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The Herald Scotland
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Dick Gaughan deserves every moment of his newly restored reputation
'I'd heard of people doing that before,' Barbara said on Anna Massie's BBC Radio Scotland programme, Travelling Folk, 'but I couldn't believe my eyes.' The man who was so intent on watching Gaughan's renowned guitar technique, was, she added, 'a real geek, obviously a Dick Gaughan fanboy'. And whoever he was, he was far from being the last person to be bewitched by Gaughan's outstanding work on the acoustic guitar. Dick, now 77, is one of Scotland's most renowned musicians. The power of his live performances has long been recognised. As the Glasgow Herald remarked, back in 1989: 'It is impossible to listen to Dick Gaughan and remain unaffected by his work; he is a performer of such unremitting force, such devastating persuasiveness, and an orator of considerable weight … In everything he says, in every song he sings, Gaughan preaches humanitarianism.' Read more: A few years later, a Guardian review noted that Gaughan took no prisoners: 'his songs of the dispossessed were delivered with the electrifying passion of a zealot, cutting through any Aran-sweatered Celtic twilight mist like a Stanley knife at a rave … Those who welcomed a return to social realism in pop with Bruce Springsteen's depressive The Ghost of Tom Joad, should seek out Gaughan's blast-furnace performances to hear how music from the gut really sounds.' When he was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame Gaughan was described as Scotland's 'most passionate troubadour, a singer and guitarist whose performances both burn with a fierce conviction and smoulder with equally heartfelt compassion and invigorate audiences across the world with eloquently expressed conviction'. He has inspired such people as Kate Rusby, Karine Polwart and Billy Bragg. To Kathryn Tickell, the feted exponent of the Northumbrian pipes, he is one of the absolute greats of the folk music world. Dick suffered a stroke in 2016. Today, he is legally blind, and can no longer play guitar. His name and his work, however, are being widely championed. A sum of £92,000, raised by a Kickstarter campaign, led to a substantial amount being given to him to pay for his living costs. The balance is being used to finance R/evolution: 1969-83, a comprehensive seven-CD, one-DVD boxset of his recorded work, which will likely be released in November or early December, distributed by Last Night from Glasgow. At the same time, a GoFundMe appeal launched at Dick's behest has so far raised most than £32,000 to raise legal fees 'to test the claims by an entity called Celtic Music to the rights to a tranche of [his] recorded works – music recorded between 53 and 30 years ago'. The fund's target is £35,000. The albums in question are No More Forever (Melody Maker's Folk Album of the Year in 1972), Kist O' Gold (1977), Songs of Ewan MacColl (1978, with Tony Capstick and Dave Burland), Live in Edinburgh (1985), and Call It Freedom (1988). Also covered are one album he made with Boys of the Lough in 1973, and one he made in the mid-nineties with another group, Clan Alba. Dick fervently hopes that his legal process will be a bridgehead for other artists of his generation, or their heirs, whose 1970s recordings are effectively 'locked up' by the same entity. Dick Gaughan was born in Glasgow in May 1948, the eldest of three children to Dick and Frances Gaughan, from Leith. His family were all musicians; his grandfather played the fiddle and his father played the fiddle and guitar, and his mother was a Gaelic singer. Dick picked up his first guitar at the age of seven and at length began to develop his own style of singing and playing. He was in his late teens when in 1966 he landed his first paid gig, in a folk club in Bathgate's Rendezvous Roadhouse. For his pains he received £2. 'In those days it was all word of mouth and very informal and anarchic, and clubs were generally run by dedicated and pretty fanatical amateurs', he told JP Bean, author of an oral history of British folk clubs, more than a decade ago. 'As I got more work, I just kind of drifted into earning my living exclusively from playing, finally giving up other jobs in January 1970.' He released his first solo album, No More Forever, the following year. In June 1972 he joined Boys of the Lough for eight months, after which he returned to solo work, before, in June 1975, joining the electric folk band Five Hand Reel, with whom he made three albums. Handful of Earth, released in 1981, came to be regarded as classic solo Gaughan, its potent blend of traditional and contemporary folk songs underpinned by his intricate guitar work. It was his considered reaction to the 'extreme right-wing government' that had come to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Its power quite undimmed by the passing of the years, Handful of Earth was voted Album of the Decade in Folk Roots magazine's poll in 1989. Alighting upon that opportunity to reassess the record, Mark Cooper, writing in Q magazine, observed: 'Despite the sense of outrage that lurks behind most of the material on Handful Of Earth, the overall mood is of a kind of gruff sorrow. Perhaps Gaughan still saw himself more as a reporter than a revolutionary and certainly the two ballads at the album's heart, 'The Snows They Melt The Soonest' and 'Lough Erne', are mournful, measured laments whose power is all the greater for their restraint. 