Colin McClelland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Colin McClelland (born 1944) is a retired journalist, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

He worked briefly as a library assistant and shipping clerk before taking up a full-time job with a rock club, The Marquee in Belfast, in 1968.

He became a pop columnist for various magazines, including New Musical Express, around 1970. Colin later managed a Northern Ireland pop group called Chips. He went on to enter mainstream journalism as a reporter and feature writer with the Belfast Sunday News, during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He was later promoted to Chief Sub-Editor of that newspaper, where he also wrote a weekly column.

In 1977 Colin entered into correspondence with a singer and guitar player called Jake Burns, who was trying to promote his band Stiff Little Fingers.

Colin later took his friend and fellow journalist Gordon Ogilvie to see the band perform live, and afterwards the two became first publicists, then managers, of SLF. The band and Ogilvie and McClelland set up a company called Rigid Digits, based at Colin's home in Sharman Road, Stranmillis, Belfast, to promote and manage the band.

Through his contacts in the recording business in Ireland, Colin set up facilities for the recording and pressing of the band's first single "Suspect Device", and with Ogilvie, dealt with the promotion and distribution of the single. They also handled live gigs for the band, where major record label A&R men were invited to see them play.

After the release of the first album, Inflammable Material, and the negotiations with Chrysalis for the band's first major recording contract, Colin sold his sixth share in Rigid Digits to the other partners. He had already moved to Dublin with his family, and there went on to further his career in journalism, becoming the editor and director of Ireland's Sunday World newspaper. He retired from newspapers in 1994, at the age of 50, and now runs a media management company.