Early Life
John Graham McVie was born in Ealing, west London, to Reg and Dorothy McVie and attended Walpole Grammar School. At age 14 he began playing the guitar in local bands, covering songs by The Shadows. He soon realised that his friends were learning lead guitar so he decided to play the bass guitar instead. Initially he just removed the top two (E and B) strings from his guitar to play the bass parts until his father bought him a pink Fender bass guitar, the same as that used by McVie's major early musical influence Jet Harris, The Shadows' bass player. John was in 3J class with Roger Warwick, a baritone sax player who had studied under Don Rendell and was to emerge in the London rock-jazz scene. Their teacher, Mr Howell (a pianist), although not really appreciating this "funny" music, was intelligent and open-minded enough to give pupils space and time to use school facilities to practise and listen to the new wave.
Soon after leaving school at 17, John trained for nine months to be a tax inspector and this also coincided with the start of his musical career.
Read more about this topic: John McVie
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“...to many a mother’s heart has come the disappointment of a loss of power, a limitation of influence when early manhood takes the boy from the home, or when even before that time, in school, or where he touches the great world and begins to be bewildered with its controversies, trade and economics and politics make their imprint even while his lips are dewy with his mother’s kiss.”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man’s life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)