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"People may say they're namby-pamby but I love them!"
— Richard Coles
They may deny it now but 1988 in Britain was all about loving America. People were flocking to Disneyworld and spurning France and Spain as holiday destinations. American football was growing in popularity and looked to be the next big thing. Pop stars and famous actors who would visit the UK were treated like royalty and even someone as innocuous as Sylvester Stallone's mother fawned upon on the popular talk show Wogan. American-themed restaurants were all over the country too. And if all this wasn't enough, I was subjected to the question "are you Amer-eee-can?" (emphasis on the third syllable just as they liked in Essex) wherever I went.
Rock and roll being American, it's easy to see why so many British pop stars fell for the US. Many of them live there, including some who've moaned about the UK being too American. The Rolling Stones embodied the idea of being English yet wanting to be a Yank but luckily they had Mick Jagger to send it up even as they were drowning in Americana. Others haven't had lead singers as clever. Being pro-American is one thing but losing one's Britishness is another.
America has always been at the heart of Prefab Sprout's work. Paddy McAloon's heroes are Burt Bachrach, Brian Wilson and Phil Spector so this would naturally have led him to look across the Atlantic. At first, references to the US were subtle. Their debut album Swoon includes a song about chess legend Bobby Fisher ("Cue Fanfare"), as well as opening with a puzzling number about their neighbour to the south ("Don't Sing": "don't blame Mexico"). "I Never Play Basketball Now" deals with a popular sport that the British hadn't really taken to. Their follow up album Steve McQueen had been named after the great American actor and it opened with a number "dedicated" to country crooner Faron Young (a SOTF back in 1985).
But it was on their third album From Langley Park to Memphis that America became the focal point. "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" would prove to be their biggest hit and it dealt with an aging rocker still clinging to fame due to his one novelty hit. Its subject may or may not be American (I suspect he's British which makes the whole tale even sadder) but it is loaded with references to the US. "Cars and Girls" was an undeserved flop that took the mickey out of Bruce Springsteen. And with "Hey Manhattan" (aka "Hello Manhattan" as Smash Hits erroneously has it) you've got a wide-eyed youngster who has just arrived in New York and has big plans for success — or so he thinks.
What makes this trilogy wonderful — you know, aside from them all being brilliant songs — is how distinctly British their take on America is. The British singer from the fifties with that one solitary hit probably never went to the US — or he flopped spectacularly if he did. Springsteen did much more than make records about "Cars and Girls" but that was the reputation he got lumped with, especially on the other side of the pond. NYC was this destination where dreams either came true or went to die and this is what's celebrated here. The hopeless hopeful who arrives in the States is initially "star struck, Uncle Sam" before admitting that his struggles and failure is down to "bad luck". The promise of making something of himself is dulled by the feeling that he's already being chewed and is about to be spat out by the Big Apple.
"Hey Manhattan!" gave Prefab Sprout their third Single of the Fortnight but once again it failed to connect with enough people to get it into the Top 40. It's difficult to say whether their less-than idealistic take on the American Dream kept the punters away since they'd had plenty of flops that didn't hit a similar nerve. If anything, it only reinforced the narrative that they were "too clever by half" (whatever that means) and that they were only able to capture fellow musicians and pop critics. There was already a small but loyal cult of Sprout out there and it's one that remains to this day but they couldn't quite catch on the way we all thought they deserved. Oh well, it's their loss.
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— Jimmy Somerville
The singer from The Communards is none too impressed with "Hey Manhattan!" and opts instead for the second single from Bomb the Bass. A project helmed by young DJ Tim Simenon, it first came to attention in the early part of 1988 with "Beat Dis", a sampled-filled acid house single which reached number 2 on the charts. Coming in between "Pump Up the Volume" by M|A|A|R|S and "Theme from S'Express" by S'Express, it should have joined them as chart toppers but it failed to dislodge Kylie Minogue's massive "I Should Be So Lucky" from the top spot.
Being DJs, Simenon, Mark Moore, The Beatmasters and Coldcut struggled to make pop music a top priority. They had raves to appear at and they were all in demand to produce and/or remix other people's records. They didn't dream of pop stardom and didn't chase it. While Smash Hits and Top of the Pops had difficulty presenting them as performers and pinups, they in turn weren't as accessible and didn't seem aware of how to play the pop game. As a result, follow ups were slow. Not to mention the fact that for the talk of sampling being "theft", piecing together these jigsaw puzzle records proved to be tiring, thankless work. In any case, churning out the product was better left for the likes of Stock Aitken Waterman.
This review of "Don't Make Me Wait" is from the 28 June edition of Smash Hits. The single, however, wouldn't appear on the charts until just shy of two months later, debut at 20 in the last week of August. Did ver Hits get their copy too early? Did Bomb the Bass' record label Rhythm King decide to hold it back? Or were they trying to build up hype? It's impossible to say but it's more than a little odd that a "group" that was taking its time releasing records would have their hotly anticipated second single delayed.
There's another curiosity surrounding this release and that's the status of the other song. The single would eventually be released as "Megablast"/"Don't Make Me Wait" and was a double A-side. Somerville doesn't mention this other track, nor is its title printed on the singles review page. To be fair, I don't blame his nibbs from The Communards. "Don't Make Me Wait" is absolutely superb and it didn't need another tune on the flip to prop it up. A case could even be made that "Megablast" itself was more than good enough on its own and they wasted two potential Top Ten hits by throwing them onto the same record.
Being potentially viewed as "Beat Dis, Part 2" may have made those concerned cool towards "Megablast" so I suppose the more pop friendly "Don't Make Me Wait" had the upside of being something different and unexpected. That said, the former also had a radically different version with British rapper Merlin (who introduces it by asking "who's in the house?" which will crop up when he guested with The Beatmasters the following year) which could also have had single potential of its own. Nevertheless, the single version of "Megablast" is extraordinary and could have been the single of the year had it got the notice it deserved. It is an absolutely thrilling record with all the samples placed with care
Though I do prefer "Megablast" there's no arguing with "Don't Make Me Wait" either and the two could very well be the finest double A-side cut by anyone since The Beatles. With Lorraine McIntosh (not to be confused with the singer from Deacon Blue) on vocals, it has the appearance of a pop song but this can't disguise the devastating sounds within. Simenon would go off the rails slightly with the follow up — a cover of Aretha Franklin's "Say a Little Prayer" — but this once he found a balance between sample-heavy house and dance-pop. Somerville wants nothing more than to dance to it but it's also a great pop song that can be appreciated by those of us who have no interest in doing so. Though they were slow to take to the pop world, the house DJ's of the time proved more than capable of bringing the clubs and the raves into our homes.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
The Special AKA featuring Ndonda Khuze & Jonas Gwengwe: "Free Nelson Mandela"
A well-intentioned remake to mark Nelson Mandela's seventieth birthday but one that doesn't come close to the original "Nelson Mandela" from four years' earlier. There are some good ideas present and Jerry Dammers was right to bring in some African vocalists for this re-recording but it doesn't work. He may have been better off handing everything over to a crack group of singers and musicians from Africa to see what they could make of it. There's also a too-obvious attempt at keeping things current with some house music that just doesn't fit. The excitement of the original is nowhere to be found here but hopefully it still played well at the Mandela Tribute concert that summer.
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