'Yet this collection is full of songs which trace the diaspora of the Irish and the Scots as poverty drove their poor towards America. Landlords, bailiffs and beagles pursue the emigre of 'Craigie Hill' just as the hunters pursue the birds in 'Now Westlin Winds'. 'Despite the straightforward power of Leon Rosselson's 'World Turned Upside Down' (since popularised by Billy Bragg) and Ed Pickford's 'Worker's Song', it is the juxtaposition of these contemporary songs with the haunting traditional material which makes this both a poetical and a polemical collection with the poetical holding the balance.' In the mid-eighties in Belfast, a city where Gaughan often played, his music was discovered by a university student by the name of Colin Harper. Today, Colin is, amongst other things, a music writer and curator, author of an excellent biography of Dick's fellow Scot, Bert Jansch - and creator of the very Kickstarter campaign that has marked such a resurgence of interest in Gaughan. Read more On the Record: 'Handful of Earth is a masterpiece,' he said earlier this week. 'As a young listener …I was drawn in by the power and charisma of his stage performances, and the magic guitar playing on things like 'Erin-Go-Bragh' and 'The Snows'. But the deeper magic reveals itself in the more subdued songs, especially 'Craigie Hill' and 'Both Sides the Tweed'. 'Compiling a box-set of live and BBC material as we speak, I know now the other songs in his repertoire in 1980/81 that he might have recorded for Handful of Earth but I can see why he didn't - the mood of it would have changed. 'He got the contents of it exactly right. It's frustrating that much of Dick's 1972-88 commercially recorded work is currently inaccessible. Handful of Earth is the only album from that period that's been physically available ever since. But by happy chance, it's the best of them all!' Handful of Earth would later be described by Billy Bragg as one of his all-time favourite albums. 'World Turned Upside Down', he said, saw Gaughan grabbing the song "by the scruff of the neck and [chucking] it into the twentieth century where it lands at my feet and I think 'f———' hell, that is an incredible song. 'Both Sides Of The Tweed',' he added, 'is probably the best song you could ever imagine about English and Scottish thoughts of independence'. The comedian Stewart Lee accorded Handful of Earth a similar accolade, taking the view that it was 'a great album of Scottish nationalist songs and really old Highland ballads, with this fantastic intricate guitar playing'. It is all happening for Dick Gaughan now: the forthcoming boxset (there will be roughly 500 copies on sale to the general public), plus limited-edition releases of Live at the BBC (on vinyl), a CD, Live in Belfast 1979-82, and a twin CD collection, Live in the 70s. More is on the way. 'Next year', adds Colin, 'we hope to release an expanded True And Bold: Songs of the Scottish Miners [originally out in 1986, long out of print], a 2-CD Andy Kershaw Sessions Plus: 1984-2005 - Dick's six Andy Kershaw Radio 1 sessions plus the best of his other BBC recordings from the 'second phase' of his career - and Collaborations, an exciting album of the best of his studio recordings gifted to themed albums/tribute albums and vocal guest performances with other artists, all from 2000-2015. And from Topic, a new vinyl remaster is in the works.' Dick Gaughan deserves every last moment of his newly restored reputation, having paid his dues in more ways than one. Criss-crossing the country, driving long distances at uncongenial hours and playing in venues that frequently erred on the wrong side of glamorous, was not for everyone. But he persisted, because he was a musician, and because he was very good at it. 'By the time I knock off all the costs of doing my job,' he reflected to JP Bean for his book, Singing from the Floor: A History of British Folk Clubs, 'I probably end up keeping about 15 per cent of what I earn and my taxable income over a year is roughly what I'd earn stacking shelves in Tesco. 'Being on the road isn't a career - it's a way of life. Anyone who gets that the wrong way round isn't going to hack it for long. After a decade they're going to be completely burned out and bitterly disappointed unless they get lucky and hit commercial success outside the folk world … It's just the way of life I chose and it's the price you pay if you decide to do something outside the accepted mainstream.' * The GoFundMe page can be found at Dick Gaughan Live at the BBC 1972-79 (vinyl) is available for pre-ordering from Last Night From Glasgow: ; details of the forthcoming R/evolution boxset can be found at
Spectator
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
I've rekindled my love affair with England
