The gig-economy life of a struggling Scottish composer

The National

6 hours ago

John Currie, a wonderful colleague, conductor and music critic, in his early days supplemented his earnings as a street lamplighter in the West End of Glasgow.
I remember 'the leeries' as they were known. They carried a short stepladder over a shoulder and a taper with which to light the gas mantles. In the increasing dark of winter smog-ridden Glasgow nights the lamps themselves became mysterious, isolated pools of light in the yellowy-black.
In the mornings at first light, the leeries extinguished them. In summer, that would be very early morning and John loved to recount one occasion, about 4am and with the sun just rising, making his way home across Kelvingrove Park and being confused by distant human cries and mysterious thwacking sounds.
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He crested a hill and, lo and behold, there was a substantial cohort of policemen playing cricket, the criminals having all, one presumes, gone soberly to their beds. John found me work as a music critic for The Scotsman, though as a junior critic, casually employed, I could only sign off with initials. I disapproved of that. The readers had a right to know who was writing about them, good or bad.
Being an indigent, young freelance composer making a precarious living, I was up for anything and took on quite a bit of extra work and walk-on parts for television. The casting agency was friendly to musicians and, as members of the Musicians' Union we had, in those days, some reciprocal rights with Equity, the actors' union.
I recall being cast as a 16th-century swineherd in The Borderers, although I was forbidden to use my stick upon a vast sow and her farrow who scratched their backs against the plywood towers added to the ruins of Mugdock Castle, swaying alarmingly under the pressure.
The directors from the south waved their floppy arms ineffectually and uttered 'shoo'. These were people whose green welly boots had never graced a farmyard and there was I, who knew perfectly well what I was about, whether in the 16th or the 20th century, denied my vocation.
Miraculously, the set survived and I got paid anyway. It was the money we were after, not the glory. We spent hours sitting around waiting to be called for five minutes of action, passing the time counting imaginary sixpences into a piggy bank. The longer the director faffed about, the more we got paid.
It could be dangerous. We were untrained extras, not stuntmen, and I remember someone's sword pierced a heavy serge jacket in close combat as we fought it out on a confined area of grass.
I got a speaking part in the STV production of Redgauntlet. To my constant chagrin I was always cast as a Redcoat, and this was no exception. Longing to be a Highlander probably didn't help my performance and that was the only speaking part I was ever offered.
The predecessor to Redgauntlet was The Flight of the Heron. It was in one of these productions that the Highlander extras had great sport. Filming was not far from Fort Augustus and they had arrived by bus in the field where the shoot was to take place. Everything was shrouded in thick mist and it became obvious it was not going to clear.
Their bus was not ordered to pick them up until hours later, so they trekked back to the hotel by a shortcut down through the fields, maybe a dozen of them, in full Highland gear – targes, claymores, beards, kilts, the lot.
They emerged from a gate onto the road just in time to see an Austin Mini ditch itself, no doubt the driver confused in the mist. The 'Highlanders', in total silence, surrounded the Mini and its two female occupants and lifted the entire thing back onto the road, then headed off, vanishing into the mists of time. Is there a line between reality and illusion? And if there is, who could draw it?
My great moment on celluloid was as an extra in Bertrand Tavernier's cult film Death Watch, shot in Glasgow in 1979 and in which, for all of seven seconds, I make my ill-shaven way across the screen.
Such are the brief moments of glory to which one clings with pathetic determination akin to that of a baby whose needs are only silenced by a dummy teat. In the film, I was a down-and-out, queuing for my handout from the powers that be. Death Watch is a horrible and prescient precursor of reality TV and intrusive journalism.
Death Watch was filmed in Govan (Image: John Purser)A woman dying of an incurable disease becomes a media sensation, her journey towards death filmed both with her consent and secretly – until she discovers the truth, that there is also a camera implanted behind the eyes of the man she trusts.
