In this second interview from 2007, Cammy talks about The Dial Inn, his music, recording with an Orchestra, Kelvingrove, The David Forbes Band,  moving to London in 1987 , why he retired so young and what he is doing now and more.

The Dolphins played a three hour gig in The Dial Inn on the 1st of July 1982, how did that come about? And what was it like ?

We had been playing The Dial Inn for about two to three years by then and we knew Davy Edgar was leaving and Harry Denmark was coming in as drummer so we decided to play every song Davy knew as a kind of send off and when Harry came in we were going to up market and go for places like The Mayfair etc… so it was really the end of The Dial Inn for us although we did still play there but not as much, it had been our regular gig playing there about two to three times a week. The gig lasted about Three and a half hours and opened early at six o'clock with people queuing outside to get in.

Did you make a conscious effort to change your style of writing i.e. ‘Slow down’ and ‘Tonight; etc… as opposed to ‘Running’ ‘Light up the sky” and ‘Cold war’ ?

It wasn't a conscious effort, I think that that was just the songs that came up, around the time Harry arrived, we also bought new equipment like the Prophet V keyboard and the Simmons drum kit, those songs would have sounded like any other Dolphins songs it's just the instruments we used on them that made them sound slightly more commercial, so it wasn't a conscious effort , we were doing songs like “Older and wiser” which was a new song then and that was kind of old school Dolphins at the same time as “Me and no one else” and we did songs like “Hijacked” way back at the beginning which was a three minute pop song so I just think it was just a natural progression with the new equipment making it sound more modern at that time.

There is an interesting story behind the song ‘Best Years of my youth’ tell us about that ?

Well I was always into football and was quite good for my age when I was younger so I used to go and play football in Queens Park in Glasgow with all the older guys these guys would have been 18 or 19 and I was about 11 or 12. During a game one day this guy said to me “ Cammy you better move out the way here” and he picked me up and stuck me up onto a tree just beside the entrance to the park, it turned out that there had been an arranged gang fight which I didn't know about so these guys had just been having a kick about until the big picture started, then the other gang came in, I had never seen anything like this in my life! Knives, sticks, machetes, this was the early 70s and a full on gang fight, so when I got older this memory stuck with me and I thought, these guys now who would be a lot older when I wrote the song aged 22 or 23, would they have any remorse? Were they thinking “did I waste the best years of my youth when I could have done something more creative? I was thinking how can you do that, man's inhumanity to man, playing football one minute then trying to stab someone to death the next, this guy had the morals to pick a kid up, put him out of harms way then get stuck into a gang fight, the story has always stuck with me and is what made me write that song.

We spoke last time about the Kelvingrove night time gig in 1983 what did it feel like to play in front of thousands that night ?

It had never been done before, obviously the afternoon gigs with Radio Clyde had been but never at night so we thought it would be good to do a night time concert, we had to cut through a lot of red tape to do it, it did help that the Lord Provost, Peter McCann stayed at the end of my street and I sort of knew him so he helped us a bit, We didn't know Louise Batchelor the BBC reporter was coming to interview us they just turned up, John McCAlman our manager at the time said we've just had a call the BBC are coming down. We didn't know how it was going to go, it could have rained it could have poured it was kind of dull and cloudy all day, we set up, did the sound check and went away thinking “Hey if 300 or 400 people turn up great, it didn't really cost us anything we got the bandstand for free, we used our own PA, we got some extra lights and some fireworks and stuff. Because there was no lights back stage (just some ambient light from the stage) we couldn't see the crowd until the show started and the lights came on to reveal a crowd of around 4000.  We had fireworks shooting about five times the height of the bandstand (Cammy bursts into laughter) with NO! health and safety, the fireworks were just in a hole in the ground with a guy pushing buttons to set them off, that thing could have fallen over and taken out half the audience, it's funny now but at the time we didn't care we just did those things. It was Kelvingrove's first big night time concert yet after we played that gig there wasn't a single review in the papers, nothing in NME, Melody Maker, not even the local press turned up so it goes down in folklore only to be remembered by the people who were there.

You worked with a 12 piece Orchestra, how did that go and how did you work out the arrangements ?

We used a producer called Dave Murrican who was a classically trained conductor, we just sat down with me on one keyboard and him on another and we worked out the string parts between us, I would let him know what kind of feel I wanted then he went away and came back with this big scroll of paper with all the notes on it, I said “Well I don't know what that will sound like” and he said he had booked a 12 piece Orchestra, we had to put down a click track because the strings came in on the intro before the band, (this was at the Cava Studios in Glasgow), when the Orchestra started it was absolutely amazing it sent shivers down my spine. the songs were ‘Stay; and ‘The Story of life’ which were to be b brought out as a single through EMI but it never transpired, EMI paid for the Orchestra which cost a couple of thousand pounds at the time, they were the first big record company to show any interest in us, we also had Barry Manillow and the band ‘Air Supply’ interested in our songs, we sent the demo away but it came to nothing. At least to this day I can say that I have got a couple of my songs recorded with an Orchestra.

