Museum celebrates the history of Scottish pop music
● National Museum of Scotland joins up with BBC to put on landmark exhibition
The story of Scottish pop music over more than half a century is to be charted in a landmark exhibition.
The National Museum of Scotland is joining forces with the BBC to stage an extended celebration of “the musical culture of a nation” next year.
Spanning the 1950s to the present day, it will feature artists ranging from Lonnie Donegan, Lulu, Gerry Rafferty, Midge Ure and The Rezillos to Simple Minds, Garbage, Franz Ferdinand and Young Fathers.
It will explore the influence of labels including Postcard, Fast Product and Chemikal Underground, and the ground-breaking music they released by Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, Scars, The Mekons, Mogwai, Arab Strap and others.
Costumes, instruments, stage props, archive footage and newly-recorded interviews will be featured in the exhibition. Running from June to November, it is being staged in the wake of the huge success of David Bowie and Pink Floyd exhibitions at London’s V&A, Liverpool’s pop music celebration The Beat Goes On, and celebrations of AC/DC and Kylie Minogue at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove gallery.
Exhibition curator Stephen Allen said: “Popular music is a shared experience and a really important one in many people’s lives. Whether it’s a gig a teenager went to a week ago or 40 years ago or a song they hear for the first time, a lot of the underlying emotions and reactions are the same.
“We want the exhibition to capture and reflect that in the atmosphere and the experi- ence, to look at it from both a Scottish and wider perspective and, crucially, to put the music and the people who made it centre-stage.”
Midge Ure has agreed to donate two jackets, one he wore in Ultravox’s Vienna video in 1981 and another on stage at the Live Aid concert in 1985 that he helped mastermind.
Visiting the museum to launch the exhibition, he said: “I don’t think there’s ever been anything like this before. I’m not sure how all-encompassing it will be, but it will cover a lot of the rock music Scotland has been responsible for over the last 50 or 60 years.
“For a small country we’ve punched way above our weight when it comes to producing global artists … I think the success of the David Bowie and Pink Floyd exhibitions has woken the museum world up a bit to the fact people want to see this kind of stuff.”
An accompanying threepart TV series and a four-part radio series will be made by BBC Scotland. Live shows and talks will be programmed during its run, which coincides with the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe, while broadcaster Vic Galloway, who is to present the radio series, will write an official accompanying book.
He said: “The music that has come out of this country across seven decades has been exemplary, and has gone on to influence the history of global pop and rock. Maybe we’re at a place in pop history where we’re more comfortable looking back as well as forward.”
Fiona Shepherd, The Scotsman’s pop critic, said: “There’s books been written on the history of Scottish pop and rock before, but it’s such a huge subject for an exhibition that it has maybe been too daunting before. If anyone is going to do it, an organisation like the National Museum of Scotland can. They’ve got a big enough canvas.”
Given the astonishing range of pop music produced in Scotland since the 1950s, from chart favourites including Lulu, Garbage and Franz Ferdinand to the more esoteric sounds of Mogwai, a major exhibition highlighting its cultural significance is long overdue.
Perhaps anticipating a furore over potential omissions, the National Museum of Scotland said it expects a “huge amount of lively debate”, but given the number of acts there are bound to be some. As Midge Ure points out, Scotland has “punched way above our weight” on the international stage. The importance of music and the arts can be overlooked but, as the influence of Hollywood on the world’s attitudes to the United States demonstrates, they are key elements of “soft power”.
Music, in particular, often arouses strong passions. And love for a Scottish band can translate into anything from warm feelings towards Scotland to hard tourist cash as people visit the country.
But the sounds of modern Scotland should actually be celebrated for one reason alone: the sheer joy it has brought to millions of people all over the world.