Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie, famed for hits such as Always The Last To Know and Nothing Ever Happens, said he will have to stop performing one day due to Parkinson’s disease. The 59-year-old songwriter has spoken of the “quite grim” outlook for his performing career in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Tremolo programme, due to air on Sunday afternoon (March 10), saying: “I can’t play the way I would expect to, and I know it will get worse. At what rate, nobody knows.”
Speaking on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg ahead of the broadcast, Currie said: “I know I’m going to have to stop. Whereas, formerly, people like me would never want to stop, you know. We’d want to be singing in a pub at the age of 80 or something, and being dragged off by our grandchildren or something in embarrassment. So the idea of having to stop, that’s quite grim.”
“I seem to have lost a bit of diaphragm control,” the Glasgow-born singer said. “It’s already changed my personality, in not necessarily negative ways.”
And he said the diagnosis had made him more aware of the experiences of those around him. “(With) any form of disability, you become aware of disability in general, and you become acutely aware of that line that disabled people have been saying for years – that there aren’t able-bodied people, there are just a lot of people who are not yet disabled,” he went on. “So I quite like that. I quite like the idea that we’re all going to go through some of these difficulties at some point in life.”
He added: “I think you do think you’re invulnerable until something proves you’re not. That ridiculous cliche, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, that’s not true. If you lose a leg you are not strong. And I am not stronger for having Parkinson’s, believe you me.”
Parkinson’s, which sees parts of the brain become progressively damaged over many years, is often characterised by involuntary shaking of parts of the body, as well as slow movement and stiff muscles, the NHS said. It is caused by a loss of nerve cells in part of the brain called the substantia nigra.
Celebrities including Back To The Future star Michael J Fox and Sir Billy Connolly have also been diagnosed with the disease.
:: Justin Currie’s interview with the BBC’s Tremolo programme will be broadcast on Radio 4 at 4.30pm on Sunday (March 10)
