Rock, pop and dance music
Rock and pop
According to the veteran Scottish music broadcaster Stewart Cruickshank, ‘there is no such thing as indigenous rock music in Scotland’. In the historically literal sense he’s referring to, this is true, the consensus being that rock – out of blues - is originally an African-American conception. Scotland, though, with its seafaring history and long legacy of emigration, offered a welcoming port of entry to the new music crossing the Atlantic during the 1950s and 60s, from Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, through early rock’n’roll, to beat and Motown. The UK skiffle boom of the 1950s was headed by a Scotsman, Lonnie Donegan, albeit that he made his career in London. The home front was soon to be more than adequately manned, with American-styled Scottish bands including Lulu and the Luvvers, the Poets, the Pathfinders, the Boston Dexters and the Misfits, catering for a thriving countrywide live scene. Donovan, meanwhile, became Scotland’s favourite poster-boy for the flower-power generation.
By far the most celebrated Scottish act to emerge from this period was Alex Harvey, firstly at the helm of his Big Soul Band, then as the ringmaster of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, whose extraordinary 1975 performances in Glasgow are still talked of in hushed tones by rock connoisseurs.
Also in the 1970s, the international success of the Average White Band sealed the reputation, built on the local club scene’s affinity with vintage American record labels, of their native Dundee as Scotland’s ‘Soul City’, while heavy-rock outfit Nazareth and sugary pop pin-ups the Bay City Rollers also shifted millions of units to their respective, very different export markets.
Come the end of the decade, Scottish musicians and audiences responded with conspicuous appetite to the arrival of punk. Its anti-establishment militancy perhaps chimed partly with the concurrent pro-devolution campaign, while its disaffected, do-it-yourself ethos also struck a particular chord with bands operating outside the London music-industry ambit. The Skids and the Rezillos led the charge in Scotland, along with Johnny and the Self Abusers, who eventually cleaned up their act, became Simple Minds and ascended to stadium-rock stardom during the 1980s, with their mix of resonant anthemic hooks and New Wave edge.
In their wake came a string of commercially successful Scottish bands – Deacon Blue, Del Amitri, Texas, Wet Wet Wet, Hue & Cry, Love and Money, Big Country, the Eurythmics, the Associates – all of whom variously tempered the shiny pop polish then in vogue with a piquant twist of literacy or leftfield sophistication, often drawing again on classic Stateside influences. They were mostly from Glasgow, resulting in one of the city’s periodic spells in the fashionable music-industry spotlight as a happening hotbed of new talent.
Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and others out of Alan Norne’s Postcard Records stable pioneered the art-pop blend of playful irony, faux naïveté and melodic savvy traceable onwards through the BMX Bandits, Danny Wilson, the Proclaimers, Teenage Fanclub, Belle and Sebastian, Snow Patrol and Franz Ferdinand. At the same time, as post-punk evolved into indie, cult acts on this scene like the Fire Engines and the Exploited were joined by the Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Goodbye Mr Mackenzie and others, a parallel Scottish school exploring darker, harder-edged musical territories, more recently the province of Idlewild and the Delgados.
The seismic explosion of rave music in the late 1980s still reverberates as loudly as elsewhere through the Scottish rock and pop scene. The Shamen came from Aberdeen to the forefront of UK indie/dance outfits, while the continuing interplay between live and DJ culture also informed the sounds of the Beta Band, One Dove and Boards of Canada. More recently Scotland’s, or rather Glasgow’s aptitude for producing slick (but not stupid), user-friendly pop was further demonstrated by Travis and the reinvented Texas. And a strong grassroots groundswell of contemporary singer-songwriting became focused around the somewhat unlikely setting of Fife, home to a loose but lively network known as the Fence Collective.
The convergence among this succession of diverse talents was epitomised in 2004 when Franz Ferdinand won the
Nationwide Mercury Prize, one of the UK’s top awards across all genres, with their debut album. This once again brought the international A&R scouts scurrying northward, with Glasgow basking anew in its status as a counter-capital of cool.
