Deacon Blue’s Lorraine McIntosh, from Glasgow slums to stardom | Music | Entertainment

It has been forty years since Ricky Ross formed Deacon Blue. “Sometimes it feels like it, too,” his wife and co-vocalist Lorraine McIntosh says, her blue eyes sparkling. “But everything’s very good. Our new album is out, our tour is about to start…” The album, The Great Western Road, celebrates the days when the soulful Scottish pop band lit up the charts with unforgettable hits like Real Gone Kid, Wages Day and Fergus Sings The Blues. Their latest single, Late ’88 – an exhilarating slice of heartfelt nostalgia – captures the rush of those early days. “The energy, the positivity, the sheer thrill of it all,” enthuses Lorraine, 60, from the Glasgow home she shares with Ricky, her husband of 35 years. “Like most bands we were playing to tiny audiences in venues with no dressing rooms. It felt lucky to get a record deal. Life changed; it was a such fantastic experience.”

If you have only seen Lorraine in gritty TV crime dramas like Shetland and Taggart, you might be surprised at how easily she laughs. And how energetically she moves on stage – she says their tour rider now includes a kilo of Epsom Salts to relieve tired muscles after a two-hour set. Deacon Blue’s current theatre tour is sold out; their longer arena run kicks off in September.

Lorraine rates Late ’88 as one of their greatest songs along with Dignity, their 1987 debut single, which was about a council road-sweeper dreaming of escaping his day-job by saving up to buy a dinghy and sailing away. Its life-affirming message of thrifty aspiration is utterly timeless. It’s also Dundee United’s unofficial anthem. Music was McIntosh’s ‘dinghy’. Born the youngest of three in “the slums of Glasgow’s east end”, she was three when her shipyard engineer father David landed a job in Killoch Colliery, and the family relocated to Cumnock, Ayrshire. Her County-Donegal-born factory worker mother, Sarah, died tragically from leukaemia aged 46 when Lorraine was eleven. “It’s really tough losing your mother growing up,” she says. Tougher still, because her father was overwhelmed with grief. Lorraine, an ambassador for Glasgow’s Simon Community, has spoken about him losing his job and them getting evicted days after her 18^th birthday, recalling her belongings and, heartbreakingly, her mother’s keepsakes, were “flung out on street” and lost.

Moving back to Glasgow, she flat-shared with musicians including Ewen Vernal who became Deacon Blue’s bassist. Her future husband, Dundee-born Ricky secured a publishing deal on the strength of his early demo tape. Keyboardist Jim Prime (ex-Altered Images) heard the tape and tracked him down. With Graeme Kelling on guitar and drummer Douglas Vipond – now a regular face on TV – Deacon Blue emerged.

Growing up, Lorraine had sung harmonies with her father at family parties in Scotland and northwest Ireland. Singing on stage and on the band’s demos wasn’t a huge leap. When they asked her to tour England, she went on holiday to Greece instead, so she was surprised when she found a note through her door asking her to join them recording their CBS debut album, 1987’s Raintown, at London’s AIR Studios. It went platinum, and their double-platinum-selling second album, 1989’s When The World Knows Your Name, topped the charts. They had 17 hit singles, including a 1991 Top 3 cover of The Carpenters’ I’ll Never Fall In Love Again.

Deacon Blue tours never hit Led Zeppelin levels of excess but in Germany in 1989, Lorraine recalls Ewan knocking on Graeme’s hotel door “and letting him have it with a fire extinguisher.” She adds, “He thought it was foam but it was chemical; we had to rush Graeme to hospital, his clothes were taken away. He wasn’t happy on the bus the next day…” Peculiar fans have included a borderline stalker and a woman who sent them clippings of her pubic hair, but Lorraine says, “Most are lovely, some we’ve known for 30 years.” One was Neighbours soap star Stefan Dennis, aka Paul Robinson, who contacted them while they were touring Australia in 1989. “He said he wanted to write a musical about Bogie, the guy from Dignity,” recalls Lorraine with a smile. “He sent it to us. I don’t think Bogie meant the same thing there as it did in Glasgow.”

