Gordon Giltrap (born 6 April 1948) is an English guitarist and composer. His music crosses several genres. He has been described as "one of the most revered guitarists of his generation", and has drawn praise from fellow musicians including Steve Rothery, Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page.
Early life Giltrap was born on 6 April 1948 in the village of Brenchley, Kent, England, at the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies. Thereafter, he was brought up in Deptford, south east London, spending the first 11 years of his life at 43 Elverson Road, a two up, two down terraced house shared by two households with an outside toilet. His family then moved to Blackwall Lane, East Greenwich. Rock star Marty Wilde grew up in the same area, along with guitarist Albert Lee. Giltrap began to play the guitar at the age of 12, receiving no formal tuition, choosing instead to develop his own style and technique.
Career Giltrap's career began in the 1960s performing in the folk music scene in London alongside contemporaries such as Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, and Mike Oldfield. Giltrap was part of the band Accolade in 1969-1970 after which he went solo again. At 18, Giltrap signed with Transatlantic Records and released his debut studio albums, Gordon Giltrap (1968) and Portrait (1969). Both featured Giltrap on guitar and lead vocals; he has since considered his lyrics "naive".Perilous Journey, First Edition 2018, Steve Pilkington. p. 31, Wymer Publishing, The track "Willow Pattern" from his debut attracted the praise of guitarist Ralph McTell for the imagery it portrayed.Perilous Journey, First Edition 2018, Steve Pilkington. p. 39 "Gospel Song", also from his first, features a more aggressive strumming style, influenced by Pete Townshend, which later became a trademark of his style. In 1969, Giltrap was featured in Transatlantic's guitar showcase album The Contemporary Guitar Sampler, Volume 1.The Contemporary Guitar Sampler Vol 1, Transatlantic Records – TRA SAM 14, 1969 He was also featured on the second volume released in 1970,The Contemporary Guitar Sampler Volume 2, Transatlantic Records – TRA SAM 15, 1970 and both increased his profile.
Shortly after the release of his first album, Giltrap joined The Buskers' Tour of the UK, headlined by Don Partridge. Giltrap subsequently formed a band with Partridge called Accolade. Together they released a self-titled album. Partridge later wrote the sleeve notes for Portrait. Giltrap played lead guitar in the band and penned several compositions. Whilst his involvement in the band certainly helped to raise his profile he felt impatient to move on to recording further new albums under his own name.Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.37
1970s In 1970, Giltrap signed to MCA Records and released his next album, Testament of Time, which was again a mixture of songs and instrumental pieces.Perilous Journey. 2018 First edition, Steve Pilkington, p. 39 on two future albums. It was to be one of the pieces he chose to play on his first television appearance, on Disco 2.
At this stage, he was managed by Miles Copeland who, amongst others, also managed Wishbone Ash. Strings on the album were arranged by Del Newman, who also played keyboards. Newman had already worked with many artists of that era including Cat Stevens.Perilous Journey 2018 First edition, Steve Pilkington Page 38 Thus began a lasting friendship, and later Giltrap wrote the foreword for Newman's 2010 autobiography A Touch From God (It's Only Rock and Roll).A Touch From God – It's Only Rock and Roll, With Newman's influence, the album had a much fuller sound than Giltrap's previous two albums and he regarded it as a significant step forward.
His association with Copeland ended when he moved to Philips Records, releasing the 1973 album entitled Giltrap. This album featured a much larger band. On some of the songs he experimented with early instruments (played by Douglas Wooton and Rod and Joseph Sleeping) and some of his lyrics clearly reflected an interest in historical events. The drummer on this album was Nicko McBrain, who a decade later would join Iron Maiden. The front cover photographs reflect Giltrap as a proud father blowing bubbles together with his then two-year-old son, Jamie. The opening track, "When I See My Son", further reflected that pride. This was the last album on which he sang lead vocals.Perilous Journey, First Edition 2017, Steve Pilkington, p. 46 As he became less convinced by his lyric writing capabilities he began seeking a different path.
While popular on the folk and university circuit, Giltrap reached a turning point and received greater recognition during the 1970s. During this time, Giltrap started to concentrate on more purely instrumental pieces, and in 1976 released the album Visionary, based on the art and poetry of William Blake. Whilst recording, he missed the birth of his daughter Sadie, who was born in March 1975.Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.56
Visionary was produced by Jon Miller, who along with guitarist Roger Hand and keyboard player Rod Edwards were known as Triumvirate Productions.Perilous Journey, First Edition 2018, Steve Pilkington. p. 58 Hand and Edwards, having listened to demos of some of the material for Visionary, decided that it was time for Giltrap to be dragged, initially reluctantly, into the realm of rock music.Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.57 With this new sound, however, Giltrap found a different audience and gained greater commercial success.Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.59 The success of this album prompted Giltrap to move on from the singer-songwriter approach and to form the Gordon Giltrap Band, which toured extensively in the UK at that time.
