Gerard Mc Mahon - The Early Years

The Early Years

Gerard McMahon, who lists amongst his musical influences Liam Mullen, John Lennon, Stevie Wonder and Stravinsky, emigrated with his family from England to America when he was 11 years of age. Initially moving to New York, a few years later the MacMahons moved again, eventually settling in Wichita, Kansas.

"When I was there I started learning guitar and the bass, and realising I had a voice, I started a band which played in clubs all over the Midwest" —Gerard McMahon

McMahon was only 16 years of age at the time. Despite his young age, McMahon, together with his band, The Strangers, recorded one single before disbanding.

After The Strangers disbanded, McMahon moved to Boulder, Colorado and took a job arranging classes at the University.

In 1971 however, McMahon moved to New York to pursue a performing career. His first gigs were playing bass and guitar in R&B bands in Harlem. However, being a versatile multi-instrumentalist, McMahon was soon receiving additional offers of work as a session musician. It was in this capacity that he provided backing vocals at Electric Lady Studios in New York, on the last Zephyr album to feature wunderkind guitarist Tommy Bolin - Going Back to Colorado.

In addition to gigging and studio session work, McMahon also became involved around this time in creating music for TV commercials. He also created a number of scores for Public Broadcasting Service projects.

McMahon spent 1972 living in Los Angeles, where his experience of studio and production work quickly established him a well-respected member of the city's music scene. Soon he was to be found playing bass with Jackson Browne's touring band. It wasn't too long however before McMahon concluded that it would be more rewarding to promote his own solo career and headed back to Colorado.

After returning to Boulder, McMahon got together with a group of ten studio musicians and fronted what was to become one of the most popular rock bands in Colorado at the time - Gerard.

"After attending a concert one evening that showcased Tommy Bolin, Chicago producer Jim Guercio walked out mesmerized by Gerard's opening set" —G.Brown, author, Colorado Rocks!: A Half-Century of Music in Colorado

Having much admiration for McMahon and his band, Guercio offered the band a deal to record an album at his newly built Caribou Ranch, a popular recording studio subsequently favoured by many prominent artists.

"Next thing I knew, we were moving to Nederland to record an album. Jimmy owned a smaller ranch nearby called Forest Lakes, so he let us live there. It had a couple cabins, a dining hall, and a building we turned into a rehearsal room." —Tom Likes, Gerard

The resultant album, produced by Guercio himself, was the appropriately titled Gerard. It was released in 1976 on Guercio's Caribou Records label. There did, however, seem to be one downside to this union, seemingly echoed in McMahon's frustration with the music press at that time, in so far as every review of Gerard's album, an album for which he had written twelve original songs, compared his music to that of Chicago's. Although the album done well, it never broke nationally. A second Gerard album was to follow (?), Row, before the group disbanded. After which McMahon decided to return to Los Angeles.

The next three years saw McMahon again partaking in a number of different musical projects and continuing to lend his services as a session musician. One of the projects he undertook at that time was to play keyboards on ex-Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Jimmy Ibbotson 1977 Nitty Gritty Ibbotson album. He is also listed amongst the credits for Max Gronenthal's 1979 album Whistling in the Dark.