Remembering Henry McCullough.

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my brother Paul passing away, so we had a little family meet-up to remember Paul. Looking through photos with my niece Lee I came across some previously unseen photos of singer-songwriter guitarist Henry McCullough from the times when Henry played in Paul’s pub in County Mayo, Ireland. I thought it might be a good idea to write a little piece about Henry and use the photos to illustrate the story. Hopefully some of Henry’s fans and friends might like to see it.

Firstly, I’ll just tell you briefly a little bit about Henry in case you are not familiar with his history. He was born in Portstewart, Northern Ireland in 1943. In the early 1960s he was playing guitar in the Skyrockets Showband from Enniskillen. In 1967 he joined a psychedelic rock band in Belfast and later that same year they moved to London where they were spotted by Jimi Hendrix’s manager Chas Chandler who renamed them as Eire Apparent. During a North America tour supporting The Animals Henry got busted for Marijuana in Vancouver and repatriated. He was replaced in the band by Mick Cox. He then joined the great Irish Folk group Sweeney’s Men who you may remember I wrote about on this blog page last December. His stay with Sweeney’s Men was short lived, but they did take the Cambridge Folk Festival by storm in 68.

Henry departed to join Joe Cocker’s Grease Band where Henry was the only musician from Ireland to play at the legendary Woodstock Festival in 1969. After playing on the Grease Band’s eponymous album Henry went on to play on the original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. He also wrote Step Right Up for my favourite female singer Anne Briggs on her 1971 album The Time Has Come. In 1972 Paul McCartney invited Henry to join Wings and Henry stayed for a year touring and playing on the album Red Rose Speedway. Henrys improvised playing on My Love is often cited by critics as being one of the greatest ever guitar solos. In 1973 Henry can be heard on one of the best-selling albums of all time Dark Side Of The Moon saying, “"I don't know; I was really drunk at the time". 

In 1975 Henry joined the Frankie Miller Band for one album The Rock, and recorded a solo album Mind Your Own Business on George Harrison’s Dark Horse label. He later played with Roy Harper, Eric Burdon, Marianne Faithfull, Ronnie Lane, Donovan, and Dr Feelgood. Henry moved back to Ireland in 1980 and continued to work, producing several solo albums. One of my favourite songs of his is Failed Christian from 1998 which I first became aware of when it was covered by his friend Nick Lowe. (I have shared a video of Henry performing that song live below) Sadly, Henry suffered a major heart attack in 2012 from which he never made a full recovery, and he died at home in Ballymoney, County Antrim in June 2016.

I only ever saw Henry perform live once. That was in 1999 at the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury. He deserved a much bigger audience than he got but performed brilliantly. Paul and Henry had become good friends in the 1990s after Henry’s appearances in the pub, so Paul went backstage to meet him after the show, and they set off on a long walk all over the site. Henry was blown away by it all because Glastonbury was the biggest festival he had been to since Woodstock in 1969. At the end of the day one of the staff drove Henry back to his hotel. I never met him, but from what Paul told me about him, and what other people have said he was a great person, a true gentleman with none of the ego pretensions of a lot of famous musicians. I can’t think of anything else to say about him now except I hope you like the photos and thank you Lee for showing them to me.

Henry, Denny Laine, Paul McCartney.