Wonderland - The Essential Big Country

Product Information

It was a wobble that may have accidentally cost them a spot at Live Aid. The band’s PR at the time was Mariella Frostrup, then wife of Richard Jobson. Frostrup “worked at Phonogram where Geldof was a lot of the time,” says Grant. “Gossip abounds in a small town like Dunfermline and Mariella knew Dunfermline gossip, being married to Jobson.” So Bob Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith thought the band had split and didn’t invite them. Big Country were onstage for the all-star finale but missed the chance to shine in front of a proportion of the two billion viewers that later took U2 to their hearts. Adamson returned for the band's 'Final Fling' farewell tour, culminating in a sold-out concert at Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom on 31 May 2000. They played what turned out to be their last gig in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October that year. Wonderland" is a single-only release by Scottish band Big Country, released in the UK on 9 January 1984 [1] between their first and second albums. It became a top ten hit for them in the UK, peaking at number 8, giving the band their third top ten entry. [2] The song was included on all the band's subsequent greatest hits collections, although it was never released on any of the band's studio albums. Also released as a 4-song EP in the US in 1984 on Mercury (Mercury 818835-1 M-1) with the A-side consisting of "Wonderland" and "All Fall Together" and the B-side with "Angle Park" and "The Crossing". [3] You couldn’t help Stuart,” says Watson. “Any alcoholic will tell you, you cannot help an alcoholic. He’s got to get that help for himself.” There are two schools of record producers,” says Lillywhite. “One will look at a band and say, ‘Who’s the leader? Stuart: OK, I’ll go and really work with him because he is the creative talent’. Whereas I’ll go into an album and go, ‘Who is feeling insecure? Who do I need to bolster up?’ Bruce was so nervous. His hands used to shake like crazy in the studio. I try and inspire a sense of team work rather than divide and rule.”

Grant: “What made it so special? It’s just a certain chemistry. You can’t quantify it – it either comes or it doesn’t. The passion and the motivation of everyone – some of it rubs off. Like you put a dry log next to an ember and it catches fire – it’s the same thing.” Big Country were always on a major label, but it's clear they did things their way. They didn't sound like any other band by a long shot; they were almost totally unique. Don't overlook how hard that really is to achieve. The band broke massively worldwide with the release of the album’s classic singles ‘Fields Of Fire’, ‘Chance’ and signature song ‘In A Big Country’, which went on to become massive worldwide hits, selling over 2 million copies and driving ‘The Crossing’ to 3 prestigious Grammy nominations in the USA. Honolulu Star-Bulletin Hawaii News". Starbulletin.com. 18 December 2001. Archived from the original on 24 August 2008 . Retrieved 8 April 2014.

Barcode and Other Identifiers

DVD includes highlights from the Glasgow Barrowlands concert, together with promo videos for the singles ‘Ships’ and ‘Alone’ Big Country star found dead – The Scotsman". News.scotsman.com. 18 December 2001 . Retrieved 8 April 2014. Big Country released the non-LP extended play single " Wonderland" in 1984, [1] while in the middle of a lengthy worldwide tour. The song, considered by some critics to be one of their finest, [4] [5] was a Top Ten hit (No. 8) in the UK Singles Chart [3] but, despite heavy airplay and a positive critical response, was a comparative flop in the US, reaching only No. 86 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the last single by the band to make the US charts. a b c d "BPI Certification". British Phonographic Industry. Archived from the original on 11 August 2016 . Retrieved 11 August 2016.

Adamson had something more traditional thing in mind. As he once said: “Music used to be a thing where working people got together on a Saturday night and played some songs. Someone’d play the guitar or the fiddle or an accordion. No bastard’d played the synthesiser.” Grant went from that to gravitating, like so many of the supposedly redundant ‘hippy’ generation, towards the trouble-makers of punk, managing The Stranglers, among others. It was JJ Burnell of The Stranglers in fact who first turned Grant on to the Skids, having witnessed them in Falkirk while on tour. Grant was bringing Scottish acts like Penetration and the Rezillos down to London and “[JJ] said, ‘Would you bring down the Skids? I’ve found this band that I want to produce’.” Big Country Star Believed To Have Committed Suicide | News". Nme.Com. 18 December 2001 . Retrieved 8 April 2014. It’s my birthday on the 17th of December,” says Grant. “I was having breakfast with my family and my mother said, ‘Have you any news on Stuart?’ and just as she said that the phone rang and I knew the number: it was Kim his sister. She said, ‘He’s died. He’s killed himself’. I went for a walk…” On Steeltown the lyrics – the Falklands war, unemployment, tales of people trapped by circumstance and crushed by forces outside their control – and the intensity of the music combined to make something relentlessly grim.Opening the evening is the wonderfully talented Charlotte Grayson. Please come and show her your support. You’ll be glad you did. It also gave the press another stereotype to play with: the dour Scotsman. In the eyes of the music press, the band were pompous and dreary and so not cool, darling. Adamson met singer-songwriter Marcus Hummon, with whom he would form a country act, the Raphaels, and through Hummon he met his second wife Melanie Shelley. “He moved there,” says Grant. “I don’t dwell on it, but it was the worst thing that ever happened really, cos he was out of sight then you never knew what was happening. He got comfortable in Nashville and I think he thought he could drink again.” Big Country was originally formed in 1981 by guitar playing founder members Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson both native of the band’s hometown Dunfermline in Scotland.

I think a lot of people might be surprised at how good this record is, given how it seems to have fallen off the radar.

Recommendations

Message from Derek Forbes — Big Country – It's more than a journey. It's an adventure". Bigcountry.co.uk. 31 December 2012. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014 . Retrieved 8 April 2014.

Chris Briggs gave up drinking that very day,” says Grant. “Stuart had given up just beforehand and they concurred – cos AA is very kind of ‘You’re a member of the club’ sort of thing.” It looked as though Adamson had conquered his drink problem. “He bought a pub in Dunfermline and he used to pull pints, even though he didn’t drink. But then again, you never know how much he was hiding anything…”

Notes

A support slot with Alice Cooper went disastrously too, the band’s half-baked sound grating on an audience looking for glam-metal thrills. By the second night of the tour, Cooper’s tour manager was on the phone to Grant: “Your band’s off the bill, no arguing”. On November 15, 2001, Adamson left a bar in Atlanta, Georgia. His marriage to Melanie Shelley had split after two short years and he was facing a drink-driving charge that could have led to jail time. He fell off the wagon, hard. I know that really hurt Stuart a lot. I mean, big time,” says Butler. “It wasn’t fair and the album died because of it. A lot of things went sour because of that scenario. It definitely hit Stuart bad. And it really did kill the commercial potential of the band – losing that made the industry feel as though the band had no space.” This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.