Zal Cleminson


Alistair Macdonald "Zal" Cleminson is a Scottish guitarist, best known for his prominent role in The Sensational Alex Harvey Band between 1972 and 1978. In 2017, he put together a new rock band - /sin'dogs/, which recorded and released a 4-song CD and toured Scotland and England at the end of the year.

Career

A self-taught guitarist, at the start of the 1970s he played and recorded with the Glasgow-based band Tear Gas. The musicians in that band then provided the backing for Alex Harvey in The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Cleminson was an extremely distinctive stage presence with SAHB owing to his white-face mime makeup. He started wearing the mime makeup when the band started playing larger venues, so they could see what he was doing on stage easier. Cleminson has said "The mime face came about with bigger gigs - more people could see what I was up to".
When SAHB split up, in 1978, they decided to tour as the Zal Band, recruited The Tubes' vocalist Leroi Jones and 19-year-old Billy Rankin on guitar, who later played with Nazareth. In 1979 Cleminson joined Nazareth and recorded two albums with them, 1979's No Mean City and 1980's Malice in Wonderland. He also worked with Tandoori Cassette, who toured and released a single; no album was released. He was a regular guitarist with singer Elkie Brooks on many of her tours throughout the 1980s. He wrote and played on Brooks' album Minutes as well as one track on No More The Fool. Cleminson has also toured with Midge Ure on his Gift World Tour 1985 and Bonnie Tyler.
During the 1990s Cleminson played with The Party Boys, a casual band that, at various times, featured former Marillion vocalist Fish and Nazareth's Dan McCafferty and Billy Rankin as vocalists. This band became a reformed SAHB, in 1993, with Zero Zero vocalist Stevie Doherty; it recorded a live album titled Live in Glasgow 93.
In 2004, SAHB reunited alongside The Shamen frontman Max Maxwell and performed various tours and festivals between 2004 and 2008, releasing their first album since 1978's Rock Drill which was entitled Zalvation: Live in the 21st Century.
As well as performing with SAHB, Cleminson was a member of the now-disbanded outfits Ze Suicide and Oskura.
In 2006, he appeared in his début acting role as Wilson in the western film A Shot in the West, for which he wrote the theme music. In early 2008, he announced his retirement from the music industry and stated he would never perform live again.
Cleminson also spent a few years living in Cyprus with partner Rachel, and it was there that he had a vision to begin writing new material which would become his latest and potentially his 'final' music project. Cleminson decided to come out of retirement in 2017 and form his own band /sin'dogs/, with keyboardist David Cowan as he approached him to co-write and collaborate on early demos of what is now their debut album. Cleminson knew David Cowan from performing with SAHB tribute, The Sensational Alex Harvey Experience, and who has also worked with SAHB bassist Chris Glen with his band The Outfit for a brief period before leaving in 2016. The band performed a UK tour at the end of that year; this was followed by an extensive UK tour, and a studio album.
Cleminson selected William McGonagle, David Cowan, and Nelson McFarlane, to be in his band. The band also features Carlos Marin on drums. Sin Dogs released their first CD titled Vol 1 in 2018. The Trueloves drummer Louie Malvessi replaced Scott Cowie in August 2018 and then, in January 2019, was replaced by Carlos Marin. In October 2019, Cleminson announced on Facebook that he would no longer be performing with Sin Dogs for reasons unknown, but has posted online that he is looking to put together a new outfit with sin dogs guitarist William McGonagle.
Cleminson is referenced in the novel The Sacred Art of Stealing, by the Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre, as the basis of the disguises worn by bank robbers during a heist, and inspired the name of the character Zal Innez.
Guthrie Govan has cited Cleminson as one of his most important influences and considers him to have been "his Jimmy Page" in his early guitar development.