Racing driver James Cole celebrates guitar heroes at The Hawth, Crawley

You can expect performances recreating the talents of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton and many more.

The show plays The Hawth in Crawley on Saturday, January 20 (7.30pm).

One of the main guitarists in the band is British Touring Car Championship racing driver James Cole.

“This is the music that I grew up listening to,” he says. “It’s Jimi Hendrix that makes you want to pick up a guitar in the first place. When I was 14 or 15, I heard Voodoo Child for the first time, and I’d say it was a life-changing moment.

“Hendrix was one of the great original innovators of rock who turned the guitar from this Shadows clean image to a screaming psychedelic machine. I think he was absolutely integral.”

With each new tour, the Classic Rock Show tries to have a new focus. They have done greatest riffs and they have done an A-Z of classic rock: “This year we are focusing on bands that we have not really done much on in the past… so people like Jimi Hendrix.

“I am also really into Peter Green at the moment and the early Fleetwood Mac. I am just obsessed with it right now. Fleetwood Mac wouldn’t have been what they were if it hadn’t been for Peter Green and the early blues era.”

Paul Kossoff was an important figure too: “I just think he had a great feel and a great tone… and was extremely underrated. Free weren’t around for very long in the great scheme of things, and he died at such an early age. We don’t know what he could have gone on to do.”

Like Hendrix, Kossoff lived at a time when drink and drugs were viewed differently.

Pete Townshend is another great – this time one who lived to tell the tale.

“He’s just an aggressive machine, isn’t he? There is an aggression to Townshend that you can only equate to Pete Townshend. I saw The Who a couple of years ago, and you see the way he just attacks the guitar. He beats his guitar up every night!”

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