'When The World Knows Your Name' - Deacon Blue (1989)
It was September 1989 and was the first time I'd lived away from home before and it was all a bit strange and disorientating. Thankfully I soon made friends - especially a local girl called Dawn who also worked in the hotel. Her parents owned a number of holiday cottages in the village and she used to help out with cleaning them. One day, after our shift making toast and serving breakfast I went to help her out with cleaning one of the cottages.
She put on one of her CDs - 'When The World Knows Your Name' by a rock band from Glasgow called Deacon Blue. I'd vaguely heard of them before, mostly for their weirdly-titled single 'Chocolate Girl' ['He calls her the chocolate girl / Cause he thinks she melts when he touches her / She knows she's the chocolate girl / Cause she's broken up and swallowed / And wrapped in bits of silver'] which I'd seen them play live on BBC's lunchtime show Pebble Mill. The track was from their first album, Raintown, released in 1987.
So, on went the CD and the first track I heard was 'Real Gone Kid'. Really catchy hook, great vocals, and very tight musicianship.
I kept listening and more great tracks came - 'Wages Day', 'Love and Regret', 'This Changing Light', 'Fergus Sings The Blues', 'One Hundred Things' etc, etc. I was really loving this album - and this band.
The line-up of the band consisted of vocalists Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh, keyboard player James Prime and drummer Dougie Vipond. The original Deacon Blue band also included Ewen Vernal as bass guitarist.
Now that I was a fan I wanted to hear more of this very original band. On my next 'wages day' I took a trip through to the HMV Store in Inverness and bought myself copies of 'When The World Knows Your Name' and 'Raintown'.
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| The Haven Hotel, Plockton - my home from 1989-1991 |
So what's so great about Deacon Blue? Their name was taken from the title of the Steely Dan song "Deacon Blues". The main song writer of the group is lead singer Ricky Ross. Born in Dundee in 1957, he originally trained as a school teacher but soon turned to music. His lyrics often contain understated political sentiments and he is a vocal supporter of Scottish independence. The only female member of the band, Lorraine McIntosh, born in East Ayrshire in 1964, and adds a haunting and often quirky vocal line to many of the bands tracks. Ross and McIntosh were married in 1990 and have three children.
I love that every album was different in style, from rock, to experimental pop ('Whatever You Say, Say Nothing') to more 'folksy' style ('Fellow Hoodlums') to 'Four Bacharach & David Songs' to jazz and blues (B-sides of singles from the 'Fellow Hoodlums' albums.)
I also love that they were/are so prolific. In 1990 they release the double album 'Ooh Las Vegas' - a compilation album containing 23 tracks B-sides, unreleased tracks, and songs written for William McIlvanney's television play Dreaming.
The music of Deacon Blue always takes me back to those days in the Highlands when - aged 20 and 21 - I was experiencing living on my own for the first time. It was the end of the 80s and beginning of the 1990s and I was smoking for the first time, and getting drunk for the first time. Happy days!
Deacon Blue still perform - on a part-time basis. Ricky Ross currently presents Another Country with Ricky Ross on BBC Radio Scotland and has covered for Bob Harris and Dermot O'Leary on BBC Radio 2. He also occasionally broadcasts for Radio 2 from the yearly Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow.
Lorraine McIntosh took a break from music to play the character Alice Henderson in the popular Scottish soap opera River City, which is set in a fictitious suburb of Glasgow. Her character first appeared in 2002 and was written out during May 2010.
Here are the band today, appearing live on the Chris Evans breakfast show on BBC Radio 2.
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