Wonderland - The Essential Big Country

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The Irish Charts - All there is to know". irishcharts.ie. Archived from the original on 5 January 2010. 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. 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.” In October 2000 Big Country played their last gig in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia. Adamson almost missed it when, drunk, he got on the wrong plane. “He was meant to go to LA to meet the band,” says Grant, “and he ended up in Indianapolis. Fortunately there was enough time to still make the gig.” And you know how record companies are,” says producer Steve Lillywhite. “Everyone’s very excited and when it doesn’t work out suddenly it’s [sniffy voice] ‘Oh, I’m not sure about that’. All of a sudden it had gotten a bit weird with Big Country. Because one of the best producers in the world had not delivered. It sounded flat and uninteresting.”

Excellent songs, totally unique guitar sounds, amazing musicianship and production. There is absolutely zero filler.

a b c Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19thed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. pp.56–7. ISBN 1-904994-10-5. On tour in Germany at the end of 1999, Mike Peters realised for the first time that Adamson had a drink problem. “I never saw him drinking until one night in Germany when he started drinking in public again and everyone was like, ‘Whoa!’ He fell down some stairs and cut his face before a show and struggled his way through the gig. That was the first time I’d seen anything…”

Cherry Red Records – The Journey, Big Country". Cherryred.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 April 2014 . Retrieved 8 April 2014. Steeltown is a bit dense and a bit muddy,” admits Lillywhite today. “But maybe we were trying to put too much on because maybe we trying to cover something up. Maybe Stuart’s writing had become more political and even if people are living in a steeltown with no work and everything, they wanna lose themselves. They don’t want to be told that their life is shit. Maybe they need the big dreams even more…” Between their last gig in October 2000 and his death in December 2001, Bruce Watson spoke to Adamson a few times by phone “but I could still tell he was still in hell,” he says. Big Country's first single was " Harvest Home", recorded and released in 1982. [1] It was a modest success, although it did not reach the UK Singles Chart. [3] Their next single was 1983's " Fields Of Fire (400 Miles)", which reached the UK's Top Ten and was rapidly followed by the album The Crossing. [3] The album was a hit in the United States (reaching the Top 20 in the Billboard 200), powered by " In a Big Country", their only US Top 40 hit single. [1] The song features heavily engineered guitar sounds, strongly reminiscent of bagpipes; [1] Adamson and fellow guitarist Watson achieved this through the use of the MXR Pitch Transposer 129 Guitar Effect. Also contributing to the band's unique sound was their use of the e-bow, a device which allows a guitar to sound more like strings or synthesizer. The Crossing sold over a million copies in the UK and obtained gold record status (sales of over 500,000) in the US. The band performed at the Grammy Awards and on Saturday Night Live.

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saw the release of Big Country's eighth and final studio album with Adamson at the helm, Driving to Damascus (titled in its slightly different, augmented US release John Wayne's Dream). [14] Adamson said publicly that he was pleased with the album but disappointed that it did not fare better on the charts. [ citation needed] Later that year, he disappeared for a while before resurfacing, stating that he had needed some time off. [1] On 9 July 2015, the band announced that Derek Forbes would no longer be performing with Big Country, and that all forthcoming gigs would go on with a replacement, Scott Whitley. [30] On 12 November 2021, the band announced that bassist Scott Whitley would be leaving the band to pursue other interests. His replacement is Gil Allan from Dunfermline. [ citation needed] Band members [ edit ] Current members [ edit ] Image Stuart Adamson himself, writing for the sleevenotes for the CD reissue of The Crossing, put it perfectly: “The music I felt wasn’t like the music I had grown up hearing, or rather, not like any one of them. It was all of them jumbled up and drawn into something I could understand as mine. I found that I could play this music and connect the guitar directly into my heart. I found others who could make the same connection, who could see the music as well as play it. Honolulu Star-Bulletin Hawaii News". Starbulletin.com. 18 December 2001. Archived from the original on 24 August 2008 . Retrieved 8 April 2014.