TEXAS
Deep in the heart of
Texas have reinvented themselves and lead singer SHARLEEN SPITERI puts their success down to dirty, filthy sex, among other things. Story: Jonathan Trew
SIX MONTHS AGO. if anyone had suggested that Texas would have a Top Ten single. eyebrows would have been raised. Sniggers would have been snorted. Guffaws spluttered. Had anyone suggested that the new Texas album White 0n Blunt/e would be on the cutting edge. contemporary. cool even. they would have been laughed out of the last chance saloon. Texas will fill the .Albert Hall this year. Stranger things happen at sea. we are told. but none springs to mind immediately. Sharleen Spiteri is sitting in Bar 10 on Glasgow‘s Mitchell Lane. Her baggy. olive green pants end in a big pair of chunky trainers. Her big. baggy. olive greenjacket lies on the chair next to her. Combat-inspired clothing is modish. evidently. The Texas singer is smaller than her television image would lead you to believe. Her face is petite. pale and almost frail. Deceptive things. appearances. For despite the delicate exterior. Spiteri talks with the animated intensity of someone who is quietly confident of herself. She has every right to be. Texas have been around the block a few times. The band are no longer the fresh-faced group of nails who burst into the charts eight years ago with ‘I Don’t Need A Lover'. Since the success of their debut album .S'nur/Iside. named after the area of Glasgow where the band grew up and occasionally still live. Texas have seen their fortunes fluctuate and had their eyes opened to the iniquities of the music business. Initial success is no shield against subsequent misfortune and while their next two albums. Moi/mas Heaven and Ricks Road. were by no means failures. they also made nowhere near the impact of their first record. The original American country rock recipe. complete with big time slide guitar. had been thinned down and inoffensive stagnation was beckoning. The transition from bedroom wall popularity to coffee table respectability wasn‘t far off. The sudden turnaround in support and criticism had its effect on the band. ‘I felt really let down and attacked personally after the second album.‘ says 29-year-old Spiteri. ‘After the success of the first album. people were saying that we had become too fat. too big. too soon. Yesterday you loved us and today you‘ve met someone else. Why'.’ I didn’t understand. I took it too personally.’ By the time of Ricks anl. Texas knew Sharleen Spiteri: big ideas, big trainers they had taken their cue from American roots
JUERGEN TELLER
6 TllELIS'I' 21 Feb-6 Mar 1997