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In 1958, two young guitarists from Newcastle-upon-Tyne (my home town) travelled to London for a talent contest, they were Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch. they decided to stay in London and along with Jet Harris and Tony Meehan formed a backing band 'The Drifters' for Cliff Richard an up and coming Rock Singer. Rock music was virtually unheard of in the UK and Cliff and 'The Drifters' were one of the the first rock and roll groups around. However due to an injunction taken out by the American group 'The Drifters' they re-named themselves 'The Shadows' and 'Cliff and The Shadows' was born.
Within a few months, the Shadows became stars in their own right with a string of instrumental hits such as Apache, The Rise and Fall of Flingle Bunt, Foot Tapper and FBI to name just a few. Hank Marvin the lead guitarist of the group wanted to sound different to other guitarists of the time and after experimenting with echo units and the use of the tremolo arm on his guitars he established "The Shadows Sound" inspiring thousands of budding guitarists to try emulating them, the rest is history.
My Brother and one of my Cousins were some of these aspiring Hank Marvin's and it is from this background that I first started to and still do love the 'Shadows' music. I in my turn at the young age of 16 tried to emulate Hank Marvin whilst I was at school. producing a reasonable rendition of 'Apache' at a school concert, without the use of echo units which was very much a trade mark of Hank's and the Shadows guitar sound. This would have been around 1967 so the Shadows were still very popular. As you may have heard on the My Music page I am still trying to emulate The Shadows, not very well but I enjoy playing their music.

If like me you want to play along with The Shadows, the backing tracks are available from Mustang Music Ltd these are the backing tracks I use when attempting to play Shadows music.

Zoe McCulloch is a young female guitar player who started her career playing Shadows numbers. Her playing is much better than mine and she has played with some very famous guitarists such as Mason Williams of Classical Gas fame and many others.

There are many Shadows web sites on the web but I think this is the best one and it has links to many other sites related to the Shadows.