Big Country: The Crossing :1983
1983 was a very big year for me, it was the year my Grandmother died, the year we opened our Restaurant in Scarborough.
I remember traveling to my Grandmothers funeral by train, listening to Fields of Fire as I rattled across North Yorkshire on my way back to Leeds,it seemed to capture the melancholy of that journey. Later in The Rock with Lindon & Jimmy, toasting my Grandmothers passing, that tune was still resonating in my mind. I can’t listen to this album without feeling those emotions.
Stuart Adamson founded Big Country after the demise of The Skids, he was looking for a big expansive sound & with a rhythm section consisting of Tony Butler and Mark Brzezicki he found a concrete base on which to build his musical dream. He added to this his own unique guitar style that he had been developing with The Skids & also the guitar of Bruce Watson which complimented his style perfectly.
The Crossing was eagerly anticipated especially after the Hors d'oeuvre of the First single. There is plenty on this album to interest even the casual listener, the romanticism of those two guitars summoning up the sound of glen & loch on a misty morning. The realism of a song like Chance with its lines like..
“He came like a hero from the factory floor, with the Sun & Moon his gifts,
But the only son you ever saw, were the two he left you with…”
While tracks like Lost Patrol & Inwards have aged & the sound is very Eighties gated reverb, there remain little Gems like In a Big Country & Luck of a 1000 stars. They went on to further success but as the decade gave way to the 90’s their star waned.
Stuart Adamson sadly died on December 16th 2001
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