Michael Heatley - David Gray: A Biography

E veryone whos interested enough to pick up this book regardless of whether or not youve yet bought it will have their own recollection of where and when they first heard David Gray.

My own epiphany came while browsing in a record shop in Winchester. The voice seemed somehow familiar. Bob Dylan, wasnt it? But no. The Zim would never have had any truck with such a hi-tech backing. What the? Who the? Paul Brady, maybe? Not American, certainly, but not quite Irish. Who the? What the? All right, I give in

The man behind the counter thrust the jewel case towards me. David Gray. White Ladder. He was used to the uncomprehending look, hed been through this loop many times before. Indeed, putting this on the shop stereo system was a way of livening up his day not to mention boosting sales when business failed to boom.

(Since then, Ive seen John Cusack on High Fidelity use the same tactic with the Beta Band in his Championship Vinyl shop. Believe me, it was art imitating life!)

Back in Winchester, I was hooked. And the fact that the guy had released another three albums without me hearing about them let alone hearing them only added to the allure. When my friendly record retailer advised me these were otherwise unavailable, my detective instincts clicked in. What happened next began the trail that leads to this book you hold.

explains most lucidly how he made it with millions more.

David Gray may not inspire as many books to be written about him as Bob Dylan. As far as Im aware this is the first of them. Whatever he does, he has already contributed to the rich tapestry we know as popular music, and for helping ensure the singer-songwriter enjoys a reasonably high profile during the first years of the current millennium, I thank him.

W hen David Gray released his White Ladder album on his own label at the start of 1999, he did so only in Ireland. Having gone through two record labels during the course of his three previous recording ventures, he had no illusions about dominating the world of pop at least not in the foreseeable future. Ireland, though, was the one place that had taken to his raw, confessional style without reservations, and it seemed as good a place as any to start re-climbing the musical Matterhorn down which hed inexorably been slipping.

But miracles do happen. By the end of the year he was a fully-fledged star on the other side of the water from his place of birth. U2s Bono, among others, was endorsing his music a recommendation that 8,500 fans were happy to follow by buying every seat in Dublins Point Depot venue. That December 1999 gig will forever remain a watershed in his career.

It was one long succession of pleasing synergies people being in the right place at the right time, the band coming together, things like that, hed tell Hot Press music paper a few months later. But the Point gig was just a monumental night the culmination of years of passionate support from the fans, and of blood, sweat and tears on our behalf.

Hed started again at the bottom after an Irish DJ Donal Dineen had picked up on Shine, his earliest professional recording, and made it the theme tune to his show, RTEs No Disco. After being overwhelmed with requests for more, he invited David to play in Whelans of Wexford Street in Dublin. Gray admits he felt the emotionally charged atmosphere raise the hairs on the back of his neck. There were a few moments when the crowd went completely ballistic and it was like, Wow! This is serious. It was truly awe-inspiring! The audience bring to it what they will; that night, they were fantastic and all I had to do was not blow it.

He could do no wrong on that occasion, but the challenges rocket-propelled stardom threw up would prove more difficult for an intimate singer-songwriter type to overcome. Im working on my stage projection, hed admit, while allowing that both he and his fans would have to adapt. The situation has changed. Its moved on a few paces, so were just trying to keep things interesting. You cant please all the people all the time. We wanted to have a big party and get the most amount of people as we could at it.

Yes, the future would be different, but Dublin would remain forever in his heart. So much so that hed return to play a free Millennium gig on December 31, 1999 for those who couldnt get Point tickets. Roll on another 12 months and, far from being the up-and-coming songwriter of early 1999, he was well known worldwide, had a Top 10 single in his home country and was strongly tipped to conquer the States. The Point had given him that first glimpse of what the future could be. There are certain times when you see the future and you step into bigger shoes. You have to cast the skin of insecurity aside. It was like, come on, lets go why not us instead of some other band?

The Irish audience offered him the stepping stone he needed. Its been such a long-running story. Ive been adopted by them because Ive toured so extensively, far beyond what youre expected to do, because I really wanted to. I didnt want to go back to England, where I was being ignored.

A gig in Galway in the middle of the year had attracted four and a half thousand people, giving him the platform to attempt the big-city gig at a venue only U2 and Boyzone could be guaranteed to fill. But like the rest of the David Gray story, it took a lot of people by surprise, himself included. But its like, why not? If you make something of spirit, it just goes out into the world and starts creating ripples. I just didnt realise the scale it was going to get to. Its been fantastic. And its just getting started there are more chapters to be written, I think.

All told, it was an unforgettable night to crown an incredible year. Not so much a gig as a celebration. A moment when it all made sense, a stepping into bigger shoes, a taste of things to come.

Twenty months after the Point and a further none since its release, White Ladder had created history by reaching the top of the UK album chart its passage there the longest since Tyrannosaurus Rexs My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair . That album had taken four years to reach Number 1, propelled there after Marc Bolan fans impatient for new product discovered an album that had reached no higher than Number 15 in its 1968 heyday but when linked with its even less successful follow-up, Prophets Seers And Sages, The Angels Of The Ages, had been reissued by a former record company to lucrative effect. With sales totalling 1,556,000 at the point it hit the top, White Ladder had achieved its success by appealing to those who didnt consider themselves record-buyers. It had become as much an album to be seen with as Fleetwood Macs Rumours a quarter-century or so earlier. The difference was it had been created not in a series of glossy studios but on a shoestring budget in a terraced North London house.

But as Rumours listeners had taken the tales of relationships between Mac band members and applied them to their own lives, so the everyday tales on White Ladder spoke to listeners. The Observers Pat Kane himself a former pop star with Hue and Cry termed the album tabletop therapy amid the Chardonnay, soggy joints and domestic bills.

Yet while groups like Fleetwood Mac could re-invent themselves over the years, the shelf life of the singer-songwriter tended to be a shorter one. Cat Stevens in the Seventies and Tanita Tikaram were just two examples of the genre whod commanded Top Three chart positions and produced multi-million-selling albums, only to find themselves plummeting into obscurity as their audience grew up and moved on. That was the challenge facing David Gray but as we shall see, he already had a couple of re-inventions under his belt before he found the winning formula.