Bobby Gillespie
Encyclopedia
Robert Bernard Andrew "Bobby" Gillespie (born 22 June 1962 in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

) is a Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

. He is the lead singer and founding member of the alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...

 band, Primal Scream
Primal Scream
Primal Scream are a Scottish alternative rock band originally formed in 1982 in Glasgow by Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beattie and now based in London. The current lineup consists of Gillespie, Andrew Innes , Martin Duffy , and Darrin Mooney...

. He was also the drummer for The Jesus and Mary Chain
The Jesus and Mary Chain
The Jesus and Mary Chain are a Scottish alternative rock band formed in East Kilbride, Glasgow in 1983. The band revolves around the songwriting partnership of brothers Jim and William Reid...

 in the mid-1980s.

Early life

Born and raised in the south side district of Mount Florida
Mount Florida
Mount Florida is an area in the southeastern corner of the Scottish city of Glasgow.- Details :The origins of the name are uncertain. It has been stated that it derives from Mount Florida House, owned by a family from Florida, USA...

 in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, he attended Kings Park Secondary School
Kings Park Secondary School
Kings Park Secondary School, situated on Fetlar Drive, in the Kings Park area of south Glasgow, is a Scottish non-denominational state school....

. His father is Bob Gillespie, a former SOGAT union official and Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 candidate in the 1988 Govan
Govan
Govan is a district and former burgh now part of southwest City of Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated west of Glasgow city centre, on the south bank of the River Clyde, opposite the mouth of the River Kelvin and the district of Partick....

 by-election, who lost the election to the Scottish National Party
Scottish National Party
The Scottish National Party is a social-democratic political party in Scotland which campaigns for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom....

's Jim Sillars
Jim Sillars
Jim Sillars is a Scottish politician. He is married to current member of the Scottish Parliament, Margo MacDonald.-Early life:...

.

Jesus and Mary Chain days

Gillespie first became famous playing drums for the influential East Kilbride band
Band (music)
In music, a musical ensemble or band is a group of musicians that works together to perform music. The following articles concern types of musical bands:* All-female band* Big band* Boy band* Christian band* Church band* Concert band* Cover band...

 The Jesus and Mary Chain
The Jesus and Mary Chain
The Jesus and Mary Chain are a Scottish alternative rock band formed in East Kilbride, Glasgow in 1983. The band revolves around the songwriting partnership of brothers Jim and William Reid...

. Prior to The Jesus and the Mary Chain, he worked as a roadie for Altered Images
Altered Images
Altered Images were an early 1980s Scottish New Wave / post-punk band. Led by lead singer Clare Grogan, the band branched into mainstream pop music, and had a string of chart hits between 1981 and 1983.-Early career:...

 and played bass
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

 in The Wake
The Wake (band)
The Wake were a British post punk and later indie pop band, founded in Glasgow in 1981 by Gerard "Caesar" McInulty , Steven Allen and Joe Donnelly, who was later replaced by Bobby Gillespie...

. Gillespie was a friend of Mary Chain bassist
Bassist
A bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...

  Douglas Hart
Douglas Hart
Douglas Hart is a British musician and music video director.-Biography:Hart was the first bassist and founding member of the Scottish band The Jesus and Mary Chain, and played with the group from 1984 to 1991...

, who asked Gillespie to join the band after their original drummer had left following the release of their debut single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

 in 1984. Gillespie's style of drumming was minimal, with his drum kit consisting only of a snare and a floor tom, which he played standing up, an idea he borrowed from the Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker.

Gillespie played on the band's debut LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

, Psychocandy
Psychocandy
Psychocandy is the debut album by the Scottish alternative rock band The Jesus and Mary Chain, released in November 1985. Psychocandy combined the concepts of pop songs and searing guitar chords....

, which was released in 1985 to wide critical acclaim. By this time Gillespie had already released a single, albeit to little attention, with his own band, Primal Scream
Primal Scream
Primal Scream are a Scottish alternative rock band originally formed in 1982 in Glasgow by Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beattie and now based in London. The current lineup consists of Gillespie, Andrew Innes , Martin Duffy , and Darrin Mooney...

