All come to look for America: Del Amitri and me
You know The Sopranos title sequence? Tony’s trip from Manhattan to Newark on the New Jersey Turnpike, soundtracked by The Alabama 3? Thirty-nine years ago I was driving a hired splitter van at the start of a journey initially to Florida, then California and back to New York. At least that was the plan. I would abandon what had become a sweaty, seething horror show in Albuquerque.
There were seven people as well as me, a slew of bad guitars and amplifiers, rucksacks and pre-wheelie cases. Four members of the band Del Amitri, a manager, the drummer’s girlfriend (who was also a guitarist’s sister), solo singer-songwriter Kevin McDermott. We pulled onto an elevated section of the road, passed an ‘NJT’ sign. Suddenly someone started humming, the words instantly forming themselves on several sets of lips:
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
And so had we.
Melody Maker didn’t rate Del Amitri. Or to be precise, Melody Maker had hated that first eponymous 1985 album and was editorially embarrassed. One renegade hack having raved about a pre-release demo cassette and even, prior to anything actually being in the record shops, put the band on the paper’s front cover. I see them still: scrawny, gawky Bearsden lads with spiky hair and startled expressions. I reviewed a gig and was bit…snarky. Though to be honest I quite liked that first album, which has been described as sounding like the Smiths fronted by Elvis Costello, round at Andy Partridge’s house. In other words, absolutely nothing like the mature Americana-infused Del Amitri we know and love. Though with, it should be said, the same lyrical Currie bite’n’snarl that appears on the likes of Some Other Sucker’s Parade.
In truth, that debut record sounds pleasantly odd today, with Justin’s vocals a weird, strangled adenoidal cross between a bark and a chirp. If there’s an accent, it’s mid-Manchester Ship Canal with some Tayside crooning courtesy of Edwyn Collins’ influence. Send us a Postcard. There are some attractive REM-ish twangs and jangles, though, and, yes, something impressive lurks in those lurching, wayward songs.
Not enough to prevent the band being dropped, though. And what can some not-really-very-poor-boys do, ‘cept…tour America, coast to coast! Without any cash save scrimped loans and hopes of busking charity! Except for Kevin, of course, who had a proper job working on secret weapons stuff in the Yarrows drawing office.
The band’s formidable American manager, Barbara Shores had come through the Alan Horne school of abrasive non-rawk in Glasgow, briefly involved with Strawberry Switchblade, and she knew that over in her homeland, there were college kids reared on the above-mentioned Smiths and REM who had actually liked that first Dels album, and who had signed up to the fan club she ran with commitment and energy. The record had been played on various radio stations, even sold a few copies. There was a systematic mailing campaign by which a network of people was identified who were offering (or cajoled into offering) succour, spare beds, gigs, food. So, why not just…go? Busk for bread and beer, play gigs in houses, crash on their floors, travel by horse and carriage or cheap hired van…if they could only get to California, there were seductive whispers of a possible new record contract, lucrative club gigs, rich child actors in Hollywood who loved the band. Pacific Ocean Blue beckoned. Sufficient cash could be scraped together for stand-by airfares. There was a guy called Tim in New York (actually New Jersey) who said he could put everyone up and promote a sellout gig at the legendary club Maxwell’s, in Hoboken. Come on, it’ll be fun and it could change everything. What’s the worst that could happen? Nobody’s going to get chased out of Maxwell’s at gunpoint, are they? Are they?
Barbara was right. It did alter everything. It changed the band utterly: songs, accents, haircuts, clothes, attiutude. Members, relationships. And in the end, management and wealth. Justin and Iain Harvie emerged as long-haired lovers of measured mainstream freeway rock with a twist. Dylan displaced Moulding and Partridge. No more baggy Famous Five shorts, Start-Rite sandals and Aertex shirts. Leather trousers (or the breathable Gore-Tex equivalents used by bona fide rock stars) beckoned. Guitarist Bryan Tolland and drummer Paul Tyagi left or were left to watch, agonise and wonder as the Currie/Harvie axis proved bolder than love. They even had a massive hit single in America. Toured in luxury and style.
But that was years later. In July, 1986, a bunch of nervous West of Scotland people prepared to cross the Atlantic to take on the USA on the most grounded of levels. Some of them had never flown before.
There was the band – Justin, Iain, Paul and Bryan. Barbara. Iain’s sisten Lynne, who was also Paul’s girlfriend. Kevin McDermott, long-term friend of the band and solo support act, with a mission in Florida to record an entire album in a fan’s house, thanks to a promotional press story which turned out to be completely fictitious. For Kevin too, this would be a life-changing experience, opening him up to the possibilities of that endless rock’n’roll highway, the road anthems of Jackson Browne and Steve Earle. He’d sign a deal with Island later and very nearly but not quite make it big.
Kevin’s girlfriend was in New York, and so was Fiona, Bryan’s partner. By the time I flew out from Prestwick on Northwest Airlines they had all arrived in Tim’s flat, across the river from New York in Jersey City, and things had started to go seriously awry.
But what was I doing there, purveyor of sarcastic reviews and Scottish representative of Melody Maker? Well, I had convinced Dave Batchelor at BBC Radio Scotland that a documentary about the Dels’ American adventure would be a sound investment of a little cash, a few cassettes and a Sony Walkman Pro. Melody Maker didn’t care about the Dels but did fancy an interview with REM, and there was a stop planned in Athens, Georgia, where REM lived and breathed and were about to fall out spectacularly with their manager. Yeah, maybe something about the Dels too, said Adam Sweeting at the MM features desk, reluctantly. Maybe.. And then Belinda Carlisle popped up. She’d like to talk. in LA.
I convinced Barbara and the band that i was actually a pleasant boy from Troon and really, really liked that first album. The review had been snarkified by those bastards in London. What a fantastic opportunity to be on the radio, to appear in print, to enjoy my banter and general demeanour! Besides, I had an international driving licence And only Iain, and Barbera could drive. Deal. I went through to the US consulate in Edinburgh, obtained a visa, booked flights, parked my Hillman Avenger in Cowacaddens and caught a bus to Prestwick. The band would meet me at Kennedy Airport..
They didn’t. No-one did. In that pre-mobile, payphone world, nobody answered my increasingly desperate calls. Eventually I got the subway into Manhattan, terrified by its then-awful reputation, two armed Transit cops sitting opposite. I wasn’t on the Clockwork Orange anymore. I was in a scene from Walter Hill’s The Warriors.
I’d come to America.
To be continued. My documentary was never made, though I recently found the original cassettes and have digitised them. It’s pretty rough stuff, but here’s a snippet from a day’s busking in Washington Square Park, and later at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, before it all kicked off…There are loads of unseen pictures and tales still to tell (and scan in better quality). I’m hoping to have Thrawn in the USA in illustrated zine and audio form for the 40th anniversary next year. Meanwhile, were the hire company who kindly suppplied that sound gear really “fascists”, Bryan?
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