Glasvegas leader goes from football to rock ’n’ roll
By: Tom Lanham
Special to The Examiner
January 7, 2009
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| Glasvegas, which is making waves in Britain, plays in San Francisco this week. (Courtesy photo) |
SAN FRANCISCO — In Britain, the running joke is that young lads have roughly two ways out of dead-end towns: form a rock band or become a footballer, a professional soccer star.
“And I’m probably the first person of all time to do both,” says Scot James Allan, who had an eight-year midfield career for overseas teams such as Falkirk, Cowdenbeath and East Fife before retiring his jersey for a new uniform: the ebony outfit he currently wears with Glasvegas, a bagpipe-grand group he formed out of sports frustration in 2006.
“In some ways, it’s quite peculiar,” he says of the sudden switch. “But in a lot of ways, it makes perfect sense, because they have a lot of connections, you know, rock ’n’ roll and football.”
Allan — who brings Glasvegas to Popscene in San Francisco on Thursday — says his most memorable matches occurred in early childhood, just kicking the ball around with pals.
“Back when you’re still naive, wide-eyed and innocent, and everything you do is through instinct,” he says. “It’s only later that they try and mold you into a robot.”
He can only recall one great pro game: the night he signed his first club contract at 16. “We won four-nil, and I scored two goals, and that was my peak. … After that it was all downhill,” he says. “And at some point after that, the passion went and I fell in love with the idea of making music instead.”
Soccer’s loss is a rocker’s gain. “Glasvegas,” the quartet’s Columbia debut, is a memorable effort, rife with chiming Big Country-meets-Echo and the Bunnymen guitars and Allan’s dark, burr-bristled poetry in tales of prison (“Polmont on My Mind”), social workers (“Geraldine”), even murder (“Stabbed,” “Flowers and Football Tops”).
His accent is often so thick you need a lyric sheet for decoding, but the 29-year-old Glaswegian is already an Oasis-promising presence overseas; U.K.’s taste-making NME magazine dubbed Glasvegas best new band in Britain.
Allan can’t forget the moment that music took control. In a parking lot outside a Glasgow nightclub, he says, “It was pouring down rain, and my team manager had just told me not to come back, even though my contract wasn’t up, because he wanted to sign a new player. And I thought, ‘Right. That’s that — it’s over.’ It was one of our first gigs, and I walked into the venue thinking ‘F--- it, I’m gonna go on!’”
Post-show, Glasvegas was greeted by Creation Records founder Alan McGee, who booked the band for his “Death Disco” club-and-TV showcase, launching them to stardom. “So that was one of those nights that I’ll always remember,” says Allan. “People always say, ‘When one door closes, another opens.’ And that night, with football, it was all ties severed!”
IF YOU GO
Glasvegas with Carl Barât (The Libertines, Dirty Pretty Things)
Where: Popscene, 330 Ritch St., San Francisco
When: 9 p.m. Thursday
Tickets: Sold out; limited number available at door at 8:30 p.m.
Contact: www.popscene-sf.com/club/index.html; www.snagtickets.com