You had a Fanzine with The Dolphins and David Forbes Band, pre E mail / internet days that must have been hard work ?

Yes it was hard work, we made about 300 for each one we done printing and stapling them ourselves and basically posted or handed them out to people, the fanzines had about 4 or 5 pages of pictures, stories, gig info and stuff, it cost us money to do them but we thought, our fans follow us everywhere, we should keep them involved and it kept the fans interested and informed, we just thought it was a good thing to give back to the fans really.

You Must hold the record for how many times you played at Kelvingrove, How many times did you play there ?

Well it is either myself or Stevie Doherty I'm not sure! I played there in 1978 with Underhand Jones, 79 with Underhand Jones mark 2 (With Stevie Doherty on vocals) then went on to play 80, 81, 82 and 83 with The Dolphins then 84 and 85 with David Forbes…..that's 8 times, Stevie Doherty might beat that because he played with Underhand Jones, China White, Zero Zero (a few times) and later on with The Alex Harvey Band…..It's a close call.

What do you remember about the famous”Hello we're called Chasar” gig at Kelvingrove ?

That would have been the 1983 concert….Donington had been just before that and at that concert everyone was throwing bottles not plastic bottles, glass bottles, it was becoming the done thing. Chasar had a heavy metal fan base so they thought this would be cool if every band they didn't like got it, so imagine when Ian Donaldson came on with quiffed hair and stuff with H2O, they got a hard time then Zero Zero and Stevie Doherty (cracking singer though he is) started swearing back at the crowd which made them worse! Now it was our turn to go on but we knew the Chasar fans, we had played in Alloa (where Chasar come from) and got on really well with the guys in the band, our fans sort of knew each other anyway, so when we went on I said for a laugh “Hello we're called Chasar” to a kind of mumbling amongst the crowd then I said “if your gonnae throw a bottle don't throw it when I'm at the piano or when I've got my back turned and hit me on the napper because I will pick it up and I will hit one of you, there's,1,2,3,4,5….3000 of you so I WILL  hit one of you”!!…And it worked because the crowd calmed down and listened to rest of the set.

Do you still keep in touch with any of your old band mates ?

Mainly George Dunnachie, I Email Drew Phillips now and again, Brian Coyle is now a Teacher working in France, I met Harry Denmark last year when I was on Holiday he works in a market in Lanzerotti and doing great. The Guys from Underhand Jones I haven't seen a lot of them in ages… I met Billy McLeish at John McAlman's 60th birthday do, with The David Forbes Band I've bumped into Brian McNeil a few times though work, he has four kids now, also through work I met Scott Ramsey he is working as a back up musician to Gary Moia doing his Billy Connolly thing, Scott was a great Dolphins fan, talk about working your way into a band who were on a tight schedule, Scott came up to me after The Dolphins split up and said “I want to be your bass player, I know every song” so I said “OK then play” and he did, he knew every song inside out and he had a great personality so he got the job, Brian McNeil was great too he was a classically trained pianist so when I played a song to him he picked it up so fast he almost knew it before I did.

With The David Forbes Band, a lot of songs carried over from The Dolphins, did it feel different performing and writing solo? And how different did it feel between the two bands ?

50% of The Dolphins songs carried over onto David Forbes, it didn't feel different not when you're playing your own songs maybe with the new songs working on arrangements would be different because it was a new band it was only myself doing the writing, with The Dolphins some of the other guys wrote as well  which brought up the contentious point of “How do you get all of your song in and whose songs get included” and that kind of stuff which was one of the things that lead to The Dolphins breaking up.

THE BUS! Is it true you had a problem parking the bus outside your house? And you used to use the bus to drive round the corner for a bag of chips ?

Yes, a 45 seater coach, I would drive down to the end of the road onto Victoria road, park outside, get the chips and come back, it's because the band would be rehearsing and I would need six bags of chips so we used the bus! We had a problem parking outside in the street for obvious reasons, I mean, a coach parked in the street with a whole load of musicians hanging out of it but again because I knew the lord provost and he stayed in that street he gave us clearance to park there….Ohh! The stories I could tell you, you would need an X rated site to tell what went on in that bus! Not that I was involved in any of it of course.

You move to London in 1987 tell us about that ?

