Rhythm Magazine Tracks
For the next couple of months Phil is doing a couple of tracks per month for Rhythm Magazine with Pete Riley – This month it is Joe Satriani’s ‘The Extremist’ and Nine Inch Nails ‘The Collector’ and next month it is G&R’s ‘Welcome To The Jungle’.

Paul Reed Smith 50th Birthday Gig
On the 4th of Nov Phil and Peter Eldridge joined Bernie Marsden, Jimmy Copley, Martin Barre and Neil Murray as part of the gig at Birmingham's NEC to celebrate Paul Reed Smiths 50th Birthday. It was great fun doing songs like ‘Fool For Your Loving’ and ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ – with a brass section too!

Drummer Live
This years drummer live show at the new venue of ExCel in Docklands was great fun – thanks a lot to everyone who turned out! We played an interesting set that featured music from many of Nicko’s influences. It included things like ‘Take 5’, ‘Wipeout’, ‘A Hard Days Night’, ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, ‘My Generation’ and ‘Moby Dick’! Also, keyboardist Chris Teeder was back with us and he did a particularly splendid job on ‘Gates Of Babylon’.

BBC Breakfast TV/BBC News 24
Phil appeared today live 3 times on BBC breakfast tv and 5 times on BBC News 24 during which he was interviewed and spoke about the current upturn in interest in guitar this year (over a million guitars were sold!). Phil also played a number of times and even taught one of the presenters (Julia George) her first chord.

The guitar he played was a custom made Taylor worth over £5,000. . . . he was glad he didn't drop it!
Click here to see the interview >

Bath Guitar Festival
This years IGF festival at Bath is now over. Phil had a great time and his class ended up playing 5 different songs at the gig on the last night – nice one! Also, Phil got up and played ‘We Will Rock You’ with Shelley Preston’s (ex Bucks Fizz!) vocal class. Bill Oddie seemed to like it – he was at the gig doing a song for an up-coming BBC TV program where he learns to play guitar!

1 on 1 - Private Guitar Lessons with Phi
Phil is currently taking on a few more private guitar students to be coached at his studio. If you are interested you can get in touch by emailing: tuition@philhilborne.com

You Tube Videos
There are a couple of videos from the London Guitar Show on You Tube – Just go to their site and type Nicko McBrain as a search and you will find em’. The quality isn’t too great (probably filmed on mobile phones!) but it should give you an idea of what we were up too!

Adrian Legg Live CD
Phil has just finished mastering and compiling work on the new live CD by acoustic guitar virtuoso Adrian Legg. There is no release date sorted out as yet – we will keep you posted! By the way, Adrian will be supporting Joe Satriani on all his European dates (except UK) on Joe’s up-coming ‘Super Colossal’ tour. Check out either Adrian’s or Joe Satriani’s websites for the dates.

London Guitar Show
We had a great time playing at this years guitar show. It was really good to work with Peter Eldridge on vocals and Geoff Whitehorn on guitar - and of course to have Bruce Dickenson join us for the Sunday show. Big thanks to everyone who turned out to see us.
Pictures >

Alan Hutton
It is with great sadness that we have heard of the recent death of guitarist, teacher and all round guitar guru Alan Hutton. Alan was a pupil of both Phil's and fellow GT writer Lee Hodgsons for about 5 years and for the last few years he had his own very successful teaching practice based near Guildford.
Alan was a true fan of guitar playing in all it's styles and was an authority on more or less every detail connected with it. In fact, particularly in the days before the internet Phil, Lee, Neville Marten and Jamie Humphries all used to contact Alan regularly for information when they were researching articles - he was a real goldmine of knowledge. He will be greatly missed. We offer our sincere condolences to his family.

London Guitar Show
Phil, Andy, Nicko, and their guests are all looking forward to playing at this coming weekends guitar show - try and make it if you can - the dates and performance times are on the shows section of the site - see you there!

WWRY etc.
Not too much has gone onto the updates so far this year because it has been so busy! So far there has been over 40 WWRY shows plus various Clinics and of course the usual GT Magazine work. By the way, Phil has now done WWRY over 350 times!

Colchester Institute
On the 22nd of March Phil did a clinic at the Institute and last night he went back and judged their yearly 'Battle Of The Bands' event. The overall standard of the bands taking part was really good and congratulations must go to the winners 'Black & White'. Also, big thanks are due to Tim Pells (head of guitar) for putting the event on - nice one!

AMS Clinics
Phil has just recently finished his guitar clinics at the Academy Of Music & Sound in Birmingham, Exeter and Southampton. The clinics were very well received and hopefully Phil should be doing the same series of clinics next year - plus an extra one in Scotland! . . . . . .