By Chaos, Freelance Writer 
Andew Mcintyre in varying moods above. - Contributed Photo
ANDREW MCINTYRE sees music in terms of colours, of pastels even. Each note, each chord has its own unique hue, he sees them all and loves it.
McIntyre has been up and down, high and low. He has performed live for 90,000 people and for dozens. For the 38-year-old singer and musician, it is all relative.
He was born in New York to a Jamaican mother and a Grenadian father and came to the island as a wee babe in arms.
He attended Mona Prepatory, and like his friends Andru Donalds and Rupert Bent III, came under the tutelage of Ms. Vidal Smith, who he describes as '...innovative... she incorporated music into school'.
He started to learn how to play the violin but soon moved on to the guitar, before a move to Guyana because of his father, who worked for CARICOM (the Caribbean Common Market) at the time.
There, he spent three years before the family transferred to Switzerland, his father this time working for the United Nations. There he did high school and started a degree in accounting "...at one of the best accounting schools in Switzerland," he says.
However, he never did finish his degree, having been 'bitten by music.'
Andrew McIntyre formed a band called 'Heartbeat' in high school, which lasted into his first year at university. They placed third in the 'Marlboro Rock Competition', out of 350 bands.
"We kinda sounded like Foreigner (the '80s super group famed for songs such as I Wanna Know What Love Is) - the nice '80s. I had my 'Jamaicanese', which I put into it, which was... cute. I sang lead and played guitar," McIntyre told The Sunday Gleaner.
McIntyre is of medium height, has long, somewhat unruly hair and, as a result of his travels, is multi-lingual, speaking English, French, German and some Italian.
At ease during the interview, his off-stage persona seems quite similar to that he puts out when performing laid-back, relaxed and confident, yet somewhat understated.
Hearbeat broke up not long after their success.
"We were disillusioned to have come so close, yet so far," he explained.
Adrift for a while, having effectively dropped out of school, one day he got a telephone call from Milan, Italy, from someone who had been in a rival band in Switzerland.
The friend was being produced by a promoter and needed a band to back a singer named Georgia, whose father was the chief executive officer of Lancia-Fiat at the time.
"We called the band 'The Mix', because we were a mix of guys from rival bands. It was bittersweet, my first professional tour. We toured Italy for nine months and I was getting paid for the first time. I played bass and sang back-up in Italian, it was a wicked experience. I learned some harsh lessons about how to organise my own money. We were getting paid, but had to pay for stuff like hotel rooms out of our own pockets," McIntyre related.
Next up was a move to New York, one he had to be convinced to make once his parents were transferred there. While there he took a sound engineering course, which he says "...took me to a different level."
Then, "...my father (Sir Alistair McIntyre, who was knighted in 1992) was working with the United Nations and got transferred to run the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus. He was the deputy secretary with the U.N. and became vice-chancellor at U.W.I. They got to Jamaica about three weeks before (Hurricane) Gilbert hit..." which left young McIntyre stranded, as it were, in the big bad city.
As The Sunday Gleaner listened to McIntyre speak of his parents the pride was obvious, but it also prompted one to wonder what they thought of a son who had opted to walk the road a hell of a lot less travelled.
"They wanted me to be professional and be an accountant, which was a little of a war, but it came from love and they wanted me to have security," he said philosophically. "It creates a grey area in people's minds -- they wonder what you are doing, if you're a druggie, now I'm older I understand where they were coming from."
To support himself in the 'Big Apple', McIntyre "...worked temporary jobs in the day, did gigs at night. I got one with 'Menace', who had played guitar for Madonna, so he was on my a.. (about playing well). The drummer had played with Billy Idol, the bassist is now at the Apollo (theatre in Harlem, New York). I ended up with The Wailers. It was a talented group of musicians," he stated.
McIntyre's stint with the legendary Wailers, the band that was created by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer and rode with them to fame, is the kind of story hopeful musicians dream about as they serve that next cup of coffee or play to a dozen bored people. Serendipity, one might call it.
"We were playing at the famous Cat Club in New York... there was this girl from Atlantic Records... there was this little girl backstage chatting off my ear, about a band looking for a guitarist, then she said The Wailers. I asked her 'You mean Bob Marley and The Wailers?'. I took her card, I was living with my aunt and she told me to call. I didn't quite know whether or not to believe her ...I was afraid of looking like a fool. I did call and she told me The Wailers were playing at the Ritz and I should come down.
"I had met Junior Marvin (Wailers guitarist and frontman), I was going out with his wife's sister years before, in the early '80s and I played him some stuff I had played. He liked it and hooked me up with some guys in London and different places, I went to London, Paris..." he remembered.
However, things did not work out and so we fast-forward to New York and the 'reunion'.
"Junior said '...but I remember you and I remember your tapes and I like you'. Al Anderson 'the great Al Anderson' had left and no one could really replace him-- well, I couldn't fill his shoes. Bob Marley had two rock players (Marvin and Anderson) who worked against each other. Bob died and Al left and I got the chance."
See tommorow's Gleaner for the second and final
installment.
