AS we meet over a Zoom call, the first thing I notice about Graeme Armstrong is his smile, how contagious and lively it is – just like his debut novel, The Young Team.
Armstrong stopped using drugs on Christmas Day, 2012. He began writing The Young Team as he was going through his first weeks of withdrawal. He felt lonely, so his debut novel became the companion he desperately needed and towards which he redirected all of his energy.
“I started writing it when I had just stopped taking drugs and I was trying to remove myself from my old life. To be honest, I was socially distant – I was on my own for the first time after living a really communal life,” says Armstrong.
After writing down three words on a page – The Young Team – he found the story he wanted to tell: one of addiction, anxiety, bravado, and social commentary.
Armstrong grew up in Airdrie, in North Lanarkshire. From his early teens, he was engaged in gangs in the local community.
When novelists write books that hit close to home, they tend to remind their audience it’s purely fictional. Unlike some, Armstrong is quick to point out that even though The Young Team is a fiction novel, he spent many years living the life of Azzy Williams, whom he describes as a mouthpiece through which he told parts of his own story.
Set in post-industrial Scotland and written in Scots, the novel tells the story of Azzy, a 14-year-old member of The Young Team, a Lanarkshire gang. Azzy would do anything for his brothers – they pull each other out of awful situations and have an unbreakable bond which was forged initially through drink, drugs, gangs, and raves. In The Young Team, Azzy constantly finds himself altercating with the rival gang, The Young Toi.
Like his protagonist, Armstrong has a tendency to look back on life. He regrets that, as an adult, there’s not always room for adventure.
“I think we rob ourselves of a childhood. I think it’s a massive part of Azzy’s character – he’s always looking back. It’s quite mystical in a lot of ways. Sometimes I read it back, and it surprises me. It’s quite childlike.”
Every time Armstrong thinks about his own Young Team, he feels a pullback. He remembers a time “when our spirits wur unbroken n our hearts were still on fire”.
Armstrong fears nostalgia may be dangerous in some ways. “I think the years have passed me by. I’ve been living in the past with the Young Team, and not really embracing my current life,” he says.
In a previous interview, the author admitted that as a teenager, he was desperate to grow up. After turning 31 in June, is there something Armstrong would say to his 14-year-old self?
“Slow down,” he repeats a few times, as if he is still trying to convince himself. “The years will tumble away without any assistance from us. I think everybody thinks it’s going to go on forever. I think a lot of people have a lot more stable years, and they can say: I did this when I was young.”
We are all shaped by our early experiences, particularly our relationships and the community we grow up in. According to Armstrong, for “people like him”, experiences are mostly dwelled into negativity. He compares it to “wee cracks where the lights get through”, perhaps in reference to Leonard Cohen’s Anthem.
Armstrong thinks working-class representation could be expanded in literature. However, he feels the industry is laden with assumptions that working-class writers have a unique responsibility to represent the hardships of working-class culture.
“I know other writers that might not have been involved in drugs and gangs – not only people like myself can write working-class books.”
ARMSTRONG wonders why the story can’t just be about somebody who works in a shop, “an everyday hero”. He regrets that the “working class is always viewed as a specimen rather than just a slice of life.”
“I think that’s why the extremes get through,” he says, mentioning both The Young Team and Trainspotting. “It tends to be trauma, to be the same trajectory, an exodus of going through a life and its transition from your community. A place of being trapped and sent on a magic flight to an unknown beyond.
“Even if you do well, knowing where to go next is difficult, and you don’t always feel at home.”
Sitting at his desk in his current London flat, Armstrong says he’s still trying to figure it all out as he is about to start his PhD at the University of Strathclyde.
At the end of The Young Team, Armstrong kept things ambiguous about where Azzy went. “The message wasn’t about Azzy, it’s the fact he escaped. He was brave enough to go somewhere and take a step into the unknown, a leap of faith.”
Armstrong says going to these places is never easy, and you don’t always get a warm welcome.
Reading Trainspotting was one of the defining moments of Armstrong’s life, a reference present in the book: Azzy Williams has a Trainspotting poster on his wall.
Recently, Armstrong shared “a moment” on social media as The Young Team will be part of the list for the Scottish higher curriculum, and lots of teachers are picking it up. A full circle moment for the author, who failed his first higher exam after writing about Trainspotting.
According to Armstrong, women his age said he didn’t have a clue what the lassies of The Young Team were going through. “I’m like, you’re right because I was 14,” he laughs.
Armstrong would love to read the female version of The Young Team. “I think their experience is as dangerous for gender violence reasons. Women were in gangs; it wasn’t just a masculine thing.”
After the success of his debut novel, Armstrong embarked on a new book: Raveheart. “I asked myself: how did I get involved in all that dance music stuff?”
He smiles at the memory of his teenage self. “My first exposure was the local ice disco, with the ice-skating rink, time travel themed. We used to listen to dance music and skate around the ring, and I was thinking to myself who plays the tunes in that place?”
That’s how he came up with Raveheart. Part political, part comedy, his next novel tells the dystopian story of a group of ravers facing the ban of what they love most.
Armstrong hopes to see his next creative venture published next year, but for now :“It’s in the hands of the gods.”
Sadly, it’s time to wrap up our conversation. I ask him who he’d like to go to a rave with. After pondering for a minute, he names his heroes: Tupac Shakur, Biggie – and Mallorca Lee, “I love the guy, I just think he encapsulates the madness.”
On that note, Armstrong ends the interview like it started, with a contagious grin on his face.
