Stuart Adamson's 50th Birthday (Part II)

After The Crossing and Steeltown, the rest of Big Country's career found the band fading from the spotlight while maintaining a devoted cult following until the end.

I could write a book theorizing on the possible reasons for Big Country's decline in popularity, but I want this to be a tribute without letting my inner critic take over. But I will say this - very few artists maintain a high level of artistic and commercial success for a great length of time. The way a band is marketed is often out of their control and the quality of the music has rarely had much impact on what makes the charts and what doesn't.

If there's one trait that all truly massive artists share, it's that they crave fame more than anything else in world. People like Bono and Madonna feel like they deserve to have 100,000 people hanging on their every word, but Stuart Adamson was infinitely more humble, and, I suspect, plagued by self-doubt. That's someone I can relate to.

Big Country's early mainstream success had a lot to do with timing, luck, and a never-ending desire for the next big thing. Perhaps outside influences expecting them to repeat that success instead of letting the band find its own path is where things went wrong.



Their third album, 1986's The Seer, debuted at #2 on the UK charts and produced the top 10 single, "Look Away". Kate Bush liked the band well enough to provide guest vocals on the album's title track, and in my opinion, The Seer was, for the most part, a natural progression of Big Country's sound, but the lighter, more polished production values didn't appeal to me as much as the raw passion of Steeltown. And despite the more radio-friendly sound, mainstream success in the US eluded them once again.

The band was at a crossroads. Would they be allowed to continue as a cult favourite with artistic integrity and a devoted following, or would the major label demand major hits? During this time, Stuart Adamson once said that he "spent more time arguing about music than making music".

In 1988, under pressure from their record company, the band made a questionable decision to embrace then-current fashions (ie. keyboards), hire a producer who had recently scored some hit singles, and abandon their Celtic roots in an attempt to re-conquer North America.

That album, Peace In Our Time, failed to make a dent across the pond, wound up alienating some of the faithful, and was the first album not to go gold in the UK.

Such is the fate of a band with a distinctive sound. If you stick to the formula, critics complain about your songs all sounding the same. If you try something new, some fans will say you've abandoned them, compromised your vision, or "sold out".

The irony is that the demos and b-sides from the Peace In Our Time sessions showed that the band was still making the music they wanted, but the record company didn't know what to do with it.



The nineties saw a series of independently released albums which always contained some excellent songs, but, some might argue, lacked the cohesiveness or the distinctive vision of The Crossing and Steeltown.

There were some high-profile European gigs opening for the likes of the Rolling Stones or Page and Plant, but nothing the band did would capture the mainstream's attention. There was also a plethora of live albums, DVDs, and rarities collections that kept the fans like me well occupied.

If I'm giving the impression that the band peaked early, I would argue that there's no shame in that, especially since their peak reached such great heights. If Kurt Cobain had lived and Nirvana had stayed together for fifteen years, would their later output have been greeted with the same reverence as Nevermind? I doubt it.

What matters most to me is that Big Country recorded a lot of great songs during the nineties, including this gem from their 1993 album, The Buffalo Skinners.



Prior to Big Country, Stuart Adamson was the lead guitarist for a band called the Skids who started out as a punk band, but, like the Clash, quickly grew tired of punk's self-imposed limitations and started incorporating other influences. I once heard the Skids described as Celtic New Wave Art-Punks, and that sums them up about as well as any label could.

An early fan was legendary British DJ John Peel, who called Stuart Adamson the "Hendrix of the North".

Another admirer was a young fella who was going around calling himself the Edge and trying to start up a band called U2. Stuart's work in the Skids was a direct influence on the Edge's early sound, and U2 eventually covered a Skids track "The Saints Are Coming" as a charity single in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The Skids themselves managed a few hits in the UK, but lead singer Richard Jobson was an acquired taste to say the least, so many pundits began to see Stuart Adamson as the quiet visionary who was the Skids' not-so-secret weapon.

I thoroughly enjoy the best of the Skids, especially tracks like Charles, Masquerade, or Arena which place the emphasis more squarely on Stuart's contributions.



Stuart also spent a brief time in the late 90s in a band called the Raphaels, working alongside a successful Nashville songwriter, Marcus Hummon. Footage from that era is hard to come by, but there is this fan-made video for Shattered Cross, which is probably my favourite song from the lone Raphaels album. If you search for Shattered Cross on YouTube, you'll also find a wonderful cover by Darrell Scott and Paul Brady.



So much for Stuart Adamson's career, what about the man himself and how he affected me? I think I'll save that for part III, which I'll post tomorrow on what would have been Stuart's 50th.

And if you missed it, click here for part one.