Danny Kirwan

Daniel David Kirwan ( Langran, 13 May 1950 – 8 June 2018) was a British guitarist, singer and songwriter with the blues-rock band Fleetwood Mac between 1968 and 1972. He released three albums as a solo artist from 1975 to 1979, recorded albums with Otis Spann, Chris Youlden, and Tramp, and worked with former Fleetwood Mac colleagues Jeremy Spencer and Christine McVie on some of their solo projects. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1998.

Early life, education and family Kirwan was born Daniel David Langran on 13 May 1950 and raised in Brixton, South London. His parents separated when he was young. His mother, Phyllis Rose Langran, married Aloysious J. Kirwan in 1958 when Danny was eight. Kirwan left school in 1967 with six O-levels and worked for a year as an insurance clerk in Fenchurch Street in the City of London.

Career Musical influences and first band Kirwan's mother was a singer and he grew up listening to the music of jazz musicians such as Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Belgian gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt and 1930s–40s groups such as the Ink Spots. Boilerhouse played support slots for Fleetwood Mac at London venues such as the Nag's Head in Battersea and John Gee's Marquee Club in Wardour Street.

Joining Fleetwood Mac

Mick Fleetwood recalled, "We met Danny at a little club in Brixton, the Nag's Head, one night when we played with a local band called Boilerhouse. Danny played beautifully, getting a subtle tremolo effect from his fingering." Kirwan became a devoted fan of Fleetwood Mac's lead guitarist, Peter Green, and followed the band around the London clubs, often turning up at gigs during the afternoon to help to carry the gear in and jam with Green after the soundcheck.

Fleetwood Mac had been constituted as a quartet but Green, the band's founder, wanted to move away from pure blues and had been looking for a new musical collaborator and backing guitarist to work with, Green found that he and Kirwan worked well together, and suggested to Fleetwood that Kirwan could join Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood invited Kirwan to join the band in August 1968. His arrival expanded Fleetwood Mac to a five-piece with three guitarists.

Green described Kirwan as "a clever boy who got ideas for his guitar playing by listening to all that old-fashioned Roaring Twenties big-band stuff." Kirwan was known to be "emotionally fragile", and Green said that in the early days, Kirwan "was so into it that he cried as he played." He wanted to be open to other musical styles and bring in more of his own material.

Fleetwood said, "Danny worked out great from the start. His playing was always very melodic and tuneful, with lots of bent notes and vibrato.

Kirwan was interviewed by weekly music paper Melody Maker soon after joining Fleetwood Mac and gave the first indication of the breadth of his musical influences. He told Melody Maker: He played his first gig with Fleetwood Mac on 14 August 1968 at the Nag's Head Blue Horizon Club in Battersea, London. Three days after that the band began a 50-date tour of the UK and Scandinavia, and at the end of November they were in Paris,

First recording: "Albatross" Kirwan's first recorded work with Fleetwood Mac, in October 1968, Green said, "Once we got Danny in, it was plain sailing and when they listened to the final mix, everyone agreed it was "a beautiful record".

Kirwan provided the instrumental "Jigsaw Puzzle Blues" for the B-side of "Albatross". His first published composition, this was originally a clarinet piece, written by Joe Venuti and Adrian Rollini and recorded by the Joe Venuti / Eddie Lang Blue Five in 1933. Kirwan worked it out from the record and adapted it for Green and himself to play on guitar, but Green remembered, "I couldn't do it properly, I can't play that sort of big band Prohibition-time thing," so Kirwan played all the guitar parts himself. Fleetwood said later that the sessions had produced some of the best blues the band had ever played, and ironically, the last blues that Fleetwood Mac would ever record.

Green took a back seat during the recording sessions and left most of the guitar work to Kirwan, who composed seven of the fourteen tracks. The track was recorded at Warner-Reprise's studios in Hollywood on the band's third US tour. "The Green Manalishi" was released in May 1970 and reached number 10 in the UK charts. It was the band's fourth consecutive hit single, and Fleetwood Mac's last in the UK for six years. and Spencer recalled later that Kirwan and Green had begun to piece their guitar parts together "almost like orchestrally layered guitar work." Green said, among other things, that he was exhausted from endless touring.

