Bobby Henry / Friends Again.
I was writing about Whispered Reason No.2 and I realised that Bobby Henry kept popping into my head, it made me think of the first time I met him. It was whilst recording Friends Again's final single “South of Love” at the great Palladium Studios in Edinburgh, Bobby was the producer. Friends Again recorded at the studio many times with the enigmatic engineer Jon Turner at the helm as did Capercaillie, the Cocteau Twins and countless others.
The next time Bobby and I worked together was some twenty six years later, we were co-writing songs for Karen Matheson's album "Time to Fall" and it was at that time we penned the tittle track for "Starless". Bobby later introduced me to the fantastic MC Lee, thank God for Bob.
Along with my dear friend Lindsay Chapmam Bobby had a great part in helping me navigate the dusty path of reinventing myself and to this I am ever grateful, they are both sadly missed.
Friends Again.
Friends Again formed in 1980 by School friends Chris Thomson, Paul McGeechan and Neil Cunningham, with Andrew McGurck on guitar and Colin McGowan playing drums. At the time the band were influenced by Bowie, The Velvet Underground, Joy Division and they were also keen on fellow Scots Aztec Camera.
FA recorded two demo sessions before the line up changed with Stuart Kerr and James Grant joining the band. Soon after that the new line up recorded two songs "Sunkissed' and "Honey at the Core" at Palladium Studios in Edinburgh. It wasn't to long after that when the influential Billy Sloan played the tracks on Radio Clyde that the band signed a publishing deal with EMI and then a record deal with Phonogram. At the time, the now restaurateur and TV chef, John Quigley was the band's manager.
The band’s first single Honey At The Core was released in 1983. Friends Again released the album Trapped & Unwrapped in the summer of '84 and disbanded in November of that year. FA were most famous for their singles "State of Art", "Sunkissed" and "Honey at the Core". They released a self-titled EP in 1984, which peaked at No. 59 on the UK Singles Chart.
I though I would post this for anyone that remembers the band or for anyone that may be interested in listening to them. If you would like to hear the bands album "Trapped and Unwrapped" you can go to this playlist on Spotify.
I thought I would include an excerpt from David Scott's blog about the late Bobby Henry, please take a moment to read it.
"..... A small but perfectly enthusiastic incarnation of my Pearlfishers recently guested at the Ceol’s Craic event at CCA in Glasgow. During sound-check I glanced out and there in the corner, making the International Sign for “I feel and can demonstrate emotion” (fanning one’s eyes with two rapidly flapping hands, the better to dry emerging tears), was my old friend Jerry Burns, just in from a sophisticated and doubtless enigmatic European City. After catching up on some tears and years of nonsense, talk fell to someone who was once very important to both of us, the artist Bobby Henry of Coatbridge, Lanarkshire".