I sent a few demos off and Rondor Records at the time (who were working with bands liket Uriah Heep and Motorhead) put me into The Roundhouse Studios were we put together a few songs and they liked it so they put me up in a nice house (just down the road from Abbey Road Studios) so we started recording some songs. Gerry Bron who owned Rondor Records then went bust after ploughing all of his money into Computers and it never came off, Rondor went bankrupt and Bron lost millions of pounds, he had to shut down everything,he had to close his record company and lost The Roundhouse studios where I was recording songs for an album, suddenly I was back on the streets again, I ended up coming back to Glasgow in 1988.
I did play with a band called ‘Mad Hatter’ while I was in London, a fantastic bunch of guys from Stoke, we played gigs all over England.

You now work as a Sound Engineer with Highper PA, your own PA business, have you worked with any bands that you rate ?

One or two over the years but recently I worked with a band called “Ernest” a three piece band, very tight, they make most of their money playing covers but when they do their original stuff they are great. Three piece old school, great songs, great voices, simple songs and they just go out and do it.

You produced a single in 1983 for Glasgow band ‘Snapshot’ what was that like? And why are you not involved in music as a producer or a writer ?

I think I enjoyed being in a band too much, I liked working with the band Snapshot because the singer wrote some really good stuff lyrically and musically but at that time I was very busy with The Dolphins. If I had had success and had brought a couple of records out I would maybe have gone into writing and producing but after The Dolphins and David Forbes it never even entered my head to write or produce for anyone else, by then I was scunnered with the music business, I had had enough and never really done anything musically for about four years until I started my PA business.

You  effectively  retired  from  live  performing  before  you  were  30, why did you stop so young ?

I was 28 when I stopped playing live, someone once said I was the Bjorn Borg of the music business, I remember the moment well and it was a conscious decision.
We were going to play a gig in ‘Shadows’ with The David Forbes Band in August 1985, turned up, parked the bus outside the place, just about to get the gear out of the bus and I said “I can't do this any more” so I went to the guys in the band, told them to sit down and told them that I couldn't carry on any more, they all thought I was kidding, they were giving it “aye right” “ wit ye talking aboot” and stuff, I just said I'm sick of it, I've been round this block so many times in fact I thought I caught myself coming out of a gig when I was going into it, you know, that sort of thing? David Forbes never got a deal as well? I thought How many times can you re-create yourself from Underhand Jones, The Dolphins and David Forbes, the music industry knew me and I was starting to think they were saying “Aghh him again” so I decided then to pack it in.

Do you still play music i.e. Guitar, Piano etc… today ?

I don't really play the guitar anymore as for singing I could do a gig but I would probably lose my voice by the end of it, the range is still there but it's not strong anymore. I do still play the piano, I have a digital piano and keyboard and I play for about an hour every day, I do still write songs but I never finish them, I never play anybody else's music I just sit and mess about with chords and make up a melody then get a verse, middle, chorus then say “that's shite” but maybe years ago that would have ended up in a band's set.

Would you ever perform live again ?

Never say never, yeah if someone said to me look, here's a gig, the people will turn up, I'd use my own PA system, we would do the sound…I would do it but the hard part would be “Are you free George?” “Are you free Drew?” you know! And the thing is a lot of people who went to see us will be middle aged by now, it would be hard to get a lot of people to go to something like that, OK there will be friends and stuff but you want 300 - 400 people to be at a gig. I’m sure if it was done correctly, advertised correctly, The Dolphins could pull a crowd like that to play a small theatre like The Mitchell theatre.......Since this interview Cammy and the lads from The Dolphins reunited for a couple of gigs in 2012.

You recently met up with John McCalman your old manager, how did that go ?

Yeah, he had a 60th birthday do, it's hard to believe that when he first managed the band we thought he was old and he was only 28, it was good to see him again. He actually did a lot for Glasgow music, more than he got credit for to be honest like Kelvingrove and stuff, in fact (and this sounds big headed but it's true) It was John, myself and Billy Fairbairn the singer from Underhand Jones who came up with the idea for the Kelvingrove annual concerts back in 1978, we asked John to get Radio Clyde involved, we said, why don't we get four bands? So we got Chow Pahrot. Underhand Jones, Sneeky Pete and a band called Charlie Brown, that was the very first Kelvingrove festival in 1978 and because Radio Clyde promoted it a lot of people turned up. It’s is a shame that all of the recordings from the Clyde Kelvingrove Festivals were lost during Clyde's switch from Anderson to Clydebank in the mid 80s.

What was the last CD you bought ?

I bought all of the early Genesis CDs, I'm a kind of closet prog rock fan that's where The Dolphins instrumental sections come from that kind of influence, Uriah Heep I bought all of their back catalogue and also The Best of America, I buy mostly compilations these days, nothing really new.

Thanks Cammy.