The film was partly shot in a church in Govan which was in the last throes of its life, being literally eaten alive by dry rot fungus. Tavernier missed a trick or two there. As you entered the vestry under a low stone arch, the spreading stain of fungus could be seen between the stones but it was when you got into the main body o' the kirk that you saw God's handiwork under the severest assault from – well, God's handiwork.
We extras were all assembled in the church itself, and where we were is where a very real death watch drama was being enacted. Slowly, inexorably, the fungus, having made a start on the roof beams, was snaking its way down the huge unadorned stone wall in search of more wood to eat. Dry rot cannot eat stonework but it can and does eat wood.
The thing is that this wall was so high that the dry rot's search for nourishment, informed neither by sight, hearing, smell, nor touch, was on a long speculative journey towards breakfast.
What was even more sinister was that when I went to investigate the carved wooden pulpit, I could hardly get into it as it was filled with vast folds of fungus. So the rot was from below as well as above.
This was the place from which God's word was spread forth to the faithful, so if you wanted a reminder of the frailty of life, of the shortness thereof and the little time left for repentance before you were judged unworthy and fit only for hell, then a pulpit being consumed by dry rot was the perfect symbolic place to be.
Standing there, I felt a bit like the famous English poet John Donne, who once preached to his congregation from inside his upright coffin: 'Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.'
I take comfort in that quotation in that, for once, the doom and gloom does not emanate from a Scottish Presbyterian theology. The English, God love them, can be miserable too.
At the other end of appearances, I was once paid to model for a promotional ad for Harris Tweed. I had never modelled for anything and had no idea how to go about it. I got up early and, this time, shaved meticulously.
But when I arrived 'on set', the director took one look at me and sent me off to get a proper shave. I felt a little humiliated but now rejoice in the memory of the best shave I have ever had. I was rather looking forward to modelling with a model, but the reality was not what I expected.
The model was, as they had to be in those days, and even today, as thin as a rake. I'm sure she looked great on camera. Anyway, we were placed beside some cases of fancy Caithness glass and jewellery and the like, pretending to be connoisseurs. There was no rapport whatsoever between us and it does not surprise me that sales in Harris Tweed do not appear to have benefited from our poor showing.
Being an extra in an orchestra is a different matter. How can you be an 'extra' in an orchestra? As an extra, you don't get to speak ('rhubarb' excluded) but surely in an orchestra you have to play? Well, no, not always. On this occasion, some of us got paid for pretending to play.
The Scottish National Orchestra – as it was in those days before it, somewhat controversially, applied for and was awarded royal status – had commissioned a promotional video which was to be set to a recording they had made of the Shostakovich Festive Overture.
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Why couldn't they just film the recording session itself? Because the orchestra was not sufficiently impressive in size for the video, so they got in some musicians who could play well enough, but not to its standards. I was, rightly, one of these; a mediocre cellist but one who, like virtually every musician that ever performed, knew how to fake it. I guess we have, most of us, faked it at one time or another.
So there we were in glorious array – maybe 100 strong or near enough – bows poised, instruments at the ready, watching for Alex Gibson's down-beat for us to commence playing with noiseless vigour as soon as the tape started. Not as easy as you might think.
Anyway, that is not what happened. The Overture starts with a brass fanfare, and no sooner did Alex's baton descend than the entire brass section broke into The Dam Busters March, or some such – fortissimo.
There's a lesson there. Don't mess with an orchestra. They did not like being asked to fake it. Not their job. Let the film-makers sort it out.
They must also have disliked being regarded as visually inadequate and being seen by the public with a number of sub-standard players on the back desks.
Each orchestra, within the genus as a whole, is a beast of its own particular species and, when riled, it is a thoroughly dangerous creature. Of course we could scarcely hold it together, the brief opening take was a washout and Gibson was livid.
Can't blame him. Can't blame the orchestra. So much for the camera not lying. Anyway, it turned out fine and we extras all got paid for being seen but not heard.