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Three Parts Guitar: Gordon Giltrap, left, with Raymond Burley and John Etheridge |
There’s no idle frets with Giltrap around!
PREVIEW: GORDON GILTRAP
Union Chapel
GUITARIST Gordon Giltrap’s a British institution – a guitarist’s guitarist who’s played alongside everyone from Brian May to Cliff Richard to James Taylor – and is a keen vacuumer.
It’s true, Giltrap enjoys nothing more than to clean his Sutton Coldfield home to relax, a fact, he says, no one has known until now.
He plays Islington’s Union Chapel on September 29, alongside jazz guitarist John Etheridge and classical guitarist Raymond Burley.
Their collaboration, Three Parts Guitar, he says, is “a bunch of friends having fun – we don’t do a great deal of rehearsing”.
Giltrap has been friends with Etheridge since 1973 and working with Burley as a duo for the past seven years. “Expect a diversification of styles – English classical rock with a bit of Celtic thrown in from me, pure classical guitar of Raymond Burley then the way out jazz of John,” he says.
Giltrap played the Union Chapel some years ago but, he says, only about eight people turned up. His unique sound comes from his self-taught method of playing the guitar.
“I started playing electric guitar and then acoustic,” he says. “I needed more than my basic plectrum technique so the little finger on my right hand crept in, which enabled me to play two notes simultaneously.”
Giltrap once nearly snubbed James Taylor, while on the radio in the 1960s.
“I was the guest of an unknown singer-songwriter – James Taylor,” he says. “I’d never heard of him. I just didn’t take to him, I didn’t realise he was a heroin addict and it affected his demeanour and personality.
“He was a very tortured person, just recovered from a nervous breakdown, but he was writing incredible songs – his guitar playing was amazing.”
The show’s producer asked Giltrap to duet with Taylor: “I said I don’t really do that, not really interested. I was really trying to shy off from doing this number and he really hassled and bullied me into doing it. So I reluctantly got back on stage and we jammed together and within a year this guy was the greatest thing and I was a big fan.”
He never got into drink or drugs, which may explain how he ended up becoming friends with Cliff Richard. “I’ve known Cliff since the early 1970s through the church,” says Giltrap.
“I was a born-again Christian then. I’m not now, my faith has waned. Cliff asked if I wanted to be in his musical Heathcliff, which I jumped at because I was a big fan of The Shadows and Cliff.”
One final thought?
“The great thing about guitar is that it’s not dictated by fame or fortune,” says Giltrap. “If you’re a good player and people respect you, you make a lot of friends.” |
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