Alex Glasgow

Alex Glasgow (1935 - 2001) was a singer/songwriter from Low Fell, Gateshead, England. He was educated at Gateshead Grammar School. He wrote the songs and music for the successful musical play "Close the Coal House Door" by Alan Plater and scripts for the TV drama "When the Boat Comes In", the theme song of which he sang. He also worked in Germany and emigrated to Australia in 1981.

Personal life

Glasgow was a traditional Geordie 'working class' singer-songwriter. His style would be regarded as solidly within the British (and wider) folk music tradition. He became widely known for his own style of Geordie folk songs, often on political topics, generally socialist and/or trades union-focused. He wrote his own songs, not all political, and earlier in his career sang versions of other popular Geordie folk and socialist political tunes and some of the best of these can be found (if still available) on albums such as 'Songs of (Alex Glasgow)' and 'Now and Then' (particularly perhaps Vol. Two). For those who lived through the period and became entranced, or those who perhaps are still committed members of the trades union or labour movement, especially recommended are (among others) 'The Sunsets, Bonny Lad (the sunsets, that will drive your breath away)', 'Any Minute Now', 'Wor Nanny's a Mazer', 'Cushie Butterfield', '(They're) Turning the Clock Back (he could hear his granny say)', 'The Mary Baker City Mix', 'In My Town' and perhaps also 'When It's Ours'(Jackie Boy, when it's ours...).with John Woodvine from the stageplay he wrote 'Joe Lives'

Alex Glasgow's masterpiece is the song cycle "The Tyne Slides By" written in the Seventies for the BBC series "The Camera and the Song". The cycle covers the life of a working person in Newcastle when there was still work to be had in the shipyards, from childhood and schooling, early experience of work, the exuberance of free Saturday afternoons and going to see Newcastle United play, musing on a working life as the ship goes down the slipway (a heartbreaking lament) and grandparenthood and death. It is a rare and beautiful combination of words and music.

Alex's music is available on CD from MWM in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (and the writer has no connection with this company!)

Careers

Alex Glasgow was also a writer and radio and television broadcaster. He was reportedly even a 'house husband' for a while,( while his wife retrained as a Social Worker) and known among his friends and neighbours as a fine baker of fresh bread! In addition, he once had a hit in the German pop charts and his theme music from "When the Boat Comes In" hit the UK pop charts. Some of Alex's songs are furthermore ones with real pain and sorrow and are said to be able to make the listener cry. Include songs like 'Time Enough Tomorrow (for a sad song...)', 'The Harlequin (turn up your coat collar ...to the wind)' and 'And I Shall Cry Again (but I'll know why again)'.

Politics

Alex Glasgow was born in the 1930s Depression in a North East England miner's family. As a result, he became an ardent socialist, to some extent wearing his pain, anger and politics on his sleeve, but also mirroring twentieth century post-war Britain. That world, however, finally disappeared and, perhaps finally succumbing to modern living, Alex moved with his family and spent his last years in a new life in Fremantle, Western Australia. He died in 2001, against expectations perhaps, in Australia rather than in the (English) North East.

Alex moved to Australia because he suffered from arthritis and the climate in Perth was expected to give him some relief - and enable him to continue playing the guitar.

For the twentieth century British (and wider) labour movement, Alex Glasgow’s legacy is that he expressed in writing, song and other ways some of the pain, hopes and dreams its battles, suffering and history had left behind.