The Beginning

I was born Sunday, 4th April 1965 in Oldham, Lancashire to Don and Josie Burns. I'm the youngest of three children. My brother Russell is nearly five years older and my sister Donna is a year and half older.

    I started playing guitar in the 70's. My second cousin, Ian Burns gave me and Russ a guitar for Christmas. It was a Hofner guitar and we loved it. I was probably about 9 or 10 years old at the time and Russell would have been about 14. That would make it 1974/75.

Russ started playing first and I just copied off him. I also started playing drums. My dad's uncle gave us a drum kit. I used to love making noise with it. In fact I spent more time playing drums than guitar back then. 

    I only really got into playing guitar when I was about 12 or 13. I wanted Russ to show me everything by then. He would show me something and I would go away and learn it. My dad bought him an Antoria Telecaster copy and it was easier to play than the Hofner. Russ also bought himself a Carlsbro Stingray amp.

    Russ moved out when I was about 14 and my dad bought the Antoria tele' and Carlsbro amp off him and gave them to me for Christmas. I was hooked at this point and just played guitar all the time. My early influences were Nazareth, Lynyrd Skynyrd, UFO, Rush and Thin Lizzy. I just put the albums on endlessly and played along until I thought I knew how to play the songs. Russ was listening to all these bands and it was through him playing them all the time, that I got into them too.

    Later on, he bought the first Van Halen album. He took me to my first gig that year on the 22nd May 1978 to see Black Sabbath with Van Halen as the opening band. It was unbelievable and I knew there and then, that's what I wanted to do. Be in a band.

    All through my teen's I stayed in and played guitar. I just needed to know how to play these things I was hearing on my albums. I noticed that I was improving as people were now asking me how to play things instead of the other way round.

First Bands

I formed a rock band with another guitarist from school. He's called Jimmy Keegan. He's a couple of years older and we used to go to his house during the dinner hour at school to play guitar. We formed a band with a singer called Greg who's dad had a pub called the Whitegate. We used to rehearse in this room above the pub but nothing ever came of it. It was good fun though. I think that originally, I started on drums but then moved to guitar with this band.

    We then put another band together called 'Mainstream' (I think). We used to rehearse in this big room in a Polish social club. We were doing Lynyrd Skynyrd, Judas Priest, Nazareth and some other songs. I was actually fired from this band. It was the first and only time I have ever been fired. It was due to the drummer and myself not getting on and as it was his fathers contact who had got us the rehearsal room, I had to go. Bastards :-).

    I got in a band with my friend Anthony. Ant played drums and it was his band. They were called 'Graphic Sound'. They used to do loads of gig's and I was happy to join as second guitarist. Sadly, I only ever did one gig with them at 'The Pit' club in Limeside, Oldham. That was my first ever gig. We carried on for a while but just ended up getting together and having fun rather than rehearsing. It was a good laugh though and all the rehearsals got me used to playing in a band.

    I never really liked school. I couldn't wait to leave. There were some great people there both pupils and teachers. Mr Moran and Mr Pennington fell into that category.

Tommy Moran was loaning me Lynyrd Skynyrd albums when I was about 13 years old. He knew that Russ was playing me this stuff at home and he let me listen to the albums that Russ didn't have.

Mr Pennington started to teach guitar in his own time during dinner breaks. There were not too many people turning up but he gave his own time and encouragement to help us out and I always thought that was pretty cool of him. Cheers :-)

In school, we had a career's advice lesson. I said I wanted to be a guitarist when I left. I was told that everyone wanted to do that and to pick something more realistic, I then said that I wanted to work in a record shop and surprisingly, I was given the same answer. After that I told him I wanted to be an astronaut. I felt I would have about as much chance at doing that than the first two choices........

When I left school, my first job was in Javelin records in Oldham. One of the first customers I served was my old career's teacher. He told me "well, that's one of the jobs you wanted". The shop eventually closed down and the following year, I got a job making luggage.

