The Journey is a Big Country song from their 2013 album of the same name. It introduced Mike Peters as the new vocalist, Jamie Watson as the new co-guitarist, and Derek Forbes as the new bass player, alongside stalwart and long-serving legends Bruce Watson (guitar) and Mark Brzezicki (drums).
The line-up that created this album is no more, but this was the line-up that allowed the band to come back, re-establish itself, and move forward. They made it possible for the band to continue to exist in the various forms it has existed in since their New Year’s Eve comeback in 2010.
The Journey is a mission statement song. It encourages fans to give the new band a chance – to join them on their new adventure. The song stands for rebirth and rejuvenation – not just for the band, but for its many fans as well. It is a song born out of a series of very positive circumstances.
Unfortunately, the start of the story that led to that song is the exact opposite.
In order to have a rebirth something must first end, and everybody thought it would be the end of Big Country when their co-founder, lead guitarist, vocalist, frontman, and main songwriter Stuart Adamson died on 16 December 2001.
The news shook bandmates, friends, family, fans, and everybody who had known Adamson to the core. At that point, there was no way onward for Big Country. The band was over.
The fact that Big Country eventually found a way to continue in spite of this was very much a gradual process, and far from an obvious or logical conclusion. It took a while before it even was a thought that people would entertain, and many things had to happen before it was even possible to consider the notion.
The amazing thing is that these things did happen.
Some level of closure came at a memorial concert in May 2002. In spite of its name, the event was less a memorial and more of a musical celebration of Stuart’s life by those who had been closest to him. It included a host of guest artists, including all members of Big Country performing in various constellations with the other musical guests. It was felt to be a very positive experience, especially in light of the massively negative thing that led to it.
Even so, nobody expected to see what happen next: a full-fledged Big Country convention, featuring all surviving members alongside The Alarm’s Mike Peters and keyboardist Josh Phillips. It happened in Zaandam, the Netherlands, on 14 December 2002. This is very close to the one-year anniversary of Stuart’s death, which must have been on everybody’s mind that day.
The notion of having anyone take Stuart Adamson’s place was simply unthinkable, yet at the same time, few people had an issue with Peters standing in on this occasion. The fact that the other Big Country guys played together again was too paramount a thing to even think of anything else, and Peters was frankly the one who helped make it happen. Big Country and The Alarm had been peers and musically likeminded in the 1980s, and had continued to forge bonds in the years since. Mike Peters was already more or less one of the Big Country family.
At the time, most people were not aware of just how close Mike Peters had come to literally becoming part of that family – even while Adamson was still alive.
In the latter half of the 1990s, Stuart moved to America to start anew. He was recently divorced and was looking for a new start, including new musical inspiration and possibly new collaborations. This factored into the band’s eventual split after their Final Fling tour in 2000. Big Country was over, but Bruce Watson revealed on the Big Country podcast The Great Divide that Stuart did not want his bandmates to feel stranded. In fact, he was happy for them to continue working as Big Country without him, and he even had his replacement in mind.
Bruce said, “I’ll always remember when Stuart was still alive and had moved out to America. The band had split up at the time. Stuart was happy for Mike to join Big Country even at that time, because he was out doing his Raphaels stuff, and obviously there were other things happening in his life at the time. Mike actually came down and rehearsed with us. It wasn’t that it didn’t work out, but it was just obviously a strange time, and then Stuart passed away. We never did do anything until Mike came out with us to Zaandam to do the Big Country convention. But by then Mike had put The Alarm back together again anyway, and things were looking good for him. So nothing materialized then.”
The links between Mike Peters and Big Country already ran deep. In 1983, Adamson and Peters had joined U2 on stage at the Hammersmith Palais on 29 March 1983, on the last night of the UK War tour for a rendition of Knocking On Heavens Door. They all represented the new movement of bands that played big music that mattered, and there was a brotherhood of sorts even then.
