On the face of it, you wouldn’t quite place Miki Gavrielov in the same music industry sector as David Lowy.
For starters the latter is the 66-year-old founder and lead guitarist of The Dead Daisies, an Australian-American heavy rock band used to playing stadiums and other large venues around the globe. Meanwhile, Gavrielov is a 71-year-old Israeli guitarist-vocalist who, while he has ventured into the rock world over the past half century or so, for some years now has tended toward the quieter, more balladic end of the stylistic musical spectrum, in Hebrew.
With everything that has been going on for the past year or so, it doesn’t exactly take a PhD in astrophysics to guess what Gavrielov was looking to offload with his very first song in English, as a solo artist.
“I think we need to take care of the world,” he says. “If we don’t take care of it, we will never get out of this pandemic mess.”
The opening stanza spells it out in no uncertain terms: “A world’s gone crazy. The world’s gone mad. My mind gets hazy. It feels so bad.” There is some ecological subtext in there, too.
THIS IS quite a departure for the septuagenarian, and not just because of the language switch.
He is possibly best known for his long collaboration with late iconic Israeli pop-rock singer Arik Einstein, although he first came to notice back in the mid-sixties as a founder of pioneering Israeli rock band The Churchills. And, while the group predominantly covered American and British rock and pop hits of the day, it generally had the services of a bona fide English-speaking front man to ensure the lyrics were pronounced just as the queen/president intended.
Not that Gavrielov is a complete stranger to English, having translated his own Hebrew lyrics to The Churchills’ heavy rock number “Messianic Times” back in the day. Now, however, he felt it was time to try to get his plaintive message over to as wide an audience as possible, which necessarily meant conveying the sentiments in a language understood by many around the world.
“I always express my feelings and thoughts through my music, and this song has a social message and sociopolitical one,” he notes. “I wanted to get that out to people outside Israel, too.”
Gavrielov’s singer-songwriter daughter Shira helped ensure the English grammar and syntax passed muster.
HAVING LOWY, who also happens to be the son of Israeli-Australian billionaire Frank Lowy, on board for the ride could definitely help draw attention to Gavrielov’s intent.
The two first crossed each other’s path at a dinner party in New York, at a mutual friend’s home, a couple of years ago. They got talking about their shared craft and hit it off together, although serendipity brought them together professionally a while later.
“We got chatting, and we had the connection through the music,” Lowy recalls.
They may have enjoyed each other’s company, but their musical synergy began in earnest over at this end of the world.
“My father lives in Israel, and I come to Israel every month or so,” Lowy explains.
He also tries his best to feel at home here.
“Every time I am in Israel I go to ulpan, although I don’t make much progress,” he chuckles. “It is difficult to make progress with my Hebrew outside Israel,” he adds, impressively, in Hebrew.
It was while he was on a break from his Hebrew class in Tel Aviv that Gavrielov’s wife, Michelle, who was at the aforesaid social occasion in New York, happened to pass by the café where the rocker was sitting, spotted Lowy, and the two musicians duly hooked up again.
Despite his far more feral sonic output, Lowy says he had no problem finding a common musical language with his Israeli counterpart.
“I like a broad range of music. I love rock & roll, and I love playing rock & roll. But I like to collaborate with other musicians,” he explains, modestly adding, “I like to stand on the shoulders of giants,” he laughs. “And Miki certainly is a giant, and so is his daughter Shira.” That is praise indeed, coming from a musician of Lowy’s global standing.
When Lowy and Gavrielov got together, virtually, they didn’t start from scratch.
“I like the right kind of ballad,” Lowy says. “It’s rare for me to do that, but I had this chord progression that I’d been playing around with for quite a while. It had been rolling around in my head for a long period of time, and I thought I’d play it to them [father and daughter Gavrielov] and see if it resonated with them. It did.”
Still this was in the middle of a global pandemic, and the logistics were challenging.
“It was difficult to get into the room together, and to play and record the song was difficult,” Lowy notes. “We did it a bit by remote control.”
The Gavrielovs went into Miki’s studio in Ramat Hasharon and recorded their parts.
“It came out a bit like a seventies-style song,” Gavrielov observes. “I thought I’d jump in at the deep end and see how it goes.”
The man is clearly a good swimmer.
There may be more where “A World’s Gone Crazy” came from. If it does come to fruition, Gavrielov envisages a multistratified offering. “I come from a Turkish, actually Ladino, background, and there was Greek and Armenian music at home. And David brings the rock music side with him. We’ll see what happens.”
The “rock side” comes through loud and clear in Lowy’s guitar solo on the number. Should be interesting to see where the Lowy-Gavrielov path leads next.
“A World’s Gone Crazy” is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEBRBGr9lZY