The Proclaimers' Craig Reid Wants To Walk 500 Miles Away From Brexit

The first time The Proclaimers – history’s greatest bespectacled Scottish folk-rock twin brother duo – came to Australia, it was 1989. To start the year, their all-time banger I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) sat at #1 on the Australian singles chart for five weeks, eventually leading their second LP, Sunshine On Leith, to double-platinum Australian sales. Proclaimermania was at its peak, and the duo, brothers Charlie and Craig Reid, found the whole thing overwhelming.

“It was a bit nuts, a bit crazy. It was getting screamed at, getting followed, getting mobbed in the street. It got a little bit uncomfortable, on a couple of occasions,” recalls Craig Reid, with candour. “Australia back in ’89 was the biggest success we’ve ever had anywhere. I’m glad we had a little bit of success like that, but only in one country for a certain amount of time. Because that level of intensity, that level of scrutiny, that much recognition, I don’t think it’s really conducive to creativity. It isn’t something that I’d want to repeat. I’m really glad we had that success, and it’s great that we can still come to Australia, but that madness that was around 1989 is something, honestly, I don’t miss.”

Reid is talking from Singapore, where the band are playing before arriving here for their latest local tour. He’s not sure how many times they’ve been here – “I honestly have no idea,” he admits, “maybe six or seven times before this?” – but, as always, he’s glad to be able to travel. Growing up in Scotland, largely in Edinburgh and Auchtermuchty in Fife, the Reids took one family holiday to France as kids, but had otherwise never travelled before The Proclaimers took them abroad.

Though Australia is a beloved market for them, when performing, they find there’s no place like home. “The songs resonate in Scotland more than they do anywhere else. It’s a much more intense thing when we’re playing there,” says Reid. “We’re Scots. We don’t hide where we come from, we don’t hide our accents. I think Scots get the songs more than anyone else.”

"Brexit is all-consuming. It's the thing I end up talking most about."

These days, when playing outside the UK, Reid finds the conversation turning, time and again, to the same subject. “Brexit is all-consuming,” Reid sighs. “It’s the thing I end up talking most about. I think it’s mostly because people outside the United Kingdom are just bewildered. The intensity is just getting more and more stifling, and it’s getting in the way of everything else. And I don’t know if it’s going to be resolved in the near future. I think it could just run on and on.”

Reid calls Brexit “the biggest mistake Britain has made since the Second World War, by a long, long way,” and laments that the failed Scottish independence referendum of 2014 – in which he publicly campaigned for independence – left Scotland “dragged out of the EU against its will”. He channelled those frustrations onto the latest Proclaimers LP, 2018’s Angry Cyclist, the band’s 11th album. “The title song, Angry Cyclist, is using that metaphor – cyclists in a city where they’re being hemmed in by the buses and the cars, feeling a mixture of fear and anger and paranoia – as a way to talk about how politics, in many Western democracies, has become very polarised in the last few years.”

The Proclaimers, of course, are playing songs from their new record on stage, but they know the jams that butter their bread. “You’ve gotta recognise there are a few songs you have to play every night, which you’ve just gotta do,” Reid offers. “But we change the set around every night, we don’t play the same set twice. You have to strike a balance. You have to play those few songs that everyone knows, but, then, in the rest of the set, you’re free to mix in new songs, things from older albums.”

Have The Proclaimers ever played an old-album-in-order show? “No! No! I’m not interested! I’ll never do that! I’m not interested in doing that!” Reid barks, words coming out in a breathless tumble. “What’s the point? Playing the songs in the same order as you had them in on the record? An album and a live show are two completely different things. It just seems so pointless, to me. I’ll never do it.”