Greg Quill


Gregory Raymond "Greg" Quill was an Australian-born musician, singer-songwriter and journalist. He lived in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and was an entertainment columnist at the Toronto Star newspaper from the mid-1980s until his death in May 2013. In Australia he came to popular fame as a singer-songwriter for the country rock band Country Radio. Their biggest hit, "Gypsy Queen", co-written by Quill with bandmate Kerryn Tolhurst, was released in August 1972 and peaked at No. 12 on the Go-Set National Top 40. After getting an arts grant, Quill travelled to Toronto in 1974 and by the mid-1980s had become a journalist with the Toronto Star. By 1983 he was married to Ellen Davidson, a public relations executive. Greg Quill died on 5 May 2013, at the age of 66, from "complications due to pneumonia".

Biography

Early life

Gregory Raymond Quill was born on 18 April 1947 to Raymond and Doris Quill. He grew up in Sydney with a younger brother, Christopher. From the age of about 15 years he learned how to play acoustic guitar and his first public performance was in his final year of high school. Quill began his musical career in the 1960s as a solo performer on the Sydney folk scene clustered around the University of Sydney, where he graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature. He worked briefly as a history teacher at a Catholic boys high school in Bankstown. He was hired by David Elfick, then the local editor of the national weekly pop music magazine, Go-Set. Quill worked as a writer from 1969, then feature writer and Sydney regional editor for the Melbourne-based publication. In 2002 Quill recalled that editing Go-Set had prepared him for his later work in journalism.

Early musical career

From 1967 Greg Quill ran The Shack, a folk music venue at Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches, he also performed there. In 1999 he described the venue " was a sort of folk co-operative, and everybody who performed on a particular evening got to share in the door takings – it was never more than a couple of bucks". In 1969 Quill handed over the running of the venue to his younger brother, Christopher. Gus McNeil, a music publisher, record producer and former singer and saxophonist for 1960s rock band, Gus & The Nomads, signed Quill to a publishing deal with his company, Cellar Music. McNeil produced Quill's first commercial recording, the single, "Fleetwood Plain", and the subsequent album of the same name. Quill wrote all the tracks on the album.
For the album Quill was backed by Orlando Agostino on guitars, Chris Blanchflower on harmonica, John Walsh on bass guitar, and members of local rock band Pirana: Jim Duke-Yonge on drums, Tony Hamilton on guitar, Graeme Thompson on bass guitar and Stan White on keyboards. Early in 1970 the album was released on EMI's new subsidiary label, Harvest Records, although the title single had been issued on EMI's Australian pop label Columbia Records. "Fleetwood Plain" was subsequently covered by Australian country musician, Reg Lindsay, and by Canadian folk-rockers Creamcheeze Good Time Band on their 1973 album, Home Cookin'.