Deacon Blue never cracked America but they played the key cities. “It was the best fun ever. The Bottom Line in New York was a tiny club with a tiny stage; Rod Stewart was there and Bruce Springsteen’s manager – we were invited to see Bruce play two sets on the same night. Things mean more now, when you’re this age; at the time you don’t realise…” Like Springsteen, Ricky’s songs mirror ordinary lives with emotional honesty. Lorraine lost her voice in Boston and a consultant told her she had throat nodules. “He said, ‘You can’t sing for six months’ so we cancelled the entire tour. Back in Glasgow, I saw a specialist who said it wasn’t nodules. We’d missed the whole tour for nothing.”

McIntosh married ex-English teacher Ross in May 1990. They have three daughters, including Ricky’s daughter from his first marriage, and a son, born in 2000. She is now the “besotted step-grandmother” to Ricky’s two grandsons who were born in California. Lorraine, who was recently awarded an honorary doctorate by Abertay University, grew up hearing her brothers’ Springsteen and Jackson Browne albums. “I loved Blondie and the Eurythmics, but I’ll admit the first single I ever bought was Cavatina by The Shadows – the classical guitar piece from The Deer Hunter. That and an ABBA single. My youngest is 24, my kids are obsessed with music but what they listen to is much broader.”

After Deacon Blue split in 1994, the Rosses spent a summer in LA where Rick recorded a solo album. By chance they met old pal Paul Laverty, a screenwriter who was working with filmmaker Ken Loach and asked if Lorraine had considered acting. Six months later she met Ken, auditioned and was cast as Maggie in Loach’s hard-hitting 1998 film My Name is Joe, starring Peter Mullan who won the Best Actor award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for his role. She went on to appear in Scottish National Theatre productions, including Beautiful Burnout and Let The Right One In, and also in a stage version of Beowulf and joined the 2016 cast of the live run of Scottish sitcom Still Game.

Lorraine’s many TV roles include playing an alcoholic in Scottish soap River City – not helpful on school parents’ evenings. She was last seen in 2023’s BBC1 cop drama Shetland with Ashley Jensen, Alison O’Donnell and Phyllis Logan. “We all ended up a bit drunk in the pub one night and me and Phyllis Logan ended up walking the wrong way down the only street in the town. I was heading off into the night with Scottish acting royalty, going the wrong way.”

Although the Rosses love working together, Lorraine maintains it’s important that they also do things apart, “otherwise you’d go a bit mad; Ricky writes” [including songs for other artists, like James Blunt and Emma Bunton] “and does radio shows and I act, so it’s really special when we come back and do these Deacon Blue shows.” It gives him a break from her impatience, she says, and her time off from his over-attention to detail.

Reforming in 1999, the band lost Graeme to cancer in 2004 and bassist Ewan to other projects. Gregor Philp and Lewis Gordon replaced them – “Our two new guys,” she laughs. “We still call them that although they’ve been with us for 17 years.” Lorraine relaxes by socialising with family and friends, and enjoys walking, cold water swimming, nights at the theatre and watching good TV. “Almost every night in our house is rounded off with an episode of Seinfeld. We’ve watched it start to finish at least four times. We’re also obsessed with This Country and Daisy May Cooper. We were late to the party but have rewatched every episode. It’s so original, funny and poignant.”

The band remain close friends and share a commitment to making every gig the best gig it can be, she says. She’s proud of the new album. “Fans want to hear the songs you remember but for a band to stay alive you have to write new music. If you don’t, you wither up and die. We’d become a tribute band to ourselves. It’s nostalgic but also joyful. It’s looking back on youth and all the things you’ll never experience again and saying, ‘Celebrate them, but know that there’s still brilliant things to come’.”

*Deacon Blue’s new album The Great Western Road is out now, the band tour extensively this year.