Former drug trafficker turned musician films music video in Barrhead

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

Their song “Runaway”, written by Allan, was entered into a national music competition organised by Spanish radio.

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

“Stormy Waters”, also penned by Allan, was the standout track recorded during this time and became the opening track in a double album compilation.

(Image: Supplied)

Now, more than three decades after this success, Scottish BAFTA Award-winning director Iain Henderson has teamed up with Allan to shoot a video for Runaway, starring the 60-year-old with his guitar in the streets he grew up in.

Speaking of the video, which has racked up “thousands of streams” across platforms, Allan told the Barrhead News: “We decided to keep it quite simple.

“It was recorded live in the jail and it’s so funny that 30 years later there’s a video to it.”

Allan, who is now based in Barrhead after years of living in Spain, used to play in bands in the area as a young teenager.

He moved to Spain after attending Stow College and then Glasgow Tech (now Glasgow Caledonian University) where he booked bands as entertainment manager.

It is there he says his introduction to "the greyer side of life" started.

Following this he began working on doors of clubs and running security for them, as well as organising club nights.

(Image: Supplied)

Eventually, Allan moved to Spain, where he received his jail sentence and a 65 million peseta fine after being busted with a car full of cannabis in the late 1980s.

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

A renowned jazz guitarist, who also ran a music academy, saw Allan at one of the first music workshops in the prison in Murcia and suggested getting a band together to enter the aforementioned radio competition.

(Image: Supplied)

The band’s name came about after they were filmed by a TV crew playing to the women’s prison and then unexpectedly caught sight of themselves on a common room television on the news before a segment about the Berlin Wall coming down.

At that very point, the guards asked what the band was called and they decided on Berlin, later adding the 90 to avoid having the same name as the American band behind the Top Gun song Take My Breath Away.

Amid the band's escalating attention, Allan remembers how they performed songs in the middle of the top 40 show before they had even released a song.

He also explained that prison guards and staff would come and watch their rehearsals and that, perhaps surprisingly, they encountered no jealousy from other prisoners who instead revelled in their success.

(Image: Supplied)

Their dreams of fame and fortune came crashing down, however, when Allan was transferred to Madrid’s notorious Carabanchel prison, which was considered the most dangerous jail in Europe at the time.

“I was supposed to be getting open prison and one minute I was being promised I was going to be a rockstar and get a recording contract but the next I was off to Madrid because they felt I was getting a bit too big for my boots,” explained Allan, who spent the last three months of his jail time in El Dueso in Santander, reportedly Spain’s oldest prison.

Allan’s transfer to Madrid spelled the end of the band and since leaving prison he has forged a career on the right side of the law, selling magazine advertising.

(Image: Sourced)

There has, however, been a resurgence in interest in the band in recent times.

It was all sparked when Spanish DJ Angel Sopeña, who had been a reporter in Murcia when the band were in jail and unbeknown to Allan had been playing their music over the years, reminisced about them in media interviews while celebrating 30 years of his radio show.

By coincidence around this time, Allan finally got his hands on old recordings of the band and after getting in touch with the DJ, interviews with Allan were aired and a double-page spread went out in 32 different Sunday papers in Spain to an audience of 23 million.

Allan with Angel Sopeña (Image: Sourced)

The Runaway video made this summer was released as an exclusive via the website of respected photojournalist Brian Anderson, who is about to publish a new book featuring Allan along with photographs of other personalities.

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

“It’s been surreal”, added Allan. “I can’t believe it. I’m taking the opportunity and I love it."