Dan McCafferty Dies: Nazareth Co-Founder Who Sang Lead On ‘Love Hurts‘ Was 76

09.11.2022 - 04:11 / deadline.com

Dan McCafferty, the power-voiced founding frontman of Scottish rock band Nazareth, who sang lead on its Top 10 U.S. hit “Love Hurts,” FM staple “Hair of the Dog” and five Top 15 UK hits, died Tuesday. He was 76.

His longtime bandmate, bassist Pete Agnew, revealed the news on social media. “This is the saddest announcement I ever had to make,” he wrote on the group’s Facebook page. “Maryann and the family have lost a wonderful loving husband and father, I have lost my best friend and the world has lost one of the greatest singers of all time.”

McCafferty co-founded Nazareth in 1968 with Agnew, guitarist Manny Charlton and drummer Darrell Sweet and retired from touring in 2013 — after 45 years — due to the effects of COPD. He sang on all of its nearly two dozen albums until 2014.

The band found success in the UK with its 1973 third LP, Razamanaz, produced by Deep Purple’s Roger Glover. It reached No. 11, and spawned a pair of Top 10 singles in Great Britain, “Broken Down Angel” and “Bad Bad Boy” — both of which McCafferty co-wrote. Its follow-up disc, Loud and Proud, arrived that same year and hit the Top 10, spurred by another hit single, “This Flight Tonight.”

But both of those album stalled in the 150s on the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S., as did Nazareth’s 1974 disc, Rampant, though it reached No. 13 in the UK.

But stateside success happened in a big way the next year.

Hair of the Dog, the group’s six studio disc, featured a radical reworking of “Love Hurts,” a 1960 non-single by the Everly Brothers. Gone was the Kentucky duo’s country-flecked arrangement, replaced by Charlton’s feedback-fueled guitar hook, which fed into a signature solo. The song hit No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, driving Hair of the Dog into