When the London-based PR firm called Dougie Adam to say he could spend an hour with RICKY ROSS over coffee the following day he literally dropped everything and set off to meet one of his musical heroes.

DA: Had you been under any pressure from the record company to try and get more hits or better album sales after 'Raintown' had sold slowly and a couple of singles just made it into the Top 40?

RR: No. We were never put under any pressure. The only pressure we had came from ourselves. It was me that wanted to have some singles, and wanted to make a singles-based album. I thought that would be a fun exercise in popdom, but funnily enough they weren't huge singles either. We never had a number one single; most of them made the top 20 if we were lucky.

DA: The next album 'Fellow Hoodlums' saw you dealing with some spiritual issues again on songs like "Your Swaying Arms", "Cover From The Sky" and "One Day I'll Go Walking". How did those songs come about?

RR: (Laughs) It's too long ago! 'Fellow Hoodlums' was a very rooted album, it was placed specifically within Glasgow, and there were lots of love songs and a lot of stuff about location and a lot of it was made here as well. It was all part of that thing and that time. It was also an album where the main attempt with that record was to get the band playing back in the studio, really enjoying doing what we were doing. It was a really good time to be in the band. We had great fun making the record with Jon Kelly. My disappointment with it now is really with myself. I was a bit pig-headed about the album. I had this running order of these 12 songs being "the songs". Actually, looking back on it, I think we should have cast it wider. I had loads of songs and I think we could have had one or two better songs on it I reckon.

DA: When it came out it seemed like you were also turning your back on the "When The World Knows Your Name" sound and stadium and arena sized gigs.

RR: There was definitely an attempt to say, "Look, we don't want to make that highly polished [sound]." Warne Livesey produced 'When The World Knows Your Name' and everything was very neat and we had used click tracks, etc. This one was more trying just to be live in the studio and do our own thing, and also to encourage the band just to play, to go in and express themselves in the studio and really just play their hearts out and that in a sense is the great thing about it. It was a Deacon Blue album and everyone got to be the best at what they could be.

DA: On the Fellow Hoodlums tour I remember you covering "Every Grain Of Sand" by Bob Dylan and for me personally it was a moment where I thought, "I really need to check out whoever wrote this song!"

RR: Oh really! That's one of my favourite songs. Where did you see that?

DA: It was in the concert hall in Glasgow. I remember being in the audience and being amazed by the words and sound of the song that night.

RR: It's nice to think that a song has that effect. It's one of the best songs. Funnily, when you hear the original recording it almost passes you by. I had heard the original and I realised it had passed me by and then I heard the version on the Bootleg Series which is beautiful with the dog barking in the background and I always admire that 'cos my dog's always barking on my demos (laughs).

DA: Your last full album with Deacon Blue before you split seemed like another big deliberate change of direction again.

RR: I think the trouble is that Deacon Blue always had three albums in them. I'm not sure they had four albums in them. And I think that at that point it felt like someone needed to come in. It wasn't a case of just leaving everyone in a room and they'd come up with the album. I find that quite difficult. I thought the only way round it was to bring in someone else to produce it and of course eventually realised when it takes someone else to come in and do that maybe what's the point in having a band anyway? You don't really need a band to make an album. If that band has its own sound then good enough and Deacon Blue were kind of. we didn't know where we were going. And then I found it really easier latterly to be making demos in the house and I found it difficult to say, "Do we really need all these backing vocals from Lorraine? Do we need everyone to play on every track?" Sometimes it just needs simple stuff. So that was really the point of departure.

DA: Around half that album came across as being quite "up" in terms of being inspired by life and celebrating birth and then the other half had songs like "Your Town", "Hang Your Head" and "Cut Lip" where the mood seemed angrier or despairing.

RR: Yeah it was. They were the kind of songs that I don't write very much. I find it difficult. "Your Town" is probably the only one that has managed to be good. It's very difficult to write an angry song and for it to be good. It can be a bit clumsy really. I think "Your Town" is one of the better ones. It has a real venom to it, which at that time it was coming up to the 1992 General Election and we had had three Tory governments and everyone was really sick, fed up with them and it was that sort of political song. Any time I have come close to doing that since then it just hasn't happened at all.