From Page to Stage: A Bestselling Author's Dramatic Pivot
Sprawled on the cold, hard floor of an airport, a middle-aged man lay bleeding. As crimson stained the concrete from a wound on his face, he looked up to find himself staring down the barrels of guns wielded by heavily armed guards. This wasn't a scene from one of the gripping crime novels that made him a household name; for Scottish author Peter May, this was the unsettling real-life moment that convinced him his life needed to change.
The Airport Incident That Forced a Change
The 73-year-old writer, whose books have sold an astonishing more than 16 million copies worldwide, has revealed he has effectively retired from writing to focus on a surprising new chapter. While brutal murder won him legions of fans and countless literary awards, the celebrated crime writer is now channelling his energies into an entirely different passion: music.
On December 4, he will release his first album, a collection of songs touching on deeply personal themes including grief after the loss of a friend and his father's battle with dementia. Speaking from the recording studio in his home in south west France, the bestselling author admitted that although releasing the album realises a long-delayed ambition dating back to his teenage years, he feels vulnerable revealing so much more of himself in lyrics than he ever did in his novels.
He is also anxious about whether the crime aficionados who devour his books will appreciate his songs. "These songs come from the same place as my novels – a curiosity about what it means to be human, how we deal with change, loss, and love," May explained. "But writing lyrics is a very different skill to writing prose."
A Lifelong Passion for Music Finally Takes Centre Stage
May's love of music was almost killed off before it properly began. Born in Glasgow in 1951, he began piano lessons aged five. "I sat in a darkened front room with a music teacher who rapped me across the knuckles with a ruler every time I played my scales wrong," he recalled. "I absolutely hated it."
Under a less brutal tutor, he learned classical piano but was forced to perform for his parents' friends. "Aged 10," he said, "my pals were playing football, but I was sitting in the front room, freezing in front of a two-bar fire practising Schubert. I really wasn't interested."
The emergence of The Beatles in the early 1960s changed his life completely, leading him to learn guitar and form a band with friends. By sixth year at school, he was playing four or five nights a week at venues across Scotland and northern England – paying so little attention to his studies that he was eventually expelled.
After a brief civil service job, a 16-year-old May and his bandmates left home in an abortive bid for rock and roll stardom, leaving a farewell note on his pillow before heading for London. Sleeping rough in parks, the band busked at Tube stations to raise money for food while trying – in vain – to find an agent.
After this episode, which features in his semi-autobiographical novel Runaway, May returned to Scotland and shelved his musical dreams, working through the 1970s and 80s first as a journalist then as a TV scriptwriter while continuously writing books before eventually becoming a full-time author.
The Personal Stories Behind the Songs
In 2019, he built a recording studio in his French home where he has now created his first album, 'Towards the Light'. The heartfelt title track is written from the perspective of his father Les suffering from dementia.
May explained: "He was an English teacher and headmaster with a genius IQ of 168. But in his 70s as the illness took hold, he couldn't spell even the simplest words. He was aware of what was happening to him - he was so frustrated." Although his father's dementia helped shape a character in his best-seller The Lewis Man, it plays a far more personal role in this new song.
"When my mother refused to look after him any more, he became my responsibility," May shared. "In the nearly two years that I looked after him, I had a very poignant insight into his state of mind. The song relates his experiences, from losing his ability to write, to the death of his relationship with my mother. It also recounts one of the most emotional moments of my life. Like many Scottish men of his generation he didn't readily express his feelings. Then one day he told me for the first time that he loved me."
In another song called 'I Wasn't There', May reflects on his grief over the death of his lifelong friend Stephen, who had also been one of his teenage bandmates. Interestingly, May revealed he maintains a more lasting emotional connection to his songs than to his novels. "With a book, once I've written it, I don't re-read it," he said. "But with a piece of music, you listen to it again and again - and it has the same impact every time."
Over the past 30 years, May has published more than 30 novels, including his best-selling China Thrillers series, the Enzo Files and the Lewis Trilogy, which depicts gruesome murder in the Outer Hebrides. Although music has always been a huge part of his life, the demands of being an author meant playing guitar and keyboards remained just a hobby.
That all changed after the airport episode, which persuaded him to set novels aside to concentrate on songwriting. "I was spending six months writing a book, then six months promoting it," he said. "I was travelling all over Europe, the US, Australia, living life on the wing, staying in a different hotel every night. It was exhausting."
One particularly gruelling weekend saw him flying to Italy, then to Scotland, then back to France. "I was racing towards passport control when I tripped on a baggage strap and fell straight onto my face," he recounted. "As my glasses smashed onto the floor they made a cracking sound like a gunshot – which is exactly what the guards thought it was. I was lying there, bleeding onto the concrete, when I saw them running towards me with their weapons drawn. I suddenly realised I'd had enough."
"Since then, I've stopped accepting contracts for new books: I've effectively retired," May confirmed. "It's not to say I'll never write again, but it would have to be an idea that really smacks me in the face – like that airport floor! In the meantime, I've been doing the things I haven't had time for since I got involved in writing and promoting a book a year for the last 30 years... And the most important is my music."
'Towards the Light' by The Peter May Band is out now on Spotify, Apple Music and 21 other streaming platforms. 'Runaway' by Peter May is published by Quercus.
