HEAD BOYS FLY INTO HISTORY
HEAR D about theKen tuc k y ban d who grew up lovin g Fran k ieM iller? That’s the case with Southern rockers the Kentucky Headhunters, who will finally make their Glasgow bow at the O2 ABC2 tomorrow after over 30 years as agroup.
A fear of flying previously stopped guitarist Richard Young from touring, but now he’s keen to make up for lost time, including that Glasgow show on Wednesday.
“I’ve always wanted to go to London, since I first heard the Beatles and British music, but my next favourite would be Glasgow because we live near Glasgow, Kentucky,” chuckles Richard.
“One of my biggest influences was Frankie Miller. I love his voice and he’s up there with Robert Plant and Paul Rodgers for me. They all influenced my singing style, and it was my brother that got me into Frankie in the 70s.
“There’s arare confidence in his voice that only afew possess, and that’s what it takes to put arock, soul and blues song across. It’s like abird crying and it draws you in, like amoth is drawn to alight.”
The Headhunters go back to the 60s, when Richard and his brother, drummer Fred Young, formed the band Itchy Brother. They kept going until 1982, before reuniting under the Headhunters name four years later.
As the Headhunters, their mix of country, blues and rock won them aGrammy award in 1990. However both Richard and Fred hated flying so much that atour of Europe was never on the cards, until their son John, drummer with Black Stone Cherry, helped persuade them to reconsider.
“My son’s rock band, they’ve been coming over for years, from clubs to the Barrowland and then arenas now, and they’d always come back and say ‘dad, you need to go over there – people ask us about you and they know who you are.’
“I kept saying ‘no, no-one knows us there’. Then last fall they came home from abig arenatour and ganged up on me – we were all at the farmhouse where we rehearse and they said they were going to set us up with some shows. And lo and behold, they did!”
There’s another reason the band want to travel more too.
“We lost our father back in April, and he was avery well educated man,” explains Richard.
“The odd thing about it was that he knew so much about Europe, and all the castles and history there, but he never travelled more than 500 miles outside of Kentucky. So that was another reason why I decided I would fly, because I had all these opportunities and different parts of the world, and my dad would have loved that. So we are doing it for my dad, too…”
They’ve also cut anew album, that should land in November. As always, it should combine the band’s musical styles – something they learned while growing up on afarm.
“We started out listening to the Stones and the Beatles as kids, then we graduated to Free, Thin Lizzy and all the great bands,” adds Richard.
“The first time we saw Thin Lizzy they were opening for Queen in America– Scott Gorman and Phil Lynott were both extremely nice and talked to us, and I’ll never forget that Phil said to us to keep playing and ‘don’t take any wooden nickels’. Then Led Zeppelin hit and that blew our minds. We studied those rock bands from the 60s and 70s, and coupled it with those rural sensibilities – being around afarm there were white families working there and African American families, so you’d hear someone singing Jerry Lee Lewis, or the Beatles, or gospel spiritual songs, or BB King.”
And Richard’s pleased to see the next generation having success too, with Black Stone Cherry now riding high and conquering arenas.
“They were raised on the farm and came out of the same practice house as the Heads,” he says.
“They learned all their early musical roots from the Heads other family members and local folklore, but more importantly they learned how to conduct themselves as genuine, good people. They also possess agift of focus and diligence in their work like I have never seen in a band. Just abunch of straight shooting good ole Kentucky boys that grew up like us, as brothers.”