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Marti Pellow was the frontman of the chart-topping Scottish band for 28 years, from 1982 until they split up in 1997, and again when they reformed in 2004 until he left in 2017. Alongside this he has forged a solo career, recording ten albums and starring in musicals in London’s West End and on Broadway in New York, including Evita, Chicago and Blood Brothers. The Hydro is close to the former shipyards where Pellow’s great grandfather worked. Their closure lead the men in the family into the building trade. Marti grew up in Clydebank, forming Wet Wet Wet with school friends in 1982 before finding success with hits including Angel Eyes and Wishing I Was Lucky. Before returning to Glasgow, Marti Pellow spoke to The Scotsman’s Janet Christie about his early attempts at music. “My dad would say ‘we’re in the trade. We build things. According to him he built most of Glasgow, “ he laughs. “And I'd say, ‘I understand, but I might have a chance with music’ and then you surround yourself with other dreamers and then it’s a domino effect happening.” It was a gig at The Pavilion in Glasgow that first convinced Marti’s granny that the band were on the road to success: “It was one of the first big gigs with 2,000 kids inside and 3,000 out on the street and I remember being in the dressing room with her and sticking my head out of the window to give the people who couldn't get in a wave. I said to my granny, come on, sit and have a wee look out the window and my wee granny gave them a wave and turned and looked me straight in the eyes and went, ‘your life is never going to be the same again’. “And life did change because you're on TV or on a stage or the front cover of a magazine and people interact with you in a different way. Everything's very public about your successes, your struggles…” Sharing his enduring enthusiasm for the songs of Wet Wet Wet led him to call to mind a Glasgow memory: “I adore that body of work with a passion. Being one of the predominant songwriters within it, I want to celebrate that. I guess this is more about entertaining than educating. I'm not going to change the wheel, but I might give it new spokes. I started writing as a 14, 15-year-old kid and it’s how do I interact with this as a 60-year-old man? It resonates with me in a completely different way. “You would say to your girlfriend at 16 ‘I love you’, then as a 60-year-old man saying it to your woman, there’s a gravitas in those three words that goes way deeper. That’s so inspiring to me to find another way of extrapolating even more from my work as each decade of my life unfolds. How you interact with it fascinates me.” “It's like looking at a piece of art, like Salvador Dalí's Christ of St. John of the Cross in the Kelvingrove Museum. Me and my dad would go and look at that all the time. As a young boy I would get the sense of perspective and think wow, that's powerful. But when I go back and look at it as each decade in my life's unfolded, it resonates with me even more. The day that I put my father in the ground I was standing in front of that painting two hours earlier, because I wanted to connect with the multiple times we looked at it. “And that's what I find in music or books or poems. Being bounced on your grandfather's knee when he's reciting Parcel of Rogues, with his vintage baccy breath and bonfire face, and then fast forward to me as a 60-year-old and I'm going, ‘I get you granddad. I get it.’ And that's happening to me constantly. I think my fan base tap into that in a subconscious way too because we're all growing together.” You can read the full interview with Marti Pellow here.
