Aztec Camera

East Kilbride

Roddy Frame was born in January 1964 in East Kilbride, a new town built to take Glasgow's overspill, where he remembered Tamla Motown playing everywhere. He learned on an acoustic guitar, switched to a Telecaster copy after hearing Wilko Johnson in 1976, and began writing songs during punk. His first band was Neutral Blue. Wanting something closer to Joy Division and Magazine, he left at the end of 1979, taking their drummer, David Mulholland, with him, and formed Aztec Camera, a name he later admitted was chosen for being ridiculous. Frame recalled that a 16-year-old on stage was odd enough, let alone one with a 12-string acoustic. He wrote at four in the morning, he said, so an acoustic guitar was the only one that would not disturb anyone.

Postcard

In December 1980 Alan Horne, who ran Postcard Records, the Glasgow label behind Orange Juice and Josef K, saw the band and signed them days later. In January 1981 Sounds ran their first big feature, with Frame 16, Owens on bass and Mulholland on drums. Two Postcard singles followed in 1981, Just Like Gold and Mattress of Wire, which reached ten and eight on the UK independent chart, and an acoustic We Could Send Letters appeared on the NME cassette C81.

A planned Postcard album, Green Jacket Grey, was scrapped, Mulholland left, and a run of drummers came and went until the band was briefly just Frame and Owens. Horne himself told them to stop releasing records until they were better organised. Frame later called him a mix of Andy Warhol and Julie Burchill, and said he owed him a huge debt.

Postcard was the perfect apprenticeship.

Roddy Frame, 2014

Rough Trade

In May 1982 Frame took the band to Rough Trade, which had once sent him a rejection letter, and he and Owens moved from East Kilbride to Acton in London. Dave Ruffy, formerly of the Ruts, joined on drums and Bernie Clarke on keyboards. After the single Pillar to Post, they recorded High Land, Hard Rain in about three weeks at the ICC studio in Eastbourne with John Brand, Frame playing a cheap Japanese copy of a Martin. Choosing acoustic, he said, was a way of being contrary when everyone else was turning back to effects.

Oblivious came out in January 1983 and went to number one on the independent chart, followed by the album in April and Walk Out to Winter. The album reached 22 in the UK and topped the indie chart. Elvis Costello took them on an eight-week tour of America that summer. Robert Christgau gave it an A-minus and said only Marshall Crenshaw matched Frame as a songwriter.

WEA

Frame then signed to WEA, which reissued Oblivious in October 1983 and took it to 18. He wrote most of Knife in New Orleans on a four-track after the Costello tour, and Mark Knopfler produced it at AIR Studios. It reached 14 in 1984, though NME found it too smooth. Love (1987), made in the United States with a team of producers including Russ Titelman and Tommy LiPuma, was what Frame called his white soul record. Its Somewhere in My Heart went to number three in 1988, the band's biggest hit, and the album went platinum.

Stray (1990), recorded at Rockfield in Wales, included Good Morning Britain with Mick Jones. Dreamland (1993) was co-produced with Ryuichi Sakamoto in New York, and Frestonia (1995), produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, was the last Aztec Camera album. Frame has recorded under his own name since, from The North Star (1998) to Seven Dials (2014).

Afterlife

Frame believed bands such as the Smiths and Everything but the Girl carried echoes of Aztec Camera and of Postcard, and hoped they had persuaded later groups to pick up acoustic guitars. Pitchfork has described the C86 movement as splitting the difference between Aztec Camera and the buzzsaw punks. For the debut's 30th anniversary, Frame played it in full at Drury Lane, Manchester's Bridgewater Hall and the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in December 2013, switching guitars to match each song on the record, and Domino issued an expanded edition in 2014. The WEA years were gathered on the nine-disc Cherry Red box Backwards and Forwards in 2021. The fan archive Killermont Street takes its name from a song on Love.