“Let’s begin at the start, we could?”
The excitement of expectant chatter within the auditorium turns to cheers because the room fills with the magnificent racket of The Mekons’ 1978 single, “The place Had been You”, clattering out as intro music, and as a reminder of what was within the air again when all this began. Behind the stage, letters apparently stolen from the set of Elvis’s 1968 comeback particular spell out E D W Y N. And now Edwyn Collins himself seems from the wings, walks slowly and determinedly to take the chair he’ll occupy for many, however not all, of the night, and leans towards the mic.
“The Orange Juice days,” he says. “Let’s begin at the start, we could?”
And with that, along with his sterling five-piece band l,ocking immediately into the circling, tumbling riff of “Falling And Laughing” and with feelings already operating excessive, we’re off. One final time.
When, because it should, Hollywood will get round to creating the large display screen Edwyn Collins biopic, the scriptwriters will certainly take poetic licence, tweak the pesky information, and rewrite actuality in order that this Glasgow present turns into the ultimate gig of this closing tour.
Edwyn belongs to Glasgow
Certain, Edwyn was born in Edinburgh, the place the final present of what’s billed as The Testimonial Tour: A Final Lap Round The UK is definitely scheduled to happen, on the Queens Corridor on October 9. And, certain, for a few years London, the place he’ll grace the Royal Competition Corridor on October 4, was his house and base of operations.
However, as each one of many fifteen hundred souls gathered collectively amid the old-world plush of the venerable Theatre Royal would insist on telling you, Edwyn belongs to Glasgow, even when, tonight, it feels extra like Glasgow belongs to him.
That is the tour’s third cease, and there are 9 extra reveals to return. However right here is the place it ought to finish, as a result of right here’s the place it started.
He ignores the plain
Simply across the nook lies the location the place as soon as stood the Apollo, the fabled dive the place, in 1978, the eighteen-year previous Collins, by then resident in Glasgow’s suburbs for 3 years, first met Alan Horne, one other younger face within the crowd at a David Bowie gig.
A brisk stroll within the different course will shortly take you to 185 West Princes Road, and the tenement flat the place the pair quickly after launched Postcard Data, the categorically impartial label spearheaded by Collins’s Orange Juice, whose sound and angle laid down a blueprint many have since taken up as a sort of DIY Bible. (Actually, members of a number of generations of Glasgow bands who wouldn’t have sounded fairly the identical with out Orange Juice’s instance are scattered among the many crowd tonight.)
Alongside the best way, you’ll go the ruins of the Artwork College, the nice constructing worn out by hearth, the place Orange Juice performed their first gig in 1979.
Whereas it will make for excellent dramatic symmetry for Collins to carry his performing profession to a detailed in Glasgow, it’s completely in step with the person that he ignores the plain and the enduring and any heroic metaphors for his personal life, and ploughs into the second at hand.
He’s frequently reworked by his music
Even at its most meticulously constructed, Collin’s music has at all times been in regards to the mess and the giddy rush of life, unfastened threads, stolen moments and ragged edges. The opening salvo of “Falling And Laughing” and “Dying Day” underline this, with Patrick Ralla’s lead guitar unearthing the exact pitch of ear-splitting, wire-thin treble that scythed and glimmered by means of the Orange Juice originals, whereas Carwyn Ellis’s excellent bass picks up the heartbeat that held all of it collectively.
As has been the case for 20 years now, for the reason that double stroke that modified, and nearly ended, all the things for Collins, and the accompanying aphasia that sought to rob him of the dazzling wordplay of his songwriting, the very first thing that strikes you when he begins to sing is how he’s frequently reworked by his music.
The voice that may typically falter in speech lately is all of the sudden again there at its thick, sturdy, rubbery baritone finest in track. When you start the evening by considering it’s unimaginable that he’s taking part in in any respect, inside seconds you’re knocked again into considering: this simply sounds unimaginable.
“So laborious to let my previous self go”
In different circumstances, this tour would showcase this yr’s tremendous album, Nation Shall Communicate Unto Nation. However solely two tracks make the minimize tonight, though one, “Data”, a superbly easy and direct track about the place Edwyn as soon as was, and the place he finds himself now – “So laborious to let my previous self go” he repeats, time and again – is the evening’s first perilously poignant second.
