Everything Was Enhanced By You

John Douglas 1963 – 2026

“How’s it gaun? Y’awright?”

These were usually John Douglas’s first words, whether one or two songs into a set with the Trashcan Sinatras, or more recently out front on his own, but also any time you met him. Throwaway (and maybe even insincere when spoken by anyone else), but delivered by John they revealed something of his true character; interested, empathetic, kind. Off-stage, they were usually delivered along with a warm bear hug, something that could melt the hearts of even the most reluctant and Calvinistic of west of Scotland males. We’re not all confident and outgoing huggers in this part of the world, but people like John made the act easier to embrace, pun intended. The outpouring following his death early on Monday morning has been universal in the notion that here was a man who was nothing but genuine, unassuming and decent. ‘Lovely’ seemed to be the adjective of choice and it’d take the hardest of cynics not to agree with that. It’s just a shame John’s not around to read the swell of testimonies since written about him.

I’ve known John for the best part of 40 years, initially as one of the older guys at the back of The Turf and The Crown, a musician I was told, a songwriter with a love of The Clash and Guinness and Benson & Hedges. He and his band The Trash Can Sinatras (3 words back then) had topped the premier league of local bands by earning a record deal with Go! Discs, but hadn’t yet released a record. As fate would have it, a drunken fracas in the toilets of The Attic, Irvine’s premier late night dancing emporium for those wanting to shake their thang to loud, alternative and non-chart music led, in a roundabout way, to a life-long friendship with two of the Trash Cans and, by default, John.

We’d sit around the table in The Crown talking music, film, football, politics, people, Irvine and they’d treat us to stories from the studio; what they were working on, how they’d turned a slow dirge into a fast racket, how they’d turned a fast racket into a slow beauty, how they were making a really great album. Cake, as you know, is a really great album. Not the best Trashcans’ record though.

That might be I’ve Seen Everything, album number two. By now, Sunday Drivers, an Irvine-born group of shouty guitar stranglers and drum bashers I was a proud part of was rehearsing directly below the TCS office at Shabby Road in Kilmarnock. One day, we broke a bass string. No one carries spare bass strings, least of all the ill-prepared bass player, because bass strings never break. But there we were, session abruptly over. Upstairs in the office, Trashcans John and Paul were sitting around smoking and drinking tea and doing whatever else young guys with a record deal do all day instead of work.

‘Eh. You don’t have any spare bass strings, by any chance? We’ve broken one.’

‘You’ve broken a bass string?! No one breaks bass strings!’ (Looking around fruitlessly, behind ashtrays, under CDs, on top of the cat,. ‘Nah. Nothing. Sorry.’

At this point, John leans into Paul and says something quietly before turning to us.

‘Take the Rickenbacker. We don’t really need it.’

The Trashcans had used some of their record company money to buy a beautiful black and white Rickenbacker bass guitar. It might’ve been a 4003 model, but in any case it was a Bruce Foxton, a late-era McCartney, a Colin Moulding, a Lemmy bass guitar. Rule number 1 for any recently-signed band is to buy the same type of classic guitar played by your heroes and influences, and so the Trashcans splurged on a Rickenbacker. Rule number 2 for the recently-signed band is most certainly not to immediately lend said instrument to a bunch of chancing and ham-fisted instrument abusers, but that’s exactly what they did…no questions asked, no ‘we need it back by Friday’ deadline sort of thing. We ended up using it for two years. Indeed, it was lying on my bedroom floor the night my parents’ house was burgled and they made off with the family jewels. Imagine they’d nicked that guitar too? How d’you explain that to the person who was generous enough to trust you with it?

There are loads of stories you can read about John; his Syd Barrett paint collection and the Trashcans’ song it inspired. His song Wild Mountainside, now something of a folk standard, sung by his wife, ‘the missus’, Eddi Reader, at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The fact that he was never happier than when on the road with Eddi, travelling to and singing in the farthest-flung corners of this island and beyond. Lots of stuff has been…and will be.. written about this by more prominent writers than myself, so here’s a story with a thirty-years later punchline that you most definitely don’t know.

A few years back I was involved in putting on a Martin McAloon show in Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre. I interviewed Martin in advance of the show and opened by telling him my pals had supported Prefab Sprout in 1991. “Ah! Lovely John!” he said immediately. “He used to busk ‘We Let The Stars Go‘ – did you know that?” I’d suggested getting John to open the show, but Martin, who’d only played one solo show before Irvine – and John had played one less than that – wanted to ease into his night, maybe play two sets, maybe just the one longer one, maybe we’d judge the room at the time… so the idea of a support act would only complicate the matter and my idea was dropped.

On the night of the show, Martin asked excitedly, “Is John here?” I’d invited John and ‘the missus’, but they hadn’t shown. “Ach. Give him a call, will you? I’d like him to play ‘We Let The Stars Go’ with me.”

