Orange Juice

Bearsden

Orange Juice began in 1976 in Bearsden, a suburb of Glasgow, as the Nu-Sonics, named after the cheap Burns Nu-Sonic guitar Edwyn Collins had bought for £20 at sixteen. Collins, born in Edinburgh in 1959, played alongside guitarist James Kirk and Steven Daly, who sang at their first gig in Paisley in November 1977 before moving to drums. When David McClymont, a workmate of Collins's at the Glasgow Parks Department, took over on bass in 1979, they became Orange Juice. They drew on Subway Sect, Television, Buzzcocks, the Byrds and the Velvet Underground, and threw together styles that rarely met, country, disco and punk among them.

Postcard

Alan Horne had watched them support Steel Pulse in Glasgow in January 1978. He and Collins founded Postcard Records, and Falling and Laughing became its first release in February 1980. Horne and Collins waited for John Peel outside the BBC to hand it over, and Peel played it. Three more Postcard singles followed, Blue Boy, Simply Thrilled Honey and Poor Old Soul, along with Peel and Radio 1 sessions and an autumn tour supporting the Undertones, during which they became the first band to play Rock City in Nottingham. With Josef K and Aztec Camera they defined the jangling Postcard sound.

In August 1981 they recorded a debut album in London with producer Adam Kidron, paid for by Rough Trade on Postcard's behalf. Josef K had just split, and Collins asked their guitarist Malcolm Ross to join.

Polydor and the split

In October 1981 the band left Postcard for Polydor and took the Kidron tapes with them. The first Polydor single was a cover of Al Green's L.O.V.E. Love. By then the group was coming apart. Ross and McClymont, tired of the fighting between Collins and Kirk, decided to leave and offered Collins a place with them. He took it, sacking Kirk and then Daly. Ross later conceded that he was, in effect, the man who broke up the group. On 6 November 1981 BBC2's youth programme Something Else broadcast the band playing Falling and Laughing.

The Zimbabwean drummer Zeke Manyika played his first show with them in January 1982, and You Can't Hide Your Love Forever came out early that year, reaching No. 21. Daly felt Kidron had treated it as a showcase for his own talents, piling on horns and strings.

Rip It Up

Rip It Up, made with Martin Hayles at Berwick Street Studios and released in November 1982, was glossier, and the reviews were harsh. It peaked at No. 39. Then the title song, issued as a single in February 1983, became a hit: Rip It Up reached No. 8 in 1983, their only UK Top 40 single. Their Top of the Pops appearance ended with a drunk McClymont headbutting Jim Thirlwell, who had been miming the saxophone solo. Ross and McClymont left after the band's first outdoor gig, a festival in Victoria Park, Hackney, in August 1983, and the planned single and album were pulled.

The end and after

Collins and Manyika carried on with producer Dennis Bovell, making the mini-album Texas Fever, a No. 34 hit in 1984, and The Orange Juice later that year, which Collins called more or less a solo album. On 19 January 1985 they opened a miners' strike benefit at Brixton Academy, ahead of the Woodentops, Everything but the Girl and Aztec Camera, and Collins announced the split from the stage. He went solo, scoring with A Girl Like You in 1994, and returned to music in 2007 after two cerebral haemorrhages in 2005.

Domino's reissues, among them the Postcard collection The Glasgow School (2005) and the box set Coals to Newcastle (2010), secured their standing. Franz Ferdinand, Belle and Sebastian and the Cribs named them as an influence, and Simon Reynolds took the title of his post-punk history from their hit. The four original members reunited in Glasgow in 2008 to accept a lifetime achievement award, and in September 2025 Kirk and Daly joined Collins on stage for the encore of his farewell hometown show.