Fidelfatti featuring Ronette: "Just Wanna Touch Me"

15 November 1989

"It's astonishing how house music seems to produce all the best pop records these days, isn't it?"

— Miranda Sawyer

Vocals that are mostly a non-factor. The same notes and chords repeated ad nauseam. Formulaic in spite of the creators' best attempts to make it seem like anything but. Music that may or may not have been made by the people fronting the act in question. But enough about The Stone Roses.

Actually, no. A bit more on them for now, particularly in relation to how I didn't have the chance to discover them in 1989. It was November and it was beginning to dawn on me that I wasn't especially happy to be back in Canada. I had next to nothing in common with most of my friends (the one exception is still a good friend of mine), virtually everyone hated my music (though, in truth, that likely wouldn't have changed had I still been in the UK) and I had begun tuning out school. I would go to bed at night picturing as many details as possible about life a year earlier in Britain, conveniently leaving out the bad bits. Sometimes it would take hours to drift off to sleep as I tried to bring everything back.

I also began to picture an alternate reality in which we'd remained there for at least another year. I was convinced that I wouldn't have been as miserable there than I was in my current state. It was a life dreamed of with rose-tinted spectacles as a means of escape. It took a long time for me to acknowledge that it wouldn't have been any better over there. Except for perhaps on the evening of November 23, 1989.

Millions of Britons tuned in to Top of the Pops that night likely anticipating yet another hum-drum edition of an increasingly stale show. New Kids on the Block were at number one with a song that everyone called "The Right Stuff" but which was officially titled "You Got It" for some reason. Either way, the song sucked and so did the New Kids. The whole Top 5 was bland and this was the norm for the upper echelons of the hit parade during that time. And yet something was coming. A week earlier, indie techno group 808 State appeared on the show playing their extraordinary hit "Pacific State", which would open the door a crack for an eventual stampede of fellow Mancunian acts, which in turn would lead to bands from all over the country to emerge. But even that couldn't have prepared people for what was to come.

First up was Happy Mondays (or 'Happy Monday' as presenter Jenny Powell has it) with "Hallelujah" from their Madchester Rave On EP. A raucous performance, it introduced the nation to Shaun Ryder, an unattractive man (even then) with not much talent for singing but with charisma to burn. The whole band looked like a group of mates causing havoc at a party. They would soon record stronger material (as we'll see shortly in this space) so if "Hallelujah" hadn't been sufficiently eye and ear catching then it wouldn't be long before young people were going to give themselves over to Shaun, Bez and the rest. If you didn't necessarily aspire to creating music like their's then at least you'd want to be in a group with your pals just having a laugh.

Then came The Stone Roses. They'd only enjoyed minor hits up until this point so for their latest single to be that week's highest new entry was nothing to sneeze at. If ver Mondays looked like chums having a laugh, the Roses looked much more like a proper group. The British indie scene had yet to recover from the demise of The Smiths two years earlier but here were the saviours. And while the foursome retained some elements of alternative rock, they were something entirely different. Indie kids got into them but there was also room for dance music fanatics. "Hallelujah" is probably the slightly better song but the hooks on "Fool's Gold" were enough to ensure that The Stone Roses would be the short term beneficiaries of that landmark TOTP episode.

When I started this blog four years ago I vowed not to do a couple things in these write ups. One was not to get all hung up on discussing if a particular record hadn't 'aged well'. (And I think of stuck with it for the most part: aside from problematic lyrical content, I'm not even sure what being dated even means) The other was not to take Smash Hits reviewers to task for choosing lousy Singles of the Fortnight. (Pop star guest reviewers, however, are fair game)

So, I won't be bashing Miranda Sawyer for going with some Italian house music over a monumental Stone Roses single. It's not like she dismissed "Fool's Gold" or anything; she explicitly picked it as her runner-up and is very enthusiastic about a group that she would have a close connection with. Yet a single by the unfortunately-named Fidelfatti and a very uninvolved Ronette is her favourite and I respect her choice.

Nevertheless, "Just Wanna Touch Me" isn't up to much. Sawyer's raving isn't wrong exactly ("The only way to describe this one is Soul II Soul meets Black Box meets Enya. Really.") but it misses the point. It's far too much of a jumble to make for a truly good house record. The Soul II Soul bit gives way to the Black Box movement too abruptly while the touches of Enya aren't fleshed out enough. It works a bit better on the 12" mix but there is still far too many cliche samples getting in the way.

The record doesn't do anything for me but isn't Sawyer's review a wonderful piece of writing? She doesn't say a whole lot and doesn't need to. "Just Wanna Touch Me" is "berrrilliant" and that's all there is to it. Reading a lot of these singles reviews over the last few years, I am often struck by how often I'm feeling left out in the dark as far as the quality of the SOTF goes. Tom Hibbert seemed to actively dislike some of hit picks while other critics act like they were just choosing something simply because they were supposed to. They'd get through their pile of new releases, pick one that didn't get on their nerves as much as the others and then never listen to any of them again. Reading this, however, I am struck by the feeling that Sawyer not only loves this record but that she'll be secretly stashing it in her purse or under her coat as she exits that office that night. For all I know, she listens to it to this day. And good for her.