Kirwan worked with Fleetwood and John McVie on the first solo album from a then-current member of Fleetwood Mac when Spencer recorded his album Jeremy Spencer, released in January 1970. Kirwan played rhythm guitar in various styles and sang backing vocals throughout. The album was not commercially successful, but Spencer discovered that he and Kirwan worked well together without Green. He said later, "In retrospect, one of the most enjoyable things was working with Danny on it, as it brought out a side of him I hadn't seen."

Blues band Tramp In 1969, Kirwan contributed as a session guitarist to the first album by London-based blues band Tramp, titled Tramp, which was recorded at DeLane Lea Studios in Soho. The album featured an uptempo guitar instrumental, "Hard Work", from Kirwan. Mick Fleetwood played drums on the recording. said he had enjoyed working with Kirwan during the Tramp sessions and remembered him being friendly and cooperative. In his 1998 history of the band, Brunning described Kirwan as "a talented and soulful musician" who had contributed much fine work to Fleetwood Mac's repertoire. Kirwan and Spencer were now having to front the band and their morale was low. Green agreed,

Once the band got into their stride, Kirwan is reported to have felt annoyed and overshadowed because Green was taking a leading role in their guitar playing. the second of two nights at the Rock Pile on Long Island. Until then Green had kept a relatively low profile, but in his last ever performance with Fleetwood Mac, he and Kirwan and the band "took the place by storm" with a four-hour improvised version of "Black Magic Woman". He arrived in London from Paris, where he had been stranded after his previous band fell apart. We loved his personality. His musical roots were in R&B instead of blues [and] we thought it would be an interesting blend. He had a precise sense of phrasing and timing and he was well-trained, as opposed to us, who had just wandered into it." A personality clash developed

Welch recalled, "I thought he was a nice kid, but a little bit paranoid, a little bit disturbed. He would always take things I said wrongly. He would take offence at things for no reason ... I thought it was just me, but as I got to know the rest of the band, they'd say 'Oh yes, Danny, a little... strange'." Welch also suspected that Kirwan did not appreciate his musical style. "I think Danny thought I was too clever a player ... too jazzy, too many weird notes. I don't feel he loved my stuff to death." Kirwan contributed the album's opening track, "Woman of 1000 Years", which one reviewer said "floated on a languid sea of echo-laden acoustic and electric guitars". His other songs were the melodic "Sands of Time", which Warner Bros. Records chose as a single in the US, and the country-flavoured "Sometimes", which suggested the route he would later take during his solo career. McVie later described Kirwan's "Woman of 1000 Years" and "Sands of Time" as "killer songs". Welch said "Woman of 1000 Years" was "Danny at his best".

Bare Trees 1972 In 1971 Kirwan began an 11-month tour of America and Europe with the band. They opened a couple of dozen shows for Deep Purple and for several months played second on the bill to Savoy Brown. In a rare week off, early in 1972,

Firing from Fleetwood Mac Pressure and stress By the summer of 1972 Kirwan had been writing, recording, touring, and performing continuously for nearly four years, since the age of 18, as a member of a major international band. He said, "Danny had been a nervous and sensitive lad from the start. He was never really suited to the rigours of the business. Touring is hard and the routine wears us all down ... Our manager kept us touring non-stop and we were being stretched to our limits ... and the pressure was obviously taking its toll. He simply withdrew into his own world."

Other members of the band recalled the incident. Welch: "We had a university gig somewhere. Danny started to throw this major fit in the dressing room. He had a beautiful guitar ... [a vintage Les Paul Black Beauty.

