Deacon Blue - Songs Under the Rain

Until the mid-nineteenth century, Glasgow's West End was an isolated stretch of greenery, dotted only with the grand country estates belonging to local dignitaries. Then, during the second industrial revolution, step by step, the cranes began to build, following the establishment of the botanical gardens and later the university, which was relocated here, to Gilmorehill, in 1870 to find a more suitable space for its campus.

Since then the landscape has changed considerably, and the West End has become one of the city's most colourful and trendy neighbourhoods, with its lively mix of clothing boutiques, wine bars and fashionable cafés, clusters of terraced houses and imposing Victorian buildings, open-air parks, bustling bookshops and the picturesque cobbled lanes branching off from Byres Road, once home to stables, carriage houses and servants' quarters. Several important museums are also located in this area, such as the Riverside, along the River Clyde, dedicated to transport and technology, or the Kelvingrove, the municipal art gallery displaying objects from all over the world, divided into departments ranging from archaeology to design to natural science.

To reach the area from the city centre, the ideal route is Great Western Road, which, besides being the name of a crucial thoroughfare, is also the title of the album that, in 2025, Deacon Blue chose as a metaphor for their forty years of career: a busy, eventful road, though not always an easy one, on which internationally they have probably gathered less than they deserved. Yet at home they are still revered as stars, thanks to an unforgettable debut album, a string of singles that climbed high in the charts, and a story behind them well worth telling. Because it isn't over yet, and it still carries on here, in Glasgow, where it all began back in 1985…

From Dundee to Glasgow: Ricky Ross, true to his faith

No smoking, no drinking, no football on Sundays. For my parents, pop music was the worst thing imaginable, and when you grow up as a teenager with that mindset, you only have two options: go along with it or rebel. In high school I was the classic coward, and music was the world where I could take refuge

(Ricky Ross)

Richard Alexander Ross, known to everyone simply as Ricky Ross, was born on 22 December 1957 in Dundee, one of Scotland's most populous cities, located on the country's east coast, facing the North Sea. He grew up in a deeply religious household, which would profoundly shape the way he thinks and acts. As a child he was already writing songs, shut away in his bedroom in Broughty Ferry, overlooking the bay, and whenever he was given the keys to the church, every spare moment he had he'd go and hide away there, alone, to play them on the piano. After finishing school, he took a teaching course, while also keeping busy as an activity leader at the evangelical circle of the Brethren Church. "We were deeply attached to the Christian Brethren community," the singer recalls, with a touch of nostalgia mixed with pride, "we spent a lot of time at church, going three or four times a week. We'd meet parents with their children from pretty much the whole area around Dundee, the typical profile was self-employed, lower-middle-class people who, nonetheless, never went without. My family was one of them, we owned our home, had a car and insurance."

Ricky would never renounce his faith or the afternoons spent within the fellowship, as we'll see further on, but it's a dimension that soon starts to feel too confining: at twenty-four he realises his destiny lies elsewhere. So he decides to board a train to Glasgow with a one-way ticket. He will never go back, not least because, as he has repeated many times, "it was written that I'd stay there forever, there's something about that place that captures you, something to do with the spirit of its people, that only those who live there can understand."

It's 1982, and Ross has youth, enthusiasm and plenty of goodwill on his side: to make ends meet, he teaches English part-time to students with behavioural difficulties at St. Columba of Iona, a secondary school in the Maryhill district, and in his spare time he nurtures his real great passion, music, which will stay with him for the rest of his life. At the suggestion of his old friend Brian McGlynn, who had convinced him to move by promising to let him join his band, he starts singing and playing keyboards in Woza, with whom for about a year he opens live shows for Friends Again and one of the Waterboys shows at the Heatery Bar in Wishaw, even though at this stage being the frontman of a band wasn't exactly top of his mind. He would rather focus on his songwriting skills, which were already clearly emerging, also because, at a time when everyone seemed obsessed with the rampant post-punk craze, he had a different artistic outlook, more that of an author or lyricist, perhaps working for someone else, having grown up listening to the records his older sister Ann brought home, in particular those of Van Morrison, James Taylor, Carole King and Simon & Garfunkel, as well as the Beatles' and Jimi Hendrix's singles. "Those were my models, I wanted to let loose doing a kind of 'Electric Ladyland' while also giving the song itself its due importance. Seeing Mike Scott and the Waterboys that night in Wishaw had opened my eyes, I thought that if someone could really make music with that much heart like he did, then I had to try it myself too".

When Woza break up, he goes it alone, and in 1984 he records a demo tape titled So Long Ago for Sticky Music, an independent Edinburgh label that at the time was trying to promote some emerging local acts. Contributing to the recordings are Ewen Vernal on bass, with whom Ricky Ross would later work again in Deacon Blue, Steven Butler and Carol Moore on backing vocals, and the Duffin brothers — Malcolm on drums, Stuart on bass and Graeme on guitar — all session musicians who were, at the same time, carving out a place for themselves, some more gloriously than others, in the Scottish new pop scene with Talking Drums, Lies Damned Lies and Wet Wet Wet. Worth noting too is Zara Ross on accordion, Ricky's wife at the time.

The eleven tracks that make up So Long Ago already hint at some of the traits that would define his future solo work: skeletal arrangements built essentially around piano parts, sentimental lyrics ("Love You Like A Son", the charming "Little India" and "Vision On") alternating with more weighty verses (for instance, "A Week In Politics" and "The Germans Are Out Today", which tells of his father's religious conversion in the Royal Air Force bunkers during the war), and a pronounced gift for melody, as shown by "Surprised By Joy" (inspired by a book by the Northern Irish essayist and theologian C.S. Lewis), "Check Out Girls" and "Don't Look Back", which touch on matters of faith without ever skimping on catchiness.

Overall it's a tentative debut, one that very few people notice, not least because the budget is tiny and barely eight hundred cassette copies are distributed, which today can be considered collector's items. One of the tapes, however, ends up with some London publishers who seem interested, on condition that Ross shows up with a band, and so now, contrary to what he had set out to do a couple of years earlier, fronting a band becomes, in his mind, the priority.

Springsteen, the Finnieston crane, Lorraine McIntosh and the others

Back then we had a great time, music was at the centre of everything but I never thought it could actually earn me a living.

I was studying to become a teacher, until Deacon Blue called me

(Lorraine McIntosh)

Within a few months, Ricky gets to know his fellow travellers. First Dougie Vipond, a classically trained drummer who had studied orchestral percussion at the Royal Scottish Academy Of Music And Drama in Glasgow. Then James Prime, a keyboardist and pianist from Kilmarnock, in Ayrshire, who had previously had stints with John Martyn's band and with Altered Images, but after getting married he needed a steady wage and so had gone to work in a bank. Finally they're joined by guitarist Graeme Hunter Kelling, born in Paisley, in the Lowlands, but raised in Mount Vernon, in the East End, who was already active on the Christian rock circuit with Tune Cookies, Precious and One Clear Day.

In its early stages the line-up goes through quite a few changes: the group calls itself Ricky Ross And Doctor Love, with Carol Moore on backing vocals, kept on board after the favourable impression she'd made on So Long Ago. The name is changed in 1985 to Deacon Blue, a tribute to the song "Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan (found on their 1977 album "Aja"). "I was walking down Tottenham Court Road in London," Ross explains, "Van Morrison was playing at the Dominion Theatre that night, I saw a poster and that song came to mind, who knows why, and I thought that character's name would look good on a bill".

The line-up, now a quintet, plays its first official gig on 5 December 1985 at the Fixx, a pub on Miller Street. Several more live shows follow without catching the attention of talent scouts, until, by sheer chance, they're spotted by Gordon Charlton of Cbs Records, who, to be fair, happened to be in the area to see the show of another band, Painted Word.

Glasgow's underground scene, in fact, is in full swing in those days, and the venues are swarming with record company managers, drawn in by the more highly rated Hue And Cry, Bourgie Bourgie, Del Amitri, Sideways Look and Love And Money. During his stay, Charlton also listens to a three-song demo credited to Deacon Blue, "Just Like Boys", "Dignity" and "The Very Thing", and is so impressed that, after consulting with Cbs executives, he offers them a contract.

This is the turning point: Ross now senses that broadening his artistic horizons requires a tweak, perhaps a strong female presence, so he considers replacing Carol Moore with Lorraine McIntosh, a girl recommended to him for the harmonies by his former bassist Ewen Vernal, who knew her well since she'd been his flatmate and had played with him for a while in Rattling The Cage. She was doing covers of Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" at a party with her brother John when Ricky first approached her. The spark, though, wasn't mutual, at least not at first, not least because she had other things going on.

