BIG COUNTRY'S BAGPIPE CURSE!

BIG COUNTRY'S BAGPIPE CURSE!

DETAILS IN THIS STORY!

Karen Schlosberg

by

Things were swimming along in a British synthetic haze in the fall of ’82 when there issued this sound over the radio waves. It sounded familiar, warm, twangy and electric...oh, right—a guitar!

With the demanding opening thunder of “Fields Of Fire,” Big Country staked another powerful claim for the vitality of rock ’n’ roll, and were entered in the Sincerity Sweepstakes (you know—the holy trinity of U2, Big Country and the Alarm, etc., etc., etc.).

The half-Scottish, half-English quartet have a strong sense of self-respect and faith in their own intuition, which has led them to some less-than-overtlycommercial career moves: Following the success of their first LP, The Crossing (which landed their first single, “In A Big Country,” in the U.S. Top 20), they followed that up not with an LP, but an EP of some new and some unreleased album tracks, Wonderland, then released the full-length Steeltown in 1984.

Steeltown was, to say the least, a mixed blessing, for the band chose to accompany the LP’s themes of economic and spiritual disillusion with an opaque, layered sound meant to illustrate the aural pictures. It did that too well, for most of the criticism was leveled at its sonic density and the LP was not as successful as its predecessors.

The band took a little break from the public eye, composing the soundtrack to the independent film Restless Native (now in limited release in the States) and staying home with families while working toward the new LP. And the new album, The Seer, produced by Robin Millar (Sade, Fine Young Cannibals) is spacious, soaring, intriguingly complex and buoyant.

“I think it’s much lighter than Steeltown,’' singer/guitarist Stuart Adamson agrees, “because it’s more an album of mood than an album that’s about ideas and attitudes. Steeltown was very much a straightforward black-and-white, documentary-styled album; we’d felt very strongly about the things that we were discussing,” he says, adding that the dense sound was-needed for the songs’ impact.

Adamson is sitting with bassist Tony Butler in a somber conference room in the band’s label’s mazelike New York office. It’s run-the-interview-gauntlet time again; guitarist Bruce Watson and drummer Mark Brzezicki are off being grilled elsewhere. Butler barely gets a word in edgewise over Adamson’s vigorous replies. He’s no doubt used to it, though it’s hard to tell if he’s bored or amused (oh, dear, there goes Stuart off again...). Adamson, meanwhile, exhibits a zealous vision of Big Country and defends it with unself-conscious pride.

“I’d dearly love Big Country to be the biggest band in the world, but because we’re Big Country, not because we’re someone else’s idea of what Big Country should be,” Adamson says earnestly. “We’ve always said that things have to be the way we see them and the way we want them for them to work. I think it’s very important to the group to do that; I also think it’s very important for people who are interested in the group that we do that, as well. I think that I have an artistic responsibility and I feel that music should reflect and be a part of the environment it comes out of. I don’t mean that in a specific Scottish sense; if I’ve learned anything over the past four or five years, it’s that no matter where I seem to go in the world, people’s hopes and fears for their own lives are very much the same.”

With a comprehensive world-view and a sense that his music should speak to something more than, as he puts it, “Baby, baby, baby I’ve loved you since I first saw you, come go with me in my long black limousine,” it’s not surprising that each Big Country LP is a coherent, logical whole.

As for The Seer, Adamson says, “I think there is very much an underlying theme; I think it’s one that could be construed in a worldly sense as ‘Those who cannot remember the past are forever condemned to repeat it’ [a thought attributed to philosopher George Santayana]. I think it’s a good one; sort of forward looking back with a sense of being positive about it, rather than a sense of being rosy-eyed and sentimental about it.”

(Adamson had once described himself as being a “depressed optimist”; reminded of that he laughs and claims it still to be true.)

“I think this album is much more an album of moods and of hopes for the future—I think it’s definitely the most inspiring thing we’ve done; it’s very optimistic,” Adamson says.

