CLASSIC

CLASSIC POP

eighties
electronic BARRY Aaffair
Familia
GIBB Sophie
OCT/NOV 2016

eclectic
Bee Gee
goes solo Ellis-Bextor
MADNESS • BARRY GIBB • SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR • THE CURE • YELLO • XTC • ALANNAH CURRIE • TALK TALK • SKYE | ROSS • PET SHOP BOYS • BRITNEY SPEARS

THE CURE E X C L U S I V E

Celebrating the
kings of goth-rock YELLO
ALANNAH CURRIE Oh Yeah! The synth
pioneers are back!
A life of dissent after
the Thompson Twins
TALK TALK
It’s My Life
and beyond

MADNesS “NATIONAL TREASURES?

NO THANKS!”
25
25

SUGGS KEEPS IT REAL FOR

9 772050 664327
9 772050 664327

THE NUTTY BOYS’ NEW ALBUM

OVER 7W0S Pet Shop Boys • Britney Spears • Kaiser Chiefs • M.I.A.
REVIE
CLASSIC POP

Kate Bush • Prince • Deacon Blue • Elle Exxe • Many more...

OCT/NOV 16
ISSUE 25
PRICE £5.99
 LIVE MUSIC WEEKENDS PRESENTS

NORTH COUNTRY BOYS AND BUTLIN’S LIVE MUSIC WEEKENDS PRESENTS

11-14 NOVEMBER
BUTLIN’S BOGNOR2016,
REGISBUTLIN’S MINEHEAD
- MINEHEAD ARENA
- SKEGNESS

ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN / SHED SEVEN

CAST / PAUL HARTNOLL (ORBITAL)
THE WONDER STUFF / BLACK GRAPE / ASH
THE BLUETONES / THE HOUSE OF LOVE
THE FARM / ECHOBELLY / MARK GARDENER (RIDE)
DODGY / JESUS JONES / STEVE LAMACQ (DJ SET)
UTAH SAINTS / BENTLEY RHYTHM ACE / THE FREESTYLERS LIGHTNING SEEDS
THE HIGH / THE RAILWAY CHILDREN / THE STAIRS THE CUBAN BROTHERS
THOUSAND YARD STARE / CUD / THE FRANK & WALTERS RODIGAN’S RAM JAM FOUNDATION SESSION
THE REAL PEOPLE / NORTHERN UPROAR / HURRICANE # 1 CRAIG CHARLES FUNK AND SOUL CLUB
EDDY TEMPLE-MORRIS / JAMES ATKIN (EMF) WIGAN CASINO DJS
SAFFRON (REPUBLICA) / AUDIOWEB / SPACE MONKEYS FUN, FRIVOLITY, MERRIMENT & MIRTH
THE ELECTRIC SOFT PARADE / BEZ’S POOL PARTY
PLUS MUCH MORE
GOLDIE LOOKIN CHAIN POOL PARTY / PLUS MANY MORE

SEE BIGWEEKENDS.COM FOR FULL BREAK LINE-UP SEE BIGWEEKENDS.COM FOR FULL BREAK LINE-UP

AND BUTLIN’S LIVE MUSIC WEEKENDS PRESENTS

ELECTRIC DREAMS
WEEKEN DER 2-5 DECEMBER 2 0 1 6
Weekender
B UTL I N ’ S BO G N O R REG I S
Butlin’s Bognor Regis, Minehead and Skegness

H O L L Y J O H N SO N

OMD
TONY HADLEY
MARC ALMOND
SOUL II SOUL
ASWAD SONIA
HEAVEN 17
COMPLETE MADNESS
ROLAND GIFT OF FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS
BLANCMANGE
PL US MA N Y MO RE PLUS MANY MORE

SEE BIGWEEKENDS.COM FOR FULL BREAK LINE-UP SEE BIGWEEKENDS.COM FOR INDIVIDUAL BREAK LINE-UPS

Visit BIGWEEKENDS.COM and enter code CLASSICPOP or call free on 0330 100 9742
3 seaside locations | Legendary artists performing live | Over 18s only | 3-nights accommodation | Deposits from only £15pp

Act line ups are correct at time of print but are subject to change. From £15 per person deposit is only valid when using the Auto Pay feature and applies to new bookings only when booking more than 84 days before break
start date. Deposits are non refundable and your final payment will be debited 12 weeks before you arrive. All offers are subject to promotional availability, may be withdrawn at any time and cannot be combined with any other
offer or internet code except the 5% Premier Club loyalty discount. For full terms and conditions please visit butlins.com/terms. Butlin’s Skyline Limited, 1 Park Lane, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, HP2 4YL. Registered in
England No. 04011665.

B5156 BUT LMW ADVERT CLASSIC POP MAG.indd 1 30/08/2016 14:21

 WELCOME TO
CLASSIC
eighties
electronic
eclectic

“WE’VE STILL GOT CHAOS. NATIONAL

TREASURES? NO THANKS!”. SO PROCLAIMS
SUGGS IN OUR COVER FEATURE THIS
MONTH, HOT ON THE HEELS OF NEWS OF
A DEFIANTLY-TITLED NEW STUDIO ALBUM, 25
CAN’T TOUCH US NOW AND UK ARENA
TOUR. NOW WHILE

B
WE’RE OBVIOUSLY ack in 2009, Madness with anything in their back
released the superb – and catalogue – no mean feat after
NOT AVERSE TO A very ambitious – concept 35 years of active service.
LITTLE NOSTALGIA album The Liberty of Norton Let’s face it, we all love a third
HERE AT CLASSIC POP, Folgate. It was a sharp reminder act victory, whether it be the recent
of their songwriting prowess and chart-topping return of Rick Astley
SUGGS’ REFUSAL FOR a heads-up that they were very far or the all-conquering Stone Roses,
HIS BAND TO EXIST from being a spent force. Resting who have taken a more tentative
on their laurels? You’ve got to approach to releasing new
SOLELY AS A TOURING be kidding… material since reforming –
JUKEBOX CHURNING That forward-looking attitude just the two songs in four years,
OUT THE OLD HITS is also mirrored in Rudy Bolly’s lads? Come on, pull your collective
superb exclusive chat this month fingers out. We really want an
IS AN ATTITUDE WE with former Bee Gee Barry Gibb. autumn album…
WHOLEHEARTEDLY Even with an untouchable back Elsewhere this issue, we track
APPLAUD. AFTER ALL, catalogue boasting the depth, down Alannah Currie for an
variety and quality of Mr Gibb’s, illuminating look at what she’s
SHOULDN’T YOUR Barry is still looking to the future been up to since the Thompson
FAVOURITE BANDS STILL with his first new studio album Twins went their separate ways,
AIM TO BE CREATIVE since 1984. Likewise, comes the we run the microscope over the
return of the estimable Yello who career of The Cure and get the
ARTISTS RATHER are back with new album, Toy, inside track on the making of XTC’s
THAN DEPENDABLE and flush with a newfound respect classic album Skylarking.
as electronic pioneers from the One foot in the past then and
ENTERTAINERS? THE current generation of tastemakers. the other in the future. Will we pull
FEAR OF FAILURE CAN I always think that band and a muscle? Don’t fret, we’ve done
BE A SUFFOCATING artist comebacks are far more our requisite number of stretches
satisfying when there’s fresh and are ready for action...
BEAST AT THE BEST material on the table. New Order’s
OF TIMES BUT IT’S recent return to the fray has been
Steve Harnell, Editor
Follow me on Twitter:
ONE THAT HAS TO a thrilling renaissance in what has
@AnthemEditor
already been an almost peerless
BE OVERCOME TO career. You could hear the howls
MAKE A FULLY-FORMED of dejection from departed bassist
COMEBACK HIT HOME. Peter Hook for miles around. New
Order’s Music Complete album
can stand shoulder to shoulder

S U B S C R I B E

With our unique mix of features, flights of

fancy, playlists and reviews, Classic Pop
/classicpop is unmissable. Get yours delivered to your
mag
@classicpop
door – and save yourself some cash – by
mag subscribing. Turn to page 72 for details.

3
CLASSIC
eighties
electronic
eclectic

CONTENTS
26
25
38 50
Follow us F E A T U R E S CLASSIC ALBUM 44 TALK TALK 60
Search Classic Pop MADNESS 26 Faced with a big-name US producer and In this extract from band biog Spirit Of Talk
magazine They are, without doubt, a beloved under huge pressure to deliver, Swindon’s Talk, it’s 1983, and Mark Hollis’ band is
institution, but with new album Can’t Touch XTC battled to make what would eventually about to embark on It’s My Life
@classicpop
Us Now Madness are hardly snoozing in become one of their fans’ favourite albums, YELLO 66
magazine
their deckchairs. “We’re a band with hidden 1986’s lovely, pastoral Skylarking “You’re trying to feed a gorilla on your
@classicpop shoulders…” Dieter Meier and Boris
deeper meaning,” Suggs informs Classic Pop ALANNAH CURRIE 50
magazine
THE LOWDOWN: It was the unlikeliest of adventures: Blank discuss their brand new record
THE CURE 34 Thompson Twins zoomed from squat band to and their first live shows – ever
From quirky post-punk to the darkest art-pop megastars in 18 short months. Still POP ART: MICK HAGGERTY 74
of dramas and purest pop, we chart the as uncompromisingly creative today, Alannah From Supertramp to David Bowie via The
output of the band’s golden era looks back exclusively for Classic Pop Police, Go-Go’s, Hall & Oates, Simple Minds,
BARRY GIBB 38 SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR 56 Public Image Ltd and OMD
Left to carry his family legacy alone, From indie to dancefloor to esoterica, it’s SKYE|ROSS 80
this finest of songwriters has produced been a circuitous journey for the singer. “I Two-thirds of Morcheeba, Sky Edwards and
his first solo album in 30 years. But he’s want to have my cake and eat it,” she tells Ross Godfrey, are back as a duo: “We just get
proud to discuss the Bee Gees with us us. “All different types of cake!” on and complement each other”

4
60

66
44
34
80

56
N E W S Marr/McClusky collaborator and ex- R E V I E W S Subscribe
POP-UP 08 Kraftwerkian discusses experimentation The best releases and live concerts Subscribe to Classic
Adam Ant gets wild, New Order get merry, and the meaning of electronic music SINGLES 88 Pop, save cash and
Bowie gets lauded, Björk gets digital, and U2 With Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue get it delivered to
drop a hint or two R E G U L A R S your door! Page 72
NEW RELEASES 89
BURIED TREASURES 12 TRANSMISSION 22 Britney Spears, Yello, Norah Jones, Elle Exxe,
Four promotional and double rarities Letters, tweets and snaps: readers’ input M.I.A., C Duncan, AlunaGeorge…
to match artists in this issue: XTC, Talk
Talk, The Cure and Yello…
from around the globe
LONG LIVE VINYL 84
REISSUES
Marc Almond, Dusty Springfield, Oasis,
96 JUST
RADAR
The best upcoming releases
14 Unmissable records this month from John
Foxx, The Human League, Madonna, Belly –
Ultravox!, Cicero, The Verve £25
COMPILATIONS 100
PAUL YOUNG 17 and David Bowie with The Gouster, his long- Top of the Pops 3-CD sets plus more
Hanging his hat on Memphis soul, the missing pre-Young Americans album BOOKS AND DVDS 104
singer looks forward to next year’s COMPETITIONS 102 Kate Bush, Prince and Youth
’80s Invasion shows Win a copy of the new Shakatak LIVE 109
KARL BARTOS 19 album or one of two of the latest 12" Pet Shop Boys, Latitude festival,
The musician, composer, Sumner/ compilation from Demon Records Faithless, Tony Hadley and Blue Dot

5
 CLASSIC
eighties
electronic
eclectic
Anthem Publishing
Suite 6, Piccadilly House,
London Road, Bath, BA1 6PL

WHO’S WHO 25 Tel +44 (0)1225 489984

www.classicpopmag.com

AFTER TEAM GB’S OLYMPIC HEROICS, THE CLASSIC POP BODS WATERCOOLER
MOMENTS
REVEAL THE SONG THAT MAKES THEM FEEL LIKE A WINNER *1 “An instant shot of adrenalin courtesy of
Captain Rock Richard Ashcroft. If this doesn’t
EDITOR Paul Lester get you going, you’re dead.”
Steve Harnell Musclebound – SPANDAU BALLET *4 *2 “Sing standing in crane position – karate
[email protected] John Earls kick on ‘best’. Wax on, wax off.“
Come On – THE VERVE *1 Intergalactic – BEASTIE BOYS *5
Andrew Dineley
*3 “Makes me feel like a steamroller that
FOUNDER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE can plough through whatever stands in
You Are Unstoppable – CONCHITA WURST *6
Ian Peel my way.”
Ian Ravendale
[email protected] Maybe I’m A Winner – GRAND DRIVE *4 “Who wouldn’t feel emboldened by this
Get Real – PAUL RUTHERFORD song and its accompanying video? The ripped
Rick Batey
abs! The gleaming musculature! And that’s just
Ain’t That Enough – TEENAGE FANCLUB
ART DIRECTOR your humble scribe...”
Rudy Bolly
Jenny Cook *5 “This was my walk-on music when I briefly
You Win Again – THE BEE GEES
[email protected] tried doing stand-up. Still feels immensely
Mark Lindores
You’re The Best – JOE ESPOSITO *2 powerful, despite not exactly feeling like a
Don’t Stop Me Now – QUEEN *7 winner after most of my comedy shows.”
ADVERTISING MANAGER Dave Freak
Beat the Clock – SPARKS *6 If this had been by Beyoncé rather than a
Adrian Major drag queen with a beard, it would have been
[email protected] Jenny Valentish
a worldwide smash!”
Don’t Stop Believin’ (not the Glee version) – JOURNEY I Walk The Earth – VOICE OF THE BEEHIVE
Josh Gray *7 “This was the song that was playing when
I crossed the finish line of the Edinburgh
DIGITAL EDITOR Marathon. I may not be Team GB but it was a
CEO
Tom Turner personal triumph!”
Jon Bickley
[email protected]
[email protected]
Fichtl’s Lied – DIE WOODYS
The Whole of the Moon
CONTRIBUTORS – THE WATERBOYS
Andy Saunders (Art Editor)
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Dancing on the Ceiling – LIONEL RICHIE
Simon Lewis
Wyndham Wallace
[email protected]
Army of Me – BJORK *3
International Velvet – CATATONIA

O U R C O N T R I B U T O R S
Paul Lester always Mark Lindores grew up Best known for editing
wanted to be a music during the golden age of Teletext’s music pages
journalist. He became pop mags, devouring such Planet Sound throughout
Features Editor of Melody publications as Smash Hits the Noughties, John Earls
Maker, and later Deputy and Number One. Writing has also ‘done’ pop for
Editor of Uncut. Since about the artists he used The Sunday People, News
2007, he has freelanced for The Guardian, to read about for Classic Pop, Total Film Of The World and, currently, NME and the
The Sunday Times, The Independent, and Mixmag, he is living the dream of his Daily Star. John also lectures in journalism,
MOJO, Classic Rock, Prog… and 15-year-old self. This issue he looks at the writes about football for When Saturday
Classic Pop, where this month he career of The Cure and XTC’s classic Comes and this month speaks to Madness
meets Sophie Ellis-Bextor. album Skylarking. and Yello.

SUBSCRIPTION ENQUIRIES 0844 8560642 (Calls cost 7 pence per minute plus your phone company’s access charge) or +44 (0)1795 414877 classicpop@
servicehelpline.co.uk PRINTING Polestar UK Print Ltd Tel +44 (0)1582 678900 DISTRIBUTION Marketforce (UK) Ltd 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London,
E14 5HU Tel +44 (0) 20 378 79001 LICENSING ENQUIRIES Jon Bickley Tel +44 (0)1225 489984 [email protected]

6
 Academy Events present

in association with SELECTIVE AGENCY presents

THE
CHRISTIANS 30th ANNIVERSARY TOUR
PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS
SEPTEMBER NOVEMBER
30 BRISTOL FLEECE 12 HOLMFIRTH
OCTOBER PICTUREDROME
21 SHEFFIELD O2 ACADEMY2 18 YORK FIBBERS
22 BIRMINGHAM O2 INSTITUTE2 19 STOCKTON ARC
28 OXFORD O2 ACADEMY2 DECEMBER
29 LONDON O2 ACADEMY 03 SOUTHAMPTON
ISLINGTON 1865
THECHRISTIANSLIVE.CO.UK

PETE
M3 MANAGEMENT in association with SELECTIVE AGENCY & presents
presents

NOVEMBER 2016

WYLIE
03 SOUTHAMPTON
THE BROOK
09 SELBY
100 TOWN HALL
10 DERBY THE VENUE
11 OXFORD O2 ACADEMY
18 COVENTRY KASBAH
20 LIVERPOOL EPSTEIN
95
29 BRIGHTON KOMEDIA
30 HARPENDEN
& THE MIGHTY
WAH!
PUBLIC
75 HALLS
DECEMBER 2016
01 LONDON JAZZ CAFE
04 EDINBURGH
VOODOO ROOMS
06 BILSTON ROBIN
25 plus special guests
NOVEMBER 2016 16 OXFORD O2 ACADEMY
12 LEICESTER THE SCHOLAR 19 BIRMINGHAM O2 ACADEMY3
5

@ O2 ACADEMY 20 SHEFFIELD O2 ACADEMY2

13 GLASGOW O2 ABC2 26 LIVERPOOL O2 ACADEMY
0

ROACHFORD.CO.UK NEW ALBUM ‘PETE SOUNDS’ DUE OCTOBER

TICKETWEB.CO.UK & ALL USUAL AGENTS

SECRET RECORDS PRESENTS THE NEW STUDIO ALBUM FROM

ALSO AVAILABLE

BEST OF DOWN ON THE STREET

SECCD063 SECCD121

Times and Places

DRIVIN’ HARD NIGHT BIRDS
SECCD132 (Expanded Edition) SECCD079
FIND US ONLINE!

OUT 30th SEPTEMBER

Facebook: secretrecordslimited
Twitter: secretrecords
YouTube: secretrecordslimited

M O R E T I T L E S AVA I L A B L E O N T H E S E C R E T W E B S I T E : w w w. s e c r e t r e c o r d s l i m i t e d . c o m [email protected]
N E W S & O B S E S S I O N S

UP

8
Tour Of Experience
U2
will tour the world again
in 2017 in support of a
new album. Bono has
confirmed the band’s
expected companion
piece to 2014’s Songs Of Innocence is
nearing completion, and claims it contains
some of his finest lyrics to date.
“It’s not finished yet but you will like it,”
the singer promises. “In terms of lyrics it is
stronger than War… it has more clarity.
“The second part of the tour is for 2017...
You might see a few things in September or
October, though.”
The Edge earlier announced: “We always
envisaged that it would be a two-record
set. We’re trying to really be brutal with the
material and only focus on the things that
we’re really convinced are the best ideas.”
Continuing the William Blake theme, the
title of the new record is rumoured to be
Songs Of Experience.

9
 UP

No.25
THE NORMAL
WARM LEATHERETTE
(1978)
The Normal was, of course, the
alias of Mute Records founder
Daniel Miller. Their sole single Calling Marilyn’s name again
E
nominally featured TVOD as ighties icon Marilyn has cracked open a fresh bottle of peroxide in
its A-side, but it was the blank anticipation of his pop comeback. The star, real name Peter Robinson, hasn’t
robotic chill of Warm Leatherette released music since 2003 but he returns with new reggae single Love Or
which proved Miller’s point that Money on 23 September – a track co-written and produced by his old New
anyone could write a great song Romantic sparring partner, Boy George.
on a then-new cheap synthesiser. Marilyn explains: “It was the first song George and I wrote/recorded together in
Although the song has since been the studio, earlier this year. It came about so organically and it was George who
covered by Grace Jones and suggested going back to my roots, sonically – taking inspiration from the rhythms
Duran Duran, Miller firmly told of the islands that soundtracked my childhood. I was born in Jamaica and spent
Classic Pop last year that there the early years of my life there… I have dual English/Jamaican citizenship. Reggae
won’t ever be a follow-up. has been a huge influence, but I’d never thought to incorporate it in to my own
However, TVOD/Warm music before.” Love Or Money arrives via Marilyn’s own label Mmm.music through
Leatherette isn’t Miller’s RightTrack/Universal.
sole foray into performing.
Alongside future Throbbing
Gristle associate Robert Rental,
NEW ORDER GET KRAFTY
Ant’s final Frontier
The Normal played several
improvised electronic gigs, IN THE BREWING BIZ
compiled on the one-sided album Nothing beats a pint of thirst-quenching
Live At West Runton Pavilion. Stray Dog on a Blue Monday; so say Adam Ant will stage his final UK performance
Miller used Mute to release New Order, who have created their own of Kings Of The Wild Frontier this winter. The
an album in 1980 as Silicon 4.2% beer with Moorhouse’s Brewery post-punk legend plays his classic 1980 album
Teens. Wanting to “see how it of Burnley. in its entirety for the very last time at London’s
would sound doing Chuck Berry Manchester’s finest export named Roundhouse on 18 December. Recently reissued
on synthesisers”, the album the brew Stray Dog after a track from as a super deluxe boxset, including gold vinyl and
Music For Parties featured Fad recent album, Music Complete, and it’s 2-CD deluxe package,
Gadget’s Frank Tovey. Then came available in UK pubs this autumn. Hop the fan favourite
1983’s Duet Emmo, featuring heads may like to know Stray Dog includes anthemic
Miller with former Wire is brewed using American Cascade, hits Antmusic (UK
mainstays Bruce Gilbert and Centennial and Willamette hops, with No.2) alongside
Graham Lewis, for one-off album the finest English Maris Otter malt. Dog Eat Dog (UK
Or So It Seems. Miller has also No.4). Adam
remixed for Erasure and Depeche promises to play
Mode, as well as establishing B-sides and rarely-
the duo Sunroof with Erasure aired personal
producer Gareth Jones. Sunroof’s favourites on the
remix CV includes Goldfrapp, night, too.
Faust and MGMT.

10
 N E W S & O B S E S S I O N S

IT’S MORE FUN

TO KRAFTWERK
One pop fan has gone beyond the pale in
honour of his musical heroes. American
David Sanborn loves German electronic
masters Kraftwerk so much he changed
his name to, what else – Kraftwerk. The
gentleman from Florida has been curating
his new Kraftwerkian life on Flickr,
posting snapshots of himself dining and
filling his car with petrol, resplendent in
a Man Machine-style red shirt. And in
case anyone accuses him of making it all
up, Kraftwerk, as we must call him, has
kindly shared a picture of his new driving
license as evidence.

Beyond Bowie
The jazz musicians who played on David suggested playing Warszawa, so we did
Bowie’s Blackstar album have recorded a it every set that week. I knew that I wanted
tribute to the late legend. Beyond Now, to record it. The title track Beyond Now is
the new album from saxophonist Donny inspired by a song of David’s we recorded
McCaslin, features two Bowie covers, during the Blackstar sessions, but that didn’t
including Low classic Warszawa and A make the final record; all the originals were
Small Plot Of Land from 1995’s 1.Outside. written last summer, while the Blackstar
McCaslin reveals: “We played a week recordings were still really fresh. Songs of
at the Village Vanguard [in New York], the his were just kind of running through my
third week of January this year. As David unconscious. Beyond Now is dedicated to
had just passed, it was such an emotional David and to all who loved him.” The album
time. Our keyboardist Jason Lindner is released on 14 October.

FAREWELL ENTHOVEN

I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen The pop world has paid tribute to
one of its finest managers, David
Enthoven, who passed away in August
after a short illness. Enthoven formed
EG Records in the Seventies and
managed the likes of T. Rex, Roxy
Music and Robbie Williams in a career
spanning five decades.
“David will be remembered as a
true friend, an exemplary colleague, a
helpful mentor and a truly exceptional
human being,” said a spokesperson
for the MMF Music Manager’s forum;
Enthoven and his business partner
Tim Clark were honoured with the
Robertson Taylor ‘Peter Grant’ Award
for outstanding achievement at the
Music Managers Forum Awards in
2007. Robbie Williams, who worked

B
owie’s musical Lazarus finally and features music from Blackstar as well with Enthoven at his IE management
comes to London at the King’s as Bowie’s entire career. Classic Pop is company since his Take That days,
Cross Theatre from October. A planning to bring you an in-depth look at tweeted: “My Friend, Mentor and
huge hit last winter during its the creation of the musical in a future issue. Hero passed away today. David
off-Broadway run in New York, The news of Lazarus’s imminent arrival Enthoven I love you RIP x.”
Lazarus is inspired by the book The follows the release of Bowie’s Who Can
Man Who Fell To Earth. It focuses on I Be Now? (1974-1976), the second in a
the character Thomas Newton – a ‘man’ series of boxsets spanning his career and
unable to die, who encounters another lost featuring his so-called “lost funk album”
soul that might finally set him free. The Gouster in full for the first time. See
Starring Michael C Hall, the show runs our review in Long Live Vinyl on page 84
from 25 October to 21 January 2017 of this issue.

11
 UP

ANSWERS 1) Haircut One Hundred 2) Where Did Our Love Go? 3) Get Carter 4) Private Dancer 5) Sade 6) Paul Weller 7) Maverick 8) Dick Tracy 9) Big Audio Dynamite 10) Betty Boo 11) Get A Life 12) Duran Duran 13) Grant McPherson (14) Pet Shop Boys 15) Womack And Womack
BURIED TREASURES

R
ooting around those boxes of junk in your loft may turn up more
than you hoped for. While many vinyl releases from the Seventies,
1Les Nemes, Blair Cunningham
and Graham Jones were
members of which band?
Eighties and Nineties are worth next to nothing – nostalgic value
aside, of course – some could land you a small fortune, should you
choose to part with them. Here, we take four rare artefacts to the
2 Which Supremes song did Soft
Cell cover as the official double
A-side of Tainted Love?
experts at 991.com and ask them for a valuation. Browse their online store at
www.991.com... and get 15% off using voucher code CP150115.

3 The Human League’s Dare

features a cover of the theme
to which Michael Caine film?
TALK TALK
IN CONCERT
UK nine-track promo-only BBC Transcription
THE CURE
BOYS DON'T CRY
1980 Spanish promo-only vinyl 7" housed in
Services LP, live at Hammersmith Odeon a textured monochrome picture sleeve with
4 Mark Knopfler initially wrote
which Tina Turner hit for his
own outfit Dire Straits?
in 1986. Intro by DJ Richard Skinner,
with commercially unavailable live tracks
Spanish language biography. Issued in 1980
as part of an exclusive box entitled On The
including Dum Dum Girl and It’s My Life. Wave. As for finding complete boxes, well,
5Diamond Life is the multi-
million-selling debut album by
which British artist?
Bootlegs exist but genuine pressings should
fetch over £150 now. #CN4787/S
we’ve never seen one! #2814215 – mint
copies are worth in excess of £500.

6 Who established Respond VALUE AROUND £150 (IF MINT) VALUE OVER £500
Records, a label which released
singles by Tracie, Big Sound
Authority and The Questions?

7 What was the name of

Madonna’s record label, which
released Alanis Morissette,
Deftones and Cleopatra?

8 In which film did Madonna

play wannabe gangster’s moll
Breathless Mahoney?

9 The Bottom Line, E=MC2 and

Medicine Show were singles
by which rap/rock collective?

10 Name the earlier performing

alias of Hear’Say and Dannii
Minogue writer Alison Clarkson.
YELLO
POCKET UNIVERSE
XTC
SKYLARKING: MUSIC & INTERVIEW
1997 German 11-track Mercury 2-LP set, Rare 1986 Geffen US promotional-only vinyl
11 What was the name of Soul
II Soul’s follow-up to Back To
Life, a No.3 in 1989?
including the song To The Sea featuring
Stina Nordenstam. Housed in a single pocket
LP which features an exclusive interview
with Andy Partridge, plus 14 tracks from
picture sleeve, this is now a highly sought- Skylarking, complete with its original Geffen

12 Which has Trevor Horn

not produced: ABC, Dollar,
Duran Duran, Frankie Goes To
after and rare LP, number #5343531. Mint
copies should fetch in excess of £150.
press release, WBMS146. Mint copies
should fetch £50.

Hollywood or Spandau Ballet?

VALUE OVER £150 VALUE AROUND £50
13 Who is not in Madness: Mark
Bedford, Chris Foreman,
Grant McPherson, Lee Thompson?

14 Which band made the 1987

film It Couldn’t Happen Here?

15 Husband-and-wife duo Cecil

and Linda, who had a No.3
hit in 1986 with Teardrops, are
better known by what name?

HOW DID YOU DO?

13-15 The Winner Takes It All
10-12 I Should Have Known Better
6-9 I Feel For You
0-5 Give It Up

12
 N E W S & O B S E S S I O N S

Brent channels the Eighties

E
ighties pop was the inspiration for Ricky Gervais Ricky started out as a wannabe pop star with his
when creating music for his recent David Brent band Seona Dancing three decades ago. “It was all
movie. The comedian teamed up with former over in about six months, but because I’m famous now,
Razorlight drummer Andy Burrows for the the whispers are that I was on Top Of The Pops and
soundtrack, Life On The Road – as sung by that I was big in the Philippines. That last one might be
his alter-ego from TV comedy, The Office. “We’re so true, but I have no evidence about that,” he laughs. “I’m
excited,” Gervais enthuses. “It’s like an Eighties movie not having an identity crisis. I don’t think I’m George
where two kids suddenly get any wish, and they just run Michael or David Bowie. I’m a middle-aged comedian
around playing for a day.” whose fictional character is bringing out an album.”

A 10CD complete career deluxe box set compiled by Marc

MARC ALMOND
TRIALS of EYELINER T H E A N T H O L O G Y 1979/2016

Contains music from Soft Cell, Marc and the Mambas and
the Solo Years – contains all the singles for the first time ever

Includes 3 CDs of rare and unreleased material plus 64-page

hardcover book with new essay and extensive photos

Released 28 October 2016

13
 O N T H E

UP
THE RELEASES TO
LOOK OUT FOR IN
THE NEXT COUPLE
OF MONTHS…
ALUNAGEORGE
I Remember
New album 16/9/16
SHAKIN’ STEVENS
Echoes Of Our Time
New album 16/9/16
DAVID BOWIE
Who Can I Be Now?
(1974-76)
12-CD boxset 23/9/16
MARILLION
FEAR
Madonna crosses the Borderline

M
New album 23/9/16 adonna celebrated her 58th birthday in Cuba this year, visiting Havana
in August with daughter Lourdes, son Rocco and friends after President
VANGELIS Barack Obama’s administration loosened travel restrictions for Americans.
Rosetta Her visit got a write-up in the Cuban Communist party’s official
New album 23/9/16 newspaper, Granma, who reported she had been dancing on a bar.
BETTY BOO Madonna recently spoke to LOVE magazine about the perils of being famous in
the 21st century. “I was already famous before social media, so for me fame isn’t the
Boomania! burden,” she said. “Now to me, the burden is people are more focused on fame than
Expanded reissue doing the work or being an artist. Now it’s easy to become famous. What isn’t easy is to
23/9/16 develop and grow as an artist without being distracted or consumed with fame.”
YELLO
Toy
New album 30/9/16 Higher and Higher
THE BEAT Heaven 17 believe their signature hit Temptation
Bounce could never have been recorded in today’s times
of musical austerity. “Our label gave us a blank
New album 30/9/16 cheque,” recalls Martyn Ware. “We had the best
DEACON BLUE studio, the best engineers and the best producers.
Believers When I rang them up and said, ‘Can we have a
New album 30/9/16 60-piece orchestra?’ they just said, ‘Yeah, go on
then’. There was more optimism about the money
STING records could make. You couldn’t imagine that now.”
The Studio Collection Temptation still resonates with audiences young
Vinyl boxset 30/9/16 and old wherever it’s played. “We performed it with
La Roux at Glastonbury a few years ago, before a
KAISER CHIEFS L E T ’ S G E T D I G I TA L
30,000-strong audience of mainly 20-year-olds, and
Stay Together Digital, Björk’s interactive virtual it was like they were all Heaven 17 fans,” says Glenn
New album 7/10/16 reality exhibition, has set up camp in Gregory. “It never fails to blow the roof off.”
the UK. Following stints in Australia
PHIL COLLINS
and Japan, the immersive video
The Singles exhibit currently resides at London’s
Compilation 14/10/16 Somerset House from 1 September to
TWO DOOR 23 October. Digital features ground-
CINEMA CLUB breaking 360-degree virtual reality
films directed by Andrew Thomas
Gameshow
Huang and Jesse Kanda, among
New album 14/10/16 others. Björk marks the occasion with
MADNESS shows at the Royal Albert Hall on
Can’t Touch Us Now 21 September and the Hammersmith
Eventim Apollo on 24 September.
New album 21/10/16

14
 weexplore
buy our
vintage pop & rock vinyl!
buried treasure!
991.com buys and sells mint condition Vinyl, LP’s,EP’s,
45’s, CD’s and pop music memorabilia.
N E W S E N S AT I O N
As many as 15 previously unheard songs by Michael Hutchence
could materialise next year. The final years of the INXS singer’s from the Classic Pop to the obscure: 80’s, 70’s, 60’s
life are the subject of a film by Ron Creevey, who runs Sydney- pop & rock prog, psych, blues, folk & jazz.
based venue The X Studio. “I heard some time ago about some
unreleased music and I approached [Hutchence’s] trust directly,”
says Creevey. “At least five songs are brilliant… there’s going
to be two duets with two very big artists that I can’t legally
name at the moment, and then there’s singles he did himself.”
Record producer Danny Saber, who worked on Hutchence’s
self-titled solo album in 1999, adds: “It’s sort of like a little
treasure trove of stuff — vocals and ideas and that’s the
material that I’m reworking and we’re going to be releasing.”

DEACON BLUE ARE BELIEVERS

Evergreen Scots Deacon Blue approach each new song like it
might be their last.
Ricky Ross, whose band release Believers on 30 September,
explains: “You try to write something that would be good
enough if it turned out to be the last thing you did. When you’re
young you think, ‘There’s plenty more records I can do.’ It’s not
so urgent somehow. There are still plenty more records that I
want to make. But I might not get time to do them all. That’s a
thought that certainly pulls the songwriting into focus.”
Believers is the third part of an album trilogy that began with
The Hipsters in 2012, and it’s politically charged in Deacon Blue’s
own subtle way.
“The song which starts off the whole album is The Believers,”
says Ricky. “It’s our statement that belief in the possibilities of
hope and a better tomorrow is the side we choose to come down
on. We once covered the mighty protest song, Which Side Are
You On? – a pressing question in today’s political climate. This
record is our best answer.” Sell your unwanted Vinyl & CD’s at our Kent buying days
held monthly on second Fridays plus regularly in Soho
London - see site.
991.com are official stocklists for Art Vinyl Play and
Display Frames. Get exclusive deals on our site.

01474 815 010

[email protected]
991.com answer the call
 UP
L OS T & F O U N D

NO. 25
Making his Marc
PERSUASION
ADAM ANT (1992)
After the reissues and tours for

A
the first two Adam And The Ants gorgeous new 10-CD boxset celebrating the career of Marc Almond lands
albums, Adam Ant’s next project on 28 October. Put together by the singer himself, Trials Of Eyeliner features
is to be a brand new album to massive hits, heroic misses, unreleased gems and ventures into almost every
follow 2013’s Adam Ant Is The musical genre from Russian folk to techno. Reflecting on his Soft Cell days,
Blueblack Hussar In Marrying Marc reveals: “We thought: we can be a pop band, but what we’ve got
The Gunner’s Daughter. to do is provoke people, shock them, wake them up, be subversive. We were pulling
But, one day soon, Ant is two ways.” The set comes with a 64-page hardcover book featuring a new interview
determined to finally release his and a wealth of photos. Marc celebrates the release with a one-off show at London’s
great lost funk album. Shortly Playhouse Theatre on 23 October where he will perform songs by Jacques Brel as well
after Manners & Physique saw as his entire Mother Fist And Her Five Daughters album.
him back in the Top 20, Ant
hooked up with Chic bassist LOVE IS ALL AROUND
Bernard Edwards. Edwards THE CHARTS
recruited Chic drummer Tony
Pop stars can be chivalrous, even in
Thompson, and Cameo leader
the face of losing a long-standing chart
Larry Blackmon guested on
record. Wet Wet Wet did the noble thing
guitar on what was scheduled to
and congratulated Drake when the rapper
be Persuasion’s first single, Little
equaled their 22-year-old record of 15
Devil. For the first time since
weeks at No.1 earlier this summer.
Dirk Wears White Sox, former
Ants bassist Leigh Gorman was Marti Pellow, whose band spent an
back in the fold, too. age at the top with Love Is All Around in
Heavily bootlegged, and 1994, said: “The way music is consumed
previewed on a US tour, today is very different to 20-odd years
Persuasion saw Ant at his most ago, so it’s difficult to equate the two
lascivious since the Dirk era, on records. Congratulations to Drake and his
team, though, for a job well done.” The
lowdown and lewd songs like
All Girl Action and Survival Of Canadian star’s hit One Dance could do no I don’t like Primark
The Fetish. But MCA refused to better than 15 weeks, so the ‘Wets still “Never criticize the audience” goes the unwritten rule
release the album and have long have their record – albeit a shared one. in pop – but Bob Geldof came under fire for dissing
refused to licence it at all, even the crowd this summer. The Boomtown Rats were
for 2000’s otherwise career- playing Brentwood Festival when the singer launched
spanning Antbox boxset. into a rant, saying “Brentwood, we are the Boomtown
But Ant is hopeful that there Rats. We are mega, and you are Brentwood. How do
has finally been largesse from we know? Because I am wearing a fuck-off pretend
MCA, saying he hopes to release snakeskin suit. On the other hand, you are wearing
it “soon” on his own Blueblack wall-to-wall Primark. When you come to a rock’n’roll
Hussar label. Fingers crossed… festival, you dress for a rock’n’roll festival.” Some took
exception and booed, while others reportedly walked
out, later venting their anger on social media.