I called John just before Martin took to the stage.

“Is that tonight?” he asked sleepily. “Shite. We were gonnae come to that!“

“Come! Martin wants you to sing ‘We Let The Stars Go’. He’s playing two sets. You could be here in an hour and appear for the encore.”

Which is just about what happened. John texted to say he’d arrived at the venue and could I let him in. As luck would have it, he’d turned up just as Martin was finishing the first of his two lengthy sets.

“How’s it gaun? Y’awright?” he asked me, followed by his customary warm bear hug. I took him into Martin’s dressing room.

My Cilla Black moment. “Martin – John. John – Martin.”

“How’s it gaun? Y’awright?” he asked, to Martin this time, and the pair of them hugged and fell into easy conversation, reminiscing about the Prefab Sprout tour, about the Trashcans’ records in the intervening years, how Martin’s brother Paddy was faring.

“Yes, John,” said an impatient Martin. “Paddy is doing well, but what I want to know is…did you bring your guitar?“

John went into the corridor and brought in his guitar case. He snapped it open, strapped it on, hit a chord to check it was in tune…and – doinnngg! – broke the top string. The lack of any spare strings in his case was immediately apparent. Helpful Martin went to his own case. Bits of stuff flew out as he raked his massive hands through the velvety interior for a string. A discarded setlist. A Sharpie. Yellow fluff. A tea towel. A massive and ancient-looking capo. But no strings. Both Martin and John looked helplessly – and sheepishly – at me.

“It’s your lucky day, John!”

Believe it or not, I’d just bought two sets of strings, one for home use and one for a guitar at school. One set was already on the Telecaster at home, but the set for the school guitar was in the boot of my car, to be taken out the next time I was at work. Given that this was the middle of the summer holidays, they were still there. What followed was a real race against the clock for the remainder of Martin’s 15-minute break as, with two professional yet shockingly underprepared singer/songwriters of some repute watching, I replaced the broken string. Roadie Level One completed.

You lend me a Rickenbacker, John, and thirty years later I’ll lend you an E string. Ye can’t say fairer than that.

New string on and guitar now in tune, John played ‘We Let The Stars Go‘ in the dressing room. Problem was, he played it in a key unfamiliar to Martin, and with the clock ticking towards the start of set two, Martin made the executive decision there and then to dispense with John’s guitar entirely. FFS! Martin would play it and John would sing it – they’d busk their way through it like the professional yet underprepared singer/songwriters they were. In the second half, Martin introduced John to rousing applause from a delighted and surprised audience and on he came – “How’s it gaun? Y’awright?” – to sing the Prefabs’ song. A great moment for everyone in the room.

As a postscript to this story, midway through his second set, Martin broke a string too. He looked at me, lurking at the side of the stage, and handed me that beautiful old semi acoustic guitar you can see in the video above. I went back into the dressing room and restrung it. I even tuned it up and placed it back on its stand at the back of the stage. Martin finished the song he’d been playing on his spare guitar, slung on the newly-strung instrument, played a G chord and gave me a thumbs up. Roadie Level Two completed. Piece of piss.

The last time I saw John was on June 18th, again at the Harbour Arts Centre. I’d been asked to secure the venue for a Trashcans video shoot that would perhaps turn into a gig. You can read all about that night here. There was something of a quiet air of finality about that show – ridiculous really, when they’d a brand new album lined up for release, but the carefully selected audience of former band members, family, friends, long-term fans and influential broadcasters and journalists who’d given many a leg-up to a group who fly defiantly in the face of fashion seemed almost serendipitous. The band – 40 years old almost to the date – played one of their first gigs in the HAC and here they were four decades later, closing out their set by playing an unplanned encore of their debut single Obscurity Knocks, played with all the feral raggedness of a teenage garage band. Full circle and fully sensational.

When I was told John was unwell, we texted a couple of times. His last text to me, a week or so ago, was asking after my wife’s health, as he’d heard she’d been at the hospital for a procedure. ‘Sending strength’, he said as he signed off. Interested, empathetic, kind, remember.

John Douglas will be missed by all who knew him, and the many more who had the measure of him through his literate, melody-packed and emotional music. He was, simply, a lovely guy.

Here’s The Hairy Years from I’ve Seen Everything, John’s confessional about stealing a snow globe to take back to his granny as a present from his holiday – ‘all the savings gone on bloody day one,’ – welded to a shouty Frank number, greatly tamed for the recording by the trickery of Paul Livingston and his mercurial way with a fluid guitar riff over a well-chosen chord sequence. It’s a mighty fine John moment in a discography choc full of them. Go and investigate it. Or investigate it further.

The Trashcan Sinatras – The Hairy Years