Harry Enfield: "Loadsamoney (Doin' Up the House)"

4 May 1988 (with more from the world's richest, most obnoxious plasterer here)

"It's exactly like Beethoven, except without all that classical music rubbish and with loadsa shouting and disco instead."

— Loadsamoney

He came, he plastered, he got plastered, he made money. Plenty of money. Piles of cash. A tonne of the green. Enough dosh that you could burn it and flog the ash for some pretty good bob. Loadsamoney lived up to his name.

But in this exclusive took at the working class lad who raked in the moolah, a darker side has to the man has been revealed more than thirty years on.

"I loved awl the money," admits the sixty-year-old who sometimes posed as a comedian by the name of Harry Enfield, "but I never realised that there woz more t' life."

He was Loadsamoney and he lived up to the name — but a darker side has begun to emerge.

~~~~~

Loads Francis Money was born in 1961 in Harsham, a small market town in the southern English county of Sussex. His family had long struggled financially but his parents encouraged young Loads and and his older brother and sister — Notmuch and Couldyalendmesome — to pursue careers in the arts. All displayed talent for music and painting but the baby of the family gradually took a dim view of this way of life.

"My family were aw'right but they shoulda made more money", he reflects. "Notmuch was a good musician and 'e could sing well but 'e neva wrote any songs about money. Couldyalendmesome painted these nice pictures of flowers and trees and awl that stuff but no one bought 'er work. Why didn't she paint some money growing on trees or summat?"

Loadsamoney first came to prominence when he began presenting short documentaries about his life for the British TV series Friday Night Live. Thinking that no working class plasterer could ever act like that in real life, viewers initially assumed it all to be a joke. The star quickly rode into the skid by creating the comedic alter-ego Harry Enfield to further delude the populace. It wouldn't be for several years that the ruse was uncovered.

"People thought I musta been created by someone or somefink cos no one loves money that much. But I do."

His notoriety at an all-time high, he released a single called "Loadsamoney (Doin' Up the House)", an obvious ode to his one true love and a record that was filled with samples.

"There was a lot of that 'ouse music at the time and this bloke I was workin' wif said we should use samples so we didn't 'ave to record as much", he explains. "I said we should 'ave that ABBA song called "Money, Money Money" which 'ad been my favourite song 'til we did "Loadsamoney"".

The single did well ("but it didn't sell enough!") but a follow up never emerged. What happened?

"We 'ad another record ready called "Loadsmoremoney"", the plasterer says, bitterly. "But this time I insisted that we charge a hundred quid a copy so I could make more money. I wanted to do that with the first record but they said no. Anyway, we did the second song which is even betta than the first one cos it's like Mozart but without all that classical rubbish and it's like The Beatles without all that love, love, love stuff. They said the record didn't sell but I think those wankers never put it out."

Some considered him to be a product of Thatcherism but he isn't too sure. "She wanted to let people buy their council flats but they shoulda bought a real 'ouse in Essex if they 'ad more money. She also let those blokes at the bank do whateva they wanted to do wif my money but I don't trust that lot."

It was also around this time that Labour leader Neil Kinnock described Tory policies as being part of the "Loadsamoney economy", a term that flattered Loads but one that he, again, took issue with.

"Them Tories coulda made more money 'ad they been like me," he boasts. "An' that Kinnock bloke, 'e wanted to 'elp the NHS but if you got more money then you can get your own health and medicine and nurses. I always wondered why Labour wasn't about labouring to get more money!"

His time in the media spotlight faded but Loadsamoney kept going and the more he plastered the more he cashed in. Contemporaries diversified but he stayed with what he knew. The double-glazing fad came and went but there were always more homes needing a fix up.

Today, he is better off than ever but he admits to feeling unfulfilled. Three wives have come and gone, friends have largely parted ways and he is now mostly forgotten by the public. He lives alone with only his vast wealth to keep him company. Does he have any regrets?

"Just one," he says pensively. "I wish I'd made more money."

~~~~~

Also of some cop

Poison: "Nothing but a Good Time"

One of Loadsamoney's greatest rivalries was with American metal band Poison. Loadsa took issue with them wanting nothing but "ladies [sic] and wine" thinking they should have aspired to champagne instead. When contacted for this article, frontman Bret Michaels had no comment but a representative for the group said that they had nothing but respect for Loadsamoney and that they aspired to a similar lifestyle. Scholars believe that the rift developed because of their parallel lives, that they were too similar. Fans around the world were forced to choose: fun or money? But as Loadsamoney would say, "you'll 'ave more fun if you 'ave more money". 

The Human League: "Empire State Human"

18 October 1979

26 June 1980

"If we have to have all this teutonic synthsiser stuff (and I'm by no means convinced) then let it be said that The Human League have a sense of humour and fairly catchy choruses. I rest my case."

— David Hepworth

"The important thing is that "Empire State Human" is probably the catchiest item in their rich repertoire, tailored almost along the lines of a crazed rugby song."

