1983 4Ever: Dreams Stay with You

My obsession with Scottish post-punk probably began the first time I heard John McGeoch's guitar, but certainly reached an apogee with Big Country. 

I first heard them in September of 1983 during the height of the New British Invasion/synth pop craze and almost immediately ran out to buy their debut The Crossing at the old Quincy Records off the main drag in Quincy Square. I remember actually being afraid that if I didn't get the album right away they might disappear back into the ether somehow. It was that kind of year.

I played The Crossing incessantly during the blissful autumn of 1983, giving the poor slab of vinyl respite only to play the Cocteau Twins and Comsat Angels in equally merciless rotation. It was a time when I began pursuing my art career seriously, and it seemed perfectly synchronistic. Why?

Well, perhaps because Big Country seemed to be a band that emerged fully-formed from my subconscious. I almost couldn't believe that they existed, having come at a point when I was getting worn out with most of the synth-pop and glam metal I was hearing on the radio. All I wanted was to hear a proper hard-rocking guitar band in the old-school style, without any of the bargain basement Van Halen guitar xeroxing and fourth-hand Rob Halfordisms I was sick to death of at the time. A band that wouldn't sound out of place in 1975, but weren't retro either.

Which is why Big Country were the band I was desperate to hear but never thought to expect. They obviously had a lot of U2 and The Clash in their sound, but could probably play circles around both bands with one hand tied behind their backs. There was also a lot of Thin Lizzy harmony and Gaelic mist in their guitar sound, and not a little Rush-tier superchops in the rhythm section, which just put the icing on the cake.

When I first played The Crossing, I vividly remember trembling by the time it was over, it had such an emotional impact on me. Hell, I remember my hands shaking as I flipped the record to the second side. Little did I expect that "Harvest Home" was waiting there to blow my brains out of my skull. And The Crossing was just a warm-up to their blistering second album, Steeltown, an album that became the soundtrack to my liberation from the clutches of my unhappy childhood home.

I didn't understand why I was drawn towards Scottish music in particular or Celtic bands in general, it was just instinctual. I was always struck by the irony that I was mad on Thin Lizzy, Stiff Little Fingers, early U2 and The Undertones at a time when the Irish Catholic kids were all listening to The Rolling Stones, The Who and Black Sabbath. I loved plenty of English and American bands too, but there was a poetic, mystical quality to the Scots bands in particular that I identified with, as well as a passion I felt deep in my gut. Scars, pre-sellout Simple Minds, these guys and of course my beloved Cocteau Twins just reached me on a level I could never quite explain. Even the early Altered Images, which I still love.

It helped that The Crossing came out in the Autumn, and I could play it while the perfume of fallen leaves and woodfires wafted into my window on the brisk night air. For years, I would welcome the first chill of Autumn by opening the window and playing that album. Worked a charm.

Here's a scorching hot live performance of "Harvest Home," performed at the Glasgow Barrowlands. The lyrics to the song itself are cryptic but the title might come from Thomas Tryon's 1973 novel, whose themes of a rural remnant of Celtic/fertility rites eerily mirrors the contemporaneous Wicker Man film, and yet is more akin to LaBute's loathesome Wicker Man remake, with its murderous pagan matriarchy.

But it just goes to show that the old ways never really disappeared there, even in the staunchest Presbyterian districts. You can't de-magic the landscape it seems, and that seemed to come through in a lot of the music at the time.

Harvest Home was made into a 1978 mini-series which featured Bette Davis and a young and nubile Rosanna Arquette. This movie freaked me the hell out back in the day.

Big Country never really hit the big time in the US. They weren't what you call pretty or cool, and were unfairly tagged as a novelty act. They concentrated on their music rather than their image, the ultimate sin in the 80s. Their third LP, The Seer is worthy, but their fourth, Peace in Our Time, was a tragically misguided attempt at AOR rock. Try as they might, they never were able to recapture the early magic after that. 

Tragically, Stuart Adamson, lead singer and guitarist, would struggle with depression and alcoholism and commit suicide in 2001. Rest in peace, brother. You left the world a better place than you found it.