30 Ricky Ross Still Rocking At 60 As
Deacon Blue Star Hits The Road For Solo Gigs 30 Years After Band's First Album
Daily Record 26th August 2017
Ricky reckons it is good to be back on his own and says: "I started out that
way. There is something very raw and very honest about it." It’s as good a time
as any for him to dust down some of the band’s most familiar songs and give them
another turn around the block.This time, there is no string section or swelling
choir. Lorraine McIntosh – also known as Mrs Ross – will not be adding backing
vocals and moral support.
In between new songs, it’s just him singing huge hits such as Raintown and Wages
Day in the stripped-back way he first wrote them. Ricky said: “For me, it’s good
to be back on my own. I started out that way. There is something very raw and
very honest about it. “Sometimes it goes horribly wrong, you forget what you’re
doing and you’ve got no one else to help you out. “But when it goes right, it’s
a really interesting connection to a room and you have a shared experience.”
His new album, Short Stories Vol 1, started on a skiing holiday with his son
Seamus. (One great thing about being a rock ’n’ roll veteran is being
comfortable with doing deeply un rock ’n’ roll winter sports.) After a day on
the piste, Ricky found himself revisiting forgotten tunes and abandoned lines of
lyrics. He said: “I had my laptop with me. For those few hours on my own every
day, I was going through all these snippets of ideas. I’d forgotten about all
this stuff.”
By the time he got home to Glasgow , he was fired up to write a new album. At
the start of March, he recorded 15-odd songs over two days. Some had started
life in the French alps. But he also felt ready to revisit some of the hits that
defined the band in the 80s. One in particular – I Was Right and You Were Wrong
– was ready for a different treatment. He said: “It was on our greatest hits
record. It was a big expensive arrangement, it was a single and it was a hit but
I didn’t really love it in its “It was the opposite of everything I ever
wanted to do with that song and with the music in general. I got the idea to
redo some of them the way they were first written, the way they were first
conceived.”
Looking at the video on YouTube , it’s clear You Were Right And I Was Wrong had
everything the producer could find on the mixing desk thrown at it. And who is
the dude in the leopardskin shirt acting out a film noir scenario? Surely not
this quiet Yes campaigner and radio presenter in a denim jacket. Today, Ricky no
longer has to play the role of the pop star. If he wants to sit behind the piano
and revisit old songs, there is nothing stopping him.
He has played the huge hits with Deacon Blue over the years. But giving them a
solo outing in a small venue is quite different to belting it out for the crowds
at the Barrowlands. Ricky said: “I loved the original version, of Raintown, I
loved the album. But it’s different to go back and sing a song you wrote 30 or
35 years ago. You sing these songs automatically if you sing them with the band.
If you sing them on their own, you remember.
“That’s why it’s stimulating to go back and revisit the back catalogue. Do they
still have the same emotional punch? Then you end up with just these songs, you
and a few people sitting in front of you and you kind of know if they’re going
to work or they’re not.” Deacon Blue were originally together for eight years
before splitting in 1994. Ricky – who rejoined the ban when they reformed in
1999 – says those early years felt long at the time. “Four years into it, we
said, ‘We’re not doing these old songs any more.’ It was craziness. Now we don’t
think anything of doing a song that’s 30 years old.”
One of the dilemmas of becoming a successful songwriter is that the life
experiences that you mined for your early material change. Life might be more
fun but it offers thinner pickings. The net must be cast wider. No one wants to
listen to an album about doing the soundcheck, ordering room service and
listening to the drummer talk about pedals all the way to Wolverhampton. Ricky
said: “Raintown is about something I never see now. I had just left Dundee and
moved to the south side of Glasgow. I was working in Maryhill as a teacher. It
was just p*****g down all the time. Dundee never had that much rain. I was never
dressed for it properly. I was always wet by the time I got to work.
“I was only starting out but other people had been there for 10 or 15 years.
They were doing their pools coupon on a Monday morning, thinking about escape.
Work was an oppressive thing for them, they didn’t enjoy it. So I was writing
songs about wanting to get out, about the town, about the weather, about work
that was bringing them down instead of making them feel good.” Now he can no
longer mine the staff-room for inspiration, Ricky has to look elsewhere. One of
the new songs on Short Stories, A Gordon For Me, was written for MND campaigner
Gordon Aikman’s husband, Joe.
Despite being on opposite sides of the independence referendum campaign Gordon
and Ricky became friends. He performed the song at Gordon and Joe’s wedding. It
was terrifying. “My nerves floored me,” he recalled. “My mouth was like
sandpaper. I don’t think anyone noticed eventually but I knew. By the third
song, I’d settled down but I had to work at it.” Ricky is part of a generation
of Scottish musicians who have had lives beyond the recording studio. Deacon
Blue broke up in 1993 because the drummer, Dougie Vipond, wanted to pursue his
career as a BBC sports reporter. Lorraine McIntosh is a successful stage and TV
actress.
Pat Kane, of Hue and Cry, is as well-known as a political and cultural
commentator as the guy who sang Looking For Linda. Ricky presents two shows on
Radio Scotland: Another Country and Sunday Morning. He also has a less visible
career as a songwriter, co-writing with Emma Bunton, KT Tunstall, Will Young,
James Blunt and others. He had no idea, when he gave up the classroom for the
tour bus, that it would turn out this way. He recalled: “I was in my late 20s
and a Japanese film crew wanted to interview us after our first record. I said,
‘I think we’ll make three records and then we’ll split up.’ I could see the
other guys shrinking. “But I was almost right – what we did was four and then
split up.
“My kids are now the age I was then. I know they can’t think beyond a year’s
time. At that stage you just don’t have a plan and that’s OK. “Plans always
scared me a little bit. And then you get older and say, I wish I had a plan.”
For a while after the band split up, Ricky would get “job envy”. “People would
say ‘I’m really busy, I’ve got so things to do, so many emails’ and I would have
nothing in my diary. I wouldn’t know what I was going to do. You have to ride
the waves of that.“You don’t know what life’s going to be – but that’s quite
exciting.” Anna Burnside