"I never had an easy life, everything happened by chance, I could never really make plans" recalls Lorraine, who has Catholic roots through her mother Sarah, originally from Gweedore in Donegal, Northern Ireland. The woman died when Lorraine was only eleven: "My father was devastated, he couldn't cope with the situation and my schooling fell apart. He drank a lot and sank into depression, he stopped even paying the bills, and a week after my eighteenth birthday, we were evicted. We left Cumnock, where we'd moved when I was three, and went back to Glasgow, where dad believed he could get back on his feet, both personally and financially. I worked in pubs, but I kept getting fired because I wouldn't show up", adds the singer, who enrols at Jordanhill College with the idea of becoming a teacher, though without much conviction, so much so that when it comes down to choosing between her end-of-term dissertation and a Bruce Springsteen concert in Newcastle, she doesn't think twice and hops on a minibus with friends. "I basically dropped out of college for the Boss. I never imagined for a second that I could make a living out of music, I played in a few small bands just for fun, until one evening another girl, Mahira Gordon, and I were asked to audition for Deacon Blue. We improvised 'Take The Saints Away', 'S.H.A.R.O.N.' and 'Just Like Boys', and when this guy from Cbs turned up with a contract in hand, Ricky took us all out for dinner to celebrate. He was over the moon, they say they signed it under the Finnieston crane, on the bonnet of an old Cadillac, just like Springsteen had done", Lorraine continues, who, in a cruel twist of fate, had lost a close relative right under that very crane (her great-uncle Archie was operating it during a work shift when he fell ill inside the cabin, and they had to climb up to recover his body, lifeless, and bring it back down to the ground, ed.).

"They asked me to do some live shows with them and I was happy to accept, then to go on tour in the North of England, but I'd already booked a holiday in Greece and I turned it down. I was a fool, chances like that only come once: you could tell straight away they weren't amateurs, they put in energy, passion, grit, their songs already sounded radio-ready. I should never have gone to Greece".

She remained the chosen one, though, because the vocal talent and ease she'd shown had stunned everyone. The problem, if anything, was that Lorraine didn't have a phone — the only way to track her down was to go looking for her at home, on Great Western Road. And so, just when she thought she'd thrown away the chance of a lifetime, Lorraine found a note on the landing asking her to join the rest of the crew in London, who were already at work on the debut album. This time she didn't need asking twice, and in December 1986 the newborn Deacon Blue found themselves all together at Air Studios, under the guidance of Jon Kelly. Now there were six of them, since they'd also been joined by longtime friend Ewen Vernal on bass, who — after some hesitation (he would have preferred to carry on with jazz, where he was building a decent reputation) — became a permanent member of the band.

1987 – Postcards from the Rainy City

There's hope, even humor, in our music — it's the only way to face the economic crisis. Our album is called 'Raintown', because we're struggling in this desolate world where there's no work. The image of unemployment, with the rain falling, is Glasgow

Just enough time to sharpen their chops as opening act for a handful of shows by Sandie Shaw and Lone Justice, held at universities across northern England and Scotland, and to contribute the track "Take The Saints Away" to the compilation "Honey At The Core" (which gathered around fifteen up-and-coming Scottish artists, including Bluebells, Kick Reaction, Goodbye Mr. McKenzie and Kevin McDermott) — then Deacon Blue were finally ready for their official baptism. Their debut LP Raintown (1987) was finished in under two months, partly because Ross arrived with a dozen tracks that only needed polishing and dressing up. The rainy city referenced in the title is of course Glasgow, pictured on the cover in a masterful grainy black-and-white photo (titled "Looking South From Park Terrace 1960") by Oscar Marzaroli, one of the most admired photojournalists and documentarians of post-war Scotland.

Born in 1933 in Castiglione Vara, Liguria, Marzaroli emigrated with his family to Glasgow, where he achieved a certain fame in the Sixties thanks to his films and photographs, capable of capturing, with uncommon skill, a period of huge urban, political and social change, through images of adults going about their daily business, at work or at leisure, and of children playing in the streets. It's more or less the same thing Deacon Blue now set out to portray through their music, as toward the end of the Eighties they forged a solid partnership with the photographer to enrich the artwork of their singles and albums. Starting, indeed, with Raintown, on whose cover the iconic Finnieston Crane — symbol of the industrial era and maritime tradition of a city in perpetual construction — looms silently against a grey sky, on a day thick with rain and smoke from the chimneys. The crane is now out of use and serves as a tourist attraction, while Raintown hasn't lost an ounce of its original evocative power, and still stands the test of time as one of the least predictable pop records of the Eighties.

The first single "Dignity" came out in March 1987 and didn't even chart in the UK; it was later reissued twice and, like all the best fairy tales, went on to achieve unparalleled popularity, to the point of being considered not just the band's signature song but a genuine national monument and an integral part of Scottish life, soundtracking practically every occasion — especially the terraces of football stadiums, where it's easy to hear it sung by fans whenever Dundee United play a match. To this day it's still a fixture on the radio, in supermarkets, at work meetings, weddings and even funerals, because it's a true story that cuts deep, and anyone who's heard it even once has surely taken it to heart.

And I’m thinking about home

and I’m thinking about faith

and I’m thinking about work

and I’m thinking how good it would be

to be here someday on a ship called Dignity

("Dignity")

"It's become a kind of working-class nursery rhyme about the value of dreams, and about the certainty that dignity doesn't depend on money," Ross confides with satisfaction. He wrote it in 1985 during a holiday in Crete, after buying a copy of Sounds magazine at the airport newsstand. On the cover was Morrissey, next to the caption "thoughts of home from abroad", so "Glasgow immediately came to mind," the singer continues. As soon as he'd settled in the city he had rented a flat on Kenmure Street, in the Pollokshields neighbourhood, from where he used to watch the street sweepers through the window. "I turned their story into that of a humble street cleaner, who's worked for the Council for twenty years, night and day, without a break. The kids laugh at him, but he never complains. He dreams of putting aside a little nest egg so he can afford a boat he'll call Dignity, and when he retires he'll enjoy it, sailing it along the west coast, through towns and villages, and when someone asks him how he got it he'll answer 'with my savings — isn't it lovely? It's called Dignity.'"

The sketch started taking shape as they played it live: the masterstroke came from James Prime, who enriched it with a cascading piano melody, modelled on Nick Lowe's "I Love The Sound Of The Breaking Glass". As layers of vocals and arrangements were added the song kept building momentum, right up to the final wall of guitars that recalls "Forest Fire" by Lloyd Cole And The Commotions: it's the first piece of a masterpiece — Raintown was released three months later, on 26 May 1987, and reached No. 14 on the UK albums chart, where it stayed for seventy-seven weeks and, over time, sold around a million copies, driven by word of mouth on the radio and relentless touring (that year alone saw ninety shows, which helped cement a solid fanbase).

Born in a storm

is that the only excuse you can give

born in a storm

is that all you’re gonna live

("Born In A Storm")

The short "Born In A Storm", which serves as a prologue, is a letter addressed to himself, dark and melancholy, laying out in just a minute and a half the leit-motif over a carpet of raindrop-like piano notes that simulate the imminent arrival of a downpour: its refined noir cadences bring to mind another true-blue Scot, Paul Buchanan with his Blue Nile, before the track slowly dissolves into the title track "Raintown", complementary in theme but stylistically far more eventful, where the vocal exchanges between Ross and McIntosh mark the beginning of a romance between the two, destined to last outside the studio as well — he writing all the lyrics, she providing vital harmonies, now vibrant and energetic, now ethereal and dreamlike.

Everything fits together like a puzzle: there are ideas, creative fire, precious riffs and arpeggios. Their sophisticated pop vocabulary blends elements of folk, classical, jazz, blues and Celtic soul, and what's more the listening experience feels like a live performance, since all the band members had, at Jon Kelly's insistence, recorded together in the same room at the same time.

The album is structured like a concept piece about the everyday struggles of the working class during the years of Thatcherism and the miners' strike, with lyrics tackling concrete issues like bills to pay and job insecurity, but also love and missed opportunities, the anxieties, hopes and disillusionments of adulthood (just listen to "Ragman", to name one), attachment to one's roots and the urge to run away ("The Very Thing" or the closing "Town To Be Blamed", with its angry tones of accusation against the city which, as in a lovers' quarrel, goes from inspiring muse to prime culprit the moment something goes wrong).

Among the standout tracks are the other singles "Chocolate Girl", "Loaded" and "When Will You Make My Telephone Ring", all of which have become evergreens, each with its own distinctive character. The first, with its country leanings, features B.J. Cole on pedal steel guitar and, behind its sugary surface, hides a bitter reflection on a disastrous relationship, echoing "Cruel" by Prefab Sprout (whose leader Paddy McAloon, not by chance, was approached by Deacon Blue to help write it, but had to turn them down). "Loaded", which alludes to certain encounters in the corridors of the record industry, was shaped by Ross as a stream of consciousness over a pop/rock backing track that the rest of the band had pre-recorded on an old eight-track (it partly quotes the evangelical hymn "Christ Is The Answer"; also interesting is the B-side "Long Distance From Just Across The Road", which sets out to imitate "Shore Leave" by Tom Waits). "When Will You Make My Telephone Ring", meanwhile, is a flawless soul ballad, made irresistible by Londonbeat's backing vocals, dealing more or less with the same theme of unrequited love (masking painful content behind a breezy surface would remain a constant in the years to come).

