Wonderland - The Essential Big Country

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Grant: “What made it so special? It’s just a certain chemistry. You can’t quantify it – it either comes or it doesn’t. The passion and the motivation of everyone – some of it rubs off. Like you put a dry log next to an ember and it catches fire – it’s the same thing.” The height of the band's popularity was in the early to mid 1980s, although they have retained a cult following for many years since. The band's music incorporated Scottish folk and martial music styles, and the band engineered their guitar-driven sound to evoke the sound of bagpipes, fiddles, and other traditional folk instruments. On 9 July 2015, the band announced that Derek Forbes would no longer be performing with Big Country, and that all forthcoming gigs would go on with a replacement, Scott Whitley. [30] On 12 November 2021, the band announced that bassist Scott Whitley would be leaving the band to pursue other interests. His replacement is Gil Allan from Dunfermline. [ citation needed] Band members [ edit ] Current members [ edit ] Image I know that really hurt Stuart a lot. I mean, big time,” says Butler. “It wasn’t fair and the album died because of it. A lot of things went sour because of that scenario. It definitely hit Stuart bad. And it really did kill the commercial potential of the band – losing that made the industry feel as though the band had no space.” That’s not gonna happen – but I still want to see Big Country and this is the only way we’re gonna have it.”

Big Country star found dead – The Scotsman". News.scotsman.com. 18 December 2001 . Retrieved 8 April 2014. I’ve survived a lot to get this far,” he says, “and I wish Stuart could have had one more day to think about what was happening to him. Maybe he’d still be here, and I wouldn’t need to be and I’d be sitting here just as a fan, just like you, and we’d be going up the front and singing our heads off to the songs,” he shakes his head. The thing was, it was so remote, if the cops came you’d see them, cos they had to come up the hill. The first time they came they brought dogs, ten of them. We stashed everything. We were all tripping, hanging upside down from the trees like bats. So these cops come with torches and don’t know what to do: ‘Get down from that tree’ [mimics uncertain cop voice] ‘…or we’ll arrest you’.” Adamson later spoke about the period: “I stopped working and quit bevvying because I was drinking too much and I didn’t enjoy that too much either. You get used to having a drink now and again and then you just get used to using it and I didn’t like that about myself too much…” The Irish Charts - All there is to know". irishcharts.ie. Archived from the original on 5 January 2010.

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Between their last gig in October 2000 and his death in December 2001, Bruce Watson spoke to Adamson a few times by phone “but I could still tell he was still in hell,” he says. Big Country ultimately faded from the popular music landscape because their earnest and serious approach ended up being deeply uncool by the late 80s. The band couldn't adapt like U2 adapted by turning to pop culture. Tony Butler, a session musician tired of being a gun for hire, had found the band he was looking for: “I thought what Bruce and Stuart were doing guitar-wise was immense. And it was lyrical, it was melodic, it was powerful – it was just lovely. I’ve got Scottish roots and it really kind of erupted from me when I first heard these guys playing…” A memorial to Adamson was held at Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline in January 2002, followed by a tribute concert at Glasgow Barrowlands in May. It brought together the remaining members of both Big Country and Skids; Adamson's teenage children, Callum and Kirsten; as well as Steve Harley, Runrig, Simon Townshend, Midge Ure and Bill Nelson. On tour in Germany at the end of 1999, Mike Peters realised for the first time that Adamson had a drink problem. “I never saw him drinking until one night in Germany when he started drinking in public again and everyone was like, ‘Whoa!’ He fell down some stairs and cut his face before a show and struggled his way through the gig. That was the first time I’d seen anything…”

a b c d "BPI Certification". British Phonographic Industry. Archived from the original on 11 August 2016 . Retrieved 11 August 2016. Find sources: "Big Country"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( April 2014) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) It also gave the press another stereotype to play with: the dour Scotsman. In the eyes of the music press, the band were pompous and dreary and so not cool, darling. Mike Peters left the band in November 2013 at the end of their 19-date Land's End to John O'Groats UK Tour. The band attributed Peters' departure to his inability to commit fully to Big Country, much of his time being devoted to The Alarm and solo projects. Initially, the band intended to continue as a four-piece, sharing lead vocals and returning all the songs to their original keys; Peters had required the songs to be tuned lower to accommodate his deeper voice. [26] However, when they resurfaced in December 2013, they were joined by English singer Simon Hough, who performed most of the lead vocals as well as harmonica and additional guitar. [27] [28] While the status of Hough's membership was not immediately clarified, in a March 2014 podcast, Bruce Watson confirmed that Hough was now the band's fifth member. He also indicated that the group was working on new material, which would involve Hough, for potential future release. [29]I think [we were] trying to understand masculinity in a way,” says former Skids frontman Richard Jobson. “And that military imagery is so potent. If you look at the sleeves of Masquerade and Charade [pictures of the battle of Culloden and uniformed men playing cards with a gun on the table, respectively], thematically, they’re about masculine grace. If you were really going to analyse all the work, I think you’ll find that’s at the root of it all – finding some kind of grace in the whole process of being a man. And not being ashamed of that.”