And it endures to this day as a masterclass of soft-rock.ĭe Burgh is a complicated figure. The album was de Burgh’s biggest hit to that point in his career (aside from 1974 single Turning Round, a surprise chart-topper in Brazil). It would go on to become the title track of his second record, Spanish Train and Other Stories, which marks its 45th anniversary on November 1st. There was an especially effusive response to Spanish Train, a baroque piece that imagined God and the devil playing poker for possession of a man’s soul. Even in Montreal (which ironically later became one of his biggest markets). Still, he had begun to notice that several of the new songs he was performing supporting Supertramp around Europe and North America were going down well.

It hadn’t caused much of a stir and it was by no means certain A&M Records would renew the two-album contract he had signed the previous year. I just had to fight my corner.”ĭe Burgh, then 26, had just one record to his name in Far beyond these Castle Walls, named after this childhood home of Bargy Castle near Rosslare, Co Wexford. But I was so incensed, having flown across the Atlantic. “The French-Canadians didn’t want to see a guy with a guitar. That got another resounding row of boos,” he remembers. “I thought, f*** – I’m going to take an encore.

The crowd had already booed him through his 20-minute performance, a curtain raiser for Ayrshire duo Gallagher and Lyle and that evening’s headliners, Supertramp. On a cold April night in 1975, Chris de Burgh walked on stage at McGill University in Montreal to a chorus of jeers.

Im in love with a stripper release date