    While I was making luggage (it must have been about 1982), my dad signed a credit deal so that I could buy my first Marshall head and cab. It was a new 50 watt master volume JCM800 head and matching 4x12 cab. I remember going to pick them up. I brought them home in the back of a black cab and my mums face was a picture when she saw me dragging it all upstairs to my bedroom. I felt I had just moved up a league.

    Me and Russ were asked to join a rock band formed by Jimmy Keegan called 'All The Kings Men'. It featured Me, Russ, Jimmy, Ronnie Wolstenholme (the singer from Mainstream) and a drummer called Eddie Misevic. We only did one gig at 'The Tower club' in Oldham and we created such a hype that we sold all the tickets. It was mostly covers with a few original songs thrown in. People in Oldham still ask me about this gig so it must have been pretty good. By this point, I had swapped my JCM800 for an older '79 MK2 MV100 head.

    About this time, Russ and the drummer Richard Muller (who had me fired from the first band Mainstream) got another band together. We had no name at the time and we used to just play Rush songs. We then got approached by a singer called Paul Bedford. He had all these weird songs that could only be described as a cross between 30's German cabaret and 70's rock. This would be about 1982/83. It was very theatrical and off the wall. We did a few gigs and although it was so 'camp' and weird, it was also very powerful and it used to go down very well live.

About this time, I bought my first Gibson Les Paul. It has stayed my faithful companion ever since. I tried every Les Paul in Manchester. None of them spoke to me o felt right. Me and Russ got on a train to London.

It was the second one I tried in London that morning and we went back to buy it later that evening. The only reason I didn't buy it straight away was because I didn't like the original pickups. I loved the guitar though. It sounded so good and had a really slim neck for a Les Paul. This guitar could have been made for me.

    It's a 1978 Les Paul Deluxe but I had the original mini humbuckers taken out within the first month, added a Di marzio Super Distortion to the bridge and a Di Marzio PAF in the neck. I had these installed in the Antoria Tele' that my dad had bought for me shortly after getting it. I always liked the sound of them. I also added gold pickup surrounds eventually and over the years, replaced all the parts to gold.

With the new pickups and all the gold hardware this guitar was a god :-)

    At one gig, I was approached by a guy called John Needham. He owned a 24 track studio in Oldham called Pennine studio's. He asked if I would go and see him and to bring a cassette of my playing.

I took some original stuff and an instrumental version of Foreigner's 'Waiting For A Girl Like You'. It was all guitars and had a big cry baby wah guitar solo in it. He really liked it. A week later, he got me my first session. I was only about 18 at the time. It was with a band called 'La Bamba'. They wrote some great pop/rock songs. I played on three songs and put a solo on one of them. Cool guys and good songs.

    I used to hang about in a music shop 'Rock Island' in Oldham (long since closed). A bass player Craig Fletcher also used to go there. I saw him around a lot and he was always gigging. His brother Morgan had been playing around Oldham for a long time and always drew a lot of people to gigs. Craig asked if I would form a band with him and Morgan. We did no rehearsals but drew up a list of cover songs at Morgan's house and did a bit of a run through. He got us a gig on a Monday night at 'The Grotton Hotel' just outside Oldham. We did the gig and it went down really well. We got offered every Monday and from that it grew to six gigs a week around the area. I did that for a couple of years and it really improved my playing and gigging experience. Morgan's still going strong now. He's still a great singer and frontman.

Dare (the start)

    Around this time (1985), Darren Wharton was working in Pennine studio. He had just left Thin Lizzy and was looking for a guitarist. He asked a bass player who was visiting the studio if he knew anyone. He said that "there was this young flash bastard doing all the Van Halen, Gary Moore stuff, if you were into that" but he "certainly wasn't". Darren was "into that" and asked the owner of the studio about me. He gave Darren my number and we got together for a pint.

    I had only just started a new band with a guy called Paul Hopwood. He used to be in a band Rox. In Rox, he was known as Paul Diamond. They were a glam band but Paul was now looking for something else. We got together and he had some really great ideas for songs. We decided on the name Jailbait. We did a few rehearsals but I ended up in a situation where I was working making luggage through the day, playing with Morgan most night's of the week and then trying to start a new rock band with Paul. 

