Blair spinner pipes up to play brother’s work at festival
HE IS still perhaps more widely known for his spinning rather than skirling.
But Alastair Campbell, who was PR chief to Prime Minister Tony Blair, is to play a key role at Scotland’s biggest traditional music festival this weekend.
Mr Campbell, a keen piper, and son of Donald Campbell, a Gaelic-speaking native of the island of Tiree, is to perform 10 tunes at this weekend’s Tiree Song Book event at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, as part of Celtic Connections.
Mr Campbell, who has been practising two to three hours a day for the concert, will join a cast of musical talent with connections to Tiree, in an event directed by Mary Ann Kennedy and featuring singers DouglasIain Brown, James Graham and Linda MacLeod, among others.
For Mr Campbell, the event will also be an emotional affair – one of the tunes he will play, the Tiree Association Centenary March, was composed by his brother Donald, who died last August, aged 62.
Donald Campbell worked in the library of the University of Glasgow. He held the post of piper to the principal of the university, playing at the key ceremonies of the institution, dinners, ceremonies, dinners and services.
Alastair Campbell said he he was forgoing another passion – watching his beloved Burnley FC play against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium – to take part in the concert.
He said playing one of his older brother’s tunes would make the event especially meaningful.
“For Donald, piping was his life. For me, the piping for a while was a relatively low order of importance, but this event has really given me the opportunity to go into the music and learn some more. It’s quite strange playing it [his brother’s tune], but it is amazing how music can give you a much deeper connection to people who are dead. I feel I am almost with Donald when I am playing it.”
“It has been an intense period learning the tunes, it has been two or three hours a day of practice,” he said.
“I am 60 this year and I do feel it’s harder work. I practise in the bathroom because the acoustics are great. My neighbours who live on that side of the house, they actually complain if I don’t play – they love it. There have been no complaints.”
Mr Campbell’s brother’s passion for the pipes led him to join the Scots Guards, and with the band of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards he saw service in Northern Ireland and toured the world, as well as playing at the Edinburgh Tattoo.
He later returned to Scotland and lived and worked in Glasgow. He had schizophrenia and on his death Alastair Campbell, who has campaigned for a better understanding and treatment of mental illness, wrote: “He refused to left his life be defined by his illness. And he was a man who lived an amazing life despite it.”
Alastair and his brother were taught the pipes by their father, and then by Tony Wilson, a former Scots Guardsman who led the pipers on Paul McCartney’s Mull of Kintyre. Their mother was also Scottish, from Ayrshire.