INTERVIEW
What is good music? What is good guitar playing? Though the premise of such questions is simple, it can take a lifetime to arrive at meaningful answers, as acoustic master Gordon Giltrap reflects when we join him to discuss his powerful new album, Scattered Chapters
One of Britain’s most gifted fingerstyle guitarists, Gordon Giltrap took inspiration from the heavyweights of the 60s folk scene, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, before embarking on his own recording career in 1968. Self-taught, Giltrap’s lyrical acoustic style has a joyous, universal quality that arguably even his heroes lacked and a distinctiveness that owed in part to Giltrap being a self-professed “ignoramus” when it came to standard guitar technique. After becoming a regular on the BBC’s flagship serious music show The Old Grey Whistle Test, crossover hits such as Heartsong from his 1977 album, The Perilous Journey, followed, making Giltrap a household name – to his bemusement.
“I had no idea it would be a hit record, no idea,” Gordon recalls. “But then it started selling. And next thing you know you’re on Top Of The Pops and they ring you up and they say, ‘Oh, you sold 15,000 singles today,’ and you think, ‘I don’t know these people – how come they bought my record?’ But the next day it was 25,000 copies sold in a day. It’s very hard to get your head around the fact that suddenly you’re selling a lot of records. Suddenly, you’re known nationally, not just among the people that like guitar playing or have seen you on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Suddenly, you’re a pop star, whether you like it or not.”
But anthems such as Heartsong are only one facet of an ever-evolving body of work that today spans 28 albums and more than 50 years of music-making. Giltrap’s road through music – and life at large – has been long and, at times, marked with tragedy. The sum of all this experience has now been distilled into his latest album, Scattered Chapters, co-written with keyboardist and arranger Paul Ward. As a tapestry of instrumental pieces, the thread that binds it together is a vivid strand of emotion, which is anchored in profound personal experiences and a rare humility. For Giltrap, good musicmaking is not about handing a loudhailer to your ego but becoming open to the flow of creativity.
“All the best stuff comes when you’re not thinking about it,” he reflects. “And it just flows. Basically, you start off with a one-bar idea and then build up on that. And, eventually, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle: you keep putting the pieces in and then eventually you end up with a [finished] piece and then you step back from it. And you say to yourself, ‘How did I do that?’”
That simple but deceptively deep question is one Giltrap has been pondering for decades. And he’s happy to share his hard-wo
