Malcolm Ross interviewed by Roy Moller, Edinburgh, October 2006 for isthismusic magazine.
Edinburgh 1979. In Bruce’s Record Shop Josef K’s talented teenage guitarist is raking through the record bins when a unique version of Bowie’s Boys Keep Swinging spinning instore catches his ear. “I’ll buy that!” enthuses Malcolm Ross to the assistant. “Who is it? ” Ross is directed to the young aesthete across the counter: “It’s his record.” Billy Mackenzie has just offloaded a brace of debut Associates singles sale or return. Prompt purchaser Ross is suspected of being an accomplice…
Collaborator, certainly, on some of the finest Scottish music of the last quarter century, Ross has just released a solo compilation on Re-Action Recordings entitled Wrong Place, Wrong Time. As the hauntingly sardonic Josef K would have it, It’s Kinda Funny: Malcolm Ross has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. … the right man, for instance, for former Fast Product supremo Bob Last to recruit to tutor the likes of Ian Hart and Stephen Dorff to mime convincingly in Hamburg Beatles biopic Backbeat; and tailor a 50s gypsy score for Hollywood hit Chocolat with afterhours guitar contributions from its male lead, Johnny Depp: ”We did Johnny’s parts at midnight, after he’d done a day’s filming, in his hotel suite", reveals Ross at his Leith home. " Luckily he’s a very accomplished guitar player”. Praise indeed from the man whose new single Low Shot’s delicious riff uncoils as menacingly as a gunslinger’s gaze around a shanty town, and who delivers a post-punk masterclass on Josef K’s farewell single, The Missionary. Never mercenary, Ross “decided in the late 80s I didn’t want to be in any way a session man, making music for money. I know a lot of people who do it”, he avers, “ and in the end a lot of them stop liking music”.
Liking music, but not always each other, fellow Postcard popsters Orange Juice frequently sought Ross to smooth relations at sessions, such as one for an early single whose unique refrain gained the diplomatic Edinburgher’s particular admiration: “Ye Gods, I’m Simply Thrilled Honey!”
Fast forward to 1982: the day singer Paul Haig quits Josef K, Ross - in Glasgow for what proves to be the band’s final show - bumps into Collins and finds himself joining up for OJ’s Rip It Up album and preceding single Two Hearts Together, a substandard stab at mainstream success in an ill-judged sleeve: “we probably wore too much make up…Edwyn’s wearing a boy scout’s uniform …”. Collins sported a kilt on earlier single sleeves with some aplomb, but a scout uniform? Ye Gods! “There was a time when Edwyn would have bought every copy of that and burned them”, Ross recalls. But with Collins aggrieved that the likes of Altered Images and Haircut 100 having hits in lieu of Orange Juice, his group consented to dress for success. “Nobody twisted our arm. That was the be-all-and-end-all to have a hit single, to use the latest production techniques which was probably a stupid thing to do as it ages so badly.” Refreshingly free of inbuilt aural obsolescence, Rip It Up’s title track hit the Top Ten before OJ decided “to try to get back to where we were – sort of left field”. The group concurrently returned to its former fractious state and Ross quit with bassist David McClymont. While a new Orange Juice line-up continued releasing superbly individualistic flops, charting via en vogue production formed the gameplan for the next Postcard legend to recruit Ross: Roddy Frame harboured ambitions for prodigally poetic Aztec Camera to break America with a smooth Scritti Politti-ish sound. For Ross, recording the Mark Knopfler-produced Knife epitomised sterility: “He would spend an afternoon getting a bass drum sound. I had very little input, just got to play my guitar parts…” Live, the group cut more slack and Ross’s blistering guitar abilities coloured Frame’s assumption of whose fretwork ignited Texas Fever’s standout single: ”I remember Roddy saying, “You played that guitar on that song Bridge. The guitar playing on that’s fantastic”. I said, “Roddy, that’s Edwyn !” “
With Knife failing to make an incision in the US market, drummer Dave Ruffy accompanied Ross in the briefly, brightly buzzing High Bees, fronted by Malcolm’s wife, Syuzen Buckley, chanteuse on Applebush, which closes new Josef K compilation, Entomolgy, released by Domino, home to Franz Ferdinand. Impressed by the Glasgow quartet – who he reckons sound closer to the Monochrome Set than to his oft-invoked former cohorts, Ross admits to “enjoying this period when Josef K are kind of trendy again”. Not given to hubris, Ross is simply glad of guitar music’s general goodstanding, and has a fresh outlet for his talents: Stac Lee, formed with Fire Engine Russell Burn and bass-playing folksinger Maggie Holland - a treat for 2007.
Back in time to 79: Ross discovers the identity of the cool-looking guy with the guitar in his French & music college classes: Associate Alan Rankine, to whom Mackenzie has relayed the Bruce’s incident. Friendship fortuitously forged, Ross goes on to work with both Associates, later writing Happy Boy partly as a lament after Mackenzie’s suicide.
This affecting title track of his second Marina album graces Wrong Place, Wrong Time, alongside other gems from his career with the Hamburg label such as football‘n’fame meditation Slim Jim On The Slippery Slope and the infectiously loping Big Guitar (also featuring Buckley and originating from the country band Ross played in during a fifteen year London stay. The couple currently play country together around Edinburgh in Buckley’s Chance). Featuring several Collins-produced tracks and guesting many former bandmates, the compilation testifies to Ross’ standing as one of music’s gentlemen.. and, indeed, a scholar. “I started thinking I should study music”, he says of the music degree he gained in London. ” I wanted to really get to the bottom of it, how it all worked.” With two superb new compilations illuminating a CV also encompassing stints with Blancmange, Momus, Paul Haig and Bad Seed Barry Adamson, it’s the right place, right time to appreciate how Malcolm Ross has always innately known how to work musical magic on a Big Guitar
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