Flashback: Belle & Sebastian at Roseland Theater, Sept. 11, 2001

By CRIS LANKENAU

In 2001, the Glaswegian indie-pop group Belle and Sebastian went on a brief tour of the West Coast. It was the band’s first official trip to the States. At that time, B&S was still relatively unknown here aside from a small army of devoted fans, none of whom would think it strange to traverse the length of the country to see a rare live appearance, which is exactly what I’d done to see its show at Roseland Theater when I was 19—a show that just happened to fall on Sept. 11. 

“We’d just come from San Francisco,” says Stevie Jackson, the band’s guitarist. “I have this memory in my mind now of seeing the sunset from those two hills, the Twin Peaks, and just imagining that that was the last day of…I don’t know, innocence?” After waking up and hearing about what had happened in New York, Jackson says he and the band were entirely in agreement about what to do next. “I just remember thinking, we had to play. I really had this feeling that the best thing we could do, the only thing we could do that would somehow be useful, was to play.” 


The band opened with Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!” after frontman Stuart Murdoch made a brief speech. “I was glad that Stuart said something beforehand,” Jackson recalls. “We knew it would be vulgar not to address what had happened, you know? We wanted to do something that was useful. I imagine there were a lot of people with tickets who didn’t come, and I’d hate to think they would be somehow offended, but I don’t think that’s how it was received.” That evening, the band played a brand-new song titled “Portland, Oregon,” which Jackson had written specifically for the gig, earlier in the day. “We’d only just learned it,” he says. “I showed it to the band at sound check, and everyone liked it, but really that was the only time, aside from maybe one other occasion that it was played, so it really was a special thing.” 

SEE IT: Belle and Sebastian plays Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., with Perfume Genius, on Thursday, April 9. 8 pm. Sold out. All ages.

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