For Mike Peters, that evening is one he will never forget. “My first encounter with Stuart was a U2 show at the Hammersmith Palais,” he told Classic Rock. “Big Country were supporting and I had been invited on as a guest. In the weeks leading up to the show I’d taught U2 to play Knocking On Heaven’s Door – we used to play it in our set and Bono would come on and sing it with us. At Hammersmith, Bono introduced me to the stage and then he also invited Stuart Adamson up. Stuart was in the crowd, and he came over the heads of the crowd and over the barrier, and I helped pull him up and that was the first time I shook his hand. Bono introduced us then as being ‘the new breed’.”
There definitely seemed to be a special feeling amongst the bands that were coming up at the time – Big Country, U2, The Alarm, Simple Minds, the Waterboys etc – bands with big-sounding songs about things that mattered.
Peters’ and Big Country’s paths kept crossing over the years. When Big Country went out on their Final Fling tour, they ended up bringing along Peters as their opening act. An already good relationship between all of them would become a solid friendship at the end.
This would come to the fore on the final Barrowlands show of the Final Fling tour, which was recorded for a DVD release. The first thing of note is that Stuart Adamson wore a Mike Peters t-shirt for this show. This was not a random thing, but a conscious tribute and even endorsement. Peters would also join the band onstage for the encores, performing a long and rousing version of Rocking In the Free World – a song that Peters had also done with The Alarm. Alas, this song is not included on the DVD release of that show, but a clip of the track from the unedited version of the show can be found on YouTube. You’ll see nothing but good vibes and mutual admiration and respect in that clip, as well as an amazing version of a great song.
This brings us back to the Big Country convention in Zaandam on 14 December 2002. Times were different and things had changed massively, but given all the back story between the band and Mike Peters, it clearly wasn’t much of a stretch for the band to think of Peters to perform with them at the Zaandam convention. He was probably the only choice the band would have considered at the time. Fortunately, Peters probably did not need much prodding.
The fact that a Big Country convention was taking place at that time was not just unlikely, but downright bizarre. It was not even (but nearly) a year since Stuart’s death, and… a convention?!! They were always such positive events, celebrating the bond between the band and the fans. At that stage, it was still hard for the majority of fans to even contemplate listening to Big Country music. For me personally, that took nearly ten years. Was it even possible to celebrate anything at that stage? How to avoid it becoming a communal wake?
As it turned out, it became a different celebration – an acknowledgement of how much the band had meant and continued to mean to people. Crucially, in spite of initial scepticism, it also gave people a chance to communally grieve the loss of Stuart. It turned out that there was a real need amongst several fans to get together and process things, and as the band had stopped, the usual get-togethers were no longer happening. While it did not feel that way at the time, Zaandam showed the way forward.
The event was the brainchild of the late Peter Hornberg, a local, devoted, and much missed Big Country fan. Who knows how he managed to pull it off, but he managed to get a yes from everybody and get them there for a day of music and – as much as they could muster – fun activities. There was a mastermind competition. Mark Brzezicki hosted a drumming clinic which also included a Q&A session. Tony Butler and Mike Peters played solo sets. The main attraction was a Big Country reunion of sorts, where Bruce Watson, Tony Butler, and Mark Brzezicki were joined by Mike Peters and Josh Phillips.
All of this had come together if not at the last minute, at least with minimal time for rehearsal, but they had assembled a nine-track setlist and got through it just fine. Never mind that feelings were still raw. The show didn’t have to be perfect. The fact that they did it at all meant the world to people. It was a highly emotional experience.
The fan Jeroen Zuiderhoek was in attendance on that day, and later commented “Obviously it was a very emotional evening for both the band and audience. We had so much fun and many tears were shed at the same time.”
