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Robbie McIntosh joined Mark Knopfler on stage for the July 2002 Mark Knopfler & Friends charity gigs in London and Beaulieu. As many MK fans will recall, Robbie has worked with Mark before this, for example, as a member of Mark's band on BBC TV's Parkinson in September 2000. The biog below is taken from Robbie's official website at www.robbiemcintosh.com and shows that when it comes to pedigree Robbie is up there with the best. (TK: 23/07/03).

Robbie McIntosh is married with four children and lives in Dorset. Born on the 25th October 1957, at Sutton in Surrey, he attended St. David's Primary School, Morden Farm Primary School, Morden Farm Middle School, and Raynes Park High School. Robbie started playing guitar aged 10, picking out things from any records listened to at the time. Having two older sisters, their record collections became early influences: Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Spencer Davis Group, Jimi Hendrix etc. His dad's love of jazz was also a factor: Fats Waller, Django Rheinhardt, Louis Armstrong - oh, and his Mum plays the piano. At age 13 he began taking classical guitar lessons with a guy called Michael Lewin and continued right through to Grade 8 (aged 18). "Lightnin' Hopkins was the first blues artist that captured my imagination" says Robbie, "I've been besotted with blues music ever since."

Robbie's first band was called 70% Proof playing a mix of original material and covers of bands such as Humble Pie, The Who, Free and Stevie Wonder, amongst others. "The other guys in the band (Paul Eager, Russel Ayles and Graham Mincher) had all left school, so we used to rehearse on Sunday afternoons at the local dump works canteen. We were pretty good really. Robbie took A-levels at school with plans to go on to do biology at university but failed miserably. So, he joined up with older Raynes Park boys Graham and Malcolm Foster in their band The Foster Brothers and toured and recorded with them throughout 1977; the band gradually folded in early 1978.

After The Foster Brothers Robbie worked for about 6 months as a lorry driver for a builder's supply company, delivering sand, cement, bricks, etc, on a 3-ton lorry becoming an expert tipper in the process. Completely out of the blue, got a call from Chris Thompson who, at the time, was the singer in Manfred Mann's Earth Band. He had an outfit called Filthy McNasty who played a lot at The Bridge House, Canning Town, The Golden Lion, Fulham, etc. Chris asked Robbie to join as lead guitar player. In November 1978 the band went to L.A. to record with Richard Perry for his Planet Record label. The name of the band was changed to Night and they toured in America for most of 1979 supporting The Doobie Brothers.

Night split in 1980 but Chris and Robbie stayed together to form Chris Thompson and the Islands with Malcolm Foster, Wix and Mick Clews. Despite many gigs and various bouts of recording, a deal was never secured and Robbie split at the end of 1981. Living in Kingston at the time, Robbie formed a fun band to play local pubs called Dean Martin's Dog, with Malcolm Foster, Mick Clews, Jez Wire, Rupert Black and Mike Dudley. Not surprisingly it won band name of the year in Time Out magazine. "Even when I'd joined The Pretenders the DMD gigs continued when I could fit them in. We played a bit of everything. Good band."

Sometime in 1977/78 Robbie met and became friends with Jimmy Scott (James Honeyman-Scott). It was this friendship that led Jimmy to contact Robbie in 1982 with a view to him joining The Pretenders as an extra member to help fill out the sound of the band live. Jimmy sadly died in June '82, and Billy Bremner took over initially; but Robbie was auditioned and joined The Pretenders in September '82. He toured extensively and recorded two albums with the band (Learning to Crawl and Get Close) before calling it a day in September '87. Robbie carried on doing session work through 1988, including some sessions for Paul McCartney, which led to Robbie (on Chrissie Hynde's recommendation) joining his band. He played with McCartney right through to the end of 1993, doing two world tours plus smaller excursions, and two studio albums (Flowers in the Dirt and Off the Ground) and three live albums (Tripping the Live Fantastic, Unplugged and Paul is Live).

Is there life after McCartney? Yes, it would seem so. Robbie went back to doing sessions to pay the rent until around about 1998 when he started to realise a dream by putting together a band of his own. "I decided to pick some of my favourite players and mates for a band that I thought would give a particular sound and edge to my songs; so I grabbed Paul Beavis, Pino Palladino, Mark Feltham and Melvin Duffy and The Robbie McIntosh Band was born. We did some gigs and recorded Emotional Bends, the debut album." Prior to this, at his mate Douglas Adams' insistence, Robbie had recorded all his instrumental tunes. "This was a collection of compositions and arrangements that I just played for fun at home to amuse myself. Douglas insisted that I record them. This collection became the album Unsung, which was to be my second album, even though it was recorded before Emotional Bends." So to another RMB album, Wide Screen, released June 2001. "We did a bunch of gigs after the release of Wide Screen, but owing to a certain amount of domestic upheaval (a house fire in July 2001, had to move out for 7 months), the band activity kind of fizzled out. Mark still plays with Nine Below Zero who I go and sit in with now and then. Melvin plays with Los Pacaminos as well as working with Robbie Williams, and I still do sessions and gigs with Paul and Pino so I still see a lot of the guys."