    At the same time, Darren Wharton came to watch me play a gig with Morgan. We already did some Lizzy songs and Darren liked what he heard. I went over to Darren's house and we had a jam. We were both really into TOTO Isolation at the time as it had just come out. We played some of that and then I played a long solo over an idea for a song that he had. I still have the cassette of this audition and I will post it on the downloads page. Darren liked what he heard and we went and did some demo's the week after.

About this time, I had bought an Ibanez Roadstar 315 and a DM1100 digital delay. The guitar was a single pickup model and had a non locking trem. I just used to spray Selmer Key Oil on the nut and it stayed in tune really well no matter how much I used the trem.

    I rang Paul Hopwood and told him that I could not do the Jailbait thing with him as I was going to work on something with Darren.

    Darren was signed to Phonogram. We went into the studio the week after to do some demo's. One of these was a very early version of 'Under The Sun' which would later make it onto the first Dare album.

We started to write and record. It was the two of us for about six months but we then started to look for other members. While we were with Phonogram, I bought a Marshall 100 watt Split Channel Reverb head. It's not the most popular Marshall JCM800 amp but I really liked it. I tried a lot of them in the shop but this one had a great sound and was much better than the rest. I was using the first channel for clean. The second channel was for rhythm and for solo's. I had an MXR Micro Amp set on full to totally saturate the input stage and just stomped on it for solo's. I also used a cheap Amdek Chorus, late 70's Cry Baby Wah and my Ibanez DM1100 digital delay that cost almost as much as my Les Paul back then.

    First in was drummer Ed Stratton. He had been playing in a band called Statetrooper. We also got another friend of mine Shelly. He had been working at the BBC as a sound engineer and was a guitarist. We asked if he would switch to bass and he agreed. We started rehearsals and did some photo sessions but out of the blue, Phonogram were bought out by Polygram and we were dropped. 

We had been working under Darren's name but we decided at this point to get a band name. While we were trying to find a name Lemmy from Motorhead suggested the name Dare to Darren. We all liked it as it suggested no style of music at all.

    Ed was not working out on drums. Ed and Shelly never really got on. Ed also lived in Northampton while all the rest of us lived up in Oldham. Without Phonogram paying for train tickets, it was difficult to have rehearsals and write songs at short notice. We made a decision to start looking for another drummer. We drafted in Jim Ross. He's a great drummer and lived locally.

We were writing new stuff all the time. Daren and me did a deal with a studio in Manchester. We would play on their jingles and radio ident's and we would get to record or rehearse in the studio.

We gigged as a four piece for about a year and the first of these gigs was in December 1985 at 'The Spread Eagle' bikers pub in Ashton near Oldham. We carried on gigging as a four piece but Darren decided that we needed second keyboard player so that he could front the band with a remote keyboard. Up to now, he had been stood behind a DX7 singing.

    First we used Mark Simpson. We did a few gigs that Shelly organized in York and carried on doing local gigs in Oldham. Things were getting hectic by now so I stopped working at the luggage factory and stopped the evening gigs with Morgan so that we could concentrate on solely on Dare.

    A contact at Chrysalis Music John Fishlock met with us concerning a publishing deal. He offered us some demo time in a small 8 track studio in a basement under Chrysalis in London. They said that they couldn't afford for all of us to go down so we did drums and bass in Manchester and Darren and myself went to do the rest in London.

 We recorded Abandon, Into The Fire, Under The Sun, Love Is The Price, If Looks Could Kill, Runaway, King Of Spades. We were there for a week and within days had been introduced to a guy called Roger Watson. He remembered Darren from Thin Lizzy and said he would get us more studio time. He also found us our future manager Keith Aspden. We did more Demo's in Village Recorders studio in Dagenham and stayed at the Brentwood Post House for a week. We had two rooms and all the band and crew staying in them. Hmm, cozy.

    When Chrysalis heard these songs (Valentino, Under The Sun). They wanted us to do a showcase, We had already started working with our manager under the agreement that if he got us the record deal, we would sign to him. He organized a showcase at Nomis and Chrysalis came down. We got a call after the showcase asking If Darren and myself would go to Chrysalis for a meeting with Chris Wright (Chrysalis MD) and he said he wanted to sign us but would leave it to his head of A&R. The head of A&R passed on the deal.

