ONLY a week ago in a Selkirk grocery Ron Hutchison was reminded once again of the influence of his late son Scott. Hutchison was talking to a young woman who had just returned from South Africa, and she told him about meeting a young American professor while she was there.
The professor asked her where she came from and when she said Selkirk he then asked if she knew the band Frightened Rabbit.
“They helped me through bad times,” the professor then told her. “I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for their music.”
“That happens so many times,” Hutchison said yesterday as he sat with his wife Marion and his sons Neil and Grant, who was also a member of Frightened Rabbit, in the National Portrait Gallery.
Today, a portrait of Scott, who took his own life in May last year, will go on public display today for the first time. The family gathered yesterday to see it unveiled.
The photograph, taken in 2014 by Welsh photographer Ryan McGoverne, is an image of the Frightened Rabbit front man onstage at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh when he was supporting the poet Michael Pederson. It sits alongside portraits of Annie Lennox and Alan Cumming.
“He’d be delighted to be next to these two,” his mother Marion said, looking along the wall. “He grew up listening to the Eurythmics, whether he liked it or not.”
Starting in 2006 Frightened Rabbit released five albums and grew to be a cult live act on the back of Scott Hutchison’s charismatic stage performances and the intensity of his song writing. Today, Ron Hutchison is wearing the shirt he wore when he first saw his son’s band onstage in The Arlington Bar in Glasgow nearly 15 years ago. “To be honest I thought he’d be better sticking to his illustrations.”
“He’d got a first-class degree from Glasgow School of Art,” Marion added. “We went to see his degree show and he said: ‘Well, that’s it. That’s the art finished with. And he produced these awful scratchy tapes we had to listen to.”
The scratchy tapes were the start of a unique career, one that reached fans that other bands didn’t speak to. In his lyrics and interviews Scott Hutchison was open and honest about his struggles with his mental health. It made the band a touchstone for many young people who themselves were going through similar situations.
“It’s a testament to him as a human being,” Scott’s brother Grant believes. “The band allowed him to reach those people. It was the vehicle. But really it was him. The guy on the stage and the guy in the pub were pretty much the same person.”
Since his death last year his family have launched a charity Tiny Changes in his memory to support efforts to improve mental health in children and young people. It has already raised somewhere in the region of £300,000. A gig in support of the charity will be held at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh in January.
“The response has been overwhelming,” Marion said. “We launched the charity on the anniversary of Scott’s death. We were still grieving. We still are. But people just wanted some connection.”
They are hoping they can help those who aren't as lucky as they have been.
“We as a family have had the most amazing support because of Scott,” Marion added. “That’s not the case with most people who are in our situation.”
The National Portrait Gallery were first approached by Scott’s friend Michelle Fisher with the idea of adding a photograph of Scott to the collection. Now, Imogen Gibbon, deputy director and chief curator of Portraiture, hopes that McGoverne’s photograph can become a nexus for Frightened Rabbit fans.
“It’s a place where fans can come and spend time with him. New fans as well. That’s really important – for new people to discover his work, his life, his songs and his writing and his lyrics.”
The family are both thrilled and proud that Scott has now found a place in the national collection. But inevitably it is tinged with sadness too. “Today is wonderful,” Ron Hutchison concluded, “but it’s quite hard because it’s yet another reminder that he’s not here and that to me is the crucial part.”
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