Beatcroft

A Pollokshaws Cadillac Del Amitri special

The latest Pollokshaws Cadillac, volume 14, is based around a rediscovered interview with Justin Currie on Dallas’s KZEW station, during the infamous 1986 fan-fuelled tour by Del Amitri. there’s also music from Jimmy Dewar, Fairground Attraction, Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, Speedway, Kevin P Gilday and the Tenementals. Full playlist at the end od this blog. Listen on Mixcloud here:

Texas, August 1986. The smell of oil and money. The aroma of unwashed Glaswegians (Bearsdenians, in some cases, to be frank). We’re in the luxuriously-appointed lift – elevator if you prefer – of the Dallas Petroleum Club, members of Del Amitri, Kevin McDermott, me and a tiny Texan cowboy. Well, he’s dressed as a dude rancher, all stetson, boots and a seersucker suit. He’s clearly not impressed by the motley Caledonian crew squashing the brim of his hat against the pristine leather panelling.

“Are you members?” he drawls. Bryan Tolland, probably the most socially adept of us all, indicates that we aren’t, actually; we’re just hapless tourists who’ve come all the way from Scotland and are keen to take in the legendary view from the club’s soaring tower. “We’ve seen it on Dallas” Bryan grins, referring to the TV programme. This tiny cowperson (probably not involved with real cows) is unimpressed. “This is a private club,” he states with that steely southern politesse we all know from the telly. “I think you’d best leave.” He rides the elevator down to the ground floor with us and firmly escorts us out into the unremitting Texas glare. We don’t argue. Maybe he’s got a gun under that hat.

The Dels, supported by Kevin, are playing at Callahan’s Bar and Grille (with an ‘e’) as part of an adventurous six-week jaunt around the USA plotted by manager Barbara Shores. They are without a record deal, having been dropped by their label (or, if you prefer, and they do, the band having dropped the label). I’m along for a fortnight. The idea is to perform at gigs organised by fans, sleeping on floors or in cheap motels, subsidised by a lucrative gig at the start in New York. That has not turned out to be the hoped-for success. I’ve written about the whole affair twice already on Beatcroft and you can find the first post here. You can read more in my two previous posts, starting here.

Anyway, Dallas. The owners of Callahan’s, fans of the band, have treated musicians and hangers-on well, supplying food, a motel room and much needed laundry and showers (still to be applied during the abortive visit to the haunts of JR Ewing). We’ve had a day sightseeing, we’ve been guided around the Texas Book Depository, checked out the assassination angles, we’ve drunk some very expensive but complimentary beer. Hardly anyone has turned up at the gig. Meanwhile, legendary local DJ George Gimarc has booked an interview for his show The Rock’n’Roll Alternative on KZEW and I’m nominated to drive Justin to the station at some godless time of the morning before we head off to Las Vegas. Turns out it’s a pre-record, but Justin, hungover but determined, rises to the occasion.

I taped the interview because I was on the tour to make a radio documentary about the whole escapade. I returned to Glasgow with half a dozen C90 cassettes which were duly transferred to quarter-inch reel to reel and sat piled in a corner of Radio Scotland’s head of music, Dave Batchelor’s office for the next two years, untouched. No radio programme was ever made.

I recently listened through all those cassettes, and in truth, there is a story there – The escape from Maxwell’s in Hoboken when the owner tried to confiscate their equipment, the bill for booking the venue having never been paid. The double vision induced by drinking illegal hooch in Florida. Penniless in  New Orleans, accosted by seriously dodgy hustlers, and pursued through Alabama by lightning storms on a grander scale than any of us were used to. I remember a genuinely spooked member of the band telling Bryan to stop swearing in case God decided to target the van with a bit of heavenly electricity. As Michael Stipe was to mutter to me, “this is the very buckle of the Bible Belt.”

I was only with the tour for a fortnight, but despite the plague of giant locusts in Athens and the exclusive interview with REM, the documentary was never broadcast, never edited. Maybe someday. The 40th anniversary of it all, perhaps. Oh. Wait a minute…

Later we set off west, but by then I was out of time and left the band in pre-Breaking Bad Albuquerque, there to catch a plane for LA and then home to Glasgow. The band continue on their somewhat fractious way, to Los Angeles and back to New York, and when they return to Scotland, unbroken but somewhat battered, everything changes. They – and especially Justin and Iain – have discovered America. Sung accents alter, and so do songwriting styles. Hair grows, leather breeks are donned, Bryan and Paul Tyagi, drummer, leave. Barbara Shores disappears. Kevin also dons leather breeks and grows his locks, and with his Orchestra establishes a successful solo career.

There we were. And here we are.

The Pollokshaws Cadillac, volume 14

Juggernaut — Speedway
Dancing Queen — Jill Jackson
Little Bit of Sympathy (2024 Remaster) — Robin Trower
Stumbledown Romancer — James Dewar
Sing Anyway — Fairground Attraction
My Adulthood — Del Amitri
Justin Currie and George Gimarc — kzew radio Dallas
Breaking Bread — Del Amitri
Justin and George — kzew
Tears and Trickery — Del Amitri
Justin and George — Kzew
Keepers — Del Amitri
Roll to Me — Del Amitri 1
Neat Neat — State Blues Band
Accumulator (evens) – single edit — Kevin Gilday and Glasgow Cross
The Owl of Minerva — The Tenementals
Calton Hill — Goodbye Mr MacKenzie