Andy - Drums, backing vocals     

Home town: Fleet, Hants 

Hobbies: Apart from playing the drums - windsurfing, mountain biking and snowboarding

Despite taking piano lessons from an early age, Andy started playing drums aged 12 years when Santa managed to squeeze a Premier snare drum and some tom-toms down the chimney! His first experience on a full kit was at school when he used to play for an hour every lunchtime. He was invited to join the school Senior Windband and encouraged younger schoolkids to join him playing the kit.

From 14 years old, Andy started to add to his kit, and eventually put together a white Premier kit with Zyn cymbals. In addition to the school concerts and playing drums for school plays and other shows, Andy joined his first rock band and spent Sunday afternoons in the guitarist's parents' living room playing The Police's Walking On The Moon and Pretty Vacant by The Sex Pistols - over and over and over again - pity the neighbours!

During sixth form Andy joined Spectral Detta, and spent two years playing covers of tracks by Van Halen, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard and Gary Moore with the kit squeezed into his mum's Fiat 126!

When back from university during the summer, Andy helped form a band playing a few Rush covers - Red Barchetta, 2112, Lakeside Park etc. - with his brother, Duncan, on bass and the ex-Spectral Detta singer.

At university, Andy jammed with a variety of musicians and accompanied college plays until forming Majesty in his final year. A 5-piece rock band, Majesty played a number of gigs, culminating in the end of year open-air concert, when people in pubs two miles away were singing along to the mix of original songs and covers of Van Halen, U2, Rush, Gary Moore, Whitesnake etc.

On moving to the Thames Valley, Andy spent a few years learning formal drumming techniques with Peter Fallowell, where his childhood music theory classes came in very handy for reading and writing drum notation.

In 1986 Andy helped to form Time At The Bar, a Bracknell-based band playing punk, mod and rock covers of artists such as The Jam, U2, Bryan Adams, Foo Fighters, Therapy?, Green Day and Robbie Williams, as well as a couple of album's worth of self-penned songs. During their 20+ years together Time At The Bar played many gigs and recorded a few demo CDs at No Machine studios in Wokingham and White House Studios in Weston-Super-Mare. The band finally split following the guitarist's move to Cheshire in 2007.

Alongside Time At The Bar, Andy also played with:

• Desperate Dance: a 4-piece function band playing 70's and 80's covers including Queen, Bowie, The Police and a selection of popular soul songs.
• The Nonkey Brothers: a 5-piece comedy band whose music has been described as "Viz magazine set to music"! The Nonkeys recorded a couple of albums and played many pub gigs in the Thames Valley area. Talented guitarist Gary Nuttal joined for the last couple of gigs before moving on to join Robbie Williams' band (Andy's claim to fame)!

In late 2007, Andy helped to form Heathrow Jets when he took a call from the ex-Nonkey Brothers guitarist who was keen to form a punk band and had recruited Paul on bass.

Favourite Artists

• Rock: AC/DC, Aerosmith, Big Country, Creed, Deep Purple, It Bites, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Rush, The Police, Thin Lizzy, U2, Van Halen.
• Modern punk: Blink-182, China Drum, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Hoobastank, Just Jinger, Lit, Sum 41.
• Jazz-funk-latin: Oleta Adams, Earth WInd & Fire, Irakere, Jack Johnson, Bob Marley, Santana, Sting.

Influences

• Brian Downey - Thin Lizzy: Astounding feel and subtlety lifts one of the best ever rock bands to another level.
• Ian Paice - Deep Purple, Whitesnake: Fantastic technician, brilliant jazz/blues playing for a legendary rock band.
• Neil Peart - Rush: The Professor (RIP) - Pushed back the boundaries of rock drumming.
• Manu Katché, Omar Hakim, Simon Phillips, Dave Weckl, Gavin Harrison: Amazing ability, stunning work with ground breaking jazz/rock bands - I give up! ;-)
  

Equipment

• Natal drums - Birch Rock kit in Sunburst Fade
• Zildjian cymbals
• Pearl snare drum
• ProMark 747 Oak Neil Peart signature sticks
• Gibraltar rack, stands and pedals
• An AKG headset mic, IEMs and a selection of ear-plugs - what, pardon?