Tom Peek

Meet Tom Peek from Oxford, England.

My experience with America goes back along time..... way back. Being the elder brother (by two years) of Dan Peek, I can say I knew America before they were "Big"!

From the perspective of Dan's formative years, it all started in the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan. Our father, an Air Force officer was stationed there. It was a remote location, especially for a future rock musician. Our grandmother gave me an acoustical guitar just before we moved to Pakistan. There weren't many distractions, nothing to do but watch the camel caravans pass on their way to Afghanistan.

Soon we discovered that one guitar divided by two doesn't work. So we ordered a couple of Silvertone guitars from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. We had trouble getting picks and guitar strings. The pick problem was solved by cutting them out of Clorox bottles. Dan solved the guitar string problem when he broke a low E string. He moved the remaining 5 strings up, and fitted another high E. Very technical, but we were sure able to bend those strings!

When we had taught ourselves 10 songs, classics like Runaway, Raunchy, and some Beach Boys numbers, we managed to get some "gigs" at the Airmen's club. We played for four hours every Saturday night. We calculated that we could play 10 songs per hour. To cover the four hour job, we made a rule.... "Never repeat a song more than four times... unless by audience request". Funny, we did not get many requests. Dan was twelve years old at this time.

From Pakistan, we moved to San Angelo, Texas. There we built our repertoire up to forty songs. By the time Dan was fifteen professional musicians were coming to hear his licks. After a couple years in Farmington, Missouri, we moved to England.

It was in England that Dan met Gerry and Dewey. At this point I had a distraction which involved four years in the Air Force. Just before I was on my way, Dan, Dewey, and I took a trip to Stonehenge. It was before they fenced it in. We were sitting on those ancient rocks, listening to a group of young American tourists. We were well immersed in British culture by this time, and the loud, brash American kids were all talking at once. Saying things like "I'm from L.A., and I'm from Long Beach". I turned to Dewey and Dan and said, "Everyone I meet is from California!" I guess you know the rest of the story.

Since the Air force I have ping ponged from the U.S. to the U.K. I work for a computer company, and I have been living in Britain for the last six years.

Music wise, I still play the guitar, and write songs. I have a son who is a very talented guitarist and plays in an Oxford band (loud music.... what's with these kids today?)

Feel free to send your comments or questions to the webmaster and he will forward them to Tom.