My father was not an active musician himself, but he always encouraged me in my passion for the steel guitar, and often drove me around to gigs before I was able to do so myself. He also built me a couple of instruments that I still play and value today.

The first was an Antoria guitar, that he had kicking around during my childhood. I had acquired some Dobro parts from the USA, and came up with the idea of converting his old Antoria into a Resonator instrument.

You will see from the picture that my imagination was pretty exotic back then, and had a unique feature of an arrow design up the neck in mother of pearl. I designed the guitar and he did the conversion.

He did such a great job of it that I have been playing and recording with this instrument right up to the present day. 

 The second instrument my Dad built for me was an 8 string electric lap steel.

Once again, I did the design and it had features that made it unique.

As well as having that mother of pearl arrow that was starting to become a trademark of ours, the guitar could be removed from its stand and played across the lap.

The instrument had a great sound, and served me well for some years before I moved on to playing Pedal Steel full time. 

           BJ COLE.

How I got to go on an American tour with the Verve was an unlikely combination of circumstances.  

Following the falling out of Richard Ashcroft and Verve guitarist Nick McCabe, I got a call from Richard asking me to join the band for their upcoming American tour. I was flattered but confused. Why me? There must be dozens of great rock guitarists who could do the job. Picking a Pedal Steel guitarist with psychedelic pretensions was, to put it mildly, lateral thinking.  

It turned out that Richard's wife, Kate Radley loved the work I had done on the Spiritualized album 'Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space'. Her former partner Jason Pierce, being the leader of that group. The American tour was a gas. The Verve were just breaking in America, so no expense was spared. We rehearsed for a week in Chicago and then embarked on the tour.  
It's the closest I've ever come to being a rock star.  

The final gig of the tour, and the last the Verve ever did, was at Slane Castle in Dublin.  
The reception we received was overwhelming, right down to the Garda escort out of the site under cover of the firework display, and then back to the hotel for a night of end of tour rock 'n'roll excess.  
Although I had no prior opinion of the Verve's appeal, I came away from the experience with a great respect for them and especially Richard's vocal and songwriting talent. 

The first half of the 1970’s was my most intense period of session work. 
Following the high profile use of my Steel Guitar on Elton John’s track ‘Tiny Dancer’, everybody wanted to use me. Of the arrangers I worked with, Del Newman was my favourite and we developed a good working relationship over many projects. My favourite of these was with the legendary Scott Walker. 
 

Scott had developed a taste for Country Music. Not the traditional rhinestone kind, but the work of such young ‘outlaws’ as Tom T Hall and Jerry Jeff Walker etc. Scott and Del began work on two albums for CBS Records with Scott interpreting many well-known songs of this genre which were to see the light of day as ‘Stretch’ and ‘We Had It All’. Del asked me to play Pedal Steel and Dobro on the sessions, which were recorded at Nova Studios in Marble Arch. 
I worked on most of the songs and got to know Scott really well. He was friendly and interested in the music and didn’t exhibit the moodiness with which he was later accused. Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of great singers, but there is no doubt in my mind that Scott is the best of the lot. 
 

A few years later Scott and Del asked me to work with them once again. This time the venue was Air Studios, then in it’s original location high above Oxford Circus. This was to be a full blown Walker Brothers album, the last they were to make together. 
The production values and budget were consequently on a higher level, with A team players and full orchestral arrangements. 
 

These sessions yielded Scott’s classic version of the Tom Rush song ‘No Regrets’ and I played on the intro and outro of this song. Of the many landmark moments in my career, this has to be one of my proudest.

I'll never forget getting the call to work on 'Tiny Dancer'.

Late one evening in 1972, around 10 PM, the phone rang. It was Steve Brown of Dick James Music, he was in London's Soho, working on a project, and asked if I could come down to Trident Studios in Wardour Street straight away to work on a track for Elton, or as I also knew him, Reg.

We knew one other already. While I was working with my band COCHISE on early demos at Dick James Music studios in New Oxford Street, Elton was also working on tracks there and so we'd got to know each other. 

When I arrived, Elton's band were set up in that big basement studio. I remember meeting engineer Robin Cable, arranger Paul Buckmaster and producer Gus Dudgeon. 

So here we were in Soho in the middle of the night, Elton sketched out Tiny Dancer to me and the band, and we spent through to the following morning putting the song together. It was broad daylight when we emerged a little befuddled. 
When I eventually heard the finished track I was pleased to note that Paul Buckmaster had built the string arrangement around my Steel Guitar part. 

It wasn't until later in the'70's that I got to work with Elton again, this time at Gus's studio in Buckinghamshire, on the album 'A Single Man'. By this time Elton's fame was established and he was exhibiting his flamboyant personality. 

I remember the carpet in the studio being so thick that the pedals on my Steel Guitar disappeared in the pile. We had to set up the guitar on a large piece of plywood to correct the problem!

   Back in the late 1970’s Country music in the UK was in a worse state than it is today,  but that didn’t stop me establishing a record label dedicated to encouraging British musical talent who wished to express themselves through Country music, albeit with a uniquely British slant. I named the label Cow Pie Records, established in 1977 with the  help of a licensing deal and budgets from United Artists Records, and proceeded with much zeal to record and promote a number of home grown artists, the most notable of which was Hank Wangford.. After having established Hanks career with ‘Cowboys Stay On Longer’, the record we made together, the label folded in 1984, after I realised that I was not cut out to be a record company executive. And that, I thought was the end of that. Until I recently got a call from an enthusiastic young entrepreneur, by the name of Patrick Hart who had obviously been doing his homework. 

   Restarting Cow Pie Records was the furthest thing from my mind, and although I already knew Patrick Hart; I had no idea that he harboured ambitions of running a record label . I had first met him in his role as front man for the London Honky Tonk band, ‘East Lonesome Drifters’. What I didn’t know was that Patrick DJ’d an Americana radio show entitled ‘Country Hayride’ as The Crispy Cowboy.  Patrick turned out to be a ball of energy, and soon had me on his show playing twin steel instrumentals with his steel player Jonathan Shacklock. 

   Then, Patrick  came to me with the idea of restarting my old record label, Cow Pie. “As long as I don’t have to run it” I said; you have my blessing. Patrick saw the potential in having a brand name and back story to a uniquely British Country/Americana record label, with me as the figurehead.  
How could I refuse. 

Check out COWPIE RECORDS HERE.