Sam's remarkable musical journey began with being born into a musical home environment, his mother being a former opera singer who now gave piano lessons. He started by taking percussion lessons at the age of four, which inevitably led to a drum kit. Despite his best efforts to take up more tuneful classical disciplines such as piano, Sam found reading non-linear notation impossible due (he suspects) to his dyslexia, so set about learning them in his own way.
Refreshingly, his diverse musical influences as a child left him with a healthy disregard for musical barriers. While composing such epics, Sam developed his heavy rock streak (initially derived from playing drums in a blues band which led to a fixation his ‘holy trinity' of Led Zeppelin, Guns ‘n' Roses and, particularly, mid-period Pink Floyd, his biggest influence).