Dougie MacLean's anthem causes Scots to start greetin' and drinkin'

The Herald Scotland

3 days ago

This is one of these weeks when I must think carefully (reader's voice: 'That's a first!') about whether the Icon is the person or their most famous work.
But there's more to illustrious songwriter Dougie MacLean than 'Caledonia', Scotland's unofficial national anthem. That said, he actually had Perthshire in particular in mind when he wrote the song as a homesick young man abroad.
However, 'Perthshire's been everything I've ever had' would have had limited appeal. It's a song for the nation.
'Wester Hailes has been everything I've ever had' wouldn't have worked either. Not that Wester Hailes has been anything to Mr MacLean – no fault on either part – but his love of the land in Perthshire is very real. He lives and works where he grew up, even converting his old school and teacher's house in Butterstone, by Dunkeld, into a music studio and home.
Dougie told punk rock fanzine Scottish Field in 2015: 'When the school closed in the 1970s it lay empty for a long, long time, then I was able to buy it. We also bought the old teacher's house, which my mum used to clean. We live in it now – it's really bizarre!'
Born on 27 September 1954 in Dunblane, Dougie MacLean has described his childhood in Butterstone as 'idyllic'.
His father's side of the family hailed from Mull, his mother's from around Taynuilt. Father, a gardener on a big estate, played the fiddle. Mother played the melodeon. Grandfather was a shepherd on the hills above Butterstone. When full of whisky, he'd sing old Gaelic songs with tears flooding down his face.
'We would say, 'What's wrong with Seanair [Gaelic for grandfather]?' MacLean told the National earlier this year. 'My mum would say, 'Oh, no, it's fine. He's just happy'.'
HALL OR NOTHING
THE kitchen table would then be pushed back, as mother and uncles produced their melodeons. By the time he was five, Dougie could play 'Morag of Dunvegan' on the harmonica. A year later, taken round village halls to hear Scottish country dance bands, he wanted to be a drummer: 'I used to sit up on stage beside the drummer with a pair of drumsticks and play along.'
Soon, mandolin was added to his repertoire and, while at high school, he and buddy Ewan Sutherland (singing Corries songs) would play the Angus Hotel in Blairgowrie, earning £1 a night. With a few more pals, they formed a band called Puddock's Well, with Dougie on fiddle, the instrument for which he became best known in his early years.
In 1976, while working as a gardener in Aberdeen, the 20-year-old was invited to play for the Tannahill Weavers – beginning in Germany the following day. After quickly consulting friends – 'Do it or you'll regret it for the rest of your life' – he gave up his job and flat and ended up, as he told Klof magazine, 'travelling all over Europe, sleeping in sleeping bags on people's floors and going through some real hard times'.
Good times for folk, though, which was growing in popularity on yonder Continent. In the late 1970s, MacLean spent six months touring with Silly Wizard.
Wanting to focus more on his own songwriting, he left the band, taking up an invitation from a friend living in Germany, the late Alan Roberts, to form a duo.
(Image: PA)
SICKENING TALENT
AROUND this time, in just 10 minutes, he wrote 'Caledonia' while homesick on a beach in Brittany with a group of Irish buskers. It received its first airing at a concert in West Berlin and has since been embraced in Ireland, Norway, Denmark, all sorts of places, but mostly in Scotland, the homesickness capital of Europe. As MacLean has said: 'It's a magical thing when you put a bunch of words with a melody. When it works, it's really powerful.'
It's been played during childbirth and in folk's dying moments. A commenter on the National's website called for it to be sung in schools as Americans do with the Star Spangled Banner.
A version sung by Frankie Miller was used in a Tennent's Lager advert, which was quickly pulled for allegedly promoting a pro-independence message. It's since been watched by hundreds of thousands on yon YouTube.
'Caledonia' was written near the start of MacLean's stellar career, during which, while still in his early 20s, an English record company told him his music was 'banal, stupid and parochial'. This was at a time when cosmopolitan sophisticates Chas & Dave were all the rage. The insult led him to set up his own recording studio and label (Dunkeld Records), 'the best thing I ever did'.
Musically, 'Caledonia' may have been the best song he ever did, but he also won plaudits internationally for 'The Gael', a dramatic and ominous version of which was used as a theme tune in 1992 film The Last of the Mohicans.
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ANOTHER song, 'Holding Back', received a particularly emotional outing in 2013 when the late Alex Salmond presented MacLean with the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Lifetime Achievement for Contribution to Songwriting.
It's a song about contentment: 'That's one of the great things about being an older musician – you can feel content with your place in the greater scheme of things.'
Among other awards, in 2011 MacLean was conscripted as an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), a higher award than the Quite Good Order of the British Empire.
In 2014, Till Tomorrow, recorded in collaboration with The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, revisited some well loved songs. In Perthshire, MacLean set up the Amber Festival, so that fans might visit the places that inspired his songs.
This coming November, a revitalised Shades of Amber will light up life in the county.
In April, Dougie returned to New York's Carnegie Hall for a special concert with celebrated Scottish musicians Julie Fowlis and Mànran, while last month saw him perform at The Reeling, Glasgow's summer celebration of traditional Scottish music, at Rouken Glen Park.That song, though. Here are some final words on 'Caledonia', from the man himself: 'People sing it at weddings, they sing it at funerals. It becomes a kind of tool that people use in their everyday life. Music is much more than just a commodity. When it's done right it's a tool in life's toolbox to keep you from getting depressed or for celebrating in your own home.'