Special mention goes to "Love's Great Fears", for which Ross has admitted a soft spot (he wrote it with keyboardist James Prime, also crucial as co-writer, while the guitar solo comes courtesy of special guest Chris Rea), and above all the slow-burning "He Looks Like Spencer Tracy Now", deeply moving for the sensitivity with which it handles a tragic subject (it was inspired by a newspaper article Ross came across about Harold Agnew, the scientific observer on the Hiroshima atomic bomb mission, who has been wracked by remorse and guilt ever since).

Unanimously praised as the band's best album, on release Raintown wrong-footed critics, who struggled to find the right label for it, eventually filing it somewhat hastily under sophisti-pop, the thoroughly British genre made in the Eighties to which it undeniably belongs by a number of aesthetic measures, but which doesn't capture the whole picture on display. Similarities with Prefab Sprout, to whom they've often been compared, Simply Red, Matt Bianco and Style Council echo throughout the record, but there are also echoes of Crowded House and Cock Robin, to name a couple from outside Europe. And yet, turning the premise on its head, none of these names would actually bring Deacon Blue to mind. The compositional range and lyrical depth of Ross's writing are so broad that, combined with Lorraine McIntosh's sparkling performances and James Prime's sharp contributions, they make the Scottish band a one-off, far removed from other phenomena that sprang from new romantic territory or the Scottish indie underground. Due distinctions made, Ricky Ross, for the honesty of his songwriting, comes closer instead to Billy Bragg, Bob Dylan or his idol Bruce Springsteen, the raw, visceral Springsteen of the backstreets who was shouldering the weight of a generation "born to run" (one thinks of the albums "Born To Run", "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" and "Nebraska"), yet the piano-driven sound also makes it impossible not to think of certain records by Billy Joel, Elvis Costello or Elton John.

The icing on the cake is the February 1988 reissue bundled with the compilation Riches, in a limited edition of twenty thousand copies that sold out fast: it contains two bonus tracks that would later be included on the album's CD edition, the title track "Riches" and "Kings Of The Western World", alongside the B-sides of the singles "Dignity", "Loaded" and "When Will You Make My Telephone Ring", among which stand out a "live at the Marquee" cover of Van Morrison's "Angeliou", "Church", "Shifting Sand" and a piano version of "Raintown" for radio.

1989 – Real gone kids take on the world

When the whole world knows who you are, it's not easy to live up to it, given the expectations, sometimes stifling, that can prove to be a double-edged sword. Yet with their second studio album When The World Knows Your Name, Deacon Blue pull it off brilliantly — in fact they go even further, with the record climbing to the top of the UK Albums Chart and knocking none other than "Like A Prayer" by Madonna off its throne. The feat is even more remarkable considering it came out on 3 April 1989, at a time when the charts were crowded with "Sonic Temple" by the Cult, "Doolittle" by the Pixies, "Street Fighting Years" by Simple Minds, "Southside" by Texas, "Everything" by the Bangles and "Blast" by Holly Johnson — to broaden the scope to a few giants of the international scene that Deacon Blue found themselves jostling with in the Top Ten.

The recordings took shape amid exhausting transatlantic back-and-forth, partly at Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles and partly at Jacobs Studios, housed in an old Georgian farmhouse in Surrey, England, while production this time was handled by Warne Livesey, who had worked with Matt Johnson on "Infected" and "Mind Bomb" by The The and with Julian Cope on "Saint Julian", before relocating to Australia to work on Midnight Oil's best-known records, chiefly "Diesel And Dust" (the one with the massive hit "Beds Are Burning", just to be clear).

The sound consequently becomes more cosmopolitan and rock-influenced, in line with market trends, without the band's DNA being distorted in the process — if anything they compensate for a few shortcomings by cranking up the power. The idea of sophisti-pop still holds, but the emphasis on synthesizers and electric guitars grows more pronounced, giving the songs extra muscle, while the lyrical horizons expand beyond the narrow concerns of Glasgow and its surroundings.

The substance, however, doesn't change: meticulous storytelling, combined with a top-notch rhythm section and the passionate interplay between Ricky Ross's husky, velvety baritone and Lorraine McIntosh's fiery alto — who from here on gets ever more visibility ("a bit too much", some sneer, but for now it's a winning formula) — make When The World Knows Your Name another first-rate work, not Deacon Blue's finest by quality but their most complete, even managing to break the last taboo by giving the Scottish band the one thing that had eluded them with Raintown: the memorable single, the kind capable of dominating radio stations the world over and cementing their appeal for good.

And I’ll show you all the photographs

That I ever got took

and I’ll play you old 45’s

that now mean nothing to me

and you’re a real gone kid

maybe now baby I’ll do what I should have did

("Real Gone Kid")

"Real Gone Kid" came out on 3 October 1988 and reached number eight on the UK Singles Chart, number five in New Zealand and number one in Spain, where it stayed for three weeks: it's a brilliant example of an end-of-decade pop song, meticulously crafted with one eye firmly on sales. It was written as a tribute to Maria McKee, frontwoman of the American band Lone Justice, with whom Ross had shared the stage back in his early days, left dazzled by her wild stage presence (hence the epithet "real gone", while the lyrics seem to allude, with autobiographical overtones, to a lost childhood and the need to grow up fast).

Besides the sparkling keyboard lines and delightful vocal interplay, which erupts into collective euphoria in the little shouts of the chorus, the video is also worth appreciating — playful and chaotic, it shows, against a white backdrop, a queue of people having a ball in an old photo booth. Among the rapid-fire snapshots, a gay kiss, a scuffle behind the curtain and Ricky Ross leaping off a Yamaha CP-70 piano stand out.

Nominated for Best British Single at the Brit Awards, "Real Gone Kid" remains their unsurpassed signature tune, but When The World Knows Your Name offers much more besides, packed as it is with characters, observations, references to everyday objects and vivid details drawn from working life. The tracklist opens with the carefree jig and reel "Queen Of The New Year", which starts with a bare snare-drum intro before the song keeps accelerating as it nears its end, with an exhilarating fiddle-music climax of violins. "Wages Day", released as the second single, rides the wave and likewise quickly works its way into the European charts, since its focus on the modern obsession with fleeting weekend pleasures lets a great many listeners see themselves in the lyrics — inspired this time by a chance encounter Ross had on a Friday night in Dundee with a man clumsily smoking a cigar, caught in that moment of fleeting swagger that only payday can bring ("you can have it all, you can take it all/ on wages day"). Often read as a companion piece to "Dignity", given that both portray ordinary people trying to escape the daily grind, "Wages Day" flaunts a brash, confident boogie-woogie piano, born of the self-assurance the band had by now gained through endless sold-out shows and their audience's devotion.

Rounding off the run of singles are the sweet power ballad "Love And Regret" and the pounding, black-tinged anthem "Fergus Sings The Blues", which radiates unconditional love for African-American music (telling in this regard are the lines "Homesick James, my biggest influence/ I still dream of Memphis" and the rich bed of horns, even though it was actually musically inspired by "Gael's Blue" by Scottish folk singer Michael Marra, himself a native of Dundee).

If Raintown had been the rain album, painted in grey and melancholy tones, When The World Knows Your Name can be called the album of light and hope, as suggested by some of the other titles on the tracklist: "The World Is Lit By Lightning", which contains the line that gives the album its name, pushes forward on synthesizers and funky rhythms ("Why, girl, when the world is lit by endless lightning, do you keep telling me you love me?/ When the world knows your name, it'll call you an angel"), "Circus Lights" warns against dazzling distractions, symbolized by the Christmas decorations on Oxford Street that the band used to watch from the windows of Air Studios, "This Changing Light" leans on bass and guitars to reassure the seventeen-year-olds of the time that the place they'll grow up in is changing, because "the cruel, heartless woman is gone" (Margaret Thatcher again, ed.).

"Sad Loved Girl" is a gem of just over a minute for piano and voices alone (compared to the demo, a verse was cut; the full version can be found among the B-sides of "Queen Of The New Year"), "Your Constant Heart" is a positive ode to love (the harmonica is played by Mark Feltham, the same player heard on "Living In Another World" by Talk Talk and on Paul Young's "I Was In Chains"), and "Orphans" is a deeply emotional lullaby that Ross had hoped might become Scotland's new national anthem (he wrote it on a train journey from London to Edinburgh, sitting next to a drunk man who kept asking a small group of orphaned children where their parents were).

Finally, there are two less flashy but genuinely well-crafted tracks, "One Hundred Things" and "Silhouette", dismissed at the time as filler, but listening back today they hold up perfectly well within an album that marks the mainstream peak of Deacon Blue's trajectory - one they would never manage to replicate, nor would they ever fully break through in the American market, distracted as it was by other rising phenomena (above all grunge) and only mildly interested in lyrics largely concerned with Scottish affairs.

