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.

Wendy & Lisa: "Sideshow"

13 January 1988

"It churns and stonks along and has some shiveringly pretty singing and the best thing about it is the way they pronounce "sideshow" as "satchel" on account of their "funny" American accents."

— Tom Hibbert

1988. A key year for Smash Hits and for your humble blogger. Pop itself may not have been in peak form but the magazine tasked with glorifying it was at the top of its game. An ace "crew" of music journos with a very liberal use of "inverted" commas made the British youth keep coming even when the pop stars themselves weren't much cop. Traces of the mag's roots in punk, new wave and New Pop remained even as the era of Stock Aitken Waterman and the return of the boy bands was upon us. You might say that late-eighties Smash Hits encompassed the entire decade.

For myself, 1988 was the year in which everything changed. I began to slowly get into music over the first several months of the year which would only serve as a teaser for our move to England that August. My sister began buying Smash Hits, we never missed Top of the Pops and I quickly took to sitting through the entirety of Bruno Brooks' Top 40 rundown on Sundays. (Saturday morning pop-centred fare such as Going Live and The Chart Show was a rarity, however, since we went away a lot on weekends) Many of my childish passions had been left behind in Canada, never to return. I also discovered my love for travel and took my first steps towards becoming the person that I am today. (Read into that whatever you will...)

In the world of ver Hits, '88 began right where they'd left off. Tom Hibbert takes the reigns once again as singles reviewer. Nothing new here, this was his tenth "go" at it. Turns out, it would also be his last. Hibs had been with the top pop mag for a while, a throwback to the days when critics were about his age, not several decades younger. He would act as inspiration and mentor to a generation of excellent writers but this chapter was beginning to close. He wasn't yet done — it wasn't as if there was anyone else capable of replacing him as Black Type — but as this was his last kick at the singles "can" then this entry can be his farewell. And what a run it was: from getting me to shift ever so slightly on Big Country to making me suspect that he used his position in order to give the covert impression that modern pop was nothing but crap

His final SOTF was awarded to Wendy & Lisa for their single "Sideshow" and, for once, I don't think he's trolling anyone either. He reckons it's "really groovy" and "frightfully "sexy", if you will pardon the term". A much more convincing case than his justifications for the likes of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Limahl and even Heart. Hibs actually liked at least one pop song from this time? Yes, I believe he did.

The Revolution had been modern pop's answer to Duke Ellington's orchestra. Both organizations had immensely talented figures at the forefront and both were backed by musicians with considerable abilities of their own. People like Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard and Cootie Williams all seemed like stars but their lofty status only remained while under Ellington's employ; on their own, they could never escape his shadow. Not unlike Prince's backing band. The Purple Perv had a formidable lineup that had helped him through his prime years and it seemed like these people were all stars in waiting as opposed to, say, The E-Street Band, a group that looked like they'd end up right back in Asbury Park, NJ as plumbers (or accountants in the case of Max Weinberg) if The Boss had ever had them disbanded.

On the other hand, Ellington knew that he needed the key members of his group. The departure of Hodges in 1951 resulted in a lukewarm four year solo career for the alto saxophonist and a bit of a creative downturn for Duke. He composed with particular soloists in mind and struggled a bit with one of his top players missing. Prince had been underpaying his musicians for some time and his decision to augment The Revolution was unpopular. He would eventually blow the group up and the success of the resulting solo trilogy — Sign o' the Times, The Black Album and Lovesexy — must have led him to believe that he was better off doing everything himself. Being a generational talent — as multi-faceted musically as Paul McCartney, as chameleonic as David Bowie, as prolific as Miles Davis — this was something he was always capable of but the price he paid was the end of his great period.

Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman decided to venture out of the ashes of The Revolution as a duo, though one that also utilised former Revolution drummer Bobby Z. as well as Wendy's twin sister Susannah, who had been a member of Prince associate act The Family. Carrying on where they left off, their sound's source is unmistakable. Fair enough too since Prince's influence was all over the world of pop in the late eighties so why shouldn't his former bandmates indulge? It did, however, keep them tied too much to Prince who they would never fully get away from.

Much of Wendy & Lisa's self-titled debut album is about them finding their feet and establishing a sound of their own. A lot of the time it works and it mostly does on "Sideshow" except for the fact that it revels a little too much in its obscurity. In sending up their also-ran status as a mere 'sideshow', the pair display a degree of humour that Prince often lacked but there's the worrying sense that they were predicting their fate. Of course, this is easy for me to say in 2021 but listeners in 1988 may not have taken them seriously if they weren't in on the gag.

Otherwise, it's a perfectly nice pop-funk-soul number and one that holds up well alongside Prince's work from the same time. They're both excellent musicians and good vocalists, even if I wouldn't exactly describe their singing as "shiveringly pretty". It's far from being a mind-blowing performance but it suggests that they were on to something. They were sure to be the Next Big Thing — all they had to do was move themselves away from the Last Big Thing.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Fall: "Victoria"

Mark E. Smith and whoever else happened to be in The Fall (was Brix still a member?) displayed a bit of thing for the sixties back in '88. Faithful and fun covers of both The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" and The Kinks' "Victoria" resulted. They're both good but the latter is preferred despite its predictability. One can almost imagine Ray Davies believing all his royalist irony but you won't make the same mistake with Smith. Musically it lacks the charm of the original but there's a strong group performance and Smith "sings" it with far more swagger than Davies. A good effort that deserved to give The Fall a second top 40 hit and one that you might want to listen to a few times. Unlike "A Day in the Life", in which once will suffice.