00:00Good morning, Peter.
00:02Morning.
00:03Good morning, up-and-coming Glasgow musician, Peter.
00:07There you go, it's incredible, it's 66.
00:10It's all happening.
00:12You said both albums are rooted in a version of Glasgow.
00:17I thought that was quite fun because, you know,
00:19I've talked to other musicians who, you know,
00:25the Glasgow that they base their songs on or their characters are,
00:28it isn't necessarily the one that they inhabit,
00:30if you know what I mean, there's a kind of version of it
00:33that either takes on an American quality or a noir-ish quality
00:37and stuff like that.
00:39In your mind's eye, did you have a particular version of Glasgow
00:42that some of your characters were emerging from?
00:45Yeah, because really what I was doing was picking up
00:48where I left off 40 years ago when I was an art student in a band
00:52and, you know, when Simple Minds and all that were knocking about
00:57and Strawberry Switch played and Autodemages and all that in Glasgow
01:01was a bit kind of happening place.
01:05So I was just, it's that kind of range,
01:09but I mean it is quite cinematic that even then,
01:11I mean the concept of Glasgow was always quite cinematic
01:14and quite dramatic.
01:16It kind of suited to that.
01:19So I'm unashamedly nostalgic, you know, for that period
01:22and I think a lot of the songs and the sounds of the songs
01:26would fit into that period quite well.
01:30I talked to PJ Moore from the Blue Nile
01:34and he talked about that period in the 80s
01:38and Bobby from the Bluebells has talked about it as well,
01:41about that there was all kinds of folk arriving up in Glasgow
01:44trying to find the next best sound and stuff like that.
01:47Do you think there was a version of things
01:49where you could have been sitting in Nico's having a Brandy Alexander
01:52and you could have actually signed a record contact at that stage?
01:56Well, me personally.
01:57Yeah, because I mean there was people who were like barmen,
02:00there was people that were waitresses,
02:02there were people who were like artists and stuff like that
02:04and then next week they were on top of the pops, Peter,
02:06so you could have been in the right place at the right time is all.
02:10Well, obviously we weren't in the right place at the right time
02:14and it wasn't for what I'm trying.
02:17That never really worked out for us
02:19but we would have loved something like that.
02:21And yes, of course, that's very much what the vibe was on the scene really
02:27was people would be knocking about Great Western Roads
02:30dressed as baby goths and then the next week they'd be signed
02:35and then the next month they'd be on top of the pops or whatever.
02:38So it seemed quite possible for all these things to happen
02:41but sadly it didn't happen to us.
02:45Why do you think kids had that confidence at that time?
02:48I asked Jim Kerr, you know, like his first interview,
02:50he was a wee guy from Torrey Glen in his first interview,
02:52he said he wanted to be the biggest band in the world.
02:54Where do you think that kind of bravado came from,
02:57from people of that generation?
03:01I don't know.
03:03I mean Glasgow's a very, I think it's a very artistic, creative city.
03:09I don't really know where that comes from,
03:11I don't know where that seam of creativity has grown from.
03:17But I think people just felt they were entitled to have a go at doing this
03:23and then they could pick up a guitar and get a sense.
03:26Also it was part of the times, I mean the ethos of the times was,
03:31I mean Axoff started really doing it I suppose in 1977, 77, 78,
03:36so that was just not post-punk, I mean that was kind of punk.
03:41Although I wasn't really punking myself.
03:45It was just that that's what you did, you could be in a band.
03:49If you had a guitar and you'd get a drummer, you could just have a go.
03:52And then you'd go and see, I mean I saw the Semple Mites in the Mars Bar,
03:56I was like, what?
03:58I was like, how could people from Glasgow do that?
04:01How could, well they can, you know, and they were amazing.
04:04And there was that squashed wee sweaty bar,
04:07and Jim was there with his pudding haircut,
04:11his Shakespearean haircut.
04:14And it was just great and I thought, well I want to be part of all this,
04:18this looks fun.
04:20But of course it's not, you know, you have to work hard.
04:23They worked incredibly hard.
04:25And you've got to get lucky as well.
04:27We worked, you know, we did our best but it never really happened for us.
04:31But I always maintained an interest in music.
04:34But we got kind of tired and punch drunk really from constantly trying
04:39and not really getting anywhere.
04:41Yeah, and then things like, you know, Local Hero kind of sets the scene
04:46for acting becoming the big focus.
04:49Did you still kind of carry around a guitar and stuff like that?
04:54Not really.
04:55I mean, first of all, I've never really been a guy,
04:57I'm not the guy with the guitar at a party, you know, I'm not that guy.
05:01I don't come and join in and get to sing songs.
05:04I've never been that guy.
05:07I think I just wanted to, Local Hero was such a great kind of,
05:18a great accident, a great piece of fate sort of plucking me out of,
05:25you know, hanging about the amphora or the Miles Bar
05:28or the College of Building Technology bar and going to this other world
05:35that I was also very, very interested in.
05:39I thought, well, I've got to go with this.
05:40So I didn't really, I stopped sort of pursuing actually being a signed up
05:49pop person.
05:50There were a few kind of residual things that happened.
05:57I was always sort of half in bands and half kind of,
06:02there's lots of recordings of bits and pieces and things that we did
06:06in various studios that never went anywhere.
06:10But I think my heart had gone out of it really.
06:13And I just wanted to get on with acting, which seemed strangely more,
06:19that was kind of happening for me, you know.
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