Addendum: Hardly anyone reads this blog so I'm probably safe but in case anyone misinterprets my point above — "Music that may or may not have been made by the people fronting the act in question" — let me explain. I do not wish to suggest that John Squire, Mani and Reni weren't playing on "Fool's Gold", merely that they may as well not have been. Mani's bass playing is effectively a loop while Reni's drumming is basically "Funky Drummer". A couple bars were enough for each of them to lay down. Squire's guitar part is much more extensive, particularly on the famed nine mimutes, fifty-three second 12" version, but I'm not sure he had to play the whole way through either. It wouldn't be for another year or so that I began getting into Madchester and I was initially puzzled by the supposed connections between acid house and rave culture and this new brand of indie. I eventually realised that it was down to the tricks of house music being brought into rock: vocals that are mostly a non-factor, notes and chords repeated ad nauseam, formulaic in spite of their best attempts to make it seem like anything but and, yes, music that may or may not have been made by the people fronting the act in question.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

The Stone Roses: "Fool's Gold" / "What the World Is Waiting For"

I've already gone on and on about bloody "Fool's Gold" so what about its companion on this double A-sided single? Their critically acclaimed debut album was released earlier that year and one of the first things people noticed about it was that these weren't humble people. "I Wanna Be Adored" opens the album and its last two tracks are "This Is the One" and "I Am the Resurrection". Hammering the point home, "What the World Is Waiting For" got an undeserved boost from solid if unspectacular B-side to woefully out of its depth lead co-billing. There have been plenty of double A's in which one side of the single vastly outperforms the other but there should be at least some semblance of equality between the two. The Beatles released a handful of double A's because they couldn't agree on a flagship side but The Stone Roses did it here to make a statement. A bit boring, as Sawyer says, and, in retrospect, a troubling sign of where they were headed. In that respect, at least, the two songs went well together: what the world was waiting for turned out to be little more than fool's gold in the end.

Cat: "Catwoman"

1 November 1989

"Every single person I know (including me) said when they first heard "Catwoman": "What a useless, tuneless and boring dance record — I'd rather have my hair cut like Richard Marx than listen to this again". And all of them have had to shame-facedly admit a few days later that they've changed their minds."

— Chris Heath

Here is the second part about what it means to be 'Princian' — for good or bad.

Wendy & Lisa represented the musically literate side of Prince's vast entourage. While no one in Prince's employ could come close to his abilities, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman were (and remain) accomplished multi-instrumentalists, talented songwriters and excellent vocalists. They even came from good musical stock, with Melvoin's father Mike having been a notable jazz pianist while her brother Chris would later go on to be the touring keyboardist for alternative rock superstars Smashing Pumpkins.

But the Prince stable was populated by more than just ace session cats. Being a showman of the highest caliber, the Purple Perv cultivated first rate dancers for his renowned concerts and he kept many of them around. While Wendy & Lisa were easy on the eyes themselves, these girls were gorgeous, sexy and knew their way around a stage. In some ways they were as necessary to Prince's shows as his crack backing band.

Cat Glover came on board at roughly the same time that Wendy & Lisa departed following the purge of Prince's band The Revolution. She appeared in some of his videos and became an increasingly prominent part of his critically lauded Lovesexy tour. Magazines like Smash Hits would refer to her by the mononym 'Cat' with only the added bit of info that she was "Prince's foxtress". It looked like she was becoming properly famous.

As if to test this out, record label WEA (the same company that Prince, perhaps just a touch dramatically, would later claim had enslaved him) had Glover signed up to their subsidiary Red Dot Records. With her old friend having just released the Batman soundtrack, it seemed like a stroke of genius to have her debut single be titled "Catwoman". It's just a pity that everyone was beginning to conclude that while the movie itself was really good, the music sucked for the most part. Prince, it would seem, couldn't simply belch out an entire album's worth of songs about Bruce Wayne and Vicky Vail's romance and electric chairs and expect everyone to fawn all over it. Whatever hit single potential Cat's response had, it would pay the price for Prince's worst album to date.

But could "Catwoman" have been a hit? Possibly. New jack swing was beginning to really take off with the massive success of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 and it could easily have taken off as a result. With hits like "Miss You Much" and "Escapade", the youngest of the Jackson clan was staking a claim to territory previously occupied by her brother Michael; the hits weren't as big in Britain however. Luckily, Cat's single was very much a product of and for the UK with Bomb the Bass' Tim Simenon producing and references to Radio 1 and Radio 2. Turns out, it didn't do so well but at least it got itself a spot of the lower reaches of the UK charts.

Chris Heath admits to "Catwoman" taking its time to grow in his esteem and its lack of immediacy also may have hampered its chances. On the other hand, it hasn't altered much for me over the last few days. It sounded like a mess — an engaging mess but a mess all the same —  but one that wasn't so off-putting that I had to turn it off. Not "useless, tuneless and boring" but neither is it "quite wonderful" either. A more than acceptable first — and, indeed, only — try from Cat.

