"People chucked pesetas at us, bottles, you name it": How Gun survived Spanish crowds, an X-rated video and that "strange cookie" from INXS, then hit the bullseye again

Gun studio portrait.

Giuliano ‘Jools’ Gizzi still remembers Gun’s first time on Top Of The Pops. It was August 1989, and their debut single Better Days had charted. Young Glaswegian upstarts in ripped denim and biker jackets, Gun were in seventh heaven – especially when meeting former Prince & The Revolution stars Wendy & Lisa, who were on the show with their solo hit Satisfaction. “I said to Wendy: ‘Can I shake the hand that’s touched Prince?’” Jools recalls, smiling. “She said: ‘Sure. You can shake the hand that’s slapped him a few times as well!’” 

There was a touch of happenstance about this Prince-themed exchange, for Gun’s Better Days had actually been inspired by him. “Yeah, we’d been listening to Prince a lot,” says singer Dante Gizzi, Jools’s younger brother by eight years. “The verse of Better Days owes a lot to Mountains, off his album Parade.”