16
 GODFATHERS
of

P A U L Y O U N G

W
ith his prolonged tarriance You’ve done the Bee Gees’ Words
into Americana fronting and changed it considerably…
Tex-Mex outfit Los Pacaminos, We did. It’s like when I did Love Will
Paul Young revealed a Tear Us Apart by Joy Division on No
personality poles apart from Parlez. Back then I wanted to do that
the supple-voiced soul boy song as though I was in The Four Tops –
of his Eighties peak. But this I actually lifted the rhythm patterns from
year he ended a 20-year solo Reach Out I’ll Be There – and I applied
hiatus and made a return to the same principle to Words. I thought
the genre with Good Thing, a miscellany that as we were making a soul album, I’d
of East Memphis covers. He tops the bill do it as if Al Green had got hold of it. If
for next year’s ‘80s Invasion Tour with it’s a good song it should be able to take
China Crisis, Toyah and Martika. that punishment and still sound great.

You started in bands, went solo, Has Good Thing stirred up the
formed Los Pacaminos and now need to sing more soul or will we
you’re solo again. There seems have to wait another 20 years for
to be two distinct sides to your the next one?
musical psyche… I want to ride this one for a while,
Yes exactly, they run in tandem. Los because I’m only just starting to gig
Pacaminos is us all having a good time again after a long lay-off. Although we
up on stage, but the Paul Young shows can play it on the road as a four-piece,
need to be more pro. I can’t tie myself The brass section certainly I keep thinking, if we move to larger
down to a genre, which makes it hard vindicates his way of thinking. venues I’d love to get a brass section. In
for me to make a solo album these Was there part of you that wanted fact, I was thinking how cool it would be
days, because I pick up songs from to relive the Q-Tips days? to run a Paul Young/R&B show where
all over the place. Obviously with the Yes, it’s almost back to where I started, we take some of the old Q-Tips songs,
Pacaminos there are certain criteria that although the whole brass thing is pretty some of the ones off the new album and
make up what that band is. The music’s much one guy. Around the back of the do brass arrangements on stuff like Every
got to sound like it’s really close to the studio was a music shop and Simon Time You Go Away and Come Back And
American-Mexican border, so we know [Taylor] came in and did the brass when Stay – it would be a great show.
what we’ve got to do. With Paul Young, he wasn’t working in the shop, which
I don’t find it so easy, but it was really was so strange! Any big plans for next year’s
nice to get back into singing soul. ‘80s Invasion tour?
There are some intriguing song It obviously has to be largely songs from
Good Thing’s producer Arthur choices on the album… the Eighties, but I might creep into the
Baker has a hip-hop background, We hunted around. Arthur came to me Nineties and do Senza Una Donna for
but the record has a much more with the idea of matching an artist with a change. A big part of the enjoyment
live feel to it. Did he do away with a publishing house and suggested a of these kinds of tours is that I do
the sequencers? good fit would be all the old Stax and Pacaminos shows where I put on a hat
It was 80% there but while it was on ice Hi Records songs. I thought the best thing and do something completely different,
we had time to play and think about it. was to go back to my roots. We both and then going back to the Paul Young
Arthur got James Halliwell involved in the know a lot of songs, but we didn’t stop at stuff is more of a pleasure. So it’s like I
project. James is a very good musician, the obvious stuff, we looked a bit deeper wear a hat in one unit and sing about
a keyboardist and a tech man, so when and came up with some I know well like one in the other! Rik Flynn
Arthur was back in America, James I Believe In You by Johnny Taylor – that
had the idea to replace some of the was my Saturday night record when I See www.tdpromo.com for ‘80s
programmed stuff. He wanted to get real was driving up to London in my twenties Invasion tour dates. Paul Young’s
musicians, so the album changed shape. – and others I wasn’t so familiar with. album Good Thing is out now

17
Video Tech GOONIE TURNS POP STAR
THREE CHOICE CUTS He’s one of the best-loved actors from the Eighties, but now
FROM THE VIDEO Corey Feldman is having another go at a pop career.
BACK CATALOGUE The star of such films as Stand By Me, Goonies and The Lost
Boys has released a new album, Angelic 2 The Core – his first in
OF MADNESS…
14 years.
“There’s something for everyone,” Feldman says, dedicating
the songs to his girlfriend Courtney Anne and 11-year-old son
Zen. “I am blessed to have a beautiful child, a beautiful home, a
beautiful girlfriend and a beautiful career. I don’t take any of it
for granted.”
Produced, performed and written by the actor himself, the
SYNTH LEGENDS TO RIDE
genre-hopping collection features guest spots by rapper Snoop
Dogg and Fred Durst amongst other friends. THE SEVENTH WAVE
BAGGY TROUSERS
Electronic pop aficionados can revel in all
1980
things synthetic at The Seventh Wave
Cheap, cheerful and bags (sorry) of Festival Of Electronic Music this winter.
fun. If only saxophonist Kenny G could
Ex-Kraftwerk man Wolfgang Flür, OMD
fly then he would have been a whole
founder Andy McCluskey, DJ Rusty Egan
lot more interesting. Lee Thompson's
of Visage and Richard Barbieri, formerly
aerial acrobatics steal the show in this
of Japan, will be regaling the fans with
school-set promo.
talks, presentations and question and
www.youtube.
answer sessions.
com/watch?v=
Dc3AovUZgvo The inaugural event takes place
over four days, across three venues,
in Birmingham between 10-14
November. Tickets can be purchased from
theticketsellers.co.uk and skiddle.com.

Mozzer remains homeless

M
HOUSE OF FUN orrissey is still without a the erudite singer says: “People want
1982 record label to release his new vinyl now, they do not want the
Also guaranteed to put a smile on your next album. old originals. Physicals were only ever
face, this is one of The Nutty Boys' The former Smiths singer removed at the wish of the major labels...
finest performances on video. A classic confirmed a follow-up to who didn’t want stock clogging up their
hit laden with double entendres from 2014’s World Peace Is None Of Your offices and hallways.
a band oozing with confidence made Business is ready but he is reluctant to “People still want to go into shops
this a surefire winner. go down a traditional release route to buy LPs and even 7-inch discs, but it
www.youtube. following a dispute with Harvest Records, doesn’t suit the labels, whereas streaming
com/watch?v= whom he claimed “almost killed” him. does... and consequently music bought
GJ2X9SANsME Updating fans, Mozzer reveals: “It is with no effort has resulted in meaningless
written. We need to find a distribution music charts.”
deal. It is not possible to find a
recording deal, so
we would record
it ourselves as
soon as we can
find a distributor
who could make
OUR HOUSE it available
1982 worldwide.”
Part traditional band performance in a Morrissey believes
back bedroom (with a twist, of course), the lack of physical
the Andy Capp characters here also play music formats has
squash and take a Turkish bath fully ruined the charts.
clothed. You couldn't be too careful Noting that the 30th
with the censors in anniversary of The
the early-80s... Queen is Dead by
www.youtube. The Smiths passed
com/watch?v= without any reissue,
rXuvdeEC5y8

18
 GODFATHERS
of

K A R L B A R T O S

A
member of the hugely influential my former colleagues always said the
Kraftwerk during their pomp guitar is an instrument of the middle-age,
years, Karl Bartos has recently but it doesn’t matter, that has nothing
re-released his 2003 debut solo to do with it. Music is the sound in the
album Communication. We air – actually it’s ‘sounding air’, sound
catch up with him as he casts an vibration. Whether it comes out of a
eye over 40 years spent making computer or not, what matters is where
electronic music… you hear it. It’s very important to have
this notion that you go to a place where
What were you doing before people perform music.
joining Kraftwerk?
I was playing in the opera, the Deutsche Perhaps one of the benefits
Oper am Rhein, on percussion. Then of album sales declining is a
I met Alfred Alings, who played refocusing upon live music…
percussion on a famous composition by The meaning of music – or an important
Karlheinz Stockhausen called Kontakte. attribute of music – is that it’s transient.
That was involved with electroacoustics, Music is not meant to be recorded.
an early electronic movement that The first recording was in 1877 for
Stockhausen was pioneering. He communication reasons – telephones.
spoke about making a whole universe Then they started to cut music from
with compositions existing only out of geographical regions, but by being
electronic sources. And then, in his recorded it is also cut from time, but
most famous composition, Gesang Der world that you can see, but it’s a closed it’s not meant to be that way. There is
Jünglinge, he combined the movement of circuit – it’s just drawings. silence, then we have music, then it dies
music concrète with electronic music, and into silence, and recording is artificial.
this was the constitution of electro pop. Were you working on solo It’s nice to listen to a Beatles record,
material while in Kraftwerk? or a speech by the King of England or
When did you first get hold of Yes, even before I joined them. I was Winston Churchill, but the real secret of
electronic instruments? studying counterpoint and making music is that it is like life.
In the summer of 1974. I got a phone 12-tone music, which was invented
call from Florian Schneider asking if I by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton So you’re saying that recorded
wanted to join Kraftwerk to play some Weber. The main thing that attracted music is essentially dead?
gigs because he’d just come out with me to Kraftwerk was their identity. I was The notes are just a timeline. We have
this song about automobiles. I went into following the paradigm of The Beatles one bar, we have the meter, and we put
the studio and there was a Hammond, and The Rolling Stones, I loved Jumpin’ the little number – the bpm – on top of
a Farfisa and Florian was playing flute. Jack Flash, but if you want to come up it, but, like you say, it’s dead. But we
They sounded like Pink Floyd with tape with an idea then you have to come up can also bring it to life. People have this
delay echoes going on all the time. So with an identity, which is difficult. Every notion of recorded music being real.
this was the early sound of Kraftwerk. artist has to come along with his own Every DJ on stage says it’s real, and
Then they bought a Minimoog, which theory; their own view of the world, style everyone in the audience considers this
was actually played on a record called and mixture of what music is all about. recorded sound as life. So nowadays,
Ralf And Florian in 1973. Pink Floyd we have this notion of a DJ playing live,
had a Moog in 1972 and used it on Do you have any criticisms about but actually a DJ is somebody who plays
Dark Side Of The Moon’s On The Run. electronic music production today? a film. But I’m not against it.
But the most striking point was what No, I can’t listen to all of that. It doesn’t
Stockhausen said, that electronic music is really matter what source you use to Do you plan to make more music?
the creation of a completely independent compose music; I can easily imagine I have to; this is how I see the world. I
sound system, like an animated movie. making music with just an upright piano. live in music; I can’t go out of it.
You paint an animation movie and it’s a I’ll tell you a secret: in the Seventies Danny Turner

19
 UP
Chaka checks in
It has come to light that the death of her friend Prince
encouraged Chaka Khan to enter a drug rehab programme.
The 63-year-old singer, who covered Prince’s I Feel For
You to huge acclaim and chart-topping success in 1984, had
been battling an addiction to Fentanyl, the same prescription
medication found in Prince’s body when he died on 21 April.
At the start of the summer Chaka Khan said: “Unfortunately,
I will miss concert appearances. However, it’s vital that I put my
health and well-being first. I know that I am disappointing some
of my fans, but I also know they would want me to recover and
be well and healthy.”
Khan’s sister Yvonne Stevens, whose stage name is Taka
Boom, also entered rehab at the same time.
“The tragic death of Prince has had us both rethinking and
reevaluating our lives and priorities. We knew it was time to
take action to save our lives. My sister and I would like to thank
everyone for their support, love and prayers.” Chaka has since
successfully returned to the stage.

HOLDING BACK THE BEES

Mick Hucknall has gone on the record urging fans and

Prince’s Purple legacy scientists to save bees from deadly pesticides so they can help
the world’s crops survive. On his Twitter account Hucknall

P
wrote: “The scientific community must work together to
rince’s tragic death unloaded an avalanche of gossip, but create bee friendly pesticides. For the sake of life on Earth,
many friends were quick to point out how often the star we MUST #SaveTheBees.” In music news, Simply Red are
had gone to enormous lengths to help others. It also came celebrating 25 years of their multi-platinum-selling album
to light that the late legend had a soft spot in his heart for Stars on tour in the UK throughout November.
the run-down Minneapolis house that acted as his home
in his iconic 1984 movie Purple Rain, as he purchased it shortly
before he passed away. Despite the house being in a state of
considerable disrepair, Prince reportedly paid way over the odds
to save it from demolition.
Prince was a nostalgic Minnesotan and bought more than 200
acres of property in his hometown over a number of years. Six
of his houses are to be sold following his death, but contrary to
rumours, the Prince estate has denied plans to sell his Paisley
Park home-cum-studio. His family have also announced that an
official tribute concert will take place at the US Bank Stadium in
Minneapolis on 13 October.

20
 N E W S & O B S E S S I O N S

HAZEL MOURNS REAL POP

It’s not just pop fans who miss the
Eighties – some of the decade’s biggest
artists get a little misty-eyed, too.
Chart diva Hazel Dean – whose hits
include the PWL classic Whatever I Do

All he wants is... (Wherever I Go) – recalls: “For me, the

Eighties is the last decade of what I call
It won’t come as a great surprise to learn day when you’re on tour is that two hours ‘real’ pop songs.
that Simon Le Bon was once rather fond when you’re standing in front of the “Even back in 1989 the music trends
of the fairer sex. In fact, the Duran Duran audience who’s paid to see you.” were changing, along with records like
vocalist admits to spending rather more Indeed, these days the band pride Ride On Time [Black Box]. It was that
time focusing on women than music back themselves on their professionalism. record that made me think, 'now that is
in the day. “We’re all developing as musicians,” really different'. From then on, it all sort
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been drummer Roger Taylor points out. “John of changed.
trawling the bar to look for a girl to take [Taylor] and I were talking about this
“I think that the Eighties was that
up to my room,” says Le Bon, who has recently: you can’t stand still as a player.
period of time when people were
been married to Yasmin since 1985. You always have to try to keep moving
happier perhaps, a time when things
“I did used to do that, you know. forward, while you can.
were easier. Maybe that’s got something
Marriage changed all that. Funnily “Every hour that you play develops
to do with it.”
enough, I used to spend more energy in your art, if you like. Considering the
the clubs and bars probably than I did thousands of hours that we’ve played The self-styled Queen of Hi-NRG is still
on stage. And over the years, we’ve all together over the last few years, there’s keeping her fans happy on tour and plays
learned, that the important part of your definitely been some development.“ Chester Pride on 1 October followed by
Wolverhampton Racecourse in December.

Bucks Fizz say no

B
ucks Fizz turned down a reported £1 million
payday to reunite with founding member
Bobby G. Cheryl Baker, Mike Nolan and
Jay Aston were offered the sum by a TV
production company, but refused due to their
long-running dispute over the band name. Bobby, real
name Robert Gubby, and his wife Heidi Manton own
the Bucks Fizz trademark, and the rest of the original
line-up no longer speak to him.
Mike, 61, explained: “We could never work with
Bobby again.” Jay added: “We had an offer from a
very big promoter who had a track record of making
high-profile TV shows.
“The idea was that we would try to build bridges
again with Bobby and have negotiations on
camera… I spoke to Mike and Cheryl but they were a
definite ‘no’.”
That means the remaining trio have to call
themselves Cheryl, Mike and Jay, Formerly Of Bucks
Fizz, With Bobby McVay – referring to new fourth
member, himself a former Eurovision entrant. The
foursome are currently in the middle of the Make
Believe Tour.

21
 TRANSMISSION
to my mind, is simply the pop equivalent
of AOR. Adult-oriented and/or album-
oriented pop. Possibly a more useful term
than the only alternative: sophisti-pop.
Although the seeds of sophisti-pop were
sown in the early Eighties by Sade and
Everything But The Girl, it generally refers
to a very short time period: pretty much
from the arrival of Johnny Hates Jazz to
the departure of Living In A Box. Ian Peel

W W W . C L A S S I C P O P M A G . C O M
THE SANDRA ENIGMA
Thank you very much for Classic Pop
DAVID BOWIE, PRINCE, THE GOLDEN AGE OF PRINT, PLENTY mag, nice to read all the news! Are you
OF IDEAS FOR FUTURE CLASSIC POP FEATURES, AND DIGGING planning to write about Kim Wilde, or
Belinda Carlisle? I like also the German
DOWN INTO THE PRECISE MEANING OF AOP: IT’S ALL IN singer Sandra (ex-wife of Michael Cretu/
THIS MONTH’S LETTERS PAGE… Enigma project), although she was not
famous in the UK, except the cover of
Email ian.peel@anthem- /ClassicPopMag @ClassicPop @classic
publishing.com Magazine popmag Everlasting Love (also remixed by PWL).
PETR, PRAGUE

Editor’s note: She’s less well-known

THE CONSENSUS MIX I think when I finished it, not only was in the UK but Sandra does have a
Once again I would like to congratulate it quite poignant regarding the pre- cult fanbase over here, and often gets
you on consistently delivering issue after death literature on David Bowie but also mentioned alongside another solo
issue of superb features, interviews and the ‘hidden gems’ of talent that even Euro/art-pop singer, Inge Humpe
reviews from front cover to back page. someone like me had forgotten about. from Swimming With Sharks and
I’ve not missed an issue. I worked in the Eighties for a print 2raumwohnung. Let’s add the worlds
I recently purchased both the Classic company that produced work for record of Enigma, Michael Cretu and Sandra
Pop 12-inch and Synthpop CDs, and companies such as EMI, Virgin and to the pile of potential Lowdowns for a
it made me think of other tracks which Chrysalis and smaller ones like Mute future issue.
could maybe have been included, so I and Factory. The best job I ever had, a
hope there will be more to come... I must real labour of love. As you can imagine THAT BOWIE DATE
admit I have been eager to see outcomes at the time for every big band with a I would like to draw your attention to
of your reader votes for top 12” singles new album there would be at least three page 51 of Issue 21 and the photograph
(Issue 6), top 100 singles of Eighties or four singles in maybe three or four of David Bowie. It states the photograph
(Issue 8), top synthpop singles (Issue different formats. That’s a lot of print, was taken at Earls Court on the 29
10) and I’m hoping there will be future and then they all had to be made up into August 1978. I believe this is incorrect
opportunities to vote for possible subjects sleeves or compact disc covers. So it was and that the Earls Courts dates were
– perhaps one-hit wonders and songs busy, busy. 29 and 30 June, and 1 July 1978.
from movies of the Eighties? Anyway, we have moved on, you JOHN BILVERSTONE
Finally, any chance of a Classic can’t stop progress, but the buying
Album feature on Pet Shop Boys? Seeing and listening of music feels very much THE ELECTRO 80S
as three of their albums – Introspective like today’s throwaway society: album It would be great to see a feature about
(No. 52), Actually (No. 34) and Please artwork is no longer such a cherished Electro 80’s, a band who cover early
(No. 9) all featured in the Top 100 thing. So thanks for the great read. Eighties electro pop, and not always
Albums of the Eighties survey? I’m sure ROY ASHMAN big hits but rather the coolest tracks by
it is long overdue. groups such as Depeche Mode, Human
NEIL DANGERFIELD, SURREY THE AOP CONUNDRUM League, Gary Numan, Ultravox, Soft Cell
Ian Peel’s history of the British Electric and Erasure. The highlight of their gigs is
THE PRINT ERA Foundation (Labelled With Love, issue usually a cover of Are ‘Friends’ Electric?
I purchased your mag just before 21) was a long overdue insight into by Tubeway Army. The sound and detail
Christmas – the issue with The Top 100 one of my favourite “brand names” in is always so impressive. I’m sure many
albums. Yes, I am a bit behind! I kept the world of electronic pop. And kudos readers would already be aware of the
it for my beach holiday where I just to him for reminding the world that if it group as they play across the country
crash for a week abroad every year wasn’t for B.E.F., Tina Turner wouldn’t be and have created quite a large following.
to recharge. I was not really expecting where she is today. Or Arlene Phillips ANDREW COTTON
much, it was bought as a bit of a filler for that matter, but the less said about
in between my book and Classic Rock. that the better. I get what he was saying MURPHY’S A LAW UNTO HERSELF
But when I finally got into it, wow, was I about Tina being a mainstay of AOR – Can I just say how much I enjoyed Paul
surprised! The knowledge of the staff and album-oriented pop (or adult-oriented Lester’s interview with Róisín Murphy in
the writing of the articles were great and pop, as I’ve always thought it stood for) – Issue 24 of Classic Pop. Her new album
the thought, skill and enthusiasm of all but I’ve never heard of the other acronym Take Her Up To Monto is pretty out there
who contribute was evident. he used… AOP? to say the least. Some of it works, some
Being both a massive Simple Minds MIKE J HOCH, MINNEAPOLIS of it doesn’t, but it’s refreshing to see an
fan and admirer of bands like Sparks artist willing to take some risks with her
and the Associates there was plenty for I might have been getting carried away music. Long may she push the boat out!
me to get stuck into. coming up with a new acronym but AOP, LEE STEPHENS

22
 ON SALE NOW!
Search Classic Pop @ classicpopmag
magazine

CP24.Michael jackson Ad.FINAL.indd 23 31/08/2016 11:27

 T R A N S M I S S I O N

T W E E T I T ! F A C E T O F A C E B O O K I N S T A G R A M

Classic Pop readers might also #CLASSICPOPMAG

@srace71
enjoy my blog about songs that
Album sequel suggestion akin to have never made the UK Top 40 – at last
ABC Lexicon Of Love II, how about a count more than 300 brilliant tunes,
@PaulYoungParlez sequel to No Parlez many from the Eighties.
could be Parle Moi NIALL MCMURRAY anfunny
www.intothepopvoid.com If you told me I’d be
@Only_Mel buying the soundtrack
Re. follow-up albums. If only there could Great article on Simple Minds but to a film about Eddie
have been a Purple Rain 2 surprised you missed out Sons And The Eagle six months
Fascination/Sister Feelings Call – ago, not sure I’d have
certainly an “essential album” of theirs! believed you!
@jameshutch78
IAN DAVIES @classicpopmag
So I asked my girlfriend @Sweetsuey27
to pick me up @ClassicPopMag with
@ABCFRY on cover, she texts and says I just want to say God bless your
“I got your mag with Stephen Fry” magazine with regard to your
tribute to Prince. For native Twin Citians bantha75
like me who grew up in the the Eighties, Jansen Barbieri Karn |
@EarlsJohn Playing In A Room
it wasn’t all that different from the deaths
A new @MisterMarilyn single produced of Elvis Presley or John Lennon. You With People
and co-written by @BoyGeorge? This is should have been here when they had #thedolphinbrothers
huge @ClassicPopMag news! the all-night tribute party at First Avenue. #80spopculture #80s
Everyone just poured out into the streets. #newromantics
@grecian4ever When Prince died, we lost a part of us. #classicpopmagazine
Can’t tell you how much I enjoy your DANA WARD CARLSON
mag with a huge gap in the market for
coverage of our fave 80s icons and their I have to say... no doubt! YOU are
new music! the BEST tribute publication out rosielebontennant
there for Prince! Respect! Thank U for Morning reading #abc
@slapdash_eden coming correct! #classicpopmagazine
SANTAFE HASKELL #newissue #classicpop
A new Adam Ant blog. Slapdash Eden –
www.slapdashedenblog.wordpress.com
I really liked your tribute issues
devoted to Prince and Bowie –
@TheBillyReeves billieraymartin
there are many other classic pop artists
Thanks @ClassicPopMag @letitbeep My new video comes
(Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran,
@EarlsJohn @paullester22 out on Monday and it
Abba, Blondie, New Order, etc) who I
@WyndhamWallace for slipping me might be the best one
think would make great celebration
onto p88 of issue 24. Great mag! yet. I’m so excited, and
issues as well. I love those types of issues
and IMO your artist-specific tributes are #classicpopmagazine
@_Whaambaam as good as Uncut and Rolling Stone. will be hosting the
So excited for my copy of JOHN MCMILLIN video premiere
@ClassicPopMag’s Michael Jackson
tribute to arrive! Combination of two of Paul Lester writes in his review of
my favourite things! #proudmoonwalker The Cars reissues that the band
split in 1988. Yes they did, but they rosiescdand
@thewonder_stuff reformed in 2010 and released the dvdcollection
album Move Like This in 2011. An David Bowie and Pet
A rare bit of print media for us in this
important detail. Shop Boys posters
month’s @ClassicPopMag Thanks
JON AANENSEN #mycollection
#classicpopmagazine
@TomAngel1
The Consensus Mix of Arcadia’s
Can’t wait to discover how @_real_lies
Election Day is today’s definition of
have remixed @petshopboys Say It To
Classic Pop? I have the 7” but now need
Me single kidkasio
to find the 12”!
MEL HALL Train reading material
@gorml for the journey from
#PopMusic aunties @VivaBananarama The anniversary of MTV Europe? London to Edinburgh
have new music forthcoming I remember this. I watched #classicpopmagazine
#bananarama incessantly for a few weeks. I think I saw @classicpopmag
Pet Shop Boys’ It’s A Sin video about
@DiegoImperatore 100 times, wondering why they didn’t
Just preordered @ClassicPopMag play any Black, Kim Wilde or Kate Bush
Michael Jackson special edition! at all. Of course, MTV always boycotted broberts89
#classicpopmagazine my most favourite artists... Tears #bowie
MARCEL RIJS #classicpopmagazine

24
 M A R S H E A U X

“This is Marsheaux’ ‘Eureka!’ moment” CLASSIC POP

“Nods deliciously in all the right directions” ELECTRONIC SOUND

“It’s another triumph” THE ELECTRICITY CLUB

OUT NOW

LP / CD / ltd ed CD Box Set / Download

Listen the album Watch the video

ADClassicPopMag.indd 1 02/07/16 11:43

 W

NO LONGER A NOSTALGIA BAND, MADNESS HAVE SPENT

THE PAST DECADE ASSEMBLING “NEW UNIVERSES” OF MUSIC
TO SHOWCASE THEIR IMPECCABLE KNACK OF KNOWING
WHAT MAKES PEOPLE TICK. JOINING SUGGS TO DISCOVER
JUST WHY MADNESS ARE THE ULTIMATE COMMUNITY SPIRIT
COLLECTIVE, CLASSIC POP FINDS THEM RAILING AGAINST THE
IDEA OF BEING COSY NATIONAL TREASURES.
J O H N E A R L S

26
 M A D N E S S

W
W
hen Madness launched new Lamb, and Madness are still capable of out-drinking
album Can’t Touch Us Now, most other bands.
they wanted to highlight just But there was, however unintentionally, a wisdom to
how much of a long-running getting the Chelsea Pensioners’ seal of approval. “I’ve
institution the band are. never met such a bunch of characters,” Suggs enthuses.
Others might be more “We were trying to find an institution older than
prolific – Can’t Touch Us Madness for the album launch. The only other one we
Now is only the 11th album of a career that began could think of was The Rolling Stones, and we didn’t
37 years ago with 1979’s One Step Beyond – but want to do a press conference with them.”
few are more universally loved. In August, a survey The singer admits that, until he met the Pensioners
of the dream festival line-up saw Madness in the Top on the day, he wasn’t entirely clear what the charity is
Ten, coming ninth, sandwiched between David Bowie all about. “I thought they might have been veterans of
and Rihanna. Such is the eternal power of their show, the Boer War, until someone pointed out that was
Madness were – alongside Rihanna and Eminem – the 200 years ago. Even World War I, which was my next-
only act still going in that Top Ten. best guess, is too long ago now. Actually, the Chelsea
That album title is a statement of intent, but initially Pensioners is for ex-soldiers with no wives or children.
it seemed undercut by Madness’ choice of how they It’s a fabulous community, full of very interesting people
settled on showing their venerable career: by having who happen to be old. That was a great afternoon.”
a press conference at Chelsea’s Royal Hospital with Madness’ main ethos is to strengthen the idea of
Chelsea Pensioners taking the role of journalists and community spirit. From the loving family memories of
asking the questions. Our House via the shared rites of passages detailed
“God knows how we came up with that particular in Baggy Trousers and House Of Fun to the trials of
concept,” admits Suggs. “It must have been in the middle age on 2012’s previous album Oui Oui Si Si
pub.” That wouldn’t be a surprise – Suggs meets Ja Ja Da Da, Madness are about music that brings
Classic Pop at London pub venue The Slaughtered people together – and that’s one of the main reasons

27
they’ve lasted so long. “We can’t change the system, a statement as seemingly arrogant as Can’t Touch Us
unfortunately,” says Suggs with a wry smile. “But our Now as the new album’s title, but the band eventually
band has always been about community and agreed it was time to remind people of Madness’
co-operation. That’s all we can do – keep going on status. It was, Suggs says, initially just going to be
about those ideas.” the name for their latest annual Christmas arena tour,
Madness may not be associated with being overtly based on saxophonist Lee Thompson’s new song of the
political, but that would be to ignore the anti-racist same name.
message of Embarrassment or how their initial career “When Can’t Touch Us Now was suggested for
ended in 1986 with the elegiac anti-apartheid (Waiting the tour title, I thought ‘Well, that’s just funny,’” Suggs
For) The Ghost Train, their final message before recalls. “As for an album title, though? That’s more
splitting for six years. Since their comeback, Misery permanent, and you do think ‘Does that sound a bit
has been a neat summary of Madness’ determination too arrogant?’
to celebrate life despite the state of the economy. “But Madness have got to a point now where
It’s there, too, in Mumbo Jumbo on the new album. we sold 20,000 tickets for our House Of Common
It may have been written before Brexit, but the song festival at Clapham Common, and we did that with
adroitly skewers both politicians seeking to divide the no sponsorship or branding. I’m aware the band have
nation and their determination to avoid inconvenient had as many downs as we’ve had ups. But we’re
facts. “We’re in chaos as a nation, aren’t we?” rues at the point where we’re outside of the boundaries
Suggs. “Mumbo Jumbo is, as the title says, about the of whatever the music industry is called these days.
mumbo jumbo we’re being fed as people. I don’t really So let’s celebrate that – and let the title also be a
know where this chaos is all going to end up, and it celebration of anyone who’s escaped the confines of
is worrying. On a song like Mumbo Jumbo, all we what’s expected of them.”
can do is try to filter our thoughts about the state of Exceeding expectations is something shared by all
the country into some kind of sense.” But it’s important of Madness, and helps explain why community is so
to note that Madness are experts at not making such important to the band. Because none of their childhood
statements preachy – because such an empathetic family life was exactly regular.
band are happy for the listener to figure out a song’s Suggs’ father William McPherson was a heroin
message themselves. “We’re like Chic, in a way,” addict. Lee Thompson’s father was in and out of prison,
Suggs explains. “Nile Rodgers says Chic’s music with the future saxophonist part of an infamous teenage
has HDM: hidden deeper meaning. That’s the story graffiti gang in North London with pianist Mike Barson.
of our career, too, that we’ve always got a hidden Drummer Dan Woodgate was brought up by a series
deeper meaning. And we’re happy for it to be hidden, of nannies after his parents’ divorce. Singer/dancer
because you don’t want to shout about your meaning. Cathal Smyth rarely stayed in the same continent
People aren’t stupid. People get patronised enough as for long, thanks to his father’s job in the oil industry.
it is without us patronising them, too. We know that, As Suggs says: “Most of us come from very dark
however people are portrayed, they’re not stupid. And backgrounds, and that doesn’t go away. Because we
the fact we appreciate that is one of the big reasons didn’t have a sense of community as children, we had
we’ve continued, I’m certain of it.” to learn it in Madness. The band taught us how to be
Suggs admits there was some debate about having fair to each other and how to communicate with other

28
 M A D N E S S

people. That’s not the easiest thing to learn, especially

in the madness of our popular culture.”
If it was hard for Madness to find their way together
as young men from dysfunctional backgrounds when
the band formed in Camden in the late 1970s, that
chaos has never really left them. They seem to perfectly
fit the industry adage that musicians essentially remain
the same people as when they first find success. You
don’t have to look too hard to find the bolshy, up for
it perma-partying spirit of lads in their early-twenties
when it comes to Madness. Getting them in a room
together for promo is an impossible task, and even
trying to pin one of the band down can be tricky.
When they do get together for shows, the catch-ups
can be long, liquid and full of adventure – anyone
who’s seen Madness at a festival knows it’s never
going to be a staid, sober run-through of the hits. They
still push the boundaries of pop music, and the six men
currently in Madness still explore life’s possibilities to
the full, too. It’s why the idea of them being national
Paul Agar’s striking
treasures faintly appals them.
collage cover artwork for “We’ve still got chaos,” insists Suggs. “National
the new album; above treasures? No thanks. If you saw the reality of what
right, Madness with the goes on behind the scenes in Madness, we wouldn’t be
Chelsea Pensioners
allowed near anything called an institution. We should
be institutionalised.”
They are at least each other’s own surrogate families,
with all the arguments that involves. Barson was the
first to bail, his departure in 1984 soon leading to
Madness’ split in 1986. They reformed in 1992 for the
first Madstock concert at Finsbury Park. But, once they
began trying to record again, tensions really began
to show. Guitarist Chris Foreman left after working on
their second reunion album, 2005’s covers set The
Dangermen Sessions. Bassist Mark Bedford stopped
touring for three years and wasn’t involved on Oui
Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da. And now Cathal Smyth has
left, bailing in 2014 to make his first solo album, the
surprisingly contemplative A Comfortable Man.
Foreman and Bedford eventually rejoined, which
suggests Smyth’s departure is probably temporary.
Suggs is every bit as companionable as his public
image suggests. But talking about Smyth’s departure is
the only time he becomes even remotely frosty in our
interview. “Cathal is still on sabbatical at the moment,”
he starts, his words suddenly slowing down. “He made
his solo record during the time we were recording our
new album and I really don’t know if he’ll come back.
I know you have to ask the question about him, but

29
 Suggs and Madness on
stage at the O2 Arena,
London, in 2014; inset,
the band in 1981

it’s not something I feel comfortable ourselves, and we’ve created a

talking about.” A rare pause, while depth of culture over the years
Suggs tries to consider how to sum that means we are in deep
up Smyth’s current status. “This band with the public.”
is a very complicated entity. It’s a It helps that, as Suggs puts
dysfunctional family, and within that it, Madness escaped “Eighties
you’re going to get dysfunctionality. nostalgia shit” with the
But nothing is unresolvable, and release of 2009’s album The
the seven of us have always had Liberty Of Norton Folgate.
tolerance and love for each other.” A loose concept album
I suggest that the only way in which about the Norton Folgate
Madness would really be in trouble micro-suburb of East London
is if Woodgate decided to leave, that officially doesn’t come
however temporarily. It’s an idea that under government control, it was
causes one of Suggs’ frequent convulsions of delighted Madness’ first album of new material in a decade and
laughter. “Woody leaving? Yeah, that would be like garnered the best reviews of their career. The following
the ravens leaving the tower. Me and him are the only Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da was, by contrast, just trying
two never to miss a Madness gig. Woody explained to write great songs. It, too, was a triumph.
to me why once. Before Madness, he was in a band “We put a fuck of a lot of effort into Norton
called Fat. Woody took a week off, so they get another Folgate,” Suggs explains. “We thought that might be
drummer in – and they never asked Woody back.” the last record we’d make and, if it was, we wanted it
So Madness, even if they’re currently down to a to at least be one we could be proud of. It opened the
six-piece, are unlikely to split again any time soon. But door for us to escape being seen as a nostalgia band,
is it telling that the full chorus of the title track of Can’t and Oui Oui was very well received, too.
Touch Us Now is “You can’t touch us now, we’re in too “We feel like we’ve been given an opportunity since
deep”? Is being in Madness like the Mafia, that you’re Norton Folgate and the feeling is ‘Fuck it, let’s just try
simply not allowed to leave? More Suggsian laughter. to plough on.’ We’re a working band again now, so
“Well, to my mind, it’s that the British public are in it’s up to us to just do what we do, which is obviously
too deep with us. I think we are wanted. Whatever making records.”
happens, Madness can go off and come back. Can’t Is that easier said than done in such a dysfunctional
Touch Us Now is released by Universal, but that’s family? “It’s not so bad. We’ve all stopped farting
the first time we’ve had a record contract since The about a bit and concentrated again. So this new
Dangermen Sessions. We can organise everything record was a relatively painless process. The mad

30
 M A D N E S S

PRODUCTION DUTIES
During the first era of Madness, their albums were produced by
Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, the duo who also made records
for Dexys Midnight Runners, The Teardrop Explodes and They Might
Be Giants.
The pair produced The Liberty Of Norton Folgate in 2009, but
since then only Langer has been on board for Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da
Da and Can’t Touch Us Now.
“There were lots of producers in the frame for the new album,”
says Suggs. “But Clive is a fucking brilliant producer, and he’s an
old mate. Our biggest problem is rowing about what songs to put
on an album. Naturally, everyone thinks those they’ve written are
the best. But we all trust Clive to be objective about which 14 songs
should go on an album from the 25 we’d written.
“Having decided to collaborate once again, we wanted the
process to be as smooth as possible, and Clive is the man for that.

“WE’VE COLLIDED
We trust him. Plus, he’s a brilliant song arranger. He does things to
Madness songs that we’d never think to do.”

TOGETHER IN A
What about Alan Winstanley? “He lives out in Portugal or
somewhere like that now. It’s not that we didn’t think about working
with Alan again; we did. But Toe Rag Studios automatically comes
SANDPIT OF JOY ON with Liam Watson as a producer, and we wanted Clive to do the
arrangements. That kept it all simple.”

