Walking Back Home

In 1986, Ricky Ross started a full-time career in music, which has lasted for over 35 years. His earlier working life was spent in youth work and teaching in his home city of Dundee, and his adopted home of Glasgow. It was in these two cities where he spent his formative years learning how to write and play songs.

Having always written about the people and places who've made an impact on his life, it's no surprise that this is how he has approached Walking Back Home, his first ever memoir, which takes the reader on a journey from Ricky's childhood to the rollercoaster of leading his band Deacon Blue to top of the charts and the band's eventual break-up and his solo career.

'I started to write about the years I spent putting the band together, on the first time we ever played in America, and about some of the musical characters I've met along the way. I gave some thought to growing up in suburban Dundee in a family with no record player and no sense that someone like me could, one day, make a record. That's one part of the story.

However, I still want to talk about the smell of Born To Run when I first got it home and how I saw the Buzzcocks looking at a Cliff Richard album sleeve in a Dundee Record Shop window. I still want to tell the stories of my Grandparents and parents and the woman whose voice was so vulnerable when she got up to sing at our church. For all these years I've told stories. Sometimes these days I also tell them on the radio. I've met some amazing people and their stories need told too.

The first time Deacon Blue ever played Wembley Arena I started to introduce a song only to hear, 'Get on with it' shouted from Row Z. We proceeded with the song, but I often thought I'd quite like to finish that story. '