The frontman of Scottish alternative rock band Del Amitri says their infamous song “Don’t Come Home Too Soon” was never intended to be the official anthem of Scotland’s trip to the 1998 World Cup.
Justin Currie recorded it having watched Craig Brown’s side qualify for the tournament in France, but had no idea it would enter Scottish football folklore.
“I just wrote it as a love song to the Scotland football team because I had just watched them qualify,” he told STV News.
“The night I wrote it, they had qualified for the 98 World Cup. I was very jubilant and I decided to write this song, which could be interpreted by American audiences as being some European family wishing their relative good luck and going out to the States.
“But I secretly knew it was about the Scotland men’s football team, which is quite an embarrassing thing that I didn’t really want to admit. I played it to my flatmate and he said ‘you should put that out during the World Cup’.
“I thought ‘really’ and then our manager heard it, and he and a record company lobbied hard to make it the official thing. Personally, I think it was a bit of a mistake.”
Currie recalls the song being controversial at the time, with some fans getting in touch to complain that he was creating a negative atmosphere around the side.
He added: “It’s the only thing I’ve ever done where it completely divided the nation in half and I got a lot of people taking issue with me, saying I was letting the whole side down and the country down and all that sort of stuff, which is just very strange because when you write a song you just expect it to be judged on its merits – not on it having another purpose, to help a team win a football match, which was never my intention.”
“My songs would normally have the opposite effect. Put it this way, there isn’t a dressing room in the world that plays a Del Amitri song before they go on the pitch, in any sport.
“I think the song would have done better if it wasn’t an official song, but at the time nobody else wrote one and there was a terrible rush to select the official song, whatever that means. I don’t think they really do it anymore.
“They just plumped for our song, knowing that it wasn’t a rousing anthem in any way, it was quite a sad, ironic little thing.”
Looking forward to going to US
Del Amitri are currently touring the United States and are playing a gig in Boston on June 18, the night before Scotland face Morocco in Massachusetts in their second World Cup group game.
Currie is looking forward to the atmosphere the Tartan Army will bring to the occasion.
“We were in France for the 98 World Cup, the atmosphere and the Tartan Army and all that was brilliant, so I’m looking forward to that aspect of it,” he said.
“I’m slightly dubious about mixing sport and music, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We’ll see if we can pitch it right, so it’s kind of a party but also just a gig.
“I’ve always enjoyed playing live. It gets more difficult as you get older, just the physical side of it is a lot more difficult but we wouldn’t do it if we still didn’t really love it.”
Still performing despite Parkinson’s
Currie revealed several years ago that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and he is aware the condition means he will have to stop performing.
“At my age and in my condition, every gig I finish is a bit of a victory,” he explained. “Because I’ve got Parkinson’s disease, I’m obviously going to have to stop at some point and as that date approaches, I celebrate the gigs more and more – almost to the point I’m punching the air and going ‘yeah, I got away with that one’.
“That’s one-nil.
“I’ve got a point (in mind) beyond which I don’t think I’ll be able to muster enough sort of physical energy to be performing the way I want to perform. But you never know, with something unpredictable like a degenerative brain disease, you never know when you might have to stop very suddenly.
“I’ve been feeling really well. I feel better now than I did four years ago, so I’m pretty confident I won’t have to stop in the foreseeable future.
“But I’ve got a kind of date in mind, which is a way of sort of relaxing a bit and going ‘right, well I can stop at that point.'”
Follow STV News on WhatsApp
Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
