Geoff Whitehorn

Born:

Aug 29, 1951

About

From Wikipedia:

Geoffrey Charles Whitehorn (born 29 August 1951) is a guitarist and singer-songwriter, who has played as a member of If, Crawler and Procol Harum.

History

In August 1973, Whitehorn joined the pioneering British jazz-rock band, If, in what was their third and final line-up, appearing on their last two albums, Not Just Another Bunch of Pretty Faces (1974) and Tea Break Over, Back on Your ‘Eads (1975). During that period, he recorded his first solo album, Whitehorn (1974, Stateside), featuring fellow If members Dick Morrissey and Cliff Davies. This was followed by two largely instrumental solo albums, Big in Gravesend and Geoff Who? which he also re-recorded and expanded as Geoff Who? 2002. In 1976–1979, Whitehorn played in the band Crawler (formerly known as Back Street Crawler), replacing the band’s founder Paul Kossoff after the latter’s death.

Geoff also played as lead guitarist with Chuck Farley besides Steve Simpson, Boz Burrell, Poli Palmer and Alan Coulter.

In 1979 Whitehorn joined Roger Chapman’ s Band The Shortlist, touring Europe extensively and recording ten albums with Chapman. His playing in the Band was inspired by jazz. He left Shortlist in 1988.

In 1991, he joined the group Procol Harum, and was their second longest serving member (after founder Gary Brooker), having played on all of their recent recordings, such as The Long Goodbye, One More Time – Live in Utrecht 1992, The Well’s on Fire and Novum as well as on Procol Harum’s live DVDs in Denmark and at Union Chapel (Concert on Friday 12 December 2003), and one recorded with an orchestra in 2006 at Ledreborg Castle, again in Denmark. He has also played live and recorded with The Palers’ Project, the Procol Harum quasi-tribute collective. He changed his style into a more classic rock solo performance.

Whitehorn has also contributed to the recordings and performances of other artists, such as Bad Company, Jethro Tull, Kevin Ayers, Elkie Brooks, The Who, Roger Waters, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Paul McCartney, Billy Ocean and Paul Rodgers. In 2007, he worked with Elkie Brooks on her UK tour. Since then Geoff has played regularly with Gambler and, more recently, The Strumbums. […]

(To Geoff Whitehorn) and Pipes Of Peace is your department I think?

I just did one track on Pipes Of Peace. Called Through Our Love or something.

Did you know Paul already before then?

No, No I knew … there was a guy … he had a guy who was a sort of a personal assistant/road manager or something or other, that I happened to know … Pete Fulham actually … and McCartney was just looking for sort of different players to come and contribute to the album. But I mean, I just ended up playing acoustic guitar on that one track. But it was good, because Paul was actually playing bass, George Martin was playing electric piano and Dave Mattacks played drums and we knocked this song off in about … an hour.

You went to the Air Studios in Oxford Street?

Yeah. I only had a really cheap nasty acoustic guitar I took with me in a sort of bag, you know like a canvas bag. I didn’t play much acoustics. So McCartney said “Well, better use this,” and he gave me this beautiful Gibson. It was a nice session … Linda McCartney was … charming. She gave me a book of her photographs …

The first one? Linda’s Pictures?

Uhm, the one with Janis Joplin and all that … and Hendrix and what have you. Sixties. She was actually really, really nice. And I was so gobsmacked, I forgot to ask her autograph. But I’ve still got the book.

Geoff Whitehorn – Brooker, Whitehorn … and 3 Beatles: interview reproduced by kind permission of ‘Beatles Unlimited Magazine’ (procolharum.com)

Last updated on May 4, 2024