Robbie says, "I have a lot of musician buddies with whom I play with fairly regularly: my little blues band The Steamer Ducks (me, Chris Lonergan, Ady Milward, Clive Ashley, Nick Gomer, Steve Mutter and Paddy Milner), and Beavis McWilson (me, Paul Beavis, Steve Wilson and Holly McIntosh, my bass playing daughter)." "Another local band I was involved with a while ago was The Polygenes, a kind of progressive instrumental rock outfit led by cellist Chas Dickie (crazy name! crazy guy!). We made an album a few years ago which you can buy from the shop on my website at www.robbiemcintosh.com - good stuff! We may well get back together sometime for some gigs or maybe some recording. Chas and I were joined by Chris Lonergan (bass) and Chris Page (drums)."

"More recently I've been doing a lot of sessions, doing sporadic little tours and one-offs with Gordon Haskell, and put half the band back together (Pino and Paul) along with the legendary singer, piano and accordion player Geraint Watkins, who I got quite matey with when we worked together backing Mark Knopfler last year (July 2002)." "This line-up rocks." I still do occasional gigs depping for Los Pacaminos when Jamie can't do it, playing with old mates Matt, Paul, Melvin, Drew, and Jim, and I make regular excursions to France to play in duo with French star Diane Tell.

In tandem with this career in bands, Robbie has played with many artists in the studio as a session man. Here is a list of the ones he can remember: Talk Talk, Paul Young, Tears For Fears. Joe Cocker, Cher, Kirsty McColl, Paul Carrack, Boyzone, Gordon Haskell, Diane Tell, Tina Arena, Russell Watson, Luz Casal, Heather Small, Roger Daltrey, The Polygenes, Thea Gilmore, Tori Amos, Mike and the Mechanics, Nine Below Zero, Tasmin Archer, George Martin, Eric Bibb, Vin Garbutt, Tom McCrae, and Deborah Bonham.

Robbie's heroes:

Freddie King, P.G. Wodehouse, Lightnin' Hopkins, Eric Cantona, George Harrison, B.B. King, Lowell George, Ry Cooder, NRBQ, Peter Cook, Duane Allman, Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed, Ella Fitzgerald, David Hidalgo, Peter Green, Albert King, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, John Martyn, Marcel Dadi, Vin Garbutt, Tommy Cooper, David Attenborough, Michael Palin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, Muddy Waters, Jim Webb, Bob Dylan, David Lindley, Randy Newman, Stephen Fry, Terry Jones, Ryan Giggs, George Best, Tony Hancock, Gerard Hoffnung, Pete Townshend, Dr. John, Frank Zappa, Esquivel, James Taylor, Steve Gadd, Jaco Pastorius, Vic & Bob, Ray Charles, Fats Waller, Claude Debussy, Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller, Dad's Army, David Gower, Charlie Christian, The Beatles, Jimmie Vaughan, Henry Blofeld, Johnnie Guitar Watson, Nick Lowe, my Dad, Viv Stanshall, Michael Caine, Jeff Bridges, Katherine Hepburn, James Stewart, John Shuttleworth, The Simpsons, Spike Milligan, Robert Crumb, Oliver Postgate, Laurel and Hardy, Will Hay, Louis Prima, Albert Collins, Tony Benn, Percy Grainger, Larry Carlton, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Keltner, Laurens Van der Post, Michael Leunig, John Simpson, Nina Simone, Douglas Adams, Droopy, Deputy Dawg, George Formby, Jacques Tati, Joe Zawinul, Jeff Beck, Carl Perkins, Les Paul, Mose Allison, Jim Mullen, Morecambe and Wise, Leo Fender, Graham Chapman, Woody Allen, James Brown, A.E. Houseman, Billy Gibbons, Buzz Lightyear, Rowan Atkinson, Irene Handl, Cecil Parker, Groucho Marx, Captain Beefheart, Curtis Mayfield, Samuel L. Jackson, Jack Benny, Steve Martin, Jake Thackary, Eddie Izzard, T-Bone Walker, Terry Thomas, Mike Gleed, ...