Big Country talk ahead of headline Robin 2 show
For a while, they were the biggest rock band in Britain. Big Country’s guitar-driven sound gave them huge commercial success as their debut album earned a platinum disc and the follow-up went to number one.
During the mid 1980s, they were untouchable – but then came the decline.
Having featured in the Band Aid charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas and toured with artists like Queen and The Who’s Roger Daltrey, the band started to fracture
They were dropped by their record label, their drummer Mark Brzezicki quit and their singer Stuart Adamson, an alcoholic, split from his first wife.
And while the band remained afloat, dwindling commercial success and the long-term deterioration in Adamson’s mental health led to a farewell tour.
During those shows, Adamson took his own life. He was found dead in a hotel room in Hawaii.
The band reformed in 2007 to celebrate their 25th anniversary with founder members Bruce Watson, Tony Butler and Mark Brzezicki hitting the road and releasing a new record. They teamed up with Mike Peters of The Alarm and Bruce’s son, while Simple Minds bassist Derek Forbes replaced the retiring Tony Butler.
And though the line-up continued to evolve, with the departure of Mike Peters, the band enjoyed a renaissance.
Their current line-up continues to feature Bruce Watson and his son Jamie alongside original drummer Brzezicki, singer Simon Hough and bassist Scott Whitley. And tonight they’ll make a welcome return to the region when they headline Bilston’s Robin 2.
The band are playing a short run of shows before heading Down Under to headline tours in Australia and New Zealand, though they’ll be back later this year, with headlines planned for The Buttermarket, in Shrewsbury, on November 7, and The Mill, in Birmingham, on December 13.
Their current tour marks the 35th anniversary of their Steeltown record, which was the second studio album by Big Country. It was recorded at ABBA’s Polar Studios in Stockholm with production from Steve Lillywhite.
Released in October, 1984 Bruce Watson remembers the time well, as the UK was in the grip of the Miners Strike: “We started work on Steeltown back in June 1984 at Abba’s studio. My Dad was a miner, so what we did was knuckle down to hard work for six weeks.”
Regarded by many as a classic, the multi-million selling ‘Steeltown’ went straight to the #1 slot in the album charts and the band will recreate it at the Robin 2 as well as performing classic hits and live favourites like Fields of Fire, In A Big Country, Chance, Wonderland, Look Away and many more.
Though Adamson has past, he remains a towering influence on the band. Brzezicki remembers: “He used to say, ‘Don’t call me a musician. I’m a songwriter, guitarist, singer, but muso – I don’t like that tag’. And yet actually he was a really good muso.
“Although he was playing punk, he still really knew how to play the guitar.
“Stuart was groundbreaking – he was making this stuff up. I think that’s it: we were allowed to make stuff up and, unlike any other situation I’ve been in, we were encouraged to do so. It was allowed to happen through Steve Lillywhite, but it happened before we even had a producer because Stuart embraced all originality.
“There were no rules – if it sounded good and fired us up that’s what went down.”
The band started their recording career with three hits – Harvest Home, Fields Of Fire and In A Big Country – and Adamson wrote the sleevenotes when their debut was subsequently reissued. He said: “The music I felt wasn’t like the music I had grown up hearing, or rather, not like any one of them. It was all of them jumbled up and drawn into something I could understand as mine.” I found that I could play this music and connect the guitar directly into my heart. I found others who could make the same connection, who could see the music as well as play it.
“The sound made pictures. It spread out wide landscapes. Great dramas were played out under turbulent skies. There was romance and reality, truth and dare. People being people, no heroes, just you and me, like it always was.”
Tickets are available at the venue.
