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The Clash: On the Road Across Scotland, 1980

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‘We seem to attract quite a bit of it,’ Mick Jones said about the interest of the local Bobbies in Dundee, in this short film of The Clash on the road across Scotland, from February 1980.

Joe Strummer joked The Clash were giving the Tayside police a change from the usual drunks, giving them the opportunity to have some fun with some lads from down south. ‘And we could do well without it,’ Jones added.

An hour before their concert in Edinburgh, Strummer preps his voice with some honey and lemon. Outside young fans, some without tickets, have been waiting since 2 in the afternoon just to get a glimpse of their idols. Later, the band will let in a few of these youngsters into the concert for free.

This is The Clash when they were still living a precarious existence, hand-to-mouth, constantly on the move.
 

 
With thanks to Nellym.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.14.2012
07:58 pm
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‘The Glamour Chase’: A documentary on the beauty and despair of singer Billy Mackenzie

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When he moved back to Dundee, Billy Mackenzie didn’t have any recording equipment in his home, and would spend hours in the local ‘phone booth, singing his latest ideas down the line to his record producer. It was typical of the maverick singer and musician whose life ran like a series of connected film scenes, from his early marriage in Las Vegas, to the excesses and glamor of his career as one half (with the prodigiously talented Alan Rankine) of the perfect pop duo The Associates.

Starting out in the mid-1970s, The Associates went on to create a giddy, euphoric soundtrack, around Billy Mackenzie’s incredible voice, which thrilled throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. From the opening chords of “Party Fears Two”, a new world of sensation opened - a world of expectation, excitement, pleasure, hurt and despair - emotions that in time came to reflect Mackenzie’s life.

As their success grew, so did the money (reputedly millions) and drugs (there’s a story of Rankine and Mackenzie being kept on heart monitors for 4 days after ingesting excessive amounts of cocaine), and the fears about performing (a tour of America was canceled days before it was to take place). Rankine eventually quit the band. Mackenzie carried on. Until in the 1990s, the record label were no longer willing to pay for Billy’s unfettered genius. Told of their plans over lunch, Billy only asked for one thing, a taxi home. An account cab was booked, thinking Mackenzie was only returning to his London address, instead he took it all the way back to Dundee, in Scotland.

As Marc Almond points out in this documentary on Mackenzie, The Glamour Chase, Billy must have known genuine heartache to sing with such painful beauty. Tragically, it was such heartache, this time over his mother’s untimely death, that led Billy Mackenzie to commit suicide, at the age of 39, in 1997. Such a terrible loss that revealed the darkness at the heart of The Associates’ music.

With contributions from Alan Rankine, Paul Haig, Siouxsie Sioux, Marc Almond, Martin Fry, Glenn Gregory and Billy’s family, The Glamour Chase is a moving testament to the scale of Billy Mackenzie‘s talent.
 

 
Bonus track, ‘Party Fears Two’, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.28.2012
07:49 pm
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