As for the song's Princian aspects, it's all surface level. Hard-hitting R&B with a hard rock guitar solo are key elements to some of his most well-remembered songs but they were hardly required in order to make a Prince tune great. Creativity, swagger and a willingness to stick one's neck out were elements that his nibs used to craft some of the most memorable pop of the age (and I say that as a bit of a Prince agnostic) but they aren't present and correct here. Wendy & Lisa had those qualities while Cat had the stage presence and confidence. Prince had it all and that X factor. In the end, perhaps it's a willingness not to be just like The Beatles or Prince that makes a band truly Beatlesque or Princian. They didn't wish to follow anyone, so why would you want to follow them?

Finally, a look at the single's review this fortnight shows a glut of product on offer. In addition to the thirteen records evaluated by Heath, there's another two dozen listed in the 'Also Released This Fortnight' sidebar. It being the start of November, it was once again time to start looking towards the Christmas Number One sweepstakes. As ever, these "contenders" were too early to put up much of a fight as the real favourites were still to come. But these singles also suggest a staleness in pop in the waning weeks of the eighties. The sidebar does give off some hope with The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Wonder Stuff and Lightning Seeds all releasing new singles. Indie would be British pop's saviour as the nineties kicked off and one of its key records was about to emerge.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Phil Collins: "Another Day in Paradise"

Phil Collins' many critics have some legit reasons for loathing his music but they might wish to try for a bit of nuance. Yes, "Another Day in Paradise" is a rich man's sob story about encountering homeless people but it isn't that bad. In fact, it all seemed very noble, if quite preachy, back when it hit the charts at the end of 1989. Where Phil got it wrong was in a lack of understanding: rich guy sees people begging out of the corner of his eye and he's moved enough to promptly write a song about it. And that's fine only there's nothing else to it. Compare it to the Pet Shop Boys' "The Theatre" from the Very album and it feels even more shallow. The following spring my English Language Arts teacher Mrs Reid had us do presentations about protest songs. Lazy bugger though I was (and still am), I was up for this assignment and I did well speaking about U2's "Silver and Gold". Most of my classmates also gave good presentations on the likes of John Lennon, Tracy Chapman and Public Enemy. The girl who chose to speak to the class about "Another Day in Paradise", however, struggled. From what I can recall, she didn't seem to have much to say beyond simply "homelessness is bad". And who can blame her? That's all Phil was able to contribute too.

Snips: "9 O'Clock"

19 March 1981

"I raved about this when it first came out last year, I'm about to do the same thing again and I shall continue to babble its virtues from the rooftops until Snips is a stay or they come to take me away, whichever is soonest."

— David Hepworth

This again???

Music critics have a right to change their minds or even to alter their opinions ever so slightly — although I would've liked to have seen more of an explanation given back in the early part of 1998 as to why Oasis' universally praised album Be Here Now was suddenly being described as lackluster, self-indulgent and drug-fueled. David Hepworth previously reviewed The Human League's "Empire State Human" on two occasions and was more effusive with his praise the second time round. As he has stated himself, reviewing singles is something that's done over an unfairly short period of time and it's easy to make mistakes, miss something or just get a song wrong.

Nevertheless, it's nice to see that he isn't walking back his review from almost a year earlier. If anything, he appears to love it even more. The song initially grabbed his attention with those irresistible synth sirens that shriek all over the place in a manner that's sort of like The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" or ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" but manages to be different enough to sound original in its own right. But now he finds the time to wax about its "strong guitar/drums core" and the fact that Parsons' delivery is a hidden gem. His first evaluation comes after having "weathered" around two dozen dismal offerings of that issue's singles and in that context it's no wonder he liked it so much. That said, the pickings are much stronger this time round and he's still besotted by it.

With the distance of a few months since I last had a look, I can see why he still enjoys it. Looking at the singles from 1979 and '80, I began to tire of all that new wave/post-punk: all those deadpan vocals, those minimalist guitar licks, those many sub-Peter Hook-esque basslines, that bare-bones production. (I'll never be able to listen to Young Marble Giants again) Stephen W. Parsons, aka Snips, was much more musically open-minded than all those thin bands with thin ties making thin records but "9 O'Clock" still seemed too attached to that era. By 1981, however, the music scene was becoming increasingly awash in the New Romantics and synth-pop, the old cliches giving way to new ones. Some dynamic and explosive pop-rock would've been just the thing at the precise moment that the group once known as Joy Division was evolving into New Order and The Jam were tripping on soul music.

Combining power pop energy, a post-punk atmosphere and pop hooks, "9 O'Clock" deserved to be a hit in either 1980 or '81. That it never caught on in spite of multiple attempts and strong critical backing speaks to how many great singles there were at the time and how a quirky rocker like this could slip through the cracks. For all its pervasiveness, crashing new wave didn't guarentee chart success (even some of the most well-remembered bands of the era like Squeeze and XTC had up-and-down Top 40 fortunes). By '81, it stood almost zero chance of landing.

