Gerard McMahon

The early years

Gerard McMahon, who lists amongst his musical influences Liam Mullen, John Lennon, Stevie Wonder and Stravinsky, emigrated with his family from England to America when he was 11 years of age. Initially moving to New York City, a few years later the MacMahons moved again, eventually settling in Wichita, Kansas.

"When I was there I started learning guitar and the bass, and realising I had a voice, I started a band which played in clubs all over the Midwest"

McMahon was only 16 years of age at the time. Despite his young age, McMahon, together with his band, The Strangers, recorded one single before disbanding.

After The Strangers disbanded, McMahon moved to Boulder, Colorado and took a job arranging classes at the University.

In 1971 however, McMahon moved to New York to pursue a performing career. His first gigs were playing bass and guitar in R&B bands in Harlem. However, being a versatile multi-instrumentalist, McMahon was soon receiving additional offers of work as a session musician. It was in this capacity that he provided backing vocals at Electric Lady Studios in New York, on the last Zephyr album to feature wunderkind guitarist Tommy Bolin – Going Back to Colorado.

In addition to gigging and studio session work, McMahon also became involved around this time in creating music for TV commercials. He also created a number of scores for Public Broadcasting Service projects.

McMahon spent 1972 living in Los Angeles, where his experience of studio and production work quickly established him a well-respected member of the city's music scene. Soon he was to be found playing bass with Jackson Browne's touring band. It wasn't too long however before McMahon concluded that it would be more rewarding to promote his own solo career and headed back to Colorado.

After returning to Boulder, McMahon got together with a group of ten studio musicians and fronted what was to become one of the most popular rock bands in Colorado at the time – Gerard.

"After attending a concert one evening that showcased Tommy Bolin, Chicago producer Jim Guercio walked out mesmerized by Gerard's opening set"

Having much admiration for McMahon and his band, Guercio offered the band a deal to record an album at his newly built Caribou Ranch, a popular recording studio subsequently favoured by many prominent artists.

"Next thing I knew, we were moving to Nederland to record an album. Jimmy owned a smaller ranch nearby called Forest Lakes, so he let us live there. It had a couple cabins, a dining hall, and a building we turned into a rehearsal room."

The resultant album, produced by Guercio himself, was the appropriately titled Gerard. It was released in 1976 on Guercio's Caribou Records label. There did, however, seem to be one downside to this union, seemingly echoed in McMahon's frustration with the music press at that time, in so far as every review of Gerard's album, an album for which he had written twelve original songs, compared his music to that of Chicago's. Although the album did well, it never broke nationally. The lead-off single, "Hello Operator" (b/w "Who's Your Daddy-O?"), failed to hit Billboard's Hot 100 chart, getting as high as No. 109 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. The second single, "Good Yankee Boy", was released as a promo-only single, and garnered only moderate radio airplay in 1976. A second Gerard album was to follow (?), Row, before the group disbanded. After which McMahon decided to return to Los Angeles.

The next three years saw McMahon again partaking in a number of different musical projects and continuing to lend his services as a session musician. One of the projects he undertook at that time was to play keyboards on ex-Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Jimmy Ibbotson 1977 Nitty Gritty Ibbotson album. He is also listed amongst the credits for Max Gronenthal's 1979 album Whistling in the Dark.

1980 – 1999

McMahon's song Is That You was the first track on Kiss' Unmasked (1980).

Encouraged by Billy Joel's former manager Irwin Mazur, in 1980 McMahon decided to promote his own recording career. He assembled a group of accomplished musicians – Gary Mallaber, John Massaro, Kenny Lewis and two of the musicians he had engaged for Gerard, guitarist Steve Sykes and keyboard player Al Campbell – collectively called Kid Lightning, returned to the studio and recorded the album Blue Rue. After the album was completed, McMahon's band was dropped from Columbia Records.

Invited to Los Angeles by Warner Bros. for a showcase, McMahon quickly impressed Hollywood's film elite – David Geffen, Joel Schumacher, Cameron Crowe, Jerry Bruckheimer. Already experienced in major TV commercials, McMahon began film work. McMahon wrote and recorded seven songs for film producer Jerry Bruckheimer's film Defiance.

"Gerard's a triple threat, he's a writer, he's a producer and he's a performer...it's very difficult to find someone to deliver all that"

McMahon is known to have said that writing songs for films and TV shows was a "great new creative outlet"

During the '80s, McMahon wrote songs for such films as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Spring Break, All the Right Moves, The Lonely Guy, Grandview, USA and Hardbodies, among others.

McMahon's next album, No Looking Back was released by Warner Bros. in 1983, after which McMahon signed with the Atlantic Records label and in 1986 released Foreign Papers.

McMahon scored a hit in 1986 with "Cry Little Sister".

G TOM MAC

McMahon recorded another album 2000 for Edge Artists. To record and promote the album, McMahon formed a new band, G TOM MAC, with bassist, songwriter and co-producer Anthony Silver.

McMahon and Silver added Rodney "Cortada" Alejandro on keyboards, drummer Rob Ladd (from the band The Pressure Boys), Willy Aron (lead guitar) and Brie Darling (from the band Boxing Gandhis) on backing vocals and percussion for live performances.

In 2004 McMahon wrote the music and Eddie Kislinger wrote the lyrics for "Wicked Town", "Drop Dead Pretty", and "Was It Magic" for "Witchblade The Music", an Edge Artists soundtrack of songs from or inspired by the "Witchblade" TV series. McMahon and Kislinger are credited as Executive Producers. In 2012 the CW used "Wicked Town" in its trailer promoting "The Arrow" TV series. Edge Artists posted McMahon's performance of "Wicked Town" and "Was It Magic" on YouTube.

The band planned a 2008 tour to promote their second album, Thou Shalt Not Fall (2007).

Pseudonyms

Since McMahon has been known under a number of different names, much confusion has arisen over the years about his identity.

The first pseudonym McMahon adopted, 'Gerard McMann', was just prior to the release of his album Foreign Papers in 1986. Of this he is reported to have said:

"When I would go out and do interviews on the radio or TV, it seems everybody was pronouncing my name in many different ways, except the correct way. So I thought it would make more sense to spell it out the way that is it pronounced."

"Cry Little Sister", the song McMahon performed in 1987 for the soundtrack of the film The Lost Boys was therefore credited to Gerard McMann.

When his father died, he reverted to McMahon.

However, since forming G Tom Mac, "Gerard Thomas MacMahon" (the correct Irish spelling of McMahon) has become known to his new audience as 'G Tom Mac'. He is also known to use this name professionally. Consequently, most of the writing and performance credits since G Tom Mac was formed in 2000 are often to be found listed under this name.

McMahon is sometimes also referred to as "G", a nickname given to him by his friend Roger Daltrey.

Song list (Film and TV)

All the following songs are written and performed by Gerard McMahon unless otherwise stated:

Further works

McMahon has also contributed to all the following films and TV shows: