Tony Cummings offers a think piece about Scotland's premiere stadium rockers RUNRIG.
We're all caught in circles. It's so popular an expression no one thinks about it anymore. 'Don't need to' say the nihilists. It just means how pointless things are. Chasing our own tails around and around - eventually coming back to where we started again. And we can't jump out of the circle of our lives unless we die. And can we then? But doesn't that circular path lead us somewhere that whatever path we take however many false turns, we eventually find our way to the centre? Like a maze, you get there in the end.
Two chats with Runrig
and neither of them ideal. One in the jostle of a 1987 Greenbelt
Festival Press Conference as I struggle to come to terms with my
Englishness and seek to discover what is it in their music that sets
off such deep, deep longings within me. The other chat is on the
telephone a few days ago. Calum MacDonald patiently fields my
questions; yes he's pleased that 'The Big Wheel' has gone Gold, yes he
and his two brothers go to church, they don't work on Sunday, they
wish they spent more time on the Western Isles, yes he believes in
prayer. Calum Macdonald, as the percussionist and lyricist with the
band, tells me that there's no historical significance in the title or
the haunting, eerie circular maze image that Chrysalis designers have
put on 'The Big Wheel' which decorated the stage when the band played
that breathtaking concert on the 22nd June on the banks of Loch
Lomond.
The journalist.
The Big Wheel is an exploration of everything that you are.
The writer of songs.
It's Saul the designer. Do I want another nine lines for the
discography? House style. But I can't remember the years off the top
of my head and there's no time for phone calls. The courier's coming
at 4.00pm. The Highland Connection, Ridge (their own label). But the
year? 198? Four for Ridge. The Cutter And The Clan, that's easy,
Chrysalis, 1987. I didn't get to hear them till then. What came next?
Oh yeah, the live album 'Once In A Lifetime'. 'Searchlight', 1989, two
EPs; The Big Wheel'. But the years? No time. House Style looses out.
The journalist
There have always been bands on the edge of modern music that
have had Celtic influences. They've come in waves. There has been the
folk revival within rock music and bands like the Chieftains getting
record deals with major companies in England. Throughout rock history
there has been bands with Celtic influences. To a greater or a lesser
extend Celtic music is a wide thing. We got our name Runrig from an old
farming system that was used in Scotland from about the 12th Century
onwards and its used in certain places today. It means different
things at different times but In the clan system of Scotland you had
an area of ground that was designated arable for these communities
that was all sectioned off and this was called the Runrig system. In other
areas It was used as a drainage system for the land, as the land was
very poor and had to be drained so you had and the drains and pipes,
it was a name that came from the past, it came from the earth, and it
sounded quite modern. So we thought it was quite good.
The
writer of songs
Found the biography. Donnie Munro (vocals) Rory Macdonald (bass,
harmonies/vocals), Malcolm Jones (guitars, accordion, mandolin, lain
Bayne (drums, percussions), Peter Wishart (keyboards), Calum Macdonald
(percussion)
The journalist
The notion that we, the church, should be a subculture I don't
find particularly appealing in any away. You have something that
exists you know and is known by a certain section of society as
Christian music it should be up there with all music. A bit like
ourselves because If we were playing Gaelic influenced music it would
have been very easy for us to have remained in the backwaters of
Scotland playing only to the people who might have found it
Interesting and in the same way that would have been a subculture of
Scottish music that would never have done. The music you play is for
everybody and If Its Christian music It should be for everybody's
consumption.
The writer of songs
A paradox. A band that evokes continually within me, images of
windswept, wild country playing 'stadium rock' before thousands of
people. A rock band? A rock folk band? All I know is that in the
hugest of crowds they awake a longing in me.
The journalist
Sunburst. The morning moor. The light of God. The heart of
youth. I look around me. My eyes find their rest on this garden the
flower of the next Sunrise.
The writer of songs
"Radical new approach to the article?" says my assistant editor
unimpressed. "You're not going to start goin1 on about Wild Geese
again are you? Wild Geese flying over the island. You did that with
lona."
The Journalist
You should never dwell on the past but you have to investigate
it you have to learn from It.
The writer of songs
Skye. lona. The Isle Of Lewis. Lindisfarne. Places I've yet to visit
yet places that have helped make me what I am. While the world careers
on in its giddying scramble for mammon they at least have stayed true
to the old ways, the ways of simplicity, the ways of faith.
The
journalist
If there is any predominant theme within the lyrics of Runrig is probably the
landscape and everything to do with It. Coming from a rural
environment, obviously you tend to write about the things around you.
And what is around us is the landscape with its beauty. It's the real
political environment, what people are set to do in this landscape and
what happens to these people as they go through it historically. These
are very common themes in our songs Also the spiritual side, the sense
of spirituality within the people. I think those are the main themes
of Runrig's music.
But we are trying to widen that now. I think we have done that for a
long time and with a lot of value but I think as the band Is growing I
think the music and the songs have got to grow and come out into a
wider context.
The writer of songs.
My wife calls. She puts my five-year-old son on. A bomb has been
discovered, unexploded, in his school. This world of ours.
The
journalist
I think our single "Protect And Survive", in a lot of ways
pointed out the problems, moral problems that we all, it Christians
and non-Christians, have to grapple with it dealt with the whole
nuclear issue which Is obviously one of the major issues that anybody
who Is a Christian has to address.
The writer of songs
Sara's waiting to key-in. I'd better stop here...
The journalist
Three of the band members would say they are Christians if
your definition of that Is having an absolute belief and realisation
of the resurrection of Christ, three would adhere to that belief. And
the others would have a very broadish spiritual base.
The writer
of songs.
Lord, help me hit deadline.
The journalist
In the past I have occasion to phone editors or talk to
editors in the music press, to criticise how they actually conduct
themselves. Because I don't view the music press as being different
from any other news publication and what It should be doing Is
informing the public of what Is happening in music and that Is the
basic task of the music press, not to be necessarily some thing for
building up and knocking down people.
The writer of
songs
I like a lot of the things in Q but the article in the September 91 issue is a complete stitch-up. 40,000 people, there to see Runrig play by the banks of Loch Lomond and they send in a sneering cynic to ridicule not only the band but the crowd as well. Carefully selecting his victims, "he wears a t-shirt reads: "If you're no Scottish, away and throw shite at yourself."
Images of drunken yahoos engaging in nationalistic clap trap. Fascist
nonsense. Only the last paragraph captures the event, "A little later,
a middle-aged woman is still staring into the sky, long after the
fireworks have faded. 'This has been the most wonderful night of my
life,' she says to no one in particular. She means it too." I'm sure
she does.
The journalist
Many worshipping wealth at the world's altar (From "The
Crowded River" translation of "Abhainn An T-Sluaigh").
The
writer of songs
Ring a friend in the Folk Department at the National Discography.
Classical-in the oral tradition. Bagpipes, Harp music. Folk songs and
ballads. On the Isle of Skye, the McCrimmond Family wrote huge amounts
of lovely pipe musical Gaelic. For generation upon generation. A
language of stark beauty. Gaelic poetry, dependent on rhyming in the
line rather than at the end of the line. All those throat sounds.
Different vowel sounds and some we haven't got in boring English.
Gaelic: a language, my friend tells me, infatuated with beautiful
words and beautiful imagery.
The journalist
We've played in Denmark, Germany, France and Switzerland. So
In some ways European audiences have been easier for a band like
ourselves coming from an area In Scotland where there is an obvious
ethnic link we have always felt that England was probably a greater
hurdle within the United Kingdom than going to Europe because the
English language is obviously very dominant. In a country like Denmark
the people are very used to listening to music In a different language
other than their own so there Is always ah easier acceptance of Gaelic
music.
The writer of songs
Strange. The songs I love the best are the ones I understand the
least. I cannot rationalise it. Other than to say it sounds like Donny
is worshipping the Lord in tongues. In a sense he is.
The
journalist
It is not even so much an issue of an language identity In the
music, it is more to do with being a cultural influence on the music.
We always feel that the backbone to our music Is the one that Is set
very deeply In the tradition that uses the Gaelic language. The heart
of the music if you like.
The writer of songs
Phew made it. Praise God.
The journalist
The Big Wheel? Its really a journey. Life is a journey.
The writer of songs
I, too, have only recently discovered Runrig while researching my Scottish heritage. Sadly, too late to see them in their final tour. But it hasn't stopped me from listening to their music all the time. I, too, hear God in the strains, and what a refreshing, uplifting thing to hear, that "three" of the members KNOW the one true God! So, of course, we hear God in their music!! I do have a question about one song which I can't seem to find an answer to. What is "From the North" about? I've let my mind run amok with possible explanations; the Bruce searching for help in northern Scotland, among the fierce border clans, maybe? A Highland lord in a lifelong blood battle with, I dunno, someone, and looking among his Scottish brothers for assistance? Anyone know the truth or where I can find it?