Gallagher and Lyle: Scottish pop duo singing from same song sheet again

Published on Sunday 6 September 2009 20:14

THE London commuter town of Bromley, in Kent – at various times home to David Bowie, Peter Frampton and Clash drummer Topper Headon – is currently going through a quieter period in its rock 'n' roll history. But Benny Gallagher, one half of Scotland's most successful songwriting duo, lives on its leafy southern fringes and there's this other guy you might remember, name of Graham Lyle.

Double-act Gallagher & Lyle scored hits of their own in the mid-1970s with I Wanna Stay With You, Heart On My Sleeve and Breakaway and their soft-rock songs were much covered. Then, 30 years ago, they broke away from each other.

Lyle has often described the split as being as "painful as a divorce". Gallagher, who saw his old friend enjoy even greater success without him, hasn't said much in those three decades. And even though they live a five-minute car ride apart, there have been years when they didn't even exchange Christmas cards.

But this summer they've got back in the old routine. Gallagher says The Tears of the Moon is their first collaboration for longer than they care to remember. "We've just sent it to Art Garfunkel and he loves it," he says.

It would be wrong to suggest that in 30 years they haven't spoken, or that one song signifies a proper reunion. Equally, the news they're working together again won't alter the course of pop history any more than Gallagher & Lyle did, first time round. Nevertheless, there was a spell when these school-friends from Largs in Ayrshire seemed to know the secret of Top 10 radio-friendly pop as well as anyone.

Passing through Edinburgh on a tour of Scotland he's organised for New Zealand cousins, Gallagher is 64 and silver-haired and doesn't immediately look like he could once have prompted teen mags to inquire: "What's your favourite colour?" But the gold chain and shoes without socks hint at a racy past. And the tan, effortlessly achieved, confirms prosperity – even though he's the one, post G&L, who didn't go on to write What's Love Got To Do With It? and You Don't Need Another Hero for Tina Turner.

He says: "Graham and I had known each other since I was 13 and he was 14, so when we split in 1979 we definitely needed a wee break. Suddenly, a long time had passed. We've always been completely different characters. When we listen to the old stuff now we think we sound like strangers. But when we got back together it was like we'd just nipped out for a pint or something. We wrote the song without hardly having to talk, which was always how it was."

Gallagher doesn't mythologise the songwriter's craft. He used to work in the shipyards, among men who never boasted about their skills. He believes that like all trades, tunesmithery can be taught, and he runs workshops. But then Gallagher and Lyle benefited from pretty good teachers themselves – the best in the business.

After an apprenticeship in Ayrshire bands – rehearsing above an Ardrossan ice-cream parlour and playing for American servicemen based at Dunoon – the pair moved to London in 1967 and got themselves hired by the Beatles' Apple Publishing, earning 25 a week each.

A splurge of Fab Four nostalgia in anticipation of Wednesday's release of the digitally remastered back catalogue has brought memories for Gallagher. "I suppose the Beatles were trying to create a hit factory like New York's Brill Building. Graham and I decided we weren't going to sit around. This was a job and we were going to work every day – we had families after all.

"The offices were in Savile Row. You'd bump into tailor's dummies wearing the Sgt Pepper uniforms; Paul's Hofner bass would be lying around, and George's Rickenbacker. George was doing his Hare Krisha thing so we never saw much of him, and John had the Plastic Ono Band. Ringo would drop in now and again and say 'Hi guys' but the one who was the biggest encouragement was Paul.

"He was one of the most famous men in the world and yet he was available on the other end of the phone if you hit a snag in the studio. He'd be like: 'Oh yeah, I get that problem with the bass sound. Try moving the mic back three feet.'"

Apple was run very much in the spirit of the age. "Ken Kesey (the counter-culture author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest] was the resident writer. He arrived in a tan leather suit and cowboy boots and was asked what he needed in his office. He said: 'Some uppers, some downer, oh, and a typewriter.'

"Our best effort at the time was a song called Sparrow which made it on to a Mary Hopkin B-side."

