Richard Peter Gaughan (b. 17 May 1948) is a Scottish musician, singer, and songwriter.
He was born in Glasgow's Rottenrow Maternity Hospital, because his father was working in Glasgow as an engine driver. He spent the first one and a half years of his life in Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire, a suburb of Glasgow, after which the whole family moved to Leith, a port on the outskirts of Edinburgh. He has never returned to Rutherglen, and is proud to be a Leither. His mother was a Macdonald from Lochaber, and was a native speaker of Gaelic. As a child in the 1930s she won a silver medal at the Gaelic Mod. His father was born in Leith, and his paternal grandfather was an Irish speaker from Mayo, who played the fiddle. The three children, of whom Dick Gaughan was the eldest, grew up surrounded by the music of both Scotland and Ireland. The family experienced considerable poverty, which had a very strong influence on Gaughan's chosen path in life and his political views.
Dick Gaughan took up the guitar at the age of seven. Although he later sang in Scottish Gaelic he is not fluent in that language; however, he has a powerful command of Scots. He sang in Edinburgh folk clubs and became a professional musician in 1970. Gaughan began playing mainly traditional songs on an acoustic guitar. He now writes his own songs as well as performing those of others. Although his approach to performing concentrates strongly on the song itself, Gaughan is known as being a master of the acoustic guitar. For an example of his purely instrumental work, listen to Coppers and Brass (1977).
He made one solo album, No More Forever, before joining Boys of the Lough, singing and playing guitar on their debut album (1972). After leaving, he was a guest of the High Level Ranters when they recorded The Bonnie Pit Laddie in 1975, performing on two tracks. From 1976 to 1978 there then followed a hectic period of his life pursuing two careers, one as a member of Five Hand Reel and one as a soloist. It was a time of hard drinking, travelling continental Europe in vans, and seeing very little of his wife and daughter. The crisis came when his daughter was knocked down by a car while he was away. The daughter survived, but Gaughan had to take stock of his life and re-prioritise things.
He taught himself to read and write music, and in the late 1970s he began to write reviews for what was at the time the only national folk music paper, Folk Review. He also saw more of his family. He joined the agitprop theatre group called 7:84, which was extremely popular at the time for its highly aggressive attacks on Margaret Thatcher and the New Right in general. In this, he appeared to be following in the footsteps of another socialist theatre-director-singer Ewan MacColl, even recording a tribute album to him in 1978. (Gaughan has also taken part in a tribute to Woody Guthrie). In the early 1980s he campaigned vigorously for an organisation called Perform, which aimed to unite professional and amateur folk performers into a body to negotiate fees, distribution rights, and to retain artistic control. He was the chair for two years.
Gaughan's solo albums of the 1980s returned to the acoustic style in which he had begun, containing both traditional ballads ("The Muckle Sangs") as well as his own songs, and using acoustic guitar (although he can play electric guitar and in fact most fretted instruments). His decision to concentrate on songs which convey a political message, rather than those which might be more easily attractive to the mainstream, is clearly shown in the important albums Handful of Earth (1981) and A Different Kind of Love Song (1983). Handful of Earth was Melody Maker's album of the year (1981) and was also voted album of the decade by Folk Roots magazine in a readers' poll.
One of Dick Gaughan's strong interests is the Internet, and he has a particular love for Usenet in which he has been an active participant for many years. While recovering from voice problems in 1984 he took a course on computing and is one of the few professional singers who could easily get a job as a web designer. He designs and maintains his own extensive website, and is strongly in favour of web accessibility.
Dick Gaughan has many and various influences. In his guitar playing one can detect the influence of Big Bill Broonzy and Bert Jansch, but he also claims to have been influenced by musicians as diverse as Hank Williams and Neil Young. His powerful songs have been recorded by Billy Bragg, Mary Black, Jessica Haines & Mark Kaiser and Capercaillie amongst many others. He has also recorded extensively as a session musician.
In the early 1990s, Dick Gaughan joined Davy Steele of the Battlefield Band, virtuoso piper Fred Morrison and other musicians to form Clan Alba. They released one self-titled album in 1995.
In 2002 he released Prentice Piece, a self-selected thirty-year retrospective of his career (although some material could not be included due to copyright disputes). His latest CD, Lucky for Some, was released in April 2006.
In 1983 Dick Gaughan was the subject of a BBC Spectrum documentary entitled Gaughan, and in 2005 a further documentary entitled A Different Kind of Love Song formed part of the BBC Four Sessions series.
Gaughan's deep interest in the composition and orchestration of classical music has led to two orchestral commissions from the prestigious Celtic Connections festival: Timewaves (Lovesong to a People's Music) in 2004, and Treaty 300 (expressing disapproval of the Treaty of Union of 1707) in 2007.