Billy Bremner

Overview

Submitted by guitar-list on Mon, 2014-12-22 08:12

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photograph of Billy Bremner

William 'Billy' Bremner (born in 1947, in Scotland) is best known for his work as guitar player in the band Rockpile. Rockpile played on the bulk of Nick Lowe & Dave Edmunds' albums throughout the mid 1970s but only released one album under their own name. In addition to his guitarist duties, Bremner occasionally sang lead, as he did on "Heart" and "You Ain't Nothing But Fine" on 1980's "Seconds Of Pleasure." He also wrote Edmunds' hit "Trouble Boys", but used an alias, Billy Murray, so as not to be confused with the more famous footballer with the same name.

Before Rockpile, he played with The Luvvers, who served as Lulu's backing band and recorded a single ("The House On The Hill/Most Unlovely" for Parlophone in 1966. In 1971 he added some guitar work to "March Hare", the 1st solo album from ex-Honeybus member Colin Hare.

Immediately before Rockpile he was a member of the Neil Innes Band, Fatso which went on to record the soundtrack for the original Rutland Weekend TV program.

After Rockpile split in 1981, Bremner played lead guitar on The Pretenders' 1982 single "Back On The Chain Gang/My City Was Gone". He later provided lead guitar for their 1990 album "Packed".

Bremner released his first solo album ("BASH!") in 1984, containing songs co-written with The Records' Will Burch, Elvis Costello, and Chris Difford & Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze).

After stints in L.A. (where he played in the bands of Pat McLaughlin and Rosie Flores) & Nashville he moved to Sweden in the 1990s where he hooked up with The Refreshments, producing & playing on a few of their albums. A second solo album, "A Good Week's Work," followed in 1999 and a third "No Ifs, Buts, Maybes" in 2006, both recorded in Sweden. Read more about Billy Bremner on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.