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