Blue
Irish News 13th September 2013
GLASGOW-based Deacon Blue enjoyed huge chart success with their sophisticated,
anthemic pop music for the best part of a decade. Kicking off strongly in 1987
with acclaimed debut LP Raintown, the quintet enjoyed a run of 12 Top 40 singles
including Dignity, Real Gone Kid, Fergus Sings The Blues and Your Town, scoring
two number one albums with 1989's When The World Knows Your Name and 1994's hits
compilation Our Town.
Led by singer Ricky Ross, who married co-vocalist Lorraine McIntosh in 1990,
Deacon Blue split in 1994 before reuniting on a part-time basis in 1999.
In the intervening years, drummer Dougie Vipond became a successful sports
reporter for BBC Scotland, while Ross enjoyed a solo career.
Tragedy struck the band when bassist Graeme Kelling died of pancreatic cancer in
2004. However, the band have soldiered on with a rejigged line-up to enjoy yet
more chart success with the release of their ironically titled new album The
Hipsters, which entered the Top 20 last year.
Having just enjoyed a summer of festival gig appearances including T In The Park
and V, the Glasgow group are on the road once again and headed for shows in
Dublin and Belfast next week.
HELLO Ricky, what are you up to today?
The tour kicked off on Friday and we just played three nights in a row, so we've
a day off today. The first date was a charity gig at King Tut's in Glasgow,
which was a nice sweaty one.
It's a much smaller venue than we normally play but it went really well. The
first couple of nights on a tour you're always changing things around a bit to a
certain degree - but I think we're getting settled now.
Are you enjoying being back on tour?
Very much so. We did T In The Park and V Festival over the summer which were
really good - but they were only short shows. When you're gearing up for a tour
proper you have to bring in a lot more material, so it's been great to go out
and start doing lots of songs from right across our albums.
We always change the set around a lot anyway, so every night is different.
That's one of the ways we keep it fun for everyone.
Your current album The Hipsters has done really well, are you playing plenty
from it as well as the hits?
The Hipsters was great for us - people really responded to it and it gave us the
chance to play new songs for the first time in a long time.
The show is built around it, really.
We normally do a good lot of stuff from it. But we put on quite a long show so
there's room for a real mixture of songs.
Were you surprised when four songs from The Hipsters made the Radio 2 'A-list'?
Yeah - I don't think that has ever happened for us, certainly not in a long long
time anyway. So it was amazing.
Even back in the times when we were always on Radio 1, I don't know that we ever
had four songs in heavy rotation.
So it was incredible, because it means that when we're playing live now even
people who might not have the album still know those songs and treat them like
old friends.
You celebrated the 25th anniversary of Raintown last year.
What's it like to perform for a mixture of old fans and younger folks who were
barely born in 1987?
Some of them weren't even born when we split up in 1994, I think. It's lovely to
see younger people at the gigs and if they're happy to come see us we're happy
to have them along. It's given us a real sense of rejuvenation.
So, are you already thinking about the next record?
I am. We don't have any concrete plans yet but I've started writing, so we'll
start demoing and working on stuff when we come back off tour - that'll be a big
part of October and November for us.
Having been a 'part-time' band for so long there, are you enjoying being back at
it full-time again?
Well, we're almost full-time. We're full-on when we're doing Deacon Blue, like
now. But we also all do other things when we're not together, which we all got
used to after we split.
So we come from other places now - I think that's quite healthy actually and
probably a better way to be in a band. I think it helps your creativity.
Sometimes it can get very intense when you're all entirely focused on one thing
and one thing only. When we split in 1994, we all felt very strongly that there
really wasn't another album in us. We'd reached a creative end, really. Things
had to change.
I didn't really expect it to go in this direction - but it's great that it has
and I embrace it.