On The Seer, Adamson has tried to tie in past, present and future in a sweeping, almost epic fashion, with lyrics, melodies and arrangements that echo the timeless effect of folk music; if Steeltown was, as the band said in one interview at the time, a ‘‘20th-century album,” then The Seer is more like, say, vinyl for the 14th or 12th.

It’s reminiscent of XTC’s Mummer in that The Seer is what music would have been like if the electric guitar had been invented in a past century. And just as Mummer reflected the pastoral landscape of XTC’s home county, so The Seer is steeped in the romantic, mythic wildness of the Scottish Highlands. Songs like “I Walk The Hill,” ‘‘Eiledon,” “One Great Thing,” “Look Away,” “Remembrance Day,” “The Teacher” and the title track ring with almost legendary, compellingly spiritual resonances whose influences and meanings Adamson is hard-pressed to define.

“I think they work better in an aural sense rather than an oral sense, if you see what I mean,” he says with a neat turn of phrase. “It’s hard for me to sit here and define inspirations and roots for things like ‘I Walk The Hill,’ which is very much a song of mood and a song of spiritual things, which are really quite intangible.

“I like that idea about folk music, that sort of hand-me-down idea. Not that I’m a big folk music fan,” Adamson continues, “but a lot of the sort of ephemerals about it I think pertain quite nicely to rock music, for us, anyway—the way that it’s seen very much as a music of the people and a music that you can do anywhere, anytime. You don’t need a vast array of technology to be able to sing those sort of songs.”

To parallel the fable quality of the album, Adamson used several simple, folk-tale-like titles: “The Seer,” “The Teacher,” “The Red Fox,” “The Sailor.”

“I think I kind of did it for two songs and then thought it was quite a good idea and started doing it for them all,” Adamson says. “‘Look Away’ was actually called The Outlaw’ at one stage, as well. It was like putting the group name in ‘In A Big Country’—is this a good idea or is it really cheesy?” Adamson laughs. “But because the songs themselves are done like little parts of storytelling, it was nice to title them like that.”

The group’s straightforward lyrics and melodies, often hitting with an anthemic power, have been construed as simple, though Adamson leaves it to others to draw the line between simple and simplistic.

“I think people tend to see us as being a little bit naive and a little bit innocent, and I think that’s good,” he says, “I think there’s plenty of room for that. I think our attitudes to things are very simple; our music is what we are. And that’s all there is. That’s the bottom line. Songs like ‘I Walk The Hill’ and ‘One Great Thing’ are very closely related to what we’re about as a group.”

With the deepening texture of each album—there’s even a soft, pretty love it Big Country song, “Hold The Heart,” on The Seer—comes the fervent hope that will, in the eyes of the public, outgrow the one-guitar-wonder tag that has hounded them because of Adamson’s and Watson’s unique guitar sound (it’s been reported that Adamson’s guitar work in his former band, the Skids, influenced a certain Edge). You know. The, uh, “bagpipes from Hell” and such, which has often prompted both musicians to threaten violence at the mere mention of that droning wind instrument.

“I think people constantly referring to us as the band with the bagpipe guitar sound is the most irksome thing,” Adamson says, sighing. “It’s a shame that people have that sort of blinkered view of us.

“I think with each album we’ve showed quite a lot of musical scope,” he continues. “Obviously, I think there’re things on The Seer that we weren’t capable of doing on the first two albums, just because the longer the group goes on, the stronger we get. We have a very individual sound, and that does carry through all the music that we do, whether it be a slow ballad or a fast rock song. They always sound very much like Big Country because they’re all done with a lot of care and a lot of pride and a lot of passion. It’s all very much Big Country.

“I think we do a lot of things that are just—’’Adamson pauses then spews in good-natured frustration, “it always comes back to that goddanm bagpipe guitar sound!” He laughs. “Show me the bagpipe guitars on ‘Look Away’!”

His point of their expanding musical range is corroborated. He grins wickedly.

“Now we have guitars that sound like fiddles, is that what you mean!” He and Butler laugh.

Well, now that you mention it...

Just kidding. Really. 0