    We then decided that keyboard player Mark Simpson was not working out. He had got on everyone's nerves while we were staying in London doing the showcases and famously didn't laugh at a funny joke Darren told :-) so we decided it was time for a change.

    Enter Brian Cox. Brian had been round to Darren's house a few times and had already offered his services. We started rehearsals at the Maple squash club in Oldham. We knew the owners Allan and Rita and they always let us rehearse there for free :-). We got a load of gigs booked locally and started to work on our stage show and lights as well as the songs. We used all our fees from these shows to pay for lights, PA, crew and a Van. The shows started to look really slick and sound really good.

    Our crew (the 'builders' as we called them) had been with us for a couple of years and consisted of my brother Russ, guitar Tech and sound (assisted by Chris Dooley). Howard Mcgiffen, drums (and security). Ian 'Billy' Howard, lights (assisted by Paul 'Greg' Gregory). Wayne Fitzpatrick, van driver. Ian Mcgiffen (RIP) van owner, helping hand and security. At this point, the whole thing was very professional, the only thing we needed was a record deal. Darren and myself had both got publishing deals and we had spent all our money on equipment and the studio at Darren's house was also coming along. We now had the means to record demo's in our own studio.

    On one of our trips to London for a meeting, we found out that a photographer friend of ours Tony McHugh, had organized (lied to a promoter) for a few dates in Hong Kong. After rushing about to get passports for Jim and myself, we found ourselves on a British Caledonian DC10  flying to Hong Kong.

    We had a great time. We were only scheduled to do four gigs and a TV show but we ended up staying for 12 days before we decided to come back. The shows went well and things were moving along nicely with record company interest.

We managed to get EMI up to a gig at the Hurricane club in Oldham. A week or two later we had MCA come to see us at The Maple in Oldham. When RCA and A&M heard that EMI and MCA were interested and had already been to Oldham to see us, they also turned up at our next gig at The Maple.

At the end of this gig, A&M told us to forget the others as they would give us the deal we wanted. We introduced them to our manager and they sorted the deal out. In May 1987, we signed to A&M records and started to look for producers. I even went out and bought a shocking pink Ibanez guitar to celebrate!!

Around this time, I went back to school to see my old maths teacher Tommy Moran. While I was there, I saw my old career's teacher again. He congratulated me on getting the record deal (he had read about it in the local paper). This being the second job he told me I would never do :-)

Later in 1987, I bought my first Mesa Boogie amp. It was a Mk3 Simul class full size head. This was a great amp. I ordered it from Chandler guitars and something like 16 weeks later, it arrived from the USA

Dare (Out Of The Silence)

    A&M introduced us to Mike Shipley and Larry Klein and they were confirmed as producers for the album. They picked Hook End Manor in Berkshire as the studio to start the album and on a cold morning in January 1988, we all set off with hangovers in Brian's Ford Escort to start the album. We spent six weeks there doing drums, bass and most of the heavier rhythm guitars. I also did a few solo's at Hook End. 'Abandon' being one of them.

    It was decided we would not have enough time to get all the guitars done at Hook End and I would have to finish them in LA. I was not going to argue with that :-). Darren went out a month before me to get started on keys and vocals and I travelled out on 17th March 1988 (St Pat's day). This was my first time in the US and I loved it. We stayed at the Sheraton Miramar in Santa Monica for 7 weeks. We were recording at Larry and Joni's Studio in Bel Air (Larry Klein was married to Joni Mitchell). It was a really relaxed way to do an album and me and Darren had a great time.

    On the album, I used all sorts of guitars. The majority was recorded with my 1978 Les Paul straight into the Boogie. We hooked up the volume pedal on inserts on the desk so that I had control over any sort of volume swells etc but by using it on the inserts, we did not lose any gain to the amp. This was the first time that I had incorporated a volume pedal into my setup.

