I know I’ll have to stop singing.. it’s grim
Del Amitri’s Justin reflects on Parkinson’s challenge
Del Amitri singer Justin Currie has said it is “quite grim” that he will have to stop performing one day due to Parkinson’s disease.
The 59-year-old Scot revealed his diagnosis in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Tremolo programme. Speaking ahead of the programme yesterday on BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Justin said: “I can’t play (music in) the way I would expect to and I know it will get worse. At what rate, nobody knows. “So I know I’m going to have to stop.
Whereas, formerly, people like me would never want to stop, you know?
“We’d want to be singing in a pub at 80 or something, and being dragged off by our grandchildren or something in embarrassment.
“So the idea of having to stop, that’s quite grim.”
The Glaswegian reflected on how the disease has affected him and said: “I seem to have lost a bit of diaphragm control.”
He added: “It’s already changed my personality in not necessarily negative ways.
“(With) any form of disability, you become aware of disability in general, and you become acutely aware of that line that disabled people have been saying for years – that there aren’t able-bodied people, there are just a lot of people who are not yet disabled.
“So I quite like that. I quite like the idea that we’re all going to go through some of these difficulties at some point in life.”
He added: “I think that you do think you’re invulnerable until something proves you’re not.”
Del Amitri formed in Glasgow in 1980 and had hits with Nothing Ever Happens, Spit in the Rain and Always the Last to Know among others.
You think that you’re invulnerable until you find out you’re not
JUSTIN CURRIE ON COPING WITH PARKINSON’S DISEASE