The Adventures of Gabriel Spitfire, Part 1
I first met Gabriel Spitfire in a session in Miami several years ago. He was fumbling with a song on an old blue Telecaster. The lad had obviously spent many years in the shadow of Bowie and Lennon based on his chord-play; Descending progressions in G that modulated into some E-Flat variant before long. He was mumbling a melody in his migrated London drawl, verbally scrawling words like “dirigible” and painting vibrant images of lost cities and love. He was immediately interesting, cigarette stuck to his lower lip and eyes rolled back in a moment of distant conjuring.
“That sounds nice,” I venture, worried that I may somehow flip a switch on this wisp of a man/boy and that he would lash out at my rudeness.
“You think? I’m just fucking about here a bit,” he replied in nearly a whisper. His accent seemed a bit odd at first, as if at some point he had tried to adapt to a local flavor and failed. He flicked his ash onto the floor, stood up and stuck out his left hand.
“Gabriel Spitfire at your service,” he said in an almost humorous way. But he wasn’t joking. What a name! He had to be kidding.
“You mean, like the airplane or the car,” I inquired?
“Yup, those’ll be my namesakes. I should sue them both,” he replied dryly.
After a short bit of small talk, I left the gear room we were in and headed in the general direction of the main studio. I was called in to play a session in this studio purely as a keyboard player on a dance track, or so I was told. But, something was wrong here. It happened that the studio was in something of a snafu as the previous act was still running around putting the finishing touches on their recordings. It didn’t take me too long to realize that this young guitar player I had just met, this Gabriel Spitfire, was a part of this said band, and his “fucking about” was a part of the problem.
Looking at my watch and concerned about the time and prospects of my session actually happening, I casually ventured into the control room of the studio. Oh brother, were there troubles there. The producer and the engineer were up in arms about someone in this ban I was waiting on. He was apparently not cooperative, wasted on pot half the time and “so bloody stubborn about his creative shit” as the engineer so eloquently put it. And now he had wandered off to fix a minor part and no one had any idea where he was.
They of course could be talking about no one other than my new guitar-playing friend.
I was about to offer that I had recently seen Gabriel in the gear room when in walked the man himself, a pair of sunglasses now perched at the end of his slender nose, a blue tele over his shoulder and a finger pointing at the wall.
“I’m going to cut my guitar part again. Please darken the room. All the way.”
The engineer and producer, hands on hips, were silent with mouths wide.
“Sure your bloody fucking highness,” mumbled one of them as the room went dark.
What i proceeded to hear was a gem of a guitar track. Oh, it wasn’t technically perfect. In fact, it sometimes sounded like a drunk falling from a bar stool. But it was brash, filled with attitude and sonic as all hell. Imperfect perfection. In the glow of blinking LEDs, you could even see a faint satisfied look come over the producer as Spitfire finished his solo, as if in some way this made up for all of the trials, tribulations and gray hairs.
As the track finished, and the guitar faded to a hum, I realized that no matter what happened to my session that night, I had born witness to something interesting and special. Gabriel Spitfire was one of those shadow gifts from beyond, unexplainable and bi-polar as hell. I couldn’t wait to hear more.
I was ready to exit the control room and head off to find the studio’s owner when the lights to the studio were brought up.
“What the bloody hell,” someone exclaimed from the booth? “Where’s he now?”
And there in the studio was a chair with a blue Fender Telecaster on it, still plugged into the amp and starting to feed back a bit. And just like that, Gabriel Spitfire was gone.
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