“In 1978, I was a 14-year-old schoolboy in Liverpool with a cooler, older brother who was into the Clash and the Sex Pistols, but I wanted a band I could call my own.
I saw the Rezillos on Top of the Pops – performing, ironically, a song called Top of the Pops – and they resonated with me immediately. They were an art school band and I liked their sci-fi, almost cartoonish, style and power-pop/punk crossover music.
They were other-worldly and shortlived but, to me, they encapsulated the new-wave ideal of do-it-yourself directness. As they briefly burned brightly, they were picked up by the same record label that boasted the Ramones, whose garage-band approach they wholeheartedly embraced.
The Rezillos recorded their debut album in New York and this is the bass guitar played by Ali Donaldson, who was also known by the name William Mysterious.
This exhibition, titled Rip It Up: The Story of Scottish Pop, at the National Museum of Scotland tells the story of Scottish pop music from its early roots in the dance halls and coffee bars to the present day. We made curatorial choices about notable bands and artists who developed that historical narrative, rather than putting together a list of performers who simply grew up here.
A theme that emerged during audience research was that a lot of people were surprised to learn the bands they liked were from Scotland. I had no idea all those years ago that the Rezillos were Scottish. I had never been to Scotland.
Similarly, while a lot of groups are not bothered about being recognised as Scottish, others – the Proclaimers and Belle and Sebastian, for example – consider Scottishness to be an important part of their identity.
I had to rein in my fanboy enthusiasm with the help of an exhibitions officer who stopped me from being too nerdy and brought a great deal of objectivity to the table. But not the time, unfortunately, when she herself went a bit wobbly during discussions about Wet Wet Wet, the pop group (who also happen to be Scottish) she loved as a teenager.
I have no musical ability so this show is not about playing out my pop star fantasies. If anything, it’s had the opposite effect. Listening to so much music for a while made me feel like the character of Alex watching ultra-violence in Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film A Clockwork Orange. My partner remarked a few months ago that I wasn’t playing music in the flat very much. It felt too much like work at the time.”
I saw the Rezillos on Top of the Pops – performing, ironically, a song called Top of the Pops – and they resonated with me immediately. They were an art school band and I liked their sci-fi, almost cartoonish, style and power-pop/punk crossover music.
They were other-worldly and shortlived but, to me, they encapsulated the new-wave ideal of do-it-yourself directness. As they briefly burned brightly, they were picked up by the same record label that boasted the Ramones, whose garage-band approach they wholeheartedly embraced.
The Rezillos recorded their debut album in New York and this is the bass guitar played by Ali Donaldson, who was also known by the name William Mysterious.
This exhibition, titled Rip It Up: The Story of Scottish Pop, at the National Museum of Scotland tells the story of Scottish pop music from its early roots in the dance halls and coffee bars to the present day. We made curatorial choices about notable bands and artists who developed that historical narrative, rather than putting together a list of performers who simply grew up here.
A theme that emerged during audience research was that a lot of people were surprised to learn the bands they liked were from Scotland. I had no idea all those years ago that the Rezillos were Scottish. I had never been to Scotland.
Similarly, while a lot of groups are not bothered about being recognised as Scottish, others – the Proclaimers and Belle and Sebastian, for example – consider Scottishness to be an important part of their identity.
I had to rein in my fanboy enthusiasm with the help of an exhibitions officer who stopped me from being too nerdy and brought a great deal of objectivity to the table. But not the time, unfortunately, when she herself went a bit wobbly during discussions about Wet Wet Wet, the pop group (who also happen to be Scottish) she loved as a teenager.
I have no musical ability so this show is not about playing out my pop star fantasies. If anything, it’s had the opposite effect. Listening to so much music for a while made me feel like the character of Alex watching ultra-violence in Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film A Clockwork Orange. My partner remarked a few months ago that I wasn’t playing music in the flat very much. It felt too much like work at the time.”
Stephen Allen is the curator of Rip It Up: The Story of Scottish Pop. Interview by John Holt. Rip It Up: The Story of Scottish Pop is at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, until 25 November