As for babbling its "virtues from the rooftops", I haven't heard much praise from Hepworth since. Snips hasn't appeared on the excellent Word in Your Ear podcast and Heps' love for "9 O'Clock" hasn't resulted in any of his sweeping, unbeatable theories for which he is rightly renowned. Does he still adore it? Has he forgotten all about it? Possibly but all he has to do is rediscover it and he'll be gushing over it to co-host Mark Ellen and the many WITY listeners/viewers. I can see it now: "I think you'll find that records age well because we age well..." — or something to that effect.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Hazel O'Connor: "D-Days"

Hepworth admits to donning "Red Starr's Russian fur hat" and engaging in a little "cossack dancing round the office" while the latest from Hazel O'Connor was playing. What she perhaps unknowingly created was this link between Ukrainian folk music and ska/rocksteady, a connection I had never noticed until now but one that I will never unhear. (This has no doubt occurred to everyone else before and I'm sure there's a fantastic reggae version of the Tetris theme out there) All this would be for nought if "D-Days" sucked but luckily it's quite outstanding. I had suspected that O'Connor falls closer to the wrong side of the Lene Lovich-Toyah divide but I'm happy to consider myself corrected on that matter. In truth, she doesn't have nearly the charisma of either but she makes up for it by having a strong set of pipes and a band that kills it here. A solid second to Snips in the Single of the Fortnight stakes.

Wendy & Lisa: "Waterfall '89"

18 October 1989

"This extraordinary lump of swingy guitar rock drives along at a simply glorious pace while Wendy belts out in the most beautiful voice ever about one moment you're floating down the river of life, the next moment, pouf!"

— William Shaw

The next two entries covering the 1989 Singles of the Fortnight are, in effect, part 1 and part 2 of the same essay. Both deal with the influence of an overwhelming figure of the time who happened to be losing his way.

I have long taken the term 'Beatlesque' as a warning to stay away. It tends to be code for very predictable, very boring power pop. Three chords and the truth. Radio exec Kevin Howlett, musicologist Rob Bowman and ex-Klatuu (ie the 'Canadian Beatles') drummer Terry Draper managed to come up with eight possible definitions of what constitues 'Beatlesque' and the first seven have some merit, though they seldom apply to bands described as such. The eighth suits the purposes of this review because it is a "simucalarum of the Beatles' reputed sound that ultimately means nothing ("a copy without an original")". 

Thus, let's have a look at another, less commonly used adjective borrowed from the name of a musical giant. "Princian" probably ought to refer to artists or groups with oodles of talent,  stubborn single-mindedness, some wild eccentricities and a complete lack of concern for what anyone else thinks but, instead, it is used to describe R&B acts who use rock guitar, pop groups who try to be slick or anyone who brings to mind the late singer from Minnesota.

It would have been inevitable for both Wendy & Lisa and Cat to be compared to Prince since they were all in his inner circle and they owed their musical careers to their old boss. Nevertheless, is their work all that similar? Just how Princian were they?

William Shaw points out a growing concern in the camp of Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman: their relative lack of success. The critics may not necessarily have been fawning all over them but their reviews tended to be strong (so much so that the usually cold, pop-neutral Tom Hibbert seemed to genuinely appreciate their single "Sideshow" the last time they popped up on this blog; he also admitted to being an admirer of an earlier effort of their's which he reckoned was the "greatest single of 1987" which happened to be the original single release of "Waterfall"). But the public weren't having it. "Satisfaction" managed to give them a minor Top 30 hit in the UK in the summer of 1989 but everything else they put out flopped. With the singles "Are You My Baby" and "Lolly Lolly" having already missed, their best bet to capatalize on their first proper hit was to re-release and remix their most commercial-sounding pop song from two years' earlier.

Superficially Princian, "Waterfall" is awash with crunching guitars and a big fat beat that could've come straight from the Purple Perv (Melvoin even unleashes a wicked ax solo that is not unlike what she would've played on the 1999 and Purple Rain albums: this isn't so much her nicking from Prince as borrowing from herself; if they owed plenty to his nibs than the success of The Revolution owed an awful lot in turn to the two of them). Yet the hooks and sunshine melody puts it in entirely different territory.

The 1989 remix (the 'Alice and Sundial 7"') adds some slap bass, the pace seems a little swifter and there are some effects going on the background. A little more like Prince, come to think of it. If they wanted to distinguish themselves from the guru they apprenticed under then this revamp undermines them a little. On the other hand, Prince himself had a new single out at the same time and the duet "Arms of Orion" with muse Sheena Easton does a fine job on its own of undermining his own supposedly untouchable legacy (William Shaw describes it as a "sloppy...sluggish and even unconvincing love ballad, with quite the corniest words ever" and he's not wrong). A revamped Wendy & Lisa single may not have been necessary but at least it reminded everyone of how great Prince once was.

I previously compared Prince to Duke Ellington, noting that they were these two huge musical figures at the centre of a pair of accomplished groups. The members of Duke's band had him to thank for their lengthy careers but he needed them just as much. The departures of Ben Webster (permanently) and Johnny Hodges (for just four years) proved crippling but he was able to work around them; the deaths of longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn and Hodges in 1967 and '70 respectively ensured that his work in the last years of his life would never be quite the same. Prince's biggest shortcoming was that he never fully appreciated his bandmates to the same extent. He gave them a chance to be part of the greatest band in the world and they repaid him by being the greatest band in the world. Then, he figured he could do without them and he was never really the same. The "stubborn single-mindedness" that I mention above could be a Princian trait that worked to his advantage but it could also be his creative undoing.

As for Wendy & Lisa, they're only surface-level Princian. Princian because that's what we know them as and Princian because that's what they were expected to be. Not so much because they sound like Prince but because they came from Prince and that's close enough. Talented remixers could manipulate them into sounding more like their old boss but there was much more to them. Could they have been as successful as him? Probably not. They didn't have his charisma, they weren't mavericks and never had command of pop the way he did. But, Princian or not, they were very much their own thing — not so much a "copy without an original" but a pair of originals working off of a copy.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Chris Rea: "The Road to Hell (Part Two)"

It is December 23, 1987 and a still blond and well-tanned Chris Rea is heading up to Middlesborough for Christmas. Traffic is slow but he's in a cheery mood and by the time he reaches his hometown and his family he has a new song called "Driving Home for Christmas". Five days later and he is heading back down the motorway to London and the snail's pace his car is crawling along to only makes him angry and despondent. By the time he gets back to his flat he has yet another composition as well as a dark beard and slicked back hair to show for the long journey. This isn't how the two songs were conceived but it's how I like to imagine they came to be. "The Road to Hell" sounds like Leonard Cohen singing over a Dire Straits backing track, something that Shaw noted at the time but never occurred to me. It was the much bigger hit than "Driving Home for Christmas" but there's no question which one has lasted and which one has been largely forgotten. "The Road to Hell" seemed immensely cool to me as a twelve-year-old but I don't have much time for it now. Either it has aged badly or I have.

Barry White: "Follow That and See (Where It Leads Y'All)"

4 October 1989

""We have the power to change anything," bellows the the God-like "Walrus of Love" at the beginning of this record, in a voice deeper than the depths of hell (i.e. unnaturally deep)."

— Sian Pattenden

In my recent post about Michael Hutchence's side project Max Q, I hinted at a lull in the music scene the autumn of 1989. I was focused on a distinct lack of dynamic stars on the cover of Smash Hits, particularly in an environment dominated by Jive Bunny and Black Box, but the pop scene in general seemed to be going through a rough patch in general at around this time. I was by then back in Canada where there hadn't been the same penetration of music as in the UK. My favourite songs were The Cure's "Love Song", Madonna's "Cherish" and Tears for Fears' "Sowing the Seeds of Love" and at some point it occurred to me that there wasn't much out there to replace them.

That was in Canada but Britain had to be different, surely. Jive Bunny's "Swing the Mood" had only been in the charts for a couple weeks before I left and so I never had the chance to get sick of it and realise that it was crap; the British didn't seem to tire of it and it remained on the Top 40 as follow-up "That's What I Like" was topping the charts. (Indeed, it managed to hang around long enough to to be there to welcome the horrible Christmas-themed "Let's Party" for its less extended run, giving these so-called Mastermixers a sustained chart presence for over five months...bloody hell, Britain) "Ride on Time" was a much better record than any of Jive Bunny's nonsense but did it really deserve to sit at the top for six whole weeks, the longest chart reign in over five years?

This fortnight's singles does little to address the lack of quality in the pop charts. Most of the records reviewed by Sian Pattenden are poor or indifferent and the vast majority didn't exactly set the hit parade ablaze that autumn. Just two ended up being big hits — Lisa Stansfield's number one smash "All Around the World" (itself an indication of how low the charts had sunken: her previous singles "People Hold On" and "The Right Time" didn't do nearly as well despite being significantly better songs) and the Top 5 smash "Street Tuff" by Rebel MC & Double Trouble —  with just four more getting into the Top 40 — and only just barely for two of them. The rest is a veritable flop parade and lowest of all is Barry White's "Follow That and See (There It Leads Y'All)" which failed to chart at all.

With the possible exception of Billy Idol and his four Singles of the Fortnight (yes, there's still one more to come), there probably isn't another artist I am surprised to be covering on this blog more than Barry White. I already blogged about him last year when he released an ultimately doomed attempt at a Christmas number one and now he's back (BACK!!) with a new recording to see if he can recapture the public's imagination. He didn't but not for lack of trying.

While the likes of Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder were recording socially conscientious pop and R&B in the early seventies, White was fashioning himself into a baritone-voiced lathario, one who didn't seem particularly interested in civil rights, the generation gap, Nixon, pollution, urban strife or war. Gaye himself would quickly move back to the bedroom with Let's Get It On and I Want You (before ending up in the divorce courts on Here, My Dear) but he had been part of the zeitgeist with 1971's What's Going On and this massively important and successful album remained a firm part of his reputation long after its issues ceased to matter as much to him. Not so with White and while he may have been capable of his own What's Going On or Innervisions or Superfly, he never indicated that he had any desire to do so.