After Apple, the pair were part of McGuinness Flint and had a hit with When I'm Dead and Gone. They formed their duo in time for the sensitive singer-songwriter era and Gallagher & Lyle were an act your mum liked, maybe your granny too. Gallagher remembers their stints on Top of the Pops: "One week we were on with Marc Bolan, Stealers Wheel and Stevie Wonder, who performed a brilliant 20-minute version of Living for the City, spoiled slightly by the Wombles larking about on the stage. Just as well for Stevie he's blind."

When the hits dried up they went their separate ways. Lyle revealed in a 2002 radio interview that he had to come off the road to save his marriage. Says Gallagher: "Personally, I never touched drugs although there was a lot of heavy drinking." But while Lyle had considerable success with other collaborators, Gallagher became disillusioned with the business… He hardly sulked. As the first chairman of the Performing Artists Media Rights Association, he helped secure 20 million in musician royalties. He became a fellow of the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, set up by his old mate Macca. And he never stopped writing songs.

"My wife thought I had. I told her there were 70 she hadn't heard – but they were all in my head. Quite rightly, she pointed out that if I suddenly dropped down dead, our kids would never know them." Gallagher's sons Julian and Dylan have produced and written for U2, Kylie Minogue and Pete Doherty and earlier this year they finally got to listen to their old man's first solo album.

"I've always kept songs in my head – it used to drive Graham crazy. But I think I've worked out that I use music to self-medicate. A grandson has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] and we reckon this has been passed down the male line. I need to write songs for my general well-being but it's never bothered me whether they ever get recorded."

Lyle seems more driven than Gallagher, but he is happier in the studio than on stage while with Gallagher it's the other way round. "We're totally different, but a perfect match. We're both worked with other people but write best together. Neither of us knows why that it is."

Nor, it seems, do they properly know why the partnership ended. Typical of a duo that have never made spectacular claims for their work and prefer to let it speak for them, neither has a great break-up story.

In that radio interview seven years ago, Lyle challenged Gallagher to build the first bridge. "We love each other really, but we've always had tough times and this is one of them," he said. "We've been through too much together to chuck it all away but I feel it's Benny's move."

Gallagher admits he didn't act then. "Possibly I told him it was him to go first. Honestly, we're just like a married couple except we both play the woman. The other one will ask what's wrong and we'll say nothing, even though there is, and this will go on for ages."

Before they knew it, 30 years had passed. But Gallagher & Lyle, who once sang "I wanna stay with you/ For the rest of my life", are back round the kitchen table and the blunt instruments have been put away.

&#149 The next Benny Gallagher Songwriting Weekend is at The Stables, the Inn at Lathones, St Andrews from 2-4 October. Information: www.mundellmusic.com

THE SONG SUPPLIERS

AT THE peak of their songwriting powers, Gallagher and Lyle numbers were being snapped up by other acts as fast as they could write them.

Gallagher said: "When we were mucking about in the studio with Heart On My Sleeve, Bryan Ferry heard the song as he walked along the corridor. He didn't ask us if he could record it – he went straight to our publisher."

Breakaway was the title track of the duo's breakthrough album but that didn't stop Art Garfunkel from doing a cover. The Simon and Garfunkel version of A Heart in New York probably rates as the most notable G&L cover, given that it was performed to 500,000 people in Manhattan's Central Park.

The song also featured in Garth Brooks' show at the same venue to a similar-sized crowd.

Don Williams took Stay Young to the top of the American country charts, generating more than 1 million US radio plays. Others who have covered the duo include Ringo Starr, Phil Everley, Elkie Brooks, Rita Coolidge, Jim Capaldi and Ricky Nelson, while Lemon Jelly have reinterpreted I Wanna Stay With You for fans of chillout electronica and Fury in the Slaughterhouse reworked the old McGuinness Flint number When I'm Dead and Gone for a German heavy metal audience.

Lyle, writing with Terry Britten, won a Grammy for What's Love Got To Do With It? which has notched up four million radio plays in America alone. During the recording of Michael Jackson's Bad album, he got a call from producer Quincy Jones saying they were short of a song and two days later sent over Just Good Friends which Jackson sang with Stevie Wonder.

He has also been covered by Diana Ross, Rod Stewart, Ray Charles, Joe Cocker and Kenny Rogers.