Deacon Blue, however, couldn't care less about the business side of things and carry on regardless, since, as Ross is keen to point out, they never wanted to compromise their moral integrity: "We had no other purpose than to make people think, we just wanted our songs to reach the heart." Still, don't dare call them "one-hit wonders", judging by the breadth of their body of work and the warm response from audiences even in the decades that followed.

Orange Blossoms, Between Bacharach and Las Vegas

A tremendous crowd greets the band's first Australian tour in July 1989, followed by North America, and then in September they land in Europe for three dates including stops in Italy, in Milan, Florence and Turin. In December the Scottish band returns triumphantly to the UK, where they close out the year in style with two dates at the SEC Centre in Glasgow (twenty thousand tickets sold in a single day!) and a few charity shows as part of the "Cash For Kids" fundraising campaign.

1990 is another particularly intense year on several fronts. Live activity continues relentlessly: on 5 May the band plays "A Hard Day's Night" at Liverpool's Pier Head, during a tribute to John Lennon broadcast by television networks around the world.

Even more significant, though, is the event that takes place exactly a week later, on 12 May, on the shores of Loch Lomond in the Lowlands: Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh, who have for some time also been a couple off stage, get married, crowning a courtship that began "when I was twenty-three," Lorraine recalls. "I discovered Ricky through mutual friends, he was arrogant, talented and driven, all qualities I find attractive in a man. From the start we seemed to see eye to eye on things, so gradually we fell in love."

Not everyone, however, looks kindly on this marriage: the fact that Ross's ex-wife, Zara, was pregnant with their daughter Caitlin when he left her for Lorraine had caused a stir and raised ethical questions, and beyond that, the marriage between the two singers seemed bound to inevitably upset certain hierarchies within Deacon Blue itself, both on a personal and an artistic level, putting the relationships among the band members at risk.

Before that can happen, though, there's time for "The Big Day", Britain's biggest free concert, held on 3 June in Glasgow in front of around 250,000 people, to celebrate the city's designation as European Capital of Culture (besides Deacon Blue, the hosts include Big Country, Wet Wet Wet, Associates, Goodbye Mr. McKenzie and Sheena Easton, while the international guests include Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant). There's no shortage of tense moments either, with Sheena Easton booed at length and pelted with objects for apparently having lost her Scottish accent, while Ricky Ross attacks the British government during the show, dedicating "Orphans" to unemployed miners. A few weeks later the band makes its mark at the Glastonbury festival, then at Roskilde in Denmark, and at the "A Day For Scotland" event beneath Stirling Castle.

In August it's time for new music with Four Bacharach & David Songs, a fine EP of four covers from the Burt Bacharach/Hal David songwriting partnership which, although it was produced purely for fun - so much so that Ross would later dismiss it as a "collection of odds and ends" - ended up giving the band their biggest-selling single ever in the UK, thanks to "I'll Never Fall In Love Again", embroidered with delicate strings and piano, which climbed all the way to number two on the UK Singles Chart (kept off the top spot only by Timmy Mallet's cover of "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie").

The other three tracks are reworkings from the American duo's songbook, rendered in pleasantly catchy versions: "The Look Of Love", with its intriguing jazz shadings over a backing track styled like a jam session, "Are You There With Another Girl", which showcases Lorraine McIntosh's vocal range in a role previously held by Dionne Warwick, and "Message To Michael", made famous in '64 by Adam Faith, which is here given a brand new identity.

In September came Ooh Las Vegas, a special double compilation of no fewer than twenty-three songs. As the subtitle specifies, it gathers "B-Sides, film tracks & sessions", including old overdubbed demos and seven unreleased tracks written for the soundtrack of the TV play "Dreaming", based on a story by fellow Scot, poet and novelist William Angus McIlvanney, in which the band plays themselves (it's the story of a teenage fan who dreams of meeting his idols). Although it initially met with mixed reactions (some saw the project as an early, and ultimately successful, attempt to cash in, given that it climbed as high as number three on the charts), this box set too hides some real gems, chief among them the guitar-driven folk ballad "My America" and an acoustic version of "Circus Lights", genuinely stunning in this new guise. Just as good are "Undeveloped Heart", with its fiery literary pathos (it quotes Edward Morgan Forster), a fine cover of "Trampolene" by Julian Cope, "Souvenirs", with its touch of Eastern flavor, and "Long Window To Love", written right after the 1987 election while Labour Party posters were still being scraped off the walls.

As usual there's plenty of variety, not least because each track dates from a different era: the orchestral "Let Your Hearts Be Troubled" (which turns a line from the Gospel on its head), "Gentle Teardrops" and "Take Me To The Place", dedicated to their recently deceased photographer friend Marzaroli, are set within elegant arrangements, while the more introspective "Is It Cold Beneath The Hill" is sung by Lorraine McIntosh alone.

"Love You Say", the catchy "Christine", "Las Vegas" (the working title of the second album, later transformed into the prophetic When The World Knows Your Name) and "Little Lincoln" (the latter being the B-side of "Real Gone Kid") follow the path of light, carefree synth-pop, finding in "S.H.A.R.O.N." one of its most playful expressions (as mentioned earlier, it's one of the very first songs Ricky Ross ever wrote). "Disneyworld" only half succeeds: conceived as Ronald Reagan's farewell address, it uses the fairy-tale colors of the theme park in contrast to the harsh realities of adult life (a recurring trope, also found elsewhere in the tracklist on "Back Here In Beanoland", which draws on another amusement park, Chessington World Of Adventures).

The funk-tinged “Ronnie Spector” and “Down In The Flood” take a few more risks on the rhythmic side. Rounding out the picture are the rockin' “Killing The Blues,” “Don’t Let The Teardrops Start,” and the playfully toned “Born Again.”

Ooh, Las Vegas is followed by another grueling European tour, taking Deacon Blue to play at the NEC in Birmingham and Wembley Arena with the Kick Horns providing brass support, but the grandeur of the venues doesn't quite deliver the goods: the intimacy of the performances is gradually getting lost, so to ensure better sound and encourage communication between band and audience, it's decided that the next tour will be staged in smaller theatres.

Early Nineties: the right company, the wrong choices

According to a widespread theory, an artist's third album is always their best: in the case of Deacon Blue, Fellow Hoodlums (June 1991) can't quite claim that title, but it certainly belongs to the group's noble discography, as for this fateful test of maturity they opt for a return to their roots, calling Jon Kelly back into service, who had already produced Raintown.

Recorded between New York and the Guillaume Tell Studios in Paris, the album updates the band's tried-and-tested hybrid of pop, rock, soul and blues, channeling it onto a more organic, raw track led by Kelling's guitar, so as to emphasize the emotional tension of the songs and their rhythmic substance over electronics, while the lyrics once again turn to Glasgow and its everyday life.

Among the highlights are the four singles released from the album, all of which achieved notable success: “Twist And Shout,” with its tasty Cajun/zydeco influences (not exactly a masterpiece, truth be told, but it was a radio staple, reaching number 10 on the UK Singles Chart), “Your Swaying Arms,” driven by Ewen Vernal's bass lines and Lorraine McIntosh's sweet harmonies over hope-filled lyrics (“Nessuna paura ti farà piangere o ti farà diventare triste/ e ci sveglieremo presto la mattina sapendo che non te ne andrai mai”), “Closing Time,” which freshens things up in its intro by nodding to “Family Affair” by Sly & The Family Stone and is enriched by virtuoso drumming from Dougie Vipond, and the adorable Christmas ballad “Cover From The Sky,” the very first Deacon Blue single to feature Lorraine McIntosh as sole lead vocalist (it's a prayer to God asking for shelter from the sky).

If the days become the walls you never wanted

our years will give us covers from tyhe sky

(“Covers From The Sky”)

The tracklist offers other praiseworthy moments: the touching “Goodnight Jamsie” and “I Will See You Tomorrow,” framed by piano chords with a cinematic feel and mournful strings dedicated to the memory of Lorraine's father, who had passed away just a few weeks earlier, the intoxicating duet “The Wildness,” and the opening track “James Joyce Soles,” inspired by a BBC play by Scottish playwright Peter McDougall, while the title track “Fellow Hoodlums” (taken from the opening line of a speech by Chicago's newly elected mayor during Prohibition) and the jailbound “The Day That Jackie Jumped The Jail” explore society's underbelly through vignettes of outcasts and their misadventures within urban settings.

“A Brighter Star Than You Will Shine” and “One Day I’ll Go Walking,” on the other hand, settle into the comfort zone of relaxed yet impactful pop-rock, a zone the band would try to drastically break free from two years later with their fourth studio album.

Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, released in March 1993, would however yield questionable results. Some detractors joked that Ross, forced to give up his dream of emulating his idols Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen, was instead falling back on territory dear to Bono and U2, even down to the stage costumes à la Zoo TV, appearing in videos and on stage with megaphones, gold shirts and huge dark sunglasses: the comparison, then, isn't far-fetched, and moreover, in an extreme attempt to break through in the US and to confront the sonic challenges of the post-“Achtung Baby” era, the band brought in a new team made up of Steve Osborne and house music guru Paul Oakenfold, fresh off “Pills 'N' Thrills And Bellyaches” by Happy Mondays. The recording sessions, however, turned into a nightmare for everyone, marked by constant friction and disagreements; they were also affected by Lorraine McIntosh's advanced pregnancy, as she was reportedly exhausted and repeatedly found in tears due to the stress piling up in those days.

The two producers, who according to bassist Ewen Vernal had been chosen precisely because their background was so different from anything Deacon Blue had done before, still tried to surprise by steering the sound toward a bold, aggressive alternative rock, marked by dance textures that, however, fully convince only on the first single “Your Town,” a hypnotic, whirling anti-Thatcher protest song written ahead of the 1992 general election (some parts evoke “The Fly” by the Dublin quartet and “Big Love” by Fleetwood Mac). Among the bright spots are also “Bethlehem's Gate,” one of the most alluring tracks of this experimental phase (it deals with the importance of Christianity), the anguished, politically charged “Peace And Jobs And Freedom” (“Chi è che diceva pace, lavoro e libertà? Quando muori non c’è più nulla”), and the slow, atmospheric “Last Night I Dreamt Of Henry Thomas,” against whose backdrop mysterious, indecipherable sounds emerge in the distance.

But it's too little: the rest of the tracklist in fact gets bogged down in a collage of ideas that are ambitious — “Hang Your Head” and the funky “Cut Lip,” with its piano riff steeped in Motown flavor — and pleasant enough on the ear, like “Fall So Freely Down” (about waiting for a child to be born), the midtempo “All Over The World,” close to Britpop, and the other singles “Only Tender Love” and “Will We Be Lovers,” which wink at INXS and Simple Minds (both achieved a fair amount of success), but the overall impression is of a capricious, forced record, not least because the band's musicians had clashed from the outset with Oakenfold's tyrannical methods, as he gradually lost focus and interest in the project, leaving its authorship almost entirely to his alter ego Steve Osborne.

Despite the critics' hostility, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing reaches a respectable number four in the UK, but in the United States it doesn't come anywhere close to charting, prompting Deacon Blue to finally give up on the American dream, this time for good. On the other hand, their live dimension, in which they excel, continues to thrive, and in May the band lands in Japan for the first time; back in Europe, they get to work in London studios recording the song “I Was Right And You Were Wrong,” which picks up the techno thread begun with Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, along with the more conventional “Bound To Love” and “Still In The Mood”: all three are included on the hugely successful April '94 compilation Our Town – The Greatest Hits, which gathers together the singles released up to that point except for “Closing Time” and “Hang Your Head” (incidentally, to this day it remains their second and last album to reach number one on the UK charts; the vinyl edition adds a fourth, previously unreleased track, “Beautiful Stranger,” which we'll come across again later).

1994 – The band splits up: solo careers and other jobs

The fallout from the preceding months gives everyone pause for thought, and the fatigue and internal misunderstandings start to take their toll. So, in the middle of yet another exhausting tour, the group's imminent breakup is announced; they play their final show on May 18th in Dundee, Scotland, with two extra nights added on the 19th and 20th at Glasgow Barrowland to properly bid farewell to their home crowd; after that, the band decides to take a long break. Drummer Dougie Vipond uses the time to reinvent himself as a well-regarded radio and TV journalist and presenter of sports, travel and rural/agricultural affairs programs, James Prime is recruited as an organist by Johnny Hallyday and moves to France for a couple of years before returning home and becoming a music teacher, while guitarist Graeme Kelling writes scores for film and television and in the meantime runs a private recording studio. Ewen Vernal joins the Scottish folk group Capercaillie, of which he is still a member today.

Ricky Ross, meanwhile, takes the opportunity to fly to Los Angeles, where he signs with Epic and releases his second solo album, What You Are. Around this time he becomes enamored with Buffalo Tom and Lemonheads, so he enlists the Robb brothers (with whom they had collaborated several times) in an attempt to modernize his sound and imitate theirs, but it's not a brilliant idea: the result is a pretentious mix of rock (“Icarus,” “Cold Easter”), alt-country (“Rosie Gordon Lies So Still,” “Promise You Rain”) and blues (“Radio On”) that misses the mark (the two singles “Good Evening Philadelphia” and “Radio On” stall at number 58 and 35 respectively), despite the usual formally flawless arrangements, with genuine high points only on “Jack Singer,” with its powerful chorus over largely acoustic verses, and on a couple of more introspective songs whose piano-driven approach betrays the familiar Deacon Blue trademark (“When Sinners Fall” and “Love Isn’t Hard It’s Strong”).

It's still a flop, and in October several dates are cancelled due to poor ticket sales: the disappointed record label drops him, but the indefatigable Ross isn't fazed and in 1997 decides to self-finance, through his own label, International Records, the new LP New Recording, which is met with mixed reviews. Written and recorded with the help of former Love And Money keyboardist Paul McGeechan, it offers eleven largely acoustic songs (standouts include "Blue Horse", dedicated to his young daughter Georgia, "My Only Tie" and "Earth A Little Lighter") with a nostalgic mood ("Creswell Street", "Ash Wednesday" and "I'm Sure Buddy Would Know"), with occasional touches of synths and strings in the service of a harmless, relaxed easy listening feel.

On "The Further North You Go" (a dialogue with a St. Andrews University student, originally intended for Deacon Blue but never completed) the singer is joined by his wife Lorraine McIntosh, who had followed him to America with their children and in the meantime seems to have found a prestigious new occupation of her own. She is in fact spotted by director Ken Loach, and after passing an audition, makes her film debut in November 1998 in "My Name Is Joe", the story of an unemployed ex-alcoholic who falls in love with a nurse in one of Glasgow's toughest neighbourhoods. She would go on to land further roles, both on the big screen (worth mentioning are "Aberdeen", from 2000, directed by Hans-Petter Molland, and "Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself", from 2002, directed by Lone Scherfig) and on television (she would appear in various episodes of "Life Support", "Taggart", "River City" and "Hope Springs").

Homesick for home: the return of Deacon Blue and more

After the EP The Undeveloped Heart, which reworks in a rock vein an old, same-titled piano-ballad from Ooh, Las Vegas, pairing it with four outtakes from New Recording ("Only Love Remains", "Ghost", "Passing Through" and an acoustic version of "Wake Up And Dream"), in 1999 the news everyone had been waiting for finally arrives: Deacon Blue reunite and, five years after their last time together, in April they all gather for rehearsals ahead of the long-awaited event, which takes shape on 27 June at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall as part of a charity evening featuring several illustrious fellow artists.

On guitar now is Mick Slaven, with whom Ross had played frequently during the promotional tours for What You Are and New Recording, and who now proves invaluable in also supporting Graeme Kelling, whose health is starting to dangerously deteriorate. They take part in "Scotland For Kosova", a fundraiser for the Kosovo crisis also featuring fellow Scottish stars of the calibre of Simple Minds and Midge Ure, then embark on a twelve-date tour (later extended to seventeen) called Walking Back Home, which will also be the title of the new LP due out in October: a work that can be considered half compilation and half studio album, since it dusts off nine cornerstones from the past (including "Love And Regret", "Chocolate Girl" and "I'll Never Fall In Love Again") and adds another eight tracks, a mix of brand new material (the warm, heartfelt "Plastic Shoes", "Love Hurts" and "All I Want") and previously unreleased recordings dug up from the vaults (the title track "Walking Back Home", restrained and minimalist in the style of "Streets Of Philadelphia", actually dates back to New Year's Eve 1980; "Jesus Do Your Hands Still Feel The Rain" had been cut from the soundtrack of Stephen Hopkins's film "Blown Away" in 1994; the delicate "Christmas And Glasgow" had featured on the 1991 Oscar Marzaroli tribute album "The Tree And The Bird And The Fish And The Bell").

Also worth a listen are "Beautiful Stranger", with its curious rap verses (it had already appeared on Our Town – The Greatest Hits), and the piano ballad "When You Are Young", both testifying to the band's rediscovered verve, even though sales here too are far from spectacular (a new single by the band, already set for release, is pulled after Walking Back Home drops out of the charts within just three weeks).

Still, it's a way of relighting the fuse, and the positive impressions are confirmed by 2001's Homesick, its cover dominated by an astronaut floating in space.

These are just some photographs talking

make it look easy to imagine just walking

back into someone's arms

and feeling homesick

("Homesick")

Released by Papillon Records, an offshoot of the Chrysalis group, under the direction of Kenny MacDonald, Homesick builds its foundations on simple arrangements (the title track "Homesick" and "Now That You Are Here") and radio-friendly, instantly catchy choruses ("Out There" and the cheeky "A Is For Astronaut"), without producing anything truly essential (the lead single "Everytime You Sleep", for instance, stalls at number sixty-four, despite perhaps being the most emotionally affecting track on the record).

