 He started playing lead guitar with a number of different punk acts whilst still in school in the late 1970s, including the "Studio Sweethearts".In the Manchester scene he personally influenced Johnny Marr to start performing as a guitarist, and encouraged Morrissey to make his first foray as singer/frontman with a punk-rock act entitled The Nosebleeds.After leaving school, Duffy left Manchester when the "Studio Sweethearts" moved to London, working for a period as a shop assistant at "Johnsons" in the King's Road, in Chelsea.