Big Country are a Scottish rock band formed in Dunfermline in 1981. Big Country comprised Stuart Adamson ( vocals/guitar/keyboards), Bruce Watson (guitar), Tony Butler (bass/vocals) and Mark Brzezicki (drums/vocals). Adamson auditioned Parker (1981) and the next day was called on to play drums on demos for CBS at their Whitfield Street studios. Adamson asked Parker to join the band, which led to eight months of rehearsal in Dunfermline in a disused furniture warehouse. The culmination was a concert at the Glen Pavilion at Dunfermline and an interview with BBC Radio Scotland where the CBS Studio demos were utilised. The band then played live with Alice Cooper’s Special Forces tour for two concerts in 1982 at The Brighton Centre. Butler and Brzezicki, working under the name ‘Rhythm for Hire,’ were brought in to play on “Harvest Home.” They immediately hit it off with Adamson and Watson, who invited them to join the band.
Big Country’s first single was “Harvest Home”, recorded and released in 1982. It was a modest success, although it did not reach the Uk Singles Chart. Their next single was 1983’s “Fields of Fire”, which reached the UK’s Top Ten and was rapidly followed by the album The Crossing.
The album was a hit in the United States (reaching the Top 20 in the Billboard 200), powered by “In A Big Country”, their only US Top 40 hit single. The song featured heavily engineered guitar playing, strongly reminiscent of bagpipes; Adamson and fellow guitarist, Watson, achieved this through the use of the MXR Pitch Transposer 129 Guitar Effect. Also contributing to the band’s unique sound was their use of the e-bow, a device which allows a guitar to sound more like strings or synthesizer. The Crossing sold over a million copies in the UK and obtained gold record status (sales of over 500,000) in the US. The band performed at the Grammy Awards and on Saturday Night Live.
Big Country released the non-LP extended play single “Wonderland” in 1984, while in the middle of a lengthy worldwide tour. The song, considered by some critics to be one of their finest, was a Top 10 hit in the UK Singles Chart but, despite heavy airplay and a positive critical response, was a comparative flop in the US, reaching only No. 86 on the Billboard. It was the last single by the band to make the US charts. Their second album Steeltown (1984) was a hit as soon as it was released, entering the UK Album Chart at No. 1. The album featured three UK top 30 hit singles, and received considerable critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, but like Wonderland (and, in fact, all subsequent releases) it was a commercial disappointment in the US, peaking at No. 70 on the Billboard album chart.
Throughout 1984 and 1985 the band toured the UK, Europe, and to a lesser extent the US both as headliners and in support of such bigger-name artists as Queen and Roger Daltrey. They also recorded prolifically, and provided the musical score to a Scottish independent film, Restless Natives (1985), which was released years later on the band’s Restless Natives and Rarities (1998) collection.
1986’s The Seer, the band’s third album, was another big success in the UK, peaking at Number 2. It produced three further Top 30 singles, including the Irish number one hit “Look Away”, which would also prove to be the band’s biggest hit in the UK, peaking at No. 7.Kate Bush provided backing vocals on the album’s title track, and the album received good reviews from the music press. In the US, The Seer sold a little bit better than Steeltown, reaching No. 59 on the Billboard chart.
