The name of Ricky Gardiner, who has passed away at the age of 73, is perhaps not immediately familiar to many. I first came across him in 1972 at the Grangemouth Festival – often considered to be Scotland’s first ever music festival – when he appeared there playing guitar with Beggars Opera, the progressive rock band he had jointly formed in Glasgow three years earlier. By the time of Grangemouth, Beggars Opera were already established as the regular house band at the Burns Howff, the late, great pub and live music venue that was located in West Regent Street in Glasgow city centre. They had assumed that residency after following in the footsteps of yet another brilliant Glaswegian band of that period, Stone The Crows.
Ricky Gardiner’s unquestionable talent came to the attention of David Bowie and he played guitar on Bowie’s 1977 album Low. His surname may well have been misspelt on the album credits, but just listen to the first side of a vinyl copy of that record and you will hear Gardiner’s euphoric, futurist playing adding a further dimension to tracks such as ‘What In The World’, ‘Sound and Vision’, and ‘Be My Wife’.
It was during the recording of Low that Ricky Gardiner first met Iggy Pop and, alongside Bowie himself on keyboards, subsequently became a member of Pop’s live band as they toured his then debut album The Idiot. Gardiner played lead guitar on Iggy Pop’s next studio album Lust For Life, as well as co-writing three of the stand-out tracks, ‘The ‘Passenger’, ‘Success’, and ‘Neighbourhood Threat’. The intoxicating, sinuous riff that Gardiner lays down on ‘The Passenger’ in particular is the stuff of rock legend.
Becoming a father then contributed towards Ricky Gardiner stopping live touring, but his musical career did not end with David Bowie and Iggy Pop. He set up his own recording studio, and released a series of solo albums including The Flood (1985) and a “symphony for computer”, Precious Life (1987). He continued to make music into the 1990s and beyond with his wife, Virginia Scott, who had played keyboards alongside her husband in Beggars Opera.
It was an email from Virginia Scott to Tony Visconti – who had co-produced Low – that prompted Visconti to advise his Facebook followers of Ricky Gardiner’s sad passing following what was described as his long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Iggy Pop joined with Tony Visconti in paying tribute to this great Scottish musician and composer. He wrote: “Dearest Ricky, lovely, lovely man, shirtless in your coveralls, nicest guy who ever played guitar.”
Main image of Iggy Pop, Ricky Gardiner and David Bowie performing live in 1978 in San Francisco, California (Picture: Richard McCaffrey/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images)
