Former drug dealer and current musician shoots music video in Barrhead

Allan McCarthy started “Berlin 90” with fellow inmates in Sangonera prison in Murcia during his six-and-a-half-year sentence.

Her song “Runaway”, written by Allan, was submitted to a national music competition broadcast by Spanish radio.

The group then surprised everyone by winning the opportunity to leave prison under armed guard to visit a recording studio.

“Stormy Waters”, also written by Allan, was the standout track of the period and became the opening track of a double album compilation.

(Image: provided)

Now, more than three decades after that success, BAFTA Award-winning Scottish director Iain Henderson has teamed up with Allan to make a video for “Runaway,” which sees the 60-year-old marching through the streets of his childhood with his guitar.

Of the video, which garnered “thousands of streams” across platforms, Allan said: “We decided to keep it very simple.

“It was recorded live in prison and it's so funny that there's a video of it 30 years later.”

Allan, who now lives in Barrhead after spending many years in Spain, played in bands in the area as a young teenager.

After attending Stow College and then Glasgow Tech (now Glasgow Caledonian University), he moved to Spain, where he worked as an entertainment manager booking bands.

According to him, this is where his introduction to the “grayer side of life” began.

He then began working on club doors, providing security and organizing club nights.

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Eventually, Allan moved to Spain, where he was sentenced to prison and fined 65 million pesetas in the late 1980s after being caught with a car full of cannabis.

He spent the first 18 days after his arrest in a “dungeon,” sleeping on a thick blanket on a paved floor.

A renowned jazz guitarist, who also ran a music academy, saw Allan at one of the first music workshops in Murcia prison and suggested putting together a band to participate in the radio contest mentioned above.

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The band name came about after they were filmed by a television crew playing outside the women's prison and then unexpectedly appeared on television in a common room on the news before a report about the fall of the Berlin Wall was shown.

It was at this point that the guards asked for the name of the band and they settled on “Berlin”. They later added the 90 to avoid having the same name as the American band behind the Top Gun song “Take My Breath Away”.

Allan remembers that amidst the increasing attention the band was receiving, they were playing songs in the middle of the Top 40 show before they had even released a song.

He also explained that prison guards and staff came to the rehearsals and that, perhaps surprisingly, they did not feel any envy from the other inmates, who instead rejoiced in their success.

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However, their dreams of fame and fortune were shattered when Allan was transferred to Madrid's notorious Carabanchel prison, which was then considered the most dangerous prison in Europe.

“I was supposed to go to an open prison and one minute they were promising me I would become a rock star and get a record deal, but the next they were flying me to Madrid because they felt I was overconfident,” explained Allan, who spent the last three months of his sentence in El Dueso in Santander, reputedly the oldest prison in Spain.

Allan's transfer to Madrid meant the end of the band and since his release from prison he has built a career on the right side of the law, selling magazine adverts.

(Image: Source)

Recently, however, there has been renewed interest in the band.

The trigger was that Spanish DJ Angel Sopeña, who had worked as a reporter in Murcia when the band was in prison and who, unbeknownst to Allan, had played their music over the years, reminisced about them in media interviews on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his radio show.

By chance, Allan finally came across old recordings of the band at this time and after contacting the DJ, interviews with Allan were broadcast and a double page spread was sent to an audience of 23 million people in 32 different Sunday newspapers in Spain.

Allan with Angel Sopeña (Image: Source)

The Runaway video, shot over the summer, was released exclusively on the website of renowned photojournalist Brian Anderson, who will soon be releasing a new book featuring Allan and photos of other personalities.

Brian, who has photographed everyone from Mohammed Ali to Jon Bon Jovi, Prince and Oasis, was the last to photograph the late Amy Winehouse.

“It was surreal,” Allan added. “I can't believe it. I'm embracing the opportunity and I'm loving it.”