Orange Juice were a Scottish jangle pop band founded in the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden in 1976. Initially known as the Nu-Sonics, they changed their name to Orange Juice in 1979, and took inspiration from contemporary punk bands including Subway Sect, Television, and Buzzcocks and 1960s acts such as the Byrds and the Velvet Underground. Musically, the band brought together styles and genres that often appeared incongruous, for example, country, disco and punk. Though their line-up changed numerous times, lead singer and guitarist Edwyn Collins was a constant presence and the 'face' of the band.
The band released their first singles in the early 1980s on the independent Postcard Records label founded by Collins and Alan Horne. Along with labelmates Josef K and Aztec Camera, Orange Juice's 'neo acoustic', jangly guitar sound (as evident in singles including "Blue Boy" and "Simply Thrilled Honey") came to define the "Postcard Sound" that would directly influence acts as diverse as the Bluebells, Haircut One Hundred and the Smiths.
History Origins: The Nu Sonics Orange Juice had their origin in the Nu Sonics, formed by Edwyn Collins with college friend Alan Duncan (on bass) in 1976: the band was named after the affordable Burns nu-sonic guitar used by Collins, who later recalled buying the instrument for £20 at age 16 and practising it for years.
Two students in the year below Collins – Steven Daly and James Kirk, previously in punk band, The Machetes – were drafted into the band in 1977, with a fifth member, Jeff Taylor, playing drums. A first gig was held in the Silver Thread in Paisley in November 1977, with Daly on lead vocals. Daly subsequently shifted to drums, and further local gigs followed as a four-piece. One gig supporting Steel Pulse at Satellite City in January 1978, alongside Johnny and the Self-Abusers, later to be known as Simple MindsGilbert, Pat, 'Orange Juice', Record Collector no 193, September 1995 was attended by Alan Horne who would soon become strongly involved in the group's career. Duncan left the band after a gig at Hardgate Town Hall, leaving the remaining members to search for a new bass player.
The Postcard years Shortly after Duncan's departure, one of Collins' colleagues in the Glasgow Parks Department, David McClymont, joined the band on bass, and the band was rechristened as Orange Juice. By this stage, the band had moved into the orbit of Alan Horne and the crowd that dropped in and out of his second floor flat (2/R) on 185 West Princes Street, Glasgow. Collins recalls meeting Horne mocked his appearance when thet first met at a Bowie gig.
Collins, Kirk, McClymont and Daly's first gig as Orange Juice occurred in April 1979 in the Glasgow School of Art refectory. At another early gig at Teviot Row House at the University of Edinburgh was recorded by Malcolm Ross of Josef K, and one track from this (Kirk's "Felicity") was pressed as a flexi-disc to be distributed with a planned fanzine to be called 'Strawberry Switchblade', a name that later inspired and was adopted for a band formed by friends of the group. Horne planned the fanzine with Collins in 1979 primarily as a conduit to release Orange Juice's music. The fanzine never appeared, though some copies of the flexi were given away in the Ten Commandments fanzine run by Robert Hodgens (of the Bluebells).
Daly left shortly after the Teviot Row gig, joining local punk act Fun 4. Daly was replaced in Orange Juice by Chris Gordon on drums, but was persuaded back to record the band's debut single "Falling and Laughing" for what became christened Postcard Records after Gordon suffered from stage fright at a number of gigs. The debut single was recorded in December 1979 in Strathaven, with Malcolm Ross co-producing and adding guitar to both the A-side and the playful and instrumental B-side "Moscow", the latter recorded as a tentative 'theme tune' for the coming 1980 Moscow Olympics. Collins recalls that the single was recorded in eight hours in a small 8-track studio in Paisley and attributed its slightly out of tune sound to the band's inability to afford a guitar tuner.
Fewer than 1,000 copies of "Falling and Laughing" were pressed, and most included copies of the "Felicity" flexi: 200 also included a postcard by the band. The wrap-round cover and amateur packaging established Postcard's home-spun aesthetic, with the label's "Sound of Young Scotland" tagline marking it out as something of a reaction to much of the seriousness and angst of post-punk. Yet despite modest beginnings, the label was intended to be a commercial proposition. Horne suggest that the aim was to cut out the majors labels while reaching the charts. Collins concurred and stated that the label wanted a young, popular audience rather than remaining a trendy independent label.
Released in February 1980, "Falling and Laughing" was Postcard's signature tune: lyrically and musically, it celebrated the innocence of youth and was very much at odds with much contemporary independent music, combining a disco bass-line purloined from an ELO song with jangly guitars reminiscent of the Velvet Underground. Gaining appreciative reviews in the music press, the single was never re-issued, making it among the most sought after seven-inches of the post-punk era, copies with postcard and flexi selling for well in excess of £500.
