The singer, songwriter and guitarist Isaac Clifter He passed away today (Thursday) at the age of 72. Clifter is one of Israel’s greatest guitarists, who broke out in the Hive band and went on to a glorious career in other groups as a vocalist.
Clifter was born on March 31, 1950 in Haifa and grew up in Tel Aviv. When he was a student at school he gave a lecture in one of the classes about the life of the former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and since then the nickname “Churchill” has stuck with him.
At the age of 15, he founded the first band in his life, “The Churchills”, but left it before it was successful. He enlisted in the army as an armored soldier, but at the order of his commanders he switched to playing in an armored corps band.
After his release from the army, he started playing in the band “Acharit HaHaimim”, which played progressive rock and the only record it released was considered a masterpiece, but during its activity it was not a commercial success. One of the solos that Klefter played in this band, in the song “The Tree is Tall”, was chosen in 1997, in a project by the “Ha’ir” newspaper, as the greatest guitar solo in the history of Israeli music.
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In 1973, Clifter accepted Danny Sanderson’s invitation and joined the Beehive band, which quickly became a great success story. Although Clifter’s role in writing the band’s songs was secondary, he contributed to the band the melody for the songs “She’s So Beautiful” and “The Fool’s Song”, which he also sang, and he co-wrote several other songs.
After the disbandment of Beehive, Klefter joined the band “Tsilil Ma’im’in” alongside Shlomo Yadov and Shem Tov Levy, where he performed the song “Tliil Ma’in” which became the song most identified with him, and other songs. At the same time, in those years he composed songs for David Broza, Gidi Gov, Yael Levy and others, which were successful.
In 1981, Clifter started a solo career when he released the record “Yitzhak”, from which the songs “My love is not his love” and “We met” stood out. In 1982 he teamed up with Eric Einstein and released with him the album “Sitting on the fence”, in which he composed all the songs and received equal credit as a partner. A year later, Einstein and Klepper released another album, Shabir.
Eric Einstein and Yitzhak Klefter (Photo: Shmuel Rahmani)In the later 80s and 90s, Clifter continued to release solo albums and write and compose songs for other artists, while at the same time participating in the Hive’s reunion shows in 1984, 1990 and 1998.
At the turn of the millennium, Clifton began to suffer from various health problems. In 2000, Hive got together especially and held a fundraising show in order to raise money for him for urgent surgery. However, Clifton continued to create and perform and in 2008 released another solo album. In 2011 he was hospitalized for an extended period in Ichilov due to complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In 2013 he participated in another beehive union.