Over the decades, Scottish musicians have made many classic, cult or under-appreciated albums that have stood the test of time. Today, we look back at White On Blonde by Texas.

LOOKING back from a vantage-point of nearly three decades later, it’s not difficult to see how important White On Blonde was for the Glasgow band, Texas.

Their 1989 debut, Southside, had sold a reported 1.6 million copies world-wide and spent 32 weeks on the UK charts, peaking at number three, with its slide-guitar-driven single, I Don’t Want a Lover, reaching number eight.

Despite the presence of some strong material, however, its successors - Mothers Heaven (1991) and Ricks Road (1993) - fared less well, each selling a reported 600,000 copies. Their chart peaks were, respectively, 32 and 18. Their joint total time on the charts: six weeks. Various singles failed to repeat the commercial success of I Don’t Want a Lover. As Sharleen Spiteri would later say, she and her bandmates couldn’t get arrested after that first album.

Discouraged, and aware that they needed to reassess the kind of music they wanted to make, the band went on an extended hiatus.

“Texas had all the danger signs of a band on a downward spiral," reflected Howard Berman, the then managing director of Mercury Records (UK), Texas’s label. “Everyone was aware that if this album didn't work, they didn't really have a future."

‘This album’ was White On Blonde, which was released in February 1997. It changed everything.

The facts speak for themselves. The album sold in excess of four million copies worldwide, spending 112 weeks on the UK charts and twice occupying the pole position. It yielded several UK Top 10 singles, including Say What You Want, Halo, Put Your Arms Around Me, and Black Eyed Boy.

The album, which had been championed early on by Chris Evans on his Radio One programme and his C4 show, TFI Friday, was nominated for a Brit award alongside such albums as The Verve’s Urban Hymns, Radiohead’s OK Computer, Oasis’s Be Here Now and The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land; later, Texas received an Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Collection.

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Furthermore, Spiteri, the band’s frontwoman, found herself on the front pages of numerous magazines. The polished images of her for the album artwork had been taken by the renowned photographer, Juergen Teller. Suddenly, belatedly, Texas were everywhere.

While on Blonde was, all in all, a most accomplished piece of work.

In a perceptive article for the Financial Times in December 1997, Alice Rawsthorn noted that the band’s comeback was regarded as a marketing coup. How, she asked Mercury’s Berman, had they done it?

“Because of the music," he told her, simply. “It's all very well for us to sit here saying how clever we were, but White On Blonde has sold because it's a great album”.

Rawsthorn wrote that if White On Blonde had been weak, it was inconceivable that Mercury could have persuaded two million people [the then current sales figure] to buy it. But, she added, “when a troubled band produces a strong album, there is always a risk of failure because no one has a chance to hear it - which is why marketing can make a difference”.

White on Blonde had originally been slated for release in August 1996 but Mercury held it over until the following February. Rawsthorn wrote that Spiteri’s partner at the time - Ashley Heath, a senior editor at The Face magazine - had asked Teller to shoot her for the album cover.

More importantly, Texas played showcase events in five British cities, which went down well. "Let's just say you've got to be very confident to let any artist do showcases," said Berman. "But we knew Texas were great live, and that they could carry it off”.

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By the time Say What You Want made its way into the Top 10, interest - from public and media alike - in the band was growing apace. The album zipped into the charts at number one in the February, and  how red around the charts for the rest of the year before regaining the top spot over Christmas. All told, it spent 86 weeks on the charts, from mid-February 1997 until early October of the following year.

Listening to the album afresh earlier this week, it’s evident that Texas - Spiteri, Ally McErlaine, Eddie Campbell, Richard Hynd and Johnny McElhone - came up with some great songs for White on Blonde, the title of which was a nod to Bob Dylan’s mid-Sixties classic, Blonde on Blonde. McErlaine once said that “we all gave White On Blonde every ounce of everything we had”, and this is reflected in the sheer quality of the material.

The opening run of songs is glorious and utterly compelling: Say What You Want (written by Spiteri in 1996 as she sat on a Parisian roof-top, glass of red wine in hand, and now, in 2024, boasting 126 million plays on Spotify); Drawing Crazy Patterns, Halo, Put Your Arms Around Me; Insane; Black Eyed Boy.

“In its fourth album”, wrote the LA Times critic, Sandy Masuo, “this Scottish quintet draws on a surprising variety of styles without ruffling their smooth, adult-pop composure. Hints of ambient electronics, gritty rock and R&B grooves ripple through the lush layers of sound. … Spiteri shifts effortlessly from bluesy crooning to a forthright folkiness without ever losing her poise. It all makes for a very beautiful musical display that remains frustratingly static”.

Andy Gill, writing in the Independent, observed that Texas seemed to change their style with each successive album and that Spiteri had described White on Blonde as a “modern soul record”. The more chances Texas took, he went on, the more effective they were. “On the dark, moody ‘Insane’ and ‘Put Your Arms Around Me’, looming strings are carried on a slowed-down breakbeat, and on ‘Good Advice’, production duo Rae & Christian put the classic Barry White style to new use”.

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Summing it up in his 2018 book, Rip It Up, Vic Galloway got it right when he said that in White on Blonde Texas made “the album of their careers” with a string of modern-day classics in the shape of its hit singles. 

Speaking to the Evening Times in October 1997, Spiteri said: “It's funny to think when our first album came out we couldn't get arrested, now everybody wants to know us. It’s amazing how these things come together. I'm sure some people think our change in style is all a big career move but that's not the case. It's just the way things worked out”.

She added: “I was at an awards luncheon in London recently and George Michael came over and said: 'Good things come to those who wait' and he was right. It’s been a long time coming”.

White on Blonde, however, came close to being the last album she made.

When it was finished, she and Heath went climbing in the Cuillins, in Skye.

As she told Q magazine’s Phil Sutcliffe a couple of years later: “We took slightly different routes and as I was coming up to a ledge I did this stupid thing, I overstretched and my body flew out so my whole weight hung on one hand with a sheer drop below me. No ropes. I absolutely thought, I am not strong enough to hold on here, I am gonna die. And then, I don’t wanna die, please God don’t take me!”

Fortunately, Heath, who was ahead of her, looked back and saw her hanging on for dear life, and quickly grabbed her by the wrist to pull her to safety.

"My knees buckled and I knelt there on the ledge shaking”, Spiteri said. “Facing death is no thrill for me at all, I can assure you.”

Texas consolidated their success with their next album, The Hush, released in 1999 which, like White on Blonde,  went to number one. A Greatest Hits compilation, released in 2000, did the same.

* Texas headline Edinburgh’s Hogmanay on December 31.

Next week: The Space Between Us, by Craig Armstrong.

 

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