Australian Musician And Journalist Greg Quill Passes Away

One of Australia's most acclaimed roots musicians of the 1970s, Greg Quill, has passed away in his Toronto home from complications due to pneumonia and sleep apnoea. He was 66 years old.

Quill began his career as a solo musician in the Sydney folk scene in the mid-1960s before assembling the first line up of his band Country Radio in 1970. While they originated as an acoustic act, the recent success of records like The Byrds' Sweetheart Of The Rodeo and The Band's Music From The Big Pink – country records given an extra kick thanks to the use of electric instrumentation and a certain influence from R'n'B and soul styles.

The first record, Fleetwood Plain saw Quill and his band achieve some success thanks to the album's title track.

In 1972 Kerryn Tolhurst – who had been in fellow pioneering Aussie roots rock band Sundown and who would go on to form The Dingoes shortly after – joined the band and co-wrote what was arguably Quill's most highly regarded tune Gypsy Queen.

Mid-way through 1975 Quill received an Arts Council grant that allowed him to travel overseas, the musician landing in Canada and starting a new group called Southern Cross, featuring Sherbet's Sam See and Chris Worrall and Chris Stockley from The Dingoes as well as long-time collaborator Tony Bolton. The band lasted a few years but eventual split, Quill citing burnout as the reason for the band's demise and the eventual end of his performing career for quite some time.

Upon settling in Canada, Quill became a well-respected television and newspaper journalist and author. He wrote Michael Jackson: Electrifying in 1988 and The Rolling Stones: 25th Anniversary in 1989 and was a senior arts writer for the Toronto Star newspaper.

In 2003 Quill and Tolhurst hooked up again to make So Rudely Interrupted, Quill's first album of new material in close to 30 years.

Quill is survived by his wife Ellen Davidson, daughter Kaya and grandson Raymond as well as step-daughters Angela and Tosha and step-grandchildren, Jack, Owen and Evelyn. He is also survived by his brother Chris, sister-in-law Jewel and their two children.