Will Worthington Guitar / Slide / Vocals I got my first guitar for Christmas in 1959…that’s the photo on the right! I was 13 and had just done my first term at Bolton College of Art where I met Barry for the first time. I had been asking my parents for a guitar for at least two years previously. In those days rock and roll was rarely seen on television but I had been aware of the odd appearance of Tommy Steele and the like on the Six Five Special and experiencing a strange feeling that I can only describe as longing! It could be that my first exposure to the music coincided with my puberty! When Barry and I were in our first year at Art School we were impressed by a couple of guys in the year above who played acoustic guitars at lunchtime most days. They played and sang Everly Brothers stuff and always had a knot of girls around them! In that first year I also heard for the first time Buddy Holly’s ‘Everyday’ on a dansette at the schools Christmas party and became besotted with him. Barry and I started learning earnestly and by our second year we had a band with two other classmates on bass and drums. We mainly did Buddy Holly songs but after a short while Barry left the band and was replaced by a girl singer called Marianne Stockley who later had some fame as Friday Brown. She soon left for a working band and, as a three piece, we had our first gig at Bradford ward Labour Club, I was 14 by then and had my first electric guitar, a Rosetti Lucky Seven…£7.10 shillings from my mums mail order catalogue! In the next two years we added a singer and a rhythm guitarist and gigged around Bolton at various clubs and coffee bars. A friend of the singer liked buying guitars although he couldn’t play, so he lent them to me to use on stage. Through that period I played a Rosetti ‘Super Seven’, solid with two pickups, a red Futrurama and a powder blue Futurama 2. When the bass-player left to join another band we called it a day. In 1963 Barry and I decided to form another band which became the Atlanta Roots. I bought an old, un-named electric guitar which was probably Italian and you can just see bits of it on the early photo section. I used this guitar until 1964 when I saw Dave Davis use an Epiphone Casino on tv playing ‘You Really Got Me’…I immediately went out and ordered one from the local guitar shop! I used this through the rest of the Roots early phase and it was played by Barry later when we re-formed and became a band icon…unfortunately it had to go later when I needed funds! When the Roots split in 1966 I had a brief correspondence with David John of ‘the Mood’ to replace Barry, but it didn’t work out. Within a couple of months I was invited to join a band called ‘the Cheshire Set’ and played with them intensively around Manchester for a year. Eric Bromley from the Roots joined briefly towards the end, but because of constant ‘unrest’ within the band we decided to leave in the summer of 1967….but not before we had borrowed their gear to play with the rest of the Roots for my 21st birthday party! In the early seventies I played briefly with a band called ‘Sparrow’…a three piece with John Rainford and Eric Sandiford. John played drums and Eric had been a guitarist in several bands including ‘the Herd’ and neither of us wanted to play bass!...although I nearly gave in and almost bought the bass rig from Bob Lange that he had used with the ‘Mindbenders’…however to solve the problem we went acoustic and had a few gigs around Manchester ….both were lovely guys, but not a period musically speaking that I recall without cringing! When the Atlanta Roots re-formed in 1987 I bought a 1972 Gibson Les Paul goldtop and I already owned a 1963 Gretsch Firebird which I later used for slide. I recently replaced the goldtop for a Les Paul Standard, a guitar I had long wanted since first playing as support to the Bluesbreakers in 1965 when Eric Clapton used one. Details Birth date: August 7th, 1946. Birth place: Farnworth, Bolton, UK. Influences: Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, The Kinks, The Beatles. Guitars: Flametop Gibson Les Paul Standard, 1963 Gretsch Firebird. Amplification: Marshall. Back