Mike Scott

Mike Scott’s ‘Peace of Iona’ 

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“Like being accompanied by an angel.” Iona-lover Mike Scott shares about his special relationship with the sacred Isle of Iona and how he was inspired to write the song ‘Peace of Iona’. Enjoy his song accompanied by beautiful pictures of this magical island.

Mike Scott, singer-songwriter and leader of the famous rock band The Waterboys spent many years living at the Findhorn Foundation Spiritual Community. He was next-door neighbour and close friend to Eileen Caddy, one of the community’s co-founders.

Mike has visited our retreat house Traigh Bhan on the sacred Isle of Iona on the West Coast of Scotland many times and shares with us his memories of a very special stay on Iona at midsummer 1994, which inspired him to write the song Peace of Iona.

He says there is a presence on Iona that feels “like being accompanied by an angel.”

Clouds at sunrise near the Findhorn Foundaiton’s retreat house Traigh Bhan

“I remember Iona being spoken about in hushed terms as a child as Scotland’s sacred island.  My grandmother was from Mull and knew all about Iona.  I remember the “o” sound in the name being stretched out as if it contained vastnesses.  I didn’t visit myself until I was 29 years old, the first of many visits over a twelve year period.  I was touched by the atmosphere on the island, and explored all over it on my various visits (many of them on my own).

On one of my early visits I could feel another presence in my head, like a different spiritual wavelength, or like being accompanied by an angel.  I’ve had that feeling other times since on Iona too.  I wrote the song Peace Of Iona in 1994 during a visit at midsummer.  I knew the St Patrick’s poem about “deep peace of the running waves” but I wrote my own lyrics, based on my own experiences.

I remember writing it down in the guest book in Traigh Bhan that summer, though I probably fine-tuned the words later, before finally recording it in 2003.  My last visit to Iona was in 2001, and there is no reason I haven’t returned since other than schedules and being busy, but I carry the spark of Iona inside me.  It never leaves.”

Source: Mike Scott’s ‘Peace of Iona’ — Findhorn Foundation

The Waterboys new record “Life, Death, and Dennis Hopper”

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The most audacious Waterboys album yet, Life, Death And Dennis Hopper is the epic story of the trailblazing American actor and rebel told through a song cycle depicting not only Hopper’s story but the saga of the last 75 years of western pop culture.

“The arc of his life was the story of our times,” says bandleader Mike Scott, “He was at the big bang of youth culture in Rebel Without A Cause with James Dean; and the beginnings of pop art with the young Andy Warhol. He was part of the counter-culture, hippie, civil rights and psychedelic scenes of the ’60s. In the ’70s and ’80s he went on a wild 10-year rip, almost died, came back, got straight and became a five-movies-a-year character actor without losing the sparkle in his eye or the sense of danger or unpredictability that always gathered around him.”

Scott worked for four years on the album, which spans 25 tracks and traces the extraordinary arc of Hopper’s life, from his youth in Kansas to his long rise, five wives, tumultuous fall, and ultimate redemption. Says Scott: “It begins in his childhood, ends the morning after his death, and I get to say a whole lot along the way, not just about Dennis, but about the whole strange adventure of being a human soul on planet Earth.