Listen To Del Amitri Live At Glasgow Barrowlands.
THIS IS GOING TO BE DULL, BUT IT'S ALL TRUE, UNLIKE ALL THE CRAP IN THE BOOKS.
DEL AMITRI MARK I. Started at school in 1980, originally called Del Amitri Rialzo in order to confuse the public (name was invented for its meaninglessness; all other stories are fabrications) in west Glasgow, Scotland. Wanted to be The Feelies, The Cramps, The B52s, Joy Division, Orange Juice. Played Cafe Vaudeville, Charing cross in 1981 amongst a handful of other shows around Glasgow.
Line up: Justin Currie (Bass, Singing), Donald Bentley (Guitar), James Scobie (Guitar, Singing), Paul Tyagi (Drums)
Releases: "What She Calls It". Flexi-disc also featuring The Bluebells given free with fanzine "Stand and Deliver"
Signature Tune: "Penelope"
Writers: Whole band, everything co-written with most but not all lyrics written by Justin and James.
DEL AMITRI MARK II. After the two guitarists leave to attend university in 1982, Justin and Paul meet candidates to replace them in the Equi Cafe on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. While, Mary, the old waitress who had to pay the kitchen for the customer's food served them Snowball Ices and milky coffee in her blue apron, the bassist and drummer eyed up the various style casualties obsessed with Grace Jones and Simple Minds who had applied for the job through an advert in MacCormac's music shop. The only impressive applicant, fresh from a year out of art school working on a farm is Iain Harvie, a tall young man in an ill-fitting second hand jacket with a Captain Scarlet badge on the lapel. This was the age of the badge. Iain hails from East Kilbride and lets the band keep their gear in his parents' garage. After one or two rehearsals, Iain recruits fellow art school architecture under-graduate Bryan Tolland, a tall thin blonde classical guitarist with a liking for Van Morrison and Magazine. New material is written and features alongside the previous line-up's at Glasgow University Queen Margaret Union, Cafe Vaudeville and Night Moves.
The group want to be Television, The Undertones, The Buzzcocks, The Fall and later, Murmur era REM.
A single, "Sense Sickness" is recorded at Palladium studios in Edinburgh in early 1983 and released in the spring on Justin's sister's friends, Nick Low and Graham Cochrane's label Nostrings. This leads to a single of the week in Sounds magazine, a John Peel Roadshow live appearance which in turn leads to their first Peel session and a new manager, Barbara Shores, an ex-pat American loosely involved with the Postcard label so admired by the band. An A&R man called Pete Lawton at Chrysalis Records hears the debut broadcast of the session late one night and quickly moves to sign the band to an album deal on his in-house alternative imprint Big Star, run with Rough Trade's Geoff Travis. After a not wholly successful session with Tom Verlaine in Britannia Row the band record their first album with Hugh Jones producing in two stints at Park Lane in Glasgow and the Garden in London. Before the release of the first single on Chrysalis, Ian Pye of Melody Maker hears a cassette of work in progress and proceeds to put the band on the cover touting them as the next big thing leading to a hideous backlash when the single and album are belatedly released in 1985 a good six months after the feature. Del Amitri will never again be entertained by the music press.
The group begin to resent label-mates The Housemartins and become friendly with The June Brides and Grab Grab The Haddock. A little evening airplay is garnered but few records are bought by the public.
At the behest of Barbara Shores the group become heavily involved in their fan club, writing to many of their fans who have picked the LP up on import in the States. The album is released domestically in America in 1986.
By early '86 the band's coat is on a shaky nail, relations are extremely strained with Chrysalis and after a six week tour of continental Europe supporting their highly successful contemporaries Lloyd Cole and the Commotions the group return to beg their record company to release them from their deal. The company eventually accedes to their demand after Barbara organises their fans to threaten a sit-in at the company's offices in London's West End.