THIS NEW ALBUM”

members are less mad, the sane members are less sane
GOING IT ALONE
and we’ve all met in the middle somewhere. We’ve Since Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da four years ago, there have been a
collided together in a sandpit of joy.” raft of Madness solo albums: Cathal Smyth has left to focus on solo
There is, loosely, a concept to Can’t Touch Us Now, debut A Comfortable Man, drummer Dan Woodgate released In
despite Suggs’ reluctance to call it a concept album. Your Mind with his brother Nick and saxophonist Lee Thompson has
“On Oui Oui, my lyrics were more abstract than released two albums with Lee Thompson’s Ska Orchestra.
usual,” he explains. “I’ve concentrated on getting back Has this tempted Suggs to make a new solo album to follow his
to the narrative side of my songwriting. I wanted stories 1990s efforts The Lone Ranger and The Three Pyramids Clubs?
“I wasn’t particularly mad about those albums,” Suggs admits.
again. All the songs are about specific people or
“They only touched on the things I wanted to do. They came about
events, and I’m telling those stories.” when I was in the middle of a lot of other things, like TV and radio
Following the uptight anti-hero of first single Mr presenting. Plus, Madness were starting to come back with the
Apples, the album also depicts a stern would-be Madstock festivals.
father-in-law on Herbert, the gadget-obsessed wideboy “I was a bit distracted then, but now I’m fully immersed in
in Another Version Of Me and Pam The Hawk: “A songwriting. So, yeah, there are songs I might want to do in a
beggar – if that’s the correct term, I don’t know what different context than Madness offers.”
the modern vernacular is. But Pam was an amazing Would that include your oft-discussed unreleased song about
character; she’d make £200 a day before she living in Pembrokeshire coastal town Haverfordwest as an eight-
unfortunately passed away.” year-old? “Maybe! It was an interesting place – it’s a pretty rough
market town, but it was my first experience of the countryside,
Having written about Amy Winehouse in Circus
so that was amazing. I was running around in fields, swimming in
Freaks on Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da, Suggs writes rivers and scrumping. It was the whole Van Morrison experience,
about their final meeting on moving ballad Blackbird definitely worth a song.”
on the new album. Winehouse lived in Camden, near
Suggs, and he still despairs at her death five years on.
“I saw Amy on Dean Street in Soho very shortly

31
before she died,” he sighs. “So soon after her death,
the timing wasn’t right to write about it on Oui Oui.
But the experience kept going round and round in my
head. She was walking towards me and went ‘Alright,
Nutty Boy?’ That was just so funny, because no-one
had called me Nutty Boy since 1979. I’m a 55-year-old
man, for goodness’ sake. The way she said it was very
funny, too, and I felt it captured something about her. I
mean, what can you say about Amy that hasn’t already
been said? But I felt compelled to write Blackbird, and
Chris wrote a very nice soul motif that immediately fit
the lyrics. That song came out very naturally.”
Winehouse was a regular at The Dublin Castle, the
Camden pub where Madness played their first shows
and where Suggs still goes drinking 40 years later. It’s
one of the few pub venues in London where new bands
can still get a gig easily – a problem for new musicians
that appals Suggs.
“When Madness started, there were six or seven
pubs in Camden alone where you could get a gig,”
he says. “There’s a chapter in Chrissie Hynde’s book
where she writes about coming to London back in the
mid-70s, how it was absolutely made for musicians:
there was cheap public transport, you could go on
the dole, you could squat and you could find an
abandoned warehouse to rehearse in.
“Now? Fuck, try going on the dole now. I know Filming the video for
Driving in My Car, 1981
Henry Conlon, who runs The Dublin Castle, and he
says the energy a new band needs
just to keep going now is massively
harder to maintain. The Dublin Castle “YOU HAVE TO BE
doesn’t charge, but a lot of pubs
make bands stump up £200 before AN ETONIAN TO BE
they’ll let you play. When we started,
you were alright so long as you A F**KING MUSICIAN
brought enough people to buy
a couple of pints. NOWADAYS ”
“And, of course, bands can’t
afford to live in London anymore anyway. You have Madness first tried to write a concept album on
to be an Etonian to become a fucking musician 1982’s The Rise And Fall, but Our House is one of its
nowadays, or get mummy and daddy to pay for you. few songs to fit the intended theme of childhood. And
I really do worry for new bands.” Suggs would also argue against The Liberty Of Norton
The new album’s other concept was simply to get Folgate qualifying. “There was a very clear remit on
the band writing together again, rather than have Folgate, of it being an ode to London,” he considers.
everyone come in with complete songs written on their “But, as Chris pointed out, ‘What the fuck are the
own. “Our management noticed that, during Oui Oui, rest of our songs about, then?’ So Folgate is hardly
we were getting more and more individual,” Suggs a concept, really. Maybe we’d do something more
admits. “We weren’t collaborating with each other so concrete like Folgate again, but I don’t know if we’ve
much to write songs, and we were aware a lot of our got a concept album in us.”
classic tracks were co-writes. That’s quite abstract, in Like Oui Oui, the new album was recorded at the
a way, as songs are just songs. But we’ve all made a infamous Toe Rag studios, the back-to-basics base in
conscious decision to collaborate more.” Hackney where The White Stripes laid down their
Along with Suggs, it’s Barson and Thompson who’ve breakthrough 2003 album Elephant featuring Seven
been the main protagonists of Can’t Touch Us Now, Nation Army. Owned by producer Liam Watson, it
but the singer insists: “If Woody, Mark or anyone else features entirely analogue equipment and eight-track
has a tune, I’ll try to write with them.” recording equipment.
Suggs’ reticence to classify Can’t Touch Us Now Watson worked with Clive Langer, the producer who
as a concept album is mostly down to the fact that has overseen all 11 Madness albums. “All the effort
the characters he’s writing about aren’t linked. “I has gone into writing this album and the rehearsing
was never into concept albums,” he tuts. “There’s a of 25 potential songs,” explains Suggs. “Doing that
contrivance to them, and you end up wedging songs meant that actually recording it was as painless as
onto them for the sake of the story. You have to ram possible – it only took three weeks. Having only eight
songs in, and that rarely works. Look at Tommy by tracks to play with really does focus the mind.
The Who. There are some great songs on there, but “We took the album to Charlie Andrew, Alt-J’s
there are also some real duff ones.” producer, for some technical wizardry in mixing

32
 M A D N E S S

afterwards. But what we wanted was to capture the think about old people playing pop music, I don’t think

POP_UP Madness were the only musical guests to appear twice in the anarchic 80s
sit-com The Young Ones. Suggs and Co played House of Fun in the first series and
feel of a Madness performance. Once you write a about The Rolling Stones. I look at Buena Vista Social
good song, all you really want to do is to arrange it Club, where it’s possible to play pop music with some
and rehearse it well, so that it’ll sound good on the dignity. You don’t have to flounce about in leather
album. To do that, you should do 15 or 20 takes of trousers, all winks and glitter.
it in the room together, just performing it until you’ve “If you still enjoy making pop music – which we most
practiced it enough. That’s what we did on this record. assuredly do – and you feel there’s some go in you,
You capture something more than the modern method, that’s the main thing about deciding whether or not to

followed it up with a romp through Our House in series two.

where you lay down the bass, then the drums, then the carry on.
guitars... Even if there are bumps and bruises, you just “Our job as a band is like reggae and soul artists
know immediately if a particular take has got a certain who don’t have a miserable bone in their body or their
atmosphere. Capturing the spirit of our shows is really music, despite the shit they’ve been through. It’s about
what has excited the band all along.” trying to make the effort look effortless.”
Whatever the reception that meets Can’t Touch Us And Madness, Suggs believes, have quietly become
Now, it leaves Madness in rude health. As a working as big as they were during the Baggy Trousers days.
band, it shouldn’t be too long before album 12 arrives. Their albums chart better than ever, they sell more
They may still play those songs of young men – last tickets than ever. “Every year, Madness opens out in a
time Suggs spoke to Classic Pop, he admitted that the different way than I thought it would. It’s getting bigger
line “Sixteen today, and up for fun” in House Of Fun is every time, and it’s starting to get scary because none
“an albatross, Madness’ very own ‘Talking about my of us knows what we’re unleashing. I don’t want to end
generation’.” But they’re still able to play those songs up a gigantic popular rock star, but it’s heading in that
with an exuberance of a band aware of their good direction, for some peculiar reason.”
fortune that, dysfunctionalities and all, they essentially Making great records and still playing celebratory
still get on. shows must have something to do with it? “You’re very
So will Madness still be playing It Must Be Love kind! When we go on stage, I do feel a great deal of
when they’re as old as Chelsea Pensioners? “I hope pride in the fact that we’re a pretty fucking good band.
so,” says Suggs, after another burst of laughter. “If we We’re one of the three best live bands in the world.
get to have the lives they’ve had, then fantastic. When I And I don’t know who the other two are.”

33
 T H E L O W

DOWN

THE CURE

O
HAVING ARRIVED ON f all the bands that emerged in the pitted as poster boys for the burgeoning goth-
aftermath of punk in the late-Seventies, rock scene. Themes such as abandonment,
THE MUSIC SCENE few have proved to be as enduring addiction and depression loomed large in
AS PURVEYORS OF as The Cure. Having formed bands their work and the constant anguish took its
GLOOM, THE CURE at school as a coping mechanism toll in 1982 before line-up changes (the first
to combat his feelings of being an of many) and moonlighting with Siouxsie &
QUICKLY BROKE outsider after his family moved to The Banshees forced a reboot of the band,
OUT FROM THEIR Crawley from Blackpool as a child, introducing a new quirkier, poppier sound,
DOWNBEAT DIRGES Robert Smith played in a variety of revealing them to be masters of light as well as
groups before forming The Easy Cure shade, and revealed their trademark smudged
AND GHOULISH in 1976. The band specialised in lipstick and bird’s nest hairdo image.
PERSONAS TO dark, spiky guitar pop and began gigging 1983’s The Love Cats gave them their first
and recording demos, one of which, Killing Top 10 single and set them begrudgingly on a
EMERGE AS ONE
An Arab, found its way to Chris Parry, an A&R path to worldwide success, endearing them to
OF THE MOST rep from Polydor Records. By December 1978, an ardent army of acolytes who have faithfully
INFLUENTIAL ROCK the band was called The Cure, and Parry had supported the band in its various line-ups, side
arranged to have the song released on indie projects and musical changes, showing great
BANDS OF THE PAST label Small Wonder, before leaving Polydor devotion to them for almost four decades.
FOUR DECADES... to start his own label, Fiction, and taking The Despite an eight-year gap since their last
M A R K Cure with him. album, The Cure are currently on the road,
L I N D O R E S With their debut album, Three Imaginary headlining festivals and playing sold-out shows
Boys, and an exhaustive touring schedule, in huge arenas and stadiums. Fans are being
the band were lauded by the music press and rewarded with career-spanning setlists that
built up a huge following of fans that related encompass the hits, B-sides and rarely-played
to the intensely dark, gloomy dirges which album tracks – the perfect appetiser for the
dominated their first four albums, seeing them next chapter of The Cure’s illustrious career.

34
 T H E C U R E T H E L O W D O W N

T H E M U S T- H AV E A L B U M S

PORNOGRAPHY THE HEAD ON KISS ME, KISS ME, DISINTEGRATION

1982 THE DOOR KISS ME 1989
The doyens of doom 1985 1987 Ending on a high
By the time The Cure released their A brighter outlook Puckering up Having spent the Eighties as one of the
fourth album in 1982, they were widely After a spell of releasing increasingly dark 1987 was quite the year for prolific defining groups of the decade, The Cure
acknowledged as one of the key acts of material, the ever-changing Cure returned songwriters releasing double albums. Like ended it on a high with the release of
the goth-rock movement. Having got in 1985 with The Head On The Door, an Prince’s Sign O’ The Times, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Disintegration, their ultimate masterpiece.
progressively darker with each album, album that signalled a new line-up (making Kiss Me was a cacophonous set on which Dismayed at the thought of turning 30,
Pornography was their rock bottom – a the band now a quintet) and a fresh musical its creators let loose, experimenting with a troubled by inter-band rows and at how
searing morass of pain and anguish. direction. Citing his old band Siouxsie & variety of musical styles and expanding their The Cure had become a stadium rock band
“I was in a really depressed frame of the Banshees, Human League and New musical scope. –“which was exactly what I didn’t want us
mind between 1981 and 1982,” Robert Order as influences, Robert Smith wrote the Continuing to hone the pop sensibilities to become” – Robert Smith had begun using
Smith said. “We had been touring for about entire album and proved himself a versatile he displayed on The Head On The Door, drugs again, particularly LSD, to combat his
200 days a year and it all got a bit too songsmith (no pun intended) as adept at Robert Smith once again shows his versatility depression. These issues became the catalysts
much because there was never any time to crafting unabashed pop melodies as he was as a songwriter, displaying his range from for Disintegration – a trippy take on the
do anything else. I had two choices at the angst-ridden anthems. In Between Days, upbeat, danceable tracks such as Catch and gloomy aesthetic of their earlier works such
time, which were either completely giving in which had already been a hit prior to the How Beautiful You Are to the menacing The as Pornography.
[committing suicide] or making a record of it album, determined the standard and pace Snakepit, the eastern goth of If Only Tonight Disintegration is the album on which all
and getting it out of me.” of The Head On The Door, which continued We Could Sleep, the beautiful One More Time the past deviations and experimentations
Although it was criticised upon release throughout with an impressive run of and A Thousand Hours to the glorious hits with different styles align to create the
for its persistent misery, the album has since perfectly produced concise tracks comprising Just Like Heaven and Why Can’t I Be You? band’s true sonic identity. While the poppier
been reappraised as a painfully honest Push, on which Robert relates his experience The album may be varied in style, but moments such as Love Song (a wedding
depiction of the mental torture the band were of irrational hatred, followed by A Baby it’s utterly consistent in quality. Even at present for Robert’s wife) and Lullaby gave
enduring at the time due to depression and Screams, Close To You and the monumental A 18 tracks and more than 70 minutes in The Cure their biggest hits to date, they
drug and alcohol abuse, and is now widely Night Like This before climaxing with Sinking. length, Smith said that he had so many were matched quality-wise on the album by
regarded as a seminal release because of The fresh sound and outlook paid off, with songs that it could have been a triple album, the blissful Pictures Of You and Fascination
its subsequent influence on goth as a genre. the album becoming their most successful with leftover material relegated to B-sides… Street as well as the sprawling Same Deep
Despite The Hanging Garden being the to date, reaching No. 7 in the UK as well as though The Cure’s B-sides are renowned for Water As You, Homesick and the title track.
album’s sole minor hit, Pornography reached opening the band up to larger audiences in being of a similar high standard to album Disintegration reached No. 3 on the UK
No. 8 in the UK chart. Europe and the US. tracks and even singles. album chart, again a career best to date.

AND THE REST...

THREE SEVENTEEN FAITH WISH
IMAGINARY SECONDS 1981 1992
BOYS 1980 The second long-player Now facing the daunting
1979 Clocking in at just 35 in a gloom-laden trilogy task of following up their
Released in May 1979, The Cure’s debut minutes, the brevity of The Cure’s “difficult” of albums which would conclude on greatest work, Wish arrived three years
album was an accomplished piece of post- second album was due to budgetary the following Pornography, Faith was after Disintegration. The first Cure release
punk on which the band were establishing restrictions, not because of a lack of depression personified by the grey fog of the Nineties, Wish saw the band compete
themselves as a fresh new voice, combining inspiration. The songs were pouring out that immersed not only the music but also with artists that had been influenced by
Robert Smith’s distinctive vocals, minimalist of Smith, with the entire album written in the sombre artwork, all part of Robert them such as the alternative/shoegazer
sound, quirky riffs and offbeat subject just two sessions at his parents’ home on a Smith’s masterplan to create a work that outfits of the time.
matter to emerge as one of music’s most Hammond keyboard – an instrument which would fit the description of “funereal”. A Although the album is undeniably
promising new acts. Even though it’s their would add a worthwhile dimension to The haunting masterpiece, Faith is brimming poppier and happier than its predecessor on
debut, their promise shines through with Cure’s sparse sound, transforming it from with dark songs like The Holy Hour, Other the surface, the lyrics maintain the despair
tracks such as 10:15 Saturday Night, Fire In post-punk to the early example of what Voices, The Funeral Party and The Drowning and depression that wracked their earlier
Cairo, Accuracy and Meat Hook standing up would become goth. Man, all of which are chapters of a spooky work. Tracks such as Trust and To Wish
still among their best works to date. Smith As they had very little money available, journey taking the listener deep into the Impossible Things provide a balance to the
went on record bemoaning the fact that the the entire album was recorded and mixed in psychosis of depression, though not quite overt happiness of High, Doing The Unstuck
record company had the final say on the just seven days at a cost of £2,500 as that to the depths they would explore on the and Friday I’m In Love, while Open is one
album’s tracklist and artwork and included was all the studio time they could afford, subsequent Pornography. Faith heralded of their greatest ever songs. The album was
songs he wouldn’t have approved of, such meaning they had to work around the The Cure as one of the most inspiring bands released to glowing reviews and entered the
as Object, World War and an ill-judged clock to finish it – regularly working 17- to of the burgeoning scene, and with their UK album chart at No. 1 and at No. 2 in the
cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Foxy Lady, and has 18-hour days. A Forest, the album’s only sombre sensibilities with an obvious knack US where it would go on to sell 1.2 million
exerted ultimate creative control on every single, became their first chart hit, reaching for a pop hook, they were the act most copies and establish them as one of the
subsequent Cure release since. No. 31 in the UK. likely to take goth from the underground. biggest bands in the world.

35
T H E L O W D O W N T H E C U R E

THE ESSENTIAL SINGLES

THE LOVE CATS IN BETWEEN DAYS CLOSE TO ME JUST LIKE HEAVEN

1983 1985 1985 1987
Feline groovy Sweet and sour In the closet Fall at her feet
The Love Cats arrived at a strange, uncertain As purveyors of the morbid, The Cure had A highlight of The Head On The Door LP Not only one of The Cure’s greatest love
time for The Cure. The Fourteen Explicit built up a loyal following throughout the (where it appeared without the brass songs but one of the greatest love songs
Moments Tour had strained relationships early Eighties with their sulky, angsty songs section), its second and final single and the period, Just Like Heaven is the perfect
within the band, prompting Simon Gallup to but, following the brief flirtation with weird song which gave the album its title, Close To encapsulation of the feeling where if you
leave, while Robert Smith told Melody Maker: psychedelia on 1984’s The Top album, In Me was – like many of The Cure’s best pieces have your partner, you have everything. The
“Do the Cure really exist any more? I’ve Between Days, a jaunty danceable track – inspired by one of Robert Smith’s vivid climes of the South of France, where it was
been pondering that question myself. It’s got heralded a new sound and was a taster of dreams. On this occasion it was a dream in recorded, only added to its sunny demeanour.
to a point where I don’t fancy working in that the direction the band were headed in with which he was trapped in a wardrobe that fell “I knew as soon as I’d written it that it
format again.” He busied himself working their next album, A Head On The Door. off the edge of a cliff into the sea (the dream was a good pop song,” said Smith. “Although
and touring with Siouxsie & the Banshees. By definition, the song was bittersweet, was perfectly recreated in the song’s video). I didn’t realise it at the time, the structure is
Persuaded by the record label to continue juxtaposing a charming New Order-esque “It’s weird because of all the tracks we’ve very similar to Another Girl, Another Planet
as The Cure but to change their sound, the melody with typically maudlin lyrics: written, Close To Me doesn’t spring to mind by The Only Ones. The main difference is that
band released a trio of singles throughout “Yesterday I got so old I felt like I could die/ as one of our best songs,” Robert Smith later as the song progressed, I introduced some
1983, Let’s Go To Bed, The Walk, and The Yesterday I got so old it made me want to said. “It was a slightly surreal moment on different chord changes, which give it that
Love Cats – which, despite being dismissed cry/ Go on, go on, just walk away/ Go on, go the record and wasn’t even a definite album slightly melancholic feeling. The song is about
by Smith as “a joke” and “a parody”, was on, your choice is made/ Go on, go on, and track during the recording. It was only when hyperventilating – kissing and fainting to
the most popular, giving them their first Top disappear/ Go on, go on, away from here.” I did the vocal and got really extreme on the the floor. Mary dances with me in the video
10 hit. The song compares Smith’s feelings The song was The Cure’s fourth consecutive production, making it really claustrophobic because she was the girl, so it had to be her.
of being unloved and unwanted to cats being Top 20 single in the UK and marked a sounding, that it came to life. Up till that The idea is that one night like that is worth
put in a bag and drowned. breakthrough for the band in the US. point, it was average.” 1,000 hours of drudgery.”

ONLY FOR THE BRAVE

THE CURE WILD MOOD
2004 SWINGS
A complete misfire, 2004’s 1996
self-titled album found The Cure did not cope well
producer Ross Robinson intent on turning with commercial acclaim and, following
the band into a self-parody, attempting to the most successful period of their career,
capture former glories, and failing. The one they returned with… this. The album
terrible thing about the album he can’t be lacked direction from the beginning, a fault
blamed for is the abysmal artwork. reflected in its diminished sales.

LULLABY FRIDAY I’M IN LOVE

1989 1992

NEED TO KNOW
Spidey senses Living for the weekend
Robert Smith has described traditional Ironically, by the time The Cure released S H H H
lullabies as “songs with catastrophic endings”, their first material of the Nineties, the band
with soothing melodies disguising tragic regarded by many as the matriarchs of
denouements. Lullaby, the lead single from misery were providing a beacon of light and
● Robert Smith has said that he he recalls. “It was the one time
Disintegration, is said to have been based love in a grungy musical landscape awash
never intended The Cure to become I’ve been really frightened with The
on a recurring dream he had as a child in with self-loathing and depression. As with
famous on a large scale, and he grew Cure, because we were locked in this
which he was eaten by a giant spider. Smith Just Like Heaven, Friday I’m In Love is a
resentful of some of their biggest hits: basement and we could smell burning,
has said that the song is about the fear of joyous ode to the notion of living for the
“For a long time, I didn’t like certain sirens were going off, and I thought,
sleep; many have speculated that it is about weekend. “Friday I’m in Love is a dumb pop
songs because I thought, ‘You’re to We’re not going to get out of this.”
drug addiction, which makes sense when song, but it’s quite excellent, because it’s so
blame, you bastard. You made me ● The Cure’s music has been featured
considering lyrics such as: “And I feel like I’m absurd,” says Smith. “It’s so out of character
popular. Friday I’m In Love is a perfect in a host of films and TV shows
being eaten by a thousand million shivering – very optimistic and out there in happy
example of that.” including Boys Don’t Cry, Just Like
furry holes/ And I know that in the morning land. It’s nice to get that counterbalance.
● Smith’s lowest point in The Heaven, South Park, The Mighty
I will wake up in the shivering cold/ And the People think we’re supposed to be leaders of
Cure was when a riot broke out Boosh and One Tree Hill. However,
Spiderman is always hungry.” Lullaby was some sort of ‘gloom movement’. I could sit
in Argentina after 110,000 fans Smith refused to allow Stars In Their
The Cure’s highest charting single in the UK, and write gloomy songs all day long, but I
descended on a 60,000-capacity Eyes to have a contestant impersonate
reaching No. 5 in April 1989. just don’t see the point.”
stadium, leading to the death of a him as it “represents everything I
hotdog salesman. “That was ugly,” abhor about television”.

36
T H E M U S T- WAT C H V I D E O S
BOYS DON’T CRY WHY CAN’T I BE YOU? CLOSE TO ME LULLABY
DIRECTOR: TIM POPE DIRECTOR: TIM POPE DIRECTOR: TIM POPE DIRECTOR: TIM POPE
Although it may look simple compared to Why Can’t I Be You? was as big a departure “They sent me the song and I recall it Lullaby was one of The Cure’s most
the band’s later, more cinematic efforts, as any from the band’s early videos, casting sounding very claustrophobic,” recalls Tim. accomplished and atmospheric promos, and
the video for Boys Don’t Cry – with three the band in a hilarious pastiche of TV “That was where the idea of the band being won Best Video at the 1990 Brit Awards. “I
youngsters miming instruments and vocals dance troupes, dressed in weird costumes in a wardrobe came from – it had to be had been influenced by the films of Roman
very professionally while Smith, Tolhurst and making ill-coordinated attempts at a really confined space. Then, the video Polanski,” Tim Pope says. “They all tended to
and Dempsey make shadow-shapes behind choreography. “We got lots of complaints actually completed the song, because after be kind of dark and obsessive. And that was
a curtain – was quite challenging at the for that,” laughs Robert, who spent the shoot we shot it, they remixed it for the single something that went very well with The Cure’s
time. “Because we didn’t have green screen clad in a dinner jacket, a zebra-pattern safari release to make it even more claustrophobic- music and Robert’s lyrics.” Pope played a
or anything like that, everything had to be jacket and a furry costume. “It was as far sounding to go with the video.” huge part in creating an otherworldly, twisted
filmed separately,” director Tim Pope told away from what I thought we were all about. The video featured the band crammed fairytale persona for The Cure’s videography.
Sky Arts. “I had to film the band, who were Some fans were very upset and disgruntled inside a wardrobe, playing toy instruments, For Lullaby, an artfully nightmarish
shown in shadow, then the three boys who saying we were ruining the meaning of the with Smith controlling them by operating treatment was required to capture the song
were playing them had to learn not only the band but I always thought that if we couldn’t finger-puppets. The wardrobe then falls off about Robert being eaten by The Spider
song and instruments but also the band’s take the piss out of ourselves, there was little a cliff into the sea, filling up with water. The Man. “Tim was part of our inner circle, and
movements and mannerisms, and then I had point in making videos.” shoot caused a great deal of discomfort to whenever he had an idea we just trusted him
to make sure it was all in sync. It was actually “The videos they had done before I the band. “I hated shooting that video,” says and went with it,” Robert said. “He created
quite tricky. I only recently found out that the worked with them had all been very specific, Robert. “After being stuck in the wardrobe we an alternative world through the videos
three boys from the video, who are now in and portrayed the band a certain way, they had to be in a water tank filled with freezing and it really served us well because it kept
their late thirties, stayed in touch with Robert were all dour and serious with everyone cold water by the local fire engine for about people interested and guessing what we were
after the shoot and still collectively attend looking really gloomy, and I wanted to do six hours, like some bizarre endurance test. really like. As the years went on and we
Cure concerts to catch up with him, which I something different to that,” says director It was by far the most unpleasant video we just got stranger and stranger… ‘til we did
think is a lovely story.” https://www. Pope. https://www.youtube.com/ ever made!” https://www.youtube. Lullaby.” https://www.youtube.com/
youtube.com/watch?v=9GkVhgIeGJQ watch?v=MI0a9hTh5AU com/watch?v=BjvfIJstWeg watch?v=ijxk-fgcg7c

“Tim Pope was part of our inner circle, and LISTEN UP! 11 In Between Days
whenever he had an idea we just trusted him The selection of 20 tracks Hit from A Head On The Door
is a process that would
and went with it. He created an alternative world keep any true Cure fan agonising
12 Why Can’t I Be You?
through the videos and it kept people interested, for days, but here’s our pick of a Bouncy weirdness
few unmissables…
guessing what we were really like” – Robert Smith 13 Fascination Street
1 Just Like Heaven A single in the US only
Ever-gorgeous love song 14 10:15 Saturday Night

WHAT’S NEXT?
2 Lullaby Opener to Three Imaginary Boys
Waking nightmares 15 The Same Deep Water

3 Close To Me As You
Panic in the wardrobe Nine-minute Disintegration cut

While fans eagerly await a new album hits, album tracks and fan-favourite 4 Open 16 The Drowning Man
(due to be released next year), the B-sides. Meanwhile, founding member Fabulous first song on Wish Closer from 1981’s Faith
band are currently out and about on Laurence ‘Lol’ Tolhurst is publishing
their world tour, which finally his autobiography, Cured: The 5 Love Song 17 One Hundred Years
Lighter moment from Disintegration The gothest of the goth
lands in the UK at the Tale Of Two Imaginary
end of November for WITH Boys on 11 October. 6 Pictures Of You 18 A Strange Day
dates in Manchester MARATHON THREE- Promising to take an Chilly, chiming perfection From Pornography
and London having in-depth look at The
taking in the HOUR SETS THE CURRENT Cure until 1989, 7 Boys Don’t Cry 19 Just Say Yes
US, Europe and WORLD TOUR HAS BEEN the book will Single from June 1979 New track for Greatest Hits
Australia. Although “take readers
eight years have
GARNERING SOME OF THE on his personal
8 Friday I’m In Love 20 The Hanging Garden
Cure meets Banshees
passed since the BEST REVIEWS OF THE odyssey from
The band’s poppiest moment

band’s last album, the BAND’S CAREER suburban London to 9 The Love Cats
tour has been a sell-out the Mojave desert Slinky selection http://spoti.
and garnered some of the and across the miles of fi/2b2x0WJ
10 A Forest
best reviews of their career due to the love, addiction, pain, forgiveness
Definitive early Cure
marathon three-hour plus sets they and ultimately, redemption,
have been playing, pulling out classic experienced in-between.”

37
B A R R Y G I B B

THE
TIME IS
NOW
STANDING SHOULDER TO SHOULDER WITH THE GREATEST
SONGWRITERS OF ALL TIME, BARRY GIBB SOLD HUNDREDS OF
MILLIONS OF RECORDS WITH THE BEE GEES. NOW AS THE LAST
MAN STANDING IN THE FAMILY UNIT, HE’S STRIKING OUT ON
HIS OWN FOR HIS FIRST SOLO ALBUM IN 30 YEARS. CLASSIC POP
MEETS THE POP LEGEND AT HIS FAVOURITE CURRY HOUSE…
R U D Y B O L L Y

O
ne of the most recognisable happens to be his first solo effort in over 30
voices in pop has been years, yet the creative process was just like
silent far too long. After the being back in a band.
death of his brother Maurice “It took me a year to do and I co-wrote it all
in 2003, Barry Gibb called with my sons, Steven and Ashley,” he enthuses.
time on the Bee Gees for the “So the same circumstances seemed to prevail.
first time. Then, in 2012, Robin Gibb passed It wasn’t about brothers but about sons this time.
away following a brave battle with cancer. “And a very similar process – they tell me if
Having come to terms with loss, Barry has there’s something they aren’t happy about and
rekindled his passion for music via a new we were like that as brothers, too; that’s the
solo album, In The Now. “I no longer think of team thing.”
past, present or future,” he says. “In The Now Incredibly, it’s only Barry’s second solo
represents my complete denial of time.” With a effort in a long and auspicious career. A little
euphoric Glastonbury Festival cameo still fresh uncomfortably, he explains: “I don’t think I’ve
in the memory, now is definitely the time for ever put out a serious solo album. I did try one
Barry Gibb again. called Now Voyager way back.
Born on the Isle Of Man, raised in “But my brothers didn’t want me to, there was
Manchester and discovered in Australia, these a lot of discouragement to go solo because of
days Miami is home to Barry Gibb. During the Bee Gees. That’s what you deal with if you
a rare UK visit, the Transatlantic icon invited are brothers, being in the family bad books, so I
Classic Pop to his favourite Indian restaurant. didn’t really try. Although truthfully, Andy [Gibb]
Perusing the menu in anticipation, Saturday included, we all wanted to be a solo artists, no
Night Keema, To Love Some Balti and a glut matter what… and I think that probably exists in
of dodgy curry puns spring to mind until Barry all groups.”
informs us the kitchen is closed – “but come The sense of duty weighed heavy on the
back, they do the best.” eldest brother and the lack of solo opportunity
It’s been 15 years since This Is Where I Came does seem a little unfair, especially considering
In – the songwriter’s last album of original that Robin issued many solo records. Barry
material with the Bee Gees. In The Now also nods: “Yes, he released about four or five and

38
BARRY GIBB
/ BEE GEES
DISCOGRAPHY

The Bee Gees Sing

and Play 14 Barry
Gibb Songs (1965)
The trio’s earliest
Australian material covers
a gamut from Merseybeat
(Peace Of Mind) to folk
(Follow The Wind). Some
songs feature guitarist
Trevor Gordon, later of
The Marbles.

Spicks And Specks

(1966)
Studio engineer Ossie
Byrne expands the
production allowing
double-tracked harmonies
on songs like Monday’s
Rain and I Don’t Know
Why I Bother With Myself.

Bee Gees 1st

(1967)
Drummer Colin Petersen
and guitarist Vince
Melouney turn the Bee
Gees into a psychedelic
pop band. Includes New
York Mining Disaster 1941
and the Motown-inspired
To Love Somebody.
UK: No. 8

39
B A R R Y G I B B

Barry married former

Miss Edinburgh Linda Gray in
1970. They have five children

had some success, but his comment is always the same –

it’s not that much fun if you are on your own.
“We grew up together, and although we have a desire
to be individually recognised, it’s not that enjoyable if you
are not actually together. We were 45 years as a group
so stepping away from that has never been easy and even
today it wouldn’t be any easier if we were all together.
People think of the Bee Gees no matter who it is – me,
Maurice, Robin or Andy; for me it’s the Brothers Gibb,
always has been.”
That contradiction of seeking solo recognition while
maintaining the group tugged at Barry his entire career.
He’s one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation,
which leads us to wonder… what has he been doing these
past 15 years?
“I fell in love with bluegrass music, right after Robin
passed,” he explains. “That led me to Nashville, buying
the house that Johnny Cash lived in, which consequently
burnt down. So I didn’t get to complete that project, but considering Bowie and Gibb were born just six months
I wanted to investigate it all. I started following my own apart and reared on the same diet of skiffle, rock’n’roll
tastes, I didn’t have to worry about what somebody else and The Beatles. Now 70 years old, Barry muses: “I never
wanted me to do. I had no brothers telling me, ‘you can’t met Bowie. I think he was very smart and avoided being
do that’ or ‘you gotta be mainstream’, so I wandered off associated with anybody that didn’t relate to his image.

POP_UP “Kenny Rogers still says to me, ‘I don’t understand what

million selling song. “It’s about a No.1 record, Kenny, get over it”
the path.” But we both come from the same era. Songs like Amy In

Islands In The Stream is all about’,” remarks Barry of his multi-

As Islands In The Stream will attest, country has always Colour go back to that time – it’s my McCartney song,
been in Gibb’s music. However, there’s barely a patch of about that one-night stand who you never saw again.”
gingham to be found on In The Now. Barry also tackles themes of violence, religion and, in
“No, this album is about the five decades and all the The Grand Illusion, an entirely new way of existing. “Time
influences they bring,” he says. “It’s like a journey, my and loss equals a new way of thinking for me: death is
opinion of life today… and it’s very autobiographical, just as natural as life,” he offers. “If you’ve lost all your
not consciously, but sub-consciously. I like the fact there’s brothers then you don’t look at death the same way. In fact,
a lot of diversity there, and I try to make each song say it’s perfectly fine with me. There’s no way we are going to
something social.” hang around for more than a hundred years, so now I love
From the manic riffery of Blowing A Fuse to the hymn- the moment… and we should all stop moaning.”
like End Of The Rainbow, diverse is most certainly the Another highlight on the album is Home Truth Song, a
word. Star Crossed Lovers, drenched in the nostalgia of piece which is already becoming a live favourite. “That’s
his Fifties childhood, is a personal favourite. all bluster and ambition,” nods Barry. “The lyrics go
“That’s my Carole King song, it’s for my wife Linda, we ‘I’ve been to heaven and hell and living underground’ –
were star-crossed. In 1967, if you were a pop artist signed because I refuse to be chained down and stuck in a white
to a label, you weren’t allowed to have a girlfriend. I think suit with medallions.”
it still happens today, because it may turn kids off. So she We have hit upon a rather raw nerve here – that of
always had to hide or stay at home.” disco. In spite of the monumental success the late Seventies
The sense of musical juvenilia mirrors some of the brought, it’s an era that continues to haunt him. Barry has
reflective mood that drives David Bowie’s 2013 comeback seemed a little guarded up until this point in the interview,
album, The Next Day, and perhaps it’s no great surprise even suspicious.

Horizontal (1968) Idea (1968) Odessa (1969) Cucumber Castle The Kid’s No Good Two Years On
R&B phrasing and even a At loggerheads, Robin begins Disputes during the making (1970) (1970) (1970)
little baroque style creep writing alone, while song this muddled double concept Drummer Colin Petersen Barry’s ill-fated solo debut Robin gets the Bee Gees
into this solid if more forlorn titles like When The Swallows album about a fictitious is fired, but Barry and is shelved when the brothers back together and vows
collection that scored well in Fly are less-than-subtle hints 1899 ship lead to Robin Maurice’s Don’t Forget To all reunite. Songs like I’ll never to split again.
the States. that all was not well. quitting the group. Remember goes head to Kiss Your Memory and Immediate reaction is
UK: No. 16 UK: No. 4 UK: No. 10 head with Robin Gibb’s solo Moonlight are farmed out to positive, and Lonely Days
single Saved By The Bell. other artists. becomes a No. 3 US hit .
UK: No. 57

40
 “I have no self-image. The only
way I can shout is to sing”
Without any prompting on the subject he continues,
“Even now, whenever I do any press, there is rarely a
picture of me – it’s always the three of us in white or gold
suits. I want to say, ‘Jesus, that was 40 years ago’.
“Look at how The Beatles used to dress, or Michael
Jackson. Look at the giant shorts today, it’s all part of
culture. We were that passing phase when everything
was light-hearted, flared pants. Although personally I think
Robin’s flares were bigger than mine…”
Barry’s imprint on popular culture should not be
condensed into a pair of dodgy slacks; after all, the
Gibb brothers are second only to Lennon & McCartney
in terms of global songwriting success. And yet, despite
the near-unbelievable sales figures, Barry seems to remain
uncertain of his own legacy, despite his appreciation of
a more knowledgeable public whose love for his music
transcends simply disco.
“I do feel the love now and it never ceases to confuse
me,” he smiles, as if a weight’s been lifted. “I have no self-
image, I don’t have great self-esteem, and the only way
I can shout is to sing. So I was never able to understand
any of it.
“If it worked then great, but in life more often than not
things don’t work. We could put out a song and it was a
monster and then another which would flop. So we never
got firmly rooted in anything. We were always being
pushed aside and then fighting our way back.”

Trafalgar (1971) To Whom It May Life In A Tin Can Mr Natural (1974) Main Course (1975) Children Of The
The trio perfect a softer Concern (1972) (1973) Producer Arif Mardin Eric Clapton suggests Miami’s World (1976)
progressive pop sound and Although out of vogue, the In LA to find a new sound, enters the fold introducing Criteria Studios, where The Gibb-Galuten-
How Can You Mend a Broken trio’s so-called ‘headphone the brothers still tread R&B, Philadelphia soul, they experiment with a Richardson team replaces
Heart? becomes the first Bee album’ fuses plaintive over-familiar waters. Tracks funk and hard rock into Caribbean-influenced disco Mardin and set the Top
Gees No. 1 single. country (Road To Alaska) like Living In Chicago are the brothers’ music. sound. Jive Talkin’ and 10 disco tone with You
with post-psychedelia (Sweet criticised for being too long. Nights On Broadway become Should Be Dancing, which
Song Of Summer). the new blueprint. features Stephen Stills
on percussion.