— David Hepworth

As you can see, David Hepworth twice reviewed the same single by The Human League for Smash Hits. The first from 1979 is included above in full and it quite clearly isn't his favourite offering. Regular readers of this blog will have noted that his "pick" single that fortnight was The Undertones with "You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It)" while other favourites include Nils Lofgren with "No Mercy", The Specials and their superb double-A "A Message to You Rudi" and "Nite Club" (probably the rightful SOTF with all due respect to Derry's finest) and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark with "Electricity" (for someone who isn't "convinced" by synths, Heps sure is okay with at least two rising electro-pop groups). "Empire State Human" probably isn't a top flight offering but his nibs can certainly see the value in it.

Jump ahead eight months and ver League and their reissued single of old seem to have grown on him. While he also enthuses about "Wednesday Week", yet another record from The Undertones ("not so much a change of tack as an example of the advantages of growing confidence"), I detect slightly more of a pop fan's appreciation for "Empire State Human" ("an insanely jolly chorus") even though he orders the pop kids reading the Hits to go out and buy them both forthwith. The selection of singles is fine though not as strong as the previous October. It seems The Human League have spent the past few months endearing themselves to at least one top pop critic (I don't think he considered their repertoire to be as rich a year earlier), something they would slowly do to music hacks and the British public over the next several months ahead.

A year on from this issue of Smash Hits and The Human League would be well on their way to being one of the biggest groups in the world. Yet, you'd never know it at this point. "Empire State Human" had already been their third single but such was the state of their commercial potential that their record label had more faith in it that any of the material on their recent album Travelogue. The Holiday '80 EP had been a near-miss (the song "Marianne" is one of their finest hits that never was) but their latest album had done well entering the charts in the Top 20. A group on the rise, or so you'd assume. Surely any of "Life Kills", "Dreams of Leaving" or "The Touchables" off of Travelogue deserved to be pressed into a 7" disc.

Nevertheless, "Empire State Human" was a good enough single to merit a second chance. From debut "Being Boiled" on, Human League records were first rate recordings and it's remarkable how poorly they did. Their industrial/experimental sound would always be there while founding members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were part of the group but they were seldom overly radical at the expense of melody and pure pop jubilation (the leftist agitprop EP The Dignity of Labour and the "Empire..." b-side "Introducing" being the only real exceptions). Anyone who thinks they only became a pop group with the 1981 breakthrough Dare need only listen to this tune's catchy chorus (it's so catchy that Hepworth felt the need to bring it up in both of his reviews). While we may assume that leader Philip Oakey was wishing to be taller, there's the subtext of yearning for his band to be bigger as well.

Opening with a bouncy synth, Oakey delivers his most commanding vocal to date. Ware and Marsh back the singer with layers of sparkly keyboards but the track gradually takes on darker tones with more of an avant-garde VCS 3 synth thrown in and Ware doing some Residents-esque chanting in the background. It could have soundtracked a sad late-seventies remake of Metropolis and, indeed, it's a wonder film technician Adrian Wright didn't choose to use stills of the 1927 classic in the single's promo. Yet, it's funny and few others could get away with repeating the word 'tall' as much as Oakey does in the song's three minutes.

I stand 195 cm (I don't do feet and inches anymore so look it up if you're metrically-challenged) and I have always been tall (I was ill as a newborn and was crammed into an incubator, doubtless an odd sight alongside a bunch of tiny infants) and I will say that it's fantastic for the most part. My height makes me seem more handsome than I actually am (or it did when I was in my twenties) and strangers think I'm special just to by looking at me. Sure, I bump my head a lot, it's difficult to buy clothes and people sometimes call me 'Stretch' but I love being tall. It's nice to be envied for something I had no control over. Everyone wants to be "tall, tall, tall" and who can blame them?

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Ultravox: "Sleepwalk"

From bubble gum to punk to classic rock, Midge Ure's next logical step was synth-pop. His background in disparate genres makes him far too good of a vocalist for his latest project and his attempts to pull off a Bowie/Numan robotic style fail to convince. It's almost as if he assumed he was laying down the vocal for a power pop number only for the electronic keyboards to wipe out the three chords and the truth. Synth music was not without its bandwagon jumpers but its a credit to Ure for getting on early. Musically, the single is pretty good, if a little anonymous. Ironically, it's Ure's rockism that makes them stand out; it probably isn't the best idea for your weakness to be what makes you unique but there you go. A bit of a breakthrough hit, "Sleepwalk" lays the groundwork for their biggest hit "Vienna" when Ultravox almost seemed like legit synth-pop contenders. Chancers gonna chance.

The Housemartins: "There Is Always Something There to Remind Me"

20 April 1988

"In fact, it just makes the whole thing even sadder and...excuse me while I blub..."

— Josephine Collins

In an age when bands never really breakup anymore, it's almost impossible to imagine a group closing the curtain when things were only just getting started. The Housemartins had only been a name act for two years and it naturally caught a lot of people in UK pop off guard. And this was still a time when groups did decide to end things early. The Police were only just reaching a mass international audience when they went on permanent hiatus. Similarly, Wham! wereat the height of their powers when George Michael concluded that going solo was what was best for all concerned — except for Andrew Ridgley. Paul Weller took The Jam to pasture as he began to realise that his musical ambitions were beyond his bandmates.

Speaking of which, the last time this blog dealt with a farewell single was when we looked at "Beat Surrender" by "La confiture". It was Single of the Fortnight as much for its place as an event in British pop than for its quality. The Jam did many, many better singles in their day and their finale could well have been their weakest since the Bruce Foxton-penned "News of the World" (and that was done when they were still finding their feet) but try telling that to their still-loyal following: the group went out on a high note with an exciting, piano-driven rocker with some of Weller's patented sloganeering. It hit number one so who am I to question it?

The breakup of The Housemartins was caused a similar out-of-nowhere shock. They weren't huge like The Jam or The Police or Wham! but, then, they never gave themselves a chance to get that big either. They never did much in America (and sales of their records in New Zealand were never anything special) and weren't quite critical darlings the way The Smiths had been. (For all of its end of decade embrace of all things pop, Smash Hits got behind them more than the weekly music journals for students, venues one might assume would have been a more natural home for ver Hoosies) They were just two albums in and who's to say how much bigger they would have become?

Looking back to childhood is a popular subject for songwriters — and the results generally resonate with fans. "In My Life" was described by John Lennon as his first "serious" composition and reflective songs of this sort have since been taken up by many (including by former Housemartin Paul Heaton with "I'm Your No.1 Fan" from The Beautiful South's 0898 album). Others go for a more playful look back at younger days. Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" is filled with fond reminisences of youthful hijinks of hanging out with "hoodlum friends" and "playing doctor" while "Baggy Trousers" by Madness just lists off examples of "all the fun we had" in spite of some terrifying teachers. There's more than a little of this going on in "There Is Always Something There to Remind Me" too: "drawing mustaches and glasses on the ruling classes" does appeal to boys bored and bratty alike but there's also something less-than savoury going on. There's some real fear in some of Heaton's lyrics and they still manage to nag at him in adulthood.

A seemingly playful song like "Baggy Trousers" is able to hide its dark side underneath all that nutty boys fun but there's less of that here with the equally goofy Housemartins (their image as merry men of pop was something they all despised and it likely contributed to how The Beautiful South were received as confrontational and prickly just a year later). I listen to it and think of the many slights I have felt at the hands of teachers, students and even friends and how they still come back to me on occasion. I am also reminded of stupid things I said or did that still cause me to shudder. "I've more than you" — incidentally, I always thought it was "Our mother knew": I am always finding new mondegreens — is not a phrase that haunts me but I imagine it would stick with young people growing up in a class-based society like Britain. We finish school and get on with our lives but we never quite move on from those incidents that were traumatic.

While last singles like "Beat Surrender" and Wham!'s "Edge of Heaven" were both number ones, "There Is Always Something There to Remind Me" underperformed, only reaching a peak of 35 in May of 1988. This broke a nice streak of six top 20 hits on the bounce and it's bizarre that such a good single would fail where others had done well, especially as it was their swan song. A problem, however, was that the single wasn't brand new. It had been recorded several months' earlier for a John Peel session and buyers may have been turned off by the group calling it a day with some recycled product. (They admitted in Smash Hits that they weren't interested in prolonging the end by playing a farewell concert which stands to reason considering they couldn't even be arsed to record a proper final single) More importantly, there's little that's self-congratulatory to it nor does it bring the group to an end by bringing tears to the eyes of their fans. They went out the way they wanted to go out and didn't much care what anyone thought. Luckily, they left plenty behind to remind us of them.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

Joyce Sims: "Walk Away"

"Come Into My Life" had been a hit single that made you wonder why there weren't more songs just like it. A rare groove with stylish soul and a club hit that managed to crossover to the UK charts. It's still a great song but why weren't there more? No one managed to emulate it and Joyce Sims herself struggled to match it. "Walk Away" is perfectly acceptable eighties' soul-pop but it suffers from being not up to scratch alongside its predecessor. Well sung by Sims and it's not a song I'd turn off though nor is it anything that commands the listener's attention. She never did another "Come Into My Life" but just be glad she pulled it off the once.

The Lover Speaks: "No More "I Love You's""

6 April 1988

"You're sure to recognise it, and whimper and blub at the tale of lurve gone mouldy which unfolds."

— Tom Doyle

Few have been able to launch themselves into a solo career like Annie Lennox. While the likes of all four Beatles, Sting and George Michael were all able to do so coming off the momentum of their previous groups, her old act Eurythmics had begun to fade away, their later albums didn't sell as well while their singles didn't place as high. And while charismatic in her own unique way, she wasn't exactly omnipresent in the culture. (On the other hand, her status as a solo act was helped along by winning four Brit Awards for Best British Female Solo Artist while still being a part of her old group: her 1989 BPI trophy is especially out of place given that it came between Eurythmics albums and her only fresh release was the tepid "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" duet with Al Green taken from the movie Scrooged; surely Yazz, Tanita Tikaram or the unnominated Kim Wilde deserved it more)

Yet, 1992 saw the release of her debut solo album Diva and it was a monster. There were hits aplenty (I've always preferred "Walking on Broken Glass" to "Why" myself but I reckon I'm in the minority on that one) and she was as big as ever — bigger if you consider that Eurythmics are in effect one hit wonders in North America; of course, they did have more than one actual hit but when was the last time a radio station played anything by them other than "Sweet Dreams"? It was so big that its follow up was also huge. Putting out an album of cover versions isn't exactly a guaranteed path to success but many people who were enchanted by Diva went out and picked up Medusa when it came out in the spring of 1995.

