Clare Grogan on Altered Images’ enduring success, upcoming Rewind gig and how family always helps keep her feet on the ground

Singer and screen star Clare Grogan is lounging on the sofa of her London home when P.S calls. “I’m looking at outfits online,” she laughs, adding with comic flourish: “A very busy day – hectic, I tell you, hectic!”

Two years ago, at 60, she landed Scotland’s Living Legend award.

But the Glasgow born and bred mum of one – who shot to fame straight out of school, starring in the movie Gregory’s Girl and fronting chart-topping band Altered Images – is clearly not one for taking herself too seriously.

For Clare – who with husband Stephen Lironi, formerly the band’s songwriter, owns three London restaurants – nothing is off the style menu. “I sometimes think, ‘Clare you can’t wear that’, and then I realise I can do anything I want,” she grins.

She’ll be performing with Altered Images at the Rewind Scotland Festival that kicks off at Scone Palace, Perth, on Friday, followed by a string of further appearances throughout the summer, culminating in the band’s October tour to mark the 40th anniversary of its hit album Bite.

Together they have shared global success, selling millions of records which topped the charts in the UK and overseas, recording three Top 10 albums, and landing six UK Top 40 hits.

‘Rewind is all about the big bangers’

Clare – who also has appeared in a string of TV shows and movies like Taggart, EastEnders, Red Dwarf and, most recently, Bafta-award-winning My Old School, alongside Alan Cumming and Lulu – will give the Rewind crowd the band’s “Big Five” – I Could Be Happy, See Those Eyes, Bring Me Closer, Don’t Talk To Me About Love and the iconic Happy Birthday.

“Rewind is all about the big bangers,” says the singer who has been attending for around 10 years. “But for some of the other shows I get to do stuff from the new 2022 album, Mascara Streakz. It did well. I’d had no idea what would happen, and it reignited something.”

Mum to teenage daughter Ellie, she explains how she came up with the title for the album, chuckling: “I love the notion of having a big night out and waking up the next morning with mascara running and having those panda eyes that I’m not sure I should say I am still capable of!

“That’s what these shows are about. A lot of us are still that young person at heart. When you get together there is this shared feeling of emotion. We know we’re not young any more, but my goodness we still know how to have a good time.

“I don’t want to be known as a number or an age, I just want to be known as a person. All of us women are labelled on some level or another. I just wish we could see people as people.”

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Coming “home” to perform, though, is not without its challenges. “Playing Scotland is a big and nerve-wracking moment for me because I never want to let the side down,” she admits.

And it’s emotional. Clare, the youngest of three siblings, with Margaret the oldest, followed by Kathleen, reveals: “My dad was a fish wholesaler in Glasgow’s fish market. He passed away five years ago. He was a huge part of our lives. We would all take a turn staying with him every week and I miss that.

“My mum was a hairdresser, I grew up on the salon floor. She passed away 15 years ago. It can still stop me in my tracks and that’s testament to the fact they were really good parents. They had their views, and their rules, but they had a lot of fun in them as well.

“I lived in a household with three generations of music fans because my grandma lived with us. I grew up with everything from Doris Day and Glenn Miller to the Rolling Stones and Diana Ross and the Supremes. My family had good taste.”

Then she discovered Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees (who she later went on to support) and wanted to be part of that world. It “terrified” her parents.

Joining Altered Images

At that time the boys who were to become Altered Images went to school together and had already set up a band. They were looking for a singer. Clare, who was at the city’s Notre Dame all-girls school was introduced to them by her sister Kathleen. “I was rehearsing away in my bedroom in front of the mirror with a hairbrush, I was ready,” she laughs.

She was just 17 – a couple of years younger than her own daughter, who she adopted at eight months old – when Glasgow-born film director Bill Forsyth spotted her waitressing in the city’s Spaghetti Factory and approached her to be in Gregory’s Girl. Soon after the late BBC Radio One DJ John Peel noticed the band, which led to a contract with Epic Records.

“It was extraordinary how quickly it happened for Altered Images. We went from watching Top Of The Pops to being on it within a year – it was crazy,” she says.

Amazingly, her strict but loving parents gave their blessing. She reveals: “Years later I asked them about that. They said they realised it would be worse if they tried to stop me. It was wise of them.

“I would disappear for weeks on end. We didn’t have mobile phones and I couldn’t afford to use the expensive phones in the hotels, so I’d speak to my mum and dad maybe once a week. It helped that they were very familiar with the boys in the band and their parents.”

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Reliving that time, she recalls: “I was doing a promotional tour of America, and we were staying in the Los Angeles Beverley Wiltshire Hotel, in one of their pool cabanas. In the room next door to me was Prince Philip and on the other side Elizabeth Taylor. I was 20. I just thought it was funny.”

It could have gone to her head but for her family, who she says kept her grounded. “There was no special treatment,” she said. “I would come home from the most extraordinary experience, and it would be ‘there’s a dishwasher to load in that kitchen’ or ‘before you sit down, put your laundry in the washing machine’.”

Ellie has no desire to follow in her mother’s glitzy footsteps, Clare reveals. “She wants to become a teacher. She really cares about young people. I am biased, but Ellie is impressive.

“She thinks about others. She is a very funny, lovely, teenage girl. I am really proud of her – most of the time,” she grins, adding: “Don’t get me started on the mess in her bedroom.”

Her daughter arrived after a heart-rending decade of repeated miscarriages and failed IVF. “Ellie was tiny when my mum died,” she says, “but I am absolutely delighted she got to see me become a mum because it was a really tough road.”

Clare is setting her sights on more acting work next year and hopes to tour the US with her band. She says: “Women of a certain age can be undervalued and made to feel that they are not as relevant as men of a similar age. Rather than moaning about it I thought, ‘I am just getting out there and doing it’.”

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Ocean set to make a big splash

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It’s all happening at Rewind Scotland 2024 with a feast of music and entertainment set against the spectacular backdrop of Perthshire’s Scone Palace.

Friday kicks off at the Pink Flamingo Club with the Edwin Starr Band, with Saturday night headlined by the legendary Billy Ocean.

His specially created Rewind exclusive show will include a big band, gospel choir and special guests. Billy will perform some of his greatest hits like When The Going Gets Tough, Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car, Love Really Hurts Without You and Suddenly.

Joining Billy are Scotland’s own, much-loved Altered Images, who are among other 80s giants like Kim Wilde, Bad Manners and Hue & Cry.

Sunday’s line-up is led by The Boomtown Rats performing I Don’t Like Mondays, Rat Trap, She’s So Modern and other favourite hits.

Also taking to the stage on Sunday will be Cambuslang’s own Midge Ure along with Shakatak, Gabrielle, and Nik Kershaw.

With camping, glamping, funfairs and fireworks, street food and street entertainers, a silent disco, inflatable church, kids’ zone and much more it’s a festival that will hit the high notes and is not to be missed.

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Rewind Scotland at Scone Palace, Perthshire, runs from Friday to Sunday. Find out more information at scotland.rewindfestival.com