Guitar: John Vanderbilt
John Vanderbilt is driving force behind the London punk rock band the Blind Luck Band. He founded the band and he is the principal song writer. During his time with the band they have grown to a group of semi-serious guys who thought that playing in a band would be good fun to a band that are one of the leaders of the current London punk rock scene. The transformation has been slow but they have become respected musicians with a significant following.
John Vanderbilt got his start in music the way most punk rock musicians get their start, by accident more than anything. After spending several years bouncing from one lousy job to another, usually because he got fired, he decided that a career in music would be a worth a try. The fact that he had at best rudimentary guitar skills at the time was hardly going to slow him down. During one of his periods of unemployment Vanderbilt started a punk rock band called The Blind Luck Band.
The band original consisted of Vanderbilt and a friend of his named Jonas Bernaerts on bass and his girlfriend Florence Everbrook as the singer. They put up an ad for a drummer and they found Peter G. Eerts. None of the group had ever been in a band before and their early days playing together were not pretty. In the beginning the started out by playing covers of classic punk songs. After a little while they managed to get good enough that they were able to get a few gigs here and there. However the band came nowhere close to paying the bills and Vanderbilt continued to take on a variety of jobs in order to make ends meet.
Eventually the decision was made that in order to move forward with the band they would have to start writing their own songs so Vanderbilt started doing just that. He had no experience at this of course but that had never stopped him before. The early songs were not good but with a little bit of practice he managed to get good enough that he was writing songs that the band were at least not embarrassed to play in public. Once they started to get gigs performing their own songs the band really took off.
These days John Vanderbilt remains the main song writer and the driving force behind the Blind Luck Band as they build their reputation around England. They have become quite a popular live act in London because of their high energy performances and the fact that their music really is a throwback to the old fashioned punk ideals. As the bands popularity has grown they have been able to attract a loyal following of hard core fans who show up for most of their live shows. The next step is to build their reputation in the world beyond England.