Albums of covers tend not to sell well because they usually aren't very good. Medusa is no exception though it does have a couple nice tracks. Familiar fare like Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and Bob Marley's "Waiting in Vain" are uninspired and who wants to hear these great songs reinterpreted anyway? Not surprisingly, it is the lesser known numbers that make Medusa just about bearable. She does well with The Blue Nile's "Downtown Lights" and her version of London Calling's so-called "hidden" track "Train in Vain" isn't too bad (I would argue that the song was a little more obscure back in 1995 than it is today so it does qualify). But the one real highlight is the album's opener "No More "I Love You's"", a tune that few would've been previously familiar with.

"I used to be a lunatic from the gracious days..."

The song dates back to 1986 from the philosophical minds of songwriters David Freeman and Joseph Hughes. As Tom Doyle (in his debut as Smash Hits singles reviewer) says, the latter is a "birrova "snoot" intellectual" and notes that he has also had a book of poetry published. But this only taps the surface. The duo got their name from the Roland Barthes book A Lover's Discourse and it would provide the basis for their self-titled debut album as a whole. It's considered a minor work by some but major by others (Barthes' works are compartmentalized between serious academic studies — Elements of Semiology, S/Z — and his much more creative pieces — A Lover's Discourse, Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, the essay collection Mythologies — of which I was much more partial) My memories of it today aren't strong but I can recall reading it in the bath one night and being reminded of those girls that never called me back, of those stupid things I've done that ended up ruining relationships and those times I said "I love you" only to realise it was a mistake as soon as the words left my lips. It was something I said far more often than I care to admit.

"No More "I Love You's"": it sounds like a vow I made to myself but that's not what's going on here. The "language is leaving" him and he is unable to say these words. From Lennox's version there is simply the voice of making a promise to oneself; Freeman's reading gives off pain but it can also be spun to be about a rogue who pledges love but swiftly reneges on it or of a loser who feels something, expresses it and immediately knows he has said the wrong thing. Much has been made about men who are incapable of saying 'I love you' but what of those of us who serially throw it around like barkers at a carnival? I uttered these three words so often that they ceased to have any meaning at some point — and with that, I could say them to just about anyone.

Falling out of love would frequently come about soon after. Still, I seldom did the breaking up when things finally began to crumble. I initiated the 'I love you's' so I could hardly go back on them. This repeated itself enough that I began to see the warning signs: chief among them was listening to vaster quantities of bittersweet heartbreaking pop as the inevitable began to approach. Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love, Blur's 13, The Go-Betweens' 13 Lovers Lane, The Sundays' Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, loads and loads of XTC, The Beautiful South and James. (No, I wasn't listening to Blood on the Tracks or Rumours: I hadn't been in a sufficiently adult relationship to get much out of either of them) The Lover Speaks wasn't there though it easily could have been. Having said that, I wonder if this song would have been a little too on the nose.

"Changes are shifting outside the words..."

I like this song but I can't see myself listening to it again. Timing is everything and the original version of "No More "I Love You's"" in 2021 doesn't mean as much to me as it would back when I first heard Lennox's version of the song (I was doing a very poor job trying to cope with the after-effects of my first breakup) or a decade later when I read A Lover's Discourse (I was in my late-twenties and was starting to fret that my romantic prospects were beginning to dry up). They say that happiness kills creativity, that pop stars who attain a level of domestic bliss start to decline because they no longer carry around pain to communicate. Music consumers are in a not-dissimilar position: when our lives have become contented, we cease to react to tormented works as fervently as we used to.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

James Brown: "The Playback Mix (Part One)"

Remixes of classic pop were all over the place in 1988 but the medley boom had long since faded (to the extent that Jive Bunny seemingly brought it back to a mercifully shorter shelf-life than a decade earlier). Still, a megamix of the Godfather of Soul's hits made sense. The J.B.'s were James Brown's revolving door backing band and it was drummer Clyde Stubblefield who played the iconic break that was already being sampled to death less than twenty years later. Reclaiming it from the likes of Erik B & Rakim, Public Enemy and LL Cool J (even though he neglected to compensate his old drummer), it now appears on Brown numbers that it hadn't been on previously. The sampling is such that you almost don't know what's authentic and what's been pasted on but that's part of the record's charm. There are many, many better Brown singles (though "Living in America" is not one of them) but "The Playback Mix" gets to the heart of his work. And who knows? Maybe it even got ver kids to take notice and wonder why this old guy nicked the drum bit from "Erik B Is President".

Siouxsie & The Banshees: "Christine" / The Stranglers: "Who Wants the World?"

12 June 1980

"Barely recognisable as the Banshees."

"After a clutch of weak singles, the Stranglers totally reverse their position, and along with the Banshees shine out as this week's single of the weekers."

