Bruce Watson

Bruce William Watson (born March 11, 1961) is a Canadian-born Scottish guitarist, best known for being a member of Big Country.

Watson was born in Timmins, Ontario, Canada. He moved with his family to Scotland as an infant. He grew up in the Dunfermline area nearby to Stuart Adamson,

Prior to joining Big Country, Watson had worked at Rosyth naval base cleaning nuclear submarines. He had also been a lead guitarist of several Fife-based bands including the Delinquents and Eurosect. It was during this time, that Watson first met Stuart Adamson, as the Delinquents acted as a support act for The Skids in their early days. One of Watson's bandmates Raymond Davidson was the brother of Sandra Davidson, Adamson's future wife.

Watson and Adamson were the two founding members of Big Country in summer 1981, after Adamson departed The Skids. After several lineup changes, the pair were joined by Tony Butler and Mark Brzezicki in early 1982, and the band went on to have considerable success.

Watson's role in the band was primarily as a supporting guitarist. He typically contributed rhythmic textures ("Wonderland", "Lost Patrol") and repetitive melodic fills ("In a Big Country", "Look Away") which underpinned verses, contrasting with Stuart Adamson's more straightforward chord work in these sections. During solos, as Adamson played the main melody, Watson often contributed a counter-melody. Watson also played slide guitar on some of the band's early material, including "Rain Dance" and "Red Fox." Later on, Adamson played much of the slide guitar work on the band's songs. Watson is also an accomplished mandolin player, and put this skill to use on several of Big Country's more country and western-influenced songs, including "Broken Heart (Thirteen Valleys)".

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.