Typical Boy: Duglas T. Stewart

This is the first of the series of five interviews I'll be posting over the next month. These are the experiences of Duglas T. Stewart of BMX Bandits Fame.

Listen along to some of the songs and artists mentioned while you read

L: So, we’ll crack right into it, shall we? Right, so where were you born?

 

D: I was born in Bellshill in Lanarkshire, which is a, I guess, ex-industrial town in Lanarkshire 12 miles away from Glasgow. A town in a part of Scotland that things like heavy drinking – sectarianism - football and all that sort of stuff are a big part of things of that environment. I mean, since I grew up there, not at that time, drugs have probably now become a part of things. Yeah, it was a fairly tough town. The school, I went to, had the reputation of being at that time the roughest high school in Lanarkshire which I think is saying something.

 

Shina Easton, the pop star, also went there. She was in her last year of school when I was in my first year of school.

Bellshill Academey

 

L: So, it almost conforms to that sort of stereotype of Glasgow and the west of Scotland. What was your experience of growing up in Bellshill?

 

D: Well, it’s funny. I don’t know where it really came from because I had quite a sort of quiet conservative sort of family. When I say conservative, I don’t mean politically You know, quite quiet - law abiding, nice family. Quite reserved and I wasn’t really like that. I was quite a shy child, but I found performing, quite alone, but for me as a way of expressing myself and almost enabling myself. It’s almost like switching into another mode.

 

L: Ok, yeah.

 

D: I didn’t become someone else, but I just almost went into another mode. I guess like how something goes into flight mode. You hear, ‘now we’re going into flight mode’. It’s almost like, a little switch would be flicked, and I’d go into a sorta performance mode. Maybe halfway through primary school, I started sort of performing and I’d get sent round classrooms singing songs that I’d made up and doing kinda sketches and even occasionally writing a whole play that would have songs in it. ‘Boys and girls, Duglas Stewart’s going to be entertaining us today with a couple of his friends a little play that he wrote.’ Or I’d come and do a show. And in the playground, I’d be much in demand to do that sort of stuff. Suddenly, once I started to do that, I started to get invited to parties that I wouldn’t have before because I wasn’t the sort of boy who would go out and play with the other boys at football and stuff like that. I didn’t really fit in but suddenly all the girls in the class would want me to come to their birthday parties, possibly I’d do a little turn at their party.

 

So, it sort of facilitated something  but I think I was very fortunate because I think, coming from that environment, and you stand out it, can be quite a difficult place to be but I had something very defiant in me. I think when people growing up sometimes find themselves not fitting in, they find it quite scary and quite isolating and quite a sort of threatening position to be in. I found it empowering.

My good friend Norman Blake, who was in BMX Bandits and was in the band Teenage Fanclub, he went to the same school as me and was in the year bellow. He said, some his first vivid memories of me at school are me being in smokers’ corner with a pipe, like a Sherlock Holmes pipe, a deer stalker and then maybe a month or two later having a snuff box and doing this to antagonise the bullies.

 

 The thing I guess with a lot of bullies, if they don’t think you’re actually threatened by them their power just evaporates. So, the fact that I would be defiantly going there didn’t make them- made the go ARGGGHH but it was almost like ‘He’s not frightened’ And I adopted, sorta unofficially adopted the name Nancy.

 

 Like, people who didn’t know me yet, which seemed almost unthinkable that they wouldn’t, like some kinda rough guys maybe from another school came up and were like, ‘Who Are You?!’ I would say, ‘Oh hello I’m Nancy. Lovely to meet you, do you like sports?’  It seems like a slightly dangerous game maybe to have played but, you know, I never in that context ended up getting like beaten up. And when people shouted things like weirdo or poof or whatever at me, I would go home and go, ‘How can I annoy them even more tomorrow?’. ‘How can I confuse them?’

 

And when I started my first group with – it was Frances Mckee who went on to be in the Vaselines, a guy called Hugh McLaughlin who still makes music in a few different projects, Sean Dickson from the Soup Dragons now HiFi Sean and Norman who I mentioned previously, and another friend called Janice McBride who didn’t go and do any other music things. My name in the band was Nancy Smith. It’s strange because Norman sometimes will be staying with his parents in Bellshill and hardmen from back in the day or whatever will say ‘How’s big Nancy doing?’ They still know me – they haven’t followed – and they’ll say to Norman, ‘What a complete big weirdo but a nice big guy.’

 

 I’m very aware that for a lot of people that wasn’t easy. It wasn’t what kind of gender I was attracted to or things like that, or feeling that I was in the wrong gender.

It was just I didn’t feel I fitted into the world that I lived in’s definitions. I felt like I was a Duglas.

 

When we started playing and bands like Orange Juice started playing post-punk, you would have a big percentage of the audience who’d feel really threatened and confused by the fact that you had a satchel over your arm or you were wearing a flowery shirt or, in my case, I was eating a banana on stage and throwing sweeties out to the audience. I wasn’t acting like Jim Morrison, you know. We weren’t acting in an overtly hedonistic male way.

 

L: But in the same vein, it didn’t fit the mainstream masculinity? It didn’t fit the main image?

 

D: No, it didn’t. And I think that was very confusing. Just a few years ago I was staying temporarily at a flat in Glasgow and one of the guys who lived in the next flat - he was mibbe slightly older than me - he came across one day and introduced himself to me and he was like, ‘I once threw a pint glass at you in 1985 in Aberdeen’ and I was like, ‘Right???’ And we used to get glasses and things thrown at us or tumbler. Even occasionally a pint glass. But he was like, ‘You came on stage and you had a doll with you and satchel, and you were eating a banana. I was just so confused I didn’t know what to do so I threw mah glass at you.’ –And I was like, ‘wow’. And people went, ‘And you continued to talk to him?!’ And I was like, ‘Yeah’. I sorta admired the fact he’d tell me that and he was actually kinda apologising. And I think it was just the programming of how people according to their assumed gender should be acting was so strong. And these deviations now would seem – ‘What you had a flowery shirt on? You had pink trousers on? And that was a major problem?’ Back then I remember a couple of gigs in Aberdeen I was having to be escorted out the back. You know, because they thought you guys go out the front you guys are going to get a serious beating because- the way you acted, it was too much. It seems bizarre.

 

 And you know, the Slits had their song Typical Girl, which was, and pretty much still is, almost my favourite Punk record. And, you know, when I was listening to that I identified with that much more than anything like the Sex Pistols were doing. I think it was because I was like, ‘Yeah. Also, typical boy.’ Frances McKee says, there’s a music documentary called Teenage Superstars which is about the music from the mid 1980s, and she was saying when she first met me and became friends with me, we got on so well because it wasn’t like talking to a boy when she talked to me. It wasn’t part of my game playing of trying to have some sort of ‘I’m Nancy, sort of a thing’. I was being Duglas. I didn’t think I wasn’t acting a way that wasn’t me and wasn’t a true reflection.  I wasn’t trying not to be what I was. I think I was just fortunate enough that I had something in myself that was like, ‘I’m going to be my own version of  being a boy and I’m going to be my own version of being Duglas. And just do what I want to do’. I’m convinced that’s a big part of the reason so many – ehh- I think something like the age group between like 20 and 50 is – in the kinda male population – highest kinda suicide thing. And I think a big part of that might be that whole thing of people finding it difficult. Whether it’s them feeling that they can’t be open about their sexuality or just the expectations of what it is supposedly to be male that’s still in our society.

 

L: Maybe, you know, in the 80s looking at places like Bellshill in particular or maybe more

places round about like Motherwell, your traditional male roles were starting to be eroded.

 

D: Totally

 

L: Ravenscraig closing, it closed later but that closed off a lot of spaces as well. Perhaps this lead- maybe to a re-emergence of the sorta hardman figure.

 

D: Yeah, also I think one of the sad things that happens is sometimes people who feel, mibbe within themselves, kinda vulnerable and not able to come forward with the real them, whatever that is. Sometimes they almost fall in to portraying those traits of male behaviour because they think if I’m not doing that, I’m gonna be the target.  And you don’t want to be the target. They’d rather be part of the gang.

 

 I had friends at school whose dads became ill or even took their own lives with the closing down of the big industries.  There was a wave, round about the time that I started high school of guys, where their whole thing was defined by what their job was. And most of my friends at that time it would just be their dad who had a full time job. Some of them, their mums would maybe have a part time job or no job at all. When I say no job at all, I’m not saying discounting the fact they were doing stuff. But not going out and doing a job that they were paid for. So much of the culture and how people felt their worth was from fitting into these defined roles. I don’t think we were ever overtly proclaiming that as our agenda in the way that something like when the Riot Grrrl movement came along. They were kinda saying almost, ‘We are this agenda, this is partly what we’re about.’ I don’t think bands like Orange Juice or the Pretty Flowers or the BMX Bandits or the Pastels or whoever were doing that. But I think it was part of the thing. That was there that it was sort of challenging those perceived gender roles. The kinda norm.

 

Some things were becoming a bit more fluid. I mean it’s also the thing of when I was growing up and again probably through the 80s and early 90s. Mostly the 80s. There were definitely bands and artists that were perceived by the music press and by a lot of music fans as being like, bands for guys. And bands and artists for girls. That was strange as well because I don’t really get rock music as a form. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like any records that might be defined somewhere as being rock. But the kinda music I’m generally attracted to, a lot of people would have considered, at that time, and it seems a ridiculous thing to say now, girl music. I remember reading an interview with a couple of comic book artists, the Hernandez Brothers, who wrote Love and Rockets and things and they were going ‘Yeah, some of our pals like the kinda groups that girls like, like the Beach Boys and blablabla.’ After that I didn’t deliberately put their comic books aside, but I never felt about them in quite the same way. I was a bit like, ‘What?!’ The whole bands for guys, this is so messed up. And again, I think this was one of the things that people found really strange and difficult. You would go to a Vaselines gig and at least 50 percent of the audience want to kill the band. About 10 percent were kinda ambivalent and 30 percent love them. Because they were like, ‘This isn’t like the Doors! This isn’t like White Snake! What are they doing!’ I guess at least the Vaselines had a female member so when you went to see BMX Bandits that was actually more confusing, ‘This is all guys in the acting like this!’.

 

L: Turning more to sorta when you started to get involved in music. How did people react to you wanting to be in a band? Was there a reaction to that?

 

D: I think it’s funny because we slightly rode the coattails of the punk movement. Occasionally, I think something comes along and it makes it a bit more acceptable to want to be in a band. I mean now, I think it’s almost odd for people not to be in a band. Then it was post-punk, so we had a band, but you definitely had the thing that there would be some friends that I had at school would be a bit like, ‘What are you doing?’ Again, I think it was almost like, why are you putting your head above? They already knew that I already did that, but they would say more to some of my friends like Sean and Norman. They would go, ‘Well we understand him doing it because there’s no hope for him. But why are you guys? Are you not already made enough of a fool of yourself without doing that?’ And, you know, there were odd school friends, that I use the word odd in more than one way, who would be supportive and come along to the gigs. You know, wanna help carry gear or be part of the thing in some way. But definitely some people if they were doing some kind of show or exhibition or whatever, I would want to go along and show my support. But they would almost feel embarrassed by witnessing what we were doing. I remember playing gigs in Bellshill and there would be, funnily enough, some younger people that we didn’t know quite so well. People who were mibbe just beginning to discover themselves and figure out what they might want to do themselves and how they defined themselves. But a lot of people we had actually grown up with and, you know, had friendships throughout our childhood and teenage years, would be nowhere to be seen at these gigs. You’d think cause it’s your hometown they’d all come back. But, generally it was almost like rather than the cliché of the, not that we were big stars but, the star turning their back on the past. It was almost the past turning its back on us.

L: Sorta completely different. Was there, compared to Bellshill, when stuff like Splash One started to start up, was there a real difference in how people reacted?

 

D: Not so much in the streets, but for us, something like Splash One was really important. In Bellshill, it felt like a small town and there weren’t that many weirdos. We ended up having to import some weirdoes like Francis McKee who came from Glasgow because there wasn’t enough of us. So, when Splash One sort of started, it was like a room full of, not that we were all the same, but a room full of oddballs and misfits and we probably got shouted at because of the way we looked on a fairly regular basis. But we were defiant enough and also hungry enough we were really interested in finding out about alternative culture. And I guess just alternative ways of expressing ourselves. A whole load of people who ended up being really successful musicians but also people who became successful visual artists, film makers, fashion people. Initially a relatively small group of these people congregating, and the music was handpicked by the people involved and running it. It used to be; you went to somewhere like the Charleston, which was the local dance place in Bellshill, or even most clubs in Glasgow at that time or Club de France over in Coatbridge. Pre- Splash One, they would play like your two alternative records and the rest of the night would be just the mainstream what was getting played on the radio at that time. And then it would nearly always be Iggy Pop’s The Passenger and one other. The one other could be a Teardrop Explodes hit single or a Soft Cell single or the Specials or something, Echo and the Bunnymen but that would be it. Only the people with slightly different haircuts or were dressed differently would get up and would dance to those records. And all the other people would be like, ‘What you playing this for?’ You know, we want to get back to what we like and what we know and what is acceptable. It wasn’t like everything we played was indie or alternative: there’d be stuff from soundtracks. You’d get classical stuff, you’d get electronica and things. But the whole thing was alternative, it was an alternative visual and audio experience for the whole night. There was a good communal area outside where people danced, where a lot of people would be standing like going, ‘Have you seen this movie?’ or ‘Have you heard this/ Have you read this book?’ You know people exchanging ideas and passions and thinking to themselves, these other people are gonnae be interested rather going, ‘What you talking about? Did you see the game last night?’ I mean, I’m not into football but it’s not an anti-football thing. Some of these people would be interested in football as well but that wouldn’t define them. That wouldn’t be the only thing that they had to talk about. You wouldn’t hear talk about the game and all of that sorta stuff. And if somebody came wearing a dress that was clearly made out of their mum’s curtains or something like that people wouldn’t snigger at them. People would go wow.

Splash One Footage

 

L: I think one of the interesting things about Splash One – I can’t remember who said it - but it was a space unlike a lot of mainstream clubs where men could dance together in groups.

 

D: Yeah, I think Eugine was saying that.   And it’s true. Jim Lambie had the understanding that this might be significant and important, kinda culturally, to record. There’s footage of me dancing with male friends and Bobby dancing with Stephen Pastel, Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream, and that being totally fine. Before that the time when that would happen would be in the environment of some sort of gay club. This was a club where it wouldn’t matter what your sexuality was or whatever. You might be dancing with someone who you saw as being this – it could be two guys who really fancied each other or were already a couple dancing, or two girls dancing together. But it wasn’t about just about sex and sexual attraction. It was just a sort of freedom where dance was a celebration.

 

L: It’s really interesting. I think the only other place that I’ve heard about where there was a somewhat similar environment was, I don’t know the name of it, but a goth club in Nitemoves. It was similar-ish.

 

D: After Splash One, and I’m not saying this to belittle them, I think it was a good thing, there became a lot more clubs that were like that. They were aimed at people who were interested in alternative rather than you just went along and your slightly different interests would be represented by two records for the whole night.

 

L: What other kind of spaces did you have? I’m aware of the Griffin and that folk used to drink there.

 

D: Yeah. I don’t really know why the Griffin became the one but, going back to the kinda days of Postcard, the Griffon became the favourite kinda drinking haunt. It’s a sort of old man’s pub, if you know what I mean by that?

 

 It wasn’t a trendy, reinvented kind of cool space. But the Griffin became the place where if there wasn’t an actual club night on and you fancied probably bumping into some people that you knew or seeing some people from bands you liked, or whatever, the Griffin would be the place to go. People like Orange Juice and the Bluebells would be hanging about in the Griffin, which is a wee time even before our generation. My friend Jason MacKell who ended up being in a band and managed the 1990s and a few other bands, when he moved to Glasgow, he deliberately tried to get a job in the Griffin so he could be serving people from the bands he liked and have some sort of contact with them. Almost build up a relationship by being the guy who would you know, be the guy who would sell me a bag of Golden Wonder cheese and onion crisps. He said his first memory of me is selling me a couple of bags of cheese and onion crisps in the Griffin. And again, being slightly younger going, ‘Yesss, I now know Duglas’. Again, another place that was a portal into that world. When Alex Chilton, an American musician who was in the band Big Star which had a seminal influence on a lot of Glasgow music of a certain period, came over to Glasgow, the first place he went out for a night out was the Griffin. There was people queuing around the block to come up to him at his table and go, ‘I heard you were in Glasgow, it’s lovely to see you’ and ‘Here’s my original Big Star record’ or ‘Here’s my Big Star reissue’. The Griffin definitely did have a bit of a focal point, but I think things started happening just in other places. We started to claim, trying to claim other spaces.

 

L: It’s very interesting.  I think one of the things I’ve picked up on and is not discussed as much is the – there were some political elements to the music then. I noticed yourself wearing a CND badge a few times and stuff like that. Was there that much of a political current or was it more just part of the time?

 

D: I guess when I was around the around age you are now, there still was a very real fear of a nuclear apocalypse. That was a real reality. There was a good chance that was gonna happen. Its funny, when issues like that come along I almost think of them as almost not being political, as just being you’re a member of the human race so surely this is important. Unfortunately, there’s quite a lot of issues like hunger and housing and things which sort of all fit into that bracket. But to me it wasn’t about going down the path of CND because that’s what a particular political party was sort of saying you should be doing. It was just basically like, we shouldn’t be, you know, destroying our world or having the potential to destroy our world and all life in it with nuclear weapons. Whether you think we should be getting taxed more or taxed less or whatever are sort of separate. This is just surely something that’s about our survival as a species and about the survival of all the other species that happen to be unlucky enough to share this planet with humans. We, BMX Bandits, I think deliberately have never been a political band, but I sorta almost think that the chances are if people like BMX Bandits music and enter that world and enter the world of a lot of the other bands we’ve been talking about, then they’re probably not gonnae be incredibly bigoted, extreme right wing, neo-fascists or something. It’s about wrong and right and kindness and stuff like that and shared humanity rather than having to be overtly political. Other people like, and I totally respect that, feel that what they want and sometimes even their reason for wanting to start making music, is that they want to make a more defined political statement or political statements.  For me, that’s never been a thing because I’ve always liked the idea that BMX Bandits are very inclusive so we’re not saying, ‘This is our agenda, and this is how we’re defined and if you don’t fit in those parameters, you’re Not Welcome!’ I like the idea of everyone coming in and actually some of – and maybe they start to rethink some of the things that have been programmed into them just from, you know, being part of that world, rather than being rammed down their throat. It’s sorta like being political by what we do, rather than by what we say.

 

L: Yeah, that certainly comes across from the ‘do it yourself’ attitude of a lot of the bands and the labels at the time.

 

D: Yeah, well, I guess it was. The two artistic heads of 53^rd and 3^rd were Stephen from the Pastels and David from the Shop Assistants. They were the guys who had the vision and were the A&R guys for that label. So, there was another guy, Sandy, who ran the office. So, I guess the ideals of that label were very much the ideals of the Pastels and the Shop Assistants and that. There was a kinda commonality, I guess, in a lot of the ways they would think about certain issues and a lot of the bands and the people making music who ended up being on 53^rd and 3^rd.

Once again, I'd like to express my graditude to Duglas for his warmth and kindness. I cannot thank him enough to agreeing to this interview.