Joe McAlinden: Swimming with Scotland's cult musician

That, I’m afraid, is more a reflection of our poor judgement than it is his. Since the 1980s McAlinden has been making music of the highest quality. We just haven’t paid enough attention. 

As a teenager he was part of the Bellshill music scene, a member of the band Boy Hairdressers before they went on to become Teenage Fanclub without him (although McAlinden was able to bring his classical training to bear on the band’s breakthrough album Bandwagonesque, arranging brass and strings on the record).  

Through the 1990s he fronted the band Superstar who were signed by Creation Records and even had a song - the eponymous Superstar - covered by Rod Stewart. And McAlinden has continued to make music up to the present day.

A new album, Where The Clouds Go Swimming has just been released and it’s notable for being a) really good, b) offering new textures to the McAlinden sound, and c) a triumph of perseverance and creativity in the face of adversity. 

We’ll get to all of that, but this June afternoon McAlinden is at home in Argyll, on the shore of Loch Fyne, moaning about the heat (“Too hot. Not good weather for a ginger. Well, an ex-ginger”) and telling me about his work with Ukrainian refugees. 

“The last few months I’ve been working with the Ukrainian resettlement team here in Argyll. It is a privilege to be involved with something like that. I’ve always been a real people person.”

McAlinden himself moved to Argyll 20 years ago. In that time he has turned his hand to a number of things, including a period as a restaurateur.

“We did it for maybe five or six years,” he explains. “It was a restaurant that had been in the in-law’s family for quite a while and I just thought, ‘What a great idea.’”

He shakes his head. “I thought the music business was pretty bad for egos, but, boy oh boy, chefs. Wow, that’s a whole other level.”

Even then McAlinden never stopped making music. Or at least he did until a few years ago when sitting down to write he found he couldn’t come up with anything. 

This was just part of a wider array of symptoms that were affecting him at the time. He was suffering memory loss and his hand-to-eye coordination was proving faulty.

“It was really quite a weird experience,” McAlinden admits. Not that he did anything about it, initially. “Typical west of Scotland male. ‘Ach, it will be fine.’ You kind of trundle on for a few months.”

But when he sat down in his home studio to start on new music he suddenly realised that for the first time he didn’t actually know how. 

“I had no clue what to do. I just sat there.”

Palm Tree from Superstar (Image: unknown)

That finally prompted him to get things checked out. “They did a lot of scans and tests and stuff. I’m still going to neurologists to get monitored six-monthly at the moment.”

Thankfully, he says, “most of the crazy stuff has been ruled out.” At one point it was even feared he might have early-onset dementia. “They’re pretty certain it wasn’t. But basically what’s happened is the little receptors are misfiring. They’re not talking to each other properly. 

“Rather than going into a panic about it I’ve kind of taught myself latterly not to worry about things I can’t do anything about. It takes a lot of energy.”

All this coincided with lockdown and he threw himself into downsizing his studio and finally learning how to use all the tech he had surrounded himself with properly. “I had been winging it for so long. 

“And that’s what I did. Before I knew it I was layering lots of soundscapes and that’s eventually what has become this album. This whole thing has been a scary journey, but it’s been an amazing journey as well.

“Getting to the end of it I feel like I’ve really achieved something personally. Because a couple of years ago it was just a big black hole. It makes me really proud.”

In the circumstances the fact that Where The Clouds Go Swimming exists at all is a cause for celebration. The fact that it’s a gorgeous, lush thing that adds new sonic layers to McAlinden’s familiar songwriting craft is remarkable. “Cinematic,” is the word he uses to describe it.

But for all its expansiveness, the album is also a chance to become reacquainted with one of the great unsung Scottish pop voices.

“I’ve always been quite an emotive singer,” McAlinden suggests. “I always sing how I feel, but I think it makes some people uncomfortable to see a grown man maybe being so openly emotive. For me it’s perfectly natural.

“I didn’t want to fall into that for this record so I double-tracked all my vocals to depersonalise them a little bit. And bizarrely it didn’t work.”

Where The Clouds Go Swimming, he hopes, is something that sounds fresh. “It doesn’t sound like it's in its mid-fifties,” he reckons. “I think it sounds quite youthful.”

Do you still feel close to the teenager you were all those years ago, Joe? “I think always because when I hear my voice I sound exactly the same as I did when I was 18 and 19. The inside of my head still feels like that as well. It really does. And I cling onto that because I kind of quite like being that guy. I don’t want to be a grumpy old bastard. I’d quite like to be that wee ginger guy.”

There's so much luck involved in music, he points out. Meeting the group of friends he did as a teenager shaped his life.

“We all met on a train when we were 16, 17 years old and we’re still doing all of this.”

And it was McAlinden’s association with Teenage Fanclub that ensured Alan McGee at Creation was interested in what he did next.

Looking back, McAlinden is happy to have remained largely on the outer rims of the Creation experience back in the 1990s. “I didn’t get immersed in that …” He stops, searching for the bon mot.

Madness, I suggest?

“Yeah, I was brought up a good Catholic boy. I was just enjoying the music. There were a few mad things went on.”

Superstar had their moments but didn’t quite cross over to the mainstream. Although they were noticed. “I just remember getting a phone call from our manager at the time saying, ‘Can you write out lyrics. I need to fax them over to LA for Rod Stewart.’ I was thinking, ‘f*** off.’ 

“Wind on a few months and I get a cassette of Rod singing Superstar. I had a really bad hangover. Of course you’re going to put it on straight away. But I couldn’t cope with it and I took it off and threw it in the bin. ‘This is too weird.’

“Obviously I took it out of the bin when I felt a little bit fresher later on. 

“But quite bizarre. It’s probably the only time I’ve ever experienced someone interpreting something that I’ve written. I think he sings it like a love song. I suppose in some respects it was. It’s obviously a break-up song, but he sings it much more endearingly I suppose. An absolute thrill.

“Off the back of that you’re being asked to do other things. I turned all of them down because I was silly. I was so immersed in doing my own thing. ‘Would you be interested in writing for Elton John?’ And I’m like ‘naw’.” 

He smiles. “It makes for a better story. I was asked to write with Brian Wilson for Wilson Phillips as well. It just freaked me out though. 

“I’m not overly keen on meeting heroes. The only autograph I have is Kenny Dalglish and I queued up in Motherwell town centre because he was opening the new Co-op in Motherwell. I was still at school and I queued up for ages and I still have the autograph book but literally he was in the storeroom at a wee desk signing his name. It was a wee bit of an anti-climax, so I’ve kind of avoided it since then.”

McAlinden is insistent on the new album being seen as a work that stands on its own, but is there a chance that he might play it live?

“I definitely want to. One thing that I’m bizarrely certain I want to do is just stand and sing. I don’t want to play any instruments. Just the thrill of being able to completely immerse myself in singing and not thinking about anything else. That’s the dream. I won’t wear a suit or anything like that. I won’t be dancing. I’ll just be singing.”

Where The Clouds Go Swimming (Image: unknown)

Put it out into the world, Joe, and who knows what might happen. “I’m the worst PR person in the world for myself. I’ll sit in Argyll going, ‘Why am I not playing anywhere?’ Well, pick up the phone and tell someone you want to play for a start. I’m not very good at blowing my own trumpet.”
It’s time we did it for him then. Despite everything Joe McAlinden has made a new album and it’s great. He makes a good cult hero, but maybe it’s time he was something more.

Where The Clouds Go Swimming is available now.