Scottish pop rockers Deacon Blue are celebrating their Ruby anniversary this 12 months with a brand new album, The Nice Western Street. Traditional Pop talks to frontman Ricky Ross concerning the secret of the right way to survive 4 many years in a band and nonetheless be having enjoyable…
On Deacon Blue’s newest album, The Nice Western Street, chief songwriter Ricky Ross is in a reflective temper. Shaped in 1985, with debut LP Raintown launched two years later, 2025 marks the fortieth birthday of one among Scotland’s premier pop-rock acts. It was 1988’s Actual Gone Child that will be their breakthrough success, with its accompanying album When The World Is aware of Your Identify peaking at No.1 within the UK. Not a band who often look backwards, this 12 months’s anniversary has nudged Ross right into a nostalgic state of mind – the video for Late ’88 is made up of pictures and clips from earlier many years.
“As you become old, you attempt to make sense of the previous,” he tells us over Zoom from his residence in Glasgow. “It’s not at all times nostalgia, it’s typically puzzlement, like, why can we do this? Why didn’t we do that? You get to a sure age, and also you’re in a position to look again to attempt to work out the paths of the place you got here from.”
How does it really feel celebrating 40 years of Deacon Blue? Did you ever suppose you’d get this far?
Ricky Ross: If somebody had mentioned to us in 1985, “Go and verify this act out, they had been round 40 years in the past,” you’d have laughed at them, as a result of that will have been 1945! At that age, you simply weren’t fascinated about something that occurred even 5 or 10 years earlier than, it simply felt actually outdated. However right here we’re.
Although this 12 months is the fortieth anniversary since Deacon Blue’s formation, Late ’88 seems again to 1988. Why that 12 months particularly?
It was significantly Actual Gone Child. Up till that time, we’d launched songs from Raintown, however I imply, all I wished to do was make an album. I believe it was midway by making Raintown, somebody talked about singles, and actually I don’t suppose we’d given it any thought! I imply [the four singles] scraped into the chart with a little bit of assist, however they didn’t actually change our life or anybody else’s. However later, in late 1988, we launched Actual Gone Child and that actually did change our lives. We had been on telly for the primary time considerably, and I at all times bear in mind making an attempt to purchase a coat in Marks & Spencer and folks me. Immediately it was like, folks know who you’re since you’ve been on tv.
How did you retain it collectively again then? In a single day success could make some folks go slightly loopy…
It does mess along with your head a bit. I believe all of us in all probability handled it in numerous methods. However I believe the purpose of Late ’88 is it was enjoyable, too. It was thrilling and that’s what pop music needs to be. The factor a few hit music is that that’s the purpose of it, that it turns into one thing so ubiquitous that everybody is aware of it, and that was one of many issues we wished to do. It was a wild rollercoaster journey for just a few months, however good enjoyable.
There’s a line in Late ’88 – “By no means considered tomorrow”. What would the Ricky Ross of 1988 consider the Ricky Ross and Deacon Blue of 2025?
I’d have been actually shocked if somebody had instructed me that we had been nonetheless doing it. I bear in mind doing an interview early on with a Japanese tv crew, and I mentioned, “I believe we’ll make three albums, then we’ll break up up.” The truth is, we made 4 after which break up up. I at all times noticed it as a finite factor – I didn’t have any long-term plans. Even 20 years in the past, I’d have nonetheless been shocked that we’re nonetheless doing it, and definitely shocked that we’re having fun with doing it, and that the social facet of the band, the cohesion of the band, is nice.
You’re one of many few teams with 40 years behind them who aren’t stuffed with substitute members. How have you ever managed to maintain most of that authentic line-up collectively?
Having the break helped. We break up up in ’94 and didn’t get again collectively til ’99, so all of us discovered our toes slightly bit, we discovered totally different paths. Take Dougie [Vipond], for instance. He began doing tv work, which is an enormous a part of his life. Jim [Prime] began instructing and went over to France and performed with Johnny Hallyday, and did a lot of issues, Lorraine [McIntosh] began performing [she made her big screen debut in Ken Loach’s 1998 movie My Name Is Joe ], and I began writing and dealing with different musicians. Being in a single band and by no means getting outdoors of that little circle isn’t good.
One of many nice issues about creating music is making it with different folks. So all of us received that different hinterland collectively, and after we got here again collectively, we thought, “ what, we’ve labored with totally different folks, we’ve carried out various things, our little factor isn’t as dangerous as possibly we thought it was – possibly it simply doesn’t need to be this 100% factor that dominates our lives.” We do produce other locations to go when all of it will get an excessive amount of, so after we do come again collectively, we will make it actually, actually good.
It’s been 4 years because the band’s final album, Using On The Tide Of Love. What’s the relevance of the brand new report’s title, The Nice Western Street?
I’m an important collector of titles. Like a number of songwriters, you gather them, then you definately attempt to work out what it’s and what’s it resulting in. So we had been driving out of the town and I used to be eager about these huge avenues that lead as much as Glasgow. It’s an enormous metropolis, however there are these iconic roads, with Nice Western Street being, in some methods, essentially the most pertinent one, as a result of after we had been beginning off, that was our hub, our assembly level. That street leads out to this stunning wilderness, and in some methods, out to the unknown.
I assumed it was only a nice metaphor for the place I’m in my life, and the place we’re – you simply don’t know what’s subsequent. It was 20 years in the past that Graeme [Kelling], our guitarist, died – that came to visit a interval of being sick for 5 years, however you simply don’t know what modifications one 12 months will deliver. I at all times wished to write down songs about being sincere and being on the level we’re at, and the Nice Western Street allowed that metaphor to be there. So it was all actually beneath that title and umbrella, after which the songs began to emerge.
What’s the distinction between making an album now and the way in which you made them within the 80s?
The distinction is that then, you probably did an album, you probably did an intensive tour, and then you definately made one other album. Having that hinterland I talked about earlier can be very helpful. After we completed [2020’s City Of Love], it was horrible, as a result of the album had no sooner come out than it was lockdown, and we couldn’t do half the promo that we had been meant to do – and we actually couldn’t do the reveals. However I used to be in a position to do a solo report [Short Stories Vol. 2] as a result of I did that in the home. That received that little bit of frustration out. Having extra issues to do helps in an odd means.
What’s subsequent for the band?
We don’t actually make huge plans. This 12 months is kind of mapped out, as a result of we’ll be touring and doing promo for this report. Within the meantime, I’ve been working for the final 5 years on a undertaking referred to as Small Acts Of Love, which lastly goes on stage this summer season on the Residents Theatre [in Glasgow]. Sadly, it’s across the similar time we’re on tour, in order that shall be fairly busy, as a result of there’s a number of work nonetheless to be carried out on casting a band and singers, in order that’s my summer season undertaking. The songs are written, the play has been written, however each time it goes in a workshop, it modifications. So I believe when it goes into rehearsal, it’d change once more, however we’ll see what occurs.
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