Stuart Braithwaite

This October we are joined by a founding member of one Scotland's most celebrated and prolific bands, Stuart Braithwaite of the utterly fantastic MOGWAI. Stuart joins us to talk about his debut memoir, Spaceships Over Glasgow; a paean to misspent youth and the salvation of great music and even better company.

Born the son of Scotland's last telescope-maker, Stuart Braithwaite was perhaps always destined for a life of psychedelic adventuring on the furthest frontiers of noise in MOGWAI, one of the best loved and most ground-breaking post-rock bands of the past three decades.

Modestly delinquent at school, Stuart developed an early appetite for 'alternative' music in what might arguably be described as its halcyon days, the late '80s. Discovering bands like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Jesus and Mary Chain, and attending seminal gigs (often incongruously incognito as a young girl with long hair to compensate for his babyface features) by The Cure and Nirvana, Stuart compensated for his indifference to school work with a dedication to rock and roll . . . and of course the fledgling hedonism that comes with it.

Spaceships Over Glasgow is a love song to live rock and roll; to the passionate abandon we've all felt in the crowd (and some of us, if lucky enough, from the stage) at a truly incendiary gig. It is also the story of a life lived on the edge; of the high-times and hazardous pit-stops of international touring with a band of misfits and miscreants.

Stuart Leslie Braithwaite is a Scottish multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter. He is the guitarist of post rock band Mogwai, with whom he has recorded nine studio albums, three live albums, and eight soundtracks for film and television.