Wonderland - The Essential Big Country

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Gwenda (19 January 2012). "Big Country Interviews 1984-1986". Archived from the original on 25 March 2019. I’ve survived a lot to get this far,” he says, “and I wish Stuart could have had one more day to think about what was happening to him. Maybe he’d still be here, and I wouldn’t need to be and I’d be sitting here just as a fan, just like you, and we’d be going up the front and singing our heads off to the songs,” he shakes his head.

Message from Derek Forbes — Big Country – It's more than a journey. It's an adventure". Bigcountry.co.uk. 31 December 2012. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014 . Retrieved 8 April 2014. It also gave the press another stereotype to play with: the dour Scotsman. In the eyes of the music press, the band were pompous and dreary and so not cool, darling. Opening the evening is the wonderfully talented Charlotte Grayson. Please come and show her your support. You’ll be glad you did. Lillywhite called him too: “I spoke to him a month before he died, because everyone was worried about his drinking and his mental state in Nashville. I spoke to him and he said, ‘Steve, I’ve worked it out, I really can’t drink, I mustn’t drink, I’m happy now not drinking…’” Excellent songs, totally unique guitar sounds, amazing musicianship and production. There is absolutely zero filler.A memorial to Adamson was held at Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline in January 2002, followed by a tribute concert at Glasgow Barrowlands in May. It brought together the remaining members of both Big Country and Skids; Adamson's teenage children, Callum and Kirsten; as well as Steve Harley, Runrig, Simon Townshend, Midge Ure and Bill Nelson. We just went to town with the guitars and drums,” says Watson. “‘Let’s flood this album with as many overdubs as possible…’ Maybe Steve could have been a better referee and said, ‘Let’s just not bother with that…’ Steve’s 12” mixes were great because he would take stuff out and feature a bass, or another instrument, and it’s great, but with a 7” mix, everything’s condensed. Steeltown was like that.”

Tony Butler, a session musician tired of being a gun for hire, had found the band he was looking for: “I thought what Bruce and Stuart were doing guitar-wise was immense. And it was lyrical, it was melodic, it was powerful – it was just lovely. I’ve got Scottish roots and it really kind of erupted from me when I first heard these guys playing…” I think a lot of people might be surprised at how good this record is, given how it seems to have fallen off the radar. Chris Briggs gave up drinking that very day,” says Grant. “Stuart had given up just beforehand and they concurred – cos AA is very kind of ‘You’re a member of the club’ sort of thing.” It looked as though Adamson had conquered his drink problem. “He bought a pub in Dunfermline and he used to pull pints, even though he didn’t drink. But then again, you never know how much he was hiding anything…”Cherry Red Records – The Journey, Big Country". Cherryred.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 April 2014 . Retrieved 8 April 2014. Grant went from that to gravitating, like so many of the supposedly redundant ‘hippy’ generation, towards the trouble-makers of punk, managing The Stranglers, among others. It was JJ Burnell of The Stranglers in fact who first turned Grant on to the Skids, having witnessed them in Falkirk while on tour. Grant was bringing Scottish acts like Penetration and the Rezillos down to London and “[JJ] said, ‘Would you bring down the Skids? I’ve found this band that I want to produce’.” Reminded of that today, even he’s surprised: “Wow. I was good in those days…”) Initially contracted to just do a single, the sessions for Fields Of Fire produced not only that classic song, but gave birth to the Big Country sound and inspired a new bout of songwriting from Adamson. On Christmas 1984, the four members participated in the Band Aid charity record " Do They Know It's Christmas?". They are among a small handful of acts to contribute a spoken message to the B-side of the single.

