The Waterboys

The Waterboys have been through numerous line-ups and many different musical styles since their original emergence in the early 1980s, but the one constant and primary driving force throughout is Scotsman Mike Scott. He started his career in the bands Another Pretty Face, Funhouse, and The Red & The Black before linking up with multi-instrumentalist Anthony Thistlethwaite to form The Waterboys, taking the name from lyric in a Lou Reed song. With keyboardist Karl Wallinger added to the band’s lineup, their 1983 eponymous studio debut featured the single “A Girl Called Johnny,” which was written by Mike Scott in tribute to Patti Smith. The single climbed to number 80 on the UK Singles chart. Their second album A Pagan Place (1984) heralded a style known as ‘The Big Music,’ helped by supporting tours with The Pretenders and U2. In 1985, they achieved their biggest hit with the classic single “Whole of the Moon,” which was featured on their third album, This Is the Sea (1985), and peaked at number 26 on the UK Singles chart. Creative differences led to the departure of Karl Wallinger, who went on to form the group World Party. A meeting with fiddle player Steve Wickham led Mike Scott in a different direction and, moving to Ireland, he firmly embraced Irish traditional music on the albums Fisherman's Blues (1988) and Room to Roam (1990), which also featured the great Irish accordion player Sharon Shannon. The departure of Steve Wickham provoked another new direction towards hard rock, with Mike Scott moving to New York. He subsequently embarked on a solo career in 1993 but relaunched The Waterboys in 1998 and released the album A Rock in the Weary Land (2000), playing music which he described as ‘sonic rock,’ partly inspired by artists like Radiohead and Beck. They went acoustic on Universal Hall (2003) and re-engaged with Wickham on Book of Lightning (2007). In 2010, Mike Scott launched An Appointment with Mr. Yeats, a touring stage show in which he set the poetry of W.B. Yeats to music. Spearheaded by the singles “November Tale” and “Beautiful Now,” Modern Blues (2015) was hailed by critics as a return to form and reached number 2 on the UK Independent Albums chart. Scott pushed the limits of the band’s sound even further with Out of All This Blue (2017) and Where the Action Is (2019), incorporating elements from funk, dance music, and hip-hop into The Waterboys’ repertoire. Both albums received generally positive reviews and made it to the Top 5 of the UK Independent Albums chart, paving the way for Good Luck, Seeker (2020), almost 37 years into their genre-defying career. Mike Scott continued to lead the band into new directions with the release of 2022’s All Souls Hill. In February 2024, the Waterboys released a five CD box set called 1985, which contained studio and live recordings from one of their most productive years. Original keyboardist, co-producer, and co-songwriter Karl Wallinger (who had subsequently formed World Party) died on March 10, 2024, at the age of 66.

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