Posted on 02/08/2005 11:49:37 AM PST by West Coast Conservative
Where does it end?
They still had a decent following of hard-core fans, though not as large (or broad) as it was as recently as the early or mid 1990's. They were close to making something of a European comeback in 2000, and would have had a chart hit, but the sales for that single were disqualified from the rankings on the grounds that the packaging was non-standard. A second single was also gaining momentum until the radio station that was really promoting it realized the group was a bunch of old fogies, rather than some new young hip band, at which point they pulled their support.
Unfortunately, Stuart Adamson (lead guitarist, lead singer and primary songwriter) committed suicide in December 2001. The band's record label is still putting out previously unreleased material, but obviously the band is no more. I never cared for the band's politics (they're way to the left), but I've always loved their music.
Gosh, that's a shame -- I wasn't even aware of that Scott Adamson story. I knew they had resurfaced somewhat in the late 1990s, but I never heard "the end of the story," so to speak.
Adamson had a long-standing problem with alcoholism, going back to when he was with The Skids in the late 70's/early 80's. From everything I'd heard, he stayed clean & sober throughout most of the 1990's. He moved to Nashville, TN sometime in the late 1990's and was here in the US when September 11 happened. Apparently, that affected him deeply, and he began drinking again. He was displaying erratic behavior throughout that fall (he was a no-show for a scheduled concert, for example). He finally disappeared sometime in December, and they found he had hung himself in his hotel room in Hawaii.
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