Fame had its dark side for Tommy whose death was prematurely announced on Radio Merseyside in 2009
Danny Gutmann
13:46, 30 May 2026
Liverpool musician Tommy Scott – who made it big in the 1990s as the lead singer of Britpop band Space(Image: Supplied/Tommy Scott)
At 18, Tommy Scott had never picked up a guitar and had prepared himself for a “life on the dole”, but in the 1990s he became famous as part of the wildly popular Britpop scene with his band Space. Growing up in Everton before mass demolitions in the area forced him and his family to move to Cantril Farm [now Stockbridge Village], Tommy looked back on his early years with fond memories.
In an interview with the ECHO, he Said: “Cantril Farm is known as a tough place to live in, but I’ve got nothing but love. From Everton to literally being surrounded by countryside, I loved it.”
After leaving primary school, Tommy went to Cantril High School, but said he had few prospects for the future. Instead he spent his time in school “daydreaming” and waiting for the weekend when he’d go to Eric’s and Brady’s with his mates to watch the likes of Echo and the Bunnymen, Gang of Four and Pink Military.
Tommy, 62, said: “I was just a daydreamer, I just used to just look out of the window all the time, and I didn’t listen to what anyone was saying. I was just a little daydreamer kid.
“I just loved going to gigs. Getting at the front of the [stage], going to Eric’s and Brady’s. I used to be able to get into the odd matinee back in them days. So I could go from school and go and watch. But, I never had any intention [of becoming a musician], I just loved listening to music and going to gigs.”
Space recorded a number of top 10 songs with their career peaking in the mid to late 1990s(Image: Daily Record)
“I got a guitar off my uncle one time, but couldn’t even play it. I just learned how to play and he kept telling me how to tune it up and as soon as he’d go, I’d untune it again because it sounded better to me. That’s probably where I got my weird style of music from.”
It was around that time, in the mid-1980s that he decided to start a band with a schoolfriend.
“I had a mate called Scotty and we got a band together and he was going to be the singer. But he was just always too nervous to actually play, so I ended up having to take over and that’s how I ended up being a singer.
“It was just that normal thing you do with your mates in school, getting in bands and you think something’s going to happen. You go from just pretending to sing, pretending you’re Elvis, to actually on stage.”
As his time in school came to an end, so did his early foray into music. He said: “I just basically thought I was just going to be on the dole forever. I did loads of music schemes and the only jobs I could get was Youth Training Schemes.”
Tommy looking back into his archives from the band’s heyday(Image: Supplied/Tommy Scott)
“I went to sign on in Huyton, and someone would come over to you with their clipboard and say ‘We’ve got a job for you here. What are you interested in? Do this or you’re getting your dole stopped’. So, it was just things you had to do to keep getting your money.”
Tommy laboured in numerous bands through his 20s without much success before rising to prominence in Space in the 1990s, with hits like Neighbourhood, Female of the Species and Avenging Angels.
After finally “making it” there was very little time to ever take stock. He said: “You’re just running with it, because, I’d been in so many bands before that didn’t do anything. When we actually made it, and I was on Top of the Pops, I was 30 by then, so it took me a long time to get anywhere. It wasn’t like I was 18.
“One minute the furthest I’d ever been in my life was Llandudno or Rhyl and then the next minute I’m in Hong Kong, America and Singapore and it was just like ‘What’s going on?’ So even though I was 30, I was an immature person, so I just always felt like a kid.”
The cover for Space’s Neighbourhood album(Image: Peter Ashworth)
Space became part of the Britpop music scene that engulfed 1990s popular culture and which included such disparate bands as Liverpool’s The La’s, Blur and Oasis to name just a few.
“It’s so strange because Female of the Species was just meant to be one of the songs on a B-side. We never ever thought that would be a [hit].
“That song is basically about the first ever crush I had, which was the Bride of Frankenstein. I was just like ‘how can that be a hit?’ I’m just glad there’s enough kooky people out there to have got into us as well, because I don’t really think we fitted into all that Britpop thing because we didn’t have the right haircuts, the right clothes.”
Fame did have a dark side for Tommy as he recalled how in 2009 rumours of his death surfaced and were taken so seriously his passing was actually announced on Radio Merseyside. Tommy’s mum even thought he had died.
Recalling the incident, he said: “I had to phone my mum, who thought she’d lost me. She was crying her eyes out, she couldn’t believe it was me that she was speaking to because I was dead.
“Her brother got on the phone to her and said, “What’s this about Tommy? It’s all over the radio that he’s passed away’. It was just insanity. Bizarre. But these things happen.”
After splitting in 2005, Space are back together and will soon be releasing a new album, Ten Neurotic Fairytales, in September.
Tommy recalled: “As soon as I started being in a band, my dad was always like ‘you’re not worth a carrot, you’re rubbish’. He used to always say, ‘You are never going to make it, get a job’.
“But, in a way, that was pushing me to try and do something, because I was like, ‘I’m going to prove to you that I can do it. The only thing is he passed away before I made it, so I never got to show him.
“I always say to other bands ‘Just don’t give in’. This mightn’t be the band that you make it in, but just keep going, keep going and just do it.”