. Throughout his days as a drummer Gillespie had continued to work at Primal Scream, the band he started along with guitarist Jim Beattie
Jim Beattie (musician)
Jim Beattie is a Scottish musician who founded Primal Scream and later went on to form Spirea X and Adventures in Stereo.-Biography:Beattie formed Primal Scream in 1982 along with Bobby Gillespie...

 in 1982. By early 1986, Gillespie had played his last show with the Mary Chain and left to devote his attentions to Primal Scream.

Primal Scream

The band signed to Creation Records in 1985, and over the next year, they released a pair of singles. However, Primal Scream didn't really take off until the middle of 1986, when Gillespie left the Mary Chain and guitarists Andrew Innes
Andrew Innes
Andrew Innes is a London-based musician. He is best known for being the rhythm guitarist in Scottish rock band Primal Scream.-Early years:...

 and Robert Young joined the band. The B-side "Velocity Girl" wound up on NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

's C86
C86 (music)
C86 is a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine NME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from independent labels of the time. As a phrase, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based musical genre characterised by "jangly" guitars and fey melodies, although other...

 cassette compilation, a collection of underground pop groups that defined the UK's mid-'80s indie pop
Indie pop
Indie pop is a genre of alternative rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid 1980s, with its roots in the Scottish post-punk bands on the Postcard Records label in the early '80s, such as Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera, and the dominant UK independent band of the mid...

 scene. After the band rejected the initial version of debut album, Sonic Flower Groove
Sonic Flower Groove
Sonic Flower Groove was Scottish band Primal Scream's debut album. Released in 1987, Sonic Flower Groove featured psychedelic, Byrdsy jangle pop and was the only Primal Scream album to feature founder member Jim Beattie ....

, recorded with Stephen Street
Stephen Street
Stephen Street is an English music producer best known for his work with The Smiths in the 1980s, as well as Blur and The Cranberries in the 1990s. Street also collaborated with Morrissey on some of his most popular work after The Smiths broke up, playing instruments and co-writing songs...

, they re-recorded the album with Mayo Thompson, and the record was finally released in 1987 on the Creation subsidiary Elevation. The album was well received in the British indie community, as was its 1989 follow-up, Primal Scream
Primal Scream (album)
Primal Scream was the second album of British band Primal Scream. Released in 1989 it took a harder rock approach than their debut album Sonic Flower Groove and did not achieve great success...

, which demonstrated hard rock influences from the Rolling Stones and New York Dolls
New York Dolls
The New York Dolls is an American rock band, formed in New York in 1971. The band's protopunk sound prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era; their visual style influenced the look of many new wave and 1980s-era glam metal groups, and they began the local New York scene that later...

 to the Stooges
The Stooges
The Stooges are an American rock band from Ann Arbor, Michigan first active from 1967 to 1974, and later reformed in 2003...

 and MC5
MC5
The MC5 is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan and originally active from 1964 to 1972. The original band line-up consisted of vocalist Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson...

.

As the 1980s drew to a close, Britain's underground music scene became dominated by the burgeoning acid house
Acid house
Acid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's core electronic squelch sounds were developed around the mid-1980s, particularly by DJs from Chicago who experimented with...

 scene. Primal Scream became fascinated with the new dance music, and they asked a friend, a DJ named Andrew Weatherall
Andrew Weatherall
Andrew Weatherall is a DJ, producer, and remixer.Andrew, Terry Farley, Cymon Eckel and Steve Mayes started Boy's Own initially as a fanzine commenting on fashion, records, football, and other issues...

, to remix a track from Primal Scream, "I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have." Weatherall completely reworked the song, adding a heavy bass groove echoing dub reggae, deleting most of the original instrumentation (even the layers of guitars), and interjecting layers of samples
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...

, including lines of Peter Fonda
Peter Fonda
Peter Henry Fonda is an American actor. He is the son of Henry Fonda, brother of Jane Fonda, and father of Bridget and Justin Fonda...

