"This is the first ever photo of me in my first ever high school band. We’re in the hall of my best mate Rob Allman’s house on Altrincham Road, near Timperly (South Manchester). We used to rehearse there all the time and it’s a testament to the quality of 1930’s semi-detached British houses that his patents used to sit in the living room watching TV and we’d play in the hall outside. This is where it all started for me, there’s nothing before it, its ground zero. Rob’s on the drums, the guy with the bass is Rick Maunder and it’s me with my very first ever guitar, a black Columbus Les Paul copy. I didn’t know how to play at the time though! Me and Rob were in the same class at school and we were really tight, Rick was in the same year and he was a friend but not as much as Rob and I as we were best friends. At the time the band were called Eye Routine, and it was a jam band really as we didn’t have a singer but at that time Johnny Marr used to come and sit on the stairs to watch us rehearse. When I went off to form a band with Morrisey Rob Allman went on to become the singer in Johnny Marr’s very first band, who I think were called The White Dice. Unfortunately Rob’s dead now. Basically there was a split after Punk happened and half the guys wanted to be hippies and half the guys became punks and I got into the punk thing. So I started going to punk gigs and left this band behind." Billy Duffy - January 2013