George Lewis, a great talent remembered

[tonykiek]

Dear Shads friends,

It is with very heavy heart that I inform you that our dear pal George Lewis passed away this week, aged 78, in his home town of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, Australia.

George was my music partner for over twenty years and was a wonderful guitarist and engineered the Shadows sound to perfection; few others have got anywhere near what George achieved in technique and tonal quality. George and I played together as the duo "Turning Point" at clubs and festivals all over Australia including in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth, and we toured about twenty Shadows clubs in the UK in 2008.

As well as the classic standard Shadows tunes, George loved playing the less well known ones such as Stack It, Thing Me Jig, Hammerhead and so on, and together we recorded two CD albums with me on keys and George on lead guitar and doing all the sound engineering and producton, at which he was a wizard. A link to George's rendition of "Turning Pont" is included below (paste the link into Google to hear it). I have also included a link to George's own video "Wonderful Land" in which he videoed all his favourite places in the UK and in which he played a virtuoso perfomance of that tune Wonderful Land, and is seen in the video playing with "The Foot Tappers" band (incl. Daniel Martin and Joel Jackson) at the South Yorkshire Shadows Club (Doncaster 2008).

Although we concentrated mainly on Shadows music, we also played lots of others including George's favourites including "Caravans" (Mike Batt), "Bilitis" (Francis Lai), "1492 Conquest of Paradise" (Vangelis), "Parisienne Walkways" (Gary Moore), "Rodrigo's Guitar Concerto" (Rodrigo), "Galveston" (Glen Campbell), "Surfside" (The Denvermen) and so on. George was an original member of the Sydney Shadows Club and we were frequent particpants in Australia's main Shadows festival called "Shadoz" held annually in Melbourne.

George was good pal of sound engineer Charlie Hall (of Ely, Cambridgeshire) and was a moderator on Charlie's website. George was "instrumental" in programming his own patches for the Yamaha Magicstomp effects box, and made one of his own Stratocaster guitars which he called a "Partcaster" as it comprised parts from various other models.

George is survived by his wife Anna and daughter Clare. Rest in Peace George, you were awesome.

"https://app.box.com/s/8sbub9w3ldatnyt4ymaway33ezs5fah0"

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW2dhM761Pw"

[Beebs]

Shocked at the news. A wonderful guitarist indeed. R.I.P. George


Regards

Bob Brown

[JimN]

That IS sad news, Tony.

I still remember your visit to ShadowMusic South-East (and to Dartford) some years ago, and still have some of your CDs here.

Poor George.

Condolences to his family and friends.