In an attempt to win back the fans who had drifted away after Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, all experimental ambitions are abandoned in favour of an accessible, no-frills pop-rock that finds three of its most convincing moments in the soft opener "Rae", the joyous "Even Higher Ground" with its infectious harmonies, and "I Am Born", once again touching on themes of faith, while "This Train Will Take You Anywhere", the catchy "Silverlake" (which samples Steely Dan's "Do It Again") and "You Lie So Beautifully Still" are watered down by one too many banalities, fortunately not too intrusive and well masked by the serene flow of the arrangements; the instrumental passages, meanwhile, manage to hold the listener's attention, ensuring an at least acceptable result overall.

Homesick is followed by two electrifying sold-out UK tours, further proof of the band's unbroken bond with their own people. Unfortunately, though, the band's peace of mind is once again undermined by guitarist Graeme Kelling's health problems, as he is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It's hard for Ross to come to terms with: Kelling is the bandmate he has always felt the strongest affinity with, since he too had grown up in a strongly religious environment (within the Plymouth Brethren sect), so the two understood each other instantly, both in terms of musical choices and, more broadly, their shared life path beyond Deacon Blue.

Faced with the situation, the singer has no choice but to temporarily set aside any future plans involving the band, but he doesn't sit idle, and in 2002 he releases This Is The Life, completed over a span of roughly six years and made up of thirteen songs stylistically far removed from what he was used to offering with the band, yet no less intriguing, especially because of the lyrics which, as he explained in an interview at the time, were initially "meant to be about my friends while they're still alive, as opposed to What You Are, which was instead centred on my father, after his death".

The themes, in truth, broaden along the way, and the sound plays the card of an enjoyable, tasteful country-pop ("Hippy Girl", "My Girl Going To Town") without pulling any particular surprises out of the hat. The ability to condense everything into just a handful of chords nonetheless makes for a smooth, direct listen, recalling as much the Beatles – for instance on the anthemic title track "This Is The Life" – as the soft singer-songwriter style of Rufus Wainwright, on "I Sing About You" and "Looking For My Own Lone Ranger".

"Northern Soul" is about a parent's love and the terror of losing a child, "Threatening Rain" dates back to the 1999 eclipse and is dedicated to two friends who were going through a painful separation, while "Angel And Mercedes" (one of the less predictable tracks, thanks to a magnetic intro that wins you over instantly) is for two girls from Madrid he met in Dublin in 1997 "twenty-four hours after the worst gig of my life — that night they said they'd come and see me, and I gave one of my best shows; for me they represent a symbol of healing and rebirth." "Rodeo Boy" is not exactly transcendent, frankly a bit redundant, while "The Way To Work" is a fine piano-driven number; "London Comes Alive", on the other hand, was written on train carriages for his mother ("I realised I'd spent so much time talking about my late father that it didn't feel right never to have done anything for her").

Special mention goes to "Nothing Cures That", enlivened by a lush horn section — Roddy Lorimer on trumpet, Anne Whithead on trombone, Simon Clarke and Tim Sanders on saxophones — and by the voice of Lorraine McIntosh, who that same year made her stage debut in "Mum's The Word" ("Acting is the best thing I've ever done, a real blessing," she said happily at the time) before joining the cast of the BBC soap opera "River City".

2003 saw Ricky Ross handed the prestigious task of singing the national anthem "Flower Of Scotland" before kick-off at Scotland-Netherlands, the play-off for qualification to Euro 2004. Deacon Blue then took the stage at the Big In Falkirk festival and at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Enable charity.

Also in 2004, though, came the news many had feared: on 10 June Graeme Kelling succumbed to illness, after nearly four years of battling it, and the band opened a tribute page on their official website where friends and fans could leave a thought in the musician's memory; he left behind a wife (TV and radio producer Julie Smith, whom he married in 1997) and two children, Alexander and Grace.

At this point it's not easy for anyone to start over, but you have to begin somewhere, and Ross did so in style, first collaborating on "High" by James Blunt, whose debut LP "Back To Bedlam" turned out to be the best-selling album of 2005 (over two and a half million copies), then donating the proceeds of an unreleased track to tsunami victims, and finally, as stipulated in his publishing contract, writing songs for various other artists, such as Emma Bunton, KT Tunstall, Gareth Gates, Will Young and up-and-coming newcomer Tricia McTeague.

2005 was also the year of Pale Rider, his fifth solo album, which doesn't stray far from its predecessor's blueprint, picking up its main stylistic coordinates as well as the conscientiousness of its themes, which once again often touch on the pain of loss, the importance of family, faith and death ("I Know It's Only Sunday" and the title track "Pale Rider" itself). Produced by longtime friend Davie Scott, who had made a name for himself during the Nineties with Pearlfishers, it was very well received by critics, and is indeed his most mature, intimate and personal work to date: standing above all is the moving closing track "In The End", for voice and piano alone, which depicts Graeme Kelling's last night on earth at the "Marie Curie" hospice where he was being cared for; toward the end, electronic beeps enter to simulate a life-support machine at the most harrowing moment, while a drum quietly creeps in to suggest a heartbeat struggling to survive.

In the end sun goes down

and the stars came out

and the world keeps on turning

in the end

(Ricky Ross – “In The End”)

The melancholic, reflective atmospheres of "History" and "The Streets Are Covered In Snow" showcase exquisite storytelling skills, confirmed by "Soundtrack To The Summer", with its opposite, à-la Beach Boys temperatures, and by "Kichijoji", which portrays a Tokyo neighbourhood visited during a trip to the Land of the Rising Sun.

"In This World" and "If You've Got The Time It's Gonna Take", with their astral influences à la Van Morrison, celebrate the small joys of a "normal" everyday life, as does "She Gets Me Inside", which had been written for Ronan Keating (the blond former Boyzone frontman included it on his 2003 LP "Turn It On"). "Calvary" is an ironic little snapshot of the habit of celebrating Christmas, while "Boys Break The Things They Love The Most" examines male behaviour from youth all the way to old age (“I ragazzi rompono le cose che amano di più/ passano le notti a piangerci sopra/ sono forti da giovani e deboli da vecchi/ ma cammineranno accanto a te sulla strada/ e ti porteranno con loro quando se ne andranno”).

The spare, minimalist arrangement is essentially built around guitar and a handful of vocal harmonies (Lorraine McIntosh is a welcome special guest) and is fleshed out just enough, without ever overdoing it, by violin, trumpet and cello, striking the right balance between singer-songwriter folk-rock and pop sensibility.

Meanwhile Deacon Blue got back on the road with shows in exotic locations like Dubai, Bahrain and Oman, and in 2005 returned to Glasgow's SECC for a thrilling concert alongside Travis, Texas and Franz Ferdinand, with proceeds once again going to tsunami victims. In 2006, at Manchester's Old Trafford, they set the pre-match atmosphere alight before the Super League Grand Final with a memorable performance, then backed, with an intense TV advertising campaign, the compilation Singles, which alongside the old favourites featured three new tracks, "Bigger Than Dynamite", "Haunted" and "The One About Loneliness", whose sound harks back to the band's Nineties phase; they kept delivering their best live, and in 2008 toured practically every arena in the UK supporting Simple Minds, who were marking their thirtieth anniversary.

In 2009 came an enjoyable interlude, credited simply to "McIntosh Ross", titled The Great Lakes: as you might guess, it's a project exclusive to the two spouses, closer than ever, who took a break from sessions with the band and retreated into isolation at Silver Lake, where they were utterly struck by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, becoming fervent disciples.

In an almost ascetic atmosphere of prayer and meditation, and with the backing of a squad of seasoned session players who had repeatedly worked with Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, they navigate thirteen tracks blending Americana-style country-western with pure Scotch malt.

Preceded by the single "All My Trust in You", the album yields a number of genuinely recommendable tracks, such as "Silver And Gold", the moving "Gloria", "Mount Juliet" and "A Passing Place", the a cappella gospel "Jesus Nailed My Sins Upon The Tree", "Bluebell Wood", embellished by Richard Green's violin, and "This World Is Not My Home", which alludes to a life after death and shines for its gorgeous vocal harmonies.

In November of that same year the MacIntosh/Ross duo set off on a tour of small venues across the UK, at the end of which Ricky agreed to host the BBC Scotland music programme "Another Country With Ricky Ross", devoted to both modern and vintage Americana and country, before getting to work on some demos that would form the backbone of the next Deacon Blue album, polished with the help of his wife and new guitarist Gregor Philp, also from Dundee (he replaced Mick Slaven, who, after a gig at the Tartan Heart Festival near Inverness, amicably parted ways with the band, with whom he had played since 1999, to pursue other projects).

