Sharleen belongs to Glasgow
from the Sunday Mail - 31 December 2005 by Paul English

SHE might be leading the party at the bells tonight in Edinburgh - but Sharleen Spiteri would rather be in Glasgow TheTexas siren can't wait to headline the giant shindig in the capital, but her heart lies in the west coast.

Speaking from her London home where she's playing mum to a very lively Misty Kyd while trying to blow away the cobwebs of a night-out with comedian Peter Kay, Sharleen recalls the special feeling of festivities in her Balloch home as a child.

She says: "Christmas and New Year were big days.We'd wear all the new gear we'd got, eat selection boxes, read Oor Wullie and watch The Wizard Of Oz. My parents had parties at New Year and we got to stay up late.

"But there's always such a pressure at New Year. It's the one day when you're supposed to have the best time.

"I normally end up with a bad back or something. But this year I'm really looking forward to it - and doing the gig gets you off the hook for a lot of things. People ask what you are doing at New Year. I had a night out with Peter Kay and his wife yesterday and, when folk asked, I realised that telling them we're playing at Edinburgh Castle sounds quite impressive.

"But if we weren't playing there I'd have come back to Scotland anyway."

If she wasn't working on Hogmanay where would she be - Glasgow or Edinburgh? "Are you serious?" she says, scoffing.

"Glasgow, of course. Glasgow. I'm a Glaswegian, I'm not from Edinburgh."

But would she be joining the 100,000 down in George Square?

"I've never done the George Square thing before," she says. "But the thought of standing in one of those taxi queues in the middle of the night sends a shudder right through me."

The chances of her being reduced to that are slim, however. More like a helicopter home.

And, given her status as the leader of the gang, it means she's the one buying the drinks tonight.

Champers? "Are you kidding?" ?' she says. "A bottle of bubbly won't do it for my band, I'm afraid. I'd say it was more a case of a bottle of vodka.That tends to hit the spot with them."

But she's confident a lively crowd will get the band's juices flowing tonight better than any spirits can.

"It's a really great line-up," she says, referring to El Presidente and KT Tunstall. "If the crowd are up for it, then we're up for it. You can feed off a good crowd."

The year has been a turbulent one for the 38-year-old.

The relationship with Ashley Heath, the father of her child, broke down, and claims were made she worked through her emotional angst with the songs on the latest Texas LP Red Book.

It's fair to assume she's relishing the prospect of wiping the slate clean and starting afresh - but it's not a New Year's resolution to go out and find a bloke. She says: "I don't think I could make enough New Year resolutions.

"If I thought about it, I'd probably come up with about 20 and not stick to any of them. But I always go into the New Year very positively. As much as I don't have resolutions I have little things that I try to achieve each year, personal things as a parent. Like being less of a witch, or cutting down on swearing a little bit.

"But I'm really very happy. I'm in a good place. I'm enjoying life."

If that's a hint at a new love interest, then questions on that front are as welcome as a small, blond and ugly first-foot. "Get lost," she says. "I can smell that sort of stuff coming from 40 years away, you know. I can't believe you even tried asking that."

She's laughing, but she's serious. With a toddler to protect and a career to keep on track, she's got bigger fish to fry than idling over her love life.

"People forget," she says. "I've never been the kind of person to go into my private life in any depth.

"It's not something I think is remotely interesting - and it's one little thing I hang on to."

One other little thing she's hung on to is her position as front-woman in one of the most successful bands Scotland has produced. And, while she's strumming on her guitar at the bells, she'll also be ushering in a remarkable professional milestone She says: "It'll be 20 years since the first members of Texas formed. I think we'll mark the occasion privately. It hadn't dawned on me that it was 20 years until folk stared asking me about it whenwe launched Red Book.

"But I am proud of it. Who knows, maybe we'll go on stage tonight and let rip with a big celebration of that.

"That's the highlight of being in Texas just now - that we've managed to stay together and make a record folk are still interested in.

"I can feel so much goodwill out there for my band just now and I find it quite emotional.

"People seem genuinely happy to see us. I feel like hugging folk just for taking an interest in what we do.

"It's such a big deal to buy a record, and I have no idea what that record makes people feel. But if it makes them feel something, I've succeeded. That's how I measure what I do. I'm turning into such a hippie."

It hasn't always been this way.The band seemed to have run out of puff soon after their early hits like I Don't Want A Lover and their cover of Al Greene's Tired Of Being Alone in the late '80s and early '90s.

It wasn't until a change in direction and an image overhaul which saw the stunning singer become the band's brand image that fame kicked in again. She says: "Maybe I'm blinded to our ability, but I never thought it was the end of Texas. I was always sure, not of success, but that we would make records. All that mattered was we felt good as songwriters.

"Who knows what we'd be doing now if White On Blonde hadn't done so well. But we were being dumb but there was never a question of it being all over."

Subsequent albums The Hush, a Greatest Hits package and Red Book have fared very well. However, 2003's LP Careful What You Wish For wasn't such a hit. "We're very lucky," Sharleen says.

"Even if a Texas album doesn't do that well, it still does relatively well. That was the wrong record at the time, and we'll never know the reason for that. But we decided to pull it and write the new one."

A new single, Sleep, will be released in 10 days. Featuring Blue Nile singer Paul Buchanan on guest vocals, the videoalso features Peter Kay. "We met at Live8," she says. "We turned out to be big fans of each other. He's the funniest man on the planet.With Paul it was a case of him telling Johnny McElhone, our bass player, he would love to sing with us. So we wrote a song specifically with him in mind. Paul doesn't do anything he doesn't want to, let alone sing duet on someone else's album."

At that, Misty lets rip, hollering in the background with a vocal range to match her mum's. "She's knackered," Sharleen says. "All these Christmas parties have taken their toll."


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