— Deanne Pearson

There's none of that 'Record of the week'/'Personal record of the week' stuff going on this fortnight (though someone really ought to have informed the reviewer that she was writing for a fortnightly publication), Deanne Pearson simply has two favourites that she is unable to choose between. This time, there's also less of a divide between her choice cuts: an elegant Cole Porter standard by Ella Fitzgerald and a burst of post-punk energy from The Flowers couldn't have been more different; while there certainly is plenty separating Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Stranglers, both groups came to prominence at a similar time, achieved comparable levels of success and would probably be similarly remembered today. Fans of one may well have been into the other, even if they hardly go hand-in-hand.

Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin had been members of the famed Bromley Contingent, a noted pack of Sex Pistols fans that likely had more talent than the band they followed. While Billy Idol made a career out of this association, Sioux and Severin were quick to distance themselves from the punks. She had started off the notorious Filth and the Fury TV interview with Bill Grundy but it wasn't long after that the pair stopped attending Pistols' gigs. They had already formed a band a year earlier and had used a young John Simon Richie (aka Sid Vicious) to drum for them at their first show. She received a great deal of attention following the Grundy debacle but rather than capitalize on the notoriety, she stepped back and got to work on making The Banshees into a much better group than the one she had attached herself to.

Meanwhile, The Stranglers were being lumped into a scene that they were merely running parallel with. Drummer Jet Black was born two years before John Lennon but their reputation for being elder statesmen of punk was overstated. With both Ian Dury and Charlie Harper of the U.K. Subs being in their mid-thirties, The Stranglers' drummer being over forty wasn't that out of the ordinary. A number of American punks — Patti Smith and Debbie Harry just to name two — were also past their twenties and Stranglers Hugh Cornwell and Dave Greenfield fit into that generation. Not everyone was like the nineteen-year-old Siouxsie Sioux.

Having said all that, the real reason The Stranglers never quite fit in with punk was that they weren't really punks to begin with — or, at best, they were punks in the same way that Lennon and Keith Richards were punks (ie not at all). They played aggressively, sure, but garage rock had been around since at least the mid-sixties and the only thing punk about, say, "Louis, Louis" by The Kingsman is that people commenting on YouTube videos will claim that they're the first punk (even though they weren't). They may have done well as a result of punk and the genre's rise in popularity opened doors for them that had previously been locked tightly

"Hong Kong Garden" had already been a single-of-the-year candidate back in 1978 so The Banshees were hitting their stride right from the start. Their run of singles stretching over at least the next decade is outstanding, as good as any group of their time. As Pearson suggests, "Christine" is something of a turning point, as they began exploring sounds beyond the bleak and doom-laden. The lineup of Sioux, Severin and Budgie (maybe I'm just not much of a Banshee follower but I often forget that they were just a trio; a lot of five-piece groups would have struggled to match their power and layers of sound) are synched up so well. Siouxsie's voice is confident and only she could do S&M goth rock but I do wish she could be a little more playful, not unlike the way Robert Smith is able to coyly flirt with the listener on The Cure's "The Lovecats". Groups like Strawberry Switchblade and The Belle Stars were swiftly finding a home merging post-punk wastelands with glorious pop but this was beyond the reach of Siouxie Sioux, assuming she ever even wanted it. Nevertheless, "Christine" is a fine track that takes a proud place in The Banshees' admirable discography.

While The Banshees were on a roll, The Stranglers were struggling following their superb early singles like "Peaches", "No More Heroes" and "Nice 'n' Sleazy" which all did well during punk's golden age. While younger groups (so much for their age not being an issue) were progressing, developing as songwriters, trying new things, their more recent material had begun to stagnate. "Who Wants the World?" does have some of that old energy but I'm not as convinced by it as Pearson. The Stranglers boxed themselves into a corner: they were better off when their songs were kept simple but, as a result, this often meant that their records sound incomplete. As she says, Wakefield's organ is as brilliant and distinctive as ever but the rest is lacking. A reasonable stab at their patented brand of dirtbag rock but an unmemorable one. They weren't quite ready to move on from not being punks but the near-number one success of their 1982 single "Golden Brown" would be just what they needed. It only goes to show they weren't new wavers either.

In a Smash Hits singles review that also features an appalling Sex Pistols' cover of The Monkees' "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone", it is clear that some were having trouble letting go from the heady days of '77. Then again, post-Lydon Pistols were all about ripping people off: some of their fans may not have known what was going on but a flash-in-the-pan band was happy to exploit them. The Stranglers had never been punks, Siouxsie & The Banshees weren't any longer and the Sex Pistols were busy proving that punk was just a brand. Maybe no one was punk and no one had ever been punk: now there's a thought.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bob Marley & The Wailers: "Could You Be Loved"

I've long preferred The Wailers to Bob Marley & The Wailers: the original trio of Marley, Pet Tosh and the recently departed Bunny Wailer was a superstar unit and one in which no one individual deserved to hog the spotlight. (I have nothing against the post-Tosh/Wailer period though I resent reissues of earlier albums that use the latter credit) Now joined by Rita Marley and a bunch of people I've never heard of, it's only right that his nibs would take lion's share of the credit. His work following the Natty Dread album is inconsistent but the bulk of the singles are still pretty good. "Could You Be Loved" is one of those ones that I never need to listen to because I can always count on it winding up played in the mild of a film about backpacking the tropics or political prisoners or bloody romantic comedies since the Marley estate will allow the great man's stuff to spread as far out as possible. Punk had become a brand and the king of reggae would soon follow suit.