's dialogue from The Wild Angels
The Wild Angels
The Wild Angels is a 1966 Roger Corman film, made on location in Southern California. The Wild Angels was made three years before Easy Rider and was the first film to associate actor Peter Fonda with Harley-Davidson motorcycles and 1960s counterculture...

. The new mix was retitled "Loaded," and it became a sensation. "Come Together," the first single from their forthcoming third album, was in much the same vein, and was similarly praised.

For their third album, Screamadelica
Screamadelica
Screamadelica is the third studio album by the Scottish alternative rock group Primal Scream and was their first to be a commercial success. It was released on 23 September 1991 in the UK by Creation Records, and 8 October 1991 in North America by Sire Records. Screamadelica peaked at #8 on the UK...

, Primal Scream not only worked with Andrew Weatherall
Andrew Weatherall
Andrew Weatherall is a DJ, producer, and remixer.Andrew, Terry Farley, Cymon Eckel and Steve Mayes started Boy's Own initially as a fanzine commenting on fashion, records, football, and other issues...

 and Hugo Nicolson
Hugo Nicolson
Hugo Nicolson is a record producer and engineer who has worked on records for artists including Primal Scream, Embrace, David Holmes, Shack and Julian Cope....

, the pair who designed the sound of the album, but also The Orb
The Orb
Throughout 1989, the Orb, along with Martin Glover, developed the musical genre of ambient house through the use of a diverse array of samples and recordings. The culmination of its musical work came toward the end of the year when the group recorded a session for John Peel on BBC Radio 1...

 and former Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller. The resulting album was a kaleidoscopic, neo-psychedelic fusion of dance, dub
Dub music
Dub is a genre of music which grew out of reggae music in the 1960s, and is commonly considered a subgenre, though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae...

, techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...

, acid house, pop, and rock, and it was greeted with favorable reviews in the UK Released in the spring of 1991, Screamadelica also marked an important moment in British pop in the 1990s, helping to bring techno and house
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...

 into the mainstream. The album was a massive success, winning the first Mercury Music Prize in 1992.

The fourth album, Give Out But Don't Give Up
Give Out but Don't Give Up
Give Out But Don't Give Up is a 1994 album by Primal Scream. It was the follow-up to the successful Screamadelica.-Track listing:All tracks written by Bobby Gillespie, Andrew Innes and Robert Young, unless noted.# "Jailbird" - 3:46# "Rocks" - 3:37...

, marked a departure for the band from its original sound, experimenting instead with Stones-influenced hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...

. The album was eagerly awaited, but was not well received, and it was a relative commercial failure. More importantly, it hurt the group's reputation as innovators, a situation they reacted to with the title track to the hit 1996 film Trainspotting
Trainspotting (film)
Trainspotting is a 1996 British satirical/drama film directed by Danny Boyle based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh. The movie follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life...

, a return to the dance stylings of Screamadelica. The band continued to work on their next album, entitled Vanishing Point
Vanishing Point (album)
Vanishing Point is a 1997 album by Primal Scream. It is named after and inspired by the 1971 film Vanishing Point, especially the song "Kowalski", which is meant to be an alternative soundtrack to the movie...

, over the course of 1996, finally releasing it to enthusiastic reviews in the summer of 1997. The ultra-aggressive XTRMNTR
XTRMNTR
XTRMNTR is a 2000 album by Primal Scream. In a departure from Primal Scream's earlier hedonistic recordings, the band took a more political stance, attacking government, police, and multinational corporations...

followed in the spring of 2000. Two years later Primal Scream released Evil Heat
Evil Heat
Evil Heat is a 2002 album by Primal Scream.The track "Rise" was originally titled "Bomb the Pentagon", and debuted as part of the band's live set in summer 2001. In light of the September 11, 2001 attacks, both the lyrics and title of the song were reworked, and the revised version appears on the...

