Love songs make the world goround
Band talk about inspiration for latest collection
HALFWAY through the set in his first gig in Sydney for 30 years, Deacon Blue singer Ricky Ross knew something was wrong.
The band were on their first tour of the Antipodes since 1990, arriving Down Under at the height of the bushfire crisis which tore across parts of the country, with temperatures hitting 50C.
Even in areas not directly affected by the fires, clouds of toxic smog turned blue skies brown. Even with Sydneysiders trying to seek respite from their concerns at a gig, the effects of the fire threatened to take their toll.
“During our first show in Sydney I actually felt my voice going,” said Ross, the frontman of the Glasgow band, recalling their return to Oz in December. In the middle of the show I got a really bad throat. It was sore and I realised I couldn’t do certain things with my voice.”
He managed to subtly convey his concerns to bandmates and fellow vocalists, guitarist Gregor Philp and wife Lorraine McIntosh, to help back him up. “I have a little code that I use and I turned round to Gregor and Lorraine to let them know what was going through my head. My voice had been in great shape too, so it was really weird,” he said.
“But there was smoke in the air when we were in Sydney and it was only at that show when it happened. It was afterwards that the fires reached the suburbs of Melbourne and so on. It was all so sad for the people there.”
The band delivered not only for Sydneysiders but also on a run of gigs across Australia and New Zealand, which took them all by surprise.
Ricky said: “Our tour manager in
Australia brought out our Australian tour booklet from 30 years ago and pointed out that we were playing bigger venues now than we were then. So something nice has happened.”
The band used the dates to premiere some of the material from their new album, City of Love. Released today, it was recorded at Gorbals Sound and the title came from apocryphal Glasgow lore, which holds that some of the remains of St Valentine reside in a church nearby.
“I used that as a springboard for everything else,” Dundonian Ross said.
“Our first album Raintown was a collection of love songs about things going wrong and I think this is actually a more positive record – but still going back to the heart of the city. I think it’s about promise and hope and a place you can return to and even the possibility of the afterlife.”
The title track was the most played record on Radio 2 over Christmas, its simple message about trusting in the strength of love striking a chord during the year’s darkest months, and evoking the writings of St Paul in the New Testament.
For McIntosh, the city of love has no roots. Her parents were married in the Gorbals church St Valentine’s relics were first brought to and she spent the first three years of her life in nearby Bridgeton.
But she said: “When Ricky first told me the title, I didn’t think of it as a geographical city at all. I thought of it as a metaphor. I think as he gets older every song he writes goes more and more to the heart of the belief that all there is, is love. It’s a cliche maybe but it is all that remains. As you get older, all the other things fall away.”
While their biggest hits are arenafillers such as Fergus Sings The Blues, Dignity and Real Gone Kid, many of the songs on the new album offer a closefocus intimacy.
The song In Our Room is a reflection on the early days of the singers’ relationship. “Stains on the ceiling, sleeping on a mattress on a floor,” they sing, the tune recalling candle-lit nights listening to Van Morrisson.
I suggest it might be the most candid reflection on their marriage Ross has ever written. They disagree but don’t say which others from their nine-album back catalogue are more revealing.
“I think people will get it,” said Ross, laughing. “It was the early days of our relationship. The only person who didn’t get it was our manager who’d himself admit to being born with a silver spoon in his mouth (manager Tom O’Rourke’s father, Steve, was Pink Floyd’s manager).
“He’s the most important person we’ve met in the last 15 years, so much of what has happened is down to him. But he couldn’t get his head round the idea of sleeping on a mattress with stains on the ceiling.”
What has happened includes three Top 20 albums, the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, world tours and returns to arenas such as the SSE
Hydro, where they’ll play as part of a European tour later this year.
Ross recalled the feeling in his childhood of listening to his mother singing when doing the housework. Now in her 90s, their new album is, in its own way, a tip of the cap to that early introduction to music.
“God bless her, she only ever sang hymns because she only ever knew hymns,” he said. “But she would sing four or five verses by memory when she was cooking. It’s the strongest musical memory I have.”
The album is rich in sentiment, and will appeal to fans of the band’s knack of touching on universal emotions.
The finale, On Love, is one of their finest moments.
“Falling in love is the most unreasonable thing you’ll do,” said Ricky. “The idea that you can make sense of any of it – you can’t.
“They’re just events that happen to you. That song is why I consider this record to be the album of my life.”
City of Love, out now.