Once the demos for Visionary were finished, Giltrap found himself with a three-album record contract with Electric Records. He was then offered a UK tour supporting the English progressive rock band Renaissance. He was invited to appear on BBC's The Old Grey Whistle Test hosted by Bob Harris. Supported by his full band, they performed "Robes and Crowns/Awakening" and "Lucifer's Cage". Footage of the latter performance can be seen on the program 'Guitar Heroes at the BBC'.
A European tour followed at the end of 1976 as a support act to Wishbone Ash. They played several dates in Germany and were also booked to tour Switzerland. Unfortunately, upon arriving in Zurich Giltrap was hit by a car and broke his collarbone.Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.66 As he was then unable to play guitar the rest of his tour was cancelled.
His follow-up album, Perilous Journey, consolidated his success, being named one of the best albums of 1977 by The Sunday Times. It peaked in the UK Albums Chart at No. 29. A single taken from the album, "Heartsong", received extensive airplay and reached No. 21 in the UK Singles Chart. The track was later used as the theme tune of the BBC TV series Holiday. Another of Giltrap's tracks, "The Carnival", was specially commissioned by ITV for the theme tune to ITV's holiday programme Wish You Were Here...?.Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.164
"Heartsong" has subsequently become the tune for which Giltrap is best known and still features in his live sets. "Heartsong" was eventually nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for the best instrumental/ orchestral piece for that year, losing to Elton John's "Song for Guy". Giltrap later said of the track's creation, "It began with a song I did in the late '60s called 'Starting All Over'. When I lived in London I began to mess around with it and stumbled on the riff for what would become 'Heartsong'. I kept working on it, and eventually recorded the guitar part for it. Then we added the rhythm section from Simon Phillips (drums) and John G. Perry (bass)." "At the time I never thought of this as anything other than a jolly little tune, but my producers Rod Edwards and Roger Hand realized the commercial potential in what we had. The melody really came out when the mini moog part was added, and then Eddie Spence (keyboards) came up with the fast moving synth figure. Edwards and Hand recorded Eddie at half speed, then played it back at normal speed to get the desired effect. That was something they learnt from working with George Martin."
Whilst Visionary had evolved from acoustic compositions adapted for a bigger band, Perilous Journey was composed with a bigger band sound in mind. It appeared occasionally to be more keyboard dominated but Giltrap was unperturbed by this as the pieces were his own compositions and he was pleased with the arrangements which he had worked on with Rod Edwards and Roger Hand.Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.71
In this period, albums had to flow from artists at consistent rates and few acts dared to allow time for the public to forget them. Such was the case with Giltrap who released his next album, Fear of the Dark, in 1978. At this stage, after the success of his previous two albums, Giltrap was riding on a high. Material for Fear of the Dark was relatively swiftly assembled.
The title track, in shortened form, was released as a single but failed to match the commercial success of "Heartsong".Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.86 It reached number 48 in the singles charts and the band appeared on Top of the Pops. Another song on the album, "Fast Approaching", was a reworked track, vastly different from the original which had appeared on Giltrap's first album. It was extended to five minutes and featured Giltrap on both acoustic and electric guitars. He was now becoming far more familiar with the latter instrument and at this stage really enjoyed playing his Gibson Les Paul.Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.89 Giltrap's electric guitar playing is a feature on this album but he was always first and foremost an acoustic guitarist and before too long the electric guitar featured less and less in his work.
In 1979, Giltrap toured the Fear of the Dark album with a band that consisted of John Gustafson on bass, who was active in the early Mersey scene and a top session player, and Ian Mosley on drums, who went on to work with Steve Hackett and latterly became a full-time member of Marillion. Old stalwarts Rod Edwards and Eddy Spence shared keyboard duties. Singer Shirlie Roden made a guest appearance on '"Innerdream". One of the dates on the tour was at the Oxford Polytechnic, where the subsequent Live at Oxford album was recorded.
By this stage in Giltrap's career, he was beginning to be concerned about becoming too predictable. He decided to move away from playing with a band and move back towards solo work. Giltrap's next album, The Peacock Party, which was released in 1979, was inspired by a book of the same name. This was in part illustrated by Alan Aldridge, who also painted the colourful cover of the Giltrap album. A previous book entitled The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast had inspired an album by Roger Glover of Deep Purple, which featured a host of stars. The triumvirate team had also been working on an album inspired by the book featuring the voices of Judi Dench and Michael Hordern, and it also featured celebrated musicians including Gerry Conway and Bruce Lynch, both of whom had previously worked extensively with Cat Stevens. Aldridge appeared to prefer Triumvirates's version and it was he who brought his next book The Peacock Party to the Triumvirate team to see if they were interested in another project. Triumvirate felt this was a good project for Giltrap to pursue.Perilous Journey. 2018, First edition, Steve Pilkington, p.107