Two other Scottish acts were lined up for the 2004 Mercury Prize - Snow Patrol and KT Tunstall. Snow Patrol subsequently enjoyed a run of mainstream success with 'Chasing Cars' and 'Signal Fire' from the
Spider-Man 3 soundtrack, while the career of former busker Tunstall subsequently hit the stratosphere following an opportune slot on
Later - With Jools Holland. To date she has notched up over four million album sales worldwide, as well as three
BRIT Awards and a Grammy nomination. The singer's breakthrough hit 'Suddenly I See' was used in the opening scene of the 2006 fashion satire
The Devil Wears Prada.
Dance music
Scots have always been known for their love of dancing, a partiality with a particularly strong modern tradition in and around Glasgow. There, literally tens of thousands would flock each weekend during the 1940s to such locally legendary rendezvous as the Locarno, Dennistoun Palais, the Majestic and Green’s Ballroom, many of which employed their own orchestras.
Glasgow Barrowland, now renowned worldwide as a rock arena, began life as a ballroom in this era, while Glasgow as a whole boasted more dance-halls per head of population – nearly a hundred in total – than any UK city including London.
It’s a tradition more than honourably maintained by Glaswegians today. The city’s bustling club scene covers the full gamut of styles and tastes from high-end superclubs to cutting-edge underground haunts, with a healthy two-way touring traffic between international DJs and local stars. Edinburgh clubs tend to be less vogueish and more quirky than in Glasgow, often involving collaborations with live musicians, while Dundee and Aberdeen, too, both have their own distinct community of clubland activists.
Although the rapidly protean nature of dance music makes it highly inadvisable to identify particular artists or trends as representative, the Glasgow independent labels Soma Quality Recordings, Chemikal Underground and Limbo Records are all influential players on the Scottish club scene. Venues in Glasgow consistently favoured by clubbers and DJs in the know include the Arches, The Sub Club and the Tunnel, while the Venue, Ego, the Honeycomb and the Bongo Club rank among Edinburgh’s hotspots.
Rock’n’Creative Industries
From the late 1990s, due in no small part to Tony Blair’s self-designation as Prime Minister of ‘Cool Britannia’, increasing attention in Scotland increasingly turned to the value of music as an economic asset. The conducting of studies into musical activity and infrastructure, by and on behalf of such bodies as the
Scottish Arts Council, the University of Glasgow's
Centre for Cultural Policy Research (CCPR) and
Scottish Enterprise, has since blossomed almost into a mini-industry in itself. Another factor, of course, has been the need to find replacements for actual industries like mining, steelmaking and shipbuilding.
A good many common themes have emerged, generally headed by the stark fact that not one of the major international record companies or leading independents maintains an office in Scotland, with all the resultant trickle-down effects. There is clear consensus that the prevailing absence of effective infrastructure at all levels is the primary obstacle hampering the development of the Scottish music industry: certainly not any shortage of creative talent.
Investigations such as these, especially since devolution, have given rise to an array of useful initiatives aimed at stimulating that development, broadly following an investment model. These range from increasingly well-tailored
Scottish Arts Council funding schemes and
British Council-backed showcases, to the easing of social-security restrictions on aspirant musicians, and the growing willingness among enterprise boards to consider bands and other musical ventures in line with other forms of small-scale, creative-based entrepreneurialism. Where once rock and pop were once deemed beyond the pale of public subsidy, more and more such artists are now being welcomed into the fold.
The proliferating collaborative dialogue among all sectors of Scottish music in recent years has bred growing support for the idea of capitalising on this close-knit dynamic in the form of a Scottish Music Industry Association, an all-encompassing representative and lobbying body. Consultation for a feasibility study into the proposal, commissioned by the
Scottish Government, the
Scottish Arts Councill and
Scottish Enterprise, was carried out during 2004.
Recent advances in technology, of course, have also made life considerably easier for non-metropolitan musicians, enabling the escalating growth of professional quality home studios, own-label releases and DIY promotion – all of which also present new opportunities for publicly-sourced seed-money.
There remains the nagging awareness, nonetheless, that of all musical forms, rock and pop’s ultimate success is measured the most brutally in free-market terms, and the sense that Arts Council grants really aren’t very, well – rock’n’roll. As of the early 21st century, however, by those terms Scotland is doing very well for itself indeed - even if few of the acts riding high are on Scottish labels - and any source of sustained investment is well placed to produce rapid rewards.