Fleetwood: "We all felt a blow-up was brewing, but we didn't expect what happened. We were sitting backstage waiting to go on. Danny was being odd about tuning his guitar. He went off on a rant about Bob never being in tune ... He got up suddenly ... and bashed his head into the wall, splattering blood everywhere. I'd never seen him do anything that violent in all the years I'd known him. The rest of us were paralysed, in complete shock. He grabbed his precious Les Paul guitar and smashed it to bits. Then he set about demolishing everything in the dressing room as we all sat and watched. When there was nothing left to throw at the wall or overturn, he calmed down. Five minutes to showtime and there was blood everywhere. Danny said 'I'm not going on'. We were already late to the stage and we could hear the crowd chanting for us. We had to go on stage without him."

Welch remembered, "I was extremely pissed off and the set seemed to drag on for ever. To do a whole set without Danny was tough, because all the band arrangements depended on him being there for a guitar part or a vocal part or whatever. I think we told the audience Danny was sick, which I guess he was, in a way." ... [but] there was no other option. Danny had to go."

Fleetwood said in 1976, "It was a torment for him, really, to be up there [on stage], and it reduced him to someone who you just looked at and thought 'My God'. It was more a thing of, although he was asked to leave, the way I was looking at it was, I hoped it was almost putting him out of his agony,"

Welch said that until then the band had remained loyal to Kirwan, even when he became impossible to work with. "I would say, 'the guy doesn't show up to rehearsals, he's embarrassing, he's paranoid, we've spent five hours dealing with him', but Mick, John, and Christine remained loyal to him because he was Peter's protégé."

Fleetwood justified the decision to fire Kirwan as a way to put him out of his misery.

Solo career and beyond Hungry Fighter, 1974 In early 1974, Kirwan and another recently departed member of Fleetwood Mac, singer/guitarist Dave Walker, joined forces with keyboard player Paul Raymond, bassist Andy Silvester and drummer Mac Poole to form a short-lived band called Hungry Fighter. This group played only one gig, at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England, which was not recorded. Walker remembered, "Danny was an incredible talent ... At this time [his] guitar playing was still superb, but he was becoming increasingly withdrawn."

Walker had previously been a member of UK band the Idle Race, which opened a show for Fleetwood Mac at the Lyceum Theatre in London in 1970. In 1974, Kirwan worked again with Mick Fleetwood at Southern Music Studio in Denmark Street, London, in recording sessions for the second album of London-based blues band Tramp. Many of the songs were very simple musically, with little more than infectious melody and basic lyrics to sustain them. A Rolling Stone review of Bare Trees in 1972 commented on the similarity of Kirwan's musical style to Paul McCartney's. Kirwan said in 1997 that McCartney had been one of his early influences. Davis later described the album as "so bad". He said, "[Kirwan] had to finish it for contractual reasons, but I had to put down the acoustic guitar parts and the vocals and everything else. I even picked the songs."

Personal life Mental health Fleetwood Mac period, 1968–1972 Kirwan was described by those who knew him in Fleetwood Mac, between the ages of 18 and 22, as a brilliant and exceptionally talented musician, but also as nervous, sensitive and insecure. Christine McVie said in an interview in 2018, "Danny was a troubled man and a difficult person to get to know. He was a loner." Fleetwood remembered Kirwan as "nervous and sensitive" and commented, sympathetically, that he had "carried all his emotional baggage around with him". A member of the band Kirwan was in briefly in 1974 recalled, "Danny had a touch of genius, but the poor fellow was a bag of nerves."

In 1969, Peter Green described Kirwan, then aged 19, as neurotic and prone to worrying. He said, "[Danny] has done some incredible things on the new LP and we're proud to have him with us, [but] he's neurotic and worries about everything. He even worries about simple things like catching a bus. He bites his nails until they bleed. He's either right up or right down, either raving or worrying."

