This section is still under construction and in it you will find snippets of Big Country
Trivia as well as annecdotes about bizarre situations or near-disasters which the band have
found themselves in.
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The whole band ended up in hospital on their way to play at Keele at the beginning of March. The windscreen of their car was shattered as they were on their way up the M1 motorway. A piece of metal flew off a lorry in front of them and hit soundman Bob, who was driving, in the face. He managed to pull over to the hard shoulder where a passing windscreen repair van (would you belive) stopped, ferried them all to hospital in Nottingham, and mended the windscreen. Bob had a nasty cut which needed four stitches; Bruce, Stuart and Mark all had to have their eyes checked for splinters of glass, and Stuart's eyeball was slightly scratched; Tony had to have a piece of glass taken out of his forehead, and a particularly unpleasant anti-tetanus injection. Back on course, there were more problems ahead. When they reached Keele, extremely late, Bruce's equipment decided to pack up after the first number, and the band ended up playing the same songs about four times each. They would like to thank the audience for being so patient and appreciative under the circumstances - and hope to make it up with another gig soon.
A promise is a promise, even if it was made years ago in childhood. Well, Mark made a promise that when he appeared on Top of The Pops for the first time, which was a great ambition in his younger days, he would take his Teddy with him. I use the term Teddy loosely, as it looks more like a scruffy dog with floppy ears to me. But when he got to the BBC TV studios in Shepherds Bush he realised poor old Ted was still sitting at home in Twickenham. Fortunately record company Phonogram came to the rescue and sent a taxi to fetch Teddy for his TV debut. Suitably spruced up for the occasion he sat by Mark's drum kit right through their rendition of Fields Of Fire. Sadly he wasn't spotted by the cameras - but Mark never promised anything about Stardom...
Newspaper headline from "John Blake's Bizarre" column:
You can't believe everything you read in papers, now can you...
Location: Swanage, Dorset, UK
Purpose: To make a promo video for "In A Big Country"
Incident: An unfortunate mistake in the early hours of the morning in a cheap hotel. Certain members of Big Country, after an evening of merriment and drink, knocked on the wrong door by mistake, which led to a complaint and the nationally-reported eviction. What some hotels will do for publicity...
The actual filming was as adventurous as the story line. There weren't many casualties apart from a case of sea sickness and a damaged knee ligament, both sustained by me. I thought Swanage was great - but you can keep the hotel!
Cheers, Tony
"That Adamson received a walloping shock when he put his mouth to the microphone - a shock that first stunned him and then sent him sinking to a sitting position on the drum platform - was the final straw. At that point bassist Tony Butler, as his compadre in music sat in the background dealing with the pain, told the crowd: "We're going to stop this now, until we can play a proper show for you." A half-hour later, one of the techies appologised, but said the problem couldn't be corrected right away. Even though Adamson was alright, the situation was still hazardous, and the show was cancelled.
Mark tells the story (from "A Certain Chemistry"):
"We were in New Orleans. I went to help Bruce get rid of these two fans that were banging on his door. We were in adjacent rooms with an adjoining door. I could hear these fans banging and Bruce was very drunk, he was shouting "piss off, go away". I was trying to get to sleep, it was the early hours of the morning and we had a long drive the next day and needed our sleep.
"Then they carried on, Bruce came out, gave them their autograph and they went. Then they came back and I thought this is going to cause some problems here. Bruce is not handling it very well, I'll go out and just tell 'em straight to go downstairs.
"So as it happened I went into Bruce's room, through my through door, told them to be on their way but they actually pushed their way into the room. This is absurd: either they're drunk or they're high on getting an autograph or just mucking around and being very giggly and childish.
"I said: "look, you'll have to keep your voices down otherwise we'll be in trouble, there's other guests sleeping". Just then there's a knock at the door and suddenly there's me, two girls and Bruce in the one room which looks ridiculous. This is completely the truth of it.
"I opened the door on the chain and this guy with long, greasy hair and a black bomber jacket, no a green bomber jacket, says something like "Okay you asshole, what's all the noise about?" And I said: "look it's under control, don't worry about it, it's under control. That's the whole reason I'm here: I'm sorting it out. Excuse me, there'll be no more noise."
"He said: "Don't you give me that shit, I've heard it for the last five minutes", and he started abusing me - swear, swear, swear all the time.
"I shouted to Bruce to call hotel security and call our minder and he suddenly said, "I am hotel security you asshole". So I said: "Where's your ID?" We're still talking through a gap in the door.
"He said: "I'll come in and knock your head off", so I thought the best thing to do is to get the door shut, 'cos it's on a little chain, get our minder up. So I slammed the door shut against him, holding it. he was trying to get in at me, he was completely furious.
"So I then went to my room to ring up my minder and just then he kicked the door in, coming in with his gun, wanted to blast me away. The girls were screaming and then they ran off. Meanwhile the hotel had called the police and he had pinned me to the ground with his gun.
"In a split second it had turned into something horrific through actually nothing. The police came and I thought "Thank God for that!" They all suddenly said "Arrest that man" and they all pointed to me. They arrested me and I spent the night in a cell. (Laughs)
"Bruce was going: "It's me you want, it's me you want. He had nothing to do with it, it's me!" "Okay, you can explain that in court tomorrow."
"The court, of course, were completely embarrassed about it 'cos the guy who was hotel security should have shown me his ID. He was also an off-duty police officer who was moonlighting. He didn't turn up in court and was very cagey about the whole thing.
"My bail to get out was $1100 and the solicitor I got, funnily enough, his bill came to $1100. I got an apology from the New Orleans police saying this guy was gun-happy and that it was very embarrassing and this incident shouldn't get out and if I was to sign this bit of paper saying none of this had happened then you can just go. So I just signed it to get outta there."
During the recording of "No Place Like Home" at Rockfield Studios, Stuart took along his weightlifting gear. When it was time to return home, Stuart asked Robin Walker, the guitar technician, to take the weights back to Scotland in the truck along with the recording equipment.
En route to Dunfermline, Ayrshire police stopped Robin and took him to a weighbridge where, of course, they found the truck to be overweight! The band's "company" is called Big Country Touring and Recording". Unfortunately, the relevant documents that had to be completed stated it as "Big Country Touring and Recovery"
It subsequently took three visits from the police and £200 of the band's money in legal fees to convince the authorities that they were not running an illegal haulage company!
The case was dropped.