But something changed over the years and his re-emergence at the end of the eighties brought about some a new approach. The biggest change was musically. The contemporary production on album The Man Is Back! is tasteful for the most part but his voice is missing something without a string section to back him up. Indeed, he isn't being backed up so much as drowned out on "Follow That and See (Where It Leads Y'All)". (I didn't know it was possible for such a powerful vocalist to get beaten down by production no matter how big it is) James Brown's output from around the same time leaves a lot to be desired but he would never have let his voice be anything but front and centre.

If the song doesn't work in the confines of an eighties recording studio then at least there's White to give it the charm it needs. It's a lot more hectoring than anything Gaye and Mayfield and Wonder ever did and it's a point in its favour. White had more than a little of the preacher in him and it really comes out in this paean to world unity and understanding. This is no doubt bolstered by the sight of him standing at a pulpit in the accompanying video. He seldom tackled heavy issues in his recordings but this track only makes the listener wish he had done so more often — especially back when he was at his peak.

In my previous piece about White, I mentioned that it's easy to guess what his songs sound like before you've even heard them. This isn't the case here which is a shame. What White did was limited in scope but at least he did it better than anyone else. It was noble that he wanted to have his say as far as the fate of humanity and the world was concerned but he should've brought it into the sound he was best known for. "Follow That and See" proved he had a great socially conscious pop/R&B album in him but by 1989 it was too little too late.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Fuzzbox: "Walking on Thin Ice"

Having a laugh seemed to be what the girls from Fuzzbox were all about. As punks they refused to take anything seriously and this approach carried over when they abruptly went pop in 1989. Boys fancied them, girls looked up to them and we all thought they were brilliant. It couldn't last but they could've continued for at least another year before things fell apart. Third pop era single "Self" kind of sucked and their cover of Yoko Ono's "Walking on Thin Ice" is no better — and by this point interest in them began to wane. The icy production, glorious disco beat and John Lennon's searing guitar are nowhere to be found here and it doesn't even sound like they're trying. A B52's cover would have been more suitable (they were influenced by Yoko, you know) or, better yet, one of their addictive anthems about rescue missions or pink sunshines. That's why we all loved Fuzzbox, even if the midriffs were nice too.

Elvis Costello & The Attractions: "From a Whisper to a Scream"

5 March 1981

"E.C. serves up another gem-like effort from the mighty "Trust" (every home should have at least one) and this time it's to be hoped that a few hundred thousand people do some serious purchasing."

— David Hepworth

Befitting an individual who earned a healthy amount of praise (four Singles of the Fortnight in the eighties, tying him with The Cure and Pet Shop Boys), Elvis Costello's relative lack of success proved to be an ongoing concern for Smash Hits writers. Tim De Lisle felt that his nibs needed a "big hit that will become a standard", something that wasn't in the cards for SOTF "Man Out of Time". Ro Newton was too busy appreciating the man's genius and the overall brilliance of "Tokyo Storm Warning" to get caught up in something as trivial as his chart potential but Richard Lowe is hopeful that "Veronica" will bring him back into the "Fun 40" (it did indeed do so even if he was probably thinking of something better than number 31). The critics loved him so what was wrong with the record buying public?

It hadn't always been this way. Costello's early career had seen him enjoy a decent run of nine Top 40 hits on the bounce, from "Watching the Detectives" through to "New Amsterdam", a period that coincides with the closest he ever came to being a singles act. Debut album My Aim Is True is a big favourite of many fans but the highlights ("Less Than Zero", "Alison", "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes", as well as "...Detectives" off the American edition, amazingly the only hit of the bunch) are those that were also released as 45s. Follow-up This Year's Model is strong from top to bottom but it almost sounds like thirteen singles shoved together. 1979's Armed Forces is a bit uneven like My Aim Is True and there's a reason everyone's favourite number from it is "Oliver's Army". Again, Get Happy!! from a year later sounds like a giant sprawl of singles, its label reading '20 GREAT HITS' in the top right corner being only somewhat of a joke. Costello's best songs were singles; his best albums had as many singles as possible.

Fifth album Trust came out at the start of 1981. For the first time, it didn't feature any major standouts; on the other hand, it was commendably low on LP filler. There's the sense that its fourteen tracks all belong, even if "Lover's Walk" and "Luxembourg" aren't quite as solid as the others. Having fourteen cuts may not seem like anything special but most of The Beatles' classic albums had that many tracks (A Hard Day's Night and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band would have if not for rejected George Harrison numbers) and, indeed, Trust has something of the throwback sixties record about it for that reason. Many of these great Fab Four albums didn't include singles on them — With the Beatles, Beatles for Sale, Rubber Soul, Pepper, as well as double set The White Album — and, in spite of the demands of their American label Capitol, didn't need them. Standalone and/or film tie-in singles kept them at the top of the charts while their albums remained largely untouched. (The much ballyhooed Revolver had the double A-side "Eleanor Rigby"/"Yellow Submarine" released from it but it's unlikely that the single made much of a difference in how it has been appreciated)

"From a Whisper to a Scream" was the second and final UK single culled from Trust and it makes me wonder how Costello, his fellow Attractions, label F-Beat and any other concerned parties went about choosing their 45's. First release "Clubland" only got to number 60 in Britain and it too seems like an unlikely chart hit. Was "You'll Never Be a Man" deemed potentially too sexist? Did Costello fear alienating his fans by putting out the XTC-inspired "White Knuckles", a song whose inspiration he had to keep secret from his laddish bandmates? Was "Strict Time" nixed for being too bloody wordy, even by Costello's lofty standards? All fourteen of its cuts comes with at least one 'but' as far as commercial potential, with "From a Whisper to a Scream" and American release "Watch Your Step" as perhaps the closest.

