The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Runrig recall struggle to win fans in Arbroath.
Back in the early 1980s, Runrig couldn’t give away tickets to their gigs
Runrig will finally bring the curtain down on their career with playing two sold-out farewell concerts in Stirling in August.
It’s unlikely they will ever forget the gig they played in Arbroath 35 years ago when they couldn’t give the tickets away and the only following they received was from the local hotel’s bedbugs.
The band went on to play to just 13 fans at Smokey’s nightclub on February 18 1983, despite having three successful albums behind them and having just released the single Loch Lomond in the UK charts a month earlier.
Runrig were still unknown in Arbroath by the time the ill-fated Scottish 12-date tour arrived and there were no advance tickets sold at the seafront venue.
The band’s founder Rory Macdonald recalled that the band took to going round the Arbroath pubs in the tour van to try to sell the unwanted briefs.
He said that when the tickets didn’t shift they ended up having to give them away but admitted “there were still only a dozen people there”.
Iain Macdonald was merchandising on the tour and said Arbroath also featured the worst hotel anyone in Runrig could remember.
He said: “Brian Freel was the support act and I remember him running up and down the stairs shouting that there were bedbugs, and sure enough the sheets were nearly running down the stairs themselves.”
Mr Macdonald said that part of the country hadn’t heard of Runrig in 1983 as they hadn’t even played in Dundee at that time.
“The concert at Arbroath had about 13 people there,” he said.
“They were going round the pubs and chippies giving out tickets and Smokey’s must hold nearly 1,000 people – it’s a huge place.”
The tour was described as a complete disaster and made a total profit of less than £70.
Runrig signed to Simple Records in 1984 and released their fourth studio album in 1985.
But it was the band’s fifth studio album, The Cutter And The Clan in 1987, which had originally been released on the independent Ridge Records label before being re-released on Chrysalis, that lit the spark and brought the band to wider audiences in the UK and Europe.
The period from 1987–97 marked Runrig’s most successful run, during which time they achieved placings in both the UK albums and singles charts and toured extensively.
The band would go on to rock to some of the most iconic venues in the UK and Europe – from sell-out shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London to castles and arenas across Germany and Denmark, to Times Square in New York.