Bob Welch worked with Kirwan in Fleetwood Mac from April 1971 to August 1972. He and Kirwan shared a productive musical partnership, but Welch, an outgoing Californian, found Kirwan to be withdrawn and difficult to communicate with. Welch recalled, I thought he was a nice kid, but a little bit paranoid, defensive, a little bit disturbed. He would always take things I said wrongly ... He would take offence at things for no reason. He'd play something and I'd say, 'That's kinda nice' and he'd say, 'Kind of nice? You mean you don't like it?' I thought it was just me, but as I got to know the rest of the band they'd say, 'Oh yes, Danny, a little... strange'.

In the late 1970s Kirwan's mental health deteriorated, and after a difficult time recording his final solo album in January 1979, he played no further part in the music industry.

Alcohol and drugs Alcohol and drugs appear to have contributed to Kirwan's decline. Green's biographer Martin Celmins said that by the age of 21, after two and a half years as a professional musician, Kirwan was "lost in a drink and drugs wasteland." A lot of pressure and responsibility had fallen on his shoulders after Green left the band in 1970 and he had found it difficult to cope. In 1980 Fleetwood Mac, then based in Los Angeles, were in London for a concert and Kirwan turned up at their hotel. Fleetwood recalled later, "It was heartbreaking ... he looked derelict ... he told us he'd slept on a park bench the night before." In 1989 Bob Brunning, wanting to interview Kirwan for a book, tracked him down to a hostel for the homeless in Covent Garden in London's Soho district. Brunning said Kirwan was "still slim, but puffy-cheeked and highly agitated. He couldn't talk coherently, just said, 'Can't help you Bob. Too much stress'."

In 1993, Fleetwood contacted the Missing Persons Bureau in London from Los Angeles and Kirwan, then aged 42, was traced to the hostel for the homeless In 2002, Jeremy Spencer visited with Kirwan's ex-wife and son. Spencer said later that the meeting had been pleasant, although Kirwan was "in his own world". Kirwan was said to be well looked after, and was visited by family and friends.

Final interview Music writer Martin Celmins met Kirwan at the hostel in London where he was staying and managed a brief interview, which was published in The Guitar Magazine [UK] in July 1997. Celmins said Kirwan was "mostly cheery ... and able to express his views forcefully and articulately." Celmins asked how he had come to play the blues. Kirwan said, "I was around and gathered it all up and got involved. I didn't think 'I want to be a musician'. It just kind of happened ... I got into the blues and it got into my system."

Celmins asked about big-band music and Django Reinhardt. Kirwan said, "Those were the kind of records I'd buy. I worked out 'Jigsaw Puzzle Blues' from that stuff and then played the signals to the rest of the band. John McVie knew every signal you could give out – signals to say, 'You do this' and 'You do that', and they'd do it and it would all come together. That band was so clever – they knew all the signals and could do it." Celmins asked how he had joined Fleetwood Mac. Kirwan said, "Mick Fleetwood asked me ... I didn't know what to think once I'd joined because ... then I was on stage and there were television cameras and I got a bit paranoid." the band's manager, Clifford Davis, blamed Kirwan's mental deterioration on the same incident in March 1970 that is alleged to have damaged Green's mental stability: a reaction to LSD taken at a hippie commune near Munich in the middle of a European tour. Davis said, "Peter Green and Danny Kirwan both went together to that house in Munich, both of them took acid as I understand it, [and] both of them, as of that day, became seriously mentally ill."

Other sources, however, say that Kirwan was not present at the Munich commune. Fleetwood Mac roadie Stuart 'Dinky' Dawson remembers that only two of the Fleetwood Mac contingent went to the party: Green and another roadie, Dennis Keane. Dawson states that Kirwan did not go to the commune, and that when Keane returned to the band's hotel and told them that Green would not leave the commune, neither Kirwan nor Davis went to fetch him, leaving the task to Keane, Dawson, and Mick Fleetwood.

Keane agrees with Dawson's account, except for the details that he phoned Davis from the commune and did not physically return to the hotel to fetch help, and that Davis accompanied Dawson and Fleetwood to fetch Green. Green said of the incident, "To my knowledge, only Dennis and myself out of the English lot went there." Neither Keane, Dawson, Green, nor Spencer mentioned Kirwan being present at the commune.

