Journalist Billy Sloan on the release of his first biography detailing his experience in Glasgow’s music scene
Billy Sloan has been a prominent part of Glasgow’s rich music culture since the 60s and how now recorded his experiences in a book.
In One Love, One Life, Billy gives behind the scenes knowledge on interviewing legends such as Paul McCartney, David Bowie and Grace Adams.
In One Love, One Life, Billy gives behind the scenes knowledge on interviewing legends such as Paul McCartney, David Bowie and Grace Adams.
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00 So, Billy, new book is on the horizon, we're sitting here in Glasgow's West End today.
00:04 Why 2023 is the right time for you to get your book out?
00:09 I'm not very sure it is the right time, but I've done it and fingers crossed it's going to be
00:15 well received. But over the years a lot of people, like friends and family members and colleagues,
00:20 have said you should write a book, you've got all these great adventures and some fantastic stories.
00:25 And I'm not being over modest when I say that, I just never thought there was any interest in it.
00:30 I was thinking, you know, who would be interested in reading a book about, you know, my life and
00:34 my career? But a few years ago I was in Selfridges on Oxford Street in London and they've got a
00:39 fantastic book department. You see books in there that you've never seen before. And, you know,
00:44 I spend like hours when I'm in London down there looking at the books. And one day I was in and I
00:50 saw the biography of some dog that I think had got to the final of Britain's Got Talent. And I thought
00:57 if the dog can do it, maybe I can do it. Right. So I sat down and I started kind of putting down
01:04 a few ideas. And I'm not very good at working from home. Too many distractions. I'll sit and
01:09 watch a telly, I'll have a snooze on the couch or I'll read some magazine that's been lying in the
01:13 cupboard for the last three months. But what I tend to do is I tend to start work at kind of midnight
01:19 when there's no phones and no distractions of any kind. And I walk through about five,
01:22 half five in the morning and then I conk out and go to sleep. So I wrote a couple of chapters
01:27 and they turned out quite good. There was a chapter about going to interview Johnny Cash in London
01:32 and the photographer annoyed him. And I tried to retrieve the situation and only succeeded in
01:39 annoying him even more. He was going to kill us. Right. And then I did another chapter. I know
01:43 you'll find this hard to believe about the time I supported, note that word supported,
01:48 I supported Status Quo at the SEC in Glasgow. Ten thousand people completely sold out.
01:54 Big gig for Christmas. And I supported them and was lucky to escape with my life. Right. So I
02:02 wrote a couple of chapters with the view of doing a whole lot more and then kind of life intervened
02:08 and I never got the chance to write anymore. So the chapters basically lay printed out in pieces
02:13 of paper in an envelope for something like, you know, seven or eight years. And that was as far
02:18 as I got. Then, you know, a guy I know who is a literary agent, he said, let me see the chapters.
02:25 And I thought, you know, it might give you a wee laugh. I don't know if it's what you're looking
02:29 for, but he loved them. Then he showed them to a couple of book publishers and they seemed to
02:34 like them as well. And he said, you know, what else have you got? Can we see some more? So that
02:37 was the kind of catalyst for sitting down and trying to chip away at a book. Just in terms of
02:44 your career, I know some people keep diaries and whatever else. Was that ever something that was
02:49 at the back of your mind when you were doing interviews before? Obviously, you've moved from
02:53 a major journalism, you know, but a lot of written press has maybe turned into digital press and
02:57 dictaphones, whatever else. But did you ever kind of keep any kind of written note of interviews or
03:03 stuff you would ever do? No, I mean, I wish I was that organized. You know, I reckon that from, you
03:08 know, the late 70s when I started, I must have done in excess of a thousand interviews. And,
03:15 you know, you tend to do most of them now on cassette tape as it was then. And I wish I'd
03:20 kept some of the tapes, but not all of the tapes. I wish I'd kept some of the tapes, because, you
