Music helped me conquer alcohol and sexual abuse
2025-01-18
Category: entertainment

For Ross Wilson, the release of his sixth album was cause for both celebration and reflection.The record was the best selling yet by the Scottish singer - who performs under the name Blue Rose Code - but it also featured him coming to terms with a troubled past.The Edinburgh native was drinking heavily before he was a teenager, had a mother who struggled with addiction and has been to rehab multiple times.He was also sexually abused as a child - but told BBC Scotland News that he forgives his abuser.  
"It took me a lot of time to come to terms with," he says, discussing the abuse that was carried out by a man who was not a family member."I've had a load of therapy.  What I understand is that people who are abusers have often been abused, and I don't hold any hate in my heart for that man. I wish him well."
Wilson himself is now a father-of-two, and settled in Liverpool. He returns to Scotland on Saturday for the Celtic Connections festival, for a gig at Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre that holds special significance for him.A trip to the festival more than 20 years to see Scottish folk great John Martyn kick-started his own musical ambitions, inspiring him to move to London.His decision to move was also an attempt to start afresh following teenage years where he "barely went to school" and spent his days riding buses around the Scottish capital, listening to old Motown songs on his Walkman.It left him with what he calls "a bent for self-destruction.""I grew up with my mum as a drug addict so she was in and out of jail and rehab," he says. "My gran raised me until my teens, when I went back to my mum. She was clean for a while, but there was no structure or no boundaries."    
'She was smoking crack in my kitchen'
It has only been since his mother's death last year that Wilson has felt able to talk about his background in detail.On last year's Bright Circumstance album he included the song Sadie, a melancholy look at a woman trapped by addiction - written about his mum in the last months of her life.To the end, their relationship remained complex."She got clean when I was around 12 or 13 and I thought she remained that way until I was about 27," he says. "I was living in London and came home one day to find her smoking crack in my kitchen. I didn't know what to do. We have this conventional wisdom that we have an obligation to try again and again but I don't believe blood is thicker than water or anything like that. "I don't know if I'd have done it for myself, but with my kids I had to love her from a distance. In the last few months I took them to see her separately, kind of to say goodbye, and I'm at peace with that. I don't feel any guilt, it was just responsible parenting on my part. "I love her, but, and I know this sounds heartless, it's also a relief not to worry about trouble coming to my door anymore."  
As a teenager, Wilson threw himself into two things - music and alcohol. Both remained with him long after his teenage years had faded away.Musically, his songs dash around alternative folk, jazz, soul and pop, with the spirit of Van Morrison - who he has supported- and John Martyn flowing through them.Martyn's gig on the same Pavilion stage that Wilson will play still brings a smile to the singer's face.  "In 2001 I was on benefits and had no hope of a life. Six of us went through in my little Ford Fiesta to see John Martyn and Danny Thomson [Martyn's collaborator he had fallen out with] reunite. "I'd seen John a number of times and he could be a mess onstage, but that night he was really lucid and you could feel the camaraderie onstage. It just had a really transformative effect on me."
It took years before Wilson's own music truly emerged. After moving to London, and then New York, he struggled with alcohol, which escalated his temper and halted his career."I've never been able to drink safely," he admits. "One was always too many. I started drinking as often as I could from about 12 or 13. You'd go through your pals' parents' drink cabinets and other kids could take it or leave it - with me I was either drinking or thinking about drinking."He entered rehab multiple times, but it wasn't until being left "broken" by a relationship ending that he benefited from help.He took inspiration from the work of the Canadian physician Gabor Maté, who examined the impact of trauma on victims, and from "a vicar on a council estate in Liverpool", who discussed religion and faith with him.Wilson is now a church-goer "of no particular faith".
Bible passage
He recently told BBC Radio's Sunday Mornings show he finds the Bible passage "great is the mystery of faith" particularly inspiring.But music remains at his core, with plans for a seventh record under way and, in a first for him, a play."I've never had chart success but my build has been gradual and what I've had is a real affinity and affection with a core of people," he says. "I guess they identify with my story or the stories I tell. Alcoholism is something that affects all of us, whether first-hand, second-hand or a generational thing. "People often ask do I have any regrets but I don't regret the past or wish to shut the door. I think that these challenges can really help us help other people."   If you've been affected by the issues in this story, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.