Espedair Street

Espedair Street is a novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1987.

Plot introduction

The book tells the (fictional) story of the rise to fame of Dan Weir ('Weird'), a bass guitar player in a rock and roll band called Frozen Gold, and of his struggles to be happy now that he is rich and famous.

Plot summary

"Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal’s cave; or I might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed.

Espedair Street (radio)

Espedair Street was a four-part BBC radio adaptation of the Iain Banks novel Espedair Street broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 1998. The dramatisation was by Joe Dunlop and it was produced by Dave Batchelor. The series was narrated by Paul Gambaccini in the style of a documentary as if actually being broadcast on BBC Radio 1, having the subtitle The Frozen Gold Story, and usually starting with a 1980s era jingle from that station.

Cast:

The music was credited as written by Iain Banks and arranged by Nigel Clark, it was performed by Nigel Clark, Brian Kellock, Nick Clark (guitar) and Gordon Wilson (percussion), with Monica Queen singing the parts of Christine. This band performed a charity concert as Frozen Gold, in Glasgow on 21 December 1997.