Late spring. Sitting in the armchair in the living room, I was chilly and disconsolate. My middle daughter was seven-and-a-half months pregnant and unwell. The pregnancy had triggered two serious autoimmune disorders. She'd been successfully treated for thyroid cancer a few years before, but this new disease was attacking her lower spine; she was exhausted and in almost constant pain. At times she couldn't pick up her two-year-old daughter. I could barely afford to fill up the car, never mind pay for parking and a flight back to England, and every night lay awake worrying. Beside the chair to the left, a live rock wall, and in front, a wood-burner. To one side of the stove, on a table-easel, was a framed print; the last and most optimistic in a series of allegories I painted during my immediate post-marital separation years. The five works depict the same semi-naked woman turning away from a sparse and gloomy interior towards a bright landscape (hope) in the distance, but with each new work, the interior became lighter and more colourful, and the landscape moved closer. Next to the print, a painted concrete cast of Tintin's dog Snowy. On the other side of the fire, a plaster tortoise and a small copy in oils of the Victorian symbolist painter G.F. Watts's 'Delusive Hope'. Hope or, to the more pessimistic, 'delusive hope' was the last of the 'evils' to escape from Pandora's box. In Watts's painting, a blind girl sits on a rock trying to play a tune on a broken lyre. An email appeared on my phone. Would I be interested in hosting one of the Spectator writers' dinners? I looked at the blind girl playing the single string on her lyre and re-read the message. It was definitely for me and, although doubtful anyone would turn up, I said yes. A date was set. I tried not to think about the prospect of no one coming and forgot about it until I was told it had sold out. Sixteen Spectator readers bought tickets. A couple of weeks later I learned from the Times's Diary the evening was also the one in which Sarah Vine was holding a launch party for her book about being married to the editor of this magazine, Michael Gove, and by chance – or not – Vine's ex-friend Emily Sheffield (Samantha Cameron's sister) was hosting a big party as well. And it was Boris Johnson's birthday. After some thought I couldn't decide which of these four events would be more terrifying. I needn't have worried. The evening was jolly and there were a couple of familiar faces, Nicola and Woody, whom Jeremy and I met on the 2015 Spectator cruise from Venice to Athens. A bonus. Alasdair came down especially from Glasgow and I, sometimes mocked as a young nurse for reading the Times or the Glasgow Herald on lunch breaks, was particularly pleased to meet two Spectator-reading nurses, Siobhan and her friend Caroline. My only regret was to yield to the request from features editor Will to tell the dinner guests my entry to Jeremy's 2011 puerile and offensive joke competition. It was how Jeremy and I met; the winners were invited to his first book launch. The joke was bad enough 14 years ago. What kind of fool would recount a misogynist joke in public these days? Three glasses down I hoped the tide of wokery was, if not exactly ebbing, turning at least, and thought too that Spectator readers more than most, would laugh. They did. Being a woman helped. Imagine a bloke telling the one about the man who goes to the doctor worried that his wife is dead which ends with the punchline: 'Well, doctor, the sex is still the same but the ironing's piling up…' The following day I headed to Oxfordshire to see my middle daughter and meet my grandson for the second time. Since he was born in the middle of May, he's almost doubled in size and is now smiling and cooing and holding his head up. My little granddaughter ran into my arms, and my daughter, although still tired and on fortnightly injections, is almost completely pain-free and 80 per cent more energetic than she was. We had an early dinner in the garden of The Fish in nearby Sutton Courtenay and another day went to a bougie family festival. The sun shone and rekindled my love affair with England. As a child, because my father was dead and my mother worked full time and had a boyfriend I feared and loathed, I spent the summer holidays away from Scotland with my grandparents in Staffordshire. Between the ages of eight and 11, I stayed on an aunt's farm, helping with housework and stable duties and learning to ride on a palomino pony called Silver. Eventually I was proficient enough to be allowed out alone to explore the bridle paths on an old 16-hand chestnut mare called Monica. She was a gentle creature and allowed me some of the happiest moments of my childhood. Occasionally in my mind's eye I catch a glimpse of myself, aged ten, trotting along sun-dappled lanes on that big steady horse. Back home in Provence the summer rentals I manage have begun. Although quieter than previous years, they'll provide a little income and I've received two, possibly three, new commissions for paintings. For now at least, the copy of 'Delusive Hope' is no longer the dominant image in the room.