Still, single or deep cut, hit or flop, "From a Whisper to a Scream" is indeed a gem as David Hepworth says. With some crunchy guitar chords and Bruce Thomas' bouncy guiding bass, it opens with a pop. The dueling vocals of Costello and guesting Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze manage to contrast each other in the verses while the two come together effectively in the chorus. The harsh and occasionally nasty singing of the former makes the more child-like singing of the latter a welcome addition. Its a relentless track and it's only until long after the fact that you realise he never bothered with a middle eight.

Great as it is, however, it doesn't come close to the full scope of Costello's considerable abilities, as well as those of his fellow Attractions. A better appreciation of them can be found on the Trust album itself, something that would carry forward the following year on the similarly hit-free masterpiece Imperial Bedroom. (The two albums bookend the release of Almost Blue, a collection of country music covers which resulted in the Top 10 single "A Good Year for the Roses"; I once worked in a bookstore with a guy who said it was his favourite Costello album which is tantamount to saying "I don't like Elvis Costello all that much") These two LPs represent him at the peak of his powers. So what if the hits had all dried up?

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Yoko Ono: "Walking on Thin Ice"

People have softened on Yoko Ono over the last few years but you still don't hear people praise her singing very much, do you? When people make fun of her unique vocals they don't appear to be referencing this song, even though it happened to be the biggest hit she made under her own name. Hepworth reckons that its chances of doing well are mainly down to the aftermath of John Lennon's murder (he was "working on [it] the night he was turned into a crime statistic") but surely they could've scraped the bottom of the barrel with something under his name if they really were after yet another sure-fire hit. It did all right (number 35, a peak it would hit again over twenty years later) but it has since been hailed as a bit of a classic, better than much of what ended up on John and Yoko's Double Fantasy album. Hepworth points out that Lennon's "sheet lighting guitar solo" is an example of how he "decided to leave the boundary-breaking" to his wife and he's right, especially considering how shockingly conventional Ono sounds on this same record. In any case, "Walking on Thin Ice" was a baby step towards her eventual rehabilitation in the eyes of the public and it would go on to be covered by (well, fancy that!) Elvis Costello. Fuzzbox would also go on to do a version of it at the end of the eighties; I wonder what it's like...

Max Q: "Way of the World"

20 September 1989

"This is the "solo" project of Michael Hutchence of INXS. He's teamed up an Australian musician pal of his and come up with this scorching epic."

— Richard Lowe

With absolutely no Top 40 hits to his name, the late Matt Fretton is likely the most obscure pop "star" to make the cover of an issue of Smash Hits. Then just eighteen-years-old, he was in an edition that also featured the second in a three part series called 'Who's Who' with the bios of people who all would've been better suited to the front page. The prominence didn't do much and single "It's So High" only put up a modest chart performance. Tellingly, then-editor Mark Ellen would later confess to some bad luck he had with choosing who to put on the cover, citing JoBoxers and Jimmy the Hoover but neglecting to mention Fretton. Imagine being so forgettable that you're not even remembered for your obscurity.

As Ellen has stated, there have been some curious choices — and not just under his watch. The magazine did a soft launch in the north of Britain with Belgian star Plastic Bertrand  on the cover but at least he had been a big deal in much of la Francophonie. One hit wonders such as Secret Affair, Classix Nouveaux, Department S, Marie Brennan of Clannad (on the cover with Bono, who wasn't on all that many Hits covers) and Hollywood Beyond were all Hits cover stars. Barry McIlheney took some grief for putting Wayne Hussy of The Misson on the front in 1987 and they had a few hits!

So, what if I was to tell you that Michael Hutchence was another of these more unusual selections for the front page of Smash Hits? The sex god lead singer of INXS, one of the biggest bands in the world in the late-eighties? A man who had Mick Jagger's charisma with infinitely more attractive features? A man who was not unlike Jim Morrison without all the unsavory elements? This man was on the cover of Smash Hits and it was a strange decision?

But consider the circumstances. INXS had been slow to take off in Britain. The modest Top 30 performances of both "New Sensation" and "Never Tear Us Apart" weren't enough to get them on the cover in place of, say, Rick Astley or the Pet Shop Boys. The group would only ever have one UK Top 10 hit when "Need You Tonight", a flop from a year earlier, came just short of hitting number one in November of 1988. Cover stars during that month were Yazz, Wet Wet Wet and Kylie and Jason (which happened to be the first issue I ever bought, my sister and I having decided that we could no longer share). A swift re-issue of another single from the hit-packed Kick in the New Year might have put them on the cover but "Mystify", rather mystifyingly, didn't hit the shops until that April.

