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Big Country
It's only Rock 'n' Roll...
Melody Maker, 21st September 1991
BIG COUNTRY's new album, 'No Place Like Home', is meant to be a return to the basics of
classic, honest-to-God guitar rock, a celebration of straight-from-the-shoulder rock'n'roll.
To the ears of THE STUD BROTHERS, however, it still sounds like the bombastic swagger of yore.
Pics: TOM SHEEHAN
"We were the band that made your brain think and your foot tap at the same time
(not a trick everybody can manage, mind you - there are some real thickets around). We had -
dare I say it - class. And we were the band whose gimmick was...music. Oh, yes, we had that
reputation" - Iain Banks, "Espedair Street"
We're early. A good two hours early. Some sort of time-warp, a loop in time, or
something. Our airline tickets promised us we'd be in Edingburgh by 11, the press officer
told us the cab ride from Edingburgh to Dunfermline would take 40 minutes. We were to
interview the band at 12.30. but it's 10.30, so unless we got up early we must've gone back
through time.
We're pondering the mystery in a bakery-come-caff just
off Dunfermline's only busy street when Bruce Watson walks in. Bruce Watson is 30 years old
and still looks a more convincing Dunfermline docker than he does a rock'n'roll guitarist.
His demeanour's part amiable pub racontuer, part ned hardman. He smiles a lot and has a
front tooth missing. He keeps his new tooth in the breast pocket of his denim jacket.
Bruce greets our photographer Tom Sheehan warmly. Tom's known Bruce for
f***ing years. According to Tom, Bruce used to be a real rascal around a drink.
"Och, Tom," grins Bruce. "It's been six years now. Six years without a drink.
Six months without a cigarette."
He considers this feat of self-control
for a moment then adds with a flourish, "So, would anyone like any heroin?"
With that Bruce is sharpley summoned to a nearby table to appear before his Auntie Mary who
would like to know why she's seen neither hide nor hair of him for weeks now. We can think
of a number of good excuses - writing and recording a new album, making videos, organising
next year's world tour - but then we're not Auntie Mary. Auntie Mary's wounded expression
reminds us of a headmaster who once told us excuses are lies.
We retreat to the street and from there to a hotel where Tony Butler, Big Country's
bassist, turns up bearing a massive hangover he's eager to share. We offer sympathetic ears.
Bruce, though has evidently discovered that one of the few pleasures of not drinking is to
exacerbate Tony's hangovers with finger-wagging I-told-you-so's.
He
tells Tony, "I told you so."
Tony was born in West London but now lives
with his family in a tony Cornish village. He didn't even bother going back for this year's
Notting Hill Carnival. When Tony was a kid, the Carnival was the biggest event of his year.
He played in the calypso bands and helped to decorate the floats. Now London's out of the
question - too fast, too frenetic, too smelly. Maybe even too dangerous.
Stuart Adamson arrives sporting a spectacular quiff, leather motorcycle boots, a heavy
leather belt and a huge leather jacket. Adamson lives just around the corner with his wife,
two kids and two retrievers. Everywhere Adamson goes people ask "How's yer wee bairns?"
Adamson at least looks like he's involved in pop music. Tony kind of does
but only in an erstwhile capacity. Part-time roadie. Bruce is so determinedly proletarian he
makes The Farm look like Motley Crue. As rock'n'roll stars go, Big Country aren't up to much.
We like them immediately.
Homely, affable, intelligent, Big Country, who
eschew any gimmick more ostentatious than a leather jacket, look awfully dignified. This,
though laudable in blues or soul, bemuses the pop fan. Dignity, to pop, looks undignified.
Big Country have simply written honest rock'n'roll songs about, well, Stuart Adamson. What
Adamson does, thinks, reads, cares about. Simple, artless honesty looks to some contrived.
"Yeah, well, people think," says Adamson, "that we're simply a career band,
working musicians, or just doing it because it's something to do. People think we're not
into it, that it doesn't mean much to us. But I care passionately about music, I just get
really cheesed off with all the nonsense that goes with it. For me being in a band is
writing songs and playing the guitar. The most important response we can get is if one of
our songs can affect someone's life in the same way a song can affect my life, if someone
can just identify with it."
With the recent "Republican Party Reptile" single, Adamson identifies with the
right-wing American journalist PJ O'Rourke. "Republican Party Reptile" (the title is lifted
from a collection of essays by O'Rourke) is an assessment, maybe even a celebration, of PJ's
hedonistic, self-seeking capitalist, someone to which Adamson, the still-committed socialist,
admits a helpless attraction.
"You could never admit to being like that",
he says. "It's just so not-right-on. But to know someone like that, someone who wants it all
- who wants to get wasted and laid and wants a career in politics as well - would be brilliant."
While we approve of the sentiment, we're far less keen on the music,
an oddly characterless lump of blunt guitar riffola. These feelings extend to the album, "No
Place Like Home", a perpetually bombastic affair that swaggers in an objectionably American
way, which, even at its most plaintive and pastoral, sounds inexplicably impersonal.
"No Place Like Home" leaves all Big Country's idiosyncrasies behind and instead
makes reverent reference to an impeccable lexicon of American stars - Neil Young, early Heart,
early ZZ Top, even John Waite's one hit-single. It left us feeling genuinely bewildered. We
even wondered if Stuart Adamson had gone mad.
"From the outside it will
look like a real departure," says Stuart. "But for us it's what we do and what we are. I
wouldn't even begin to pretend we're the same band we were three years ago, that we're even
the same people. What we've done with this album is to emphasise the different musical sides
of the band. We can't go and make a record wondering what people will think about it
afterwards. We do it the way we wanna do it and if we can't do it that way then we won't do
it at all."
We don't for a minute doubt the sincerity with which Big Country's new album was
written and recorded. Adamson is a long-time fan of American music and, long before his punk
days with The Skids, played R&B with a band called Tattoo.
Jon Bon Jovi once told us he
was still just playing in a bar band. The only difference was the bars had turned into stadia.
The same applies to Big Country.
Still in Dunfermline with family, kids
and dogs and now back with an album that pays homage to the American guitar rock they've
loved for years, Big Country are probably the biggest, brightest pub-rock band in the world.
Still the band whose only gimmick is...music.
The album, "No Place Like Home", is out on Phonogram this week.
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