Glasgow Times
12-07-2025
- Automotive
- Glasgow Times
Times Past: How Glasgow's Clyde Tunnel changed the city forever
The Glasgow Herald article from that day captures the sense of public excitement generated by the opening of the road tunnel, with drivers and passengers "marvelling at the steepness of the dip under the Clyde and the climb out on the other side." Two days earlier, on the 3rd of July 1963, hundreds of spectators had crowded behind the crash barriers on Govan Road to catch a glimpse of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh at the official opening ceremony. West Tunnel under construction looking north, showing lighting, trunking and exhaust duct cladding (1963) (Image: Supplied) The effects of the new tunnel on Glasgow's traffic were felt immediately. On King George V Bridge, at the time the most westerly of Glasgow's bridges and the site of regular snarl-ups, traffic flowed freely. The long queues of cars that could usually be seen waiting for the Govan ferry at rush hour had disappeared – "they must all be using the tunnel today," commented ferryman Kenneth McKenzie in the Evening Times the day after the opening of the tunnel. West Tunnel, general view looking north (1963) (Image: Supplied) The opening of the Clyde Tunnel had been a long time in the making. Glasgow Corporation had been eager to improve Glasgow's cross-river transport infrastructure since the end of WW2. The importance of the stretch of the Clyde westwards from Govan and Finnieston to Glasgow's shipbuilding industry rendered a bridge across that section of the river undesirable. The boom of the motor car and the resultant congestion in the city, however, required a solution. A pamphlet created to mark the opening of the tunnel, held at Glasgow City Archives, outlines the difficulty faced by those attempting to cross the river by car prior to the construction of the tunnel: "motor traffic has had to rely on vehicular ferries to carry vehicles between the opposite banks or make a detour into the heart of Glasgow and cross the river by one of the four city bridges." In 1948, Glasgow Corporation acquired the powers to construct a road tunnel under the Clyde, between Whiteinch and Linthouse. Financial troubles meant nearly ten years would pass before Lord Provost Andrew Hood would sink a silver-plated spade into the soil at Linthouse to mark the beginning of the construction of the tunnel. Building the Clyde Tunnel was gruelling work for the tunnellers underground. Nicknamed the 'Tunnel Tigers', the cohort included many emigrant workers from County Donegal. The 'Tigers' spent eight hours a day digging tonnes upon tonnes of stone and silt from beneath the river. Beyond being physically exhausting, the work could also be dangerous. There were numerous cases of workers suffering from 'the bends' during and after their work on the Clyde Tunnel, and two workers, Leslie Bone and Thomas Roache, died from decompression sickness. When the first tunnel was completed in 1963, it was hailed as a feat of civil engineering. At time of opening, the Clyde Tunnel's 6% gradient made it the steepest road tunnel in the world – a fact which won't be surprising to anyone who has puffed their way out of the tunnel's cycle lane on their bike. The initial estimate was that 9000 cars a day would use the Clyde Tunnel, but within a year of opening that figure had shot up to 22000. While the Clyde Tunnel proved popular with motorists, some certainly felt its disadvantages. The neighbourhoods of Whiteinch and Linthouse were considerably altered by the construction of the tunnel, with the demolition of 250 tenements, a church, several bowling greens and a number of allotments. The residents of these areas found the peace of their neighbourhoods disturbed by the traffic of the large new roads. The Herald reports how "people accustomed to quiet nights found the late-night and early-morning traffic interrupted their sleep," while children who used to play freely in the street found themselves hemmed in by crash barriers. The Clyde Tunnel is a landmark not only of Glasgow's road network, but of the country as a whole. In the 62 years since its construction, it remains Scotland's only road tunnel, and now carries around 25 million motorists, cyclists and pedestrians a year.