But how did the band feel? Tony Butler revealed on the Big Country podcast The Great Divide that he had big reservations about attending. He said, “Initially, I refused to do anything. I didn’t see the point. I was very, very blinkered in my thoughts. Obviously, it was still very raw, and nothing made sense at all. And it wasn’t a very good time in life for me either on a personal level, because not only did I lose Stuart, but I also lost my mother and mother-in-law. Death befell me big-time and I had a lot of sorting out in my own head to do. So something like a convention just didn’t seem appropriate to me at all initially. But I got out of my selfish thoughts… probably through talking to Ian [Grant, manager]. He’s been my guiding light, and I listen to him. So by the time I got out there I stopped being sorry for myself and decided to give everybody else a chance to do what they needed to do in that kind of situation. I don’t have a lot of memories to be honest. I even had to be reminded that that’s where Mike Peters came on board as well, to do some singing. But I don’t remember much because my blinkers were down, and I was there because I was asked to be there. I was going to share the evening, and then get home again, to be honest.”
If people had hope that the convention signalled continued collaboration between the band members, they would be disappointed. Bruce Watson was asked if he thought Big Country would reform. His answer was a clear no, and he added that the band was “too emotionally and spiritually unrewarding for me right now.”
Watson kept in touch with Mike Peters and the two had a busy 2003 together, as they joined forces with Glen Matlock and Slim Jim Phantom for the project Dead Men Walking. They toured and released an album. Watson and Peters also performed as a duo acoustically during Alarmstock on 24 August that summer, billed as The Alarm vs. Big Country and playing songs from both bands. Peters released the performance as Rock and Roll International. They did it again in 2004 and released it as Rock and Roll International Part II. The chain continued to be forged.
During the years that followed, everybody stayed busy with all sorts of projects, solo albums, new collaborations and even jobs/projects outside of music. Big Country conventions continued to happen, and although most of them did not have the full-fledged band attendance and performance that Zaandam had seen, people just did not stop wanting to celebrate Big Country.
Watson later spoke to Classic Pop about these wilderness years: “After Stuart’s death, I didn’t think that Big Country would ever play again. The band broke up before Stuart passed away and we thought that was it anyway. So after Stuart passed away we were all doing our own thing. What happened was, fans were regularly organising conventions and meet-ups where they’d get together and play Big Country stuff. We were always invited. Sometimes we’d go individually or maybe a couple of us. It just got to the point where people were wanting to hear Big Country again.”
By 2007, the door had become ajar. It also happened to be the year when anniversaries were lining up. Skids were celebrating their 30th Anniversary, and Richard Jobson welcomed Bruce Watson and his son Jamie to play guitars for it. More unexpectedly, Big Country ended up celebrating their 25th anniversary by going out as a three-piece – Mark Brzezicki, Tony Butler, and Bruce Watson. The shows were great, although the two-guitar dynamics of the original band was obviously toned down.
Watson had clearly moved on from his “too emotionally and spiritually unrewarding”-feelings of several years prior. Watson told The Great Divide podcast: “At the time [when I said that] I was possibly upset, what was happening made it a big no. But I think people change anyway. And everybody have a right to change their minds, and over the past ten years with the internet, leading up to the anniversary of the band, the interest was just… too much. Me and my son Jamie got to participate in the Skids anniversary. We did three shows in Scotland and people were saying, ‘everybody else is doing a 30th anniversary, you just did one with Skids, why won’t you do it with your own band?’ There was a hell of a lot of interest in Big Country at the time. So… everyone else was doing it. Why shouldn’t we? So we did!”
Tony Butler was initially reluctant to the idea, but came round as he started talking with the others. He told The Great Divide podcast: “Ian Grant called me and was talking about the 25th Anniversary of Big Country. I said, yeah, well, what about it? The band don’t exist. He said, ‘well, shouldn’t we do something about it?’ And I didn’t, I was not in the mood. But then I had Bruce contact me, I had Mark contact me, and I said, “Okay. If we do something, let’s just do it as the three of us. I don’t want any high fleeting ideas of supergroups or anything like that. If we’re going to pay homage to the band and Stuart, it’s just got to be us. Ian capitulated. I got my way. We did a few gigs, a few tours, we recorded some, all that kind of stuff. And I enjoyed it, because it was nice to play with Mark and Bruce again. It was brilliant to watch Bruce take on two guitar roles into one, trying to make it work, both Bruce and I taking on lead vocals… you know, we were all in uncharted territory. Mark stepped up to the plate as well with backing vocals and stuff.”