I think [we were] trying to understand masculinity in a way,” says former Skids frontman Richard Jobson. “And that military imagery is so potent. If you look at the sleeves of Masquerade and Charade [pictures of the battle of Culloden and uniformed men playing cards with a gun on the table, respectively], thematically, they’re about masculine grace. If you were really going to analyse all the work, I think you’ll find that’s at the root of it all – finding some kind of grace in the whole process of being a man. And not being ashamed of that.” a b c d "BPI Certification". British Phonographic Industry. Archived from the original on 11 August 2016 . Retrieved 11 August 2016. Big Country's first single was " Harvest Home", recorded and released in 1982. [1] It was a modest success, although it did not reach the UK Singles Chart. [3] Their next single was 1983's " Fields Of Fire (400 Miles)", which reached the UK's Top Ten and was rapidly followed by the album The Crossing. [3] The album was a hit in the United States (reaching the Top 20 in the Billboard 200), powered by " In a Big Country", their only US Top 40 hit single. [1] The song features heavily engineered guitar sounds, strongly reminiscent of bagpipes; [1] Adamson and fellow guitarist Watson achieved this through the use of the MXR Pitch Transposer 129 Guitar Effect. Also contributing to the band's unique sound was their use of the e-bow, a device which allows a guitar to sound more like strings or synthesizer. The Crossing sold over a million copies in the UK and obtained gold record status (sales of over 500,000) in the US. The band performed at the Grammy Awards and on Saturday Night Live.Adamson met singer-songwriter Marcus Hummon, with whom he would form a country act, the Raphaels, and through Hummon he met his second wife Melanie Shelley. “He moved there,” says Grant. “I don’t dwell on it, but it was the worst thing that ever happened really, cos he was out of sight then you never knew what was happening. He got comfortable in Nashville and I think he thought he could drink again.” Steeltown is a bit dense and a bit muddy,” admits Lillywhite today. “But maybe we were trying to put too much on because maybe we trying to cover something up. Maybe Stuart’s writing had become more political and even if people are living in a steeltown with no work and everything, they wanna lose themselves. They don’t want to be told that their life is shit. Maybe they need the big dreams even more…” Big Country was originally formed in 1981 by guitar playing founder members Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson both native of the band’s hometown Dunfermline in Scotland.

The thing was, it was so remote, if the cops came you’d see them, cos they had to come up the hill. The first time they came they brought dogs, ten of them. We stashed everything. We were all tripping, hanging upside down from the trees like bats. So these cops come with torches and don’t know what to do: ‘Get down from that tree’ [mimics uncertain cop voice] ‘…or we’ll arrest you’.” That’s not gonna happen – but I still want to see Big Country and this is the only way we’re gonna have it.” Adamson returned for the band's 'Final Fling' farewell tour, culminating in a sold-out concert at Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom on 31 May 2000. They played what turned out to be their last gig in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October that year. Sisältää hitin: Levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1961" (in Finnish). Sisältää Hitin - Suomen listalevyt (Timo Pennanen) . Retrieved 11 August 2016. Big Country star found dead – The Scotsman". News.scotsman.com. 18 December 2001 . Retrieved 8 April 2014.On Steeltown the lyrics – the Falklands war, unemployment, tales of people trapped by circumstance and crushed by forces outside their control – and the intensity of the music combined to make something relentlessly grim. The Irish Charts - All there is to know". irishcharts.ie. Archived from the original on 5 January 2010. Wonderland" is a single-only release by Scottish band Big Country, released in the UK on 9 January 1984 [1] between their first and second albums. It became a top ten hit for them in the UK, peaking at number 8, giving the band their third top ten entry. [2] The song was included on all the band's subsequent greatest hits collections, although it was never released on any of the band's studio albums. Also released as a 4-song EP in the US in 1984 on Mercury (Mercury 818835-1 M-1) with the A-side consisting of "Wonderland" and "All Fall Together" and the B-side with "Angle Park" and "The Crossing". [3] It’s my birthday on the 17th of December,” says Grant. “I was having breakfast with my family and my mother said, ‘Have you any news on Stuart?’ and just as she said that the phone rang and I knew the number: it was Kim his sister. She said, ‘He’s died. He’s killed himself’. I went for a walk…”