    We did not get everything finished on the first trip so we went back for another couple of weeks to finish the recording and then left Mike Shipley to mix the album at A&M studio's. On this return to finish the album, I left my Les Paul at home and hired a '69 Les Paul Goldtop in LA.

    We returned to LA to do a video for the first single Abandon in Aug/Sept of 1988. We did the video down in South Central and we had a lot of fun doing it.

    On returning to the UK, we finished all the photo shoots and the album got released in late 1988.

Dare gigs

We did our first major gig at the Marquee club in London on 25th October 1988. It was more of a showcase, press and music industry affair but not by choice. It seemed that everyone in London had heard how much money A&M had signed a band from Oldham for and they all wanted to see what it was all about. I think the gig was ok.

We played it very safe and it felt more like being in a goldfish bowl than any of the other good Marquee gigs that we would play later on. Press reports were favourable and the gig did it's job. The press seemed to go on more about the fact that A&M had done an over the top free bar for guests. We couldn't even get served with free drinks ourselves it was that packed. We knew we would be footing the bill for it all in the long run. We made sure that didn't happen again. Still, it was good to play the Marquee and it was a good gig too.

Dare (Jimmy Page Tour)

        In November, we did a tour supporting Jimmy Page on his UK dates. It was absolutely brilliant. Jimmy was a nice guy (and a real legend). We got to play the Birmingham Hummingbird,  Hammersmith Odeon, Newcastle City Hall and last of all (but definitely not least), the Manchester Apollo. I can't begin to say how special that was. I have seen nearly every major band at the Apollo and since being allowed to go to gigs as a schoolboy, always dreamed of playing there. It really was a dream come true.

There was a great Spinal Tap incident at the warm up gig at the Hummingbird in Birmingham. We did our set. Jimmy came in to our dressing room to say he enjoyed our show. He went out of the door and was about to walk down the steps to the stage (his intro was running). Darren shouted, "have a good one Jimmy" and as he turned round to say thanks, he fell down the stairs. Oops. We were waiting to be booted off the tour but everything was fine.

    For the 'Out Of The Silence' gigs, I bought an ADA MP-1 preamp. Mesa Boogie 295 power amp. TC 2290 delay with 0144 remote pedal board, Boss FV300 Volume pedal, rack mounted Boss TU12 tuner and a Rocktron Hush 2C noise reduction. I think I also bought two new Marshall 1960b cabs as well. It was the start of my rack obsession :-).

The gear sounded great and never let me down on tour. Jimmy Page even came and had a look round the rack and got me to show him what it did so I played Black Dog.....Badly ;-) At the same gig (Hammersmith), I caught Jimmy's guitar tech playing my gear so he let me have a go of both Jimmy's late 50's sunburst Les Paul's and the double neck :-).

Dare (Europe Tour)

After the Jimmy Page tour we got offered the support slot for the band Europe. They were playing nearly 60 shows across Europe, mostly in sports halls so we quickly accepted the tour. We set off on the ferry on the 8th January 1989 and finished on the 5th April.

This was one of the best times I have had on the road. I was single and I was going to have a good time :-)

The guys, from Europe and all their crew were amazing. In over 4 months, there were no arguments between bands and the general vibe was a 4 month party.

These gigs really brought Dare on as a band. The biggest stages we had played previously had been on the Jimmy Page tour doing theatres. With Europe, we were mainly playing sports stadiums with much bigger stages. It took us a week or so but eventually we started using all that stage and learning what looked good and what didn't.

Darren stopped using the remote keyboard except for a couple of intro's and the end of King Of Spades. He started fronting the band with just a microphone in his hand. Now this does not sound a big deal but to make a  musician who's used to standing behind their usual instrument go onstage and do a gig without that comfort zone in front of 12,000 people and you can probably imagine what Daren was coping with. I doubt I could do it!!

The gigs were so much better once Darren had  some mobility and our stage show really improved tenfold.

The guy who owned the lighting rig (Reed Glick) started doing our lights every night and that added another dimension to our show. This was made possible by Europe who let us use all the lights Reed wanted and never limited our PA volume. There are not many tours where that would happen. You could not tour with a better set of guys than these. Cheers guys.

Gary Moore Tour 89