Short Stories Vol.2

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An anecdote about how Ross bought his kids a pony after a co-writing credit on James Blunt’s song High from his mega-selling debut album is among the few divulgences of showbiz excess, a tale told more fondly than the one about the New York record execs and the offers of cocaine and prostitutes. It doesn’t really matter if you’re meeting the Pope or the Dalai Lama or the bloke three doors down,” says Ross. “What the reader really wants to know about is you and your emotions.” Doing those shows, I realised what worked best for the audience was knowing I was going to do a cross-section of my solo things, but also lots of Deacon Blue songs. Because that’s been my life, really – it’s more central to me than anything else. But I think there’s been a change in the way music is viewed. That thing that we grew up with, in the 70s and 80s, when you were either in or out, cool or not cool, you loved this band, so you hated that band…. It’s the constant search in the book,” says Ross, when I suggest that the pursuit of joy is a recurring theme, whether on stage in front of 250,000 headlining Glasgow’s Big Day in 1990 or visiting slums in Brazil with Christian Aid.

There’s lots of stuff about the band, but also lots that’s very personal – material that would really be of no consequence to anyone else, but meant a lot to me. When it comes down to it too it doesn’t matter who you are, everyone’s genuine experiences are interesting in the way that all accents are. It’s just how those experiences are interpreted.” Origins in Dundee I think that’s the search for most people – to realise when you are happy, to realise when life is good. I don’t want to use the cliche of Calvinism, but there is a sense in which sometimes that can dominate our lives, that somehow you deny yourself. I don’t talk really much about Lorraine, or my ex-wife, and I don’t talk about my children. I love them all dearly but I felt these weren’t my stories to tell.” There are sepia-toned recollections of the roles his grandparents played in his young life, and insights into the stifling nature of an upbringing in the Plymouth Brethren. Passages about the dawning realisation of his father’s mental health struggles and, much later, well-intentioned events going wrong in the days preceding his mother’s death in 2020, are especially moving. His recollections of his days as a youth worker in Dundee, and as a young teacher in Glasgow, suggest that had the nascent songwriting flame not taken hold, working with young people would have delivered their own, harder-won, joys.It’ll be a bit experimental, and I’ll have to judge it as I go along,” he says. “But that’s my intention. I didn’t intend to write a memoir. I wrote a song called On Love for our City of Love album, which vaguely mentioned my grandparents. It was a trigger for me. I wanted to write more about them, and then I started to think about other people I wanted to write about. So I did.” In his memoir, Ross revisits his formative years growing up in Dundee, his early forays into music and the beginning, extraordinary success, fall-out, and re-emergence of Deacon Blue. Ross writes movingly and with great wit about the people and places that have meant the most to him, as well as his relationship with faith, politics, and the ever-changing challenges of being a musician. It’s just my perennial thing: it doesn’t matter what phase of life you’re at, you’re travelling through it. You’re trying to get somewhere, and possibly you’ll never arrive.” If he were to do it, it would need to be about what shaped him and what he valued as important in his life. He continues , “You’ll also not be surprised to learn that I believe songs to be the perfect medium for expressing so much of what we fail to do in simple conversation.”

There are two big things that I’ve left out,” he adds. “I don’t talk much about my children [he has four, three of them with Lorraine], and I don’t really talk about my first marriage. Because that’s someone else’s story, and I didn’t think it was fair.” If we’ve learned anything about the life-cycle of pop groups, though, it’s that the years of boom and bust can often give way to a critical and commercial rehabilitation. They go there because it’s a gathering place, and Glasgow is very similar. Bands think, ‘it happened here for them, it could happen for us’. So it’s kind of self-generating in some ways.” The first time Deacon Blue ever played Wembley Arena I started to introduce a song only to hear, “Get on with it” shouted from Row Z. We proceeded with the song, but I often thought I’d quite like to finish that story.’ A pragmatic viewRecently, the Daily Record reported on a poll of the all-time top 100 Scottish music artists, in which Deacon Blue finished a highly respectable fourth position (behind Primal Scream, Simple Minds and Travis). That’s not too shabby, is it? “It depends who they asked, I suppose,” demurs Ross. “On another day, we’d be 94th.” Yet anyone looking for the kiss-and-tell candour once pursued by the Press after the singer married his Deacon Blue bandmate Lorraine McIntosh, following the end of his first marriage, won’t find tittle-tattle here. There’s a brief mention of a party with Bruce Springsteen, a wink in the direction of a do with Bono and The Edge, a head-tilt towards Rod Stewart and a cute anecdote about Billy Joel. The Rolling Stones and George Martin ghost through paragraphs and Mike Scott of The Waterboys – a pivotal figure in Ross’s story – is both gently held to account and, ultimately, absolved. The voice of Deacon Blue - feat. new recordings of Deacon Blue classics 'Raintown' and 'Wages Day' and sumptuous new songs.