[2] He began to play the guitar at the age of 10, being musically influenced particularly by the work of the British blues rock guitarist Paul Kossoff[3] and Rory Gallagher,[4] and in his youth also rode in junior Motorcycle Speedway competitions in West London.
[8] Whilst performing at a gig at the Fulham Arts Centre he was talent-spotted by the punk-rocker Billy Idol, who was at that time looking for a guitar player to complete the line-up of a new band that he had just formed that would be named Generation X.
11 in the UK Singles Chart), initiated the beginning of a deterioration in the commercial success of the band, and differences began to surface within it between Andrews and Billy Idol and the bass player Tony James as to its future musical direction.
17 Barons Court Road in West Kensington, the song "Hot Seat" (1981), with a B-side entitled "All These Things", which failed to enter the UK Singles Chart.
The new line-up released a white label 12" titled "Inside You", and toured in the UK in 1983 as a support act to John Miles and Roman Holliday, and also in Spain, where it found some unanticipated and mysteriously caused popularity with well attended shows.
In 1986 Andrews formed a retro-1950s Americana style "beatbox rock'n'roll"/rockabilly surf music garage band called Westworld,[21] with the singer Elizabeth Westwood and the guitarist/drummer Nick Burton.
[21] Between 1986 and 1990 the band performed as a trio utilizing a drum machine and sequencers with two guitarists, Andrews (lead), Burton (rhythm), fronted by Westwood as the singer, and commercially released in the United Kingdom via R.C.A.
dropped its contract, with the band's final U.K. release, the rip-roaring Dance On (which would be Andrews' career parting shot to the United Kingdom's commercial charts) reaching No.
[23] Andrews departed from England with Westwood to live in the United States in 1992, where they released two further singles and two long-players in the U.S. market via an independent label, but without commercial success, and they ended the Westworld act in 1994.
[24] In 1994, Andrews with Elizabeth Westwood came back to live in London from the U.S. and set up a new experimental Electronic pop/rock act entitled 'Moondogg', working in collaboration with Martin Lee Stephenson in a Hoxton recording studio.
A third LP, entitled All the Love in the World (2004), self-produced by Andrews, was recorded by the act at Studio Dee in Los Angeles with a session drummer, and was commercially released in the U.S.[citation needed] In 1996 Andrews joined a provisional new London band consisting of Glenn Matlock, "Rat Scabies" and Gary Twinn called Dead Horse, but the act failed to develop beyond some rehearsals and a demo recording session,[26] after Matlock abandoned it to join the reformation of the Sex Pistols.
[27] After gigging in small venues in the area, and recording music videos of cover songs ranging from T-Rex to Johnny Cash, they wrote and commercially released in the United States a self-produced album entitled California (2003), which failed to enter the U.S. charts.
[33] In 2019 Andrews released a compilation long-player of the Tone Poet series, paradoxically entitled Smash Hits (2019), with an introduction to the material written by Henry Rollins.
[citation needed] Andrews has been cited as an influence by guitarists Johnny Marr of The Smiths, and John Squire of The Stone Roses,[34] and his song back-catalogue has been covered by a diverse range of bands, including the U.S.
He subsequently moved to Los Angeles, where he dropped out of professional music for a period and worked as a motorcycle courier in the mid-late 1990s, during which time he married Stephanie in Hollywood.