As an alternative, as a farewell, the setlist attracts generously from throughout his profession, providing a style of all the things that has gone into his music: all that Velvets and Motown and Stylish meets Joe Meek, with Harry Nilsson arm wrestling Lee Hazelwood over a Sugarhill Gang 12” within the background. There’s a hefty serving to of 1994’s Beautiful George, the album that gave start to the world-devouring Northern Soul monster “A Lady Like You” – that hit is inevitably one of many hardest grooves of the evening; however a weightless, floating tackle the title observe is extra attractive but. A late acoustic studying of “Low Expectations”, with Collins breaking out a plaintive, one-handed harmonica solo, turns into the second when the tidal wave of emotion constructing within the room begins to overflood us.
Touching in one other means is “In Your Eyes”, from 2010’s Shedding Sleep, for which Edwyn is joined in name and response duet by his son, William, whose band Bayview opened the invoice tonight, wanting delighted and embarrassed as his previous man drags him out and insists on telling the gang about “the gorgeous woman” he’s simply married, earlier than the pair lay us completely to waste with the track itself.
The never-ending listing of hits that ought to have been
Within the crowd, it appears as if there are many mates, individuals who have ran into one another unexpectedly, for the primary time in too lengthy, all all of the sudden, surprisingly, feeling all of the years which have handed, all of the life that has occurred. It occurs once more when Edwyn declares that he thinks he ought to attempt standing now, his silver-topped cane is introduced on from the wings, and he grabs it and takes to his toes for the defiant, rousing, dashing name to arms that’s “Don’t Shilly Shally”, one more within the seemingly never-ending listing of hits that ought to have been.
Repeatedly, although, Collins returns to Orange Juice, whose songs make up half the present, from the glinting rumble and roll of “Merely Thrilled” by means of the swamp roar of “What Presence” and the deathless squelch of “Rip It Up”, to the delicate likes of “In A Nutshell” and “Instinct Informed Me (Half One)”. The latter is likely one of the evening’s most unanticipated moments, however extra sudden but is when, on the finish of the encore, Edwyn, with out fuss, declares, “A shock.”
“The perfect track ever written”
Greeted with a palpable sense of shock and delight, this seems to be the arrival on stage of James Kirk and Steven Daly, guitar and drums of the unique Orange Juice, and the reunion Edwyn promised would by no means occur – the one one lacking is bassist David McClymont, who has the borderline acceptable excuse of dwelling in Australia lately. Save for a quick get collectively at a non-public occasion for the Nordoff Robbins music remedy charity within the early days of Edwyn’s post-stroke restoration in 2008, it’s the primary time they’ve shared a stage since 1981.
As they launch into “Felicity” as if it was solely final week, somebody screams out, “The perfect track ever written,” and Edwyn agrees, although it was Kirk who wrote it. It could actually’t be the perfect track ever written, although, as a result of right here they’re, following it up with “Blue Boy”. Ye gods.
By now we all know it’s about to finish. Edwyn Collins will proceed to file, however he received’t be doing this once more, not right here, and after tonight he possibly has no have to. “Blue Boy, whoa, whoa, Blue Boy, cheerio…” There are tears because the lights go up, although whether or not from pleasure or sorrow is tough to say. You possibly can’t cover your love ceaselessly. Nobody right here was making an attempt, anyway. Crying. Laughing. Falling. Thrilled.
Edwyn Collins’s setlist on the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, September 27, 2025
Falling and Laughing
Dying Day
Make Me Really feel Once more
The Marketing campaign For Actual Rock
Beautiful George
Nation Shall Communicate Unto Nation
Data
Wheels Of Love
What Presence
In Your Eyes
In A Nutshell
Instinct Informed Me (Half One)
Merely Thrilled
Comfort Prize
I Can’t Assist Myself
Rip It Up
Don’t Shilly Shally
A Lady Like You
Low Expectations
House Once more
Felicity
Blue Boy