LSD and mescaline Kirwan appears to have taken LSD before the Munich commune incident. Fleetwood stated in his autobiography that the band took LSD together when they arrived in New York in December 1968 at the start of a US tour, a few months after Kirwan had joined the band.

Peter Green said in a Penguin Q&A session in 1999 that all the [early Fleetwood Mac] musicians were receiving their share of royalties, although there had been difficulty over the years in collecting some of them. He said, "Danny Kirwan is still receiving his and is doing OK."

Kirwan's three solo albums were given a belated CD release in February 2006, but only in Japan. A limited edition of 2,500 copies of "Second Chapter" was issued by Repertoire Records in early 2008. The rights and royalties situation regarding these releases was such that it was not known whether Kirwan's estate would receive any income from them. Prior to this, only Second Chapter had been available on CD for a brief period in Germany in 1993. The rights were owned by Clifford Davis.

In the mid-2000s there were rumours of a reunion of the early line-up of Fleetwood Mac involving Green and Spencer. The two guitarists apparently remained unconvinced about a reunion,

One of Kirwan's songs, "Tell Me All the Things You Do" from the 1970 album Kiln House, was included in the set of Fleetwood Mac's 2018–19 "An Evening with Fleetwood Mac" tour, with guitarist Neil Finn and Christine McVie sharing vocals.

Marriage and death Kirwan married Clare E. Stock in Southend district in the June quarter of 1971; they divorced a few years later.

Danny Kirwan died in London on 8 June 2018 aged 68. An obituary in The New York Times quoted his former wife as saying that he had died in his sleep after contracting pneumonia earlier in the year. Fleetwood had previously said in an interview, "I cared for Danny a lot and I care for his legacy. Danny was a quantum leap ahead of us creatively. He was a hugely important part of the band."

In an interview with Mojo magazine, Christine McVie said, "Danny Kirwan was the white English blues guy. Nobody else could play like him. He was a one-off ... Danny and Peter gelled so well together. Danny had a very precise, piercing vibrato – a unique sound ... He was a perfectionist ... Listen to "Woman of 1000 Years", "Sands of Time", "Tell Me All the Things You Do" – they're killer songs. He was a fantastic musician and a fantastic writer." Jeremy Spencer said, "Danny brought inventiveness and melody to the band ... I was timid about stepping out with new ideas, but Danny was brimming with them."

Former Hungry Fighter singer/guitarist Dave Walker said in 2000 that Kirwan was "a great loss to music." Bob Welch said in 1999 that Kirwan had been "a talented and gifted musician; an innovative and exciting player, singer, and writer. As a musician, he was developed way beyond his years." Mick Fleetwood said in 1990, "Danny was an exceptional guitar player who inspired Peter Green into writing the most moving and powerful songs of his life."

Equipment

Watkins Rapier 33, 1960s British-made Fender Stratocaster-style guitar, with a chambered body: Kirwan's was red, and he used it when in Boilerhouse, and during early Fleetwood Mac performances (e.g. Hyde Park, London, free concert 1968). Fender Telecaster Standard Blonde, used on "Like Crying" 1956 Gibson Les Paul Standard, Goldtop, P-90 pickups, no pickguard, later refinished to red 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, Cherry Sunburst, no pickguard 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, Tobacco Sunburst, no pickguard 1957 Gibson Les Paul Custom, three-pickup Black Beauty, no pickguard Orange Matamp 100W valve (vacuum tube) amplifier, usually used with two 4 × 12 Orange speaker cabinets (used by the whole band for a period) and separate Orange (valve) spring reverb unit Fender Dual Showman amplifier

Discography

Solo albums Second Chapter (DJM 1975) Midnight in San Juan (DJM 1976) Danny Kirwan (DJM 1977 – US release of Midnight in San Juan) Hello There Big Boy! (DJM 1979) Ram Jam City (Mooncrest 2000 – recorded in the mid-1970s as demo tracks for the Second Chapter album)