We were never going to be a nightclub act: The Proclaimers hit Adelaide
If you think you’ve heard everything you need to know about the WOMAD headliners and 500 Miles hitmakers on FM radio, think again.
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Behind their trademark wide-rimmed glasses and equally thick Scottish accents, brothers Charlie and Craig Reid have forged a remarkable career renaissance over the past two decades.
They had two of the seminal hits of the 80s; their anthems I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) and I’m On My Way (From Misery to Happiness), topped the charts in Australia and New Zealand in 1988, as did their second album Sunshine On Leith.
And they certainly don’t disown these hits, it’s just they’ve chosen not to be a nightclub, novelty or a nostalgia act.
Instead they’ve produced an enviable and eclectic catalogue of work, and amassed a loyal following around the world – including in Australia, where they are touring for the first time in four years.
In what may seem like an unlikely programming choice, The Proclaimers will perform at world music, arts and dance festival WOMADelaide at Botanic Park for one night, alongside more than 70 other international acts from March 10-13.
Guitarist and singer Charlie Reid – who, alongside his twin, lead vocalist Craig, turns 61 on March 5 – tells SA Weekend that the pair look back fondly on those early hits.
“So, in a way, they are novelty hits. It was a bonus for us,” he says.
But they don’t paint the full picture. As anyone who has attended past Proclaimers gigs, such as the one at the Adelaide Spiegeltent in 2002 can attest, their music is a joyous fusion of folk, rhythm ’n’ blues and northern soul that sways from romantic ballads to upbeat rock.
And unlike many major acts, whose audiences just want to hear all the hits on big world tours, The Proclaimers have instead undertaken more frequent, smaller scale touring, which has built a fan base hungry for new songs.
“We put albums out now, not expecting hits, but because there’s a lot of people who do come to the shows who want to hear new material,” Reid says. “And to be frank, we get to the stage where if we were just playing old material, like some acts do, it does become a bit of a nightclub act – and we never wanted that.
“There’s been so many records since 2001, that we try to put something from each record every night … but we don’t play exactly the same set every night. So there’s five places in the set where we change songs every evening.”
Reid says one of the things which defines their music is the way they have proudly and defiantly retained a Scots brogue in their singing voices, rather than adopting a neutral English or American intonation.
“It was deliberate. I don’t know if it was meant as a statement, but it just felt right if we were going to sing our own songs about our own experiences,” Reid says.
They have clearly relished taking the road less travelled.
They followed their two signature hits with a cover version of country singer Roger Miller’s 1965 classic King of the Road, recorded especially for the soundtrack of the Australian film The Crossing, which co-starred Russell Crowe and his future (now ex) wife Danielle Spencer. That was 1990 and they wouldn’t make another record until 1993.
That third album, again prophetically titled Hit the Highway, came out in 1994 and would be the brothers’ last record until 2001. Since then, they have released another nine albums.
Reid thinks their most recent albums, last year’s Dentures Out and 2018’s Angry Cyclist, are two of the finest they’ve done.
“To me, the best part of the career, the most enjoyable part of the last 20 years, has been making new records, getting out and touring regularly,” he says.
A sense of humour still pervades much of The Proclaimers’ new work, but with a level of wry contemporary social commentary and political astuteness that elevates them from the pack.
The title track of Dentures Out seemed incredibly prescient, landing right at the time of UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s resignation, his successor Liz Truss’s shortest tenure on record, her government’s disastrous mini-budget which sent the British economy and pound spiralling, and the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
“It’s funny … the main thing for us, frankly, was the unfortunate timing of that album’s release,” Reid says. “We were going to do TV shows and radio stuff, and then Queen Elizabeth died. Given the fact of what the album dealt with, and given its attitudes – and given the video for Dentures Out (which featured dancing skinheads and old royal memorabilia) – I think there’s little chance they were going to play anything or discuss it, because everybody was supposedly in mourning for the monarch.
“I did have to laugh at the time, because growing up in the household that we did, politically, to say that we were not for the royal family is putting it mildly. But she got the last laugh, because it kiboshed any promotion for the record.”