03:24 know, if you're sitting interviewing Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger or David Bowie, you know, you should
03:28 kind of keep the tape. So I kept some of the tapes. I wish I'd kept them all, but I just got
03:33 too much. And I never had any diaries of any kind. I mean, the only thing I had was when I was,
03:37 I was about 15, I went to my first gig, which was the 21st of October, 1971. I went to see the Who
03:44 at Green's Playhouse. And it was a life changing moment. It sounds dramatic to say so, but it was
03:49 a life changing moment. The reason I'm sitting here talking to you this very moment stems back
03:55 to that incredible night when I went to see the Who at Green's Playhouse. And I started keeping
03:59 a kind of scrapbook and a diary list of all the bands I had been to see over the next five or 10
04:07 years. But then it just got too nutty. And you know, you would forget and you would lose a bit
04:12 of paper and stuff. So I've still got them. But no, that was as far as I got. You know, I never
04:16 had a diary. It was kind of all kept up here. I've got quite a good, you know, capacity for, you know,
04:21 recalling dates and times and places. So it was kind of, it was all stored. It was all stored in
04:26 here. You mentioned some of those famous, recognisable faces that you've had the pleasure
04:32 of interviewing. From asking Mick Jagger about, you know, early days in the Barrowlands or David
04:38 Bowie about, you know, going for a stroll in the Botanic Gardens with an ice cream. Is there any
04:42 particular interview for you that really stands out? The thing that I hope comes across in the
04:46 book, that even though I've been a journalist and a broadcaster for 45 years, and that's given me
04:51 the kind of equipment, if you like, to write this book. First and foremost, it's a book from a fan.
04:58 I'm a huge music fan. And back when I started in late 1970s in newspapers, it wasn't cool to admit
05:06 to the fact that you're a fan. But I don't see anything wrong with that. I think when you stop
05:11 being a fan, you just stop, right? So, you know, you go from being a music fan, as I told you,
05:17 my first gig was The Who in 1971. I had pictures of Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey and Keith Moon
05:23 and John Entwistle on my wall. And then 10 years later, I'm sitting in a hotel room, the Albany
05:28 Hotel in Bodle Street in Glasgow, interviewing Roger Daltrey. But I'm sitting in the Halcyon
05:32 Hotel in Sheppard's Bush in London, talking to Pete Townshend. I mean, it's beyond your wildest
05:37 dreams. So, you know, I've never lost that, you know, I'm still a fan. You know, I go and interview
05:43 somebody at the end of it, or maybe get them to sign my album sleeve and they go, "Who's it for?"
05:47 They're expecting me to say, you know, it's for my next door neighbour's pals, paper boys,
05:51 girlfriend, and I say, "It's for me." And they kind of look at you as if they're amazed, you know,
05:57 because you're supposed to be too cool. All the London guys are too cool for school. You know,
06:01 they've always thought they were bigger stars than the stars that they were interviewing. But,
06:05 you know, to sit in a room with Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney or David Bowie or Rod Stewart or
06:11 Bruce Springsteen or Diana Ross or Neil Diamond or Dolly Parton or Tina Turner or Bono U2 or Peter
06:20 Gabriel, is that enough name dropping for you, right? I mean, if you're a music fan, it doesn't
06:26 get any better than that, you know what I mean? If you were sitting with David Bowie for five minutes,
06:30 that would be great. But when you're sitting with him for 20 minutes, or when you're sitting with
06:33 Paul McCartney for half an hour, this guy was one of the Beatles. And I've interviewed McCartney
06:38 four times, so I've had two hours of Paul McCartney's precious time. It's magical. It's
06:44 absolutely fantastic, you know. And it never loses its magic for me, you know. Who've I interviewed
06:49 recently? I did Alice Cooper a few weeks ago. I've interviewed him loads of times over the years,
06:52 but it was still great. We did John Lydon in a Zoom call. You know, he's been quite a regular
06:57 guest on my radio program. But it's always a pleasure to talk to guys like that, because
07:00 I'm a fan of their music and I'm a fan of their records. So I can assure you, it's never a
07:06 I have shipped to sit in a room and talk to Paul McCartney about the Beatles.