That fall, however, there was suddenly a dearth of potential cover stars. The number one spot had been taken up by Jive Bunny, a cartoon rabbit front for studio boffins no one cared about, and Black Box, a similarly faceless Italian outfit with lip synching models, so there wasn't much for the magazine racks. Luckily, the lead singer of INXS had a single and album to promote. The fact that it happened to be with a side project was likely neither here nor there to the Hits staff; they weren't going to be pining for photos of Garry Gary Beers or Ollie Olsen. Nevertheless, Hutchence was on the cover of Smash Hits not as lead singer of a world famous rock group but as the one guy people would know in an otherwise no-name Melbourne musical project.

Michael Hutchence never sought to be a tabloid superstar. His looks and talent made millions swoon — while making plenty more bitterly jealous — but he was keen to prove there was much more to him than being a pinup. Like fellow model-dating heartthrob superstar Simon Le Bon, he wanted to show a deeper side. Luckily, Hutchence had connections and not simply ace studio musicians, producers to the stars and record company moguls. Having starred in the 1986 cult film Dogs in Space, he became acquainted with Olsen, whose roots were in early electronica and experimental music. The very unlikeliness of the pairing was what made the team up so appealing ("We both took a perverse interest in what would happen", he told Lola Borg in Smash Hits).

With the rest of INXS busying themselves with other projects, Hutchence made a go of cutting records without being a pop star. Infamously, the first sign that something was amiss was that he had gone out to his barber and returned a good deal lighter. (Ver Hits would comment that he looked like a vicar but they didn't speculate that this new do had anything to do with his new musical direction) With the new haircut came a certain anonymity that he hadn't enjoyed in his day job. His beautiful features are barely visible in the "Way of the World" video and the Max Q collective had their faces collaged together for the cover of their self-titled album. He didn't make any secret of his involvement but he didn't use his looks to get them onto the charts. (That said, he only took this reduced role so far; he was at last a Smash Hits cover star after-all)

With a different Michael Hutchence showing up, it's only right that a different side of him would come out in the music. INXS had never been a particularly political group (though they did appear on the Greenpeace Rainbow Warriors compilation from around this time) which makes "Way of the World" a particularly impressive piece. He used his voice differently as well, the Max Q album being a showcase for his underrated range and vocal power. The excellent INXS: Access All Areas podcast argues that his singing here marked a turning point as he would begin to use his voice to better effect on INXS' 1990 album X. (Similarly, the musical mishmash of Max Q may have contributed to its more experimental follow-up Welcome to Wherever You Are in 1992) On "Way of the World" he sounds not unlike Matt Johnson of The The with a sort of angry defiance. If no one was going to be looking at him then they were damn well going to listen.

"Way of the World" came out in a time of radical change in the world. The Tianamen Square protests had taken place in China that June and the Berlin Wall was soon to come down. Pop music became a vehicle for these sentiments but not all of it resulted in stellar work. (A number of people despise Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" but I'd still take it over either Jesus Jones' "Right Here Right Now" or The Sporpions' "Wind of Change") While others seemed to buy into that "End of History" nonsense, Hutchence's contribution retains a skeptical eye. Naysayers of the Russian Revolution some seventy years earlier would eventually contend that nothing changed and that power just shifted to another group (which doesn't explain why they supported the other side in the first place but I digress); if true, then why should we expect anything to change now? This pessimism could've been taken as raining on the parade back then but it makes the song even more potent considering the current state of the world. Hutchence never lived to see 9/11, the second Gulf War, the return of supposed strongmen leaders, the climate crisis and the current situation in Ukraine but he had seen enough. Indeed, the then-eminent wars in the Balkans showed that yet again all this talk of change wasn't going to do a damn thing.

Max Q ended up being a valuable interlude for Hutchence. The album as a whole isn't really my kind of thing but the the two main singles ("Sometimes" would follow "Way of the World" later in the autumn and it ended up doing a bit better on the charts) are very good. More importantly, it was a bold creative statement from someone who had been for too long dismissed as just a sex symbol. (Guitarist Andy Gill would say much the same about working with the singer on his posthumously released solo album) While the popularity of INXS would gradually begin to fade over the course of the nineties, their output remained strong. Max Q helped give those later years a shot in the arm that they needed.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

Belinda Carlisle: "Leave a Light On"

Richard Lowe admits to being a "sucker for thoroughly predictable American rock records with whistlable tunes, chugging guitars, big blustering choruses and words about nothing in particular except for general lovey-doveyness" and I'm right there with him — except, of course, when non-Americans try to do this sort of thing. With the nineties just weeks away, you'd think someone would've warned Belinda Carlisle about a sound that was soon to go out of fashion but it's something she stuck with for quite a while. (My aside above about post-Cold War political pop reminds me that the early nineties ended up being a useful time for everyone to fully excise the previous decade from their systems) "Leave a Light On" is one of those songs that you could easily forget all about for decades until it comes on and it all comes flooding back. I will probably forget all about it again tomorrow but I'm digging it today.