Lead singer with Nazareth, the hard-rocking Scottish band
DAN MCCAFFERTY, who has died aged 76, was the gravel-voiced lead singer with Nazareth, who cut a hard-rocking swathe through the 1970s and beyond; but for all the driving energy that fuelled the Scottish band’s rise to the upper echelons, he may perhaps be best known for his passionate vocal on what many regard as the definitive cover of the Everly Brothers’ hit Love Hurts.
“We weren’t trying to be famous or trying to change the world or anything,” he said in 2013. “We lived in a small town, loved music, and all the guys in the band liked different things. It was just a bunch of guys trying to meet girls, basically.”
That small town was Dunfermline, near the Firth of Forth, where William Daniel Mccafferty was born on October 14 1946. After leaving school he formed a local band, the Shadettes, alongside guitarist Manny Charlton, bassist Pete Agnew and drummer Darrell Sweet.
They wore matching yellow suits as they played covers sets around their home town, while at the Kinema Ballroom they opened for the likes of The Who, Cream and Jethro Tull.
Taken on by the bingohall millionaire Bill Fehilly, they moved down to London and changed their name to Nazareth – after the town in Pennsylvania mentioned in the Band’s much-loved song The Weight, which opens: “I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin’ ’bout half past dead…”
Following a successful debut gig at the Marquee, they released a self-titled album and bagged a plum spot supporting heavy metal gods Deep Purple, whose bassist Roger Glover produced their second album, Razamanaz (1973).
Success came swiftly after that, thanks in part to their reputation as a storming live act, and they performed two singles from Razamanaz, Broken Down Angel and Bad, Bad Boy, on Top of the Pops.
“I remember walking down the street in London and this girl came up to me and asked for my autograph, and I thought, ‘How does she know who I am?’” Mccafferty recalled. “Then she said, ‘I saw you on Top of the Pops last night,’ and then I realised we were famous.”
Roger Glover also produced the band’s next album, Rampant (1974), which included a trenchant and acclaimed re-reading of the Joni Mitchell song This Flight Tonight. Manny Charlton assumed production duties for the Hair of the Dog album (1975), the American version of which included the band’s take on Love Hurts, one of the songs they had covered in the early days back in Dunfermline.
Reinvented as an epic power ballad and given a distinctive edge by Mccafferty’s raw, yearning delivery, it was a hit around the world – especially Norway, where it remains the biggest-selling single of all time. (Nazareth were also big in Brazil, where their instruments were once “kidnapped” and held to ransom.) It also featured on television, in such programmes as King of the Hill and That ’70s Show, and was used in a scene from Richard Linklater’s 1993 coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused.
The band carried on recording and touring with shifting line-ups, albeit with diminishing returns, and Mccafferty sang on 17 more albums after Hair of the Dog.
In 2013 COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, forced him to retire from touring. “I figure if you can’t do the job then you really shouldn’t be there,” he said at the time. “I’m sad about it, but I just can’t sing a whole set live anymore”.
The following year he was able to sing on the band’s album Rock’n’roll Telephone.
He did make the occasional live appearance, and in 2019 released Last Testament, his first solo album for 32 years.
Manny Charlton died earlier this year, while Darrell Sweet died in 1999 (and was replaced by Pete Agnew’s son, Lee).
Dan Mccafferty was married to Marryann and had two children.