Where the Rose is Sown....

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I can’t do this without you. You make it fun.

“The sound made pictures. It spread out wide landscapes. Great dramas were played out under turbulent skies. There was romance and reality, truth and dare. People being people, no heroes, just you and me, like it always was.”

—Stuart Adamson

I was at the tail end of high school. It was the start of the Michael Jackson / Madonna / Prince / Springsteen / MTV thing. We’d all come home from school and watch music videos. Radio was still a thing. So were boom boxes and mullets. Guys still wore too-short shorts and girls had really big hair. I had a part-time job unloading dirty linen off of dirty trucks, and it was the first time I became aware of just how minimum the minimum wage was. Girls took up much of my time. Not being with them, mind you. They pretty much ignored me because I didn’t play sports. That was de rigueur in them days. But I thought of them all too often, and longed for their tender charms. So as I sat there and listened to (or watched) music, I dreamt of being the guy with the guitar, or the lead singer, who with the flip of his well-sprayed hair could make women swoon.

Well, some of them could anyway. I noticed that the best looking bands didn’t seem to make the best music. The sounds I was drawn to often came from weedy looking dudes who looked pale and malnourished. Every once in a while the radio or the TV would make sounds that would lift me from my hair-band or synth-duo stupor, and I’d make a note to investigate further.

And so it was that one band from Ireland and two from the UK showed up. U2. The Waterboys. And Big Country. I’m not sure who did what first, but they each made what one of them dubbed “Big Music”. It was grand and loud and a wee bit pretentious at times but, and here’s the thing….it didn’t sound like anything else. Nobody sounded like U2 or the Waterboys. And for sure nobody sounded like Big Country, with a duel guitar attack that people frequently mistook for bagpipes (“I’ve heard enough of ‘Johnny B. Goode’ to last me the next 25 years”, their guitarist remarked). Each band was fronted by a charismatic genius (Bono, Mike Scott, Stuart Adamson) and it seemed only a matter of time until each became huge and took over the world. This could be the new Stones/Who/Kinks holy trinity.

My money was on Big Country (In retrospect U2’s money was on them too*). Their debut album “The Crossing” was so fully formed, and so sonically explosive, that it couldn’t be ignored. And it sold millions. What’s more, it sold millions in America. They were pop stars. They were video stars. Stuart Adamson seemed poised to become Bono before Bono became Bono.

Their brilliant follow-up album “Steeltown” contained their greatest song, “Where the Rose is Sown”, but the record sold a fraction of their first, especially in America. And so it went for the rest of the decade and into the 90s. Good and sometimes great records selling less and less, until the band were eventually dropped from their label. They retained a steady following in Europe, but in America they were tossed aside as one-hit-wonders. I can’t really explain why. Bad luck. Bad timing. Bad taste. Bad hair. They once had a song barreling towards the top 40 until chart regulators decided that the ‘pizza box’ packaging of the single had one too many folds in it. Sales would therefore not be eligible. They were at Live-Aid, but only shoved in the back for the finale, as apparently organizer Bob Geldolf heard that the band had broken up and never invited them to play. So they had to watch as Bono turned himself into a rock and roll savior, diving into the crowd and slow dancing with a raven-haired beauty in front of 2 billion people. What Big Country could have done that day, armed with the songs on their first 2 records, is not hard to imagine. They could have shaken the foundation of Wembley Stadium. They could have out-Queened Queen. As it turned out, nobody even knew they were there.

They just sort of faded away. Stuart Adamson seemed fragile. Tentative. Even scared…..perhaps unsure of and not trusting his own extraordinary talents (as a guitarist he was once compared to Jimi Hendrix). He got lost in a maze of drink, and started running. His last gig with Big Country was in Malaysia in the year 2000. He was due to meet the band in LA, but was so drunk he got on the wrong plane and ended up in Indianapolis. Eventually he moved to Nashville in the hope of creating some sort of country/celtic hybrid. He got himself into a messy, sometimes toxic romantic situation there, and fled, alone, to Hawaii. Private detectives were hired to find him. They never did. He checked himself into a Honolulu hotel room and never left. His room service consisted of 3 bottles of wine a day. Once he’d finally had enough, he hung himself with an electrical cord. He was 43 years old.

*At Adamson’s memorial service the Edge from U2 said that Big Country wrote the songs that U2 always wished they had written.

He should be remembered more than he is. When I listen to “The Crossing” or “Steeltown” today, they still leap out at me, like a jump scare in a movie. They still sound huge. They cannot function as background music. They take over every room they’re in. Stuart Adamson kick-started the 80s for me, but his best music outlived that decade, and it’s music I frequently turn to to help me navigate my own journey all these years later. His was a soul in torment, but there’s some beauty in knowing that he’s at rest now.

I wait here in this hole
Playing poker with my soul
I hold the rifle close to me
It lights the way to keep me free
If I die in a combat zone
Box me up and ship me home
If I die and still come home
Lay me where the rose is sown

In a bit…

—tf