Phil Duroux's first guitar was home made by brother Alan, and ably assisted by Phil. It had an acoustic guitar pickup glued to the front, and the frets were made from bicycle spokes. When it was finished and painted it looked great and worked well. The family was very poor in those days and Phil could only buy one machine screw and one string at a time. He would sit and practise for hours on the strings he had, and when he had saved up enough money he would add another string. It took many months to achieve a full set of strings.



His brother Laurie began teaching Phil how to play on six strings, and he got his first gig with a local band dance in his home town of Grafton NSW when he had just turned 15. It wasn’t long before he had regular Friday night gig with another band at a local pub.

Phil soon learned that bicycle spokes are softer than guitar strings when the frets began to wear away, the strings frayed, and the old guitar became unplayable. Laurie came to the rescue and bought Phil a brand new guitar from a shop.

Phil took to guitar like a duck to water. His passion for the instrument, insatiable hunger for music knowledge, and burning ambition to succeed, drove him to hours of practise every day. Eventually he left his home town and headed for the city where he believed the future lie. He was still 15 years old.


That was just the beginning. Too much has happened to be able to list it all here, but a career that has spanned some 43 years has taken Phil to many places. He has performed in some of the biggest venues in Australia, appeared on television, toured with shows throughout much of the country, and played in professional recording sessions.

He has achieved a high standard in many types of music, having been in rock & roll bands, latin bands, jazz bands, country bands, show bands and cabaret. He has done solo performances, worked as a freelance musician, and as a musical director for individual artists. He taught himself to read and write orchestration, and as such has written many arrangements for himself and other artists.


In 1992 Phil started jamming with son Josh. This was the beginning of Final Notice. They were writing and experimenting with heavy metal music, a genre in which Phil found himself completely at home. It was guitar player‘s music and it was fun to write. He had written many songs in the past, but none that he was satisfied with. But heavy metal offered a new kind of freedom and real expression. No need for corny pop catchphrases or broken hearted love lamentations, they were writing about real things, real life, and real adventures that happened to themselves and other people. Music to which Phil could apply his love of poetry and his love of chords. It was enough to make him withdraw from all other music commitments and concentrate wholly on Final Notice.

Phil believes that you cannot learn everything about music, and when you start believing that you know everything is when you will stop learning.




The first guitar

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