Biography Brian Willoughby
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Thanks to Dick Greener
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Brian has played "twiddly bits" for a great many well-known
artists. Starting out on guitar in his native Northern Ireland at the age of 14,
he crossed over to the UK, ending up in Hounslow in West London as an habitué
of the White Bear and running his own folk club at Regent Street Polytechnic.
Maureen Kennedy, the lead singer from the Tinkers met him at that club and took
him on as her accompanist. (She reputedly liked the twiddly bits but thought his
chords could with some work - so she gave him a book of chords for his guitar
bag!) His agent at the time was Jasper Carrott, who later became one of the UK's
top comedy acts.
Thanks to Dave Cousins playing some of Brian's instrumentals to Mary and her
husband, Strawbs producer Tony Visconti, on Brian's 22nd birthday, they offered
him a job touring with them. The tour lasted for about a year, and took him to
Israel, Australia and New Zealand. Subsequently Brian also spent three years
with successful popsters New World, Opportunity Knocks winners who went on to
have 9 hits, including "Tom Tom Turnaround". A further year with
veteran folkie Roger Whittaker and Joe Brown's two parallel bands - the Bruvvers
and Home Brew. |
| No Sweat was Brian's next project - the first signing to Pete Townsend's Eel
Pie record label. It was in 1978, playing with them in The Albany, in Twickenham,
that Chas Cronk came to see Brian play. The rest is history! Being an old pal of
Dave Cousins from the White Bear folk club days, when during a lull in the
Strawbs' activities, Dave got the yen to get back to his folk roots with an
acoustic tour round the folk clubs in 1979, he recruited Willoughby to join him.
These concerts were a great success, leading to another tour later that year,
and the acoustic partnership that resulted has continued to this day, a welcome
fix for fans between the full band's all-too infrequent performances. Meanwhile,
with the departure of Dave Lambert, the Strawbs needed a new lead guitarist and
Brian fitted effortlessly into the role. |
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His full debut with the band, appropriately enough, being at the Northern
Ireland Port Rush festival in 1979, Brian worked with the Strawbs up to their
dissolution in July 1980, when Cousins left the band. He was there for the two
infamous non-Cousins gigs, with Roy Hill as lead vocalist. In the next few
years, Brian was involved in a number of other projects, including playing on
Monty Python' "Contractual Obligation" album and being an extra in
Terry Gilliam's film "The Time Bandits". |
| The reformation in 1983 saw him back with the Strawbs, a post he has filled
with aplomb and good humour to this day. The reformed band re-appraised some of
the Strawbs classics from the earlier folk albums, and Brian's tasteful guitar
work brought a new freshness to such numbers as "Oh How She Changed",
"Josephine For Better Or For Worse", "A Glimpse Of Heaven"
and, more recently, "Tell Me What You See In Me", revived for the
band's 1991 album Ringing Down The Years. He has his own take on epics from the
Lambert years - "Down By The Sea", "Autumn", "Cut Like
A Diamond" and others - and has made his own on other songs from that
period - "Grace Darling", re-recorded for the 1991 album, being a case
in point. |
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| Brian has recorded two albums with Dave, the first Old School Songs
reproducing faithfully the atmosphere of that first acoustic tour, side two
featuring a live recording of the duo at Exmouth Festival. The second
collaboration, The Bridge in 1994 was a set of new (or at least unrecorded
songs) recorded by Dave and Brian with backing from various current/ex-Strawbs
and other friends. He has also featured on both the 1990's Strawbs studio sets
Don't Say Goodbye and Ringing Down The Years (he co-wrote two tracks on the
latter with Hud and Rod Demick) as well as the live 1990 set, released on video
and CD as Strawbs' Greatest Hits Live. |
| See
history of the Straws
Brians
Biography courtesy Dick Greener |
He released his first solo CD Black & White in 1998, a mainly acoustic
outing, featuring the powerful voice of American singer Cathryn Craig as well as
a contribution from old friend Mary Hopkin.. Cathryn and he have taken to the
folk club circuit with a vengeance - they will have just completed a 20 or so
date tour before rehearsals begin for the Strawbs tour in April/May, where he
and Dave Lambert will once again team up as the Strawbs' lead guitar duo - a
partnership even better in reality last year than their many fans could have
hoped for.
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We've just done our first gig with this new line-up and all I can say is that
it's the best Strawbs I've ever been involved with. I've had many an
incarnation over the last 20 years, and .. it's great to have Dave Lambert
back in. The two of us are playing in harmony ... and it's good fun. Look
forward to seeing you on the tour. - Brian Willoughby, May 1999 |
BRIAN WILLOUGHBY
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