Orange Juice helped to bring into being a new language for pop music.
Witty, urbane and deeply knowledgeable of the more outré aspects of pop culture, the band seem to hint at a universe beyond the sterile punk scene. Splitting onstage in 1985, Orange Juice are perhaps more relevant now than ever.
The band’s output remains a thrilling and deeply unexpected journey. Orange Juice helped to inspire new groups in their native Glasgow, but had a lasting impact in various centres across the globe.
With the lavish new boxset ‘Coals To Newcastle’ being released this week, ClashMusic sat down with some of their biggest fans…
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Gary Jarman (The Cribs)
Rising to prominence in a period that will forever be somewhat cloudily described as post-punk, Orange Juice stand out a mile when compared to their bookish, rigid and po-faced contemporaries because they had a HEART and they let it rule their head. They were romantics through and through in a time when it was more fashionable to be clinical and detached. “Lovesick”, “Consolation Prize”, “Simply Thrilled Honey” all stand out with perfect, damaged sentiments that you would usually expect to be bludgeoned to death by punks. It’s there in the playing too – the drawn out guitar slides in “Three Cheers For Our Side” are the most longing and expressive licks you could imagine.
All these people that spend their entire lives honing the craft of musicianship are missing the point. There is just something about the sincerity of people in that first flush of creativity, that improvisation and the liberty of not being constricted by bullshit traditional music rules that just slays anything that you could ever fucking learn.
Edwyn played a massive role in The Cribs life. He was a massive inspiration to us during the time he was producing us, and after that we saw him as something of a mentor – a cornerman if you will. His disdain and offhand attitude towards all the industry nonsense really helped keep us on an even keel when we met him as angry young men making our second record. His stroke occurred just days after the sessions finished and it really hit us for six. Wichita remember those days as being very dark in The Cribs camp.
Frankie & The Heartstrings
As far as I’m concerned Orange Juice invented Indie music. In 1977 all the teenagers were shoving safety pins in their ears and pogoing to The Sex Pistols while Edwyn Collins was straightening out his boot lace tie and listening Al Green. He did however take the best element of Punk which was energy and fuse it with his love for northern soul.
Orange Juice’s wit is never more evident than in their debut album ‘You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever’. Which I believe isn’t just the greatest debut of all time but the greatest album of all time. The language Edwyn uses reads like poetry making it hard to imagine they pre date The Smiths.
Not only were they the first Indie band but they were the first Indie boys. Floppy fringes, plaid shirts, slim jeans and Dr Martin shoes make for the perfect androgenous band.
Without them we’d of never had Belle and Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand or The Yummy Fur and the world would be a sad place without those.
Eugene Kelly (The Vaselines)
One Saturday evening in 1982 I went into my older brother’s bedroom to use his record player while he was out. I have three older brothers and I had listened to their glam rock then punk rock record over the years. On this evening a 7 inch record was sitting on the turn table. It had a blue label with a drawing of a cat playing a drum. The name of the band was Orange Juice and this intrigued me enough to give it a spin. The song blasting from the speakers was Blue Boy and it was the most exciting tune I’d heard on my incursions into my brothers room. The drums intro built up to a guitar playing a three chord progression until the vocals kicked in. Then halfway through the most blissful untamed guitar solo. When it finished I played it again then flipped it over to the b-side Lovesick. Next day I tried to find out everything I could about Orange Juice and began growing my fringe into the perfect copy of the Edwyn Collins hair do. Check shirt and semi acoustic guitar were saved up for and bought. My life in music began.
Theoretical Girl
Orange Juice manage to pull together everything that, to me, makes the perfect song. They manage, in that Motown-esque way, to write melancholy yet joyous and upbeat melodies. Their lyrics are dry, witty and sometimes sarcastic but still poignant. They make you want to dance, which I put down to some incredible basslines. And what makes it all even more amazing, is that it doesn’t feel as though they tried. It never sounds thought out, in fact at times they are joyfully shambolic and rough around the edges. It sounds to me that the songs just fell out of them that way.
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Theoretical Girl recently recorded a version of the classic Orange Juice track ‘I Can’t Help Myself’. Grab it HERE.
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Patrick (Veronica Falls)
I heard them in a club when I was about seventeen, and instantly wanted to own everything they ever recorded. Their music had a charm and a loose sincerity that I fell in love with right away and lead to me getting into everything else that I listened to for years after, and still listen to today. The simplicity of the songs on the first record completely changed my attitude to making music and made me embrace awkward melodies and minimal, scrappy guitars.I also heard that Blue Boy was about having a crush on Pete Shelley, but I’m not sure if that’s true or not…
Mike Schulman (Slumberland)
When I was in high school back in the dark days of the early 1980s, I was a dedicated reader of an amazing newsprint magazine called New York Rocker. One of the issues featured a cover article about The Sound of Young Scotland, and featured a lovely picture of Edwyn Collins and Clare Grogan (sigh). I’d never heard any of the bands but what I read made me quite curious, and some rather dedicated scouring of local record shops eventually turned up a copy of Orange Juice’s “Blue Boy” 7″ on Postcard.
I don’t think I’d ever heard a record quite like it. The rush of energy, the raw, edgy guitar sound, the arch lyrics and the MELODY. The debt to punk was clear, but this was POP and it opened my head up in ways that few records before or since have. I picked up all the Orange Juice Postcard singles pretty soon after, and of course tracked their evolution into a “proper” pop band, but it’s those first few gape-mouthed listens to “Blue Boy” that have stuck with me the most. A large part of what I’ve tried to accomplish with Slumberland and the bands I’ve been in can be traced right back to that little piece of vinyl.
Orange Juice – Coals To Newcastle is out now