"Falling and Laughing" immediately marked out Postcard Records as a label to watch, and subsequent releases by Josef K and Aztec Camera consolidated its reputation as being at the cutting-edge of a new wave of Scottish pop. But it was Orange Juice that came to embody the "Sound of Young Scotland", with Collins' on-stage behaviour, charity-shop chic and occasional self-parody combining camp aesthetics with a subversive rejection of macho rock and roll cliché. Live, performances could be shambolic, with guitars often out of tune, and songs often aborted as drums, bass and guitar raced away from each other. Occasionally, crowds were hostile towards the band, seeing them as effeminate and anti-rock. Nonetheless, gigs in Glasgow and then Edinburgh began to attract a sizable fan-base: gigs with Josef K and The Go Betweens were sold as 'Postcard' nights, including the 'Funky Glasgow Now' show at Glasgow Technical College in April 1980.
The band's debut single was followed by a series of well-received Postcard 7" releases: "Blue Boy", "Simply Thrilled Honey" and "Poor Old Soul" in 1980–81. Selling sufficiently to appear prominently in the independent charts, these garnered considerable interest from the London-based music press, much of which appeared charmed by the band's on-stage antics, particularly the self-depreciating humour of Collins and the oddball-antics of occasional vocalist James Kirk. However, Radio One DJ's John Peel was initially unimpressed, describing their music as 'curious'. Peel's introduction to the band came when he was accosted outside the BBC by Alan Horne and Edwyn Collins, brandishing a copy of the debut 45, 'Falling and Laughing'. Horne criticized Peels's focus on Manchester and Liverpool bands and stated that Orange Juice represented the future.
Peel confirmed the story a few days later, on 21 February 1980, when he gave airtime to the record for the first time on his BFBS show. Later, the show's producer John Walters nonetheless picked up on the band's popularity and invited them to record two Radio One sessions for Peel and, in the autumn of 1980, the band was invited on a national tour by Peel-favourites The Undertones, gaining further exposure south of the border. One of these gigs was at a new venue, Rock City in Nottingham: coming on as support band, Orange Juice became the first band to play this venue (on 11 Dec 1980). Collins recalls that during the tour with The Undertones, skinheads shout homophobic slurs at the band, and the band intentionally exaggerated that flamboyant, "effeminate" image.
Demos for an album on Postcard were completed in a single day at Hellfire Studios in Glasgow in 1981, with the working title Ostrich Churchyard. Seeking better distribution to get the debut album to a larger audience, Postcard approached Rough Trade Records with these demos, with Rough Trade agreeing to fund recording sessions in London in the summer of 1981, promising to distribute the debut album whilst allowing Postcard to retain artistic freedom. The album was recorded in Regent's Park Studios in London in August 1981, under the auspices of Scritti Politti producer Adam Kidron, who sought to augment the band's guitar-based sound with backing singers, horns and keyboards, emulating the sound that had made Scritti Politti's "The "Sweetest Girl"" a modest crossover hit. Kidron believed the album could reach a wider pop audience and said his production added horns, strings and other elements without obsucring the band's existing sound.
Afterwards, Orange Juice took the tapes from the sessions with Kidron and signed to Polydor, hastening the demise of Postcard. A scheduled final Orange Juice single on Postcard, "Wan Light", failed to ever see the light of day. Collins later described the move to Polydor as a mistake and said the band had been naive about leaving the independent sector.
The Postcard Records-era history of Orange Juice is featured in the 2015 documentary film Big Gold Dream and the 2014 book by Simon Reynolds 'Simply Thrilled Honey: the preposterous tale of Postcard Records'.
Debut album and the search for a hit Debut album You Can't Hide Your Love Forever was not released by Polydor until February 1982, and received mixed reviews, with the use of backing singers and synthesizers anathema to some of the band's long-term fans. Retrospectively, however, the album is often cited as a classic of the era and a key influence on the C86 generation and beyond. By the stage the album was released, the band in any case had a new line-up: in August 1981, Josef K split up, with Collins asking guitarist Malcolm Ross to join the band, making it a five-piece. This caused some ructions, with Daly and Kirk reportedly feeling the band was losing its original sound (Daly in particularly having publicly objected to the first Polydor single "L.O.V.E... Love", a cover of the Al Green classic, released in October 1981). Collins was reported in the press as siding with Kirk and Daly before deciding to leave with Malcolm Ross and bass player David McClymont who wanted to pursue the more commercial sound Kidron and others had promoted.