Pet Shop Boys: "Heart"

23 March 1988

"Unfortunately though, it's the best of a very bad bunch."

— Andy Bell

"I'd rather not pick one for best single — they're all terrible."

— Vince Clarke

So, what was it I was saying about Erasure being a pair of old grumps?

They were a pop group but one that seemed loath to play the pop game. Vince Clarke had already experienced that side of it and perhaps that explains their surprising lack of visibility in the pop mags of the time. Unbelievably, the pair never appeared on the cover of Smash Hits, despite racking up eighteen top ten hits, just three shy of the Pet Shop Boys. The music press reviewed their albums, singles and concerts but never went out of their way to celebrate them. They were a pop group that retained a mystery about them but as a consequence they became everyone's third or fourth or fifth favourite group but not the sort of act that thrilled the kids to pieces. Still, they got snagged for the task reviewing the singles for an issue of ver Hits at the end of March, 1988. Even so, they didn't do their standoffish image any favours by ripping into every single up for consideration. These people may have made pop music but they sure didn't seem to like it.

Their chosen Single of the Fortnight was from a familiar group that fans were passionate about. They were the favourite or second favourite group of a lot of young people in the late eighties. A group that did play the pop game. A group that had already appeared on the cover of Smash Hits on five occasions (including this very issue), with several more to come. Like Erasure, they were a duo with a curiously charismatic frontman and a stern keyboardist. Both groups played synth-pop but the similarities end there. While not exactly a world apart, Pet Shop Boys and Erasure couldn't have been more different. (There was sometimes a bit of a thorny relationship between Pet Shop Boys and Erasure, like a low-key version of the The Cure-Smiths rivalry. Bell once expressed dismay at the favourable treatment Tennant and Lowe tended to get from the press while Tennant didn't seem to respect Bell and Clarke too much. It was never discussed at length on either side and I don't think fans felt the need to back one side at the expense of the other. If there happened to be any ill will by this point, it happily isn't brought up by Erasure here, which is more than can be said for other pop stars who used critiquing the singles as a means to bash their rivals)

They say that following up a debut album is often tricky because an artist or group has a lifetime to draw upon to create that first work but only a few months to then come up with a second. Some, however, have a greater wealth of material to fall back on for a sophomore release. Noel Gallagher had accumulated enough songs over the course of his early-to-mid twenties to fill two LPs and so came the only good albums Oasis ever made, Definitely Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? Similarly, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe had been working together for five years before "West End Girls" gave them their first hit single and they had enough tracks to even see spill over to their third, fourth and fifth albums (early composition "It's Not a Crime" would eventually evolve into "Left to My Own Devices", "Jealousy" had been in limbo for nearly a decade before winding up on Behaviour and "To Speak Is a Sin" had been tried out early on only to be abandoned until 1993's Very). Nevertheless, most of the best songs were already earmarked for Please, leaving the swift follow up Actually as a bit more of a pick and mix collection. Tennant has said that it doesn't hang together as well as other albums of their's and it's easy to see why. It's sort of a less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts release with filler ("Hit Music", "I Want to Wake Up" and, yes, "Heart") alongside some of their strongest material with seemingly little thought given to track order — aside from "King's Cross" which had originally been slotted in as the album's opener before they wisely gave it a rethink and tacked it on to the end where it belonged.

Erasure's Andy Bell and Vince Clarke are in agreement with me, if much more avowedly so. I still really like Actually, I just don't think it's as strong as their other peak-period albums (on some days I'll even take later works like Fundamental and Electric over it too); for them, it's clearly a subpar effort following their impressive debut. And, certainly, Please is the better of the two. (Coincidentally or not, they would soon start approaching each album with a purpose. Introspective consisted of half-a-dozen stretched out 12" mixes of potential singles and Behaviour was meant to be a rootsy return utilizing analog synthesizers and being free — for the most part — of samples. They never did concept albums per se but the generic, whatever-is-available attempt at creating an LP would be a one time thing) Actually's first three singles — "It's a Sin", "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" and "Rent" — are superb but their options for a fourth were limited. That cheerful, irony-free love song on the second side would have to do.

Given that they made it their SOTF, you'd think Bell and Clarke would have plenty of praise for "Heart". The singer does make note of Tennant's deadpan vocals being a highlight (even if he undermines it soon after by knocking the "backing track with any old vocals slapped on top") but that's basically it. They don't knock the record as much as the others so there's that too. Otherwise, we've got a very unimpressive SOTF and, as Clarke states in the quotation above, it's a wonder why they even bothered.

