Greg Quill

Gregory Raymond Quill (18 April 1947 – 5 May 2013) was an

Gregory Raymond Quill[2] was born on 18 April 1947 to Raymond and Doris Quill (née Markham).^[3] He grew up in Sydney with a younger brother, Christopher.^[4] 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.^[5] Quill began his musical career in the 1960s as a solo performer on the Sydney folk scene^[5] 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 (later Elfick was a movie producer).^[6] Quill worked as a writer from 1969, then feature writer (February 1970 to August 1971) and Sydney regional editor (July 1970 to August 1971) for the Melbourne-based publication.^[6] In 2002 Quill recalled that editing Go-Set had prepared him for his later work in journalism.^[6]

Early musical career

From 1967, Greg Quill ran The Shack, a folk music venue at Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches, where he also performed.^[7][8][9] In 1999 he described the venue "[it] 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".^[5] In 1969 Quill handed over the running of the venue to his younger brother, Christopher.^[10] Gus McNeil, a music publisher, record producer and former singer and saxophonist for 1960s rock band, Gus & The Nomads,^[11] signed Quill to a publishing deal with his company, Cellar Music.^[12] McNeil produced Quill's first commercial recording, the single, "Fleetwood Plain", and the subsequent album of the same name.^[12] Quill wrote all the tracks on the album.^[13]

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.^[7][12] 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.^[12][14] "Fleetwood Plain" was subsequently covered by Australian country musician, Reg Lindsay,^[15] and by Canadian folk-rockers Creamcheeze Good Time Band^[16] on their 1973 album, Home Cookin'.

Country Radio band

To promote Fleetwood Plain Greg Quill formed the original line-up of Country Radio (also seen as Greg Quill's Country Radio or Greg Quill and Country Radio) in June 1970.^[7][9] Other members were Agostino, Blanchflower, Walsh and Dave Hannagan on percussion and backing vocals.^[7][17] 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 (1968), The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968), and Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline (1969).^[7][12]

By May 1971, Country Radio's line-up had changed with Blanchflower and Quill joined by Mal Algar on bass guitar (ex-Chorus), John A. Bird on keyboards and Ace Follington on drums (ex-

The band made several live TV recordings for the ABC-TV in-studio concert and interview series, GTK; including "Just Goodbye" (May 1971), "Last Time Around" (June), "Empty Pockets" (June), "Almost Freedom" (June), "Silver Spurs" (February 1972), "Commisar" (March), "Some Lonesome Picker" (April, May), "Listen to the Children" (October), "Fleetwood Plain" (November), "Gypsy Queen" (November), "Winter Song" (November), "I Need a Woman" and an interview on their break-up (April 1973).^[24] 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^[2] – at the latter festival, was included in Mushroom Records' triple live album, Sunbury 1973 – The Great Australian Rock Festival, released in April.^[7][9] Tolhurst abruptly left the band after the second Sunbury festival, briefly joining Mississippi, before forming The Dingoes in Melbourne, with singer-harmonicist, Broderick Smith.^[7][17][25] Soon after, both Bird and Blanchflower also left Country Radio.^[7][17]

we were playing this very gentle, acoustic, ringy mandolin music, with lots of romance in the lyrics ... it happened right at sundown, with a rather spectacular sunset [...] I remember, after a couple of songs, looking out and seeing 80,000 people standing up and screaming and waving and clapping. I thought the stage was on fire or something. I remember turning round to Kerryn and saying "What the hell's going on?" – but it was for us!

— Greg Quill in December 1999 on performing at Sunbury Pop Festival, January 1973, Broughton, John; "Interview – Greg Quill (Country Radio, Southern Cross)".^[5]

Quill, Bolton and Du Bois were joined by Adelaide guitarist-songwriter Russ Johnson (ex-Mississippi) – effectively swapping places with Tolhurst.^[7][17] 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.^[7] 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.^[26] Soon after, Johnson left Country Radio for medical reasons and returned to Adelaide. ^{[citation needed]}

Guitarists Les Stacpool and Russ Hinton (ex-Moonstone) alternated on lead guitar after Johnson's departure.^[7][17] 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".^[9] Quill dissolved the group in December 1973 and decided to return to his solo music career.^[7] 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. ^{[citation needed]}

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

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.^[5] Quill wrote for and edited numerous music magazines – Music Express (1981–82),^[5][27] Graffiti (1982–83),^[5] 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.^[5]

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".^[5] He also published books about musicians: Bon Jovi – Bon Jovi: Hard Rock for the '80s (1987), Michael Jackson – Michael Jackson Electrifying (1988) and The Rolling Stones – The Rolling Stones 25th Anniversary Tour (1989). The latter had live reviews by Lenny Stoute.^[28][29][30]

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.^[12][31] Over the next two years, with Quill in Toronto and Tolhurst in New York, the pair maintained contact and resumed songwriting.^[32] 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

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, (ex-The Flying Circus) 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".^[33]

Death and legacy

Greg Quill died on 5 May 2013 at his home in Hamilton.^[1] 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".^[32][34] Aged 66, he was still an entertainment journalist for the Toronto Star at the time of his death.^[1] He was survived by his wife, Ellen Davidson, their daughter Kaya, a grandson, and his two stepdaughters.^[32]

In the April prior to his death, Quill had announced via Facebook that he was working with

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.

Bibliography

Articles cited in other works

• Orlik, Peter B (2001). "Chapter 12 'Canadian-Made Show Proves Its Work' by Greg Quill; Chapter 14 'CITY-TV's Crime Series Frightening' by Greg Quill". Electronic Media Criticism: Applied Perspectives. Routledge. pp. 220–228, 278–287.
  ISBN 978-0-80583-641-7
  .
• Quill, Greg (28 February 1993). "Atom Egoyan Misses Wide Open Net in Golden Opportunity to Score Big".
  Star Media Group
  (John D. Cruickshank). p. C2.
  • quoted in Beaty, Bart (2006). "Not Playing, Working: Class, Masculinity, and Nation in the Canadian Hockey Film". In Malek Khouri; Darrell Varga (eds.). Working on Screen. University of Toronto Press. p. 128.
    ISBN 978-0-80209-388-2
    .
• Quill, Greg (3 May 1995). "Historical Vignettes Given a Dignified Debut".
  Star Media Group
  (John D. Cruickshank).
  • quoted in West, Emily (2005). "Media and Its (Dis)Contents: 3 Collective Memory on the Airwaves". In Sheila Petty; Garry Sherbert; Annie Gérin (eds.). Canadian Cultural Poesis: Essays on Canadian Culture. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. pp. 72, 82.
    ISBN 978-0-88920-486-7
    .
• Quill, Greg (8 November 1995). "Is TV's Hit North of 60 Real or a White Fantasy".
  Star Media Group
  (John D. Cruickshank).
  • quoted in Miller, Mary (2008). "Set Up, or How North of 60 Was Framed". Outside Looking In: Viewing First Nations Peoples in Canadian Dramatic Television Series. McGill-Queen's Press. pp. 242–243.
    ISBN 978-0-77357-487-8
    .
• Quill, Greg (13 August 1998). "Protecting Canada's Magazines".
  Star Media Group
  (John D. Cruickshank). p. A23.
  • quoted in Grant, Peter S; Wood, Chris (2004). "16: Trade Wars". Blockbusters and Trade Wars: Popular Culture in a Globalized World. Douglas & McIntyre. p. 366.
    ISBN 978-1-92670-679-5
    .