The lead singer of Scots rock band Del Amitri has revealed that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Justin Currie, 59, said he first suspected there was something wrong with his health when he noticed he was struggling to play guitar.
He underwent investigations, including a brain scan, which led to the shock diagnosis.
Currie, from Glasgow, formed Del Amitri in 1983 when he was still at school in the city. The group had chart success in the 80s and 90s with hits such as Roll To Me, Kiss This Thing Goodbye, Nothing Ever Happens and Always The Last to Know.
News of his diagnosis, which is said to have been made two years ago, has emerged as the band prepares for a major tour.
Justin Currie revealed he had learned of his shock diagnosis two years ago
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Tremolo programme, Currie described how the early symptoms of the neurological condition made him struggle to perform Nothing Ever Happens, one of his band’s best-known songs.
He said: ‘I noticed I couldn’t play properly and I didn’t know why. The plectrum would stick in the strings. This was a song I had played thousands and thousands of times.
‘When you are doing something you know really well, like riding a bike or something, and you suddenly can’t do it properly… you think you’re going mad.
‘I was spending the whole time on tour, when I was still playing the guitar on this song, just thinking about where the plectrum was between my fingers, and when you start thinking about things like that then all the other stuff just starts falling apart.’
Currie was sent for a brain scan at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow after his GP suspected he was developing the neurological condition.
He was also assessed by a doctor who instructed him to relax both his arms by his side. As he did so, Currie said his right hand gently trembled at his hip ‘as if it was remembering something tricky’.
He was diagnosed a year later.
Currie said he plans to keep working, touring and playing despite ‘the uneasy feeling that another man is growing inside me – slowing, ceasing the means of control’.
Broadcaster Jeremy Paxman and Scots comedian Sir Billy Connolly have also been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
The condition affects the brain and causes problems such as shaking and stiffness that get worse over time.
Del Amitri, who had a hit with Don’t Come Home Too Soon to mark Scotland’s qualification for the 1998 World Cup, reformed in 2014 after a 12-year hiatus.
They are due to support fellow Scots rockers Simple Minds on the European leg of their global tour before headlining the HebCelt festival on the Isle of Lewis in July.
Currie said the shake in his hand, which he has nicknamed Gavin, is ‘an intermittent reminder’ that he is ‘ill and unsteady’. He said: ‘As lead singer and song-writing leader, steadiness has been my strongest suit. Now I’m somewhere else, distracted and flaky.’
As well as impacting his ability to play the guitar, Currie said he has had to ‘relearn’ how to sing some parts of the band’s hits.
He added: ‘You just lose a bit of control over your muscles. Things I used to use my diaphragm to hit, I now have to do in the throat.’
The full interview will be on Radio 4’s Tremolo at 4.30pm on March 10.