Ronnie Gurr Collection

Ronnie Gurr is a former journalist and music consultant who has worked in the music business since the 1970s.

As a teenager he producd his own punk fanzine, Hanging Around, and went on to write for the NME and Record Mirror. Later he worked for record companies including Arista, Virgin and Columbia, helping to launch the careers of Culture Club, Alison Moyet, Kula Shaker, Stereophonics and others.

He was a consultant for the Rip It Up exhibition at the Museum of Scotland in 2018.

His latest project is Hanging Around Books, which publishes modestly-priced music-related photo books.

The Collection

Our collection consists of 186 cassette and DAT tapes loaned by Ronnie Gurr from his personal archive in 2017. They represent a wide range of demos, promos, mixes and live recordings of mainly Scottish bands and solo artists from the late 1970s to the late 1990s.

There are recordings of some well-known Scottish musicians, such as Orange Juice, Lloyd Cole, The Associates, Craig Armstrong, Simple Minds and Hue and Cry. And some not so familiar: The Delmontes, The Swiss Family Orbison, Dawn of the Replicants, and TV21.

Not all are Scottish. Some of the artists Ronnie represented are in force here - Boy George, Alison Moyet, Kula Shaker - and there are some outliers, such as Oasis (live in Manchester 1994) and Bruce Springsteen (live in Los Angeles in 1978).

The collection includes a tape of sessions recorded for Tay FM in 1999 featuring songs from The Silencers, Horse, The River Detectives, The McCluskey Brothers, Eddi Reader and others, and a compilation produced in connection with the Ten Day Weekend (October 1995) with tracks by Nectarine No 9, The Delgados, Bis, Urusei Yatsura, and Spare Snare.

There are live recordings of Fish (Haddington 1991), The Big Dish (Liverpool 1985) and Capercaillie (Edinburgh 1992). And demos by the Dundee band Danny Wilson when they were called Spencer Tracy, a name they had to change when they signed to Virgin.

Indie music dominates but there is also jazz from Sophie Bancroft, trip-hop from Coco and the Bean, and chilled-out house from Botany 5.

The collection may be consulted on the premises by appointment. Images and audio clips are included in the full catalogue of the collection via the link below.

Rewind

Ronnie Gurr talking about how the Blue Nile’s first album came about - A Walk Across the Rooftops (1984). From Rewind: Ronnie Gurr in Conversation with Billy Sloan at Scottish Music Centre, 30 November 2017..