Signed copies available now for £9.99 plus postage ONLY from https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheBeatcroftShop

Big Rhythm was going to be called Caught Up In This Big Rhythm, but as that’s a line from a Blue Nile song, Tinsel Town In the Rain, legal discretion was the better part of copyright valour. Now, as you’ll realise, there’s no connection with the Blue Nile whatsoever. And they’re not in the book. Because as it happens, Stewart Cunningham never took a picture of them.

Big Rhythm: 1980s pop snapshots from Scotland is 72-pages of photographs from the Scottish music scene in the early 1980s, accompanying essays written by yours truly. Perfect bound, glossy. Stewart and I worked together supplying reviews and features for the pop weekly Melody Maker, and the book features never-or-rarely-seen photos and stories of and about the likes of Deacon Blue, Wet Wet Wet, Love and Money, the Proclaimers, the Primevals, the River Detectives and many more. In glossy black and white.

No artificial intelligence was used in Big Rhythm’s production. There’s no digital equivalent to download. It’s hard copy only. 150 copies, each signed (in colour!) by myself and Stewart. £9.99 plus postage from the Beatcroft Shop here:

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

Now, Stewart hates smartphones. He has an ancient Motorola mobile held together with elastic bands. You can text him if you like but he doesn’t read them all. One of his email mailboxes is full so everything you send bounces back. Call him, though, and he picks up. Pigeon post also works, if the wind’s in the right direction.

Stewart was the last professional photographer I knew to switch from analogue to digital cameras, and he’s still the only snapper of my acquaintance (apart from David Bailey) with a lifelong commitment to Olympus equipment. Of late, in semi-retirement, he’s gone back to his first love, monochrome film photography, and set up a lab in in his Rhu house to develop and print. Slowly but surely, people are beating a path to his door, asking for him to take, develop and print pictures for them. It’s a hands-on process, offering, in a world of digital insecurity, complete control over every stage of production.

Back in the early 1980s, there was no other option. Digital photography didn’t exist. There was no email, precious few (and very cumbersome) mobile phones. Not everyone was a photographer then. And in the world of downmarket rock’n’roll music, professionals had to know what they were doing.

Low, erratic light levels, unwilling bands, confrontational managers, bullying security staff. And demanding editors who needed physical prints, a few hours after a gig had taken place. The gig in Glasgow or Edinburgh, with the publication concerned in London. Going to press next day.

So for Stewie it was back from some do that might finish at 1.00am, process the film, print off several 10 by eights, and get them to the west end of Glasgow, where I’d have been hammering out 600 words of deathless prose on an old typewriter. Get the words and pictures to the Red Star office at Glasgow Central Station in time for the 5.00am train to London, where they;’d be picked up by bike and taken straight to the Melody Maker’s printers.

It was adrenalin-and-nicotine fuelled fun and games, at a time when Glasgow was a seething maelstrom of musical creativity and ambition. Wet Wet Wet, Orange Juice, Deacon Blue, Love and Money…over in Edinburgh, The Proclaimers. And countless other hopefuls and hopeless cases, looking for the big deal. Escape. And connection. Money. And love.

Now, you can connect with those far-off days. View the haircuts that defy gravity! The youthful grins that have yet to be wiped off faces! Note the leather breeks and the ill-advised jackets. Read the tales about horrendous car trips, magnificent gigs and encounters best forgotten. Think about what it was like to be out every night at Rooftops, Bennett’s, The Sub Club, Fury Murry’s, Maestro’s, the Fixx or the Rock Garden. Barrowland or the Apollo, the Pavilion or the Sarry Heid…

Remember, if you were there. Imagine, if you weren’t. 

Big Rhythm. 1980s pop snapshots from Scotland

By Stewart Cunningham and Tom Morton

£9.99 plus postage. 150 signed copies. 

Only from

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

…and if you fancy an hour or so of music and memories, I’ve put together a wee show on Mixcloud featuring some of the music of that time…listen here

…with me talking or go to the end of the playlist for a Spotify link.