The
Fighting Cock turned out to be the ideal
place to meet Bradford musician Chantel
McGregor.
At
the corner of Preston Street and,
appropriately, Handel Street, the
brown-and-cream interior of this
real-ale pub can’t have changed much
since the late 1960s when the members of
the band Free might have popped in for a
pint after playing Queen’s Hall.
For me it’s a career, not about
partying, I don’t want to be dead at
28... it’s good to be grounded
A man
in red basketball boots, denims,
threequarter-length leather coat, long
hair and moustache came in and ordered a
“double Jack”.
He
sat hunched over his whiskey throughout
the interview, as though in mourning for
the authenticity of a time when rock
stars knew how to play their own
instruments and the public knew how to
listen.
His
spirits may not have been lifted when he
heard Chantel say: “We know a lot of
bands who play the rock’n’roll star, get
really drunk and then five years later
they are working a normal nine-to-five
job and they aren’t playing. I think the
reputation of rock’n’roll does that.
“For
me it’s a career, not about partying. I
don’t want to be dead at 28. We know
people who got too big for their boots.
I think it’s good to keep grounded. I
live at home with mum and dad. I have
never lived away, I don’t want to.”
Was this
24-year-old stay-at-home, accompanied by
her mum and dad, Janet and Alan, really
the same
Wyke
lass who in May this year played
blistering electric guitar in a 15-minue
rendition of the Robin Trower song
Daydream for the Paul Jones show on BBC
Radio 2?
It
was. She has also performed with US
guitar hero Joe Bonamassa and Deborah
Bonham, sister of the late John Bonham
of Led Zeppelin, and has the publicity
to prove it. The following anecdote may
give a little insight into the core of
Chantel’s personal and musical values.
“After a gig, a young bloke came up to
me and said he’d been playing guitar for
three months. ‘Why can’t I do what you
can do?’ he said. I thought, I’ve been
playing for 17 years, that’s why,” she
said.
Chantel, who was jamming with bands in
Bradford pubs at the age of 14, strikes
me as an alternative to the present age
of celebrity and instant gratification,
as she talks about being a performer.
“If
it’s marketed right, if it’s packaged
right, it will sell. It’s similar to the
X Factor thing. You audition for Simon
Cowell and then you’re a megastar.
“The
idea of hard work, learning your
instrument, and gigging, gigging and
gigging, is out of fashion. The whole
thing of learning your craft and
nurturing it has gone. You cannot learn
to play a guitar in a day, although Bert
Weedon did,” she said.
Fans
of her playing and singing have put up
more than 300 items on YouTube, even
though Chantel and her two-piece band
have yet to issue a CD. She’s working on
that in her studio at home, between
concerts.
In
January, she played the Skegness Rock &
Blues Festival. In August, she will be
on the main stage at the Cambridge Rock
Festival.
Virgin tried and failed to sign her up
after she appeared on stage at the
Bradford Mela when she was 14. She
didn’t want to sing Nick Drake songs
about death and depression.
A
star graduate from Leeds College of
Music – she got a first-class honours
degree in popular music – she was given
her first musical instrument, a
monophonic keyboard, at the age of nine
months. At the age of three she was
jumping about the living room to Ralph
McTell’s Kenny The Kangaroo, clutching
her father’s guitar.
What
the man in the red basketball boots and
blue jeans was making of all this was
anybody’s guess. But he may have perked
up when Chantel listed some of the stars
whose work she covers: Jethro Tull,
Blind Faith, Jimi Hendrix, Fleetwood
Mac, Bonnie Raitt.
“She’s a lovely lady,” she said of the
Californian blues singer-songwriter. “We
met up with her after her show in
Manchester. She stood talking to me for
20 minutes. She advised me never to sign
away my publishing rights because you
never get them back again.”
The
rock business is full of stories of
stars who lost their mojo, lost their
way or lost their bottle. The dusty
bottles that had once contained booze on
shelving beneath the ceiling of the
Fighting Cock seemed to symbolise so
many empty or lost lives.
How
does Chantel, still £17,000 in debt from
five years of higher education, measure
success?
“I’ll
always be up and coming because where
does it end? If playing the Albert Hall
is your destination, where does it go
after that? You can always play better
gigs,” she added.
