Belle and Sebastian front man Stuart Murdoch, a Kirk elder and worship leader, with Helensburgh man the Very Rev John Christie, a former Moderator of the General Assembly.
By Lucy Ashton
The founder member of an Indie band has spoken about the key role a Church of Scotland congregation played in its early development.
Stuart Murdoch, lead singer of Belle and Sebastian, said the encouragement and support provided to him by members of Hyndland Parish Church in Glasgow in the early 1990s was pivotal and the catalyst for future success.
Unemployed and directionless at the time, the congregation, led by Helensburgh man the Very Rev John Christie, formerly minister at St Columba’s Church in Sinclair Street, allowed him to live in a flat above the Hyndland church hall for free for more than five years in exchange for caretaker duties.
This enabled the now internationally acclaimed band to use the space to regularly practice and rehearse when it was not in use by community groups and they recorded several albums there.
Weeks after he stepped through the doors of the church for the first time in 1991 at the age of 22, Mr Murdoch’s life changed dramatically when he joined the church choir – a double quartet.
Encouragement
One of the members was the late Dr Maggie Stockwell, a highly regarded anaesthetist and accomplished soprano singer, who gave him tips to strengthen the power of his voice.
Another big supporter was the church organist, the late John Langdon, a celebrated musician and lecturer at the Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, in Glasgow.
A committed Christian who serves the same church to this day as an elder and worship leader, Mr Murdoch shared his memories as Belle and Sebastian prepare to tour across the UK, Europe, USA, Canada and Mexico next year to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their first two albums, ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’.
He appeared at the Edinburgh Book Festival recently to promote his new book, ‘Nobody’s Empire’, a coming of age work of fiction based on his own life, and was reunited with Mr Christie, who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 2010-2011.
The minister led Hyndland Parish Church for 14 years and one day spotted a young man dressed in an oversized overcoat sitting alone in a pew and struck up a conversation with him.
The minister is named in the book’s acknowledgements along with hall convener Ann Henderson in recognition of the part they played in steering the direction of the musician’s life.
Today, the church is called Broomhill Hyndland Parish Church following a merger in 2017 and Mr Murdoch is still a member of the choir.
He continues to live with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), a condition that led to him returning to his Christian faith while unemployed and searching for meaning in his life.
A God moment
Reflecting on 1991, Mr Murdoch said: “I had been unwell for a number of years, I had to give everything up and I moved back to my folk’s house in Ayr.
“I had been in hospital for a while and just had a terrible time and life had completely changed.
“Once I was out of the hospital, I had a sort of revelation while sitting at the piano in my folks’ house and felt that God was trying to get my attention.
“That is when my faith was reawakened and I moved back to Glasgow in 1991 with a friend Michael and we managed to get a flat in Hyndland.
“We were not well enough to work and were just trying to survive in Glasgow.
“One day he said to me that I was always singing old hymns and ‘you should go to church’.
“I replied ‘I’m not going to church’ as at that time I had no interest because I felt my faith was a private thing and it was fragile.
“But the next morning, I got up and I thought ‘I wonder where the nearest church is?’
“So, I threw my trousers on over my pyjamas and I dashed out and walked up to this church.
“An old lady standing outside smiled at me and I just followed her in and this was Hyndland Parish Church.”
Looking back, Mr Murdoch, who is now 58, said he did not really want to get involved with the daily life of the congregation because of his health and merely wanted to be an observer.
“I sat near the front and wanted to see if my idea of faith and what was being espoused from the pulpit had anything in common,” he recalled.
“I was pleasantly surprised because I had not been in church since I was a kid and it was much more open, friendlier and easier to digest than my memory of it.
“John Christie was a young man to me at the time and his personality seemed to be kind and I enjoyed the service.
“He came up to me afterwards and said hello and invited me back the next week and after a few weeks of attending I mentioned to him that I was interested in music.
“He called John Langdon over and said, ‘here is a chap who is interested in music, can you put him in the choir?
“I was at the University of Glasgow doing music part-time but I was still struggling to keep up with it energy wise, and I initially thought ‘I don’t want to be in the choir’.
“But within the next week there I was standing up at the sharp end with a red gown on with Maggie and her husband Ian and the rest of the double quartet.”
Caretaker
Mr Murdoch attended the church for the next four years and in 1995 his life took a significant turn on several fronts.
“At that time, I had broken up with my girlfriend and ended up being booted out of the flat I was in and John Christie must have heard because he came up to me and asked me how I was getting on.
“He explained that Ernie, the previous church officer, was retiring and there is a flat above the church hall, which was separate to the church, and the Kirk Session wanted someone to live there and look after the place.”
Mr Murdoch continued: “Ann Henderson said to me ‘if you take us on, we’ll take you on.
“So, I moved into the flat and started work as a jannie, sweeping the hall every night.
“It went from being used two nights a week to seven nights and days by different groups.
“The place was going like a fair and it certainly kept me busy because I would clean up at night and set up in the morning for a wide variety of groups like Mothers and Toddlers and the Bridge Club.
“I wasn’t a very good jannie but I tried my best and for many folk I was always just the guy upstairs.”
With a chuckle, Mr Murdoch said: “The old ladies used to always try to go up to my flat and have a look around.
“They would chap the door and say, ‘here are some left over sandwiches and cakes from this morning’ which were always gratefully received but I would always stand there and think to myself ‘nope, you are not coming in’.
“I had to draw the line because my flat was messy and it was full of music equipment and I don’t think anybody from the church would have been very impressed with the way I was keeping it.”
It was around this time in 1995 that Mr Murdoch and his friend Stuart David recruited some local musicians and they formed ‘Belle and Sebastian’, named after a short story about a boy and his dog.
“The life of the band and my life at the church went together hand-in-hand, it was symbiosis,” he said.
“Our second album, If You’re Feeling Sinister, was made in 1996.
“I would show the band the new songs that I had written at the piano in the big hall because as soon as people using it left, I would go down there to use it and we would practice for the recording of the second LP.
“We were so comfortable in the church hall because we enjoyed the acoustics and that led to us later recording in the hall itself.
“When the band started we recorded the first two albums in a professional studio in Glasgow but then for the next recordings, which became our first three EPs, we brought equipment into the hall because we wanted to get more of a live feel.”
“That was over Christmas when the hall was quiet and we sneakily moved recording equipment in and we were recording.
“It was great fun and actually we did the next album, The Boy With The Arab Strap, there as well the next summer.”
Hall recording
Mr Murdoch said recording in the church hall meant that you could sometimes hear noises from outside like bird song because it was not soundproof.
“We recorded a track called ‘Sleep The Clock Around’ in the summer of 1997 and there was noise bleeding into the hall and the engineer had to stop and someone was playing the bagpipes in a flat on nearby Novar Drive.
“We ended up going across the street, following the sound, and we found the piper and invited him across and he ended up playing on the record.”
Recalling how being in the choir improved his singing, Mr Murdoch said: “At first, my voice was very soft and Maggie used to stand in front of me and say ‘Can Belto young man, Can Belto’, which is bad Latin for ‘belt it out, come on, you need to sing up’.
“She really encouraged me to project my voice and stood me in good stead because in the early days of the band we are very quiet, we didn’t play many concerts and we had trouble making ourselves heard.
“But my voice got stronger and I put a lot of it down to singing tenor in the Hyndland choir.”
Mr Murdoch said it was great to see Mr Christie at the Edinburgh Book Festival event and he will be forever grateful to him.
“The great thing about John and the church generally is they have always been very supportive of ‘Belle and Sebastian’,” he added.
“They had no qualms and they could have booted us out of the church hall because we were not singing the Lord’s music, it was rock ‘n’ roll and the band has always addressed themes that were quite broad.
“But John was always very interested in the band, right from the outset and very encouraging.
“I think they were just happy that I’d got something that was quite solid because for a good few years I was just the guy that showed up at the church, my health was poor, I was raggedly dressed, I didn’t have a job and didn’t really have anything going on.
“The band was always around and there were a couple of occasions when we performed in the church and church hall.”
Mr Murdoch said he gave Mr Christie a special copy of Belle and Sebastian’s first album, Tigermilk.
“When you make a record, you get what’s called the test pressing you get back from the factory,” he explained.
“You check them on your record player to check that the pressing is good and I gave John one of those with a letter thanking him for his support.
“Partly the reason he got the test pressing which had a plain white label was because the cover of our first record was quite risqué and I didn’t want to embarrass John or myself.”
Mr Murdoch, who is married with two children, said his Christian faith is extremely important to him and he is very active at his church when time allows.
Mr Christie said he was pleased to have helped the musician in his younger days and to be acknowledged in the book.
He said he attended one of the band’s earliest concerts in Maryhill Burgh Hall and years later their international reputation was highlighted to him during a visit to Taiwan.
“My wife and I were invited to the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Presbyterian Church there and afterwards we enjoyed hospitality in a restaurant in the company of a few people from the congregation including the minister and his wife,” he recalled.
“I told them I was the minister in Hyndland at one time and immediately the minister’s wife piped up and said ‘Hyndland, Belle and Sebastian’.
“They knew all about the church hall and it transpired that their daughter had gone to a Belle and Sebastian concert in Seoul.
“I am very pleased to see that Stuart maintains his link with the Church of Scotland and his faith continues to play an important role in his life.”
Miss Henderson said she had fond memories of Mr Murdoch’s time as the hall caretaker.
“When he started, the church had a Friday youth club and he helped with that and I can remember him many times at Christmas and New Year going up ladders and hanging up decorations,” she recalled.
“I know him even better these days because we have an afternoon service at the church every second Wednesday and occasionally, when our minister the Rev George McKay is unavailable, Stuart has led a wonderful half-hour service.
“He has a very quiet way of speaking but he makes you sit up and really listen to what he’s saying.
“Stuart has also led wonderful prayer sessions which we have enjoyed very much.
“It’s been wonderful to watch him grow from a young lad who was just starting out to being a gentleman, father and friend he is today.”
Love
Miss Henderson said she was surprised to learn she had been acknowledged in Mr Murdoch’s book but “very chuffed”.
“To know that you are a little part of somebody’s life and pushed them in the right direction is lovely,” she added.
“We are thrilled that he stayed with us and joined us and really became part of the congregation.
“We’re all very, very fond of the lad.”
The congregation has predominantly used the Broomhill church building as the main place of worship and the Hyndland Parish Church buildings were sold in 2023.
The hall continues to be used by community groups.