41
B A R R Y G I B B

If white suits were the visual caricature, then the Bee The theme carries over into End Of The Rainbow, where

with Tragedy,” says Barry. “Steps covering it was a very

big compliment, but I never learned their dance routine”
Gees sound was undoubtedly defined by Barry’s falsetto. Barry almost sounds like Robin. “I sang a verse of it to

POP_UP “If you’re going to close a set it’s got to be

Much-maligned over the years, that falsetto is pertinent Robin when he was in a coma. It’s my comment on time,
again thanks to a wave of helium-pitched newcomers. increments on motion that keep us going. I don’t believe in
Barry agrees: “Sam Smith is a perfect example of the it anymore.”
falsetto. But I’m just playing catch-up with Prince. The In The Now is worthy of Barry’s incredible back
amount of falsetto he was using was outrageous. I mean, catalogue – a catalogue he owns himself. “We had to
I got slapped on the hand, but he used to get away with it. battle like hell to get it back, I basically went to war.”
I still doing enjoy it.” Just as well, when you consider how many artists
The hateful ‘disco sucks’ campaign at the end of the have covered his music. “Even Johnny Mathis and Andy
Seventies curtailed an incredible chart run for the Bee Williams have sung our songs. Stayin’ Alive still gets a lot
Gees, so they switched attention to songwriting. “When of requests, usually for an animated movie… and that’s
we did Islands In The Stream it was our way of getting great because kids get to discover it, too.”
other people to hear our songs. Because if we sang it, it No longer just a wedding disco staple, Stayin’ Alive
wouldn’t have got on the radio, and I wanted the songs to enjoyed a revival thanks to the British Heart Foundation
succeed no matter who was singing them. (and Vinnie Jones) using it for performing CPR. Amazed,
“Chain Reaction [Diana Ross] is another example, Barry says: “It was a surprise, but that tempo is important.
having other artists become your instruments. My brothers “When I was in the studio recording it with Albhy and
would say ‘we should be the ones doing Heartbreaker’, Karl [co-producers Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson] it
but I knew they wouldn’t get on the radio. ‘Let’s be was 103 beats per minute. I left the room for a moment
songwriters and prove that point’.”

“If there’s a sunset then I’d like to

Fear of failure seems to have driven Barry Gibb
onwards throughout his career. “I thought it was all over
for us in 1970 – the average group used to have a five-

go round the block one more time”

year span,” he agrees. “But I always seem to have a surge
towards the end of each decade.
“1967 was when we were signed to [manager] Robert
Stigwood. 1977 was the disco thing and ‘87 was the
period for You Win Again. We blossomed towards the and when I came back I knew something didn’t feel as
end of decades, then we got kicked in the pants again.” good. Karl said: ‘We moved it up one beat’. I told them to
He needn’t brace himself for another blow, for In The take it back because it wasn’t the same song.”
Now is a defiant, confident collection. And as the album Besides the occasional top-notch curry, Barry has
reaches its finale it takes on a more mournful vibe. managed to avoid the clichés and excesses of a pop star
“Shadows is my Roy Orbison song, the greatest lifestyle. “20 years ago I bought a Lamborghini and saw
songwriter – and the shadows is looking through his eyes. myself in a shop window trying to get out of it. I took it
“But I suppose it’s also me seeing my brothers when they back on the same week,” he laughs. “All I want these
are not there. Even on stage I can see them, I can smell days is a touch of credibility, spiced with sake.”
their breath around the microphone, because we were All the same, another spin on the pop merry-go-round
so used to all singing around one mic. I could tell, ‘Oh, wouldn’t go a miss. “I’m not finished. If I get momentum
Maurice has had a drink’.” with this album it will be wonderful because it wouldn’t
That sense of loss continues on Diamonds – a moving always have been about the Seventies.
account of Robin’s funeral. “I didn’t cry on that day. It was “If there’s a sunset then I’d like to go around the block
cold, almost black and white like a movie – the perfect one more time. I think there’s another chapter for me. I
funeral day. That song is from the heart – from the curse to think I would’ve wanted my brothers to go on, and I hope
the legacy, that’s my reflection on us through Robin.” they would feel the same way.”

Saturday Night Spirits Have Flown Living Eyes (1981) Staying Alive (1983) Now Voyager Moonlight Madness
Fever (1977) (1979) Disco is a dirty word, so out The Bee Gees deliver five (1984) (1986)
Not involved when Travolta Practically a solo album due goes the falsetto in favour pop rock anthems to the Despite guest appearances Another unreleased solo
started filming, the brothers to Maurice’s alcoholism, of a rockier sound. Robin inevitable Saturday Night by Olivia Newton John and effort, some of the tracks
later contribute half their next Barry perfects the layered and Maurice take lead vocals Fever sequel about Tony Roger Daltrey, this solo later appear on the Hawks
album to this soundtrack. It Bee Gee harmony sounds. again, and it’s the first Manero’s Broadway career. soundtrack to Barry’s acting soundtrack. System Of Love
shifts 15 million copies in the It sells 20 million copies album to be manufactured Side 2 features Frank debut in Storm Thorgerson’s was later revived for 1993
US and tops the UK charts for and spawns three huge on compact disc. Stallone, brother of the film largely bombed. song, My Destiny.
18 consecutive weeks. chart-toppers. UK: No. 73 film’s director Sylvester.
UK: No. 1 UK: No. 1 UK: No. 14

42
E.S.P. (1987) One (1989) High Civilization Size Isn’t Still Waters (1997) This Is Where I
Reunited with Arif Mardin, Andy Gibb dies during the (1991) Everything (1993) Elegant contemporary Came In (2001)
the trio’s first studio album making and sadness haunts Likened to Prince, this As if Saturday Night Fever R&B love songs Alone and The jangle of Sixties
in six years embraces more the songwriting (Wish You heavier funk rock record never happened, a return Still Waters are tweaked youth dominates Just In
synthesisers and drum Were Here). One secures with techno elements to classic songwriting, to perfection by esteemed Case and She Keeps On
machines. You Win Again their first US Top 10 hit after doubles up as a vague while the title refers to the collaborators Raphael Saadiq Coming, while Robin’s solo
hits No. 1 in the UK. years of Bee Gee bashing. concept record about a trio constantly having to and Hugh Padgham. compositions are driven by
UK: No. 5 UK: No. 29 “secret love” and obsession. prove themselves. UK: No. 2 a modern Europop style.
UK: No. 24 UK: No. 23 UK: No. 6

43
 C L A S S I C

ALBUM
SKYLARKING
X T C

WITH 1986’S SKYLARKING, XTC PROVED THAT EVEN THE MOST TEMPESTUOUS
RECORDING PROCESS CAN PRODUCE MAGICAL RESULTS. NOW FRESHLY
REISSUED, THE ALBUM IS FINALLY BEING HEARD AS THE BAND INTENDED…
M A R K L I N D O R E S

44
 X T C C L A S S I C A L B U M

H
aving already
experimented with
spiky new-wave,
psychedelia and
sonically-diverse
soundscapes in their first
decade as a group, notching
up hits such as Making Plans
For Nigel, Senses Working
Overtime and Sgt. Rock,
Swindon’s finest, XTC, were
in dire need of a stimulus for
their next record in 1986.
Having been forced into stage
fright-induced studio exile
four years earlier, the group
had found happiness flexing
their experimental muscles
with their side project Dukes
Of Stratosphear, revelling in
the freedom of creating music
without having to replicate the
sounds in a live setting.
However, their inability
to build upon their past live
reputation and dwindling
record sales had seen them
usurped by former punky-
upstarts-turned stadium
rockers such as The Police,
U2 and Simple Minds, with XTC during a hefty two-month

Getty Images
the group seemingly happy US tour, early 1980: Dave
to seek solace in the studio Gregory, Andy Partridge, Colin
Moulding, Terry Chambers
indulging in their newfound

TRACK BY
TRACK
1 SUMMER’S 4 THAT’S REALLY 8 EARN ENOUGH FOR US 11 MERMAID SMILED
CAULDRON SUPER, SUPERGIRL One of the album’s catchiest, poppiest The beginning of what Andy calls “the
First, a hazy, bug-infested opener. “Odd we Described by Andy as “our smallville but songs, Earn Enough For Us is a heartfelt aquatic corner of the disc”, Mermaid Smiled
should be drowning in all things hot and perfectly formedville song to start our DC declaration of love and support from a man was created after the melody triggered a
summerfied on a freezing January day in Comics female superhero corner”, That’s to his pregnant wife. Released as a single in memory: “I plundered a poem I’d written
1986,” Andy Partridge told the Chalkhills Really Super, Supergirl incorporated a Canada and Australia, the song is regarded about lost childhood innocence, which I
fansite. “But, as you can hear, things get drum sample from Deface The Music, Todd by many as a lyrical companion to Love On A think was called Book Full Of Sea, to supply
a bit hot under our paisley collars in this Rundgren’s hit as part of Utopia, recreated Farmboy’s Wages from the Mummer album. requisite text.”
extended psychedelirious workout, deep in by drummer Prairie Prince. 9 BIG DAY 12 THE MAN WHO
the bowels of Dave’s parlour.” 5 BALLET FOR A After this saccharine sentiment comes some SAILED AROUND
2 GRASS RAINY DAY of Colin Moulding’s biting cynicism, with HIS SOUL
Summer’s Cauldron flows seamlessly into With a drum pattern inspired by Sly & a song questioning a wedding ceremony’s A jazzy departure to the rest of the album,
Robbie’s Don’t Stop The Music , this song promises of eternity: “But will your love have this song was akin to swing standards Mack
Grass. “It sounds like an edit, but it’s
takes a rainy day and transforms it into a the fire and glow/ Like on the big day?" The Knife and Fever, with an introspective
not,” says Partridge. “They were recorded
together, and we played Summer’s Cauldron wonderful watercolour-inspired lyric that 10 ANOTHER SATELLITE lyric that saw Partridge dealing with decline
into Grass, and then we went back into finds the beauty in the mundane. A visceral song about the breakdown of Andy both within XTC and in personal relationships.
Summer’s Cauldron at the end. So it was all 6 1000 UMBRELLAS Partridge’s marriage and the turmoil he was 13 DYING
one long suite. It was all rehearsed and done Next, the completely unrelated 1000 feeling due to his attraction to songwriter and This sparse Moulding composition has the
like that.” Grass failed to hit as a single. Umbrellas: it’s about a devastating break-up, present partner Erica Wexler. “I wish I hadn’t sound of a ticking clock providing the
the umbrellas are metaphorically insufficient written this song,” says Partridge. “Trying dramatic countdown to an impending finality,
3 THE MEETING PLACE to put into words a gentle rebuff to Erica’s
Although it veers away by introducing a to catch the tears of the artist. and a haunting lyric delivered via a melody
persistent and obviously romantic intentions, that could have come from Pet Sounds.
more industrial soundscape, the theme of 7 SEASON CYCLE I came up with something too hurtful that
the song was a continuation of the album’s Season Cycle encapsulates the essential wounded her terribly. It was so difficult. Here 14 SACRIFICIAL BONFIRE
theme of sneaking off from work to indulge message of Skylarking, the cyclical nature of I was, a married man, but pulled so fiercely While the album began in a cauldron, it
in steamy outdoor sex. The song’s industrial the seasons and life itself. “Autumn is royal/ by the gravity of her vivacious being. She ended in a bonfire, concluding the album’s
touches were intended to mark the decline As spring is clown/ But to repaint summer/ was my new moon but how guilty I felt. At cyclical theme. “Change must be earned/
of Britain’s industrial heritage. “They were They’re closing winter down.” Its psychedelic the time of writing this I had no idea that Sacrificial bonfire must reign/ Reign over
closing factories down, and I thought it might demeanour evokes both the Beach Boys’ the stage name she used for her musical good/ Banish the bad, reign over good,
be a nice tribute to the old town,” said Andy. Smile and the Dukes Of Stratosphear. ’happenings’ was Luna.” banish the bad.”

45
C L A S S I C A L B U M X T C

THE
PLAYERS
ANDY PARTRIDGE COLIN MOULDING
As well as founding XTC and being the principal Not only a formidably imaginative bass
songwriter and singer of the group, Andy player, Colin Moulding wrote the band’s first
Partridge has released a solo album, an LP with three UK hits, Life Begins At The Hop, Making
Martin Newell, and music as part of the trio Plans For Nigel and Generals And Majors
Monstrance. He has also written and produced ,as well as Skylarking’s singles Grass and
for a diverse range of artists including Jamie The Meeting Place. Post-XTC, Colin’s musical
Cullum, Blur, Stephen Duffy and Terry Hall. contributions have been sporadic, though in
Partridge also oversees the remastering and recent years he’s played with Days Between
repackaging of all the XTC reissues. Stations and The Prog Collective.

DAVE GREGORY PRAIRIE PRINCE

Dave Gregory joined XTC in 1979 as a Todd Rundgren’s working methods meant
replacement for keyboardist and founding that most of Skylarking was recorded minus
member Barry Andrews and stayed for a drummer, with the majority of the songs
two decades, eventually leaving in 1999. recorded to a click track. Once they were
He has since gone on to enjoy a career as done, Rundgren took the tracks to San
a successful session musician, playing for Francisco for Prairie Prince to add the drums.
artists such as Peter Gabriel, Marc Almond, As well as work with Rundgren, Prince has
Jason Donovan and Mark Owen as well as also worked as a session drummer, artist
contributing to prog-minded bands such as and stage designer for acts including Michael
Big Big Train and Tin Spirits. Jackson, Diana Ross and Shania Twain.

“We were told ‘Your career’s down the toilet

unless you start to sell in America’ and given a
list of American producers. The only name I knew
was Todd Rungren’s” D A V E G R E G O R Y

love of The Beach Boys to The Police or ZZ Top. The

and Sixties psychedelia. Brit invasion of the US had
“The most fun we ever had opened doors for acts such as
in the studio was recording Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran
the Dukes records,” recalls and Culture Club, and Virgin
Andy Partridge. Records had plans for them to Andy Partridge: “It was
“There was no pressure. We tap into that. difficult for me. Virgin
never knew if it would sell, “We were called in and basically told me to shut up”
and the Dukes had nothing told: ‘Look lads, your career's
to live up to. We could never down the toilet unless you start of adjustment or compromise overshadowing the work.
do that with XTC, as there to sell records in America.’ So proved problematic. “It was very difficult for me
was too much money involved we were given this long list “Me and Colin sent Todd because Virgin basically
and we were expected to be of American producers, and the demos and he called me told me to shut up and be
mentally honest and ‘real’. the only name on it I knew one night just to introduce produced and stop being
Too much financial pressure.” was Todd Rundgren’s,” recalls himself and said: “I’ve got quirky and English so I
It was this pressure that led guitarist Dave Gregory. the running order,” Andy went into this album feeling
to the band’s record company “I think the label gave the Partridge told Uncut. “I was compromised,” says Andy.
insisting that an outside band an ultimatum: get a a bit surprised because you “Todd wanted to process
producer was brought in to producer you will listen to, don’t usually have that until us through as quickly as
hone their studio indulgences make a record that has some you’ve recorded everything. possible, and we’d be fighting
into something more success, or else you’re not He had this idea that it was about the quality of takes. It
commercial and in tune with making albums for the label all happening morning to obviously got everyone down
the music scene at the time. anymore,” Todd Rundgren night, like a summer’s day, or because we were fighting
As Beatles obsessives, the told Marc Maron’s WTF the order of someone’s life.” and we never usually did,
band were pushing to work Podcast. “That’s when they Having flown to the US to and then we got barred from
with George Martin called me.” record in Todd’s Woodstock, mixing so it took quite a few
but, due to a conflict of The union proved to be New York studio, the band years to realise that he did a
schedules, were unable to famously acrimonious with were out of their comfort fantastic job.”
make it happen. Rundgren and the band, zone both location-wise and As recording got underway,
Meanwhile, the record particularly Andy Partridge, in the studio, where Todd things went from bad to
company wanted a more clashing from the outset. With and Andy struggled not to worse. “It was unpleasant
MTV-friendly/rocky sound, both parties used to their own let their mutual dislike of one but the bastard did a great
which would see XTC as rivals ways of working, any sense another get in the way of job,” says Andy. “At the time,

46
 THE BIG
PICTURE
T H E V I D E O S

GRASS
DIRECTOR: NICK BRANDT
First single Grass boasted a video that portrayed a quintessential British summer complete with
picnics, cricket and a lawnmower. “It was shot on Wimbledon Common and it rained all day, so
all the nice sunny grassy shots had to be filmed
under canvas and artificially lit,” says Dave
Gregory. “Andy and Colin are the principal
stars, yours truly appearing for about five
seconds. The other 15 hours, 59 minutes and
55 seconds were spent sitting in my car, trying
to keep dry. Showbiz, who
needs it?!”
https://www.
youtube.com/watch?
v=ZCsnw9Eltxk

DEAR GOD
DIRECTOR: NICK BRANDT
While Dear God’s opening verse was actually sung by Jasmine Veillete, the daughter of a friend
of Todd Rundgren’s, a young boy lip-syncs in the video, and what follows is a series of swooping
shots of the band interspersed with images of
people in the trees representing the Protestant
ideal that Andy Partridge is rejecting. The
video received the Billboard Best Video award
for 1987 as well as being nominated for the
1987 MTV Best Director,
Best Concept, and Best
Innovation awards.
https://www.
youtube.com/watch?
v=hk41Gbjljfo

THE MEETING PLACE/THE MAN WHO SAILED

AROUND HIS SOUL
DIRECTOR: CHRIS GABRIN
Getty Images

Although not an official video, XTC performed The Meeting Place and The Man Who Sailed
Around His Soul as part of The Laughing
Prisoner, a special episode of The Tube shot in
Portmeirion, North Wales, which paid homage
to Sixties TV series The Prisoner. XTC wore some
original costumes from the series. https://
“It was unpleasant but the bastard did a great www.youtube.com/
watch?v=V6d6HL_
job. At the time, I said it was like one bunker TGZs and https://
with two Hitlers. We were like rams butting our www.youtube.com/
watch?v=_d--j7tk7ZU
heads together” A N D Y P A R T R I D G E

I said it was like one bunker sing along to.’ Another time, was going to be, which almost a musical trip, and
with two Hitlers. We were he leaned over and said: was something that they he recorded it as such. The
like rams butting our heads ‘I’ve drawn your cover for had never endured before. reason the songs flowed into
together. He was so bloody you,’ and I thought, ‘God, I knew the label had certain each other so seamlessly was
sarcastic; he had it down to this man’s arrogance has no expectations, but once I simply because they were
an extremely cruel art. He’d end’. He’d drawn two railway agreed to take it on, I had no recorded that way.
ask how you were going to tickets, and he said ‘These input at all from the label – “There were no edits,”
do the vocals and you would are two tickets and the album until it was finished.” Colin Moulding told Magnet
stand in front of the mic and should be called Day Passes’. Having envisioned the magazine. “One track ran
do one run-through to clear I thought it was so insulting.” concept of the album and into another. 15 IPS [Inches
your throat and he’d say, “60% of the band trusted compiled it from the demos Per Second] and it was all on
‘That was crap. I’ll come me but Andy never did,” he had worked with in pre- one reel of tape, and done
down and I'll record me Rundgren says. “Essentially, production, Todd’s vision very quickly. Second takes
singing it and you can have it was kind of preordained for the record was to be a were uncommon. Todd had
me in your headphones to by me – what the record continuous stream of music, a very unorthodox way of

47
C L A S S I C A L B U M X T C

Andy Partridge was used

to creative control in the
studio until Todd Rundgren
(right) was asked to
produce Skylarking

recording but it was all I found that it nicely

charming, in a way. summarised the time, the
“The record company place and the feeling of the
had given him the task of album – mischievous outdoor
‘bringing this ship in,’ and he sex – but Virgin had a mock-
was going to do it, come hell up sleeve made and showed
or high water. I think Andy it to all the big chains and
had a job accepting this, they all said they wouldn’t
and had a fairly miserable stock it. As a last-minute panic

Getty Images
time because of it. It was only I did a parody of a poster by
later that he accepted what a fellow called Hans Erni – it
a good job Todd had done, was something to do with
but perhaps begrudgingly so. the Swiss tourist board. The
Andy likes to have things his original title was Butter Sun
own way most of the time, Field Magic because those “Skylarking was not an easy album to make but
and I guess he had met his were all the things I thought it time has humbled me into admitting that Todd
nemesis on this one.” sounded like. Skylarking was
Feeling emotionally a phrase my father used all conjured up some of the most magical production
drained from the traumatic the time – he was a navy man and arranging” A N D Y P A R T R I D G E
sessions, the band’s spirits and it literally meant messing
were at an all-time low. The around in the rigging.”
unpleasantness of the creative Released in October
process overshadowed what 1986, the album received infuriated Rundgren and the band, the producer, and
would in time reveal itself universal critical acclaim, was the cause of one of their the fans.
to be some of their very with many citing it as XTC’s biggest disagreements. After it “Skylarking was not an
best work, yet Virgin wasn’t best work and lauding it as a was released as a bonus track easy album to make for
happy with the results at all, lush, multi-textured ‘pastoral’ on the B-side of the Grass 12” various ego reasons but
delivering the stinging verdict, soundscape. Yet despite this single, Dear God was picked time has humbled me into
“there are no singles on here positive response, Skylarking up by DJs on the US college admitting that Todd squeezed
– go and make something that wasn’t the commercial radio circuit, leading to the the XTC clay into its most
sounds like ZZ Top”. juggernaut that Virgin had re-release of the album, with complete/connected/cyclical
As well as being dissatisfied requested. It peaked at Mermaid Smiled omitted to record ever and conjured up
with the album, the label No. 90 in the UK charts and make way for Dear God. some of the most magical
baulked at the cover artwork produced two minor hits in This time the album reached production and arranging
with its controversial images Grass and The Meeting Place No. 70 on the Billboard conceivable,” concludes Andy
of male and female genitalia before the biggest cause of chart, and it would go on to Partridge. “A summer’s day
with flowers adorning the dispute from the recording sell 250,000 copies. cooked into one cake.”
pubic hair, and insisted on a sessions reared its head and An album beset by
redesign of the sleeve. reignited interest in the album problems, Skylarking has
“I thought the record had a – particularly in the US. Call it been reissued on various LISTEN UP!
kind of pagan outdoorsiness, divine intervention? formats over the years, Drench yourself in
XTC’s beautiful, multi-layered
and I wanted a Lady Dear God, a song with whether it was with Corrected
masterpiece, still as summery
Chatterley’s Lover thing of a strong atheist message, Polarity, restoration of the as it was three
meadow flowers woven had been left off the album original artwork, or with a decades ago…
through male and female at Andy’s insistence amid concise tracklisting… but now,
pubic hair,” said Andy. “One concerns from the record on its 30th anniversary, it is http://spoti.
could see almost nothing, it company that it was too finally available in a version fi/2bAiju4
was all in the imagination. offensive, a decision that all parties are happy with –

48
 V I N Y L R E I S S U E S

5 N E W TITLES AVA IL A BLE AUGUST 2016

STUMM235

STUMM285
STUMM245

Previously unavailable on LP. All pressed on 180g vinyl,

with artwork specially created for this release.
STUMM215
STUMM145

Pressed on 180g vinyl, recreated in their original artwork and packaging.

ALSO AVAIL ABLE

STUMM25 STUMM35 STUMM55 STUMM75 STUMM95 STUMM115 STUMM155 STUMM175

50
Getty Images
EIGHTEEN MONTHS TO CHART DOMINATION? IT WAS AN
AUDACIOUS GAMBLE FOR A RAMBUNCTIOUS SQUAT BAND,
REMEMBERS THOMPSON TWINS’ ALANNAH CURRIE…
J E N N Y V A L E N T I S H

B
ehind the imposing doorway of Currie may be living only five tube
the Sisters HQ in Borough, south stops from the squat where her Thompson
London, is a four-storey hive of Twins journey began, but her “little world”
mischief. The workshop is the would take most people several lifetimes
enclave of Alannah Currie, one of to explore. She grew up in New Zealand,
pop’s great dissenters, and her shadowy which, in the Sixties and Seventies, was
feminist army, the Sisters of Perpetual at no risk of being flooded with youth
Resistance. It’s strewn with furniture she culture. Currie’s father worked as a docker
builds, and silk protest banners, stitched at Auckland’s Queen Street Wharf. “That
with expletives. The basement belongs to was his official job,” she says dryly. “His
her husband, Jimmy Cauty, who creates unofficial job was as an illegal bookie.
post-riot landscapes in miniature, along with My weekend visits were often spent at the
riot shields bearing the ‘Smiley’ symbol of racetrack carrying large rolls of cash for him
acid house – the genre he once dominated and meeting dodgy blokes to pick up brown
with The KLF. paper bags full of money. In the end, he got
Currie leads the way upstairs to a lush arrested in the middle of the night and had
living area adorned with branches, regal to walk up Queen Street in his pyjamas.”
armchairs with feathers spewing from bullet Her father left when she was five, leaving
holes in their backs, and a wall of books her socialist mother to raise five kids in a
about dead artists and poets. As she serves council house. Currie told her mother’s story
tea in best china to Classic Pop, she’s in Sister Of Mercy, from 1984’s Into The
explaining why she’s doesn’t normally do Gap. “My father was a very violent man
this sort of thing. “The thing that I’m always and Mum said to me many times, ‘I would
seeking out is the feeling of the finger on have killed him with a knife, but I didn’t
the trigger, the moment that contains the because I had to look after you.’”
huge potential,” she says. “Nostalgia Currie’s grandmother was a force of
is only good for storytelling. It lacks nature, too, with tales of having been a
the potential for an explosion.” housemaid in London during the Suffragette
Yet if you don’t tell your own movement and wearing red petticoats in
story, others will. “I get fed solidarity. Her influence may have indirectly
up of reading other people’s caused Curt Smith of Tears For Fears to
versions of what I did,” she complain years later to Smash Hits that he
says. “My little world is all couldn’t fancy Currie because “she takes
very subjective.” feminism to ludicrous extremes”.

51
 The trio of Currie, Bailey and
Leeway, a format which lasted
from 1982-1986: “We gave
ourselves 18 months to do it”

Not that Currie would care. She considered herself

a working artist, not a pin-up. Her feminist stance, like
the layered clothes and oversized duckbill cap, were Currie to start), members
a two-fingered salute to mainstream expectations. of This Heat, Steve Beresford and Jimmy Cauty.
Currie came to London in 1977, attracted not by Tom Bailey also put in an appearance. He was in a
the music scene, but by the notion of squatting. “I Sheffield band, Thompson Twins, that had moved into
had two friends who were here, and they wrote and the squat opposite Currie’s. She and Newton-Ingham
said: ‘We have this house; it’s free. The government watched them move in, eyeing up the PA system like
owns it.’ I arrived at Heathrow with a postie bag and two alley cats on a wall. “I didn’t think they were
£300. The taxi drove through Chelsea and I thought, my type of people; I just fancied their gear,” she
oh yes, this is exactly what my grandmother had says. “But I became good friends with Tom and that
talked about: beautiful houses, roses round the door.” eventually became a love affair.”
The taxi kept going until it reached Brixton, where She met Joe Leeway at a dinner party, where she
the houses were barricaded with corrugated iron. recalls him grandstanding about wanting to live in
Currie’s squat-to-be, in Park Court, was above an a squat. “I’ll help you,” she offered, calling his bluff.
illegal amyl nitrate lab. Leeway’s chief interests were theatre and beat poetry,
From afar, punk had looked like a revolution. Up but he wound up joining Thompson Twins, along with
close, in Sloane Square, Currie was disappointed. Currie, for the second album, Set. Drifting away from
“They were all makeup and big hair-dos. I thought, the other band members, the trio set up a side project,
‘Well, this is no revolution. This is just fashion.’” The Black Arabs, based on the reggae soundsystems
Nevertheless, Currie formed her own band, The they’d check out in Brixton.
Unfuckables, with her friend Trace Newton-Ingham In 1982, Thompson Twins released the Steve
and a rotating cast. “We used to play anti-music,” she Lillywhite-produced single In The Name Of Love,
says. “The idea of having to stay within prescribed which became an overnight No. 1 on the US dance
rhythms and scales didn’t appeal to me.” chart, staying at that spot for five weeks. “Tom had
Their sole gig, at London’s Conway Hall, saw their moved into synths and drum machines and he was
number swelled by The Slits’ Viv Albertine, The Pop so excited about being able to construct stuff,” Currie
Group’s Gareth Sager (whose sax playing inspired says of their new direction. They hoped to marry the

52
 A L A N N A H C U R R I E

funk of Talking Heads with Kraftwerk electronica and

reggae rhythms, with the aim of chart domination.
However, whether or not the original members saw
Currie as a Yoko Ono figure, dissent was swelling.
THOMPSON
When the LP tour finished, Bailey, Currie and Leeway
decided to start again as Thompson Twins MkII. “We TWINS:
THE ALBUMS
gave ourselves 18 months: ‘Let’s just do it, with the
most intention and integrity we can’,” Currie recalls.
“Tom and Joe wanted to be on Top Of The Pops…
I just wanted to see if I could do it on my terms.”
Even with a new deal with Arista, the trio continued
to live in squalor. “They would send limos to the squat 1 A PRODUCT OF…
(PARTICIPATION)
to pick us up. I had no idea we were paying for them. T RECORDS, 1981
Everyone else in the street would leap in the limo, too, The Sheffield six-piece, helmed by the classically
legs and arms sticking out of the window, going three trained Tom Bailey, released a debut on their
times round the block before we had to go to work.” own label that combined new wave with African
The British inkies weren’t impressed. “We started rhythms and chants. Currie didn’t play on the
on a bad foot, crossing the line from grungy squatter album, but upon meeting the band in London,
band into pop,” says Currie. “That was an enormous she recruited people to gatecrash the gigs with
sell-out in the eyes of various music journalists.” toy instruments and makeshift percussion.
Still, who cares? Their next album, Quick Step
And Side Kick, reached No. 2, later going platinum.
“Feeling like a commodity didn’t happen until 1985,”
Currie reflects. “There were a good couple of years 2 SET
T RECORDS, 1982
when we had a real laugh and it was exciting. The The Thompson Twins now had seven members,
three of us were interested in the things that bound us, including Currie and Leeway. Produced by Steve
as opposed to our differences.” That included messing Lillywhite, who has worked on albums by the
with gender ideas, with Currie writing lyrics for Bailey Psychedelic Furs, U2 and Peter Gabriel, Set went
to No. 48 in the UK album chart. A single, In The

“FOR A COUPLE
Name Of Love, went to No. 1 in the US dance
chart, going on to be used in Ghostbusters, Valley

OF YEARS THE
Girl and Edge Of Seventeen.

THREE OF 3 QUICK STEP AND

US HAD A SIDE KICK

REAL LAUGH”
ARISTA, 1983
The first release as a trio was a guitar-free zone.
It was recorded with Alex Sadkin at Compass
Point Studios in the Bahamas. “We were sitting
to sing. She also employed as many women as she in reception and Grace Jones walked in, took one
could; “It’s different now, but when you toured clubs, look at Tom and said ‘My bags are down there’,”
there’d be pictures of naked women all over the walls. Currie recalls. Jones wound up singing on the
album, which also features cameos from Sly and
I’d say, ‘Cover them up. I’m not going to stand beside
Robbie and Sticky Thompson.
them and have everyone gawking’.”
The band clocked up magazine covers and high-
profile concerts (including a Philadelphia Live Aid
performance with Madonna on BVs), also attracting 4 INTO THE GAP
ARISTA, 1984
their fair share of crazed fans. “Someone cut off Tom’s As well as going to No. 1 in the UK album chart
hair with scissors after a gig so she could keep it,” for three weeks and No. 10 in the US Billboard
Currie says. “He had this long hair and some girl just chart, Into The Gap spawned the hit singles
went: snip. At least she didn’t stab him.” Doctor! Doctor!, Hold Me Now and You Take
Manager John Hade controlled the kitty, giving Me Up. Once again, the band chose to record
each member a weekly wage and the odd wedge of with Alex Sadkin in the Bahamas. Slammed,
predictably, by the NME as a “mass program
cash to Currie so that she could orchestrate the tour
of monosodium glutamation of the brain”, the
wardrobes. The band weren’t in the habit of scanning album sold five million copies worldwide.
spreadsheets. “After selling millions of records and
touring the world, we had accountants saying, ‘You’ve
got to take some sort of involvement because you’re
just about to go bankrupt’,” Currie says. 5 HERE’S TO
FUTURE DAYS
Further strain came with the making of 1985’s Arista, 1985
Here’s To Future Days, originally self-produced The cause of some heartache for Currie and
in Paris, but rejected by the label. Despite Bailey Leeway, who were sidelined during the recording
suffering from nervous exhaustion, the band remade process with Nile Rogers, the album reached
the album with Nile Rodgers. “Nile is a fantastic No. 5 in the UK album chart. The more guitar-
based sound meant no more experimental
musician, but he wasn’t at that time into experimenting
percussion using fire extinguishers for Currie.
with sound,” says Currie. “He makes records like The gospel-tinged single Lay Your Hands On Me
Nile. He and Tom got on okay, but Joe and I were went to No. 6 in the US.
redundant, and that was really painful.”

53
 THOMPSON
TWINS: “THE FIRST TIME
WE TOURED
THE ALBUMS AMERICA WE
6 CLOSE TO THE BONE GOT INVITED
ARISTA, 1987
Now a duo with Joe Leeway gone, Bailey and TO THE WILDEST
Currie created this album with the mission of
seeing how quickly it could be done. Producer CLUBS AND
Rupert Hine had a very commercial track record,
having most recently worked with Tina Turner WERE UP
and Howard Jones, but it peaked in the UK
album chart at No. 90. ALL NIGHT”

7 BIG TRASH
WARNER BROS, 1989
There was plenty of off-kilter pop in tracks such
as Queen Of The USA, Salvador Dali’s Car and
Sugar Daddy (a Top 30 single in the US), but the
album failed to chart. Debbie Harry – for whom
Bailey and Currie were now writing songs with
more success – appears on two tracks.

8 QUEER
WARNER BROS, 1991
While Queer didn’t chart, the move into rave
music – with engineer Keith Fernley on board –
made it a hit in dance charts and gay clubs. The
tracks had performed much better when released
anonymously as white labels, so a decision was
made to drop the Thompson Twins name – and
its Eighties pop association – from hereon. Not long after, Leeway left
the band, eventually starting a neurolinguistic
programming training company in California. Currie
and Bailey continued as a duo, enlisting a new

9 THE STONE (as Babble)

REPRISE/WARNER BROS, 1994
manager, Gary Kurfirst, who had worked with the
Ramones, Blondie and Eurythmics; “He was fantastic,
“It’s got some great trippy stuff on it,” says really naughty,” Currie recalls. “I remember his first
Currie approvingly of the new direction into dub, outing with us, to Russia, because he got terribly
electronica and chill-out. The Stone received little drunk. Tom had to carry him out of the club through
promotion by Warner Bros. Bailey and Currie three feet of snow and drag him back to his hotel.”
took off to New Zealand, where they planned to But inspiration was increasingly elusive. “The first
work on music more remotely. time we toured America we got invited to the wildest
clubs in New York and LA and were up all night,” she
says of the flurry of celebrity engagements: breakfast
with Timothy Leary, dinner with Andy Warhol. “Then
you have security and you’re in Park Lane Hotel and
10 ETHER (as Babble)
REPRISE/WARNERS BROS, 1996)
you don’t get to meet people. You’re in these towns
and you don’t know you’re there. It’s boring. We had
“We were losing touch,” Currie says of Ether very little to write about. I lost interest completely.”
today. “You disappear up your own bum.” Once Currie and Bailey had a son, Jackson, followed five
again a collaboration with Fernley, it marked years later by daughter Indigo. They were living in an
Currie’s last involvement with music before old Victorian asylum in Wandsworth, during which
moving into art and activism, and the beginning time they released an electronic album, as Babble.
of Bailey’s next enterprise, the dub project
Then they decided to “go feral” and move to wild
International Observer.
and woolly bush land in Tawharanui Peninsula, New
Zealand. “We thought we could operate the band
by internet, so we built this crazy wedding cake of

54
 A L A N N A H C U R R I E

“I WORE BIGGER
AND BIGGER
HEADDRESSES”
On a touring pit stop in New Zealand, Currie found herself hailed
as a homecoming queen in the newspapers. More usefully, the
Government crowned her Cultural Ambassadress of New Zealand for
a year, something she fully exploited by flashing her passport upon
entering other countries.
In India, in particular, she played the role with aplomb, refusing
to take Bailey’s spiritual pilgrimage seriously. After meeting a
couple of rowdy English expats in a bar, she recruited them to be
her “photographer” and “press attaché”. “Tom played my drunken
boyfriend, and I wore bigger and bigger headdresses.”
She managed to blag her way into the Maharani Suite at
Rambagh Palace, and to afternoon tea with Sir Edmund Hillary. At
Udaipur airport she found herself accompanied by an armed guard:
“Soldiers, with guns crossed for Her Lady Ambassadress to walk onto
the plane,” she laughs. “I thought ‘Whoops – gone a bit far.’”

Thompson Twins in 1991 at

the time of the Queer album,
previewed by Tom’s ‘Feedback
Max’ dance mix identity

a house in the side of a cliff. The rain came down.

Picture scenes from The Piano.”
Currie says she didn’t change out of her Vivienne
Westwood boots for a whole year, despite the
riot shields (from £999), wrecking bars (£30), and glass hammers (£POA)
T-shirts from £25 plus artworks such as a Riot Scarf (£175), Jimmy Cauty

constant deluge of mud. “We had Polaroid pictures

THE ART OF
POP_UP Currie’s website at www.misspokeno.com offers prints and

of our London place. I used to look at them and think,

‘Ooh, I used to be a pop star. What have we done DESTRUCTION
to ourselves?’ Tom got depressed, hid under the stairs
and meditated for three hours a day.” Upon returning to London in the mid-2000s, Currie spent two years
Their second and final Babble album failed to at London Metropolitan University, learning how to make furniture,
set the world alight. Nevertheless, the pair wrote a including chairs into which she embedded taxidermied animals.
“I’d come home and say, ‘God, I want to throw this chair out of the
swathe of songs for other artists, including Debbie
window.’ And Jimmy [Cauty] being Jimmy would go, ‘Well, let’s do
Harry (I Want That Man) and Traci Lords. When
it.’ So I’d take it down the South Coast and throw it off a cliff. I like
Bailey started his own dub project, International acts of destruction in order to create something new.”
Observer, Currie threw herself into glass art and After the two-person Armchair Destructivists came the Sisters of
environmental activism, founding the rabble-rousing Perpetual Resistance – an umbrella under which many projects and
Mothers Against Genetic Engineering (MAdGE). artists could congregate. The enduring theme is dismantling elitism
After 10 years in New Zealand, Currie and Bailey and social hierarchies. Currie’s first exhibition under the name, in
split in 2004 and returned separately to London. Now 2013, was in honour of the Suffragettes who, in 1912, marched into
the ‘ex’ tours as ‘Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey’, which London’s West End with toffee hammers, smashing shop windows.
Currie’s disappointed about because it scuppers her Currie created her own “instruments of nuisance”, including a paint-
loaded ostrich egg and a hot-pink wrecking bar.
idea of: “Go to China and hire musicians to create a
Then came 2015’s Art of Nuisance season of workshops and
band, teach them our old songs, mix in some Chinese parties, held at the Borough HQ. On display were instruments of
opera and grime, update the visuals, then run it as a nuisance by female artists who had spent 10-day residencies with
mad-production world tour.” But of the two bandmates Currie. With many plans afoot for 2016 and beyond, the mischief-
with whom she lived in that strange bubble, she says making has only just begun.
approvingly, “It was a great three-piece play. We
really liked each other. We loved each other.”