The three-piece line-up was never going to last. While Tony and Mark seemed happy enough with it, Bruce was frustrated with the one-guitar set-up. It felt like a lose-lose situation having to handle 100% of the guitar duties on his own in a band known for its multiple intricate guitar arrangements, and he has had very few positive things to say about it in hindsight. On a post on the Through A Big Country Facebook group in October 2020, he said: “Tough one for me. I didn’t want to do it. In retrospect Tony says he didn’t want to do it either, but he did. He said that he would only do it if it was the original line-up which meant Mark, Tony and I playing songs. Bloody nightmare when you are in a group with two guitars and you have to play both parts.”
They released the live album Twenty Five Live from the tour as Big Country in November 2007. A new studio EP/mini-album called In Our Name appeared a year later in November 2008. Interestingly they were now calling themselves BBW, not feeling comfortable using Big Country for new material.
The path onward was uncertain. The three of them were doing something again, which was great, but eventually Watson put his foot down and concluded that they needed another guitarist. Tony Butler revealed on The Great Divide podcast that he was thinking of asking Johnny Marr, but Watson had a ready-to-go option ready: his son Jamie, who had participated in the Skids anniversary shows and was coming into his own. They would be able to work on guitar parts together and it was a practical solution. The others agreed.
There had also been recurring questions about the frontman/lead singer role. “When we did the anniversary thing, to me Mike was the obvious choice,” Bruce Watson told The Great Divide podcast. His name came up again, and the band decided to ask him if he was willing.
Watson was far from sure that Peters would have the time or even be open to being part of a Big Country reunion. He said: “I had no idea, but it was just a matter of putting in the phone call to him and see how he responded. When I called him, I think he was halfway up a mountain! ‘Mike, you sound a bit out of breath’, haha! He’s always climbing something, Mike, you know? But at the back of my mind I kind of felt that Mike would do it, because I’d worked with Mike before, with things like Dead Men Walking and at the Zaandam convention. I just thought, I really hope he says yes, but I also knew just how busy he was, either doing The Alarm or his charity work, or even solo Mike Peters shows. I just thought, if he says no, then who else is there? I can’t imagine… I don’t think we would have done it. I don’t think we would have pursued it. I mean, there are other singers out there who are great, but I think it can only work with Mike. I’m glad he said yes!”
This meant that Big Country were fully back as a band, and with Mike Peters on board, there would certainly be no lack of ambition. Anything was now possible: shows, new music, various projects. The obvious initial challenge in returning to a full-time situation without Stuart Adamson was getting people to accept new people in revered positions. Coming back was never just about coming back with this band. There was still healing that needed to be done, as well as needing to reach acceptance.
The reunited band’s first gig was in Glasgow on New Year’s Eve 2010. The second one happened in the band’s home town of Dunfermline. For Mike Peters this was a baptism of fire, but a challenge he relished. “I’ve had cancer twice in my life,” he told Classic Rock at the time. “I’ve fought back both times. I say yes to everything because I’ve had to confront the fact that life could be over for me, so every day is über precious. I was told I couldn’t have kids and now I’ve got two boys through the technology that’s out there. I’ve had to overcome some massive things, so to go out there and uphold Stuart’s name is only part of the big challenge of life.”
“I’ve survived a lot to get this far,” he continued, “and I wish Stuart could have had one more day to think about what was happening to him. Maybe he’d still be here, and I wouldn’t need to be and I’d be sitting here just as a fan, just like you, and we’d be going up the front and singing our heads off to the songs,” he shakes his head. “That’s not gonna happen – but I still want to see Big Country, and this is the only way we’re gonna have it.”