I understand Erasure's take on "Heart" but I still can't get fully on board with them. Much as I kind of want to say otherwise, it's a plenty good enough pop song by any standard. That said, the standards of Tennant and Lowe were already high enough that "Heart" doesn't quite match up. The singer has admitted that it was a "one-off" for the group and they famously wanted to give it to Madonna before losing the nerve and deciding to record it themselves. Spruced up with a remix, the single version has a little more pop to it, a rare instance (along with "Suburbia") of a PSB single being superior to its album version. I would never consider it to be one of my favourites of their's and I don't think I'd miss it if it was somehow expunged from their catalog but try telling me that when I'm happily singing along with it. They didn't play it when I went to see them but I wouldn't have complained if they had,

Helped along by an outstanding video, "Heart" went to number one just as Bell predicted. While "West End Girls" was like nothing that had come before it and both "It's a Sin" and "Always on My Mind" were epic singles that couldn't not have topped the charts, the group's final number one is relatively characterless in comparison. But that's the thing with having an imperial period: even the so-so stuff manages to connect with people. This is something that happened to The Beatles with "I Feel Fine" and "Hello Goodbye", Blondie with "The Tide Is High", ABBA with "The Name of the Game" and "Super Trouper", Madonna with "Who's That Girl?": it's one thing to top the charts with a magnificent single but quite another to do so with something that's just sort of all right.

The end of an imperial period may coincide with a group's demise (see both ABBA and Blondie) but some are able to shrug off the sudden lack of guaranteed magahits in order to reach a creative peak. This would be where the Pet Shop Boys would be headed once this nice, inconsequential love song had been done and dusted. It won't be long before they're back (BACK!) on this blog. As for Erasure, they too will soon be back (BACK!) with something of a "Heart" of their own.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

a-ha: "Stay on These Roads"

While Erasure have little good to say about "Heart", they save their best jabs for other singles on offer this fortnight. Not unlike the Pet Shop Boys, Bell and Clarke used to like a lot of a-ha's stuff but they're super underwhelmed by their latest offering. I am happy to say that I strongly disagree. "Stay on These Roads" is one of a-ha's finest singles, a power ballad with some eerie Norse angst at its heart. Sure, Bell's correct that it's nigh on impossible to understand anything Morten Harket is singing about but that's nothing new. They're quick to dismiss the trio's move towards a more "serious and credible" side but this is hardly a nineties pop group going through a miserable R&B phase; "Stay on These Roads" is a hybrid: part stadium rock anthem (Clarke admits that he can imagine it being sung at a football match), part Blue Nile-esque sophisti-pop gem, part drippy love song for teens to awkwardly sway to at a high school dance. So very eighties, yet so very timeless. With all due respect to the Pet Shops, this is the rightful SOTF.

Erasure: "Ship of Fools"

9 March 1988

"Oh what a joy it is to hear a record that isn't taken over by twittering synthesizers, pumping bass lines and drum beats ten to the dozen, especially when it comes from Erasure who've built their reputation making infectious dance music from those very ingredients."

— Ro Newton

Between Blancmange, The Communards, Depeche Mode, The Human League, Pet Shop Boys, Propaganda, Sharpe & Numan, Sparks and Yazoo, this blog has covered many synth-heavy bands (with The Associates, Eurythmics and It's Immaterial being not so far off from this realm either). It hardly needs stating that synthesizers were everywhere throughout the eighties though a subtle backlash would begin as the decade began to wane. This would never result in a full-scale destruction of the sub-genre but synth-pop's glory days were just about at an end. 1990 and '91 would mark its final high point with the outstanding albums Violator, Behaviour, Electronic, Chorus and Sugar Tax. I miss those days...

Erasure would be the last major synth act to emerge. Vince Clarke had been a founding member of Depeche Mode and had been their main songwriter, composing early hits "New Life" and "Just Can't Get Enough". There have been many reasons given for his sudden departure but if he did indeed chafe at the promotional obligations of pop it didn't stop him from quickly forming his first synth duo Yazoo with Alison Moyet. (The year I spent in the UK, we resided in Basildon, an English new town noted only for being one of the worst places in the country and the home of some pretty pop stars) He had been done with ver Mode after just one album but he managed to cut two LP's with this new unit. Again, Clarke proved his worth as a top songwriter, this time being behind hits "Only You" and "Don't Go", among others. He and Moyet went their separate ways and he dithered a bit, appearing on Blancmange side-project West India Company with their inter-faith seasonal mantra-pop "Ave Maria" and then forming The Assembly, a "group" that consisted of himself, associate Eric Radcliffe and a succession of lead singers.

With so many projects that started promisingly before fizzling out, it's remarkable that he finally found himself a partner worth sticking it out with. As opposed to Yazoo and The Assembly, Erasure struggled at first, their early singles falling way short of the hit parade. And this was by no means the public being a bunch of ignoramuses: singles like "Who Needs Love Like That" and "Heavenly Action" are nothing special, a far cry from the likes of "Just Can't Get Enough" and "Only You". A significant change that occurred at this point was that Clarke was co-writing with vocalist Andy Bell and the pair needed time to work things out. "Sometimes" was their breakthrough single and would be Clarke's biggest hit to date but it still isn't quite classic synth-pop. Were Erasure ever going to be anything more than the Pet Shop Boys without a sense of humour?

The group's seriousness is something I often cite that held them back but I've come to realise recently that it's a rather unfair judgement. With a voice like Bell's, how could Erasure pull off humour and wit? He has a gorgeous voice but one that always sounds so deeply committed to whatever it is he's singing about. (As if to compensate, they sometimes filmed lighthearted videos which never fooled me) If the Pet Shops did irony, then Erasure specialised in painful sincerity. Then again, more often than not I bought what they were selling (spiritually speaking anyway, I didn't actually purchase anything by them until the excellent compilation Pop! The First 20 Hits in 1992). Their singles got better and better so what did it matter if they were about as joyous as a bucket of old rags?