55
56
 S O P H I E E L L I S - B E X T O R

IT’S A
FAMILIA
AFFAIR
FOLLOWING A TWO-YEAR GAP, SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR IS
BACK WITH A NEW ALBUM, FAMILIA, AND – 15 YEARS
AFTER GROOVEJET AND THREE AFTER STRICTLY – A HEALTHY
ATTITUDE TOWARDS HYPE AND FAME…

I
P A U L L E S T E R

f this is what Sophie Ellis-Bextor wears for early-morning “I’ve literally never worn jeans onstage,” she adds, “and I
radio, you’ve got to wonder what sparkly finery she might never will. I will wear them to a soundcheck, but I like getting
choose for a night out. Just back from a performance on dressed up to do a gig.” Would she wear jeans to the shops?
The Chris Evans Breakfast Show, for which she interrupted She laughs – no, cackles. “I’m not an idiot!” she says, mildly
her holiday – she is on the way to Heathrow for a flight outraged. “I wear jeans when I’m playing with my kids. I’m not
back to Ibiza where she will rejoin her husband, The a pop star all the time.”
Feeling’s Richard Jones, and their four young sons – she Ellis-Bextor is a curious kind of star. She is one of the few to
has on a chic black and white chequered gingham dress have gone from indie infamy to bona fide sparkly pop success.
and stylish bright yellow raincoat. She might have started Her final single with theaudience before they disbanded was
out 20 years ago as the singer in theaudience, the last 1998’s Smiths-y hurtle I Know Enough (I Don’t Get Enough); she
in a long line of Nineties female-fronted indie bands, but followed it with her first single as a featured solo artist, 2000’s
really, glamour was always her thing. team-up with Italian electronic music producer Spiller, the divine
“I was really into Toni Basil [of novelty hit Mickey] when I was disco shuffle of Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love), which went on to
small, the crazy makeup and crazy dancing, and obviously later become the most played song on British radio that decade.
on I listened to Elastica and Sleeper,” she elaborates of her years “But in even sharper contrast,” she furthers, picking an even
at the Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, West more recent example of her contrariness, “was the first single
London (notable alumni: Davina McCall and Nigella Lawson). from [2014 album] Wanderlust, Young Blood, which was a
“But I was perplexed because [those bands] weren’t very wistful, romantic, pretty song, and the single before it was a
glamorous, and I like a bit of glamour. I was definitely an indie trance anthem with [Dutch EDM producer] Armin van Buuren.”
kid and I’d go to [London indie club] Popscene and listen to all She cackles again. “Has anyone else,” she wonders aloud,
those guitar bands. But I don’t know if [Louise Wener of Sleeper “gone from trance to folk?”
or Justine Frischmann of Elastica] were role models. My big Good question. What does she put her schizoid impulses
inspiration was Madonna and then Debbie Harry. down to? “I’m like a kid in a sweet shop,” she suggests.

57
“I want that one and that one and that one. I want to Fortunately, her stint with theaudience gave her
have my cake and eat it – all different types of cake.” a good grounding in the perils of hype. “It set me
Now 37, Ellis-Bextor has been consuming a wide up really well for taking everything that happened
array of gateaux for over a decade and a half, afterwards with a pinch of salt,” she says. “I signed my
transitioning from the dancefloor diva of 2001’s Read first record deal when I was 17 and everything was
My Lips and follow-ups Shoot From The Hip (2003), going to be amazing, and by the time I was 20 we’d
Trip The Light Fantastic (2007) and Make A Scene split up and I didn’t have a deal anymore. In a short
(2011) to the more esoteric, folky Wanderlust. space of time I experienced the upwards trajectory and
Deep down, she says, she still is “that indie person”, the shift downwards.”
but really, the No.1 success of Groovejet created the Unlike Beckham, whose pop career is in the dim
space for her to do or be anything she wanted. “I like and distant past, Ellis-Bextor goes from strength to
a bit of everything,” she agrees. “The only time I felt strength with her music. Her latest album, Familia,
I had to properly define what genre I was was when combines the club appeal of her earlier work with the
I was a teenager. But after I did Groovejet I realised I more eclectic approach of Wanderlust. She describes
could just do stuff I liked. I didn’t have to fit into a box.” it as the latter’s “bolshier, more extrovert little sister”,
She’s equally happy with her level of celebrity, which with more of a Latin American than eastern European
is just the right side of household name status, with two flavour. It is another collaboration with writer/producer
spikes on the fame chart following Groovejet and her Ed Harcourt. The relationship works because “I get Ed’s
stint, in 2013, on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing. happy thoughts and he gets my dark ones.”
Does she enjoy being recognised? Classic Pop can’t imagine the happily-married
“You know what,” she says, “most people think I’m mother of four being “dark”… “Oh, I’ve definitely got
just someone who looks like me. That’s the main thing that in me,” she insists. “100 percent. It’s something a
people say: ‘God, you really look like that singer!’” little bit gothic or weird, something I need to explore.
It must be horrible, she says, “to be down as the That’s part of the reason I wanted to do Wanderlust.
pantomime villain in the eyes of the public”. Her only I wanted to do different things.”
spell of mild notoriety came when the press cooked On Familia there are songs such as Saddest
up a chart face-off, circa Groovejet, between her and Happiness (“Sorrow knocked upon my door”), the
Victoria Beckham, then in contention for the No.1 slot “quirky” (her word) My Puppet Heart, “widescreen
with Out Of Your Mind. She and Posh had a laugh power ballad” Crystallise, and the David Bowie-esque
about it at the ITV show CD:UK (“She knew it was a Death of Love. Some of the music was written earlier
press invention – she was incredibly savvy”). this year, in the wake of Bowie’s death. “We [she and

58
 S O P H I E E L L I S - B E X T O R

DID YOU KNOW…?

• On September 11, 2001, Sophie Ellis-Bextor performed
at a music conference in Málaga
“We got the news [of the Twin Towers attacks] two hours before
I was due to go on,” she remembers. “Everyone was so in shock,
we just went ahead with it. It was very weird. Everybody knew
something enormous had happened, but nobody knew what would
happen next.”

“POP MUSIC • The McVities and Hovis companies follow her on Twitter

IS SUPPOSED
“Which is cool,” she says, “because I love biscuits and bread.”

• She sees her songs as diary entries

TO SUM UP “I look at things in my life, my anxieties and worries,” she reflects.

“It’s all there. Some of it’s a bit close to the bone because you know

VITALITY, LUST,
what mood you’re in when you do stuff. Sometimes I write a song
and come back to it two months later and think, ‘Woah! Everybody
can hear that!’”

LONGING – ALL • She thinks Madonna is as “important” as Dylan

THE BIG HUMAN

“I don’t think you should be snobbish one way or the other,” she
argues. “Madonna’s written some amazing pop records. Pop music
is supposed to sum up vitality, lust, longing – all the big human

EMOTIONS” emotions. You’d be hard pushed to find a better example of that

than Like A Prayer.”

• She plays different characters in her songs

“There’s a song on the last album called Love Is A Camera about a
witch who lives on a hill and when she takes your photograph she
steals your soul,” she explains. “That’s not a literal event! But it can
be fruitful, to invent a persona for a song.”

• She’s got a big Russian gay following

“I’ve done a few headline shows there for my gay fans,” she says.
“It’s really important to me. People should be able to love who they
want to. There’s still so far to go. We’ve made big strides but we
can’t rest on our laurels.”

• Her children aren’t that fussed about her music

“I’ve never asked them outright, but it would be a bit awkward if
they said they didn’t like it,” she laughs. “The bottom line is, it’s
their mum’s work and they have to listen to me sometimes. They
whistle along to stuff and come to gigs, but I’m not really pushing
the issue. They don’t bat an eyelid at my outfits. ‘Honey, I’m doing
Spohie Ellis-Bextor, G.A.Y. on Saturday night, what do you think of these shoes?’ They
2016: “I like a bit can actually be very helpful.”
of glamour. I like
getting dressed up • She doesn’t mind posing for selfies
to do a gig”
“I’m not trying to sound all ‘Enid Blyton’, but you can’t expect to
do what you do and turn it on and turn it off again,” she says. “If
people have heard my songs and feel excited by them, then they
Harcourt] were blindsided by it,” she says. “I’m just see me out and think that that moment is nice, then it’s nice for me,
lucky I’m in a place where I’m allowed to be emotional too. I don’t want to be singing to no one!”
in my work. Not everybody has that.”
Familia finds Ellis-Bextor exploring the light and
shade of human emotion and experience. “Everybody
has both of those poles in them,” she decides. “Every
time life is good there’s always a part of me that feels
like it’s about to be taken away.” She wrinkles her
brow. “That’s human nature, isn’t it?”
A pessimist is never disappointed? She allows herself
a final hearty cackle.
“I’m just trying to enjoy the moment,” she says,
“while being aware of the fact that it can all go wrong.
I’m one of those people. It’s a good thing, because it
makes you treasure things and never take anything for
granted. You can’t.”

Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Familia is out now on

the EBGB’s label and reviewed on page

59
 K
loud

In the city: From left to right;

Talk Talk’s drummer Lee
Harris, bassist Paul Webb
and frontman Mark Hollis

60
 T a l k T a l k

The art-pop outfit Talk Talk, led

by Mark Hollis, were one of the
most distinctive bands of the
Eighties. In this extract from
band biography Spirit of Talk
Talk, we pick up their story in
1983 as they begin to push the
boundaries of their sound…

T
alk Talk were working hard. After they’d
been touring America for six weeks pretty
much non-stop, opening for Elvis Costello and
The Attractions, Tony Mitchell of Sounds met
them resting poolside at the Sunset Marquis
in Los Angeles. They were less than eager
to undergo an interview. Citing their fatigue
at Duran Duran comparisons and other
unkind press, Mitchell encountered “defensiveness
to the point of hostility”, describing Mark Hollis as
“acerbic”. “Above and beyond all else,” he wrote,
“in the wake of Today climbing the charts, Talk Talk
desire to be taken seriously, and feel they haven’t
been, at least by the press so far.”
Eventually the ice thawed. The band members had
found Costello’s audience agreeable, and headlined
three West Coast and two East Coast shows of their
own. They’d made a mad one-day dash back to
the UK to play Top Of The Pops. Back in the US,
they’d appeared on The Merv Griffin Show, gaining
valuable nationwide exposure. They’d also supported
Sparks at LA’s The Palladium. The band was

61
understandably exhausted, but Hollis, work ethic inklings of
peeping through, commented: “If you’re away an increased
for six weeks you hopefully have a lot more sophistication
impetus when you get back to rehearsals.” of aim and sound.
Hollis now revealed he hadn’t been Davies’ first session
entirely content with the production on had been as engineer on
[debut album] The Party’s Over. He’d Brian Eno’s 1974 Taking Tiger
been impressed by Colin Thurston’s Mountain (By Strategy) album. He
involvement with Bowie’s “Heroes” – “that was to go on to great success with Roxy
track is one of my all-time favourites” – but then Music, Bryan Ferry, Genesis, Talking Heads, Dire
thought he was trying to “lay back” or “soften” Talk Straits, King Crimson, and many more.
Talk’s sound. The band had asked Mike Robinson, Keyboardist Simon Brenner was to leave after this
who’d engineered their successful David “Kid” Jensen recording, however, a sign that their over-reliance
radio session, to become involved with the mix, on synthesisers was to be forsaken, and a hugely
as they hoped he’d push towards something more important moment in Talk Talk’s career came with
“forceful”. Satisfaction still wasn’t achieved. Paul the arrival of ‘unofficial’ fourth member Tim Friese-
Webb told Mojo years later, “Mark grew very angry Greene. Although confining his contribution to
about it. He’ll probably resent that album to the day the studio (avoiding the live scenario), he became
he dies.” Still, by 1985 the album was certified silver producer, keyboard player, and Hollis’s frequent
by the BPI for sales of 60,000. co-writer for the rest of Talk Talk’s lifespan.
The band’s live sound then Friese-Greene’s input to the
was, by all reports, not lacking outfit’s growth and development
in passion and dynamics. It cannot be overstated. Some
was clear that Mark wanted of his previous work may not
something more, something have led anyone to expect
different. He spoke again of his he’d be a vital part of one of
love of Otis Redding (“he just Britain’s most intriguing musical
gave it everything”) and John experimentalists; he’d produced
Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Blue Zoo, Thomas Dolby, The
These were not conventional Nolans, and Tight Fit’s cloying
reference points for an alleged chart-topper The Lion Sleeps
Duran-alike New Romantic. He Tonight. Go figure.
emphasised that music had to “The only thing I initially knew
be ‘felt’, and not ‘cabaret’. about him were three records,”
Paul Webb stressed the Hollis told Record Mirror’s
importance of playing live, of Roger Morton, “The Lion Sleeps
not just being “a total media Tonight, Blue Zoo’s Cry Boy
thing. The excitement you get Cry and Thomas Dolby’s She
from a good live gig, you can’t Blinded Me With Science. They
beat.” Hollis backed him up, were all really well produced,
praising the rhythm section and but did completely different
their superiority to the trending things. That, to me, was the
“reliance on a drum box thing”, sign of a good producer.”
before taking a random blast at Friese-Greene was descended
Dollar and The Wombles. He from a dazzling creative
talked up Echo & The Bunnymen. Simon eulogised dynasty of film pioneers (the cinematographer William
Bowie’s willingness to try new things; Paul pointed Friese-Greene; his son Claude who made a 1924
university. Deciding “it all adds up to common sense”, he quit and

out: “There’s no room to develop your sound when film of a road trip from Land’s End to John o’Groats,
POP_UP Mark Hollis spent 18 months studying psychology at

got a job as a lab technician before forming Talk Talk in 1981

you’re only hip for about five minutes.” a vital socio-visual document of Britain between the
Talk Talk were hip enough to have Burt Ward (the wars). He was, with Hollis, and a floating pool of
actor best known for playing Robin the Boy Wonder new musicians, to do entirely new things with sound.
in the Batman TV series) helping to sell their T-shirts at The first steps came with Talk Talk’s second album
gigs, rather fabulously. But they needed and wanted It’s My Life, released in February 1984. A new year;
to step up their game for their next recording. a new phase for the band. Singles had preceded
Hollis spoke of wanting either Chris Thomas or Rhett it: Another Word from the debut album had snuck
Davies (both, as just one facet of their impressive CVs, out quietly but It’s My Life (released in January)
Roxy Music collaborators) to produce. He coveted itself heralded the ‘second chapter’ of the group’s
clarity of vocals with a hard, driving rhythm section, recordings. The single only reached No. 46 in the UK
and less synthesiser domination. Webb and drummer and was to be reissued in 1985 but became a US
Lee Harris had picked up new rhythm ideas – “with Top 40 hit. By then, Such A Shame (released in April)
a bit of feeling” – from visiting New York clubs. and Dum Dum Girl (released in July) had clarified
The band were licking their wounds, counting their Talk Talk’s fresh direction. Neither lit up the charts
blessings, learning lessons, and moving forward. in Britain – Such A Shame just crept into the Top 50
One dream came true swiftly: Talk Talk did work – but their presence in other countries was far more
with Rhett Davies, on several songs. One, My Foolish noticeable; they were hotly embraced in, for example,
Friend, produced by Davies, was released as a the Netherlands.
single in February 1983 (reaching No. 57 in the The band’s identity was distinguishable now from
UK). Though it wasn’t to appear on the next album, the fading New Romantic Movement, and the songs
the track was more than a stop-gap and showed lingered, sleeper hits in the popular consciousness.

62
 T A L K T A L K

James Marsh’s
sleeve design
for It’s My
Life was a
surreal cut-up
of the Victorian
painting
Boyhood Of
Raleigh

The album got to No. 35 in the UK and No. 42 in

the United States (with five months on the chart, thus
recouping EMI its £250,000 recording budget). It
went gold across Europe.
Friese-Greene has described it, modestly, as
“serviceable”. It’s generally a synthpop album, still,
but one of far greater poise and therefore unforced
drama than its predecessor. Friese-Greene began to
coax the art out of Hollis. While the record was a
child of the glossy dance-remix era, it increasingly
released the angst. There was some subversion in
setting dancefloors across the world gyrating to
morbidly glum lyrics like those of Dum Dum Girl and
Such A Shame. (Their closest peers of the time would,
again, be the similarly growing Japan.) The title song
sounded jubilant, triumphant, on one level – but with
Talk Talk there was always a sense that something just
under the surface was troubled, tormented.
If My Foolish Friend marked a more mature sound,
an awareness that everything didn’t have to rush to
entertain, then It’s My Life showed Hollis finding his
ideal creative consultant and more in Friese-Greene.
Richer, more natural, textures began to infiltrate the
already emotionally charged songs.
This was the start of a beautiful collaborative
process. It’s My Life, Dum Dum Girl, and Does
Caroline Know? were their first three co-compositions.
Every Talk Talk track since this album has been
credited as written by them. The nagging hooks of
the singles are balanced by Hollis’s restrained yet

IT’S MY LIFE powerful angst on the finale, It’s You. Early song
Renée found a home here, at last recorded to his

HERALDED
satisfaction. The omission of My Foolish Friend is odd,
though perhaps such a rapidly evolving band already
considered it imperfect old hat – though that does

A SECOND
make you wonder why its less interesting B-side, Call
In The Night Boys, made the cut.

CHAPTER
Overall, the record makes giant strides forwards in
presenting slower, more introspective, material that’s
smartly assimilated as part of the whole. Tomorrow
Started is another such example. Friese-Greene’s

63
arrangements give Hollis’s voice the space to soar
and swoop while the musicians come across as being
both at ease and at play. And gliding over Harris and
Webb’s rhythms are some superb guesting musicians,
not least keyboardist Ian Curnow and guitarist Robbie
McIntosh – who went on to play full-time with The
Pretenders and then Paul McCartney.
Incidentally, the single version of Such A Shame
emerged as a double-pack seven-inch in a poster
sleeve featuring a bonus single, wherein the Jimmy
Miller-produced 1981 demos finally saw the light of
day. These versions of Talk Talk, Mirror Man, and
Candy remain intriguing to fans: Mirror Man sounds
cleaner without the strings. And the official B-side
of the single – Again, A Game… Again – is an
overlooked jewel that merits greater exposure.
Such A Shame – top five in several European
countries – was inspired by the Luke Rhinehart novel
The Dice Man (a fact which the sleeve played on).
Interested in Eno and Bowie’s use of their Oblique
Strategies technique, Hollis was intrigued by the
novel’s lead character’s life choice of putting his
entire fate in the hands of a simple roll of the dice.
The song’s video similarly ran with the idea of him “IT’S SOUL.
THAT’S WHERE
spontaneously playing different roles depending on
what the dice decreed.
Asked by Record Mirror’s Betty Page in August

IT ALL COMES
1984 if he ever considered bringing that approach
to songwriting, he answered, “In actual fact, there
was a little bit of that in that song. One line – about
‘trembling hands’ – comes from the book. I thought
the imagery was good and I liked that it related to the
book directly.”
FROM”
Paul Webb, Mark
Hollis, Lee Harris:
‘It’s difficult for
people to know
where we’re at”

64
 T A L K T A L K

Page inquired what Mark given night could now be a

thought of some reviewers tricky question, as they toured
finding the album “depressing”. intensively to support the
“I don’t think I make people records. Live cuts emerged
miserable, I really don’t,” he as foreign-territory releases,
replied. “I don’t think it’s about capturing a band getting better
misery. It’s soul – that’s where it all the time. An EMI Holland
all comes from. release of TV live recordings
“It’s sad because that’s of Tomorrow Started and
what soul music is. You look My Foolish Friend is highly
at Otis Redding’s Try A Little regarded, with these versions
Tenderness and I’ve Been rated as outstripping the
Loving You Too Long. It’s all original studio takes. The mini-
love. It’s got to be.” album It’s My Mix, released in
Prompted by the interviewer’s America and Italy and a steady
wry comment that “Dum Dum import hit in the UK, offered
Girl is absolutely nothing to do extended or remixed versions
with bullets or stupid women,” of Why Is It So Hard? (a track
he revealed, “Dum Dum Girl recorded for the 1984 Michael
isn’t miserable. It’s an anti- Apted film Firstborn), Talk Talk,
prostitution song; that’s what My Foolish Friend, It’s My
it is. The songs have got to be Life, Dum Dum Girl, and Such
sung with feeling, so they’ve A Shame.
got to be written with feeling. Mark spoke of the live set-up to Melody Maker. “It
“I don’t even know if it matters any more if will be very different this time, because we are now
people misunderstand us,” Hollis went on, in actually a six-piece band for live purposes. No way
uncharacteristically forthcoming mood. “We don’t will it just be a straight duplicate of the album, as
really care. This three years [sic] since we signed with there are going to be a lot of new ideas in there as
EMI has been a wising-up process. well. I can quite easily see songs stretching out to
“We’ve met people along the way who’ve realised 10 or 15 minutes, no bother.”
what we’re talking about… so we work with them. As for where Talk Talk were at visually, they were
Like with Tim Pope and the videos – he’s a good boy; resolutely cultivating an anti-image, a non-image, in
he understands where we’re at… if people out there order to pull further away from the ‘New Romantic
don’t actually understand what the music is about, synthpop’ tag. Yet at the same time, to balance their
then we haven’t got time to worry about it any more. desire to exclude their personalities from clouding the
POP_UP The 2012 tribute album Spirit Of Talk Talk included
contributions from White Lies, Peter Broderick, Joan As Police

Who gives a toss, as Shakespeare once said…” music, the artwork of James Marsh on their record
Woman, Richard Reed Parry, Jason Lytle and many more

In March 1984, he told Melody Maker: “For sleeves was conjuring up an engaging, enchanted,
example, on Tomorrow Started, the intro reminds you and enigmatic world: “Distinctly surrealistic”, Record
of Erik Satie, the verse is maybe closer to Pharaoh Mirror said. Hollis: “We use illustrations because it
Sanders, and then the Marvin Gaye rhythm vibe says a lot more about the music than having us three
comes in. And all that is just a reflection of my whole on the front, smiling. I’m aware of the anonymity
life being one long process of being into lots of thing, which I think is wrong, I’m aware that people
different types of music. Pink Floyd, King Crimson, should think ‘I like that record, and he’s alright’, but
John Lee Hooker, The Standells, Chocolate Watch that’s not what music should base itself on.”
Factory [sic]… everything through to Shostakovich ‘Anonymity’ was becoming a recurring, deliberate,
and Prokofiev. motif in Talk Talk’s interviews. “The business of being
“I guess we are very much against the grain at the out of the public eye doesn’t really worry us,” Mark
moment,” he went on. “But then, we’ve never really told Melody Maker in March 1984. “All that’s
been part of a distinct movement. The first album was important is that we get the product right and we’re
probably quite close to post-punk new wave, and we happy with it.” Paul Webb concurred. “We never got
were definitely keen to get across a feeling of energy. caught up with all that business of getting your face in
But then, as far as I was concerned, all that was taken the magazine – and ‘Oh, by the way, here’s the
a bit too far by other people, and moved away from music’. ”We are a pretty hard act to define,”
working within the structure of songs. What we’re concluded Hollis.
doing on the new album is not to use chords to block
things, but instead give everything a lot more room to
develop. And hopefully the next album will be just as Spirit Of Talk Talk
different again. by James Marsh,
“What we’re trying to do is put a load of Chris Roberts and
different areas of music together,” he Toby Benjamin
informed Betty Page and the readers is published by
of Record Mirror. “Nothing’s Rocket 88
original. But what that means
is that it’s difficult for
people to know where
we’re at…”
Where Talk
Talk were “at”
on any

65
 B A C K I N
TH E R A C E Y L IT TLE SWISS
U N N
YEARS, “F VATING –
AFTER 38 O ARE STILL INNO LE WILL
LL P
BOYS” YE HE FIRST TIME, PEO Y TELL
RT LIVE. THE
AND, FO E T H E M
HT, THE
O SE
BE ABLE T ABOUT STAGEFRIG NEED
OP THE
CLASSIC P F SUCCESS AND
DANGERS
O
E A C H O THER...
H
IOTS” WIT A R L S
TO BE “ID N E
J O H

T
for
are known
The band e videos
ir
ere’s round in th
o many, th c lowning a ly deep
in g fa in tl y fo r M e ie r’s studied
someth and o had a
a l a b o ut Yello. e . T h e singer als art
com ic v o ic maverick
h e ir b ig g est hits Oh re p u ta ti on for his e a rs b efore
T R a ce 9 7 2, six y
T h e in 1
Yeah an d events : stalled a
e ra te ly OTT, rm e d , Meier in e
are d e li b Yello fo ation in th
d ly m a n ic ... and la q u e a t the train st st a ti n g
wil p el,
ays been wn of Kass
there’s alw e y German to a rc h 1 9 94 from
that th on 23 M stand on
the sense need to
th a t,
artist w o u ld
c tu a lly m , th e gh,
don’t a 3-4 p Sure enou
a k e m u si c. to p o f th e plaque. h o n o u re d
m ter, Meier
know: 2 years la
What we 2
is from a his promis
e. line
ter Meier other side
singer Die a n d w a s already Is Y e llo merely an c h a s
mily, ngs su
wealthy fa d u st ri a list when r th e p air? Are so P la n e t
ire in fo nd
a milliona 1978. m Divine a
in e d th e band in b le The Rhyth e x h ib its in
he jo more h u m a just m o re
n k h a d a k D a d l a rt ?
Boris Bla a truc ceptua
ro u n d , w orking as M eier’s con ss ic P o p at
backg e fo rm ed Yello Ta lk in g to Cla pair
driver befo
re h but urich, e th
ie n d C a rl os Peron, th e ir studio in Z ly tr y to
with his fr usic certain
a g if t fo r making m sa y that they
he has ies.
s and mov
for advert

66
Y E L L O

67
have fun whenever they meet – but Blank’s work ethic
in particular is demented by anyone’s standards, let
alone for a supposedly dilettante band.
Aged 71, Meier runs a restaurant in Zurich, Ojo De
Agua, which specialises in Argentine steak and wine.
He greets Classic Pop by stating: “I wasn’t drunk last
night, so I feel like a million bucks today.” If he’s a
wine connoisseur, he also plays golf every day – “You
can do that, if you make sure you find the time” – so
he still looks remarkably trim.
Seven years younger, Blank, too, is in good nick,
albeit with a slight ghostly pallor from constantly
being in the studio. “Boris virtually lives in the studio,”
Meier insists. “Our music comes about because Boris
tries to find himself by creating music all day. He’s
digging out the child within himself. The studio is
Boris’ oxygen tent.”
“That’s true,” Blank nods. “I stick my head into
music and sound so much that I could never stop now. than just two guys with laptops. And that means it’s
It’s the oxygen I need to breathe.” legitimate for Dieter and I to shake our asses. Dieter is
Today, Blank is happy to let Meier do most of one of the best dancers in Zurich.”
the talking. His English, delivered in a sing-song A full Yello tour is almost certain to follow, as Meier
voice contrasting with Meier’s deadpan baritone, is reveals: “If it works out and we enjoy it – and I think
excellent. But he says: “Dieter’s English is so perfect that will be the case – then we’ll definitely go on tour.
and beautiful to listen to when he’s offering his We already have people interested in booking us. So
perfect, beautiful philosophy.” You also suspect Blank hopefully one day, Boris and I will share a tourbus.”
would rather be playing with the banks of keyboards It helps that Yello are also readying one of their Dieter Meier and Boris
and guitars arranged around Yello’s studio. finest albums for many years, with the lively Toy. Blank in the Pigalle Bar in
Zurich’s old town, 1984
His love of the recording process helps to explain As exuberant as Yello’s best work, its 17 songs
why it’s only now, 36 years after the release of their encapsulate their capacity for joy. “We feel Toy is a
debut album Solid Pleasure, that Yello are playing live very nice album,” says Meier, his speaking voice as
for the first time. In October, there will be four shows rich as on his band’s music. “Our live show is big
at Berlin art space Kraftwerk Studio. news for Yello, which in turn helps promote the album.
Why now? “I always wanted to play live, but Boris Toy has a nice presence and is a good one for us to
was critical,” Meier admits. “He felt Yello could never start our live performances for.”
be a truly live experience.” Following a commercial peak in the late Eighties,
Blank explains: “I thought it was always strange to Yello withdrew into the background during the
be on stage shaking your ass, pretending to be live Nineties as Meier focused on his art. Today, the
when you were simply pressing buttons on a laptop.” singer admits not all of Yello’s music has caught fire.
Meier reveals Boris also suffered from stagefright, “You always believe when you’re making an album
but explains it was cured when Blank demonstrated that you’re doing something new,” he considers. “But
Yello’s interactive musical sampling app, Yello Fire, a year later, once you can reflect, you realise that
to a live audience. “Activating the app, constructing you’ve disappeared up yourself. That’s not unique to
pieces of music there and then, worked out so well for Yello, it happens to every artist. You probably find a
Boris that he lost his fear of being on stage.” new door and a new room of music with your next
Blank admits that played a part, but adds: “Also, album. But you can’t force that door open. It has to
there are many other musicians on stage with us be an organic process, and those new worlds will Of
at these shows: percussionists, singers, guitarists, either happen or they won’t. But we really feel we’ve 198

trombonists, a great brass section. So it’s much more opened a new door with Toy.”

68
 Y E L L O

COLLABORATIVE EFFORT
Yello’s new album Toy sees Chinese singer Fifi Rong and Boris
Blank’s jazz singing associate Malia take over from Dieter Meier on
several tracks.
“A lot of these songs could be for a man or woman to sing,” says
Blank. “The album I made with Malia was from songs I’d created
that Dieter said he couldn’t sing because they were obviously more
suited to a woman. I was still in that gender-neutral space, I think.”
Rong and Malia follow the likes of late Associates great Billy
MacKenzie and Shirley Bassey in guesting with Yello. “Shirley is the
friend of a friend,” recalls Meier. “When she recorded The Rhythm
Divine, I flew in from London to Zurich. But, by the time I arrived,
Shirley was so professional that she’d already recorded 11 perfect
takes of the song. I was too late to be any part of it.”
MacKenzie actually recorded the guide vocals for Bassey, and
became great friends with Blank. “Our collaboration would have
gone much further,” Meier believes. “Billy lived with Boris when
he was in Zurich working on our albums, and I’m sure Boris would
have produced an entire album with Billy. It was very, very, very sad
when we heard Billy had died. He was a friend to me, but for Boris
it was a real loss.”

“IT’S MORE THAN TWO GUYS

WITH LAPTOPS. AND THAT
MEANS IT’S LEGITIMATE TO
s
ar in
SHAKE OUR ASSES” WIDESCREEN MUSIC
Although Yello’s music often features in movies, Dieter Meier
explains that creating a soundtrack specifically for a Hollywood film
would never work.
84
“Boris can’t fulfil other’s wishes, and is only able to make music
for himself,” says Meier. “He gets incredible offers. Hans Zimmer
The shows mean Yello’s public profile is at its is a friend of mine, and he’s asked Boris many, many times to do
music on big, big movies. But being a director’s employee wouldn’t
highest since 1991’s Baby, which featured one of
work for him.”
Associates singer Billy MacKenzie’s final songs, Capri The pair made a rare exception when Lethal Weapon producer
Calling. Blank and Meier feel ready for more acclaim, Joel Silver eventually persuaded the pair to create the soundtrack
but both are wary of being too successful. for a film which Meier and Blank are reluctant to name.
“If you’re successful, you’re trying to feed a gorilla “Boris arrived with a tape of ideas,” Meier recalls. “Silver put a
on your shoulders,” says Meier. “Sometimes you’re cassette player on top of the editing table and played a rough cut of
consciously feeding it, sometimes less so – but that the movie. He was shocked at how well it fit. Halfway through, he
gorilla needs feeding. If you’ve stopped having pressed Stop and demanded ‘Where did you see this film already?
big success and you’re just a musician alone doing It’s impossible!’”
his thing, there’s no fear that you’re trying to make During the Eighties, then-Disney head Mo Eisner told a friend
of Meier’s he was sick of hearing Yello: “Why is it that, every other
opportunistic music.”
edit suite I walk past, I hear Yello’s music?” Eisner demanded. An
Meier admits that, in their early days, Yello were editor told the Disney exec that Blank’s music is perfect for making
trying to be mainstream. The only problem was, rough cuts to before the eventual soundtrack composer showed
they didn’t know how. “We’re two funny little Swiss up. “That’s one of the beauties of Boris’ music,” says Meier. “The
boys,” he laughs. “So when we got successful and rhythms are so complex that you always feel the cuts are done with
Official promo shot from received big advances from record companies, we the complexities of whatever you’re watching.”
1981, the year of second felt responsible for their cash. We wanted to prove we
album Claro Que Si
were worth their money. That can be dangerous –

69
 Classic combination: Meier
and Blank in Havana, Cuba,
for the Desire video, 1986

but Boris simply didn’t know how to feed the gorilla. If Yello broadly conform to the
He never really knew how to write a hit to order.” synth duo stereotype of flamboyant
So the mid-Eighties peak when Yello seemed to be frontman and reserved studio
on the soundtrack to every big film of the era was boffin on keyboards, then initially
by chance? “Oh, it was a total coincidence,” Meier they were rounded out with third
laughs. “Before Oh Yeah, then yes, there were songs member and fellow keyboardist
that we and our record company were convinced Carlos Peron. A longtime friend of
would be big successes. Blank, the pair began Yello a year
“But our biggest hits? They were from songs we before Meier joined.
never expected to be successful. The Race? We Peron departed after 1983’s
didn’t believe in that track at all. We threw it away third album You Gotta Say Yes
on a video album at first, and the video took me 10 To Another Excess to go solo, at
minutes. And as for Oh Yeah? Look at the lyrics.” which point it became easier for A still from the Meier-
At this point, Meier begins singing, and Classic Pop Meier and Blank to understand directed video for Tied Up
from the Flag album, 1988
can confirm he can still reach Oh Yeah’s centre-of- each other’s work ethics.
the-earth low notes. “’The moon – beautiful/ The sun “In the early days, the problem
– even more beautiful. Ohhh yeah!’ Those are lyrics was that Boris wouldn’t allow me to be an idiot,”
that are not for a wider audience, are they?” Meier laughs. “When we start an album, I have to be
Although Oh Yeah never actually charted as an idiot. I sing along like a total dilettante until a little
a single, it’s familiar from generations of film melody or a group of words emerges.
1997. First a techno club, it now features concerts in its giant turbine hall
POP_UP Yello’s first-ever performances will be held at Kraftwerk Berlin,

soundtracks, starting with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off “When I climb into Boris’ sound paintings, I’m
an early-Sixties heat and power station which was decommissioned in

and Tom Cruise vehicle The Colour Of Money and not so much a singer as an actor, telling stories and
extending to featuring in The Simpsons, American creating scenes that further bring those paintings
Dad and South Park before more recently It’s Always to life for the listener. And my stories materialise by
Sunny In California. Meier appreciates its appeal. starting from scratch. If I have to prove I already
“Everybody understands the unconditional happiness know what I’m doing from the beginning, then that
of that song. You have no more wishes in life than bores me. This process has become much more open
feeling ‘Ohhh yeah!’ The message of life’s happiness between us, and now Boris actually helps me to
is contained in those two words, and it’s like become an idiot, which makes it more joyful.”
everything has worked out for you. But we still never For Blank’s part, although he now revels in Meier’s
thought it would be a hit!” idiocies, he does admit that he wishes his bandmate
Like other Yello albums, Toy was constructed from was more focused. “Dieter has got too many things
around 70 “sound paintings” Blank constructed from going on around his ears,” he smiles. “He does too
thousands of sound ideas and unreleased past Yello many things at the same time and never has enough
demos, before the musician stripped them down to time to spend in the studio. He’ll be in the studio
20 ideas for Meier to begin working on. and suddenly ask me ‘What’s the time?’ ‘Oh, it’s
“I’m not a traditional musician,” Blank ventures. half-nine.’ ‘Oh shit! I need to go right now!’ But, after
“I’m more of a mood creator, building pictures or 38 years, we still laugh a lot together. We’re serious
paintings with sound. I never think in advance what when we make music, but there’s a lot of humour and
mood I want to create. I’m like a chef who’s planted self-deprecation. We know each other so well that we
nuts in the soil, grabbing them out again and putting can play with those ironies.”
them together. All my sounds and fragments come Toy is Yello’s first album for seven years, following
together somehow, but it always feels a miracle when Touch in 2009. During the break, Blank made
a coherent album begins to emerge.” the album Convergence with jazz singer Malia

70
 Y E L L O

“IN THE EARLY DAYS BORIS

and released the boxset Electrified of previously-
unreleased Yello outtakes and solo tracks.
Meanwhile, Meier had to write his own music for
the first time when he released the surprisingly strident

WOULDN’T ALLOW ME TO BE
dancefloor album Out Of Chaos. “Yello’s songs are
90% finished when I jump into Boris’ pictures,” he
admits. “I’m a guest in his world. I need to have

AN IDIOT. NOW HE HELPS ME”

other things in my life, so that I can get an outsider’s
perspective and objective view on what to do with his
wonderful paintings. With my record, I had to play
the songs on my guitar to these nice, professional
musicians. Playing shows for Out Of Chaos was
fantastic. I hadn’t been on stage in the 40 years
we’ve been doing this, but creating a dialogue with
the audience, I’ve never felt better in my life.”
With Meier admitting “I almost got addicted” to
playing live, it seems that Yello could yet become a
touring band. Whatever happens, it appears likely
Meier will remain happy to let his friend do the basic
brushstrokes of Yello’s music.
“Oh, but I love the studio so much,” enthuses
Blank. “When I’m in my coffin and the undertaker is
hammering the nails in, you can be sure I’ll be lying
there, trying to sample the sound so that I can make
a nice little uptempo track from the noise.”