The band started 2011 with the Back In A Big Country tour in January, then reconvened in April for a bigger tour dubbed Dreams Stay With You, which continued over the summer. The show at Edinburgh Picture House on 21 April was recorded and released that fall as a quadruple-disc (2CD/2DVD) release named after the tour.
New songs were also percolating, and the band was not shy about testing them on their live audiences. As the tour continued into the summer, a lot of songs would get their live debut. Certainly not all at once, but sprinkled in between here and there.
The song we are interested in this time was got its first ever public performance at The Tolbooth club in Stirling on 12 July. Originally referred to as Make The Journey, eventually named The Journey, the song spoke directly to the band’s audiences and to everybody who had ever been a Big Country fan, urging them to give the new version of the band a chance. “Don’t be afraid to make this journey / Here with me” urged Mike Peters. The song would continue to be developed as the band took it into the studio later on.
Other songs also crept in during the tour, and at the end of August one of them was released as a single. Another Country was another song about the current band and how the new beginning gave the music “A chance to live / To begin again”. As if to underline their link to the past, the song was even produced by Steve Lillywhite, who was the man behind the console for their first two albums and related singles.
Bruce Watson told Culturesonar.com: “[Another Country] comes from something my son Jamie and I wrote together. We handed Mike Peters our library of tapes, and he said he had a lyric for that one. It was suggested we do the track with Steve. ‘But Steve’s really busy!’ ‘You don’t ask, you don’t get. We’ll check on Facebook or something.” Steve was over, doing some work for U2, and he said we’d rattle it through in no more than half a day. We recorded it in RAK Studios, just like we did at the beginning with Steve.”
The band shared a further new song online on 16 December that year: the demo of Angels And Promises, as a tribute to Stuart. This is a stunning track which reminded a lot of fans about the sound they had on the classic R.E.L. tapes that the band demoed in 1987.
With so many new songs played live over the course of the year, as well as studio recordings starting to trickle out, it was no longer a question about whether an album would be coming out at all, but about when it would be coming. It seemed and felt inevitable at that point. The fact that the band was talking openly about a coming album helped, obviously.
Most of the material had been written when Tony Butler announced his retirement from the band and from music in September 2012, which coincided with the band’s long-term manager Ian Grant also leaving. The band recruited Derek Forbes as Butler’s replacement, best known from his stint in the classic Simple Minds line-up. He also had a history with Bruce Watson, the two of them having worked together in the project Four Good Men.
Bruce Watson was clearly happy to work with Derek again. “Derek is kind of my twin, we share the same sense of humour,” he told The Great Divide podcast. “I don’t know which one is the evil twin, we haven’t found that out yet. Derek and I have got the kind of relationship where he’ll turn up at my house with his bass, or I’ll walk to Derek’s with my guitar, and… we can write together! There are certain people over the years that I’ve tried writing with, and it doesn’t work. Then there’s other people you can collaborate with easily. Derek’s really open to ideas. He’s a great idea man himself. And his bass playing is just… he’s coming up with some mental stuff!”
Forbes coincidentally has another link to the past as well. “Derek Forbes could’ve almost been Big Country’s first bass player!” Watson told The Great Divide podcast. “When Stuart and I demoed Heart And Soul and Angle Park at Townhouse Studios down in London [on 29 June 1981, with Rick Buckler from The Jam playing drums], Simple Minds were in there doing an album with Steve Hillage producing [the double album Sons And Fascination/Sister Feelings Call], and we got talking to them. And Stuart always said, “I was going to ask Derek to play bass on the demos!” But he didn’t. And it’s kind of weird how that has come full circle now, you know.”
This was the line-up that would be recording the album. Forbes’ baptism of fire was a full-band acoustic show in Edinburgh in October. The studio sessions would be split in two: one stint in November/December 2012, and one in January 2013, with two Scottish shows put in at the very end of the year.
For the studio activity, the band assembled at the Aerian Studios in Wrexham, situated at the Welsh border. “It’s basically a nuclear bunker that has been converted into a studio!” Watson said. “Some of them are songs that we played live last year, and some are songs we created in the studio.”