The jaunty tune opens with lyrics which describe the UK as an old woman past her prime: Britain’s old and rather thin/I saw her with her dentures out/She put them in/Then mumbled something indistinct/Which might have been “Nostalgia I love you”
That’s comparatively gentle next to Angry Cyclist’s assessment of the Trump and Johnson era: Watch bigotry advance/Give ignorance a chance/With fascists, we will dance by and by.
Reid says that, while politics might not be the first thing people associate with The Proclaimers, it has been present right back to their first UK hit single in 1987, Letter from America, which deals with the long history of Scottish emigration and alludes to the Highland Clearances, when wealthy landowners forcibly evicted whole communities.
“We were younger, we had just spent six years unemployed and just come off the dole by making that record,” he says.
“Things go around and they come around. We were always aware, growing up, politically and socially. So it’s not been the main thing of what we’ve done, but it’s always been there.
“With someone like Billy Bragg (the English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist who is also touring Australia and performing at WOMADelaide) it’s the main thing … some acts never touch on politics or social commentary, and we are somewhere in the middle, I suppose.”
Born in the port area of Leith in 1962,the twin Reid brothers grew up in nearby Edinburgh, Cornwall in southwest England, and Auchtermuchty in the Scottish county of Fife.
At home, they listened to early rock ’n’ roll and country greats such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams but at school they played in punk bands inspired by such acts as The Clash, The Jam and the Sex Pistols.
Throughout the history of popular music, family acts – from the Von Trapp Family to the Bee Gees – seem to have an almost symbiotic relationship when it comes to vocal harmonies.
“There are many, many other examples of people who are related, who are all good singers anyway – and I wouldn’t put Craig and I in that category – but when you’re really good singers who are genetically similar, there’s something magical about it,” Charlie Reid says.
Working with family can also have its disadvantages, he laughs, citing the rather obvious example of the Gallagher brothers.
“Sometimes the siblings create magic on stage but then they create chaos offstage,” he says. “Look back on the Everly Brothers – and there’s more recent examples with the Gallaghers (Noel and Liam from Oasis) obviously – they were tooth-and-nail a lot of the time. But I saw them live many times and it was never anything less than magic when they took the stage, because they just had that genetic magic that you get between brothers.
“The advantage we have is that when we grew up, we were in each other’s pockets all the time because we were twins, right – we were in the same class at school, up until midway through secondary school. We shared the same bedroom, we had the same friends, so we were together all the time.
“I’m not saying that it never gets a little tiring, and we’ve had disagreements over the years.
“Obviously we’ve got families now and we’ve lived separately for many, many years … but also the desire to carry on playing kind of overcomes any petty jealousies or problems.”
Reid says it’s not uncommon for The Proclaimers to play as part of diverse music line-ups, including the original WOMAD event in the UK. They even played at Victoria’s Port Fairy Folk Festival – “many years ago”.
And he recalls the Spiegeltent gig in Adelaide from 2002, after a 13-year absence from the city.
“That was good – I remember that tour and it was interesting because it’s a similar sort of thing that we have at the Edinburgh Festival: They put the tents up and then they have musical acts, they have comedy acts, they have theatre stuff,” he says.
“We kind of felt right at home, because we had done a couple of things very early in our career in Scotland like that … so that felt quite familiar, although in a much warmer, more pleasant environment.
“Since 2001, it kind of felt that we were on the road in a way that we weren’t before, and it turned into a career. Before, it was a stop-start thing.”
So strong is their repertoire that there has even been a stage musical built around The Proclaimers’ songs, also titled Sunshine on Leith and immortalised as a 2013 romantic comedy film, which tells of two former soldiers learning to live and find love again in Edinburgh after serving in Afghanistan.
Reid says he and Craig remain incredibly grateful for the success of I’m Gonna Be and I’m On My Way, even though they have not enjoyed the same level of chart success since.
“We’re really glad that we had a couple of hit records a long time ago – and the rest of the career really has become about the substance of what we do,” he says.
“I’m really glad it’s not an Elton John thing where you have to worry about having a hit every time, because that was never going to happen with us.” ■
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