Zal Cleminson

Alistair Macdonald "Zal" Cleminson (born 4 May 1949, Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish guitarist, best known for his prominent role in The Sensational Alex Harvey Band between 1972 and 1978.

Career

A self-taught guitarist, at the start of the 1970s he played and recorded with the Glasgow-based band Tear Gas. The musicians in that band then provided the backing for Alex Harvey in The Sensational Alex Harvey Band (SAHB). Cleminson was an extremely distinctive stage presence with SAHB owing to his white-face pierrot make-up.

When SAHB split up in 1977 they decided to tour as the Zal Band, recruited The Tubes' vocalist Leroi Jones and 19-year-old Billy Rankin on guitar who later played with Nazareth. In 1979 Cleminson joined Nazareth^[1] and recorded two albums with them, 1979's No Mean City and 1980's Malice in Wonderland. He also worked with Tandoori Cassette, who toured (several live recordings exist) and released a single; no album was released. He was a regular guitarist with singer Elkie Brooks on many of her tours throughout the 1980s. He wrote and played on Brooks' album Minutes as well as one track on No More The Fool. Cleminson has also toured and recorded with Midge Ure and Bonnie Tyler.

During the 1990s Cleminson played with The Party Boys, a casual band that at various times featured Marillion's Fish and Nazareth's Dan McCafferty and Billy Rankin as vocalists. This band became a reformed SAHB (Sensational Alex Harvey Band) in 1993 with Zero Zero vocalist Stevie Doherty, and it recorded a live album titled LIVE IN GLASGOW 93.

In 2004 SAHB reunited alongside The Shamen frontman Max Maxwell and performed various tours and festivals between 2004 and 2008, releasing their first album since 1978's Rock Drill which was entitled ZALVATION: Live in the 21st Century.

As well as performing with SAHB, Cleminson was a member of the now-disbanded outfits Ze Suicide and Oskura.

In 2006 he appeared in his début acting role as Wilson in the western film A Shot in the West, for which he wrote the theme music. In early 2008 he announced his retirement from the music industry and stated he would never perform live again.

Cleminson is referenced in the novel The Sacred Art of Stealing by the Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre as the basis of the disguises worn by bank robbers during a heist.

Guthrie Govan has cited Cleminson as one of his most important influences and considers him to have been "his Jimmy Page" in his early guitar development.^[2]

Citations

References

• Interview in Guitar Player (May 2006)