A different Guitar George

[knopfling]

http://accelerateddecrepitude.blogspot.com/2009/01/perfect-unpop.html


9. The Out - Who Is Innocent? (Rabid Records, 1979)

I had never heard of Manchester's "not-quite-punk powerpop" group The Out or their leader, the Wrexham, Wales-born "Guitar George" Borowski, which is exactly why Derek Hammond's liner notes rightly exclaim, "Life can be so unfair. George Borowski plays like a demon squeezing out inspirational tunes so sweet they can make you feel physically seven stones lighter...and all he gets remembered for is being patronised by a bald bloke with a bandana." That bloke would be Mark Knopfler, whose Dire Straits song "Sultans of Swing" sent a shout out to the Out maestro as follows:

Check out Guitar George, he knows all the chords
Mind, he's strictly rhythm, he doesn't want to make it cry or sing
Yes, and an old guitar is all he can afford
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing

Besides Knopfler, The Doves, Radiohead, Teenage Fanclub (with whom he later played) and The Pixies (whose Frank Black says "I have never seen a rock and roll performer so completely connected with what he was doing on stage") are also fans...but, as Moz would say, the world won't listen. This despite GG being able to trace his lineage to Sergei Rachmanikov, (he's a great-nephew of the legendary Russian composer), touring with Meat Loaf (!), and having a half-brother (Tim Borowski) who plays for German football club Bayern Munich (OK, perhaps only I'm impressed by that last one).

Going by this track, George should be more famous, especially given this single's Jam-like mod energy. But as Q MAGAZINE blurbed it: "Guitar George Borowski, one of the hitherto-unacknowledged people, products and 'things that have helped shape rock'n'roll

[superval99]

knopfling, you never fail to amaze and surprise me with all these bits and pieces you find in newspapers and magazines!   You seem to find things that happen or happened in the UK before we do ourselves!  How do you do it?  Anyway, that was really interesting and I hope he is the real "Guitar George".  He certainly seems to fit the words of SOS.   

[knopfling]

Val, glad you liked it.
No magic tricks or anything, just Google news alerts. They find lots of stuff.

[Fieneke2]

Thank you Knopfling for this link!

I have Google News allert too, but can't remember they sent me this link! Perhaps there is a difference between USA and Europe!   Well the more information we get, the better it is! I can't get enough of reading about and watching Mister Knopfler! 

At MKnews Henk (am012345) posted a link for this Youtube video. I see he didn't posted it here yet, so that is why I will post it already. At about 6.00 minutes George starts to talk about MK.........(Thank you Henk for the link )

 evZHgXoc-RE

Fieneke

[Ingo]

When he played support for DS as he said, this must have been in 1978 (in fact DS played there in June), how can this incident be referred to in a song that was written in 1977 or even before??

[dustyvalentino]

We discussed this on MK News a few years ago, this guy is clearly a con man who has managaged to maintain some sort of career by pretending to be Guitar George.

As Ingo said,he couldn't possibly be Guitar George as Sultans was already written by the time he met MK. Also, he wasn't in a band called the Sultans of Swing who MK saw playing in a pub.

This guy is a complete shyster.

[Jules]

I heard about this guy probably in 2001, I remember this pic

When he played support for DS as he said, this must have been in 1978 (in fact DS played there in June), how can this incident be referred to in a song that was written in 1977 or even before??

Obviuosly he or MK is not telling the truth... MK's story said that he and David used to go to a pub in Deptford called "The White Swan! were a band called "The Sultans of swing" played very often and nobody seemed to care at all about their playing. It is supposed that Guitar george played with them, or maybe the story happened as Mr Borowski says, but who knows, maybe Mk wasn

[Jules]

We discussed this on MK News a few years ago, this guy is clearly a con man who has managaged to maintain some sort of career by pretending to be Guitar George.

And who else apart of DS / MK fans would recognize the term "Guitar george" to support a career based on it?

It makes sense, but maybe he wasn

[dustyvalentino]

And who else apart of DS / MK fans would recognize the term "Guitar george" to support a career based on it?

Sultans, I would say, is still Mark's best known song by a long way. It is by far the song of his that I hear the most - only the other day it came on while I was having lunch in a restaurant, and I've lost count of the amount of times I've heard it on the radio or in shops. So even for non-MK fans, it's still a very well known song and clearly it's enough to get journalists to write about you. He even named one of his albums after it.



I have the original Q magazine article referred to in the link, and in it "Guitar George" says that when he was playing with Meat Loaf, he was introduced every night as "Guitar George" and the audience always knew what Meat Loaf meant.

It makes sense, but maybe he wasn

[goldenheart96]

Um, sorry to dig up this old thread but I need some quick help... I was at a jazz concert tonight and have to write an article about it. I want to put a little Sultans of Swing reference in it... I need to know if the Sultans were a real jazz band or just fictitious? I know I should know but I don't right now 

[dustyvalentino]

Real. 

[goldenheart96]

Thanks Dusty. I must have missed them on my Google search - either that or there are too many epigones out there 
Is there a link where I can read a bit about them?

[Love Expresso]

I would not think so. If I understood correctly, it was just a "feierabend" band, and they just saved "it up for friday night"; teachers, office clerks, normal people - MK tells the story in the audio interview on the DVD "Sultans Of Swing - The Very Best Of Dire Straits". I would doubt if they ever recorded or
released something - it is just part of the song

[goldenheart96]

I would not think so. If I understood correctly, it was just a "feierabend" band, and they just saved "it up for friday night"; teachers, office clerks, normal people - MK tells the story in the audio interview on the DVD "Sultans Of Swing - The Very Best Of Dire Straits". I would doubt if they ever recorded or
released something - it is just part of the song