, a guest-laden (even supermodel Kate Moss
Kate Moss
Kate Moss is an English model. Moss is known for her waifish figure and popularising the heroin chic look in the 1990s. She is also known for her controversial private life, high profile relationships, party lifestyle, and drug use. Moss changed the look of modelling and started a global debate on...

 makes an appearance) album in line with XTRMNTR, and in 2006 Riot City Blues
Riot City Blues
Riot City Blues is the eighth studio album by Primal Scream, released on June 5, 2006. On this album, Primal Scream leaves its electronic element behind and returns to more traditional rock and roll...

came out.

In January 2010, Primal Scream started work on their new album.

Personal life

Gillespie married stylist Katy England at St. Margaret's Church, Betley
Betley
Betley is a village and civil parish in the Newcastle district of Staffordshire, England, about halfway between Newcastle-under-Lyme and Nantwich. Betley forms a continual linear settlement with Wrinehill.-Transport:...

 on 29 July 2006. They have two sons together, Wolf (born in 2002) and Lux (born in 2004).

Controversy

Primal Scream were drafted at the last minute to play the Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.The...

 in 2005, as one of the replacements for Kylie Minogue
Kylie Minogue
Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE - often known simply as Kylie - is an Australian singer, recording artist, songwriter, and actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing...

. During the set Gillespie was abusive, making various gestures including a Nazi salute and referred to the crowd as "a bunch of fucking hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...

s". He also declared that if the crowd wanted to see The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses are an English alternative rock band formed in Manchester in 1983. They were one of the pioneering groups of the Madchester movement that was active during the late 1980s and early 1990s...

 reunite that they "should've been here 15 years ago, you lazy bastards". He then accused festival headliners Coldplay
Coldplay
Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...

 of being boring and said that they are the reason why Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...

 are so miserable. The band were eventually removed from stage by security for over running their allotted time. When Gillespie was asked why he acted in this manner, he said: "Some fucking hippie robbed all my ale."

Gillespie was also criticised for defacing a Make Poverty History
Make Poverty History
Make Poverty History is the name of a campaign that exists in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark , Finland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Great Britain and Ireland...

 poster signed by all the acts at the festival. Gillespie scribbled over this and wrote "Make Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 History". Gillespie later said that he did this in support of Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

, and when questioned on whether he was anti-Semitic, he responded "There's Israeli and Jewish people who support the Palestinian cause as well. We did a lot of work for the Hoping Foundation to raise money for children in the Palestinian refugee camps and the lady who got us involved is Bella Freud, Lucian Freud's daughter and Sigmund Freud's great granddaughter. They had to flee Austria to escape Nazi persecution, and she believes in the Palestinian cause. To say we're anti-Semitic is a smear, so you'd better watch what you're saying. Because you oppose one country's government's policies doesn't. mean to say that you hate all the people from that country. I don't like Bush or Putin or Tony Blair, but I don't hate American, Russian or British people. Most people are just trying hard to get by."

On 7 June 2008 during an interview over the phone with Lauren Laverne
Lauren Laverne
Lauren Cecilia Fisher , known professionally as Lauren Laverne, is an English radio DJ, television presenter, author and singer...

 for her first ever show on BBC 6 Music (in the afternoon), Gillespie swore several times on air finishing with "mind your own fucking business!". Laverne joked that [because of the incident] there wouldn't be a 'show number two'.

Gillespie was involved in a campaign to prevent a local pub gaining extended hours saying, "I found the repetitiveness [of the noise] disturbing and I was unable to sleep because of it".

Steven Van Zandt
Steven Van Zandt
Steven Van Zandt is an Italian-American musician, songwriter, arranger, record producer, actor, and radio disc jockey, who frequently goes by the stage names Little Steven or Miami Steve...

, guitarist in Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...

's E Street Band
E Street Band
The E Street Band has been rock musician Bruce Springsteen's primary backing band since 1972.The band has also recorded with a wide range of other artists including Bob Dylan, Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Dire Straits, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Nicks, Tom Morello, Sting, Ian...

 and The Sopranos
The Sopranos
The Sopranos is an American television drama series created by David Chase that revolves around the New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the often conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads...

cast member, described Gillespie as a "waste of space" after his attempts to organise a Primal Scream tour of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

were stymied by Gillespie's drug problems.

External links

  • http://www.primalscream.net/
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