Toy is released on 30 September on UMC. Read the Shooting the video

for Oh Yeah in 1985
Classic Pop review on page 89

71
 CLASSIC
SUBSCRIBE TO
eighties
electronic
eclectic

YES! I would like to subscribe to:

BEST
DEAL
Print & Digital Bundle CPDPS25B £33.50 every 6 issues (year)
by Direct Debit CHOOSE YOUR
rint only CPDPS25 £25 every 6 issues (year) by Direct Debit
Please complete the Direct Debit mandate below SUBSCRIPTION
INSTRUCTION TO YOUR BANK OR BUILDING SOCIETY TO PAY
Originator’s Identification Number PACKAGE
1 Name of your Bank or Building Society 8 3 7 1 8 1

2 Name of account holder(s) THE BUNDLE

3 Branch sort code SUBSCRIPTION…
4 Account number • Save 44%*
5 Instruction to your Bank/Building Society Please pay Anthem Publishing Direct • Just £33.50 every 6 issues (yearly)
Debits from the account detailed in this instruction subject to the safeguards assured by
the Direct Debit Guarantee. I understand that this instruction may remain with Anthem on Direct Debit
Publishing and if so, details will be passed electronically to my Bank or Building Society.
• Free UK delivery direct to your door
Signature(s) Date • Access to the app through iTunes, Kindle
DIRECT DEBIT GUARANTEE Fire and Android
Direct Debit is only available in the UK. If you’re not entirely satisfied with
Classic Pop at any time during your subscription, you can cancel it and receive CODE – CPDPS25B
a refund for any unmailed copies

YOUR DETAILS
Title Forename Surname
Email address**
Address
Postcode Country
Daytime tel
Mobile**

OTHER PAYMENTS
Complete your details above. Sorry, gift not available with these options.
UK - £26.90 for 6 issues (year), saving 25% (credit/debit card)
PRINT-ONLY

Europe – €54 every 6 issues (year), saving 25% (Cont. Credit Card)
Australia – $86.20 every 6 issues (year), saving 10% (Cont. Credit Card)
Rest of World – £52 every 6 issues (year), (Cont. Credit Card)

UK - £34.70 for 6 issues (year), saving 42% (credit/debit card) THE PRINT
PRINT +
DIGITAL

Europe – €68.20 every 6 issues (year), saving 35% (Cont. Credit Card)
Australia – $105.60 every 6 issues (year), saving 25% (Cont. Credit Card) SUBSCRIPTION…
Rest of World – £44.99 every 6 issues (Year), (Cont. Credit Card) • Save 30%*
• Just £25 every 6 issues (yearly) on
Send your completed form to Anthem Publishing Ltd, Freepost RRBS-LRRG-CTBJ, Direct Debit
800 Guillat Avenue, Kent Science Park, Sittingbourne ME9 8GU
• Free UK delivery direct to your door
Please debit my card CODE – CPDPS25
Visa Mastercard Maestro American Express
Card
Valid from Expiry date Issue no
Signature(s) Date

I enclose a cheque made payable to Anthem Publishing Ltd for £

OFFER ENDS 17 NOVEMBER 2016 CPDPS25B FOR BUNDLE / CPDPS25

Your subscription will start with the next available issue. There are 6 issues in a year.
* UK-only pricing. Print subscription savings are based on the cover price. Bundle savings are based on the print cover price and
digital single issue price combined. The overseas prices are payments by Continuous Credit card every 6 issues (yearly payments).
Details of how to access your digital editions will be sent to you with acknowledgement of your subscription order. Please provide
your email address for this.**Please enter this information so that Anthem Publishing Ltd can keep you informed of newsletters, special
offers and promotions via email or free text messages. You may unsubscribe from these messages at any time.
Anthem Publishing Ltd, publisher of Classic Pop magazine, may contact you with details of our products, services or to undertake
research. Please tick here if you prefer not to receive such information by post phone
We occasionally pass your details on to carefully selected companies whose products and services we feel may be of interest to you.
Please tick here if you prefer not to receive such information by post phone
 CLASSIC POP NEW SUBSCRIPTION OFFER

CLASSIC
eighties
electronic
eclectic

SUBSCRIBE
FOR JUST £25!*

3 eAsY wayS TO SUBSCRIBE

anthem.subscribeonline. 0844 8150046* Please complete

co.uk/classicpop Overseas readers +44 1795 592968 the freepost order
ENTERING CODE CPDPS25B (bundle) QUOTING CODE CPDPS25B (bundle) form opposite
OR CPDPS25 (print only) OR CPDPS25 (print only)

*Calls cost 7 pence per minute plus

your phone's service charge
 M I C K H A G G E R T Y

MICK HAGGERTY’S WORK WITH DAVID

BOWIE DURING HIS EIGHTIES POP PERIOD
MAY BE HIS MOST FAMOUS, BUT DURING A
FIVE-DECADE CAREER THIS MULTI-DISCIPLINARY
DESIGNER HAS COLLABORATED WITH A
LONG LIST OF BIG NAMES. IN AN EXCLUSIVE
INTERVIEW WITH CLASSIC POP, HE OFFERS
AN INSIGHT INTO THIS AND MUCH MORE…
A N D R E W D I N E L E Y

H
aving worked with with inspiring years spent at So I made my first cover for a
artists as diverse as Ravensbourne, Central and Royal sleeveless Eddie Cochran album
Bob Marley, OMD, Colleges of Art (thankfully fully when I was 15.
The Police, ELO, Herbie paid for by generous Government
Hancock, Jimi Hendrix, Aerosmith grants). It’s quite hard to describe What was the first record sleeve
and, of course, David Bowie, it’s the dizzying effect album art had you were commissioned to design,
likely that most music lovers will on me in those years. Music, and how did it come about?
have come across your work and which seemed like the most In 1972, Storm Thorgerson’s
have some of your sleeve designs important thing in the world, was Hipgnosis designs for Pink Floyd
in their record collections. But contained in these mysterious, and others were already starting
how did it all begin? beautiful, cardboard sleeves. I had to make serious trouble, so with
I admit to following a fairly a plum red Johnny Ace memorial my portfolio in hand I just knocked
traditional path. I was a South record on Duke from 1955, which on the door of Island Records.
London mod obsessed with made me weak at the knees. What They must have liked something
American soul and blues, else could I do than try my hand? because they gave me Rosie, an
“Folk rock was pretty low on my taste scale so I admit
to a certain amount of irony in my final image, but
hell, they bought it, and I bought myself a one-way
ticket to Los Angeles” M I C K H A G G E R T Y

First work: Fairport

Convention’s
Rosie LP of 1973,
comfortingly woody
with pastel shades
for the discerning
folk-rock fan

74
 M I C K H A G G E R T Y P O P A R T

album by Fairport Convention to

design. Folk rock was pretty low
on my taste scale, so I admit to a
certain amount of irony in my final
image, but hell, they bought it, and
I bought myself a one-way ticket to
Los Angeles.

Skipping a decade and dozens

of releases to get us to the classic
pop era, we can’t overlook the
1979 cover design for Breakfast In
America by Supertramp.
This was the result of designers
and the band working very closely.
Mike Doud had the original idea
and had sold it as an illustration,
which was why I became
involved. Inspired in part by Jean-
Paul Goude’s work for Esquire
magazine, I insisted that it had to
be a photograph and set about
shooting a bleach blonde pin-up
waitress, which the band soundly
rejected. They insisted that ‘Libby’
be more of an everyday type,
and we reshot. Since A&M let
me really run with all the graphic
spin-offs, laminated menus inserted
in magazines, even aprons and
plates, it became one of the first
total media campaigns.

In 1981, you were commissioned The design for

Breakfast In
to design the sleeve for Ghost In In 1982, The Go-Go’s released That same year you also began America shows a
The Machine by The Police. Their Vacation, their second album. working with Hall & Oates. The white china New
previous album covers had all The cover design was a vivid sleeve design for H2O didn’t York skyline with
a waitress as the
featured photography of the band extravaganza of seaside kitsch include any images of the band on Statue of Liberty
members, so this could easily and pure pop playfulness… the front cover at all, and saved all and a glass of
have followed the same formula; I cooked this up with the late art the graphics for the inside and on juice as her
this time, though, you opted to director Mike Doud and Go-Go’s the labels… torch. Below: The
Police’s Ghost In
render a unique twist on what had manager Ginger Canzoneri. I After The Police’s Ghost In The The Machine
become a predictable theme. was busy strip-mining American Machine I was getting calls
I had been specifically asked for culture and Ginger and I had a offering me pretty much carte
a portrait. It was my birthday mutual admiration for the rear blanche. I collected boxing
around the time, and the type projection scenes in Paradise, ephemera and was fascinated
house sent me a present of a little Hawaiian Style where Elvis sings
pocket calculator through the mail. while surfing. Record companies
The mail carrier bent it in half to were belatedly discovering the
put it though the mail slot, and I power of employing one cohesive
picked it up and there in my hands concept that tied together cover
was a dying electronic object. art, advertising, tour imagery
It was left with this scrambled and videos – that’s how I pitched
image in the window. When I'd it. I shot the cover and the
been asked about The Police’s backgrounds for the video using
music before, I’d always said it body doubles at Cypress Gardens,
was too calculated… and there I a water skiing amusement park
was looking at a calculator being in Florida. The band embraced it
destroyed, and it was perfect. I just completely, even taking smoking
knew that all I’d have to do is get breaks from shooting, dressed in
the same face, basically, and put their pink tops and tutus on a bus
different haircuts on them. What’s bench on Sunset Boulevard. Being
really important is that you find a design jack-of-all-trades, I utilised
in the image a really important photography, illustration, graphics,
thread of a meaning, that there’s film and just about anything I could
a hook that the whole thing can think of on the campaign. A&M
hang on. said yes to it all.

75
 The Let’s Dance
single carried a
silhouette ‘boxing’
image, the Everlast-
influenced logo and
nods to the mail-
order ‘footprint’
diagrams of the
dance instructor
Arthur Murray
“For Let’s Dance I paired an adaptation of the Everlast logo
with a version of an Arthur Murray tango diagram, and it just
seemed to work. My boxing obsession, it seems, was finally
paying off” M I C K H A G G E R T Y

Below left, the

sleeve design
by the idea of the ‘face off’ fight Boshier and he wondered if I could system that I had built inside a for the Let’s
photo, it seemed the antithesis of make them work for the cover of closet at home, using a back-lit Dance album;
their usual ‘buddy buddy’ duo an album and single, and said vintage 8x10 camera. Before right, Mick
Haggerty’s
pictures. Managers often don’t feel they were to be called Let’s Dance. computers, there was no other complex home-
secure without spending big bucks I paired an adaptation of the way to make complex photo composited
on a big name photographer, so Everlast logo with a version of an images than to cut and paste artwork for
Tonight
this time it was Hiro, whose day Arthur Murray tango diagram, and together paper prints made from
rate was about twice my total fee, it just seemed to work. My boxing
but he was comfortable with me obsession, it seems, was finally
setting up the entire picture, and paying off!
him just clicking the shutter. Jeff Over the next year we stayed
Ayeroff the creative director and in touch with each other, until
I fought hard to get rid of all legal one evening he summoned me
text and tracklistings to make it a overnight to Canada so he could
double-sided package, but on the play me the next album, entitled
night of the printing we got a call Tonight. He talked about the mood
to say that they felt more secure of ‘The Green Lady’ painting by
with the portrait and were going to Vladimir Tretchikoff, about knight
move the logo. It was a long night, errants and the stories of the
but we prevailed. Holy Grail, about stained glass
windows, and about the artist as
You started working with David Romantic Hero. He was the easiest
Bowie shortly after Hall & Oates. and most interesting artist to work
Did you collaborate with him on with – playful, passionate and
design, or was he happy to trust totally secure.
your vision? By this time I was already
David had some boxing images experimenting with my own
shot by the English artist Derek makeshift image compositing

76
 M I C K H A G G E R T Y P O P A R T

film negatives using scissors and

glue, and then retouched with
paint. The problem with this was
that images degraded by four or
five generations before even being
printed. With my system, I could
composite images pretty much like
Photoshop would 15 years later,
using transparencies and mattes to
manipulate colours, to make
glows and multiple exposures.
I could shift registration and easily
paint and interfere with the image.
It was laborious and slow, but
the result looked nothing like the
retouched images of the day.
David and I met about a month
later in New York, and I shot lots
of Polaroids of him in his hotel
room at The Carlyle. From those,
I made a graphite drawing, which
I tinted Yves Klein blue. I shot
traffic and lights around Times
Square, and later flowers and oil
paint smears in my studio, and
assembled it all in my closet. I used
the same system with the same
elements for the singles Tonight
and Blue Jean. We were both quite
amazed at the results, I recall.
We would talk occasionally,
and a few years passed before he
called again in 1987 and asked
that I meet him at photographer Above: Mick’s
Greg Gorman’s Los Angeles studio to dress in clothes like a hobo For Simple Minds’ Once Upon collage for
David Bowie's
to make crude circus props copied from the Thirties. The process was A Time album in 1985 you Never Let Me
from a small collage I had given extremely spontaneous, and pure were working with a band at Down; Simple
him years earlier. By this time he Bowie. An alternative take was its stadium peak, supplying Minds’ Once
Upon A Time and
had finished the album Never Let used for the cover of the single sophisticated graphics that varied Alive & Kicking.
Me Down and said he wanted Day In Day Out. from photographic cut-ups to pure Below: OMD
typography. Your band logo, which
featured prominently on the cover
of the single Alive & Kicking, is one
of their strongest designs…
Seemingly impossible restrictions
imposed by the band are
responsible for the final cover
solution. They told me that they
wanted photographs, but that
the pictures must not show their
full faces! So I was forced to
devise two different covers for the
album. Each had Anton Corbijn’s
pictures with all the band’s faces
cropped in half, but when they
are arranged side by side, the
crops join to reveal each full face.
Virgin shipped thousands of both
covers to record stores, so they
could cover walls with the band’s
faces – not, perhaps, what they
originally intended, but another
unforeseen result was that die-hard
fans bought two albums.

For The Pacific Age, OMD’s 1986

album and its singles, you devised
a style defiantly different to
everything that went before for

77
P O P A R T M I C K H A G G E R T Y

OMD. The hand-rendered designs

were more playful and less clinical;
was this a deliberate strategy on
the part of the record company or
the band?
When OMD contacted me, I was
going to say no. How crazy would
I have to be to go anywhere near
the amazing Peter Saville? I’d just
returned from travelling around the
Baja Peninsular, taking pictures
and making woodcuts. When
the band told me the album title
was based on the concept that
the Northern European Age was
closing and the countries of the
East and South were waking up, I
realised all I had to do was clear
off my deck, start cutting wood
and lino, and keep printing. In
retrospect, I love the synchronicity
that produced these images, and
the clash its handmade quality
makes with the beautiful cerebral
coolness of their previous covers.

With your Public Image Limited

sleeve designs for the album 9
and its singles Disappointed and
Warrior in 1989, it’s evident that
by this point digital technology had
become a key part of the design
process for you.
I admit to being a reluctant digital Adventures in
convert, and working on these operator. As you see from the it. Each new screen image took pixels: PiL’s
Disappointed;
covers was largely to blame for cover art, it produced pixels the about two minutes to read in and single (above)
that. A friend called me to see a size of Pac-Man. I was working on there was no way to actually print and, below,
demonstration at his studio by several videos for John Lydon and from the digital output of this sleeves for the
9 album and the
what I vaguely recall to be a had some out-takes at hand, so I machine, so – absurdly – I had to Warrior single
Swedish computer company. The persuaded the operator to “feed” copy the images from the screen
machine was about five feet wide one in, and over the course of with an analogue camera. The
and came with a very surly many days tried to experiment with experience left me less than
convinced that the computer could
“The machine was about five feet wide, came with a very
surly operator and produced pixels the size of a Pac-Man.
Absurdly, I had to copy the images from the screen with
an analogue camera” M I C K H A G G E R T Y
ever be a useful tool for design. I
would also like to mention what an
inspiration it was to work with John
Lydon… a real gent.

Mick Haggerty is still active in the

fields of art direction, design and
film production and has a studio
based in Los Angeles. Discover
more of his work online and
check out more of his creativity
at www.mickhaggerty.com

78
 CLASSIC POP SUBSCRIPTION OFFER

CALLING
ALL USA
READERS
SAVE 27%
WHEN YOU
IF YOU’RE READING THIS SUBSCRIBE TO
FROM THE USA, WE’VE GOT A CLASSIC
FANTASTIC OFFER JUST FOR YOU!
SUBSCRIBE TODAY AND PAY JUST eighties
electronic
eclectic

$65 FOR 6 ISSUES.

SAVE
25%
OFF THE
STORE
PRICE

2 eAsY wayS TO SUBSCRIBE

www.imsnews.com/ Dial Toll Free

classicpop 800 428 3003

ENTERING CODE CPUSA16 QUOTING CODE CPUSA16

Classic Pop magazine’s subscriptions are now handled in North America by IMS News.
Call at local rates, in your hours and pay in US/Canadian dollars
S K Y E | R O S S

REACH FOR THE SKYE

MORCHEEBA MAPPED OUT THEIR
OWN SINGULAR SONIC TERRITORY
IN THE LATE NINETIES, FUSING A
FOLK-POP SENSIBILITY WITH MESMERIC
TRIP-HOP RHYTHMS. NOW TWO
THIRDS OF THE BAND, VOCALIST
SKYE EDWARDS AND MULTI-
INSTRUMENTALIST ROSS GODFREY,
HAVE DITCHED THE MONIKER AND
MORPHED INTO SKYE|ROSS. CLASSIC
POP SPOKE TO THEM ON THE
RELEASE OF THEIR EPONYMOUSLY-
TITLED DEBUT AS A DUO…
D A V I D B U R K E

80
M
orcheeba were at the summit bill also featuring David Gray and Nitin relief. I was like, ‘Thank God for that’. It
of their fame in 2003, when Sawhney, and toured China to promote was bloody awful. And I swore I’d never
the brothers Godfrey – Paul cultural links with the UK at the behest of go back.”
and Ross – decided to the British Council. Fast forward six years, and Skye
dispense with the services of “Then it was over,” Skye recalls. “We reneged on her pledge, albeit reluctantly.
Skye Edwards, citing creative hated each other at that point. Well, “I remember being taken for lunch by
and personal differences. The I thought that they hated me, but there our manager. He gulped down this beer
group, formed in London nine was more conflict between the brothers. at the end of the meal and he said, ‘Oh,
years earlier, had just headlined the One I didn’t realise and was just caught in the they would like you to rejoin the band’.
World Stage at Glastonbury, played the middle of it. When our manager called And I was just like, ‘No, not doing it, not
first-ever concert in Trafalgar Square on a me up and said, ‘It’s over’, it was a doing it’. It was months of arguing with

81
 S K Y E | R O S S

my husband. He said I should go back for the legacy outfit Nouvelle Vague on Hollywood, Mon Amour, a
of Morcheeba, for the fans, for me, for everyone. I collection of popular movie songs from the Eighties.
thought, why would I want to go back to that? But he “I had hardly seen Paul and Ross in that time. I
convinced me to at least have a meeting, to go for a wasn’t interested in listening to any of the records
meal with them, which I did. We got very drunk and they’d done,” she says. “It was like seeing your new
decided to give it a go.” husband with his ex-wife wearing my clothes!
Ross describes the years without Skye as “very “I tried to avoid it whenever I could, but it was
hard work – it didn’t feel right”. He adds: “I was very difficult, because my husband followed their careers
happy when Skye rejoined the band. Whatever the and friends did. But I’ve got to say, it was necessary
opposite of amputation is, that’s what it felt like when for us to break up. I’m really, really fond of Ross. He’s
she rejoined.” in a much better place and we get on really well.”
During Skye’s sabbatical from the group, Paul and The pair had first met at a Greenwich house party
Ross continued to record as Morcheeba, replacing in 1993 – Ross was there with a friend, Justin – hitting
her with several doppelgangers. First came Daisy it off straight away.
Martey, formerly of Noonday Underground, who “We exchanged numbers. I was living in Stratford,
fronted 2005’s The Antidote before being sacked. in a one-bedroom flat, and I was trying to sell my
She was followed in turn by Jody Sternberg, and, drum kit. I used to play drums, not very well! He said
on 2008’s Dive Deep, by no less than five different he would buy the drum kit off me. I also got Justin’s
singers, among them Judie Tzuke. number. We started dating and had two children
Skye, meanwhile, stayed busy and issued a couple together. Justin told me that they were looking for a
of solo albums, Mind How You Go and Keeping singer. I said, ‘I can’t sing! Why did you tell them I
Secrets, and collaborated with Marc Collin of French could sing?’ He just told me to go round to the flat in

LESS CHEEBA “We just complement

each other, lyrically,
“I don’t think there’ll be another Morcheeba album. We split up in
2014, and have no intention of reforming,” declares Ross Godfrey.
The reasons for the dissolution of the band – and the emergence of
Skye|Ross – are vague. “It’s a long story,” says Skye, cryptically,
though Paul Godfrey’s aversion to playing live was arguably
a factor. He continues to write and produce music, while also
discovering and developing new talent at his studio in an old
Methodist church near Hastings. Meanwhile, Skye|Ross is “the way
musically, melodically”
forward”, according to Skye. “People are getting their heads around
it. Our Facebook page was Morcheeba, now it’s Skye|Ross. When Dalston, where Ross was living with Paul. That’s when
we’re touring it’s Skye & Ross from Morcheeba. And we’re still doing I met Paul. I sang them some songs I’d written. I was
Morcheeba songs. But Morcheeba, as it stands, is no more.” singing with a funk band, doing backing vocals. I
had an acoustic guitar and would just kind of write
melodies. I used to write poems, then I’d pick up the
FAMILY BUSINESS guitar and try to write melodies to them. I was very,
very shy, so the thought of being a frontwoman in a
In Skye|Ross, Ross’ wife, Amanda Zamolo, features on backing
Mountain, with his wife Amanda Zamolo, Will Sprott from The Mumlers,
band was just ridiculous.
vocals; Skye’s husband, Steve Gordon, plays bass, while it was Ross
“They said, ‘Oh, it’s fine – we’re just going to be a
POP_UP Ross Godfrey has another project, country/folk band Little

who suggested to Skye that her 19-year-old son, Jaega, could be

the perfect drummer. “They worked through Morcheeba songs for studio band. We’re not going to go on tour’. They’d
and guitarist Ste Forshaw. Their debut LP was released in 2016

three months,” says Skye. “They were in his blood – I was pregnant had a few different singers before me. They played
with him when we recorded Who Can You Trust? His first major gig me a song, Col, and I said, ‘I can’t sing like that’. It
was at a festival in Argentina in front of 10,000 people. He played a was a girl who had a really soulful, loud voice. So we
blinder. He was brilliant. I said to him: ‘You’ve got to be better than changed it – everything became slower and quieter
any other drummer, because I don’t want people saying you got the to suit my voice, and then, of course, the trip-hop
job because you’re the son of the singer’. It’s the same for Steve. It’s movement happened.”
like: ‘You can’t make any mistakes. You’ve got to be better’.” Away Morcheeba’s sound – ambient, chill-out, downtempo
from Skye|Ross, Jaega has his own group, The Blue Pursuit. – was close enough to the genre pioneered in Bristol
by the likes of Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky,
for them to be mentioned in the same breath, even if,
on 2000’s platinum-selling Fragments Of Freedom,
they shifted towards the mainstream.
Skye and Ross have been the nucleus of Morcheeba
since 2009. In fact, Skye can’t even remember the
last time Paul appeared live with them.
“Even before the split he wasn’t happy touring,
so we did it less and less. He didn’t really enjoy the
travel. And when he wasn’t happy, nobody was
happy. So it was better for him to stay in the studio.
Me and Ross thought we should just make an album
together. It started off acoustically. And that’s how we

82
 Getty Images
Ste Forshaw, Amanda Zamolo and
Ross Godfrey as Little Mountain,
currently working on new material

thought it would turn out – more of a mellow, acoustic artistic consummation of a friendship initiated at a
record. And then we started writing more uptempo Greenwich house party all those years ago.
songs. It [Skye|Ross] feels more live. With a lot of “We certainly work well together,” declares Paul.
the previous Morcheeba records, the drums were “We have worked together for more than 20 years,
programmed by Paul.” so our music has grown around each other. When
The inspiration for the album came when Skye and I write a piece of music, she naturally finds the best
Ross were standing at the side of the main stage at melody to fit and we develop it from there.”
the Australian Gold Coast music festival, watching a For Skye, it’s just an easy liaison.
set by Gary Clark Jr. “We just get on and complement each other
“He came on with his band and we were both in lyrically, musically, melodically. We’re kindreds.”
awe, like, ‘Wow, this is really cool! Wouldn’t it be So is it better this time around?
cool to record an album like that?’ It was the energy “It is. It absolutely is. We’re communicating more,
of it, really. We thought it would be quite cool to we understand each other. Ross is just a lot happier.
capture some of what we do, because we’re quite He was really miserable back then.”
energetic on stage.”
According to Ross, whereas Morcheeba was “by its
very nature more reliant on production techniques, the
Skye|Ross album is more organic and freeform. We
didn’t worry about editing it or polishing it too much. I
think the music either has life or it doesn’t. The album
speaks for itself.”
And it’s a beautifully articulate piece of work,
defined by Skye’s beguiling delivery and Ross’ intense
soloing. “There are guitar solos all over the previous
records, but because Ross was producing this one, he
had free rein to have the solos a little bit louder in the
mix, which is really cool,” says Skye.
Photo ©Jen Maler

For his part, Ross admits to finally allowing himself

“to let loose a little”.
While the Skye|Ross project marks the end of
Morcheeba, it also heralds a new beginning, the

83
 R E I S S U E S A N D
B E Y O N D
WHAT, AND JUST AS LEGITIMATELY WHEN, IS
CLASSIC POP? WE PONDER THESE WEIGHTY
QUESTIONS AND MORE BESIDES AS WE JOHN FOXX – THE COMPLETE CATHEDRAL OCEANS
If you fancy being reduced to tears, as composer Harold Budd was when he first heard
BRAVELY NAVIGATE THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE this music, then you need The Complete Cathedral Oceans – all three editions of John
Foxx’s cultishly adored serene ziggurat, the ambient trilogy of Cathedral Oceans (1997),
OF THE SPIRAL SCRATCH, FROM THE Cathedral Oceans II (2003) and Cathedral Oceans III (2005). Foxx spent time growing up as a
SEVENTIES TO THE NINETIES… chorister, becoming “very interested in the way that sound worked in big spaces, churches
particularly.” He has described this near-decade-long career detour as “music for a vast,
P A U L L E S T E R
half-submerged cathedral”. DJ magazine called the results “a beautiful, beatless, Eno-esque
encounter that’ll ascend into the upper reaches of your soul”. All true.

DAVID BOWIE –
WHO CAN I BE NOW?
(1974-1976)
After the Five Years glam-era box set
comes this collection of his so-called
“plastic soul” output, one that includes an
unreleased album entitled The Gouster. The
12-CD, 13-LP packages boasts Re:Call 2, a
new compilation of singles and non-album
B-sides, plus remastered versions of Diamond
Dogs, Young Americans, Station To Station,
David Live,
Live and Live Nassau Coliseum ’76.
Most exciting of all is The Gouster, named
after a Sixties Chicago dress-code, a
THE HUMAN LEAGUE – 40-minute, seven-tracker recorded at the
REPRODUCTION/TRAVELOGUE height of Bowie’s experiments with funk, soul
For the first time in almost 30 years – since 1988, in fact – The Human League’s first two albums are back on vinyl. If you haven’t and R&B. Although The Gouster was never
heard them before, you’re in for a treat – or rather, a shock, because if you only know the Sheffield synth-poppers from the hit singles released, several tracks were reworked for
and Dare, you might not be aware of their arty, bleak, industrial past. Reproduction was the League’s 1979 debut, the one with the scary 1975’s Young Americans. Who Can I Be Now?
treading-on-babies artwork, titles such as Circus Of Death and Almost Medieval and a sense of dystopian disturbance. Travelogue, the 1980 will feature a hardcover photo book along
follow-up and their last before Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh split to form Heaven 17, continued in a similar, darkly pulsating vein with with new liner notes from Bowie collaborators
The Black Hit Of Space and Only After Dark, although there were intimations of their pop future on The Touchables. such as Tony Visconti and Harry Maslin.

84
 L O N G L I V E V I N Y L

BELLY – STAR BLUR – LEISURE DARYL HALL AND JOHN MADONNA –

While you’re wondering WHAT is Hard to believe, but Blur’s debut OATES – VERY BEST OF BEDTIME STORIES
classic pop, how about this one: album is 25 years young. And to There is some debate around which is It remains a favourite topic for
WHEN is classic pop? When does it start and mark the occasion the album, remastered at the biggest-selling pop duo of all scholars of classic pop: when did
when does it end? Are the Nineties classic Abbey Road, is being reissued on vinyl, time: is it Simon & Garfunkel, Carpenters, Madonna go off the boil? Was it after Like A
yet? Consider Belly. They were, like their pressed to turquoise plastic by Parlophone for The Everly Brothers, even Roxette? Some Prayer? The other hot Madge-related debate
parent group Throwing Muses, purveyors of the first time since, well, 2012. There are no argue that it’s Hall & Oates; they dominated is: when did she start making good records
jagged guitar indie, but there was a sense details at the time of going to press of any the US singles chart in the Eighties, and now again? Some consider Ray Of Light, Music
with Tanya Donelly’s offshoot combo (who extra tracks for Leisure, suffice to say the you can enjoy most of those hits as Sony and MDNA to be virtual “comebacks” after
recently reformed) that they were softening album itself contains those early – some issue their 2001 compilation, The Very Best periods in the critical wilderness. Like all
the Muses’ fiercer moments, making them might say “pre-Britpop” anthems and big of Daryl Hall and John Oates, on vinyl for the great artists with a bulky catalogue, she is
palatable for a mainstream audience. Were hit singles She’s So High and There’s No first time – a limited edition set, no less, prey to the “best since” syndrome. Bedtime
they pop? Well, take Star, Belly‘s 1993 debut Other Way. Or were they the southern featuring 18 tracks from the handsome, Stories has variously been hailed as one of
album, now being reissued by 4AD in special representation of Madchester? From the start, generously-tonsured hunks, including five US Madonna’s “best since” albums (i.e., best
double vinyl form, in a gatefold sleeve, with Blur were contentious and provocative, from No.1s: Kiss On My List, Private Eyes, I Can’t since Like A Prayer or Like A Virgin), while it
the music (remastered) spread across two their attitude to their music. The latter Go For That (No Can Do), Maneater, and Out has been cited simultaneously as the one that
white marbled LPs, and bearing updated variously boasted the lazy shuffle groove du Of Touch. This double vinyl set is a 150g saw her back on track AND the one where
artwork. That music includes the single Feed jour on some of the tracks, suggesting they pressing on grey and blue vinyl, packaged in she went off the rails. The truth is simpler: it’s
The Tree, a minor hit in the UK, supporting were “baggy” indie-dance upstarts, and a a gatefold jacket with photos and liner notes. another great Madonna album, her urban-lite
the album itself, which reached No.2, adding more frantic energy on others, positing them It also contains some of the most intensely foray, on which producers Dallas Austin,
weight to the argument that Belly, if nothing as sons and heirs of the punk movement. And hummable R&B-tinged, funk-lite blue-eyed Babyface and Nellee Hooper fashioned for
else, enjoyed “pop” success. their career would only get more confusing. pop ever committed to plastic. her a series of subtly entrancing grooves.

BOB MARLEY – THE SEX PISTOLS – STING – THE THE UNDERTONES –

THE COMPLETE ISLAND LIVE ‘76 STUDIO COLLECTION THE UNDERTONES/
RECORDINGS You may have heard that, 40 years Then again, an artist can be pop, HYPNOTISED
Can reggae be “classic pop”? It’s an ago, during the long, hot summer of then lose their “popness”. Sting with The Derry rockers may only have
intriguing conundrum. While you’re 1976, some fairly well-known punk concerts The Police made music that was often proggy released four albums in their initial,
pondering that, you can listen to this 12-LP took place. Well, here’s your chance to own in terms of complexity and jazzily muso-ish, classic iteration, but they were all good ones.
Metal Box version of The Complete Island recordings of them, on vinyl, in one handy with a punky/new wave energy, but their hits Here, their first two are being reissued on
Recordings, which first came out late last package: The Sex Pistols in all their early were as pop as pop can be. Solo Sting, on the vinyl, to mark the 40th anniversary of punk
year and comprises a decade’s worth of work glory, live and in full effect, at their other hand, is more rock, even when he’s even though they were late arrivals at the
by Bob Marley and the Wailers, specifically legendary gig in June at the Lesser Free singing something hummable and melodic. punk party – their self-titled debut wasn’t
the nine studio albums (from 1973’s Catch Trade Hall, Manchester (recently voted one of But he’s included here because, after all, he’s issued until 1979, by which time the world
A Fire to 1983’s Confrontation) recorded for the most important concerts of all time, Sting, Formerly Of The Police! The Studio had moved onto post-punk. But then, that
Island Records and two live releases alongside Woodstock and Live Aid); their Collection is a new Sting vinyl box set, and was the joy of The Undertones: they were out
(including the 2-LP Babylon By Bus) all August date at the Screen On The Green, includes eight A&M albums across 11 vinyl of time, espousing the perennial pleasures of
pressed on 180g vinyl. As well as being Islington, which saw support from The Clash LPs: The Dream Of The Blue Turtles (1985), three-minute guitar-fuelled garage punk-pop
metal, the collectors’ edition comes with a and Buzzcocks; their September visit to …Nothing Like The Sun (1987) (2LP), The when all around them were bands exploring
code voucher for high resolution download as Chelmsford Maximum Security Prison; and Soul Cages (1991), Ten Summoner’s Tales the properties of disco and dub, krautrock
well as a 70th anniversary turntable slip mat their trip that same month to the 76 Club, (1993), Mercury Falling (1996), Brand New and proto-electronica. That said, Hypnotised
(Marley turned 70 last year) and photos. And Burton on Trent, a show previously only Day (1999) (2LP), Sacred Love (2003) (2LP) evinces an increasingly sophisticated
the considerable expense incurred in the available as a bootleg. These historic live and The Last Ship (2013). The latter two approach to songcraft ahead of arguably
purchase is offset by the music – as definitive shows are now yours to keep, on 4-LP vinyl have never been issued on vinyl before, so their best two albums, 1981’s Positive Touch
a collection of reggae as you can get. (or 4-CD, if that floats your boat). this marks their debut on the format. and 1983’s lush, near-baroque Sin Of Pride.

85
 SEPTEMBER CLEARANCE

SALE
50% OFF ALL MAGAZINES
IF YOU HAVE MISSED AN ISSUE OF CLASSIC POP,
NOW IS THE TIME TO COMPLETE YOUR COLLECTION!
ENJOY 50% OFF ALL BACK ISSUES FOR A LIMITED TIME
ONLY AND WHILE STOCKS LAST

SHOP THE SALE, VISIT:

HTTPS://ANTHEM.SUBSCRIBEONLINE.CO.UK/ANTHEM-BACK-ISSUES-SALE
C L A S S I C P O P M A G A Z I N E

R E V I E W S

NEW RELEASES p88

Yello, Britney Spears, Norah Jones,
Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Elle Exxe,
Skye | Ross, M.I.A, C Duncan…
by WYNDHAM WALLACE
REISSUES p96
Human League, Marc Almond, Dusty
Springfield, Ultravox!, Oasis, The
Brilliant Corners, The Verve, Momus…
by PAUL LESTER
COMPILATIONS p100
Top of the Pops: The Definitive 3-CD
Collections, Africa Airways One and
Two, Arif Mardin
by PAUL LESTER
DVDS/BOOKS p104
The Kate Inside, Prince: Purple Reign,
This Is It! The Secret Lives of Dr
Conrad Murray and Michael Jackson,
Youth – Sketch, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll
DVD documentary
by MARK LINDORES
LIVE & EVENTS p109
Pet Shop Boys, Latitude festival,
Faithless, Tony Hadley, Grandmaster
Flash, Blue Dot Festival at Jodrell
Bank, UB40... by JOHN EARLS, STEVE
HARNELL, DAVE FREAK, JOSH GRAY
and IAN RAVENDALE

R A T I N G S

LOVE IT
BUY IT
STREAM IT
PONDER IT
AVOID IT

87
 S I N G L E S

MARILYN SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR

LOVE OR MONEY COME WITH US
It’s good to see that Marilyn is back This sounds not a million miles away from
releasing new music… it must be well over Sophie’s hit Murder On The Dancefloor,
30 years now since Calling Your Name came in a way, but it has more of a Seventies
out. This is a laid-back kind of summer disco kind of vibe to it. It’s good to hear
reggae tune which rather reminds me of that Ed Harcourt is involved when it comes
Althea And Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking. to co-writing and production, he’s a fine
And that’s never a bad thing. musician in his own right.

RICKY ROSS
ALUNAGEORGE LOWELL
DEACON BLUE SINGER RICKY ROSS, ONE OF MEAN WHAT I MEAN BLOW THE BASS
THE FINEST LYRICISTS OF HIS GENERATION, Ah. This is where I begin to realise just how Like AlunaGeorge, this type of dance music
hard it can be sometimes to criticise other isn’t my usual thing. But there’s something
IS KEEPING UP THE BAND’S EXEMPLARY FORM musicians’ work. This just isn’t my thing, about this one that I do really like. It takes
ON THEIR NEW ALBUM BELIEVERS. BUT HOW really, so it’s really difficult for me to review a while to impress, but it’s a slow burner
it fairly. But I will say that the horns are an and it ends up being deceptively catchy.
WOULD HE COPE WITH WRITING ABOUT interesting addition. I like her voice a lot, too.
OTHERS’ MUSIC? TIME TO PUT HIM IN FRONT
OF THE LATEST SINGLES…
O C T / N O V 1 6

CLASSIC

BEST SINGLE

THE DIVINE COMEDY TWO DOOR THE AULTONES YELLO

CATHERINE THE GREAT CINEMA CLUB BOOMERANG LIMBO
If you’re a Divine Comedy fan, then I’d BAD DECISIONS This is absolutely right up my street. It’s a In a funny way, this is a bit like The
be confident you’ll like this one. It’s the This is a change in direction for the trio, good, easy listen with hints of Neil Young. Divine Comedy: it’s absolutely got all the
band doing exactly what they do best. It’s but then I’ve noticed a lot of guitar bands Boomerang is a great name for a song! elements that the band are associated
unlikely to change non-fans’ minds, but why have started to make this kind of pop music I don’t know much about them – or him, with. Limbo harks right back to Yello’s
should it? All the elements their admirers recently. To my mind, it’s very much like as, I gather it’s a one-man band called Nick. iconic synth dance sound, so if that’s your
like are here. The 1975’s new album. But I really liked this. thing then this one is for you.

