the early years: our first UK tour

Our first show was in Scotland. Since we had no guitars, Owen and Duncan decided that one should take a plane to Scotland to arrange for instruments, and the rest of us had to board a train. Everything went fine - the gig was a success.

We came back to London, where we had to live in a bed and breakfast. There were a few gigs around England to be done, and it was around then that we first met Gordon Muir. He was just hanging around as a friend of Doug's - that is how we were introduced to him. We didn't speak to him much, because our English was not that good, and his heavy Scottish accent was hard to understand. We could understand Owen better, because he spoke softly with an English accent. He was a quiet, decent man - no wonder they called him "professor".

Doug and Owen treated us with much respect, and were trying hard to honour their contract - but the going was getting tough. We could see that they were struggling, but we were not part of the blame. We were playing music the best we could. In each show, we could leave the audience screaming for more. We were a strong band hungry to show off to our previous colonial masters. We were prepared to play even three shows a day, because in our country we normally played for nine hours or more with just least three breaks of thirty minutes. Here, playing for one and a half hours was like a joke. We couldn't feel as if we had done anything.

During this period, this man Gordon Muir, was still hanging around; probably he was with Doug and Owen when they shared secrets and future plans about the band. It came to a point when Owen and Doug decided to terminate the tour, and rearrange it in a better way, now that they had learnt the hard way. But before they broke the news to the band, Gordon came and told us that Doug and Owen were planning to dump us, because they couldn't afford to pay the rest of the agreed money, and there wasn't much time left to find it.

According to our work permits, which were valid for three months, the shows were few and not much money was coming in. At this point we became vulnerable. We could see our dreams being shattered; the instruments we hoped to buy as a band and all the material things which we wished we could see them drifting away. The worst was that we could see these things all around us in London town. Most of them were at an affordable price. To us, it was like being thirsty whilst your legs are in the water. Surely any predator could find us as a sitting target at that point.

Doug and Owen seemed to be hiding something from us, which made predator Gordon Muir strike on us behind their backs. According to Gordon, Doug and Owen owed him a lot of money. This was the main reason he was hanging around him, but it was proving that they were unable to pay him back. So all along he was calculating how he could make an attack on us