The Journey is one of the former songs that had been around for a while at that point. In fact, it had been around for a while in its original form, as the musical genesis of the track stems from the Bruce & Jamie Watson song Alien 9. It first appeared in demo form on their Portastudio Diaries album, then in a more realized version on Another Anthem For the Damned. In a sign of things to come, the latter version features Big Country’s own Mark Brzezicki on drums, in addition to Skids bassist Bill Simpson.
It would not be the first time a track first attempted by Bruce & Jamie would be picked up and used in a later project – both Big Country and the WKW (Watson Kercheval Watson) project would benefit from being able to develop more fully realised versions of their songs.
“The Journey was a song that we wrote in rehearsals when Tony Butler was still part of the band,” says Mike Peters in a YouTube video talking about the song. “Tony made a contribution to this particular song. It happened very organically. It started with a guitar part from Bruce, a kind of rhythm section, and it just grew up from there.”
As Mike alludes to, Bruce and Jamie would have brought in the original riff from Alien 9 rather than the full track, for the band to creatively rebuild it into something different.
“The lyrics came from a conversation that we had in the rehearsal room,” Mike continues. “I think Mark might have said to me something along the lines of, “it feels like we’re going on a journey with this song.” It was the first time someone actually mentioned the phrase ‘the journey.’ As a lyricist I leapt on that. Sometimes you’ve got to make the journey, you have to make that leap of faith, we have got to cross that line to embrace what is happening now. We’ve crossed that line, and this is the song that lyrically encourages everybody to cross that line. We acknowledge that, yes, it is going to be a tough journey. There will be pain, there will be joy, there will be tears… everything associated in life comes into making this particular journey. And this is the signature title track from the [album] because of that reason.”
Don’t be afraid to make this journey
Here with me
There’s no disgrace, no guilt or shame
In having faith
To feel the same
To live again
It’s all right to dream
There is a land, there is a sea
There is a place where we can be
There is a hope, there is a dream
Sometimes
You gotta make the journey with me
There will be hurt, there will be pain
There will be a lot of tears, a lot of joy
What we have left cannot be destroyed
“The Journey, like all Big Country songs, it came from within the band,” Mark Brzezicki said in a YouTube interview about the song. “Lyrical ideas pop up instantly with Mike, and he gets ideas and he throws those lyrical ideas at the band as well. He’ll take me outside and say, “I’ve got this great line, what do you think? This is my feeling for the song.” And when we’re cutting the demos I’m taking those words on board. You’re painting this whole picture. It’s always evolving. It’s coming from a great guitar riff, and then Mike may say, let’s go to this section now, ‘cause I’m going to speak about this. Mike is kind of leading the charge in that sense, with the lyrical ideas, with the music. It does really help to kickstart the song and move the song forward.”
Mike Peters picks up: “We’d start to see it a little bit clearer. We would literally go outside the room and I’d have some words that had just come to me while I was hearing their music. You often think, where does this song come from? Is it from here [points to the heart], or is it from a higher place and it’s passed down to you? So I felt that we needed to really get as many of these words that the music was throwing up into the space down as fast down as we could.”
“Mike has more energy than I’ll ever have,” Bruce told the Great Divide podcast. “He lives every minute of every day to the full. He comes up with ten ideas a day, either musically or creatively, of which I can maybe handle… two, you know? He’s just a ball of energy. He’s a great frontman, a great singer, great to write with, got some fantastic ideas.”
The song is a ferocious and positive track, brimming with guitar riffs and a driving tempo. The Watsons have clearly had a grand old time coming up with guitar lines for the song, because there are several playing at any time. This includes some lovely, classic-sounding harmony guitars in the Big Country tradition, in particular in the lovely middle section.
