Lead guitar and backup vocals

Born – Tuesday, 21st November, 1989.

James started playing the guitar at the age of thirteen, his original plan was to learn bass because his friends had a band without a bass player and, with only four strings, it looked so much easier to learn.  It wasn’t long after this before he had his first ‘real’ guitar which was a red Alpine, a make no one had heard of...!  This was given to him on a family trip to Sunderland, from this moment on he knew this was the instrument for him.

Learning was tough, especially as all he could play at the time was the bass line to White Stripes, Seven Nation Army.  His musical talent began to show when he was in year 9 at Cheam High School.  He was top of the class in music with an uncanny ability to be able to listen to a piece of music, work out the notes and then play it back.

He holds his teacher at the time, Mr John Merriman, in high regard and is truly grateful for all his guidance at this important time in his musical development.  He recalls one instance when Mr Merriman rang his parents and convinced them he should consider music as a subject as he clearly had a natural talent.  As a result of this he took music GCSE instead of history, good save...!

He describes the two years that followed as the best school years of his life.  Firstly he met Matt, who he now considers his best friend.  Matt and James had known each other before their GCSE studies but had never talked, this all changed and now they share a passion for music and a lot more, i.e. cars, fish and Xbox.

James explains that soon after he met Matt he made another extremely close friendship, with Matt’s younger brother Dan.  When James and Dan met for the first time Dan had just started playing drums.  James says, “He has come a long way in such a short time, he has done extremely well”.  He concludes, “Although we have had a few heated arguments we still remain close friends”.

Regarding Matt, James says, “Matt and I have also come on a long way, with both our guitar playing and vocals.  I started my GCSE knowing only a few bar chords and Matt not even knowing that.”  He continues, “We helped each other so well that we ended up with A’s in our performance work and B’s over all”.

James' first experience of rock ‘n’ roll was when his uncle took him to see his mates who were in a band called The House Rockers.  That, mixed with Marty Mcfly doing Johnny B. Goode in ‘Back to the Future’ and Matt’s love of Buddy Holly is how Vintage began...

-2007-