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When Stuart Adamson first got together with Bruce Watson and started writing songs in May and June of 1981, a room in the Townhill Community Centre in Dunfermline was used as a makeshift studio. There as just a duo and armed with guitars, drum machine, keyboard and a Tascam 4 track portastudio, they wrote and recorded the first 9 songs that would set the foundation of the new collaboration that would come be known as Big Country.
Harvest Home, Heart and Soul, Angle Park, Wake, Lost Patrol, We Could Laugh, Echoes, The Crossing and Inwards were those first 9 songs written and recorded.
Officially, only Harvest Home, Angle Park and We Could Laugh have been released. (The Crossing 30th Anniversary Deluxe CD)
Harvest Home: The original version which Bruce once described as having a "sexy bossanova beat" and you'll hear why just after the intro. I get Blondie 'Heart of Glass' vibes from it, maybe you will too.
Harvest Home was one of the first two songs (along with Angle Park) written by Stuart and Bruce when they got together so it holds a special place in the Big Country History Book for that alone. That it would go on to be chosen, nearly 18 months later than this recording, to be the band's debut single elevates it even further in my opinion.
This version is also the only one that is true to the lyrics that appeared with all versions of The Crossing's original printed inserts.
"Our home's on fire, my wife has fled" added a really dark overtone to the song. Stuart said that Harvest Home was written as a reflection of the things he saw going on in Scotland in (then) current times but used lyrical imagery of the battle of Culloden and the Highland Clearances. The verse was subsequently dropped from all versions of the song recorded later, replaced with "In a harvest home - yoh"
(nets will "shatter" turned into nets will "tatter" in subsequent versions as well - which reads a little more clearly in the verse)
This version is, as you'd expect, raw and rough but it was so important for the band, what they were trying to do and how they were going to forge their own path.
Enjoy this little piece of grand history from Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson - it all started from this.
Celebrating 41 years of Big Country - 1981 to 2022.
Stay Alive!