Finally viva Glasvegas!
EIGHT YEARS WAIT...
RETURNING rockers Glasvegas admit it’s daft that their new album took a staggering eight years to finish.
Singer James Allan wrote the songs on Godspeed in a few months – only to take for ever in learning how to produce them himself too.
He told me: “For the first 18 months, it’d stress me out when management and friends hassled me asking when the album would be finished.
“After three years, it seemed nice that I wasn’t getting that pressure any more.
“But I soon realised that was worse – people had only stopped asking me because they’d given up hope the album would ever get finished!”
A lot of Godspeed was made at James’ home in Glasgow, and the person next door didn’t always appreciate hearing previews.
The singer, whose band have been nominated for the
Mercury Prize and were last around on 2013’s album Later… When The TV Turns To Static, laughed: “My neighbour would tell me: ‘I don’t mind when it’s a full song I can listen to, but I don’t like it if you’re just repeating a guitar part again and again.’
“He was really patient, considering, but it felt like he was giving me a review all the time!”
New Glasvegas single Shake The Cage is the end credits song on Creation Stories, the biopic about Alan Mcgee, the music label boss who discovered
Oasis. And James enthused: “It’s an unusual song anyway, and it’s also the only new song among the old classics.
“The film goes from Wonderwall by Oasis into our song.
“Maybe I’m biased, but it works so well and it feels like our song was just meant to be there.”
James has known the Creation Records boss since Glasvegas started in 2007, but admitted: “I didn’t know half the stories about Alan in the film. Alan is an amazing storyteller but if I asked him to tell me about his life, even he couldn’t do it as clearly as the movie.”
Glasvegas will tour Godspeed next year, and James revealed: “I’m looking forward to seeing gigs as a fan as much as being back on stage.
“Before lockdown, I was never known for being social and I’d be too wrapped up in my band’s world to enjoy other concerts as much I could have.
“I’ll have a new appreciation for gigs once we can see them again.”