Increased quality control of Erasure's records meant that their chart fortunes grew along the way. Their second album The Circus is a marked improvement on debut Wonderland and both "Sometimes" and "Victim of Love" were pretty good singles. The album's title track was the fourth and final 45 released from it and it pointed the way forward for the group. A departure from their usual buoyant pop, it's a downbeat number that is more musically ambitious and can be slotted into the category of anti-Thatcher songs that the likes of Billy Bragg, The Style Council, The The and, yes, Pet Shop Boys were also churning out at around this time. With this one song, they were already proving themselves to be more capable of political pop than The Communards even if the record itself doesn't quite work. The tune is a bit repetitive and I'm not sure just what makes all this a circus but they were on to something. (It hardly needs saying that it fails in comparison with The Beatles' masterful "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite" in terms of big top pop)

A year later and they were back (Back!) and they had picked up where they left off. "Ship of Fools" would an unconventional teaser single from their third album The Innocents, released a month later. "Chains of Love" and "A Little Respect" would have been more logical choices (even deep cuts like "Phantom Bride" and "Yahoo!" would have made more sense). As Chris Heath says in his review of the album, it's the only slow track on an LP packed with potential hits. But they boldly went with something similarly glum as "The Circus" — only much better. (Notably, it was the only one of their singles from The Innocents not to be a hit in the US)

On paper, however, it doesn't look like much. My sister and I spent a long train journey from London to Edinburgh at the start of the October midterm break looking at the latest issue of ver Hits, which included lyrics to all the tracks from the latest compilation Smash Hits Party 1988. We knew or knew of many of the groups but most of the songs had been and gone from the charts prior to our arrival in Britain that August. Thus, we attempted to work out how the songs would go based purely on looking at the lyrics. Two songs made us laugh because they both seemed so stupid. One was "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" by Prefab Sprout (much as I love Paddy McAloon, we weren't wrong on that one) and "Ship of Fools" was the other.

To this day, I still don't know who this "baby of the class" is supposed to be or why him not knowing "one and one was two" matters. I guess it's about losing a child in some sort of nasty fashion. Recalling The Smiths and their controversial closing track from their debut album ("Suffer Little Children"), it's natural to conclude that it's dealing with abduction and/or murder. Things get a bit cloudier with the line "why can't you see what you're doing to me": is he addressing the child because he can't suddenly be trying to communicate with the criminal. Something is missing but in a way that's what makes the song's sorrow so convincing. I was a very unreliable journal keeper as a teen (I don't even bother to try now) but when I did jot down my thoughts about heartbreak and angst, they were hardly coherent. The words are scattered and it's as if Bell is in the midst of processing his thoughts in song.

Meaningful or gibberish: either way, the lyrics work as presented. It helps that the tune that accompanies it is one of Clarke's finest. It is a huge step beyond "The Circus", subtler and more refined. Not drenched in synths, no, but they're still there in service to the song. Clarke's background as a techno-pop henchman meant that he had years of experience knowing what works for various vocalists came in handy. Bell's voice is lush enough so that the music and production is gentle and only a bit haunting.

Reviewer Ro Newton never seemed like your typical pop-kid-turned-Smash-Hits-writer. As I have previously written, she had been a host of the Whistle Test and you can detect a fondness for more guitar-based music in previous singles reviews. (That said, she also once gave a Single of the Fortnight to Michael Jackson and has praise in this singles review page for Debbie Gibson — see below — so she was no rockist either) She doesn't try to hide her derision for the "twittering synthesizers" and the rest and seems genuinely surprised by this new direction. It's possible that she hadn't been following Erasure closely or she may have noted Clarke's occasional use of an acoustic guitar on tracks like "Victim of Love" or that "The Circus" signalled a change in direction. Nevertheless, she's absolutely right about just how wonderful "Ship of Fools" is. They had done fine work before but this was their first great moment where everything fell perfectly into place.

Erasure's move towards more serious subject matter didn't always work and it's fortunate that they never gave up on ecstatic pop along the way. But for an earnest singer and a grumpy-looking keyboardist/guitarist, it makes sense that they would embrace a darker side. Sheer joy just wasn't their bag and we'll see very soon just what a moody pair they could be when it came to the task of evaluating other pop groups and their synth-friendly or synth-free singles. Stay tuned.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Debbie Gibson: "Only in My Dreams"

They called her a "Mall Madonna" (though you'd think this would have been a better moniker for Tiffany given her penchant for performing in mall food courts all over the States) but Debbie Gibson was a very talented young woman back in the day. Like her nibs, she doesn't have the strongest voice in the world but there's character in that nasally tone. Truthfully, she was probably a better songwriter than the Material Girl and it was this quality that likely made everyone think she'd be around for a while. Still, it was a good ride while it lasted and she made some money and some of the songs were quite good, especially at first. I always preferred "Out of the Blue" myself and "Foolish Beat" has aged surprisingly well but "Only in My Dreams" is decent too. Her future seemed bright but she got serious too fast and couldn't pull it off as well as Erasure.