Those were the days of miracles and wonder…

Glasgow 1985, and it’s the Rock Garden in Queen Street, sometimes the Halt in Woodlands Road, the Fixx in Miller Street. All kinds of London record company characters are blowing in via the Holiday Inn to check out the action. The haircuts, the clothes, the drugs and yes, the music. Because the city, mired in Thatcherite gloom, council graft and spurious redevelopment, is bursting with sweet pop ambition.

Red Stripe, Grölsch, Furstenberg. Marlboro Red from machines in clubs like Henry Afrikas. Change for cigarettes, please…you put in two quid in coins and got your change taped to the packet. But better by far to have equipped yourself earlier with a softpack of 20, then you could flick the filter-tip up and into your mouth, light the Zippo with a smooth brush across a leg of your 501s, and inhale the burning fibreglass in a cool and unhealthy fashion.

We were young. Youngish. Well, some weren’t young at all, but for those still alive 40 years and a million tears later, it seems like a dream of innocence, albeit one leavened with Glaswegian cynicism and bolshie sarkiness. When everything was possible, success and wealth beyond dreams of avarice possible. All it took was the right riff, the correct look (ironic quiff compulsory), schmoozing (or more) the requisite A&R person. And bang, you were on the shuttle to London and signing a contract in THC-infused blood…

Some practitioners were doing it for pure love of the gig, of the rock’n’roll history they’d embraced. Bubbling under was the Pastels/Jesus and Mary Chain/Primal Scream/Splash One scene that regarded glossy pop careerists with contempt. But between Flip and Warehouse, Schuh and Fury Murry’s lurked those with an eye on the big circus with all its glitter and glam.

Pubs, clubs, university and college unions…six or seven nights a week, hanging out, hanging in there, bored and desperate, fascinated and funseeking. A fantastic array of folk – would-bes and almost-weres, actors, bona-fide pop stars, hustlers, managers, gangsters, journalists, photographers.

There was a monthly fanzine called I think Rocket 88, then Strait, edited by Stuart Spence and featuring for a while a snarkily hilarious comic strip called The Search for the Future of Rock’n’Roll, drawn by the legendary (and still very active) ‘Kaiser’ George Miller, then fronting a band called Styng-Rites. It was scripted mostly by Stuart and the late Tommy Udo, with contributions from NME’s Andrea Miller and The Herald’s David Belcher.  

The episode reproduced here gives a flavour of how frenetic the ‘scene’ could be, at a time when the hot money was on Love and Money and Hipsway, Wet Wet Wet having already signed to Phonogram for a vast quantity of cash and cat food, and the obsession with ‘candy’ very possibly carrying a less-than-obscure double meaning.

The photograph of Wet Wet Wet by Stewart Cunningham is NOT in our little book Big Rhythm: 1980s pop snapshots from Scotland, which will be launched next weekend and is available ONLY from the Beatcroft Shop on Etsy. But there are many other unpublished pictures by Stewart of the Wets, The Proclaimers, Edwyn Collins, The Primevals, Love and Money, Deacon Blue and more. And several essays by me about what it was like, way back then. When taxis were black, trainers weren’t allowed, mobile phones were carried in briefcases by hardly anyone, music came on cassettes and black plastic discs and cameras used a thing called film. 

A few advance copies of Big Rhythm are available now.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheBeatcroftShop