I grew up in a three-bedroom terraced house in Westwood, East Kilbride. It was
set in a little triangle of houses with grass in the middle. It was a happy
time and summers in particular were wonderful , with tribes of children
playing noisy games until it was time for tea. The house has gone through a
few changes over the decades — my parents still live there — but I remember
it in the years of Anaglypta wallpaper and garish 1980s colours.
I was the baby of the family. I had two elder brothers and an elder sister,
who were practically a generation older than me but who always seemed
incredibly cool. They had boxes of 7in singles — Blondie, the Clash, the
Stiff Little Fingers — under their beds. It was a treasure trove of
brilliant music and I’m sure it had an influence on my decision to become a
musician.
I’m not getting the violins out, but there wasn’t a lot of money. My father
was a bricklayer and my mother cleaned the tax office. At school, I was on
the free dinners list. Most of the people on the free dinners list spent a
lot of time dogging off school and few of them stayed on to take Standard
Grades or Highers.
Music was a very strong influence in my life. I found other people who were
the same as me, who wanted to make something of their lives. It’s like Roddy
Frame from Aztec Camera said: from Westwood to Hollywood. A lot of people
think East Kilbride is a soulless new town, but for me it was a blank canvas
where it was possible to completely re-invent yourself. There were lots of
strong subcultures — goths, rockabillies, psychobillies, punks. We all found
each other on the Plaza on a Saturday night. We had to create our own
identity in the concrete jungle and among the roundabouts.
My mother says that I was a sassy kid from a very early age. I spent a lot of
time with her and our favourite thing was to watch black and white movies
together. I remember watching Some Like It Hot and thinking : “ Wow, who is
that?” At the age of four, I wanted to be Marilyn Monroe. I used to put on
my favourite, green polka-dot bikini and put my hand on my hip and wiggle
around. I was a complete show-off.
I shared a room with my sister, although she left home before I was a
teenager, so I had the place to myself. When I was going through my goth
phase, I plastered the walls in posters to cover over the horrible pastel
green my sister had painted it. I was very close to my brother, Peter, who
was also the closest to me in age. He used to beat me up, of course, but he
was protective of me in his own way and really into his music. My very first
song- writing attempts were with him. He was into the Velvet Underground, so
I tried to make all my songs sound like Nico, even though I was only 12 . My
brother, Shug, played the guitar and so I decided that I needed to play the
guitar, too. My father is tone deaf but he used to try to sing — mostly folk
ballads that he’d learnt as a child. My mother was great with words. She
wrote a brilliant letter in rhyming verse to the gas board pleading a case
for them not to cut off our gas.
My parents encouraged us to get an education but, more importantly, they
believed that we should do something that made us happy . When my father
left school as a teenager, he had to take a job in the boat factory, which
he always said was a year of hell. He told me to do something that I loved —
something that was good for my soul.
As money was tight, we all had paper rounds. When I was 15, I worked out that
busking was a much more lucrative pastime. On my first day, I came home with
a huge pile of coins and my father was amazed. He couldn’t believe that I’d
made that much money standing on the street singing. I think after that he
knew I would become a musician.
A Band Called Quinn play the Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, June 10