Early in his career, Dan McCafferty sang in local clubs with a band whose musicians wore identical yellow suits. Every week, they had to add three new songs to their repertoire in order to be able to perform them that same night. From this working club formation, one of the most recognizable Scottish rock bands was gradually born.
McCafferty was born on October 14, 1946 in Dunfermline. In 1965, he joined the Shadettes, where bassist Pete Agnew and drummer Darrell Sweet were already playing. They were joined in 1968 by guitarist Manny Charlton, and the same year the band adopted the name Nazareth. It comes from the song The Weight by The Band.
From Scottish clubs to the world stage
In 1970, the musicians moved to London. Their debut album was released in 1971, but their breakthrough came two years later with Razamanaz. Produced by Roger Glover of Deep Purple, the album reached number 11 in the UK charts and gave Nazareth the hits Broken Down Angel and Bad Bad Boy.
The next album, Loud’n’Proud, climbed to number ten in the UK. It also included a rock version of Joni Mitchell's This Flight Tonight. The song demonstrates one of the band's strengths - their ability to turn foreign compositions into material with their own character.
The song that changed everything
The biggest success came in 1975 with Hair of the Dog. The album reached the Top 20 in the US and sold about 2 million copies. The title track became a hard rock anthem, but it was the ballad Love Hurts that brought Nazareth to the widest international audience.
The song was originally recorded by the Everly Brothers in 1960. However, McCafferty and the other musicians were attracted to the version by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. “We recorded it and thought it was great“, McCafferty later said. The song was originally intended as a B-side, but the record company chose it as the lead single. It reached the Top 10 in the US and became one of the most popular rock ballads of the 1970s.
McCafferty's voice is crucial to the song's impact. He can go from an almost intimate singing to a raw, piercing scream without losing the melody. "I don't worry about it," the singer says of his naturally rough timbre. This feature later became one of Nazareth's defining features.
Later years
McCafferty recorded all of Nazareth's albums until 2014's Rock’n’Roll Telephone. Due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, he stopped performing in 2013. "I'm sad, but I can't sing a full concert live anymore," he said a year later.
Nevertheless, he continued to record. In 2019, his third solo album Last Testament was released. Dan McCafferty died on November 8, 2022, at the age of 76. What remains are the songs in which his voice sounds simultaneously like a warning, a confession, and an invitation to turn up the volume.
Sources: theguardian.com