Norman Maclean is one of the great heroes of the Gaidhealtachd, admired by people across the globe, not least Sean Connery and Billy Connolly. Though born in Glasgow, the outbreak of the Second World War saw him evacuated to Lochaber, where he learned Gaelic from his great uncle Seamas. Later schooled on South Uist, Norman took up the pipes–the foundation for a remarkably diverse and successful career as a singer, musician, comedian, actor, novelist, writer and composer.
Yet it’s only when he was well into his 70s that the world of cinema came knocking on his door, with a significant role in the film Blackbird, nominated for an Audience Award during this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. Blackbird focuses on a young ballad singer Ruadhan (Andrew Rothney) who becomes increasingly distressed at the erosion of the traditional way of life in his small Scottish village. Alongside acclaimed singers Margaret Bennett and Sheila Stewart, Norman plays Alec, one of the older villagers with whom Ruadhan feels closest to.
When The Scots Magazine spoke to Norman while he was in Edinburgh, he had yet to see the final film. “All they did was hand me five pages and say ‘Get on with it’,” he admits. “It was mostly improvised but, looking back on it, I think what (director) Jamie Chambers was trying to do was show–and I use this long line from Heaven’s Gate, for goodness sake–that the things in life we love are the things that fade.
“The things that Ruadhan felt were fading are some of the things that I, Margaret and Sheila had,” he explains. “In a way, I think Ruadhan was over-greedy, and my character was disturbed by this. I was trying to tell him to ‘cool it’; that you cannot live in the past and things definitely do fade. So there was a certain tension between his affection for what I represented and my desire to be realistic, essentially a tension between the present and the past.”
Not that Blackbird is actually Norman’s first encounter with the big screen. “I’ve had limited experience of telly work,” he says. “To be accurate here, Gaelic telly work, which is right at the bottom of the food chain. I had a part in Bill Forsyth’s Comfort and Joy, but was escorted off the set before they started shooting! I was also involved in a very interesting film that was partly shot in Hamburg. It was one of those pan-European pieces of nonsense; the PA was a Mongolian called Ghengis, the cinematographer was Russian, the skivvies were German, the cast a mixture of Polish, Hebridean, Italian and French. It was all improvised; we all spoke in different languages and I’m sure it never saw the light of day.”
Nevertheless, it was partly thanks to that “Euro-pudding” of a film that the role of Alec came his way. It’s director, Timothy Neat, was asked by Jamie Chambers if he knew anyone familiar with Scotland’s oral traditions. “Tim would have directed him to Margaret Bennet and Sheila Stewart,” Norman says, “but when he asked Margaret who would be the best man or woman for the Gaelic subset, she said: ‘Norman Maclean, but he’s eccentric and he’s half daft; we don’t know if he’s upright just now or comatose’.”
When Jamie and his team visited Norman in his home, he admits he “started frothing” with stories, such as the ‘Black Dog of McPhee’ and the ‘Water Horse and the Young Maiden’. “I went on and on and on,” he says. “They were filming this, and used a lot of that material in a short film, When The Song Dies. It must have struck Jamie as ‘having legs’, though, and he asked if I’d fancy taking part in a feature film. It was a kind of ‘Thank you, Norman’ for the previous contribution to his short film.”
In one respect at least, Norman insists the film came at exactly the right time for him. Having returned to Uist in 2009, after the best part of 60 years away, he was increasingly annoyed by the standard of public speaking. “No one prepared, no one even bothered to dress up for it,” he says of everyone from local councillors to visiting academics. “Now that really got up my nose, and I was despairing,” he admits. “I’d been writing for a local paper about how insulted I felt when people who appeared on stage had no concern for the audience. They were lazy, I said. Then I went down to Wigtown, where Blackbird was filmed, and I saw this North Korean Army! They were amazing. That was good for me; it restored my faith that there are people out there who prepare, who work, who are not lazy, who will go through seven set-ups a day, for 31 days. That really gave me a boost.”
That said, he’s hopeful too that Blackbird might help pass on the oral tradition that has dominated so much of his life. “One of the things that impinges on one’s identity is the past, one’s immediate past, and the stories and the music from the past, and I think there is a measurable demand for the folk tradition, the oral tradition, among youngsters today. Maybe this will stimulate it or underline it. If those pretty hip young folk, Scarlett, Andy and Patrick they fell for it,” he says of the film’s young cast, “why shouldn’t anyone else?
“I mean, all we seem to be doing in Uist at the moment is producing folk musicians; we have that college–Ceòlas, a smashing place… If I was 18 I’d go back to it.” he adds. “Who knows; maybe Blackbird will stimulate a young filmmaker–from Fife, Glasgow, Inverness even–to say: ‘We’ve got stories up here too.’ Maybe it might stimulate my mob, the bilingual population, to enter the 21st century and do something that reflects interests, dreams and aspirations of young people in 2013. That’s my hope.”
First published in the January 2014 issue of The Scots Magazine.