Country Radio band

To promote Fleetwood Plain Greg Quill formed the original line-up of Country Radio in June 1970. Other members were Agostino, Blanchflower, Walsh and Dave Hannagan on percussion and backing vocals. The group started as an acoustic act but from 1970 to 1971 its musical style evolved into electric country rock, a style then gaining popularity through the influence of albums like The Band's Music from Big Pink, The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline.
By May 1971 Country Radio's line-up had changed with Blanchflower and Quill joined by Mal Algar on bass guitar, John A. Bird on keyboards and Ace Follington on drums. In October that year the group signed to Infinity Records, a new subsidiary of Festival Records and recorded their debut single, "Listen to the Children", which came out in November although it did not chart. Soon after, Follington left to join a pop band, The Cleves, for a tour of Britain; he was replaced on drums by Kim Bryant, who was in turn was replaced a few months later by Tony Bolton. In January 1972 Algar left and they were joined by John Du Bois on bass guitar and Kerryn Tolhurst on guitar, lap steel and mandolin. The addition of Tolhurst was crucial to the band's sound and style, Quill and Tolhurst began a songwriting partnership.
With the "classic" line-up of Quill, Tolhurst, Bird, Bois, Bolton and Blanchflower, Country Radio recorded their second and most successful single, "Gypsy Queen", with producer John French, in Melbourne in April 1972. It was co-written by Quill and Tolhurst, and featured a string arrangement by session musician, Peter Jones. Released in August, the single spent 13 weeks in the Go-Set National Top 40 and peaked at No. 12. "Gypsy Queen" shared the APRA Song of the Year award with Mississippi's "Kings of the World". It was featured on the soundtrack of director Rod Hardy's 2007 film, December Boys, starring Daniel Radcliffe, and in the 2009 ABC-TV series, East of Everything.
The chart success of the single and the interest of expatriate Canadian music promoter and label representative, Michael McMartin, led to a contract with Toronto-based MUCH Productions, which issued "Gypsy Queen" in Canada in 1972. At the end of that year they toured Canada to promote its release. The group's follow-up single, "Wintersong", appeared in December 1972 and made the Go-Set Top 40 in April, the next year. On 4 October 1972 the group had recorded a live-in-the-studio performance before an invited audience, which Infinity released as their debut album, Country Radio Live, in December. It included a selection of originals, plus two tracks, "Some Lonesome Picker" and "Never Goin' Back", written by John Stewart.
The band made several live TV recordings for the ABC-TV in-studio concert and interview series, GTK; including "Just Goodbye", "Last Time Around", "Empty Pockets", "Almost Freedom", "Silver Spurs", "Commisar", "Some Lonesome Picker", "Listen to the Children", "Fleetwood Plain", "Gypsy Queen", "Winter Song", "I Need a Woman" and an interview on their break-up. They appeared on concert and festival stages with different artists of the era, including Creedence Clearwater Revival, Elton John, Santana and Stephen Stills. They performed at the Rock Isle Mulwala Festival in 1972 and the Sunbury Pop Festivals in January 1972 and again the following year. Their live performance of "Silver Spurs" – written by Quill – at the latter festival, was included in Mushroom Records' triple live album, Sunbury 1973 – The Great Australian Rock Festival, released in April. Tolhurst abruptly left the band after the second Sunbury festival, briefly joining Mississippi, before forming The Dingoes in Melbourne, with singer-harmonicist, Broderick Smith. Soon after, both Bird and Blanchflower also left Country Radio.
Quill, Bolton and Du Bois were joined by Adelaide guitarist-songwriter Russ Johnson – effectively swapping places with Tolhurst. In May 1973 that line-up recorded the group's fourth single, a country-rock restatement of the traditional song, "Bound for South Australia", which did not chart. The four-piece ensemble opened for British folk-rock band Fairport Convention on three dates of their 1973 tour, which despite promotions did not include former lead singer, Sandy Denny. Soon after, Johnson left Country Radio for medical reasons and returned to Adelaide.
Guitarists Les Stacpool and Russ Hinton alternated on lead guitar after Johnson's departure. Hinton also performed on Quill's subsequent solo LP. Du Bois left in August 1973, rejoining Tolhurst in The Dingoes. Country Radio had toured relentlessly during 1972 to 1973 and according to Australian musicologist, Ed Nimmervoll, they were "driven into the ground to the point where disintegration was inevitable". Quill dissolved the group in December 1973 and decided to return to his solo music career. He also worked for a year as general features writer and news reporter for The Sunday Telegraph, then as editor of the suburban weekly newspaper, The Peninsula News. In 1974, Quill, performing solo, opened for Fairport Convention in several Australian cities.
In the same year Quill recorded a solo studio album, The Outlaw's Reply, with the financial backing of Sydney-based executive producer and Trafalgar Studios owner Charles Fisher. It was produced by John L Sayers and featured Country Radio alumni: Blanchflower, Bolton, Du Bois, Hinton and Tolhurst, plus former collaborator Jones on keyboards. Also appearing on the album were Barry Leef on backing vocals, Chris Neal on synthesisers and Peter Walker on guitar. Two singles from the album were issued during 1975: "She Do It to Me" and "Blackmail" / "The Outlaw's Reply". The album included the Quill song "Almost Freedom", which had previously been covered by former Company Caine singer Gulliver Smith on his 1973 solo LP The Band's Alright But The Singer Is.... During 1974 Festival also released a compilation album, Gypsy Queen, credited to Greg Quill & Country Radio, contained selection of album tracks, and A- and B-sides of singles. It included Quill's cover of the country classic "Singin' the Blues", which featured Renee Geyer on backing vocals and Stacpool on guitar. In May 1975 Quill promoted the release of The Outlaw's Reply by a performance at the Sydney Opera House, backed by the musicians who had contributed to the album. The Dingoes and Richard Clapton were also part of the first all-Australian country-rock show to take place on the Opera House's main stage. It was Quill's final performance in Australia for almost four years.
Quill was one of the first Australian rock musicians to be awarded a grant by the Australian Council for the Arts, alongside Margret RoadKnight and guitarist Rob MacKenzie. The grant enabled him to travel overseas and he moved between Toronto and Sydney for most of 1975. In Toronto he put together a new band, Hot Knives, with Bolton, and Toronto-based bass guitarist Dennis Pinhorn and violinist Anne Lindsay, and expatriate Australian guitarist, keyboardist, and songwriter Sam See. In 1977 Australian guitarist and songwriter Chris Stockley replaced Lindsay in 1977 and bass guitarist Bruce Worrall replaced Pinhorn, the band of Toronto-based expatriates took up the name Southern Cross.
In October 1978 Southern Cross released only one single, "Been So Long" on Warner's Elektra Records label. The group split at the end of that year, during a tour of Australia. Quill returned to Canada alone. A re-arranged and remixed version of "Been So Long", with parts added in Toronto by bass guitarist Steve Hogg, singer Ian Thomas and keyboardist Hugh Syme, was released in Canada as Quill's first solo single there, but it was the B-side, the raucous, guitar-heavy "I Wonder Why", that got most of the attention on Canadian radio, particularly Toronto's then hard-rock FM station Q107. A proposed album, "Correspondence", produced in Toronto by Alan Thorne, and featuring mostly new Quill compositions and guest performances by Canadian guitarists Amos Garrett and Mike McKenna, as well as Thomas, Hogg and Syme, was never released.

