looks back on record deals, kidnappings, childhood, terror attacks, band breakups and brain tumours in his new memoir, Having first rose to fame as the bassist for influential Scottish dream-pop band Raymonde went on to found one of the UK’s most successful independent labels, Bella Union, which has released albums by artists including Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty, John Grant and Ezra Furman. Speaking to , Raymonde, 62, admitted he’d never considered trying to put his life into a book until he bumped into musician and composer Warren Ellis, who had just completed his own memoir. “I don’t dwell – I’m the sort of person who just gets on with things,” he explained.
“It’s useful in this business, sort of like self-preservation...
I wouldn’t be alive without it, there’s no doubt about that.” He continued: “I think a result of getting older is that I don’t really care what people think about me anymore, because eventually you realise that it’s quite fruitless and there’s not a lot of good to come out of worrying. You just do what you do.
” Raymonde maintained this attitude even as he was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2001, after he suffered sudden hearing loss in one ear. “[Going deaf] felt a bit like when you go swimming and suddenly your ear is blocked but you can’t get the water out. It felt like that.
” After a hearing test, he was sent for an MRI scan, which revealed the tumour on the right side of his brain. Doctors warned that remov.