The 2010s: The Hipsters, A New House, Believers

At our age you can't write songs without being aware of the time that has passed and that keeps passing, so there's nostalgia, but also optimism

(Lorraine Mcintosh)

The duo experience in Silver Lake and Ross's solo albums, which stand out as an inexhaustible source of ideas, his and the band's relentless live schedule, and the film and theatre commitments of his wife Lorraine McIntosh, on top of family duties – the couple now have two daughters, Georgia and Emer, and a son named Seamus, as well as Caitlin, born from Ricky's previous marriage – all clog up the calendar and almost make one forget that a full eleven years have passed since the last Deacon Blue album.

The band's recording silence, which lasted since Homesick in 2001, is broken on 24 September 2012 by The Hipsters, recorded at the new, gleaming Gorbals Sound studios in Glasgow with producer Paul Savage, which seems to turn the clock back twenty-five years, at least in terms of spontaneity and dynamics. Behind the contagious surface optimism (the cheerful "It Will End In Tears", despite the tears in the title, and "That's All We Can Do", which kicks off like Billy Joel's Billy Joel "Uptown Girl") lie eleven finely calibrated songs that probe past and present with romanticism and melody, such as "Is There No Way Back To You", the dreamy ballad "Turn", the sinuous "She'll Understand" and the opening track "Here I Am In London Town", which reconnect with the infallible pop-soul of their golden years without desperately trying to imitate it, but rather by accepting the passing of the hourglass with undimmed passion, and that's precisely why they work ("Here I am in London town/ waiting for the world to begin again", this is where it starts again).

Back to where we'd come from

so we kept right on running

this world seemed so much lighter

when we were the outsiders

(“The Outsiders”)

The joyous anthem "The Outsiders", which stakes a claim as the true hit of this second artistic life of Deacon Blue, the title track "The Hipsters" (sarcastic but pointed, given that they were never really hipsters), "Stars" and "Laura (From Memory)" reach out to new audiences with sobriety and a taste tinged with indie-folk; there may be (and it shows) a spoonful of sugar too many, since they inevitably carry the Eighties within them, but the dose is still bearable.

Also worth praising is the tightly-paced "The Rest", which also lends its name to a new best of released in October (containing tracks not all necessarily drawn from studio albums, but also live snippets and a few alternative "piano&vocal" versions).

Right after The Hipsters, 2013 brings another intriguing Ross solo album, one worth owning: it's called Trouble Came Looking and portrays the Dundee-born vocalist still working within a lean, essential acoustic format, within which he now seems to have found his definitive place. Set against the backdrop of the global economic recession, it tells stories of poverty, displacement and despair, steeped in resilience ("We Shall Overcome The Wide World") and human warmth. "I was so excited that I started putting it together when I was only halfway through making it, so it sounds raw and rough," the singer explains, backed for the occasion by Gregor Philp (guitar, banjo and mandolin) and Lewis Gordon (double bass). "There are no backing vocals – for the first time Lorraine McIntosh doesn't appear on a single track, ed. – I wrote most of the songs using the only two guitar chords I know," he jokes, though not entirely, given how genuinely basic the arrangements are.

The first tracks deal with people overwhelmed by trouble, he says in an interview about the title track "Trouble Came Looking" and "Now I Smoke Like I Used To Play", while the harrowing "A Strange And A Foreign Land" tells the tragic fate of the cockle pickers swept away by the tides at Morecambe in 2004; "Any Drug Will Do" sounds a bit like John Lennon's Working Class Hero" by John Lennon and a bit like Johnny Cash's "Solitary Man" by Johnny Cash, before giving way to a graceful harmonica solo.

"Nothing More Than Travelling Now" treads heartland paths, "Taxi Drivers Ride The Lights" brings to mind Mike Scott and his beloved Waterboys, while "Sang O' The Saracen Mind" is a poem by Craig Smillie, based on a centuries-old parable here reworked as a folk ballad. Lastly, worth mentioning are "Holy Night", which recalls Elton John, and "Good Man", which evokes Springsteen's "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)". A resounding pass.

The paradox of this period is that the less attention Ross's albums draw on the charts, where they pass almost completely unnoticed, the more they seem to conceal fine material; after all, given his unstoppable creative drive, at worst they might turn out underwhelming, but the standard on offer never drops below solid, not even in the worst-case scenario. The same goes for Deacon Blue's post-reunion artistic rebirth: a year later, in September 2014, they release their seventh official album, A New House, still under the aegis of Paul Savage. It's a well-structured, reassuring work for the band's die-hard fans, who, just two weeks before the Scottish independence referendum, found in record shops a careful reminder of which models to emulate, the real values of their homeland and the direction to take to truly turn a corner — or at least that's what the lyrics (co-written by Ross and Philp) seem to suggest, imbued as ever with a certain poetic ambiguity and deliberately left open to multiple interpretations; but anyone who "sniffs out" the songs knows perfectly well what the "new house" to retreat into really is. For Deacon Blue it's one of catchy, richly contaminated pop, living on memories and hope for renewal (as in "Win", ennobled by the strings of the Cairn String Quartet), and moving with ease between protest songs, sentiment ("I Remember Every Single Kiss") and folk roots, narrowing the gap with their debut records without any pressure to prove themselves.

Above all else reigns a love for wild nature and its relentless energy, which recurs in "An Ocean", in the full-blooded "Wild" and in "For John Muir", a tribute (on the centenary of his death) to the Scottish engineer, botanist and explorer John Muir, who emigrated to the United States and devoted himself to the preservation of Yosemite National Park.

Long live the wilderness way

the high cloud, the long days

long live perpetual light

remember, wherever you wander

("For John Muir")

"Bethlehem Begins", inspired by W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming", pounds along with energetic, relentless drumming, the sophisticated "The Living" sways between reason and nostalgia, while the title track "A New House" lays out the frontman's childhood memories - penned around the time he received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West of Scotland in Ayr. As ever, voices and harmonies are calibrated to the millimetre, whether speaking a romantic language (as in "I Wish I Was A Girl Like You") or a political one ("March" focuses on the spring weeks leading up to the vote, while "Our New Land" looks "two hundred steps from here/ where the full stop is, we'll see our new land").

On bass now is Lewis Gordon, also confirmed on the band's eighth album, Believers, from 2016, which conceptually closes the trilogy begun in 2012 with The Hipsters and continued in 2014 with A New House: in Britain it achieves a surprising commercial success, with its thirteenth place in the charts marking the highest peak reached since 1993 - and it's thoroughly deserved, given it's a colourful yet essential work that once again leans on easy listening and socially engaged lyrics. This time the backdrop is the plight of refugees: "When I started writing it, it was impossible not to be influenced by the constant images of people from Syria, desperately trying to flee the war by boat across the Mediterranean Sea," says Ross, who nevertheless doesn't want to harden the songs into a mere statement about international migration or religion (many misunderstand this and flood the band's social channels with complaints), but rather wants to use them to explore the idea of "trust".

Compared to recent releases, the use of synthesisers is stepped up, marking the lead single "The Believers", melodic and optimistic, "Gone" and "This Is A Lovesong", reworked in New York with a hand from Coldplay's sound engineer Michael Brauer. The touchstones now are contemporary acts such as Mumford And Sons, Destroyer, Snow Patrol or even Bear's Den, though always kept at arm's length: the tracks sound very similar to one another but never grow tiresome, they're not remotely cool but knock gently on the soul - thanks to experience working in their favour, as in the delicate little march "Delivery Man", the bittersweet "I Will And I Won't", in which Ricky and Lorraine swap promises and vocal tone with disarming nonchalance, and the usual piano ballads "Come Awake" and "Birds", which no longer carry the impetuousness of youth but the wisdom of advancing age.

There's also room for a few experiments ("Meteors" and the vaguely psychedelic "A Boy") and for two evocative little orchestral gems, "You Can't Know Everything" and the closing track "B-Boy", adorned with luminous contributions from the Pumpkinseeds Session Orchestra and the violas of Emma Peebles, Simon Graham and Kate Miguda.

Believers is followed by a couple of years on the road (with numerous dates in Spain, from La Coruña to Valencia, from Madrid to Barcelona, as far as the Sonorama Ribera festival), wrapping up on 4 December 2016 with a dream night at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, immortalised on the lavish double CD/DVD Live At The Barrowlands.

In the middle of the tour comes another enticing solo break from Ricky Ross, titled Short Stories – Vol.1 (2017), which features fine piano restylings of old Deacon Blue songs (excellent versions of "Wages Day" and "I Was Right And You Were Wrong", with "Raintown" also present) along with a handful of raw, unreleased tracks, such as "The Kid At The Airport", "Only God And Dogs", and a cover of Gerry Goffin & Carole King's "Goin' Back" (made famous by Dusty Springfield in 1966, and already covered by Deacon Blue on the anthology The Rest, where a live version can be heard).

The real highlights, however, are the poignant "At My Weakest Point" (written for Vainess, a woman met in Africa whose only dream is to have her own water supply system) and "A Gordon For Me", which drowns its grief in memory (Gordon Aikman was an Edinburgh researcher and activist who fought against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and died recently at just thirty-one).