Spectator
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
SNP plotters should think twice before moving against John Swinney
For those who feel Scottish politics has become a little dull of late, fear not: a rebel faction within the SNP is plotting to make things very interesting again. Today's Glasgow Herald brings the news of a secret summit of top SNP insiders at which plans to remove incumbent party leader (and Holyrood first minister) John Swinney were discussed. The paper says 25 'senior' figures gathered on Monday to consider the boss's future after the SNP's surprise defeat in last week's by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, a seat they had held uninterrupted since 2011. The conspirators are reportedly frustrated by Swinney's moderation on domestic policy and his failure to ramp up efforts to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom. They are said to be giving Swinney two weeks to present a new independence strategy or face a leadership challenge before the year is out.
The National
29-05-2025
- Sport
- The National
Scottish Strokeplay Championship returns to North Berwick
Boris Becker, a smash-hit of a 17-year-old from Germany, would become the youngest Wimbledon champion that summer. A couple of weeks before his conquest at the All England Club, Becker romped to his first top-level triumph in the Stella Artois Championships at Queen's Club. His win wasn't enough to earn top billing in the sports pages of the Glasgow Herald that June weekend, mind you. Above a report of Becker's barnstorming breakthrough down in West Kensington was the headline act of Colin Montgomerie and his five-shot procession in the Scottish Open Amateur Strokeplay Championship at North Berwick and Dunbar. One likes to imagine that a 21-year-old Monty flicked through the pages of said newspaper, caught a glimpse of Becker's feat underneath his own write up and said, 'all credit to him' in that phrase of praise that would become a bit of a trademark. Or perhaps he chirped, 'all credit to me' before pinning the cutting on to his wall of fame with gleeful gusto? Here in 2025, the Scottish Open Amateur Strokeplay Championship returns to East Lothian again this weekend as the West Links at North Berwick stages the event for the first time since it co-hosted back in 1985. The decades hurtle by, don't they? 'Is it really 40 years?,' gasped Montgomerie of this passage of time. It sure is. Back in the day, a young Montgomerie had already underlined his potential by winning the Scottish Youths' title in 1983 before losing to a certain Jose Maria Olazabal in the final of the Amateur Championship at Formby a year later. 'Now on the Champions Tour, my parking spot at events is next to Jose Maria and he still mentions the Amateur Championship 40 years on,' smiled Monty of the Spaniard's gentle ribbing. In 1985, Montgomerie was a 21-year-old student at Houston Baptist University in Texas and arrived back on home soil for the Scottish Strokeplay Championship as one of the favourites. He justified that standing with a fine display of poise, polish and purpose on the east coast and eased to a victory which, at the time, was the biggest of his fledgling career. 'I'd just come back from American college and was playing better and better,' he reflected. 'I went into that event as one of the favourites and thankfully got the job done. 'The strokeplay was one of the big two amateur titles that I wanted on my CV and in 1987 I was able to win the Scottish Amateur Matchplay at Nairn. 'But I was thrilled to win that first title and it sent me on a really strong run for a few years.' That success at Dunbar in '85 helped Montgomerie secure a place in the GB&I Walker Cup team and he would retain his spot in the side two years later before making the leap into the pro ranks not long after. The rest is history. 'I look back very fondly on my amateur career,' said Monty, who was the European Tour's rookie of the year in 1988 and won his first title on the circuit the following season in Portugal by a whopping 11-shots. 'When I turned pro in September 1987, I very quickly had to go from trying to beat Sandy Stephen, George Macgregor and Ian Brotherston – all very good players - to coming up against Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo and Sandy Lyle.' A new generation, including reigning Scottish Amateur Matchplay champion Alexander Farmer, will tackle the delights, the rigours and the charming quirks of North Berwick over the next three days with an international field of 144 players gathering for this terrific links test. They'll be hard pressed to put on a show like Englishman Dominic Clemons did in the championship 12 months ago. Just along the A198 at Muirfield, Clemons conjured a quite remarkable performance that left onlookers scraping their jaws off the ground as he brought the formidable Open venue to its knees with a 24-under total. His closing day rounds of 65 and 62 gave Clemons a record-busting 17-stroke win which blitzed the previous best of eight set by Barclay Howard in 1997 and matched by Tommy Fleetwood in 2009. All credit to him, as Monty might have said.
