About Deacon Blue
Deacon Blue are a Scottish pop rock band formed in Glasgow during 1985. The line-up of the band consists of vocalists Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh, keyboard player James Prime and drummer Dougie Vipond. The band released their debut album, Raintown, on 1 May 1987 in the United Kingdom and in the United States in February 1988. Their second album, When the World Knows Your Name , topped the UK Albums Chart for two weeks, and included "Real Gone Kid" which became their first top ten single in the UK Singles Chart and reached number one in Spain. Deacon Blue released their fourth album, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, in 1993.
The band split in 1994, following which Vipond began a career in television. Five years later, the band held a reunion gig, and this led on to a new album, Walking Back Home, with the band now working on a part-time basis. The band released another album, Homesick, in 2001. Though Graeme Kelling died from pancreatic cancer in 2004, the band has continued and 2006 saw Deacon Blue returning to the studio to record three new tracks for a Singles album – including the track "Bigger than Dynamite". Deacon Blue's next album was The Hipsters, in 2012. The band released another album, A New House, in September 2014. Believers, was released in September 2016. A concert recording of their return to the Barrowlands, Glasgow, was released on 31 March 2017. The band's ninth studio album City of Love was released on 6 March 2020. In February 2021, they released their tenth studio album entitled Riding on the Tide of Love to commercial success in the UK.
As of 2020, Deacon Blue's total album sales stood at seven million, with twelve UK top 40 singles, along with two number one albums in the UK.
Taking their name from the 1977 Steely Dan song "Deacon Blues", Deacon Blue were formed in 1985 following Ricky Ross's move from Dundee to Glasgow. Along with Ross, the group originally consisted of Lorraine McIntosh, James Prime, Dougie Vipond, Ewen Vernal and Graeme Kelling.
Ross, a former school teacher originally from Dundee, was the group's frontman, penning the majority of Deacon Blue's songs. He married vocalist Lorraine McIntosh in 1990. In 1986, the band contributed a track to a compilation cassette entitled "Honey at the Core", featuring then up-and-coming Glasgow bands, including Wet Wet Wet, The Bluebells, Kevin McDermott , The Big Dish, and Hue and Cry.
The band's debut album, Raintown, produced by Jon Kelly was released in 1987. It spawned the singles "Dignity", "Chocolate Girl" and "Loaded". The city that the album's title refers to is Glasgow and the cover art of the album is a photograph of the River Clyde's docks taken from Kelvingrove Park. It proved a commercial success and has to date sold around a million copies, peaking in the UK Albums Chart at no. 14 and remaining in the charts for a year and a half. On 27 February 2006, Raintown was reissued as part of Columbia's Legacy Edition series. The reissue was expanded to two CDs, the first of which featured the original 11 track album. The second CD featured alternate cuts of all 11 album tracks, as well as the two original CD bonus tracks "Riches" and "Kings of the Western World". The new edition did not include the varied bonus cuts that were found on the singles from the album.
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