Also worth noting are the romantic "I Am Supposed To Love You", enriched by violins (co-written with Canadian colleague Amy Stewart, known for her collaborations with Michael Bublé), "I Thought I Saw You", lightened where needed by the backing vocals, and the little gem "The Germans Are Out Today", retrieved from his very first album, So Long Ago, otherwise impossible to find today.

Present day: of love and other small stories

In 2019, Ross and McIntosh - who have often distinguished themselves through humanitarian trips (for instance to Zambia, Congo and Rwanda on behalf of the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund) - join the organisation "Remembering Srebrenica" and travel to Bosnia to visit the sites of the genocide. They then lend their support to charity with a seventeen-song acoustic set at Glasgow's "Glad Cafe", helping to save the venue from closing, before flying to Australia in November, for the first time in thirty years (the dates in Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney are a triumph, with tickets selling out rapidly).

A few months later, in March 2020, their ninth album, City Of Love, is released and meets with considerable acclaim (reaching number four in the UK, its best result since the greatest hits collection Our Town, while in Scotland it goes straight to number one - further confirmation, if any were needed, of the unconditional love reserved for them at home, where they remain to this day one of the most adored bands around).

Produced by Ross and Gregor Philp, the record manages to capture the quintessence of the band through a warm, familiar mix of melody (the touching "Weight Of The World") and, when needed, energetic hooks ("Keeping My Faith Alive", scratched by Philp's guitar, would appeal to Bon Jovi), while the album's title alludes to the healing power of Glasgow, a city where any excuse will do to rekindle hope.

The title track is carried in its intro by an insistent string riff, then builds until it explodes into gospel choruses and driving guitar chords, "Hit Me Where It Hurts" quotes Macbeth over a sturdy bassline (its protagonist finds new love at his moment of greatest suffering: "Who would have thought there was so much blood in a man/ I was running from love, until you hit me where it hurts"), while the rock ballad "A Walk In The Woods" and the Eastern-tinged "Intervals" widen the record's listening range.

In the solemn "On Love", which includes spoken-word passages, Ross weaves through the verses memories of Dundee, of time spent at his grandparents' house and of early schoolyard flirtations (the track runs over seven minutes), "Wonderful" is an evocative acoustic waltz of guitar and piano, and "Come On In" a charming country-soul number with vocal interplay that still knows how to move.

It's proof that Deacon Blue are still going strong, and taking advantage of the unexpected extra time afforded by the lockdown, in February 2021 they released, as an appendix, a companion mini-album titled Riding On The Tide Of Love, which offers three tracks left over from the sessions for the previous City Of Love ("Look Up", "Send A Note Out" and "She Loved The Snow") plus five brand new songs, which each member of the band recorded in the studio individually, piece by piece. "The Covid-19 pandemic somehow brought us all together, we'd never felt so connected", Ross swears, speaking of the genesis of the record, which lasts barely thirty minutes, and indeed the eight tracks sound spontaneous and unfiltered, managing to keep the tension constant despite the band's usual surface joviality.

There's no shortage of learned references: the title track unwinds over a two-chord vamp and quotes, in its driving verse, "Democracy" by Leonard Cohen, "Time" recreates the galloping tom-tom roll of "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush, the ever-present Bacharach hovers over the notes of the romantic, jazzy "It's Still Early", and on "Look Up" the sparkling organ pays tribute to Curtis Mayfield. The rest of the tracklist splits between well-orchestrated midtempos ready-made for live singalongs, a trick they've mastered, and reflective ballads: the country-blues "Send A Note Out", about the end of a relationship, dips into the Memphis Sound, "Not Gonna Be That Girl" starts slow at the piano before swelling with pathos and horns, "She Loved The Snow" lives on graceful melodic arpeggios, and "Nothing's Changed" is sophisticated falsetto pop-rock urging listeners to ask for help in difficult times.

In November of that same year came the band's first biography, "To Be Here Someday" (the title borrowed from a line in "Dignity"), while a few months later, in August 2022, Ricky Ross released Short Stories – Vol. 2 as a solo artist: it's the second chapter of a saga that still manages to impress, speaking a disillusioned singer-songwriter language built in intimate fashion around the music stand of his home piano, with contributions from Lorraine McIntosh (vocals and percussion), Gregor Philp (acoustic guitar and mandolin) and a few trusted session players.

The tracks take shape as eleven short stories, reflecting on the end of the pandemic and the urge to start over: the opener "New World" is a window onto Ross's new world — having tasted huge success with Deacon Blue, then ventured dangerously down the paths leading to oblivion, he has managed to climb back up, and now moves deftly from frustration to optimism over a brisk metronome tick. "Still Walking" addresses a son from a father's perspective amid a back-and-forth of inner turmoil, the emphatic "Spanish Shoes" pours its heart out with mounting pathos, and "The Foundations" and "All Dressed Up" turn the focus back to the piano's black and white keys.

"The Unpath" revisits nostalgic childhood anecdotes, and there are also reworkings of earlier Deacon Blue songs, such as "Your Swaying Arms", "Bethlehem's Gate" and "I Am Born", which alternate noise and silence like faded photographs, while the brand-new "I Was The Beatles" looks back at a bygone era, and the cruel "The Unknown Warrior" tells of young soldiers marching off to the First World War.

Around the same time as Short Stories Vol.2 came the autobiographical memoir "Walking Back Home", about Ross's life; meanwhile, in partnership with Caskade Brewery, he launched a limited-edition whisky called "Born In A Storm", named after the opening track of the successful Raintown, the album from which the Deacon Blue story had first taken off.

In 2023 the band played Dundee's Caird Hall for the charity show "A Night For Keith", in support of Scottish musician Keith Matheson, who nearly lost an arm in a dramatic accident; they then released the career-spanning box set You Can Have It All and yet another best of, All The Old 45's: The Very Best Of Deacon Blue (the title taken from a line in their hit "Real Gone Kid"), before heading back to Australia and New Zealand for a run of shows in November. In 2024 they landed in South Africa, playing Johannesburg and Cape Town, then after a string of European dates, in July they played in Italy at the "11 Lune" festival in Peccioli, in the province of Pisa.

Bus driver, won't you take me

to the furthest place frome here

to somewhere I’ve not been before?

("Great Western Road")

A few months later, in March 2025, came the eleventh album The Great Western Road, timed to coincide with the band's fortieth anniversary, which, to mark the occasion, they chose to name — as we mentioned at the start of this feature — after one of Glasgow's liveliest and trendiest neighbourhoods, where Ricky and the others used to meet up as kids.

Recorded in Wales at Rockfield Studios, and co-produced by Ross and Gregor Philp alongside Matt Butler, who had previously engineered Raintown, the album debuted at number three on the UK chart (and, unsurprisingly, at number one in Scotland), although to be honest it isn't as compelling as the band's other releases of the last decade, due to a sound that's all too cluttered and overloaded, risking a rehash of easy clichés despite the innocence of its intentions.

Still, there's no shortage of ideas with good pedigree, such as the soul-ballad "The Great Western Road", which opens the record, "People Come First", with its U2-style guitar riff (the lyrics are inspired by an eponymous exhibition by Pennsylvania visual artist Alice Neel and the subjects she painted, many of whom suffered from Aids), the elegant "Wait For Me", underscored by Wurlitzer organ and brushed drums, the eccentric funky groove of the lead single "Late '88", which looks back fondly to the carefree, anything-is-possible years, and "Ashore", with its emphatic instrumental crescendo.

The second single "Turn Up Your Radio", with its 70s disco atmosphere, the soft, radio-friendly Americana of "Underneath The Stars", the piano-led "How We Remember It" and "If I Lived On My Own", and the upbeat "Mid-Century Modern", which muses on the passing of time, are certainly not throwaway tracks, but on the whole they feel a bit routine and slightly predictable. The pure divertissement of "Up Hope" and the Motown-tinged "Curve Of The Line" add little, but the band still seems to have found its footing within this era.

A lengthy tour was scheduled to promote The Great Western Road, but unfortunately, on 19 June 2025, came another piece of unwelcome news. At just 64, longtime keyboardist and co-writer James Prime passed away, also from an incurable illness. It's another devastating blow to absorb, but we're certain the Deacon Blue story doesn't end here. The band, currently made up of Ricky Ross, Lorraine McIntosh, Dougie Vipond, Gregor Philp and Lewis Gordon, decided to honour Prime with The Great Western Road Trip: A Live Album, recorded in March 2025 at Edinburgh's Usher Hall, in what, as they explain in a statement, "we didn't yet know would be our last show in Scotland with our dear brother Jim. We hope the excitement we felt making it comes through, and that you enjoy it. Dedicated to James Miller Prime, 3 November 1960 – 19 June 2025".

The live album will be released on 18 April 2026 to coincide with Record Store Day; moreover, for those who want to see them live, the official website already lists tour dates alongside the Lightning Seeds, taking place in various British cities in summer 2026.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google