Adrian Gurvitz

Born Adrian Curtis on 26 June 1949 in London, England, the guitarist who has also recorded as Adrian Gurvitz first gained experience backing 1960s pop singer Crispian St. Peters, whose road manager was his father Sam Curtis. Subsequent work with Billie Davis and Screaming Lord Sutch led him to Rupert’s People, whose 1967 single ‘Reflections Of Charles Brown’ scored a sizeable European hit. The following year he launched Gun with his brother Paul; that band later became Three Man Army. The siblings logged many session dates before joining drummer Ginger Baker in Baker Gurvitz Army, after which Adrian began releasing music under his own name. Sweet Vendetta (1979) enlisted American studio players Jeff Porcaro, Joe Porcaro, Steve Porcaro and David Paich, all later members of Toto, yet neither that album nor Il Assassino registered commercially. In 1982 he unexpectedly reached the UK Top 10 with the soft-rock single ‘Classic’, which contains the line “Gonna write a classic, gonna write it in my attic”. Appearances by the artist have since grown infrequent. By the 1990s he had adopted a jazz-inflected approach.