Greg Quill

Gregory Raymond Quill (18 April 1947 – 5 May 2013) was an Australian-born musician, singer-songwriter and journalist.

Gregory Raymond Quill was born on 18 April 1947 to Raymond and Doris Quill (née Markham).

He grew up in Sydney with a younger brother, Christopher.

From the age of about 15 years he learned how to play acoustic guitar and his first public performance was in his final year of high school.

Quill began his musical career in the 1960s as a solo performer on the Sydney folk scene clustered around the University of Sydney, where he graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature.

He worked briefly as a history teacher at a Catholic boys high school in Bankstown.

He was hired by David Elfick, then the local editor of the national weekly pop music magazine, Go-Set (later Elfick was a movie producer).

Gus McNeil, a music publisher, record producer and former singer and saxophonist for 1960s rock band, Gus & The Nomads, signed Quill to a publishing deal with his company, Cellar Music.

McNeil produced Quill's first commercial recording, the single, "Fleetwood Plain", and the subsequent album of the same name.

Quill wrote all the tracks on the album.

For the album Quill was backed by Orlando Agostino on guitars, Chris Blanchflower on harmonica, John Walsh on bass guitar, and members of local rock band Pirana: Jim Duke-Yonge on drums, Tony Hamilton on guitar, Graeme Thompson on bass guitar and Stan White on keyboards.

From 1967 Greg Quill ran The Shack, a folk music venue at Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches, where he also performed.

Quill worked as a writer from 1969, then feature writer (February 1970 to August 1971) and Sydney regional editor (July 1970 to August 1971) for the Melbourne-based publication.

In 1969 Quill handed over the running of the venue to his younger brother, Christopher.

In Australia he came to popular fame as a singer-songwriter for the country rock band Country Radio (1970–73).

Early in 1970 the album was released on EMI's new subsidiary label, Harvest Records, although the title single had been issued on EMI's Australian pop label Columbia Records.

To promote Fleetwood Plain Greg Quill formed the original line-up of Country Radio (also seen as Greg Quill's Country Radio or Greg Quill and Country Radio) in June 1970.

Other members were Agostino, Blanchflower, Walsh and Dave Hannagan on percussion and backing vocals.

The group started as an acoustic act but from 1970 to 1971 its musical style evolved into electric country rock, a style then gaining popularity through the influence of albums like The Band's Music from Big Pink (1968), The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968), and Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline (1969).

By May 1971 Country Radio's line-up had changed with Blanchflower and Quill joined by Mal Algar on bass guitar (ex-Chorus), John A. Bird on keyboards and Ace Follington on drums (ex-Chain).

In October that year the group signed to Infinity Records, a new subsidiary of Festival Records and recorded their debut single, "Listen to the Children", which came out in November although it did not chart.

Soon after, Follington left to join a pop band, The Cleves, for a tour of Britain; he was replaced on drums by Kim Bryant, who was in turn was replaced a few months later by Tony Bolton (ex-The Affair, Freshwater).

Their biggest hit, "Gypsy Queen", co-written by Quill with bandmate Kerryn Tolhurst, was released in August 1972 and peaked at No. 12 on the Go-Set National Top 40.

In January 1972 Algar left and they were joined by John Du Bois (ex-Circle of Love, New Dream) on bass guitar and Kerryn Tolhurst on guitar, lap steel and mandolin (ex-Adderley Smith Blues Band, Sundown).

The addition of Tolhurst was crucial to the band's sound and style, Quill and Tolhurst began a songwriting partnership.

With the "classic" line-up of Quill, Tolhurst, Bird, Bois, Bolton and Blanchflower, Country Radio recorded their second and most successful single, "Gypsy Queen", with producer John French, in Melbourne in April 1972.

It was co-written by Quill and Tolhurst, and featured a string arrangement by session musician, Peter Jones (who later worked on Quill's solo album, The Outlaw's Reply).

Released in August, the single spent 13 weeks in the Go-Set National Top 40 and peaked at No. 12.

"Gypsy Queen" shared the APRA (Australasian Performing Right Association) Song of the Year award with Mississippi's "Kings of the World".

The chart success of the single and the interest of expatriate Canadian music promoter and label representative, Michael McMartin, led to a contract with Toronto-based MUCH Productions, which issued "Gypsy Queen" in Canada in 1972.

At the end of that year they toured Canada to promote its release.

The group's follow-up single, "Wintersong", appeared in December 1972 and made the Go-Set Top 40 in April, the next year.

"Fleetwood Plain" was subsequently covered by Australian country musician, Reg Lindsay, and by Canadian folk-rockers Creamcheeze Good Time Band on their 1973 album, Home Cookin'.

After getting an arts grant, Quill travelled to Toronto in 1974 and by the mid-1980s had become a journalist with the Toronto Star.

He lived in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and was an entertainment columnist at the Toronto Star newspaper from the mid-1980s until his death in May 2013.

By 1983 he was married to Ellen Davidson, a public relations executive.

In 1999 he described the venue "[it] was a sort of folk co-operative, and everybody who performed on a particular evening got to share in the door takings – it was never more than a couple of bucks".

In 2002 Quill recalled that editing Go-Set had prepared him for his later work in journalism.

It was featured on the soundtrack of director Rod Hardy's 2007 film, December Boys, starring Daniel Radcliffe, and in the 2009 ABC-TV series, East of Everything.

Greg Quill died on 5 May 2013, at the age of 66, from "complications due to pneumonia".