With little money remaining and restaurant jobs looming the Dels throw their lot in with their manager's crackpot plan to tour the United States by getting fans to organise parties in their home towns, selling tickets to their friends and family and putting the band up in their parents' homes. In August '86 the four musicians alongside a journalist, Iain's sister, Lynne and their friend Kevin McDermott in support, pile into a borrowed van in New York and set out to play 12 shows in six weeks in living rooms, bars, restaurants, record shops and around swimming pools from New Jersey to Dallas to LA to Iowa to Philadelphia with no money, no hotels and no gas.
They return in September changed men. Something has clicked, something is growing, they are determined.
Line-up: Justin Currie, Iain Harvie (Guitar), Bryan Tolland (Guitar), Paul Tyagi (Drums)
Releases: Single "Sense Sickness"/"The Difference Is" (Nostrings). Single "Sticks and Stones Girl"/ "This King Is Poor". Album "Del Amitri". Single "Hammering Heart"/"Lines Running North". All Chrysalis/Big Star
Signature Tune: "Crows In The Wheatfield"
Writers: Whole band co-writes everything, Justin writes lyrics.
DEL AMITRI MARK III. (The strange creep of commercialism, ambition, rockism, jeans and sideburns.) Upon their slight return from the traumas, tantrums and mind-expanding travels living rough in the States Del Amitri set about writing in a new way. Dispensing with the previous formula of jamming musical passages together (a table-leg here nailed to a couch arm there) before having Justin fling his febrile and nervous verses on top, the group, partly at Iain's suggestion and partly due to Justin's growing confidence/desperation, decided to write complete "songs" on their own before bringing them into the rehearsal space. Early attempts by Justin to become more authorial such as "Hammer and Peach Story" and "The Wind in the Wheels" were recorded at the expense of LA indie label Big Time who'd shown interest in the band when they had slummed through LA for three mad nights on the previous tour. Big Time sort of ignored these demos but they found their way into the hands of Polygram Music Publishing boss Lucian Grange, tipped off by the group's previous A&R man at Chrysalis, Pete Lawton. As the group were now all in paid employment in various service industry McJobs, Lucian offered them a small advance for their burgeoning new song catalogue so that they could pay off debts, hire a producer (Gil Norton) and rent rehearsal time. This was all around the start of 1997. It became clear in this new creative regime that the only writers of any merit in the band were Justin and Iain so the two immediately hatched a cruel coup d'etat and canned the aforementioned Bryan for having a redundant "y" in his name, a bad hat and a curiously indie guitar style. The monster was awake. Ambition, drive, ambition, drive. "Got to be a BASTARD to make it".
They now set about recruiting the unlikely figure of Mick Slaven to replace Bryan, for a tenner a rehearsal and the chance to get amongst their new songs and shake them, break them, rock them right the fuck up. Mick was known in Glasgow as "Fast Mick" after his legendarily dexterous and enormously individual guitar playing technique that he refined in Bourgie Bourgie. Mick was somewhere between Marc Bolan, Mick Ronson, Chic and Mick Jones of the Clash and proved the inspiration the rest of the twee-twiddler twerps in Del Amitri so hungrily needed.
Now their music became angular and robust and passionate and groovy, twisted and raucous, wry, proclamatory and celebratory. It became a simple matter of cunning spin and subtle hype for Barbara Shores and Lucian Grange to have every major British record label salivating in lust for their signatures by the Autumn of 1987.
Line-up: Justin Currie (bass, vocals) Iain Harvie (Electric, acoustic, bottleneck guitars) Mick Slaven (Yamaha solid body electric guitar, levitating, yelping) and Paul Tyagi (Drums, LOTS of percussion)
Releases : NOTHING
Signature tune: "Move Away Jimmy Blue"
Writers: Principally Justin with Iain copiously co-writing and Mick contributing much
DEL AMITRI MARK IV.(The even stranger triumph of commercialism, ambition, rockism, jeans and sideburns.)
You can also visit Justin Currie's Myspace Here
