Tom Dunne: Mogwai and magic memories of a misspent youth in Glasgow
Stuart Braithwaite, centre, with the other members of Mogwai.
“I haven’t spoken about this at all yet. This is an exclusive.” The words of Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite twelve hours before the deadline for this article. I won’t lie, I had been struggling with another idea. “Okay Stuart,” I said, blessing myself, “tell me everything.”
We were ostensibly talking about Mogwai’s upcoming appearance at the Body and Soul festival, June 17-19 at Ballinlough Castle, Co Meath. That is one superbly and lovingly curated festival which this year will also feature Roisin Murphy, CMAT, Yves Tumor, Pillow Queens and more.
Mogwai could in some ways be described as the poster boys for the festival. In February of 2021 they were at the centre of some strange news, and it wasn’t being cancelled or a social media controversy. Their 10th album, marking their 25th year, topped the UK albums charts. “Mogwai,” the world said incredulously, “are Number One!?”
Mogwai are not one of those bands that you expect to see at Number One. They are a band you expect to hear name-checked by the cool sales assistant in films like Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. They are brilliant, but not terribly commercial, cool but underground, How did this happen, and was drink taken afterwards?
“We celebrated all right, but not in the manner of England’s prime minister,” says Stuart pointedly. “We observed all the rules. We had a little Zoom meeting and I drank a glass of wine, but I was raising my glass to a computer screen.” I couldn’t help but think that there something oddly fitting in this. They launched their first album when Napster was just a rumour and are one of the last bands to be “championed by John Peel.” It has been all change, but through it all: Mogwai.
They have experimented, changed their sound, set up their own label (Rock Action) and dipped their toes into the sound track world with Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait, Atomic and more. They are now championed by BBC Radio 6. Is a Zoom celebration so out of place with all that?
But going into the interview I discovered that Stuart will be releasing a memoir, Spaceships Over Glasgow: Mogwai and Misspent Youth in September. I was, happy days, the first to ask him about it.
“Covid played a part, “ he says, “I just missed playing live so much. I had an idea to write love letters to all the great bands I’ve seen that inspired me, like Nirvana and Sonic Youth, but when I started I realised I just couldn’t remember. You don’t think at the time ‘I might write about this in thirty years.’ So it started to evolve.”
Some of that evolution stretched to remembrances of the Glasgow music scene that Mogwai were so much a part of. This is an amazing scene and includes bands like Primal Scream, Belle and Sebastian, Simple Minds, Franz Ferdinand, Travis, Altered Images, The Blue Nile and Orange Juice. Bands that just seem to be so distinctive, cool and wonderfully characterful. I have wondered, often, is there something in the water?
Stuart reckons there are three things: “Great venues first, there were so many places to play. You don’t know where you stand ‘til you play. The weather helps, what else can you do? But the big thing is seeing people like you, forming bands and playing and you think, I can do this.”
It is for that reason that Mogwai’s chart success was such a triumph. It’s not just for the band but all the specialist shows that first played them, journalists who championed them, pluggers who harangued radio programmers on their behalf, venues that took a risk on them. I put this to Stuart, that their success lifted an entire scene.
“Yes, I can see that. We are one of those bands who never set off to write hits or be successful, we just wanted to do it, to write music we loved and play gigs and see where it goes.” Seeing that sometimes that feeling can go all the way is vital in this part of the industry. Away from that world of the “music business” there is another music world populated by people who make music for the love of it.
Artists like Arrivalists, Keeley, One Morning in August, Rubyhorse, David Keenan, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Sack, Brendan Tallon, A Lazarus Soul, Cat Dowling, For Those I Love, and, I am again happy to say, many, many more. Keep up the good fight.
