Fact #161804

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO DANNY WILSON? By Johnny Black
Ged Grimes (keyboards/vocals) : “Gary and I had been making music together since schooldays, back in the late 70s, so when Mary’s Prayer became a hit, we weren’t exactly new to the music business. The single took a long time to be successful, and really only charted on re-release, but as soon as we had that success, Virgin Records wanted us to pursue that direction exclusively. It was a very commercial pop song, though, and that wasn’t all we wanted to do. In fact, it wasn’t even typical of the songs on the first album.

We found ourselves in the strange situation of getting great reviews in magazines like Q, but also being asked to do things for the teeny mags, which meant we kind of lost track of the direction of the band. We spent too much time doing promotional work, photo sessions, everything except why we’d got together in the first place, which was to make music.

I think we also made a mistake with the second album by doing it all ourselves, up in Dundee. We had top name producers like Don Was coming over to discuss producing it for us, but we decided to do it ourselves, and we are perfectionists. We spent a long time making everything exactly right when maybe we should have been more focussed. It didn’t get picked up by the American arm of Virgin, which was a bit of a blow.

We ended it in 1990, a combination of being unsatisfied creatively and having management problems, but we remained friends. I got married in 1991, and now have a seven year old son, Jack. The whole band worked on Gary’s first solo album in 1992, and I had my own seven-piece band for a while in the mid-90s, and I toured with Eddi Reader, then in 1997 I was offered the chance to do music for the Playstation game Earthworm Jim, which has opened up a whole new world for me. I’m just back from the Game Developers’ Conference in San Jose, and I’ve got a number of game-related music projects in development, including the Matrix game.

I’m at my happiest in the studio, so I’ve started my own digital studio, Jack’s Hoose, in Dundee, where I make music – I did the Ford Ka advert, for example, - and I do productions. The Japanese company Capcom is interested in using one of my artists, a 19 year old singer called Lianne Carr, in a game, and I think that’s a very interesting way to launch new performers.”

Gary Clark (guitar/vocals) : Ged and I worked on my first solo album, then I formed two more bands, King L and Transister, both of which had albums out. Transister was a bit of a change for me because I didn’t sing, just wrote, played and produced the material. I’m living in London now, concentrating on being a songwriter and producer. One of my songs, sung by Lauren Christia, was in the Batman And Robin movie, and I’m the songwriter/producer of several tracks on the new Natalie Imbruglia album. I’ve just recorded a song with Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys, and, interestingly, an old Transister song, Look Who’s Perfect Now, has just started running in the Adidas commercials, so who knows, that might take off.

Kit Clark (guitar/vocals) : We got to the stage where we were all writing material and there was no way we could release it all. We considered making Danny Wilson an umbrella for various projects, but Virgin weren’t keen, so we decided to split up and get out of the deal.

Gary adds, “After Danny Wilson, Kit went on into Swiss Family Orbison, and they’ve just completed a new album. He still lives in Dundee.”
(Feature first appeared in Q magazine)