88
 N E W R E L E A S E S

YELLO
TOY
UMC

SWITZERLAND’S FINEST MAY HAVE BEEN ON THIS EARTH SINCE THE EARLY POST-WAR YEARS,
BUT ON THE EVE OF THEIR LIVE DEBUT THEY’RE NOT YET READY FOR THEIR PENSIONS…
charts: The Race and Of Course excitable media fans to shine a 30,000 Days offers reminders
I’m Lying. Even Shirley Bassey spotlight on something they’ve of the moody Billy Mackenzie
failed to lift 1987’s gorgeous always considered underrated. collaboration Moon On Ice
The Rhythm Divine beyond Fortunately, Toy sits from the same album. The latter
No. 54, and if they’re comfortably in their catalogue also underlines the lack of
genuinely famous for anything and, at its best, comes close any comparably singular foils
it’s the memorable use of Oh to matching their finest work. for Meier: the voices of Swiss
Yeah in 1986’s classic Ferris Committed fans will find much singer Heidi Happy, occasional
Bueller’s Day Off. to enjoy in the slap and tickle Tricky ally Fifi Rong and jazz
Nonetheless, this long- synths and Latin rhythms vocalist Malia seem to be
awaited return – discounting of comeback single Limbo almost interchangeable.
2009’s overly slick Touch Yello, and in the dark, shuffling However, Toy is cause
which only received a digital Starlight Scene. Dialectical for celebration – of both its

I
release in Britain – has found Kid, meanwhile, is full of existence, and Yello themselves.
t’s hard not to be a little them heralded as original rapid-fire percussion and their Crucially, it showcases their
suspicious when an act electronic music pioneers. This trademark flatulent synths, while unique sound: 71-year-old
returns after a prolonged is arguably true: it would be Pacific AM is so extravagantly Dieter Meier’s voice, which
break to vigorous critical hard to name a single act that produced it would sit well in a sits somewhere between Lee
acclaim that wholly eclipses sounds similar. But it doesn’t big-budget Hollywood thriller. Hazlewood, Lee Marvin and
the fact they were actually necessarily mean Toy stands At other times, however, Leonard Cohen, is as enigmatic
never terribly successful. with their best, such as 1985’s the sense of familiarity is a and rasping as ever, while Boris
Switzerland’s Yello have only Stella or its follow-up, 1987’s little overpowering. Give You Blank’s arrangements retain
once achieved a Top 40 UK genre-stretching One Second. The World’s programming is their mischievous, lush veneer.
album, while just two singles It might simply mean it provides remarkably similar to One You gotta say yes to their latest
have graced the country’s a long overdue opportunity for Second’s Santiago, and excess. Wyndham Wallace

89
 O C T / N O V 1 6

CLASSIC

BEST NEW ALBUM

BRITNEY SPEARS
GLORY
RCA

CAN SHE DO IT, BABY, ONE MORE TIME? APPARENTLY, YES! BRITNEY’S LATEST ALBUM, A
MASTERPIECE OF CONTEMPORARY POP TROPES, CONFIRMS SHE’S DONE IT AGAIN. OOPS!

regained pop icon status with – as opposed to its deluxe she beguiles with a hiccupped
2011’s Femme Fatale, but 17-track incarnation – Spears “Oops!” on the innuendo-
there’s still something unreal receives a writing credit on only laden, bouncily club-friendly
about her: the Spears we see five, and even these are shared Clumsy, while the sped-up soul-
seems less a person and more with at least three others. But, revivalism of What You Need
a representation. Of what, tormented as she once was, concludes with a delighted
it’s hard to say. The American Spears has never been a “That was fun!” She even
Dream? The 21st Century tortured, soul-baring artist, and gets profane on the reggae-
woman? That’s a heavy weight Glory is less about presenting seasoned Slumber Party, though
for a 35-year-old woman’s today’s Britney than showcasing the dubious sexual politics of
shoulders. But this is one of the today’s pop at its most pristine Private Show make its funky
bestselling artists of all time: and contrived. She remains, in strut appear a little cheap.

W
we’ve come to expect a lot. other words – without wishing Ultimately, who or what
ho – or The credits to Spears’ ninth to diminish her achievements – Britney is doesn’t matter. It’s
what – is album suggest little has been a vehicle. The good news is that what Glory is that counts. Add
Britney left to chance: multiple studios it’s back in tip-top condition. the neon gloss of Invitation, the
Spears and producers were employed Glory is hardly devoid of sultry yet celebratory, acoustic-
in 2016? to ensure its success, with character, either. Spears has guitar fuelled Do You Wanna
An six people necessary just to always had an ear for details Come Over, and the slow
avatar for teenage dreams at oversee her vocals on the that hint at the personality motion EDM of Make Me… and
the turn of the century, and for pounding Hard To Forget Ya. behind the polish, Gimme it’s clear: this is as close to pop
soured dreams by her public Of the dozen songs that make More’s “It’s Britney, bitch” being perfection as money can buy in
meltdown in 2007, she partially up the album’s standard version one notable example. Here 2016. WW

90
 N E W R E L E A S E S

SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR
FA M I L I A
EBGB’S

Harcourt – whose recent

Furnaces album has underlined
his place as one of the country’s
finest songwriters – is present
again for her sixth studio
album. His influence can be
heard most notably on the
string-heavy Here Comes The
Rapture, an earnestly rhapsodic
ode to true love filled with
grandiloquent statements like
“In the midst of renaissance you
inspire me to live”. It’s evident,
It’s easy to forget Sophie too, on Unrequited, where Ellis- slips effortlessly into a chorus Crystallise. The former – an
Ellis-Bextor started out in the Bextor’s well-spoken warble sits reminiscent of ELO; Hush Little effervescent, galloping pop
late-Nineties as singer for indie- alongside Matthew Caws’ (of Voices finds them sharing tune, her voice at its sweetest
rockers theaudience. She has evergreen indie rockers Nada their love for Latin America as it rushes towards an ecstatic
always been something of a Surf) on a baroque pop paean by layering cheerful mariachi chorus – remains closest to the
chameleon, however, scoring to true love that, this time, has horns over troubled references dancefloor-friendly Ellis-Bextor
a massive hit in 2000 with been thwarted. to anxiety, and Death Of Love template with which we’re most
Spiller’s immaculate disco-styled Harcourt, though, has combines guitars that sound familiar. The latter – a lush,
Groovejet – which went on proven himself skilled at more like they were nabbed from mid-paced slice of piano-led
to become the decade’s most dramatic tracks, too, just as Joy Division with keyboards elegance – confirms that she
played single – and notching Ellis-Bextor has shown herself as optimistic as the song’s remains one of our more refined
up more electro-pop hits before as adept at shifting moods declaration that “What we’ve pop stars. Theaudience may
drafting in Ed Harcourt for as she is at shifting styles. created/ It cannot be undone”. be forgotten, but Ellis-Bextor’s
2014’s sophisticated but more On My Puppet Heart, their But Familia’s two standout audience has every reason to
low-key Wanderlust. increasingly pugnacious attitude tracks are Wild Forever and remain loyal. WW

NORA H JONES
D AY B R E A K S
BLUE NOTE RECORDS

Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights.

Hell, she’s even appeared on
Sesame Street.
Jones’ voice is so warm
it’s a wonder that certain US
politicians haven’t claimed she’s
responsible for the melting of the
polar ice caps.
On Day Breaks she returns to
the piano for a dozen softly-
spoken, almost impossibly placid
tracks that will have rock fans – Jones’ country inclinations EP), and an intimate take
Norah Jones lives a charmed still queasy after she lured Green are no surprise – her country on Duke Ellington’s Fleurette
life. Signed to arguably the Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong to band, Puss n Boots, included Africaine (African Flower).
world’s most renowned jazz pay tribute to The Everly Brothers another Young cover on their While it’s not all downbeat
label, her debut album, Come on 2013’s Foreverly – tearing album – but here she plays – Flipside positively rattles
Away With Me, has been their hair out. Its silken textures things straight, the rough-edged along – Jones shines brightest
certified diamond – a phrase may indeed seem soporific to guitars of the original replaced on the deceptively edgy opener,
one rarely hears – in the US (in some, but others will find herein by jazzy piano, brass and Burn, and the title track, her
the UK it’s gone platinum eight a sophisticated record full of plucked bass. voice at its most soulful, floating
times, which isn’t bad either). exquisitely subtle performances. Her penchant for covers is alongside the slightest of string
She’s got nine Grammys, has Nowhere is this more well known, too, and there arrangements, while And Then
worked with Danger Mouse, evident that on a cover of Neil are two more here: she gives There Was You recalls Blossom
collaborated with Foo Fighters, Young’s Don’t Be Denied, its saxophonist Wayne Shorter the Dearie’s magical It Amazes
Herbie Hancock and Mike nuances recalling Jane Birkin’s spotlight on a gentle version of Me. There can be no higher
Patton (among many, many underrated 2006 interpretation Horace Silver’s Peace (already praise than this. Charmed, I’m
others), and starred in Wong of his Harvest Moon. recorded for her 2001 debut absolutely sure. WW

91
ELLE EXXE
L O V E F U E L L E D H AT E
LX RECORDS

with youthful exuberance, with

crunching guitar chords and
a chorus so exciting that its
clumsy lyric about irresistible
sexual attraction – “I’ve been
feeling so crazy/ Making
love on the daily” – is easily
forgiven. The latter, meanwhile,
drips with youthful attitude, a
colossal drum sound, and a
lyric that encapsulates the thrill
of alcohol-fuelled misadventures
Edinburgh-raised Linda Harrison – “Dancing in the motel room/ brace”. In fact, this is an album no small feat. She also shares
has been releasing songs for Spilling all the whiskey” – of two extreme halves: the first the Eighties flavours of Sick,
a few years now, first under before concluding with a full of celebration, the second which sounds like Annie Lennox
the name Harrison and, for the victorious “I’m off my face!” full of bratty indignation, with a bad case of jealousy,
past 18 months or so, as Elle There’s a second, equally both delivered with enviable the fierce girl-power revivalism
Exxe. Time has allowed her to effective one-two punch in the conviction. Yet there’s room for of Hating On You, and the
develop her sound, and now second half, with The Hammer reflection; I Do is an a cappella, concluding, surprisingly calm
she emerges with a debut that a slower but still engaging tale Vocodered and unexpected resolution of Understand.
not only invites comparisons to of triumphant revenge – “With paean to marriage, while Shoot At times profane, at others
Charli XCX and Katy Perry but all this time on my hands/ I’m is delivered in a calmer fashion, hilarious, but rarely less than
at times even outclasses them. scheming, plotting, calculating which, given the vitriol therein literate and exciting, Love
Much of this is down to how to ruin a man” – and – “Your negativity is gross/ It’s Fuelled Hate is a brash, vital
opening songs Lately and Lost In W.T.F. an even more furious, disgusting/ Bleugh, pass me blast of colourful, dynamic pop.
L.A., a pair of post-electroclash noisy assault: “When I’m done, a bucket/ The smell of your In other words, the wait has
thumpers. The former drips your teeth are gonna need a mouth’s got me chucking” – is been worth it. WW

SKYE | ROSS
SKYE | ROSS
FLY AGARIC / COOKING VINYL

furthermore, that their music

became ubiquitous. Familiarity
breeds contempt, but that
contempt isn’t always just.
Skye Edwards’ and Ross
Godfrey’s decision to go it
alone isn’t due to either the
break-up of Morcheeba – they
haven’t – or impatience with the
fact that they have outspoken
detractors. It’s instead
connected to the long-term
From time to time, bands absence of the elder brother that gave us, specifically, The acoustic soul of Medicine
become scapegoats forced to behind the band, Paul Godfrey, Sea, a song so laidback it further emphasise their serene
accept punishment for the sins from their touring set-up, with barely stands up. Two songs credentials. But there are also
of others. Travis are one such the remaining duo deciding here tip their hat to its sweet more buoyant moments here,
act, dismissed by some for that, rather than reshaping their soulful vibe: the dusky Hold On, such as Light Of Gold, which
having opened the floodgates studio recordings for concerts, whose touching declaration of swells towards Godfrey’s riotous
for excessively sentimental they’d like to try recording loyalty is delivered by Skye’s guitar solo, and How To Fly,
bands like Coldplay and something that reflects more distinctive voice against pillowy the new album’s Part Of The
Keane. Morcheeba are another, what they do on stage. synths, graceful guitars and Process. With luck, therefore,
found guilty of riding in on Ironically, it’s closer than a memorable keyboard solo, Skye|Ross will breathe new
trip-hop’s coattails and watering anything Morcheeba have and the closing The Point Of life into the perception of what
it down to reach the top. What made in recent years to the No Return, on which Godfrey’s they’ve done in the past, and
they – and others – often sound that people fell in love knack for a slide guitar takes what lies ahead, whether solo,
have in common is the fact with in the first place. That, centre stage. as a duo, or back with their
they achieved success without of course, means that it often The lovely fragility of Clear band. Familiarity sometimes
the media’s permission, and, sounds like Big Calm, the album My Mind and the nostalgic, breeds content. WW

92
 N E W R E L E A S E S

M.I.A. C DUNCAN
A.I.M. THE MIDNIGHT SUN
INTERSCOPE RECORDS FAT CAT

a voice so multi-layered it
sounds Vocodered, this in
tracks frequently depend turn submerged by synths that
on unusually simple loops. effortlessly ebb and flow. Like
Foreign Friend, for instance, You Do is equally transporting,
is based around three synth its sepulchral keyboards
chords, with only occasional blurring into a warm mist on
breaks and vocal snippets to which his vocals slowly rise.
break the monotony, while As arty as it is accessible,
Bird Song features (naturally) The Midnight Sun reveals its
bird impersonations, a single, pleasures slowly, but amongst
repeated bass note, and a rush them, especially on the glorious
of avian puns: “I believe like On Course, are ghostly, dimly
R Kelly, we can fly/ But toucan Last year, Glaswegian Chris lit apparitions of Eighties pop’s
While many musicians fly together”. Jump In, with Duncan earned himself a more tender practitioners –
seem content merely to nothing more than her looped Mercury Prize nomination for OMD, Cocteau Twins, The
entertain, Mathangi ‘Maya’ vocal, is more austere still, but his debut album, Architect, Dream Academy – had they
Arulpragasam at least attempts A.M.P. (All My People) is more which artfully combined Fleet recorded their masterpieces in
to address political issues. That ambitious, offering the album’s Foxes’ choral harmonies, Sufjan an empty cathedral. Nothing
she does this while integrating fiercest beats and whip smart Stevens’ sensitivity and Beach More even seems to borrow
styles from around the world – lyrics like” “I’m not seven, I’m House’s spectral dreampop. Its sneakily from Kate Bush’s
a further refusal to recognise on eleven/ The difference is successor – similarly recorded Running Up The Hill. Sure,
boundaries – is even more kinda like Devon and Yemen”. in his bedroom studio – has an it lacks a diversity of pace,
praiseworthy. Admittedly, Inevitably, nothing here matches even more dazzling sheen of meaning some of its songs tend
there’s a formula behind much the unforgettable complexity opulent keyboards and ethereal to smudge into one another,
of it: her rhythmic delivery and of Paper Planes, but A.I.M.’s atmospherics. Take Wanted but ultimately it’s so blissful that
lazy drawl become familiar attitude and eloquence are To Want It Too, in which a such uniformity seems almost
pretty fast, and her backing gratifyingly provocative. WW simple bassline throbs beneath deliberate. WW

ALUNAGEORGE DEACON BLUE

I REMEMBER BELIEVERS
ISLAND RECORDS EARMUSIC

album. This is followed by who’ve never been afraid of

Heartbreak Horizon, a brassy wearing their heart on their
showstopper that Janelle Monae sleeve, the idea of some young
might have recorded. It makes hipster reclaiming this heartfelt
things even more confusing. sound seems unlikely. This is a
For much of its duration, I shame: a dose of The Believers
Remember is so obsessed with could help anyone overcome
sounding ultra-modern that its contemporary overloads of
occasional interest in the past irony, pessimism and nihilism.
comes across as shocking. Ricky Ross et al’s innocent
Admittedly, Not Above Love optimism is evident from the
shares the same nostalgic title track, whose lyrics of
air, but tracks like the edgy, “honeysuckle and willow trees”
Lined up in America as the stripped back My Blood – with We need a new word to and feel-good atmosphere
next Disclosure, London duo George Reid’s twitchy backing describe Deacon Blue. ‘Dad belie its inspiration: the lost
AlunaGeorge’s second album is track to the fore – and I’m Rock’ is tied to an earlier stories of refugees crossing
a curious proposition. On one In Control appear interested generation’s tastes – Pink oceans. I Will And I Won’t,
hand it exhibits all the tropes only in showcasing production Floyd, Van Morrison, Santana meanwhile, finds him pairing
of cutting-edge mainstream skills and guests (producer – while ‘Adult Contemporary’ up with wife Lorraine McIntosh
electronic pop – eerie, sped ZHU and Jamaica’s Popcaan seems blandly antiseptic. ‘Soft on a piano-led ballad to share
up vocal samples; penetrating respectively). On Mean What Rock’ might work, given their a comforting tale of intimacy
cymbal trills that dominate I Mean, however, everything sentimental side, but that’s and affection. With such
rhythm tracks; piercingly low comes together for a true pop already taken. Maybe it’s straightforward honesty running
bass synths – and yet, on nugget: upbeat island vibes, purely due to this lack of a throughout the album, perhaps
Mediator, buried towards the intelligent lyrics, inventive pigeonhole that Deacon Blue it best deserves a succinct, well-
record’s end, they settle into a dynamics, and memorable have been critically sidelined. deserved, but unfashionable
soul groove that wouldn’t be appearances by rappers Though they’re part of a proud epithet: ‘sweet’. There’s no
out of place on an Anita Baker Leikeli47 and Dreezy. WW tradition of Scottish bands shame in that. WW

93
JOJO KAISER CHIEFS
MAD LOVE S TAY T O G E T H E R
ATLANTIC RECORDS FICTION RECORDS

single: “I ain’t apologising for described it as “like no Kaiser

shit. I do what I want. And JoJo Chiefs record you’ve heard
does, too.” before”, but long-term fans –
It’s a shame: the 25-year-old except for those who consider
might have benefitted from Coldplay’s Stargate-produced
more studio discipline. That A Head Full Of Dreams a step
mouthy first single is a sparky forward – are going to question
R&B number, full of space, that whether that’s welcome news.
wriggles its way under the skin Lead single Parachute is not
with only a few of the flourishes helped by the way it sounds
that dominate this album – as though Wilson’s singing
but it’s an album that would “if we’ve only got one pair of
be better without them. Mad shoes”, but also be warned of
Halfway through the title track Love ends up as one of those The change that’s overcome a right turn into EDM territory
of JoJo’s third album, she starts overegged America’s Got Talent Kaiser Chiefs is evident from so clumsy that, for a while,
firing off notes like they’re puddings, something hardly their sixth album’s sleeve, a Wikipedia’s entry stated
pieces of mud flying off a surprising given her history (she clash of colours whose design merely “it is utter bollocks”.
wheel, her melismatic style so was offered her first deal aged combines a dash of Duran Happen In A Heartbeat is
extravagant it would make even six). It even boasts opening Duran’s Rio, hints of Matt no better, thudding where
Whitney and Mariah dizzy. and closing ballads – the latter, Bianco’s Whose Side Are it should be thumping, with
Still, apparently no one argues I Am, reiterating Christine You On, and a lot of OMD’s Wilson apparently fighting back
with the former teen star JoJo as Aguilera’s all-important Dazzle Ships. Furthermore, the hiccups, and on the title track
she’s finally free of the contract affirmative message, “I am credits reveal it was produced he even attempts an ill-advised
that’s kept her largely silent beautiful” – to underline the by Brian Higgins, one half of Bowie impersonation. Still,
for 10 years. If that sounds artist’s maturity. The stuttering Xenomania, the team behind at least these make the cod
accusatory, then check out guest I Can Only and Caribbean- much of Girls Aloud’s and reggae of Good Clean Fun
star Wiz Khalifa at the start of flavoured Vibe instead suggest Sugababes’ success. Frontman more bearable. Seriously:
F*** Apologies, her comeback what might have been. WW Ricky Wilson’s already I predict a riot. WW

TIM MUDDIMAN & TIM BURGESS & BANKS & STEELZ SHAKATAK
THE STRANGE PETER GORDON ANYTHING BUT WORDS TIMES AND PLACES
PARADISE RUNS DEEPER SAME LANGUAGE, WARNER BROS SECRET RECORDS
GUNSTREET RECORDS DIFFERENT WORLDS
O GENESIS
Hands up if you saw a partnership between The clock face on the cover might suggest
For someone who told Drowned In Sound Interpol’s Paul Banks and Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA Shakatak have deconstructed their sound
that his ambition has long been “to live in The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess has long been coming. Anyone? Anyone? No. And yet it’s a for Times and Places, but the latest studio
a tree, eating fruit”, Tim Muddiman doesn’t a fan of sexagenarian Peter Gordon, a frequently thrilling collaboration that brings effort from the prolific London jazz-funkers
half make a lot of noise. He’s got an excuse, collaborator with Arthur Russell and founder together the moody intensity of Banks’ is very much business as usual. There’s a
however: he’s Gary Numan’s guitarist and of the Love Of Life Orchestra. Burgess now gloomy indie rockers and RZA’s furious slinky groove to the Chic-like guitars of I
a member of Pop Will Eat Itself. Paradise gets to immerse himself in Gordon’s peculiar delivery to great effect. That Speedway Will Be There and an instantly hooky chorus.
Runs Deeper is his first solo album, and universe, one distinguished by arrangements Sonora was apparently one cause for its The (near) title track Time and Place drops
sounds much like you’d expect a debut mixing many of the sounds of late-Seventies oft-delayed release – news first emerged of down through the gears for something a
by a hard-working sideman: full of heavy avant-garde New York, from disco to the album in 2013 – is a surprise: its gothic little more introspective while instrumental
riffage, thunderous drums, the pale ghost jazz. It’s Burgess who ensures the album’s guitar line, drum machines and aimless Check In boasts a fine fleet-fingered solo
of Nine Inch Nails and the lingering smell of approachability: his gentle voice anchors the structure lean too heavily on Banks’ band, from keyboardist Bill Sharpe. Heads to the
well-worn leather trousers. He’s used it to mellifluous Ocean Terminus and the spooky, making it one of the weaker tracks. It’s when Sky drops a few Cuban influences and a little
work out some demons, too: on Your Drugs 12-minute Temperature High, and floats the beats catch fire – as on the frantic Giant peak-period Stevie Wonder into the mix.
he advises us to “Put down your drugs and atop the laidback electronica of the nostalgic and the chiming Love And War– that Banks’ Elsewhere, Carry On is well-crafted traditional
swallow love”. It’s a questionable statement, Begin. The closer is the lovely Oh Men, a nasal vocal and RZA’s dramatic raps best retro pop and the Philly Strings of Wonderful
however you interpret it, but indicative of this reminder that pop and saxophone don’t have combine. That said, the mellower One By One also impresses. No lightbulb moments then,
well-intentioned album. WW to be mutually exclusive. WW is impressively disconcerting, too. WW but steady as she goes. Steve Harnell

94
 N E W R E L E A S E S

EQUADOR SUZANNE VEGA THE MONOCHROME SET THE LEMON TWIGS

BONES OF MAN LOVER, BELOVED: SONGS COSMONAUT DO HOLLYWOOD
PEGDOLL RECORDS FROM AN EVENING WITH TAPETE RECORDS 4AD
CARSON MCCULLERS
COOKING VINYL
The name may be new, but the sound isn’t. Wherever The Monochrome Set are right It would be easy to mistake teen brothers
Not that this is a criticism: with three gold now – and that could be anywhere, given Brian and Michael D’Addario’s debut for a
albums to his name as one half of Zero 7, It’s taken Suzanne Vega five years to release the amount of touring they’ve undertaken prank. Pictures suggest they were fathered
Henry Binns has no reason to fix something material from her first musical, Carson following the band’s reformation in 2010 – by The Cars’ Rik Ocasek, dressed by Marc
that ain’t broke. While the duo have been McCullers Talks About Love, but its songs are little seems to have changed since founder Bolan and, on at least one occasion, offered
on hiatus, he’s hooked up – musically and as timeless as its subject, the Southern Gothic Bid quit Adam And The Ants with Andy an “artificial limb” by Spinal Tap’s Derek
romantically – with Bo Bruce, the runner-up writer behind 1940 bestseller The Heart Is Warren and Lester Square, back in 1978. Smalls. Their music plunders the early
on 2012’s The Voice who enjoyed Top 10 A Lonely Hunter. Returning – partially – to Cosmonaut – just like the band’s debut Seventies: Harry Nilsson, Todd Rundgren, The
success the following year with her debut, the acoustic style of Tom’s Diner and Luka, single, He’s Frank, or The Jet Set Junta, Beach Boys (especially Holland and Surf’s
Before I Sleep. Given that he helped bring Sia it also tosses in a little cabaret-flavoured 1983’s classic response to the Falklands Up). A hipster’s polyester dream? Maybe not:
to public attention, she’s got big shoes to fill, spice, especially on Harper Lee, where she War – remains as distinctly English as tea their Wilson-esque harmonies (especially on
but the sultry voiced singer shows her mettle, gives voice to the writer’s insecurities while and chocolate digestives. Stick Your Hand Up These Words) and McCartney-like melodies
especially on the tabla-reinforced title track trombones and banjo shuffle around her. If You’re Louche and Squirrel In A Hat both (including I Wanna Prove To You) are
and Blood, which boasts the same lugubrious Carson’s Blues underlines the nightclub vibe overflow with swirling organs and trebly heartfelt. They’d be less exasperating if
melancholy as like-minded soothers Air. The with double bass and jazzy piano, but it’s guitars; Tigress, however – like Richard they reined in their time signature changes:
tempos pick up on the spacious Thin Air and her voice – softly spoken, infused with an Hawley indulging a love of C86 – confirms the garish pop-pyschedelia of Those Days Is
the folksy Avalon, but Bones Of Man remains appealing sense of surprise – that remains they’re more colourful than their name lets Comin’ Soon suggests an unhealthy obsession
polite throughout. WW centre stage. A labour of love. WW on. Get (Monochrome) Set, and Go! WW with Ringo Starr’s Beatles contributions. WW

FLOCK OF DIMES LATIN QUARTER THE BEAT FEATURING THE ORB

IF YOU SEE ME, SAY YES THE IMAGINATION OF RANKING ROGER COW / CHILL OUT, WORLD!
PARTISAN RECORDS THIEVES BOUNCE KOMPAKT
WESTPARK MUSIC DMF MUSIC

If Flock Of Dimes started as an opportunity It’s wishful thinking on Alex Paterson and
for Jenn Wasner – one half of indie- Though Latin Quarter’s politics were focussed, “All my heroes tell me ‘Avoid The Obvious’”, Thomas Fehlmann’s part to believe that
rockers Wye Oak – to focus on her more their musical horizons were always extensive, sings Ranking Roger on – obviously – Avoid people involved in some of the more awful
experimental side, she’s come a long way and, having reformed the band for 2012’s The Obvious, but he may have misunderstood events of the past year or so are going to fire
in the five years it’s taken to complete the Ocean Head, Steve Skaith and Mike Jones the message. The Beat’s first album in 30 up a bifter and put on The Orb. Nonetheless,
project’s debut album. Sure, Ida Glow breaks here emphasise their more acoustic, folky years is not the time for the 2 Toners to it’s good advice to Chill Out, World! and, in
off halfway through for the keyboards to tendencies. A Bank Robber’s Lament and change their ways, and yet nestling on the meantime, the rest of us might want to
twitch and convulse erratically, but elsewhere Dark Side Running sit somewhere between Bounce is a song called Heaven Hiding, the pay attention, principally because this could
she displays a mature grasp of silken The Levellers and Stephen Duffy; softened likes of which haven’t been heard since The be the most relaxing of the 16 albums The
songwriting. Birthplace pairs her aching voice by age, they put relationships under the Ordinary Boys split. (They reunited? Heaven Orb have made to date. The first beats only
to squidgy keyboards, a twisting bassline spotlight on the tranquil Her Song and You help us.) Luckily it’s one of only two serious appear on 4am Exhale (Chill Out, World!), 15
and a rhythm track that could lift any mood, And Me. The River Runs, however, is a subtle aberrations, the other being On My Way, minutes into the 45-minute album, and even
while Semaphore sounds like Ane Brun let reminder of their work with Bhundu Boys, a painful reminder of Men At Work’s Down they’re unusually subdued, though more can
loose in Depeche Mode’s studio after a tube and their political side resurfaces on Thieves’ Under. Walking On The Wrong Side is a be heard later on the Lemon Jelly-like 9 Elms
of Berocca. If The Joke’s verses appears a Imagination, which confronts corruption, and barnstorming opener, Side To Side shines a Over River Eno. The rest is a languorous,
little twee, when the song unfurls into its Below The Water, which tackles trickledown spotlight on Ranking Roger Junior, and the psychedelectronic journey of fluffy synths,
chorus it’s almost as divine as Abba. If you economics. One of those rare albums to tropical vibes of Talkin’ About Her confirm birdsong, sampled voices and cosmic vibes
see it, say yes. WW combine protest and maturity. WW the obvious needn’t be unwelcome. WW that could do everyone a favour. WW

95
MARC ALMOND
TRIALS OF EYELINER
– ANTHOLOGY 1979-2016
UMC

THE DEFINITIVE OVERVIEW OF HIS CAREER, A 189-TRACK BEHEMOTH THAT FEATURES MARC
THE SOFT CELL-ER, THE WILLING SINNER, THE MAMBA, AND THE ARCH COLLABORATOR…

ch-ch-ch-ch-changing approach The box – its music mastered melodrama of Marc And The
to music-making and ran with it. by Neal X, Almond’s writing Mambas’ A Million Manias, the
Trials Of Eyeliner is a mammoth partner/musical director – transgressive beauty of Almond
undertaking, a 10-CD boxset, is broken down into three and Coil’s The Dark Age Of
curated by Almond, of his sections: the four-disc History, Love, the gaudy, blousey Days
three-and-a-half-decade career, with favourite album tracks and Of Pearly Spencer… you might
one that has seen him busily B-sides; Singles, featuring three not like it all, but wherever you
swapping masks from member CDs of his official Soft Cell, alight on this 189-track set,
of Soft Cell, Marc And The Mambas and solo singles in you’re bound to find something
Mambas, Marc Almond And (mainly) chronological order; infectious and intense,
The Willing Sinners to solo and the 3-CD Gems… nuggets poignant and passionate, with
artist and collaborator with such as fan-only releases, one- a righteous affection for the

D
everyone from Gene Pitney to off team-ups and soundtrack histrionic and lethal doses of
avid Bowie’s Coil, Siouxsie Sioux to Sarah contributions, plus 18 camp. It makes for a good read
impact on the Cracknell. Like Bowie before previously unreleased tracks. – you get a 64-page hardcover
new pop/new him, he is both pop star and Musically, Trials… covers book with a new interview/
romantic Blitz Kid provocateur, cuddly mainstream the waterfront. There is the essay – as well as a visually
generation was entertainer and esoteric ecstatic dancing of Soft Cell’s stunning treat, thanks to photos
immense. Look no maverick, appearing on TOTP Memorabilia and Tainted Love, and images from Almond’s
further than Marc Almond, who one minute and experimenting the non-stop erotic cabaret of archive. Welcome to his Theatre
took Bowie’s chameleonic, ever on the margins the next. the Cell’s Sex Dwarf, the torrid Of Dreams. Paul Lester

96
 R E I S S U E S

O C T / N O V 1 6

CLASSIC

BEST REISSUE
THE HUMAN LEAGUE
A VERY BRITISH
SYNTHEZISER GROUP
COMMERCIAL MARKETING

THE FIRST MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE OF SHEFFIELD’S SYNTH TITANS, WITH UNRELEASED TRACKS
AND ALL THE VIDEOS OF THIS MOST VISUALLY ARRESTING OF BRITISH POP ECCENTRICS

to predict that they would split Catherall and Susan Sulley via The first two CDs offer the
in half in 1980 and create two the Crazy Daisy disco, which League’s singles history, from
separate entities that would led to the League Mk 2… 1978’s Being Boiled to 2011’s
go on to produce not one but That iteration of the Sky, and key B-sides (Hard
two era-defining albums – but group – v 2.0, to give them Times, You Remind Me Of
it really did happen, and here an appropriately digital Gold). CD3 comprises early
is the proof. On A Very British appellation – would go on to versions of songs from their
Synthesizer Group, over three conquer the world with a new, 38-year career, many of them
CDs and a DVD, you get the electronic kind of pop music: previously unreleased, although
full story: the early, bleepy The Sound Of The Crowd, sadly Dare-era obscurities such
experiments of The Human Open Your Heart, Love Action as Beauty and So Young are not
League Mk 1 – Martyn Ware, (I Believe In Love), Don’t You included, possibly because they

I
Ian Craig Marsh, Adrian Want Me, the blockbuster were never finished. You do,
f The Human League didn’t Wright and Philip Oakey – Dare album and the sometimes however, get a DVD featuring
exist, you could never make circa The Dignity Of Labour torturous, sometimes successful all their 21 videos and 24 BBC
them up – they seem too and Being Boiled, the eccentric attempts to follow it up, notably TV performances, as well as a
implausible. If the idea pop dabbling on Empire State with Mirror Man, (Keep Feeling) 58-page book with new essay
of an all-electronic group Human, the departure of Ware Fascination, the exquisite and photos. Together, they
seemed far-fetched in the and Marsh to form B.E.F./ interface with R&B that was provide a picture of A Very
late-Seventies, imagine how Heaven 17, leaving Oakey Human, the “comeback” with British Synthesizer Group. THE
ludicrous it would have been and Wright to induct Joanne Tell Me When… British Synthesizer Group. PL

97
OASIS
BE HERE NOW
BIG BROTHER

plus a 12-inch white label of the

“Mustique demos”, recorded
in 1996, when Noel was
holidaying with Johnny Depp
and Kate Moss in Mick Jagger’s
villa. You will either find them
fascinating sketches from Oasis’
heyday, or half-formed doodles
that expose the weakness in
Gallagher’s songwriting.
As for the album itself, it’s
a blustery behemoth of a
Be Here Now is the third record, made at the height of cocaine hubris evinced in the track is the seven-minute It’s
release in the Oasis Chasing Oasis’ commercial supremacy, music. D’You Know What I Gettin’ Better (Man!!), with its
The Sun: 1993-1997 series, in the wake of Knebworth. Mean? and My Big Mouth are contagious, amped-up swagger.
following the reissue of In a sense punters were still one long blaring monument to One of the extra tracks is
Definitely Maybe and (What’s acknowledging how much they maximalism and more-is-less. My Sister Lover, its title evoking
The Story) Morning Glory? liked its predecessor, in the Magic Pie is Don’t Look Back doomed Seventies band Big
Remastered from the original same way that critics, in their In Anger revisited, only on Star’s third album, a favourite
tapes, it’s available in various reviews, were atoning for their steroids. Stand By Me strikes at Oasis’ label Creation. Oasis
editions, including Super lukewarm reception for (What’s an epic symphonic note, but may have towered over Big
Deluxe Box Set, which features The Story). That second album, the melody is mundane, just as Star, but they didn’t have one
a hardback book, three CDs they underrated; this one was the lyrics are so many recycled iota of their intelligence or
(including B-sides and extra absurdly overrated. But then, tropes and banalities. “The invention. “You’re gonna miss
tracks), a brand new Noel that OTT reaction suited the future’s mine… the past means me when I’m not there,” Liam
Gallagher mix of first single mood of empty triumphalism, nothing,” Liam bellows on I sings at one point. But the truth
D’You Know What I Mean?, the vacuous heroics and Hope, I Think, I Know. The best is, we don’t. PL

MOMUS
PUBIC INTELLECTUAL: AN
ANTHOLOGY 1986-2016
CHERRY RED

philosophy… and has built up

a personal world dominated
by values like diversity,
Orientalism, and a respect for KILBURN AND THE THE MONKEES
otherness” via a fascination for HIGH ROADS 50
“the avant-garde, time travel HANDSOME RHINO
and sex”. CHERRY RED
This 3-CD collection draws
on the 30 albums he has made
since 1986, his one-a-year This is Ian Dury before he was famous: This 3-CD boxset covers the original boy
approach positing him as a sort Handsome is the 1975 album (indeed band’s 50-year career. It reaches back to
of bedsit electro-pop Woody the only album proper) by the pub rock/ their self-titled 1966 debut album, and
Allen, with his fey, forensic rock’n’roll band he fronted ahead of The culminates with two examples of their latest
Nicholas Currie aka Momus, scrutiny of love and sex and his Blockheads. You can hear echoes of the street work: You Bring The Summer, written by
a Scottish intellectual who breathy Neil Tennant-ish vocals argot-strewn funk-tinged novelty hits (What Monkees aficionado Andy Partridge of XTC,
has spent the last 30 or so – think Quentin Crisp if he was A Waste, Reasons To Be Cheerful) that he and the Rivers Cuomo-of-Weezer-penned She
years making off-kilter pop a rapper. The self-styled Art enjoyed during the new wave era. Indeed, Makes Me Laugh, both from The Monkees’
music in London, Germany Creep and Maoist Intellectual opening track Rough Kids has the scruffy 2016 album, Good Times! In between, you
and Japan, is what Creation brings his Wildean wit and energy and shabby mise en scene of punk, get all the best-known singles – (Theme
artists were like Before Oasis arch aphorisms to rail against while Billy Bentley (Promenades Himself In From) The Monkees, Last Train To Clarksville,
– arty, cerebral, with esoteric “petty bourgeois Philistines” London) is a litany of London vernacular I’m A Believer, Pleasant Valley Sunday,
imaginations. The press release and explore such queasy – “Hold your horses, how’s your father, Daydream Believer – as well as some less
accompanying this career subjects as paedophilia and well, gorblimey” – that posits Dury as the familiar album tracks such as A Man Without
anthology talks about how necrophilia. “Hell hath no fury missing link between Steptoe & Son and Chas A Dream and the psych-inflected You And I
Momus “makes novel use of like an insecure Englishman,” & Dave. This edition includes the Kilburns’ that offer a greater sense of the breadth of
decontextualised pieces of he pronounces on The debut 45 plus a previously unreleased 1974 the group’s catalogue than that provided by
continental (mostly French) Homosexual. Well, quite. PL Capital Radio broadcast. Strike a light! PL the usual hits. PL

98
 R E I S S U E S

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD ULTRAVOX!

