Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie has revealed how he once cheated death in a motorway smash on the way to a gig… but still performed that same night.
Gillespie, 60, and the band were sitting on a borrowed sofa and chairs alongside their equipment in the back of a hired Transit van during the 80s when it turned over on the motorway between Sheffield and Manchester.
The driver swerved, causing the vehicle to rock on two wheels and spin full circle before flipping over and skidding down the central carriageway on its roof, with the band being crushed by equipment.
Miraculously, only one of the band needed to go to hospital with a gash, while the rest managed to take the stage in Manchester with borrowed equipment.
Speaking about the incident on BBC Scotland series The Big Scottish Book Club, to be shown tonight, Gillespie said: “The guy who was driving missed the turn-off and lost control of the vehicle.
My back was flat on what would have been the roof of the van, skidding and then it came to a halt. Then there was a silence and there was some moaning.
I was crushed under the settee, amps, drums, guitars. I crawled out and cars were whizzing past us. Everybody was shaken.
“We played the gig. My main thing was playing the gig. We made the gig in Glasgow the next night at Daddy Warbucks. We got the Stagecoach.”
Gillespie appears on the programme to discuss his memoir Tenement Kid, about his early life in a single-room flat in Springburn, Glasgow.
