I felt that I had to make a move in the summer of 1995. My work as a musician had lost any of its creative emphasis and, more to the point, the working opportunities were becoming few and far between. What had I become a musician for?, was the question I was often asking myself. The answer was, of course, to embark upon my own creative odyssey. I had, I concluded, lost my way.

I had had a lot of fun: recording albums and singles for major and minor labels; touring Europe, North America and Japan; playing in front of 28,000 at Berlin's Wald Bühne. But none of it was completely 'mine'. Time for a new direction. But first, time for a change of location.

I signed a contract to play flamenco guitar in the United Arab Emirates (the fact that I had never played that genre before I saw as a minor obstacle). The contract work itself was not particularly inspiring, but it gave me a chance to collect my thoughts and listen to some new music in my time off. I got into a kind of Arabic vibe due to the local music and the surroundings. This was further enhanced by the Moorish thread running through the music I was playing.

On my return to London I invested my hard-earned cash in some studio equipment and an MA in Politics: a long held passion of mine. The main outcomes of the study were that I became a more competent writer and thinker, and the philosophical and intellectual material I had gathered provided the conceptual underpinning of my music during the time that followed. One might ask how instrumental music can be conceptualised in such a way. Of course it's a very personal process. So much so that an outsider could viably question its very existence. That's OK - I like to be mysterious.

Regardless of my new experiences, musically I was still a rocker. Deep down I wanted to be a Satriani or a Vai, but came quickly to the conclusion that the World was already over-laded with that type of player. I didn't think I was that technically gifted in any case. So I decided upon an overall album concept (a guitar album but not - if you know what I mean) which I called Eurasian. I set about creating a personalised musical story which would focus the whole project and give it an underlying theme. The next paragraph is where some of you may think I'm disappearing into my own posterior (if you haven't already).

Eurasia is the great land mass which stretches from the West European Coast to the Pacific Ocean: the theatre of History. I wrote some of the tunes to depict certain historical characters. Such as Natalia (Leon Trotsy's wife) and Man Of Steal (The translation of the adopted name 'Stalin'. Yes it really was a case of the lunatic having taken over the asylum). I also took the opportunity to show off my nascent German language skills in the titles Für Die Liebe Einer Frau (For The Love Of A Woman) and Schlangenbiß (Snakebite).

The album took the best part of a year and received some critical acclaim. The title track was to be included in the 2004 compilation Fuel on Chromium Records. Eurasian is my rock album, drawing largely on my pre '77 influences (I had difficulty getting into a punk band as my potential collaborators seemed to object to the fact that I could actually play the guitar).