Journalist in Canada

After the demise of Southern Cross in 1978 Greg Quill stopped playing music professionally for almost two decades. He resided in Toronto and then Hamilton. By 1983 he had married Ellen Davidson, a concert promoter-turned-corporate public relations executive. They had a daughter, and together they also raised her two children. Quill wrote for and edited numerous music magazines – Music Express, Graffiti, Applaud, The Canadian Composer, Songwriter. From 1983 he was a journalist and occasional TV and radio commentator on the arts scene in Toronto, where he was an entertainment columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper.
Quill believed his earlier career helped with journalism, as "musicians sense that I know what I'm talking about, so there's an element of trust, and when there's trust they're more forthcoming than they would be with a journalist who was just off the city desk. But also I was able to frame stories in a way that led readers into an insight that illuminated the musician's life for readers, which I still think is an edge". He also published books about musicians: Bon Jovi – Bon Jovi: Hard Rock for the '80s, Michael Jackson – Michael Jackson Electrifying and The Rolling Stones – The Rolling Stones 25th Anniversary Tour. The latter had live reviews by Lenny Stoute.

Musical career resumed

In September 1999 an impromptu reunion in Melbourne with former bandmates Tolhurst and Stockley led to Quill's returning to performing music. Over the next two years, with Quill in Toronto and Tolhurst in New York, the pair maintained contact and resumed songwriting. They formed a duo, Quill-Tolhurst and in early 2003 issued an album, So Rudely Interrupted, in Canada on the True North Records label.
They promoted its release with a concert in October that year at C'est What? in Toronto, performing with a full band including Garth Hudson on keyboards, accordion and piano. Excerpts from the show were aired nationally on Bravo! Canada's Arts & Minds and on CP24. The duo made a short Australian tour, for their first public performances there since 1973, appearing at several festivals, including the Port Fairy Folk Festival and the Brunswick Music Festival in Melbourne. Their concerts in Sydney reunited Quill with friends from his folk days at The Shack. At the final gig of the tour, at the Bridge Hotel, Sydney, Quill and Tolhurst were joined on stage by Country Radio bandmate Blanchflower.
From 2003 Quill became a regular performer in Canada's roots music scene, as both a solo act and with members of a loose collective that included Bucky Berger on drums, Anne Lindsay on violin, Denis Keldie on accordion, Cam MacInnes on guitar, and Dennis Pinhorn on bass guitar. From June 2006 to March 2008 Quill compiled and hosted the hour-long weekly Canadian roots music speciality program, River of Song, on Sirius Canada satellite radio. He returned to Australia in July 2009, and played two shows in his home town, one at the revived Shack in Narrabeen, and another at the Excelsior Hotel in Sydney, where he was joined for several songs by former bandmates Agostino and Blanchflower. In January and February 2011 Quill toured Australia's east coast, playing 15 dates with Toronto singer-songwriter, Jon Brooks. Quill started recording an album of new material during 2012.
Quill also performed with fellow expatriate Australian Terry Wilkins on bass guitar, in the band, Ironbark, which also featured Berger and MacInnes, with Mitchell Lewis on drums, guitar, and stringed instruments. On his website, Quill described Ironbark as "an extension of the traditional bush music and country-rock roots of core members Quill and Wilkins, whose musical kinship extends even further back than their time with fabled Australian country-rock bands Country Radio and Flying Circus, respectively, to Sydney's folk, blues and jug band haunts in the late 1960s".

Death and legacy

Greg Quill died on 5 May 2013 at his home in Hamilton. His family announced that he had "passed away suddenly but peacefully this afternoon from complications due to pneumonia and a recently diagnosed case of sleep apnea". Aged 66, he was still an entertainment journalist for the Toronto Star at the time of his death. He was survived by his wife, Ellen Davidson, their daughter Kaya, a grandson, and his two stepdaughters.
In the April prior to his death, Quill had announced via Facebook that he was working with Warner Music Australia and Gil Matthews' Aztec Music label on the reissue of his 1970s and 1980s recordings, and he was planning to tour Australia later in 2013 to promote them. Aztec are scheduled to release new CD versions of Quill's solo albums, Fleetwood Plain and The Outlaw's Reply, and the Country Radio Live album, with bonus tracks from a recently rediscovered recording of a 1970s festival performance by Country Radio, which includes otherwise unrecorded tracks. Warner Music are set to release a new edition of Gypsy Queen as a CD compilation, expanded with previously unreleased tracks.
In addition, Quill had announced plans to reissue his "lost" solo album, Correspondence, which had been recorded in Toronto in 1980 with producer Alan Thorne and featured contributions from Amos Garrett, Mike McKenna, and Ian Thomas. Quill had said that the album was being restored from a safety master that had recently come to light, and that it would also include bonus material, recorded around the same time in Canada for radio broadcasts, with his bands, Hot Knives and Southern Cross. Correspondence was due to be released on the Canadian label So Rude Records, but would have a separate Australian distributor. Quill had been set to release a new solo album of acoustic material that he had been working on over the previous few years.

Discography

Albums

Greg Quill and Country Radio