P/M Ian McLellan 1937-2025

Ian McLellan, probably the greatest pipe major in the history of pipe bands, has passed away peacefully at his home in Bearsden near Glasgow. He was 88 and had been in indifferent health for several months.

Ian led the Strathclyde Police Pipe Band to twelve Grade 1 World Championships, six of them in consecutive years. He secured his first title in 1976 and his last in 1991. He was also a champion solo piper winning most of the top awards for light music at Oban and Inverness.

His playing was characterised by solid technique and impeccable phrasing (he excelled at 2/4 marches) and everything had to be performed on a crisp, accurate instrument. This he drilled into his pipers, melding both accomplished and middle order players into Worlds winners.

In this he was aided by his leading drummer Alex Connel both graduates from the 214th Co. BB Pipe Band conveyor belt of excellence. Winning one Worlds is a huge achievement. Winning 12 with a motley crew of skilled and not so skilled players, all serving police officers, whipping them into shape by your own strength of personality and skill, takes P/M Ian McLellan to another level.

There was no piping in his immediate family, though his grandfather’s cousin was John MacLellan of Dunoon, the famous composer and piper. During WW2 Ian’s father Neill had the good fortune to work beside Alex Ibell and Joe King at the Dumbarton aircraft works building the Sunderland flying boat. Both Alex and Joe were tutors with the 214.

Ian’s family were bombed out of their home during the Clydebank Blitz and went to live at his father’s uncle’s farm at Shandon on Loch Long. They were there until 1947 and Alex Ibell, a keen cyclist, was a regular visitor, ostensibly to pick fruit for his wife’s jam making, but also to teach young Ian. ‘He arrived one day with a Logan’s tutor and a practice chanter for me. I was probably about nine at the time,’ said Ian.

Ian received great encouragement from his father and when the family moved back to Clydebank he was able to attend Alex’s home in Whiteinch, further along the River Clyde towards Glasgow, for further lessons. He remembered: ‘I was a glutton for practice. I was always on the practice chanter. When I started working, I served my time as a toolmaker and I used to cycle home to Linnvale, Clydebank, at lunchtime every day, have something to eat, and then get on the chanter and cycle back to work.

‘The grounding I got in the 214 was, in my estimation, second to none. Technique was everything, and Alex Ibell may not have been the best piper in the world, but by God he could teach. He knew what was right and what was wrong and he emphasised  that every movement had to be correct. I was a year on scales before he would let us near a tune and my first was Lord Lovat’s Lament, the first tune in the Logan’s Tutor. All the rudiments had to be off note perfect before you got near a tune.’

Ian  joined the Boys Brigade when he was 12 and his tutors became P/M Alex MacIver and Joe King. He competed in BB solos but in the other amateur events didn’t do well. Of these days Ian said: ‘Obviously I wasn’t good enough, but you were coming up against boys like Kenny MacDonald and Iain MacFadyen who were steeped in it.

‘I was just a raw boy. I didn’t even have a kilt. I was lucky with pipes because the ones I have now, the coccus wood set, were bought from Joe King by my father and they cost £15. They had belonged to a man Willie Francie who had bought them in 1928 at MacRaes brand new. With the modern pitch I had to change the bass bottom. The first one I got from Bob Hardie and that made a huge difference. Then I got another from Sinclairs and that was even better.

‘I didn’t always play them in the solos because every now and then I could borrow Joe King’s pipes. In fact most of the big prizes I won at Oban and Inverness came when I was playing Joe’s pipes. They were a magnificent set.’

Ian enjoyed many successful years in the 214 band (winning major titles consistently including in the adult grades). He did National Service in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders under P/M Andrew Pitkeathly where he received further expert tuition. From the Army he joined the City of Glasgow Police where he came under the wing of P/M Ronald Lawrie. Ian impressed the pipe major to such an extent that he eventually became Pipe Sergeant of the band. Ronnie also encouraged Ian to compete in solo competition.

‘I never thought of myself as being an exceptionally great player, until Ronnie gave me the confidence,’ said Ian. ‘He told me I was as good as anyone out there. He said that one of the things I did have which a lot of the competitors didn’t, was a good bagpipe.’

‘Later, when I was setting up my own instrument for the solos big Ronnie taught me to be very conscious of note intervals in the chanter. If you don’t get these intervals right your drones are never going to stay steady all the way up the scale of the chanter. Well I said if that was the philosophy for solos it was my philosophy for setting up a band.’

When Ronnie retired in 1972 Ian took over the band and after four years they began to figure in the major prizelists. Police forces in Scotland at that time had undergone amalgamation and the City of Glasgow Police were joined with Lanarkshire Police and Renfrew and Bute Constabulary to form Strathclyde Police. The City of Glasgow band absorbed pipers and drummers from these forces, but only those who were serving police officers.

Of his solo career Ian recalls: ‘The first time I competed at Oban, 1965 I think, I won the Marches. I can always remember it. It was twice through, it was outside, it was bucketing down with rain and I was first on.

‘Eventually I went away and played in the Strathspey and Reel. Later on I was wandering round the park and I met Andrew Wright. Oh well done, he says, you’ve won the Marches. You could have knocked me down with a feather. I can always remember the tune I played. It was Brigadier Cheape. You don’t hear it often in the solos now.

‘Earlier that year I had won the March at the Uist and Barra with the same tune. The thing that always stuck in my mind was that big Ronnie Lawrie won the Uist and Barra playing the same tune the previous year. I think I modelled a lot of my playing on Ronnie. I felt the way he played marches was just out of this world. Another guy I loved listening to was Hector MacFadyen. Strong hands and beautiful bagpipe. His tunes just flowed.

‘Two years later I won the Oban Former Winners. I always remember that you got nothing to show for it, no trophy that your name could go on, no medal even though it was one of the most important prizes in piping. Just a £20 note that soon disappeared when I bought everyone a drink! It’s different now thankfully.

‘The first time I played at Inverness was in the late 60s. In either 1970 or ‘71 and I won the Marches with John Wilson second to me that day. I won it with the Highland Wedding. Hugh Kennedy was another of my favourites and the other was Major Manson at Clachantrushal. I won a lot of prizes playing that. If I look at competitions like the Eagle Pipers, Edinburgh Police, Uist and Barra and Scottish Pipers, the march that I was most successful with was Highland Wedding. In fact it got to the stage that I stopped putting it in.

‘I always liked a march to sound like a march. You hear some people playing and they are so much into the phrasing of the tune that they forget to keep it flowing. It happens in the big competitions. They are all out there playing their cards close to the chest; no mistakes. But I think I was the opposite. I used to say ‘to hell with it; I’m going for it; if something happens, so be it.’

• Read more about this great piper in our Famous Pipers column. Details of Ian’s funeral in due course. If any reader would like to leave a tribute or message of condolence, please do so in the our Comments section below.

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