Towards the end of the song, the mantra is repeated over and over – “Sometimes! Sometimes! You’ve got to make a journey!” The call-and-response singing of the “sometimes” is done by Bruce and Mike respectively. This section marks Bruce Watson’s lone vocal contributions on the album. He is not shy about singing on his solo and side projects, but normally keeps a lower profile in a Big Country setting – to the point that everybody in the band is credited with backing vocals on the album except Bruce, even though he sings! C’mon, man! Suffice to say, I think more people would be open to the odd Bruce vocal than he probably suspects himself.
The drum sound is overall great on the album, and we get a real drum highlight at the end of the song, with Brzezicki giving us some thundering double bass drum action. This is proper metal drumming, giving the song a very energetic end section.
The Journey is a mission statement song. Ever since the band’s return, they had all been empathically saying that they wished Stuart could have been with them in the band and that they could have continued as they used to, but as that wasn’t possible, they were doing the best they could given that this wasn’t possible. During live shows, the band left Stuart’s centre position open as a sign of respect. Mike read pieces of poetry and gave anecdotes related to Stuart, and everything they did seemed to be dedicated to the big man. This extended to the album recording.
Mike Peters said: “There’s an element that we felt like Stuart was present at times, because we were working in certain ways, and Mark was like, “it is uncanny, it’s like I’m sat here when we’re working something out with Stuart!” And you know… When my father died, the vicar came to the house, and said ‘your father hasn’t gone, he’s just in the next room and you can’t see him.’ And I felt that’s how we were working in Big Country. I felt like Stuart was in the next room, we couldn’t see him, but his presence is there all the time because we are continuing lines of work that began with his inspiration, and that were shaped by the band, that belongs to the family now.”
Several fans were concerned about the band continuing without Stuart Adamson, and even without Tony Butler on top of that. There would be no convincing some of those, while others simply needed an emotional reassurance that the band tried their best to give, both through The Journey song and otherwise.
This was no different for the newly recruited Derek Forbes, who noticed a comment by a concerned fan. He chose to respond to him personally – and not publicly, but directly and in private. To take the time to do that on such a personal level is something most musicians simply won’t do, and you can’t do it to your entire audience, but such was the desire to let people know that they really took the responsibility seriously. It was a nice and friendly response, where Forbes acknowledged that he was coming into something that a lot of people held very dear. He paid tribute to Tony and acknowledged that he left some very big shoes to fill, reiterated his connection with Stuart from their early days, urging the fan to give it a chance because they were going to give it everything they had to do the music justice.
How do we know all of this if the response was sent in private? The fan was so impressed that he shared the response publicly, confirming that he felt a lot better about it now, and that he intended to give the new version of the band every chance.
This note sums up how the entire band felt at the time. They really cared and wanted fans of the band to give the new continuation a chance. They went to great lengths to address people’s fears and concerns – including putting that message to the fans in song form with The Journey.
The studio edition of The Journey got its world premiere on Derek Forbes’ internet radio show May the Forbes Be With You on 14 December 2012, several months before the album release. It was a low fidelity mono clip of the song, so it was primarily about giving people the gist of the feel of the song. People would still have to wait a bit longer for the full, glorious audio experience.
On 22 January 2013, the band shared the following on their official Facebook account: “Album Update: The band have completed the recording of their forthcoming 12 track album. It is now being mixed at this moment in time by Andrea Wright. The guys are now looking forward to playing tracks from the new album live, alongside other Big Country classics, on their forthcoming tour dates.”
The album would eventually take its name from The Journey song and was released on 8 April 2013. While the title track did not end up being released as a single, it was chosen to represent the band and album on the compilation CD “24 Carat Gold” that came free with issue 184 (June 2013) of Classic Rock Magazine, which would have reached hundreds of thousands of music fans. This might go a long way towards making this the most widely heard track from the album.
The band would go out on The Journey 2013 tour, touring UK in April, Europe in May, and travelling across North America for three solid months from June to August. This was their longest American tour ever, showing some ambition to tour behind the album.
All seemed well… until it suddenly wasn’t. After a break, the band picked up again in the UK across October and November, but the end of this era was approaching.
