Over three decades later, that child, now a 53-year-old music legend, has found his way back to Aotearoa, moving people to tears with the strum of his guitar.
New Zealand rock guru Jon Toogood may have kicked off his album release tour for The Last of the Lonely Gods in Kerikeri this month, but it really germinated over 40 years ago when he discovered his love for music after his Uncle Charlie’s guitar rendition of a Clapton classic.
"My love for the acoustic guitar started when I was about 7 years old.
"My parents were both Londoners who came out to New Zealand in the ’50s.
"I watched my uncle Charlie, my mum’s brother, play an Eric Clapton song with an acoustic guitar in front of me in the living room.
"Prior to seeing him do that, I thought that you had to be superhuman to be a musician.
"I thought musicians were magical beings that didn’t really exist," Toogood said.
That moment was the former Shihad frontman’s musical epiphany.
It spurred him to convince his parents to buy him a guitar.
They bought him a three-quarter-size acoustic nylon string guitar, which he played "till it literally broke".
"I just loved it so much.
"It got me through high school, and basically, my love affair has always been with that instrument because that was what I learned on," Toogood said.
"As I’m getting older, the reason I love guitar is because it’s like the whole band in one instrument."
With nine gigs done for his 19-date tour across Aotearoa, the double platinum album winner is thriving on the journey that has led to him stepping into a new realm of live performance, offering fans an intimate and powerful experience of his latest work.
"This is really deep and really special to me. It’s my story, so I’m loving it.
"I think people are really appreciating the honesty and because I’m 53 now, so a lot of my audience are similar age or even older, and some of them have brought their kids along as well and they love it too.
"If you live as long as we do, you’re going to experience some loss and you’re going to experience some pain and because life is all of it all at once," the New Zealand Hall of Famer said.
Toogood will bring his intimate and acoustic guitar and artistic evolution, to Tillermans’ stage in Waihōpai on November 2.
"Invercargill’s cool — I’ve got a long history with it.
"I played there really early on. We probably had about 12 people there, and it was cool."
