Born on this day ...

[Ruby]

Robbie McIntosh was born on this day in 1957, in Surrey, England. He had classical guitar training from the age of 13 and became enamoured of the blues listening to Lightnin’ Hopkins. After a few false starts and interim occupations (lorry driver being one), he got a break playing for band called Night – they toured the USA in 1979 supporting The Doobie Brothers. Night’s lead singer was Chris Thompson of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and so the rock n roll genealogy began - the personnel swapping/interconnections in the biz would look like the back of a giant tapestry if you could somehow depict it - a major bamboozling puzzle! He went on to join The Pretenders for around seven years, and much like another very sought after session guitarist, Dean Parks (who appears on literally countless recordings), he has played with many, many other artists since, including alongside Mark Knopfler (and Guy Fletcher, and John Illsley) and to name-drop a few more, Tori Amos, Paul McCartney, Talk Talk and Mark Hollis, Tears for Fears, Norah Jones, John Mayer, Joe Cocker, etc., etc.

He’s also released a handful of solo albums and two more as The Robbie McIntosh Band. I gave one of the latter a whirl, Emotional Bends – some of it was alright but he doesn’t have the voice – shame about that. Didn’t mind this track though - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3W39rIoGZM

His guitarwork is much more impressive than his vocal ability, as is evident, and oddly I’d been noticing it lately – on “Slow Dancing” by Big Sky, and on Gordon Haskell’s final album.

Posting this one for the amazing album cover as much as for the music – fantastic photograph! He plays throughout the whole release …