If you booked him for a session for example and the engineer wasn't getting a good sound from his kit Andy would know how to place the mics to get it to sound better, or if things were drifting time-wise because the synchronising wasn't quite right he would advise you on what to do get it right, or even if half the desk went down, give him an hour or two and a soldering iron and he'll fix it.

The first thing he did on leaving school was a two years electronics course.

Drums and electronics:

He didn't start playing the drums at all until he was 17 years old at which point he simultaneously started work at Mcdonalds.

After seeing Guy Richman play in a big band Andy was so impressed he found out the name of his teacher (Bob Armstrong) who helped him develop that famous technique which due to its power and speed makes the stick blur in a great fan in every photo you ever see no matter what the shutter speed.

After 4 years as a 5 Star worker at McD's Andy went out one night with his friend Perty to see a drummer called Neal Wilkinson.

Andy said "How come he can play like that?"
Purty said "Because he doesn't work in McDonalds".

He hasn't seen the inside of a McDonalds since that day.

Andy was the fifth out of six kids, the first from his Guyanese family to be born in this country, he grew up in Walthamstow, the son of a zany mum who had a talent for tapping rhythms on a table, and his father a meticulous tailor who Andy knew at the time would think that packing in a perfectly good job to play the drums was nothing short of insanity.

Which is why he didn't tell him for two months.

Purty told me about one cold winter's day spotting Andy in his blue cagoule walking up and down in the rain unable to either get in a practice room or go home until the time he used to do when he had had a job.

After working for a whole week stamping words on the sides of pencils he got a job at Holiday Music in Leytonstone and picked up gigs in function bands.

After seeing Dave Weckl play in Chic Corea's Electric band Andy saved up to buy his first drum machine, a Sequencial Circuits "Tom".

His partying habits were very different back then, he used to drink water and lemonade and spend all his money on gear.

He was very much drawn towards electronics and bought a Yamaha PMC 1 (pad to midi converter), a Simmons SDSV, a PA and a digital mixer which enabled him to land his first proper paid work with a singer called Basia who used to sing with Matt Bianco and had used a Linn 9000 to programme all the drums on her album and wanted to recreate that sound live.

Suddenly the young Andy Gangadeen was transported into a high life of limos and private jets and thrilling as it was there was just one thing.

It was TVs.

It was miming.

Two months later when he voiced his concern over this he was promptly sacked.

Six months after that he found their old album on a half unwound cassette in the bottom of his bag.
So he chucked it in the bin.

Later that very same day after getting a call to do a week at Ronnies and loads of live dates with them he dug the tape out of the bin, sellotaped it back together and re-learnt the material.

Two years later he landed the Lisa Stansfield gig, which was heavily electronic, in which he used more or less the same configuration you see on Bays gigs today 17 years later.

Of course there was The Spice Girls thing after that which is why he's got door handles in his house by Philip Starke.

£125 a pop.

What's wrong with B&Q?

Of course he still gets offered the best session work available but the shallowness of the commercial music industry just doesn't interest him any longer.