Bobby Gillespie delight as Primal Scream to perform at Glasgow Park where he played football

The band will head north to perform two homecoming gigs on Friday and Saturday night in Queen’s Park on the city’s Southside, days after they wowed the crowds at this year's Glastonbury festival.

A big top with the same capacity as a football pitch has been created for the sold-out shows on the site of the park’s former recreation grounds.

Gillespie, 61, who lives in lives in London with his wife, fashion stylist Katy England, and two sons said it was a “fantastic feeling” to be playing a gig in one of his childhood haunts.

He said: “When we were kids in the 1970s we’d say 'meet you at the Recs'( Queens Park Recreation grounds ) for a game of football.

“Of if it was pitch and put or if Wimbledon was on [we would meet] for tennis [and say] see you doon the Queenie”.

“Now, Primal Scream are playing a gig there - it’s a fantastic feeling”.

Mark Mackie, head of promoters Regular Music said it was the first time a concert “of this scale” had been held in the park.

He said: “Big tops are really good fun, you have the idea of the circus rolling into town.

“Also in Scotland it’s very practical because it could rain and sometimes it’s only the last ten minutes of a concert where it’s dark enough to enjoy the lights."

Site manager Graeme Beattie added: “We were looking at Cathkin Park but this one seemed to work best with the council.

“To be honest, it’s a great site for doing concerts on as you’ve got level ground.

“There are a lot of logistical challenges in trying to make sure you are keeping the local residents happy and that’s one of our key things is making sure we keep the park open whilst we are building an events site.

“We’ve got security on 24 hours a day to make sure no one is getting themselves into any danger.”

Bobby Gillespie spent his early years living in Springburn before the family later moved to Mount Florida where he attended Kings Park Secondary School.

His father is Bob Gillespie, a former union official and Labour Party candidate in the 1988 Govan by-election, which was won by the Scottish National Party’s Jim Sillars.

Best known as the founding member, and primary lyricist of Primal Scream, he also played drums for The Jesus and Mary Chain in the mid-1980s and prior to that worked as a roadie for the band Altered Images.

In October 2021, he published his memoir Tenement Kid to critical acclaim.

He writes fondly about football saying happy times on the Boys Brigade football team taught him the value of teamwork and organisation, while Jock Stein’s strategy in the 1967 European Cup influenced Primal Scream’s approach to playing live, where every gig should be “a commando raid on the soul”.

Former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker joined kilted Scots to watch Primal Scream perform on the John Peel stage on the first night of last weekend’s Glastonbury festival.

A full gospel choir was brought on for one of the band’s biggest hits, Come Together, from the album Screamadelica, which turned 30 last year.

It was released on September 23, 1991, and went on to become one of the most-loved albums of the decade.

Much of the album’s production was handled by acid house DJ Andrew Weatherall and engineer Hugo Nicolson, who remixed original recordings made by the band into dance tracks.