It was a situation that almost couldn’t last, and unfortunately it didn’t. Scheduling conflicts between Big Country and The Alarm eventually came to a head, and Mike Peters left Big Country after fulfilling concert obligations in November 2013, not even eight months after the release of The Journey album. It wasn’t how anyone had wanted things to end.
In talking to the Big Country podcast The Great Divide about this situation in December 2013, Bruce Watson spoke about the discussions they’d had with Peters over the past few months: “Mike told us that he wanted to take a year off to go and do his Alarm stuff, which is great for Mike, you know, but the rest of us can’t sit about for a year. In any business you can’t sit about for a year and do nothing, you know. Mike said he couldn’t do anything until October [2014], which is when we were going to go out and do the Steeltown anniversary. I basically said to Mike, you go out and do the Alarm, but we’ll continue as a four-piece doing Big Country, and we’ll leave the door open for you in October, but he said no. It was kind of all or nothing with Mike. I do believe Mike started off with great intentions, with doing the Big Country stuff. And he did a fantastic job, but I think when you got people who are in two separate bands, something’s always got to give.”
As unfortunate as this situation was at the time, it was also a situation that you could almost have seen coming. Mike Peters was never going to ignore The Alarm too long, which more than anything is his band; his legacy. If he was going to make one choice, that would always be The Alarm. Having said that, he no doubt fully intended to do double duty and make it work, and his dedication to Big Country during his time in the band seemed genuine, sincere and honest. In the end, juggling the two became too much of an issue for him. Dabbling with projects on the side is not how Peters operates.
Big Country soldiered on, as did Mike Peters with The Alarm. It has been good to see that there are no hard feelings about anything. Bruce Watson guested Mike Peters’ virtual The Big Night In YouTube live stream series which he ran for a few years during lockdown, and it was wonderful to hear them share war stories from their shared past. Who knows if there can be more collaborations between them down the road, no matter in what form.
The Journey era represents a crucial and very special time in the band’s history. Mike Peters came on board and made it acceptable for someone – anyone – to fill the spot vacated by Stuart Adamson. This was not an easy job, but nobody could say it wasn’t done with the utmost respect and reverence for the situation.
Everybody were not convinced and some people chose not to follow the band’s new phase. That is their prerogative, but by the same token, it is also the band’s prerogative – and right – to choose to continue.
It should be said that the band succeeded in picking up many new fans. Many were curious about what the band sounded like upon their return, and the new players also brought with them their sets of fans. Big Country had almost morphed into quite the super group by 2013. Who would have thought back in the 1980s that we’d one day have a band that featured members from the classic line-ups of Big Country, The Alarm, and Simple Minds?
Mark Brzezicki sees it as completely natural that members from the bands of ‘the new breed’ would work well together: “I think the fact that we’re of a similar age, grew up in the same time period, and embraced music of a similar style, from… you had The Alarm, Big Country, U2, Simple Minds. You talk about a family… Mike and Big Country have always been in harmony. There was no big change. That’s not taking anything away from Stuart, but from a writing point of view, it wasn’t a big change for me. I’m hearing it organically, and I’m like along with other songwriters of that ilk and that period working that way. You can call it old-school, I call it our family, the way we work. And Mike was instantly the man, doing what I would normally expect. And things just felt right, it’s the chemistry thing again.”
This era of the band was almost destined to burn brightly for a short time. Mike Peters’ health scares had taught him that you couldn’t assume anything would last forever, and in a comment that seemed to foreshadow this he touched on the fact that they might not get a second chance to do what they were doing then: “We felt, from the communal conversations that we had, that we needed to confront as much as we could. One thing I felt strongly about this is that we mustn’t leave anything behind. We’ve got everything we want to say must come out now. We may not get a second chance, it must all come out now. We must not be afraid to open ourselves up now and let those words behind that we’re too afraid to say.“
We can be grateful for that today.
There will be a lot of tears, a lot of joy
What we have left cannot be destroyed
Sometimes
You gotta make the journey with me
Facebook Comments