Breaking up is hard to do. But when you’re walking out on a band that’s been one your favourites for half a century, it can feel a little like a funeral. And I guess it was in one sense.
Allow me to start at the beginning.
My relationship with Nazareth, the Scottish rock band that is closing in on an incredible 60 years of touring, pre-dated my Columbia House record club membership, which I started when I was 12. The band’s Greatest Hits album was a staple in many homes during the 1970s, along with other classic albums like The Eagles’ Hotel California and Rumours by Fleetwood Mac.
We played the heck out of that album, but were careful to do so when Mom and Dad weren’t home, so as to avoid scrutiny should they overhear one of the band’s earliest hit singles, which featured the refrain, “Now you’re messing with a son of a b—h.” No doubt Mom came across the album many times while cleaning, though if she gave it any thought, she may have assumed, given the band’s name, that it included religious music.
Though I never really gave the name Nazareth much thought myself, I guess in the back of my mind I assumed too it had been inspired somehow by the town in which Jesus grew up. After all, the album cover features a star over the “z” in the band’s name, evoking the Star of Bethlehem that guided the three wisemen. It wasn’t till many years later that I realized the group derived its name from Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and, more specifically, the opening line in “The Weight” by The Band: “I pulled in to Nazareth, was feeling ‘bout half past dead.” That song was released in 1968, the same year Nazareth was formed.
I got my first opportunity to see Nazareth live when I was 24, when the band played a show at Sydney’s Centre 200, and they didn’t disappoint, with lead singer and founding member Dan McCafferty’s signature raspy voice making every song sound like it did on that Greatest Hits record.
About 15 years later, I got first-hand exposure to McCafferty’s secret to maintaining that distinctive voice, when the band played at HMC Dockyard as part of the annual Family Days celebration hosted by CFB Halifax. I was working in marketing on the base at the time and was one of the people responsible for delivering on the band’s rider, which included a specific brand of cognac for the aging rocker, who was already nearing 40 years of live performances.
A return to Halifax came a few years later when Nazareth played at Casino Nova Scotia, and again McCafferty and company brought that old album to life.
A chronic lung condition forced McCafferty to retire as frontman for the band in 2013, and the group tried a number of replacements in the years that followed. When he died nine years later, at the age of 76, from those same health issues, I purchased the smallest bottle of cognac I could find and toasted my musical hero, content with having seen them live three times, and dubious that a band that relied so heavily on the lead singer’s voice could continue to find that magic.
But when The Stampeders pulled out of the line-up for the 2024 edition of the Rock the Harbour event on Dartmouth’s Alderney Landing, and were replaced by Nazareth, I had to get tickets. I researched the newest lead vocalist, Gianni Pontillo, and his resume did little to alleviate my suspicions, but for one more opportunity to see Nazareth, I was willing to put those aside.
Nazareth was scheduled to close the final night of the three-day event, and as The Headpins took the stage as the penultimate act, no one in the audience was prepared for the kind of entrance that would soon be made by what is arguably Scotland’s greatest rock band (apologies to Simple Minds and Big Country).
The crowd grew a bit restless as it was announced that the final act would be delayed, as the flight carrying Nazareth band members was late arriving at Halifax Stanfield International Airport. But about a half hour later, the entire audience cheered wildly as the concert venue afforded a perfect view of a police escort as it made its way down Dartmouth’s Ochterloney Street, delivering the much-anticipated closing act.
But the excitement generated by that entrance was short-lived, at least in my mind, as the band took the stage. The young Pontillo sounded nothing like the record, and his spastic movements around the stage were a distraction. Fans of Nazareth’s live show will know that McCafferty expended as little energy as possible in belting out iconic hits like “Love Hurts” and “This Flight Tonight.” His feet only moved when he occasionally reached for a bottle of water.
So just three songs into the set, I packed away my folding chair and walked toward the exit. But what I felt in that moment wasn’t disappointment. Though I admit a tiny twinge of guilt as I abandoned bassist Pete Agnew, the band’s only remaining original member, I felt justified in my early departure, considering it just another fitting tribute to McCafferty and a band that provided many of my earliest musical memories.