Rab Allen is a modest man. It would take a wild guess to figure if he would succumb to fame in the way the Slash’s of the world have. He is a friendly giant of a man with a grin fixed on his face, but this is wholly justified. As he rightly points out, “about a year ago, nobody knew who we were”, but three weeks ago his band’s debut album were battling it out with Metallica for the number one slot. It seems that the Glasvegas’ have risen so quickly even the band members are finding it hard to believe what has happened.
His band’s story is not necessarily a unique one but it shares the unaccountable desperation that any group face when waiting to be picked up by a record label. “[We] travelled about on tour quite a lot, even though nothing was happening”, but it would prove to be a fan of the Scottish group to take charge in making them known.“A guy called Tim Jones, who was a writer at the NME and worked for the Guardian offered to release a single for us...he took it in to the people at NME, he didn’t say he was working with the band, he just gave them it and said ‘what do you think?’”.
It seems now that NME’s opinion of Glasvegas is well known. In four months they have graced the cover of the weekly music magazine twice and have received a rating of 9 out 10 for their debut LP. Suddenly everyone is discussing the band in serious conversation. Lovers of their music have enjoyed their specific take on working class culture whereas critics have focused on them being copycats of the C86 groups such as My Bloody Valentine and Jesus and Mary Chain. “I think NME picked up on that and when we were starting it was like ‘this is the new wave C86 thing’, but I don’t think that caught on very well”.
As it stands now, the band who are currently enjoying top 10 singles, acoustic sessions on radio One and national TV and Radio coverage are exactly the same as the group of misfits who were getting sanctimonious mentions on hidden away fanzines. Even as far as summer 2007, Glasvegas had famous faces on their side. “Alan McGee [Creation Records boss] ... [is] really good friends with us...it’s funny because we never heard of those [C86] bands until we met him.” It seems that looking back on the music mogul’s blog last July that he praised the band and named them “the sound of young Scotland” and more recently has suggested that they are the most exciting band working today along with Oasis.
It is with great pride that it can be said that none of this has gone to their heads. Insisting on carrying on where they left off, Glasvegas are in no hurry to settle down and ride out the success of their first album. “When we were being chased by the record companies we told them all we wanted to do a Christmas album which I think they thought we were kidding on about, so once we signed the deal we said remember, were going to the Christmas album this Christmas and they were like ‘erm OK’.” The band’s drive and ambition not to become stale will be an eventual test of time. The band have already recorded several tracks for the album, slated to be out in December, in New York and it will be finished in Transylvania (“were actually staying in a cathedral”). Will it be the next Christmas number one? “Depends what X Factor does this year.”
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