R E P U TAT I O N THE ISLAND YEARS
SFE CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL

follow-up, the dancey In Private, bleak mood of the moment, with

also written and produced by a patina of dystopian future-
the PSBs, peaked at No. 14. shock. The follow-up, Ha!-Ha!-
To capitalise on this second Ha!, also from 1977 and Eno-
wind she recorded the 1990 produced, saw an increased
album Reputation, which use of electronics and the
became only her third UK scything violins of keyboardist
Top 20 studio album. It was Billy Currie, pointing at least
50 percent a Pets album, two ways out of the punk
Tennant and Lowe writing and cul-de-sac for the new wave
producing half of it, including generation, a good year ahead
the two hit singles, while of the shift towards post-punk.
other producers included Dan 1978’s Systems Of Romance,
Dusty Springfield was a Sixties Hartman. This is the first fully Before Vienna and Midge their final recording with Foxx,
soul siren who managed to expanded edition of the album, Ure, Ultravox! were a punk was co-produced by Kraftwerk/
achieve a second burst of a 3-CD affair that contains the band whose name featured Neu! whiz Conny Plank, and
success two decades later, original LP, a disc of extended an exclamation mark, a dart has been cited as an influence
thanks in large part to the versions, remixes (many by of punctuation that suited the on the nascent synthpop scene
Pet Shop Boys. It was Neil Shep Pettibone, which still exclamatory times (it also – The Human League’s debut
Tennant and Chris Lowe who seems like a PSBs anagram) nodded to krautrock combo album, to name but one early
produced her recording of and B-sides, plus a third disc of Neu!). Their 1977 self-titled proto-electro work, was still
their song Nothing Has Been promotional videos. A 32-page debut album had pre-punk 12 months away. Disc 4, titled
Proved, commissioned for the full colour booklet fills in the influences such as Hawkwind Rare Retro, features 20 remixes,
soundtrack of the 1989 movie, background of this overlooked and Roxy Music, the latter alternate versions, Peel Session
Scandal. Released as a single chapter of the career- making sense given the takes and live recordings plus
in February 1989, it gave resuscitating Pets, who worked presence of Brian Eno at the a 20-page booklet with a new
Springfield her 15th UK Top 20 their magic around the same controls. With John Foxx on essay by esteemed Bowie/
hit. In November that year the time with Liza Minnelli. PL vocals, the band caught the League author David Buckley. PL

AMII STEWART GQ MASS PRODUCTION COFFEE

THE HITS: REMIXED STANDING OVATION IN A CITY GROOVE/’83 SLIPPIN’ & DIPPIN’
CHERRY POP BBR SOULMUSIC BBR

Washington dance diva Amii Stewart was The core of New York outfit GQ first formed Not to be confused with Brass Construction, Casanova, the 1980 Top 20 hit from US trio
the cover version queen, her full-on, hi-NRG under a series of other names in 1968 but Mass Production essayed an equivalent sort Coffee, was a superb, breathless dancefloor
anticipating disco-era reworkings of such they enjoyed their greatest success while of dance-pop to their similarly-named funk delight from the last days of disco, and with
songs as Eddie Floyd’s famed Knock On Wood signed to Arista in 1979 with the million- rivals. The 10-piece group from Virginia its handclaps, slinky groove and impassioned
(a US No. 1 and UK Top 10 hit in 1979) and selling Disco Nights (Rock Freak), a classic of started out circa 1976 sounding like a cross tale of a faithless lover, it bore a considerable
The Doors’ Light My Fire (No. 5 in ‘79, in a post-Chic disco. But there was actually more between the Commodores and Funkadelic, resemblance to Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King’s
medley with 137 Disco Heaven) proving that to GQ than disco, borne out by the fact that and they morphed into something like the deathlessly beautiful 1978 smash Shame. But
she could disco-fy, well, virtually anything, this 2-CD set covers the period 1974-’82. missing link between The Fatback Band there is more to Slippin’ & Dippin’, Coffee’s
really. Also included on this collection are Their version of Billy Stewart’s Sitting In and Chic, their music becoming increasingly sole album (here supplied in enhanced form,
renditions of her scintillating 1978 single The Park from CD2, for example (later electronic as the disco era gave way to the with extra tracks and sleevenotes), than just
You Really Touch My Heart, her 1980 Top 40 interpolated by rapper Slick Rick into his song electro-funk age. Their seventh album, In A Casanova. Slip And Dip is feisty funk, while
medley alongside Johnny Bristol of My Guy Sittin’ In My Car), has more to do with doo- City Groove (1982), was slick fare indeed, Mom And Dad 1980 is an updated version
and My Girl, her 1979 Euro smash Jealousy wop and Philly soul than glitterballs or Studio all immaculate grooves (string arrangements of a song about teenage pregnancy from
and more. All of the mixes are from 1985, 54. GQ’s other big US hit, I Do Love You – a courtesy of feted arranger/conductor Gene 1969. I Wanna Be With You is shimmery
the year that Stewart made her return to No. 20 entry – was another sad ballad, while Orloff) such as Maybe, Maybe and Never and strings-propelled, A Promise a yearning
the UK charts with Friends, a duet with Mike the slow, soulful Sad Girl and groovy hustle Ever. From follow-up album ’83, their last, ballad, Can You Get To This early-Chic
Francis that reached a creditable No. 12. The Shake confirm the band’s ability to straddle Sun Dancer was popular in soul/funk circles revisited while Say It, It’s Good To You recalls
album is now enhanced with fresh artwork the disco and doo-wop genres and eras with while Style is a dead ringer for D Train’s an earlier era, reminiscent as it is of The
and new sleevenotes. PL some aplomb. PL You’re The One For Me. PL Three Degrees. PL

99
PAUL HAIG
M E TA M O R P H O S I S
LES DISQUES DU CREPUSCULE

Engines. But they didn’t match

expectation with commercial
reward despite leaving behind
a clutch of cerebral yet catchy
singles – Chance Meeting,
Sorry For Laughing, The
Missionary – that contradict the
notion that nothing interesting
happened in Eighties guitar pop
before The Smiths.
Metamorphosis is not a
definitive career overview
Paul Haig was the Eighties star – there is nothing on this and Brussels and New York in the spotlight, preferring to
who never was. Paul Morley collection by Josef K (although in his search for the perfect record under the Rhythm Of Life
called him “the face and sound On This Night Of Decision beat, this being the dawn umbrella. And so the 34 tracks
of 1982”, labelling him “the harks back to their mordant, of electronic, rhythmic pop range from polished pop-funk
enigmatic fourth man” in a angular indie) and the two CDs (significantly, he later worked excursions such as Justice and
quartet of stylish, intelligent don’t contain many of Haig’s with Kurtis Mantronik). But it Blue For You to Sinatra covers
“new pop” frontmen which also best songs such as Big Blue does offer tantalising glimpses (from the Swing In ’82 EP) and
included Billy Mackenzie, Jim World, The Only Truth and of what Haig could do while the experimental noisetronica of
Kerr and Martin Fry. His first Love Eternal. The music here also providing clues as to why the Drama cassette. The latter,
group, Josef K, named after the is from 1981-’82, marking his he didn’t join Fry, Kerr et al in recorded in Haig’s bedroom,
protagonist of Franz Kafka’s transition – his metamorphosis the pop firmament: because he featured The Mouse and A
The Trial, were one of the most (ta-daa!) – from scratchy guitar had schizoid impulses, at once Comment, with lyrics by Kafka,
important new guitar bands of aesthete to artily modern DIY electro terrorist, smooth proof that the suave Euro-man
the decade along with fellow electro-eclectic, jet-setting crooner and synth-soul boy; and hadn’t quite shrugged off his
Scots Orange Juice and Fire between his native Edinburgh because he was uncomfortable intellectual-indie past. PL

PETER SCHILLING CICERO THE BRILLIANT THE VERVE

ERROR IN THE SYSTEM FUTURE BOY: THE CORNERS A STORM IN HEAVEN/
HOT SHOT COMPLETE WORKS HEART ON YOUR SLEEVE A NORTHERN SOUL
SFE CHERRY RED UMC

Peter Schilling was, like Nena, Alphaville and

Trio, one of several acts to score big-time If you like Pet Shop Boys then you’ll love The Brilliant Corners came from Bristol, but The Verve’s 1993 debut is the last gasp of
outside of their native Germany in the early Future Boy, a 1992 album recorded by David they were an atypical Bristol band, being shoegazing before it morphed into Britpop,
Eighties. His 1983 hit Major Tom (Coming Cicero. Then a 21-year-old Italian-American neither hyped-up funkateers like the Pop and opener Star Sail’s slow-motion haze
Home) didn’t just chart high around the Kraftwerk, Human League and Ultravox Group/Rip Rig & Panic axis nor slothful posited The Verve as junior purveyors of
world – No. 1 in West Germany, Austria, fan from Long Island who’d relocated to like the trip hop brigade. They took their the sort of drifting guitarscape previously
Switzerland and Canada, No. 14 in the US – Livingston, Scotland, Cicero had a chance name from a Thelonious Monk album and offered by AR Kane and MBV. It’s perhaps no
it achieved renown, being a revisit of Space encounter with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe this 2-CD collection is subtitled A Decade In coincidence that there’s a song called Slide
Oddity. Like Bowie, Schilling was fascinated in 1988, during which he handed the pair a Pop 1983-1993, but they were neither jazz Away on A Storm In Heaven because The
by science fiction, but he expressed his Casio-created demo tape. Before long, he’d nor pop; instead, they were quintessentially Verve provided the bridge between old-style
modern-world alienation via upbeat new recorded this, his debut album, becoming the quirky, ramshackle Eighties indie. They were introspective indie and the new variety
wave meets synthpop of the sort that could first signing to PSBs’ Spaghetti Recordings. what used to be known as A John Peel Band, typified by Oasis: bold, with pop ambitions.
sit on a playlist beside Buggles, New Musik, Future Boy was written by Cicero, but the although they did make the odd appearance By 1995’s A Northern Soul the band are
M, and other purveyors of post-Kraftwerk input of the Pets is considerable; factor in our on ITV’s Chart Show later in their career. more declamatory and Richard Ashcroft is
computer pop. This remastered version of heroes’ sweeping electro melancholia and Among this near-50-track affair are titles assuming the role of shamanic figurehead,
his debut album features an interview with this becomes as much of a surrogate PSBs such as Why Do You Have To Go Out With the space cadet to Liam Gallagher’s uber-lad.
producer John Luongo (Blancmange, Visage, project as Dusty Springfield’s Reputation and Him When You Could Go Out With Me? Now Each album is a 3-CD spectacular, with B-sides,
Bananarama) as well as nine extra tracks. PL Liza Minelli’s Results. PL that’s what you call indie. PL radio sessions, and unreleased tracks. PL

100
 C O M P I L A T I O N S

VARIOUS
TOP OF THE POPS:
THE DEFINITIVE 3-CD
COLLECTIONS
BBC/UMC

the second is heavy on glam

and early-Seventies novelty
pop. Things get interesting
on the third set (1975-1979)
with 10cc’s groundbreaking,
Eighties-anticipating I’m Not
In Love, The Buggles’ Video
Killed The Radio Star, and lots
of proto-disco, soul and new
wave – but the real deal, as far
as Classic Pop is concerned, contributions from (deep breath) swingbeat, while the second
are the sets that cover 1980- Frankie, ABC, Dexys, Soft Cell, is a haven for Britpop. The
1984 and 1985-1989. UMC Human League, Heaven 17, final set features strident early-
It might be 10 years since Top have pulled together artists Spandau, Culture Club, Duran noughties salvos from Gnarls
Of The Pops shut up shop, from Universal’s substantial and OMD. The second Eighties Barkley (Crazy), Sugababes
but it’s still much missed. catalogue and numerous other set isn’t quite as formidable, (Push The Button), Girls Aloud
Fortunately, you now have eight labels to provide the best and and feels anticlimactic, (Love Machine), Outkast (Hey
triple-CD sets’ worth of music broadest representation of the although there is still a healthy Ya!), Sophie Ellis-Bextor (Murder
to remind you of the iconic programme and its cultural dose of Dead or Alive, Simple On The Dancefloor), 50 Cent
show’s glory days, from set importance. The former offers Minds, Tears For Fears, (In Da Club) and Mya (Case
one’s 1964-1969 to set eight’s a strong case – despite strong Wham!, Style Council, Soul II Of The Ex). It’s enough to make
2001-2006, with a total of over competition from the mid- Soul and A-Ha. you wonder why they pulled the
400 songs. The first 3-CD set Sixties and early Seventies The first Nineties set has its plug on the programme, just as
contains lots of Motown, Beatles – for the period being pop’s moments, especially for fans pop was getting good again.
and “British Invasion” acts and greatest ever golden age with of hip-hop, techno, house and Paul Lester

AFRICA AIRWAYS ARIF MARDIN

ONE & TWO ALL MY FRIENDS ARE HERE
VA R I O U S CHERRY RED

CHERRY RED

Culture Club, Bee Gees, David

in the first place. It’s cross- Bowie, Chaka Khan, Hall &
fertilisation in full effect, and Oates, Aretha Franklin, Queen,
it’s fascinating to see how the Anita Baker, Norah Jones and
pioneers became impacted on Phil Collins. All My Friends
by their progeny. The two discs Are Here is the CD companion
feature music from Cameroon, piece to the Grammy-nominated
Nigeria and South Africa film, The Greatest Ears In Town:
with artists including Manu The Arif Mardin Story, now
Dibango, Jo Tongo and Jake being made available on DVD
Sollo. That music is texturally for the first time outside the US.
rich, rhythmically propulsive, The album features Bette
detailed and hypnotic, Midler and Barry Gibb, Carly
assembled via an idiosyncratic Ask any self-respecting fan Simon and Norah Jones, Daryl
Subtitled Funk Connection mess of analogue synths, of Eighties pop who the era’s Hall, Dr John and others on
1973-1980 and Funk eclectic beats and jangling hi- preeminent producers were and a series of tracks written by
Departures 1973-1982, this life guitars. Get It On The Music invariably they would answer Mardin, who died in 2006,
is an amalgamation, together by Bozambo will appeal to Trevor Horn and Quincy Jones, from all points in his illustrious
on CD for the first time, of two anyone familiar with Parliament maybe Martin Rushent and career. Recording began in
previous vinyl compilations that and Funkadelic while Jo Bisso’s PWL. But that would be doing 2005 and was completed by
offer a deep excavation of the Give It Up is cosmic funk a disservice to Arif Mardin, his son Joe following his death.
darkest recesses of Seventies of the highest order, with a who during his 40-year career The production is so light, lush
and Eighties African funk. brass construction and chant- sold 50 million records and and jazzy, so sophisticated
Fans of US funk and disco worthy title that comes across earned more than 50 gold and and well-judged, it makes most
should check these 19 tracks like a bait to their American platinum discs via his work pop music seem brash, and
out immediately, considering counterparts to cede the music with, among many others, although it might be a little
that they offer a take on the to which they can hardly claim Dusty Springfield, Dollar’s “supperclub” for some, there’s
music the continent influenced rightful ownership. PL Thereza Bazar, Scritti Politti, no denying its classiness. PL

101
WIN! LOTS OF
COOL STUFF
THIS ISSUE WE’VE GOT SEVERAL HANDFULS OF HITS-CRAMMED CD
COMPILATIONS TO GIVE AWAY TO OUR READERS, PLUS SOME COPIES OF THE
VERY LATEST ALBUM FROM THE UK’S OWN SHAKATAK. TO BE IN WITH A CHANCE
OF SCORING SOME NEW LISTENING IN YOUR LIFE, MAKE YOUR WAY OVER TO
WWW.CLASSICPOPMAG.COM AND CLICK ON ‘COMPETITIONS’. GOOD LUCK!

15x copies of Demon’s 3-CD release

Twelve Inch 80s: Can You Feel It
T
welve Inch Eighties is the successful triple-pack CD
range by Crimson Productions, compiling extended
alternate mixes of some of the biggest hit singles
of the decade. These carefully selected titles across
the range bring together the finest pop, dance and disco,
amongst other genres, in all their full 12” single glory.
Can You Feel It features 30 heavy hitters by the likes of
Rick Astley, Donna Summer, The Jacksons, Billy Ocean,
Imagination, Cyndi Lauper, Paul Young and many more.
For a chance to win yourself a copy, just answer this
simple question…

Q
Who had a hit with Get Outta My
Dreams, Get Into My Car?
• Alexander O’Neal • Billy Ocean • Luther Vandross

15x copies of Demon’s Twelve Inch

Eighties: Digging Your Scene
T
here’s more 12” action this issue with a second
3-CD collection from Crimson Productions. Digging
Your Scene is a collection of classic 12” remixes
lifted straight from the edge of the Eighties featuring
30 superb tunes from the likes of Dead Or Alive, The Blow
Monkeys, Hall & Oates, Thompson Twins and Deacon
Blue. To be in with a chance of winning one of 15 copies,
just answer the following…

Q
Who scored a Top 10 hit in 1981 with
I Could Be Happy?
• Altered Images • Associates • Eurythmics

102
 10x copies of the new Shakatak album
E
ighties jazz-funkers Shakatak are back with their first album since
2014’s On The Corner – and we’ve got 10 copies to give away.
Their new studio effort Times And Places finds the veteran London
band back on fine form. The 15-track LP includes Cuban influences,
some peak-period Stevie Wonder-style soul, and traditional retro pop.
To be in with a chance of winning one, just answer the following none-
too-difficult question…

Q
Which Shakatak single was a Top 10 hit for the
band in 1984?
• Easier Said Than Done • Feels Like The Right Time • Down On The Street

TERMS & CONDITIONS

By entering your details, you will automatically be added
to the Classic Pop magazine email newsletter mailing
lists, keeping you informed of news, special offers and
promotions via email. We never pass on customer email
addresses to other companies. You may unsubscribe
from these messages at any time. The prizes are not
transferable, nor can they be redeemed for vouchers or
money. No-one from Anthem Publishing or companies
affiliated with any of the competitions is allowed to enter.
Only one entrant per person. The judge’s decision is final.
Visit classicpop.com for more competitions not featured in
the magazine and keep checking in on the site for more
great prizes to win!

103
 THE KATE INSIDE PRINCE: PURPLE REIGN
GUIDO HARARI M I C K WA L L
WALL OF SOUND GALLERY ORION BOOKS

every movement on Instagram To begin with, the idea that a

(God forbid). The Kate Inside is career as prolific, multi-faceted
THE KATE INSIDE

photographer Guido Harari’s and illustrious as Prince’s can

delectable photo journal of be served any kind of justice
his decade working with the in a book just 193 pages long
star featuring notable images beggars belief. What’s more,
alongside outtakes, snapshots upon reading, it becomes clear
revealing a teasing glimpse that far from being the “shining
of what happens behind tribute” the press release
the cameras, while all the promises, Purple Reign serves
Wall Of Sound Gallery

time retaining her treasured as a mere overview, and a

mystique. With a foreword poor one at that. Entire eras are
from Lindsay Kemp, The Kate glossed over, condensed to a
Inside takes in The Sensual single page or, in some cases,
World, Hounds Of Love, The even a paragraph. Void of any
Being a Kate Bush fan may Dreaming and The Line, The real substance, the book offers
be rewarding thanks to the Cross And The Curve and offers As is always the case when nothing that is not already
stunning work she gifts us with, a unique glimpse of an artist an artist beloved by millions known by even the most casual
but it’s also exhaustingly trying at work and a rare insight into passes away, an influx of books Prince fan. As we have seen
as those presents arrive so the creative process, lovingly arrive on the scene. Whether with the host of Bowie titles
sporadically. Having said that, compiled with anecdotes from it is an already published this year, taking a little time
we’re all the more appreciative Guido throughout. “This is not title with a hastily tacked-on to properly appraise the work
for things when they do arrive an art book,” he writes. “It is chapter covering the final days of someone of his or Prince’s
because we haven’t been more a scrapbook that I have or, as in this case, a new title, magnitude pays off. Hopefully,
inundated with multiple deluxe put together imagining Kate bookshops will be braced for the coming months will produce
editions of every album, 10 was by my side. Both of us the flood of cash-ins, of which the in-depth biography of Prince
volumes of an autobiography laughing as we leafed through Purple Reign is the first of what that he truly deserves. This,
and been updated of Kate’s our memories.” Mark Lindores will likely be many. however, is not it. ML

THIS IS IT! THE SECRET LIVES YOUTH

OF DR CONRAD MURRAY SKETCH, DRUGS
AND MICHAEL JACKSON & ROCK N’ ROLL
D R C O N R A D M U R R AY (HUTTWENTY9) (DVD)

RMFT PUBLISHING

NO STARS
manslaughter, Murray is & Rock N’ Roll documentary
seemingly as bankrupt is a revealing insight into the
financially as he is morally: man’s career, examining his
it’s the only logical explanation working processes and finding
for this tawdry volume which out how he gets the best results
claims to be one thing yet is from those he collaborates with.
completely the opposite. As well as in-depth interviews
Murray continuously with Youth and his team, the
reiterates how Jackson saw film features contributions
him as his “best friend” and “a from Paul McCartney, Boy
father figure” before spouting a George, David Gilmour, Alan
stream of hideous accusations. McGee, Spiritualized’s Jason
As one of the most private Pierce and Embrace’s Danny
celebrities of all time, Murray’s McNamara. The film also
claims that Jackson disclosed To anyone with an interest looks at Youth’s formative years
extraordinary secrets about in pop music from the past as a punk, his breakthrough
Speaking of cash-in biographies his childhood, plastic surgery 40 years – and as you are into music in Killing Joke with
of dearly departed musicians, and feelings towards the child reading this magazine you’re hilarious anecdotes from his
this marks a new low for the daughter of his friend (he claims included in that by default – friends (listen out for the Pig
genre. Dr Conrad Murray was Jackson was fixated on her from Youth is one of the greatest Youth story) and his passion
treating Michael Jackson in the the age of five) are all tailor- producers of all time, working for art which exists as a
build-up to his ill-fated This Is It made to appeal to the lowliest, his magic on acts as diverse career alongside his music
tour when the icon was found most sensationalist tabloids who as Paul McCartney, Pink (hence the ‘sketch’ in the
dead from a lethal overdose of will repeat his ridiculous claims Floyd, The Orb, Boy George, title). Uncompromising, funny,
propofol. Now, having served and shift a few copies of a Bananarama, The Verve, grounded and brutally honest,
two years of his four-year book that is about as reliable as Erasure and Crowded House. this is a revealing portrait of a
prison sentence for involuntary Murray’s ethical code. ML This DVD of the Sketch, Drugs true artist. ML

104
 CLASSIC POP LIVE TO ADVERTISE PLEASE CONTACT ADRIAN MAJOR 01453 836257 [email protected]

S.J.M. CONCERTS PRESENTS

November
18 - 21 MINEHEAD
House Of Fun Weekender
December
MADHEADS UNITE Thu 01 BOURNEMOUTH
SJM Concerts by arrangement with WME & Anglo Hannah Management present International Centre
Fri 02 CARDIFF
Motorpoint Arena
Sat
SOLD 03
OUT BRIGHTON
Brighton Centre
Sat 03 BRIGHTON MATINEE SHOW ADDED
Brighton Centre
Thu 08 NEWCASTLE
Metro Radio Arena
Fri 09 SHEFFIELD
Arena
Sat 10 LONDON
The O2
Mon12 NOTTINGHAM
Motorpoint Arena
Tue 13 BRIDLINGTON
The Spa
Thu 15 GLASGOW
The SSE Hydro
Fri 16 MANCHESTER
Arena
Sat 17 BIRMINGHAM
Barclaycard Arena
madness.co.uk
GIGSANDTOURS.COM / TICKETMASTER.CO.UK
New album Can’t Touch Us Now
released 28 October
Pre-order your copy now

S.J.M. CONCERTS BY ARRANGEMENT WITH LPO PRESENT

HERE YOU ARE ~ THE BEST OF TOUR

Performing ‘the Lexicon of Love’ in the

Lexicon
its entirety. Plus the band’s greatest
hits and tracks from their new MARCH 2017
album ‘the Lexicon of Love II’
of FRI 24 LLANDUDNO
SOLD OUT
With the Southbank Sinfonia
Conducted by Anne Dudley Love VENUE CYMRU THEATRE
SUN 26 GLASGOW
ROYAL CONCERT HALL
MON 27 LIVERPOOL
Fri
S O L D O 21
UT Oct 2016 Manchester Bridgewater Hall PHILHARMONIC HALL
WED 29 PLYMOUTH PAVILIONS
Sat 22 Oct 2016 Newcastle City Hall
FRI 31 HARROGATE
Mon
S O L D O 24
UT Oct 2016 Birmingham Symphony Hall INTERNATIONAL CENTRE
Tue
S O L D O 25
UT Oct 2016 London Royal Festival Hall APRIL 2017
Wed
S O L D O 26
UT Oct 2016 Brighton Dome SAT 01 BLACKPOOL OPERA HOUSE
Fri
S O L D O 28
UT Oct 2016 Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre MON 03 BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY HALL
FRI 07 GATESHEAD THE SAGE
Sat
S O L D O 29
UT Oct 2016 Sheffield City Hall MON 10 IPSWICH REGENT
Sun
S O L D O 30
UT Oct 2016 Bristol Colston Hall SAT 15 SOUTHAMPTON MAYFLOWER
Tue 01 Nov 2016 Nottingham Royal Concert Hall MON 17 SALFORD THE LOWRY
Wed 02 Nov 2016 Southend Cliffs Pavilion TUE 18 OXFORD NEW THEATRE
THU 20 LONDON PALLADIUM
Final Show Added! FRI 21
SOLD OUT SOUTHEND CLIFFS PAVILION
SUN 23 CARDIFF ST DAVIDS HALL
Thu 06 Apr 2017 MON 24 BRIGHTON DOME GIGSANDTOURS.COM
TICKETMASTER.CO.UK
WED 26 BRISTOL COLSTON HALL
London Royal Albert Hall ROYALALBERTHALL.COM THU 27 LEICESTER DE MONTFORT HALL
0844 811 0051
0844 826 2826
BILLYOCEAN.COM
GIGSANDTOURS.COM TICKETMASTER.CO.UK
EXTRA DATES ADDED!
VIP PACKAGES AVAILABLE FROM SJM-VIP.COM APRIL 2017
ABCMARTINFRY.COM T ABCFRY fLEXICONOFABCMARTINFRY THU 06 GRIMSBY AUDITORIUM
AN S.J.M. CONCERTS PRESENTATION FRI 28 NOTTINGHAM New album ‘HERE YOU ARE:
ROYAL CONCERT HALL THE BEST OF BILLY OCEAN’
NEW ALBUM the Lexicon of Love II OUT NOW out now
CLASSIC POP LIVE TO ADVERTISE PLEASE CONTACT ADRIAN MAJOR 01453 836257 [email protected]
 SOLD OUT
SOLD OUT
SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT
SOLD OUT
SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT
SOLD OUT

CLASSIC
eighties
electronic
eclectic

Read on any
device, any time!

R FREE APP TODAY

DOWNLOAD YOU
Free preview issue
Single issues just
£3.99/$5.99
Search for Classic Pop and download your FREE App today
 CO MING
SOON!

OM
AVAIL ABLE FR

P E N D E N T N E WSAGENTS
AND INDE

FROM THE MAKERS OF

LLV ad prelaunch A4.indd 101 01/09/2016 13:58

 L I V E & E V E N T S

The new Pet Shop Boys

Getty Images
live shows reposition
them as forbidding
electronic pioneers

PET SHOP BOYS

ROYAL OPERA HOUSE, LONDON
20 JULY

“NO OPERA OR BALLET TONIGHT – JUST A ROOM FULL OF POP KIDS,” ANNOUNCES
NEIL TENNANT. LIKE NEW ALBUM SUPER, THIS IS A WARM AND WELCOMING EXPERIENCE

H
aving regularly played from cosily familiar back to Teletubbies from New Order’s how the venue functioned as a
unusual venues and forbidding electronic pioneers, True Faith video. dancehall during WW2, “and
written an opera, the then Super is more overtly Less predictable is just how it’s great to see you recapture
surprise isn’t so much playful again. From the start, much Tennant, Lowe and tour that spirit tonight”. It’s typical
that Pet Shop Boys the audience, many dressed in arranger Stuart Price have of PSB’s mischief, writ large
launch the tour for new the shows’ custom bright red re-energised some overlooked in Left To My Own Devices:
album Super at the Royal Royal Opera House T-shirts corners of PSB’s past. New if its namechecked composer
Opera House but that proclaiming “House music”, are York City Boy, the try-hard Debussy is most typical of the
it’s taken them so long to on their feet. Only once in two cousin of Go West on record, Royal Opera House’s regular
do it. The past decade has seen hours do fans sit back down, is a melancholic marvel as the fare, then Lowe’s whomping
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe during Home And Dry. It’s a show’s first dancer emerges beats trample all over any
transformed from reluctant, brief respite, as the dazzling in silver lamé. Love Etc, their veneer of respectability.
rarely-seen performers to lasers turn bright red and most recent Top 10 single, is It ends with Always On
playing as many shows as Bob Lowe’s synths are at their most a fantastically odd reminder My Mind, sounding as full-on
Dylan; ubiquity hasn’t tarnished pulsating for an immense The of just how off-kilter Tennant’s as ever. The idea of a disco
their mystique, though, Sodom And Gomorrah Show. lyrics are, showcased even extravaganza at the opera
especially when – as on the Regular PSB designer Es better in their great lost recent seems very Pet Shop Boys, but
previous Electric tour – Lowe Devlin’s stagecraft is sumptuous, single Love Is A Bourgeois it’s not a show that relies on its
spends the first third of the show a whirlwind of lasers and Construct. Unfairly dismissed setting: this is the apex of what
with his head entirely encased dancers as more and more ballad Winner shines, too, Tennant and Lowe have worked
in a disco glitterball. bodies join the fray until main here in a sinister ambient towards since that first 1989
But if Electric was about set closer Go West sees hordes arrangement. Tennant delights tour with Derek Jarman. Super?
repositioning Pet Shop Boys seemingly dressed as proto- in informing the audience of Smashing, great. John Earls

109
 Chvrches' Lauren
Mayberry has

Getty Images
transformed herself
into a mesmerising
frontwoman

L AT I T U D E
HENHAM PARK, SOUTHWOLD
15-17 JULY

MUCH MORE SO THAN THE FLABBY EXCESS OF GLASTONBURY, LATITUDE IS A FESTIVAL THAT
ALLOWS YOU TO CURATE YOUR OWN POP LINE-UP FROM ACROSS ITS MANY STAGES

F
olk, jazz, indie, literature Chaka Khan and Stardust to by singer Matt Berninger as throughout her second stage
and comedy – there’s justify the dancing, and it’s “so fucking awesome”. show leading up to the perfect
plenty of that, but if you a churlish soul who doesn’t If the hyped Honne are chorus of Final Song.
want classic pop then rejoice in the escapism that a disappointment, offering Best of the lot for newcomers
there’s easily three days’ Christine offers both herself nothing Metronomy don’t do is Seattle-raised Barns Courtney,
worth at Latitude. Not and her audience. Squeeze, with far more intensity, then who shows the promise of a
that you’ll get much of however, threaten to flail like there’s much new talent to new Beck as the crowd soon
that from New Order, New Order, forcing too many discover, too. The Anchoress’ swells for his anything-goes-
who have a stinker Cradle To The Grave songs on Catherine Anne Davies was so-long-as-the-chorus-is-killer
thanks to a spartan setlist and the audience before settling into reluctant to play live at first but, genre stew, while Swedish
Bernard Sumner not even Take Me I’m Yours and suchlike, while she’s hesitant and nervy super-producers Miike Snow
attempting to hit the right notes bonhomie restored. between songs, she looks as are better than their studio
for much of a show featuring Playing just before main alien as the best performers – background might lead you to
just 12 songs in 90 minutes. stage headliners The National, a fitting complement to her rich, expect; there’s a reason their
Christine And The Queens Chvrches are a “Follow that!” intense dark balladry. single Genghis Khan wasn’t
should be a novelty whose blast. Lauren Mayberry has Grimes offers radiant, No.1 for 15 weeks instead
flailing limbs become tiresome become a freed, mesmerising hyperreal cartoon pop, though of Drake, but it escapes us
after 10 minutes. But no. frontwoman and there’s no sign she takes the dayglo mood too right now. And so the pop just
Whereas her Chaleur Humaine of tour fatigue as the trio act out far in her irksome baby-voice keeps coming. Forget Latitude’s
album has a surprising amount every word. For good measure, “Aw, shucks” attitude between reputation as a decorous
of MOR among its pop triumphs Mayberry joins The National songs. MO is more consistent, middle-class bonanza. If you’re
like Tilted, in concert she throws for their ballad I Need My Girl, her attitude seeming more not dancing here, you’re not
in covers of Technotronic, her performance rightly praised genuine as she crowdsurfs trying. John Earls

110
 L I V E & E V E N T S

Getty Images
Maxi Jazz, complete
with Muhammad Ali
tribute t-shirt

FA I T H L E S S
T IN THE PARK
10 JULY

THE REASSEMBLED FAITHLESS CELEBRATE TWO DECADES SPENT IN THE HANDS-IN-THE-AIR

BUSINESS BY TRANSPORTING THE T IN THE PARK CROWD BACK TO THE NINETIES

W
hen Faithless knocked ap Gwynedd, and thumping it’s one of his most dextrous pretty much fully-formed back in
it on the head back stadium-sized beats from vocal performances, and the 1995. It still sounds remarkably
in 2011, there was a drummer Andy Treacy. song’s drum and bass coda fresh, and any song that builds
real sense that their It’s a good five minutes into kicks things up a notch or two. to an air raid siren solo is OK
crowd-pleasing live their set before Maxi Jazz They keep things varied with a in our book.
show would be much makes his way to the stage. The cover of Bob Marley’s Crazy Leather-clad axe hero ap
missed by dance quietly charismatic frontman Baldhead then roll out a rockier Gwynedd gives us a quick burst
music fans. Thankfully, might not have the most varied sound for Mass Destruction, of AC/DC’s Back In Black but
they’ve reconvened rap style, but he’s a much-loved and it’s carnage as hand-held it’s gone in a flash, replaced
to mark their 20th anniversary part of the Faithless experience. flares are let off all around with their rather slight single
and are doing the rounds of Treacy and percussionist Sudha the crowd for the monumental Not Going Home, hardly a
major festivals across the globe. Kheterpal work themselves centrepiece Insomnia, with fair trade. But, old pros that
They might not have been up into a fair old lather for Sister Bliss’s driving keyboard they are, they leave us with the
able to part the clouds during a early highlight God Is A DJ, a line still sounding deathless perennial crowd-pleaser We
rather soggy T in the Park set, great example of a trademark after two decades. Come 1, complete with call-
but as a safe pair of hands, this Faithless anthem. After a pause for breath with and-response interaction and
return to the Scottish festival Muhammad Ali, Maxi Hearts And Hands, Jazz returns a little dig at former PM David
circuit was always likely to end Jazz’s 2001 tribute to his for the positive vibe of What Cameron. Whether or not
in triumph. Instrumental opener boyhood hero, takes on About Love and the plaintive there’s much left in the tank as a
Emergency sets out their stall greater significance since the Bombs. We return to the band’s studio band remains to be seen,
nicely with chunky keyboard passing of the great man. Jazz earliest days with Salva Mea, but Faithless 2.0 could continue
lines from Sister Bliss, solid old- proudly wears a T-shirt bearing all the classic sonic tricks in as festival favourites for as long
school rawk guitar from Peredur the face of the man himself; place for an outfit that emerged as they care to. Steve Harnell

111
114
CLASSIC

MOMENTS

No. 25
K R A F T W E R K
G O D U T C H
2 1 M A R C H 1 9 7 6
The fact that this could be pretty much any Seventies band backstage is the most
remarkable aspect of Gijsbert Hanekroot’s photo of Kraftwerk, posing before their
concert in Rotterdam while touring the Radio-Activity album – a picture which
captures the classic line-up of Florian Schneider, Karl Bartos, Wolfgang Flür and
Ralf Hütter in atypically jocular mood.
Only Hütter (far right) remains in the band today, but 30 years on from
Kraftwerk’s last full album of original material Electric Café they continue to tour
their eight most famous works, dubbed The Catalogue, at modern art museums;
they are scheduled to visit Bilbao’s Museo Guggenheim in October, eight years
after Hütter’s co-founder Schneider quit. “Now we have finished one to eight, we
can concentrate on number nine,” Hütter said in 2013, after playing The Catalogue
at Sydney Opera House.
When the current line-up of Hütter, percussionist Fritz Hilpert, engineer Henning
Schmitz and Schneider’s replacement Falk Grieffenhagen will finish their elusive
11th album remains to be seen...
Getty Images
 2 NEW CDS
IN ASSOCIATION WITH RHINO RECORDS

Celebrate the art of the 12 inch remix with some of This collection brings together the most influential
the most iconic tracks of the extended remix genre, artists of the synthpop genre, including The Human
including Visage’s Fade To Grey, Poison Arrow by ABC, League, Ultravox, OMD, Howard Jones, Soft Cell and
Why? by Bronski Beat and The Sun Always Shines this classic from Thomas Dolby… and also tracks the
On TV by A-ha. There are no less than 30 classic, influence and the evolution of synthpop with music
electronic and disco favourites on one CD from Kylie Minogue, Air, Phoenix and Little Boots.

AVAILABLE IN-STORE NOW

AND
OR ON
THE HUMAN LEAGUE
A VERY BRITISH SYNTHESIZER GROUP

November 18th 2016

Featuring all the hits from ‘Being Boiled’ to ‘Sky’

3CD / DVD Plus 25 unreleased tracks, edits and demos

DELUXE All 21 of their videos plus 24 BBC TV performances

Also includes 58-page hardcover book with new

BOX SET essay, photos and memorabilia

Also on 2CD / 180 GM 3LP SET

On Tour November / December 2016 www.thehumanleague.co.uk