Album 496.
ABC...................................the Lexicon of Love   (1982)













Martin Fry's ABC were arty punk funksters from the same Sheffield scene that spawned Caberet Voltaire and The Human League. Buggles frontman Trevor Horn produced them,which could have been a disaster but instead became a match made in pop heaven.


Horn and Fry programed the arrangements for each song using a primitive sequencer,a Mini-Moog and a drum machine. Then the band re-recorded every part, erasing the synth demos as they went along,"it was like tracing" says Horn,"Which meant we got it really snappy and in your face"


The grandiose settings are constantly undercut by Fry's beautifully bleak lyrics about the impossibility of love and the illusory nature of beauty.



I had this one back in the day.

shedboy wrote:

arabchanter wrote:

shedboy wrote:

  Maybe take out my pissed contributions mind you ;)

If you take out the pissed contributions and meanderings, you might have enough left for a flyer!
 

 not sure its a compliment lol as ive spouted some shite ;)

You and me both  

arabchanter wrote:

Album 496.
ABC...................................the Lexicon of Love   (1982)













Martin Fry's ABC were arty punk funksters from the same Sheffield scene that spawned Caberet Voltaire and The Human League. Buggles frontman Trevor Horn produced them,which could have been a disaster but instead became a match made in pop heaven.


Horn and Fry programed the arrangements for each song using a primitive sequencer,a Mini-Moog and a drum machine. Then the band re-recorded every part, erasing the synth demos as they went along,"it was like tracing" says Horn,"Which meant we got it really snappy and in your face"


The grandiose settings are constantly undercut by Fry's beautifully bleak lyrics about the impossibility of love and the illusory nature of beauty.



I had this one back in the day.

Classic album - pity the first album was the peak of their powers.

Album 496.
ABC...................................the Lexicon of Love   (1982)













Well, I fair enjoyed re-visiting this album.What's so good about this album then, well for starters you've got Fry's very articulate songwriting, then you add in the not insignificant genius that is Trevor Horn,working his magic on the production.arrangement side of things,not forgetting his team (who went on to form The Art of Noise)


This album is smooth,sophisticated and a great listen, even if you took off the four singles "Poison Arrow," "Tears Are Not Enough,"The Look Of Love " and my personal favourite "All Of My Heart" I think I would probably still buy it as the other tracks are not a kick in the arse behind the afore mentioned songs.


Martin Fry oozed cool and sophistication,also had a very distinctive yet underrated vocal style that I thoroughly enjoyed, but in saying that, I wouldnay want to stuck in the trenches wi' him, I reckon he'd throw a tantrum if he ended up with "helmet hair"


Anyways, whether it's nostalgia (although I did find it as fresh as I remembered it) the cracking lyrics (do yourself a favour and read the lyrics while listening) or the warm and faultless production of Mr Horn, this album made me feel damn good.


This album will be going into my collection.




Bits & Bobs;

How we made: ABC's Martin Fry and Anne Dudley on The Lexicon of Love


 'There was a touch of James Bond to it all. It was all very aspirational and cosmopolitan'



Martin Fry, singer-songwriter



Disco was a dirty word by 1982. But I loved the strings on Chic records, and the whole soundscape of Earth, Wind & Fire. Fusing that with the likes of the Cure and Joy Division was what we were after – while Mark White, our guitarist, was keen to give the album the feel of a film soundtrack. The highly theatrical sleeve even had a touch of that old movie classic The Red Shoes to it: that was a pretty bonkers film, more intense and emotional than factual. The Lexicon of Love is a bit like that. I used a lot of falsetto, partly to convey the rollercoaster ride – the elation and despair – of being in love.



 We'd made the top 20 with our first single, Tears Are Not Enough, in 1981, and wanted this follow-up album to be more polished. After hearing Dollar's Hand Held i Black and White, which had this panoramic, widescreen sound, we approached its producer, Trevor Horn. He got what we were trying to do immediately. We were full of ideas and thought we could change rock'n'roll – very ambitious for guys who'd just been signing on the dole in Sheffield.


 Lyrically, while I loved the likes of Gary Numan and OMD, I wanted to take my songs to a more emotional level, along the lines of Rodgers and Hammerstein or Cole Porter. At that time, there were few songs about really loving or hating someone; and, whereas punk had been quite blokey, women make their presence felt in Lexicon. It was unusual to feature strings so prominently, too, unless you were Cilla Black or Cliff Richard. The Look of Love, which got to No 4, had all these pizzicato arrangements over a moog bassline, while All of My Heart (No 5) was very Bridge Over Troubled Water.


 Imagewise, the gold lame suits and dinner jackets were us turning away from punk. There was an element of James Bond to it all, very aspirational and cosmopolitan. Thirty years on, I'm performing these songs with a full orchestra. I've lived a full life and have two children now, so it's interesting coming back to All of My Heart – and singing it as a man rather than a boy.



 Anne Dudley, keyboards, arranger


ABC had no keyboard player, so Trevor Horn brought me in. At some stage during the recording of The Look of Love, he decided it needed a real string and brass section. With the confidence of youth, I volunteered to do the arrangement, even though my experience was minimal. When we recorded the 30-piece string section at Abbey Road, I was often the youngest person in the room. I'd always loved the orchestral flourishes in Gamble and Huff's disco classic The Sound of Philadelphia. These became my chief inspiration, alongside the soaring yet simple string lines in Bee Gees records; and there was even a bit of Vaughan Williams in there, too.


 I remember hearing the mix of The Look of Love and being amazed at how loud Trevor had made the strings. It was really nailing the ABC colours to the mast: this was to be an unapologetically lush and epic album. From then on, it was a given that we would add strings to many tracks, developing the unique sound of the album – a combination of cutting-edge technology, electronic sounds and real instruments. It's a mixture I've been exploring ever since.



To be honest, I thought All of My Heart was rather weak at first, until Trevor added the dramatic pause at the end of the chorus, before the line "all of my heart". We then mixed in some timpani, while the fadeout was a chance for me to have an English pastoral moment. In the end, it was probably Martin's best vocal performance, and it became a stand-out song. But the tracks were all outstanding, Martin's witty and effortless lyrics encapsulating the trials of young love. The Lexicon of Love made it to No 1, and I'm delighted with how it sounds 30 years on – and not too embarrassed by my youthful efforts.



"Tears Are Not Enough"
 
ABC's first single was a spare funk tune produced by Steve Brown in which Martin Fry contends that "tears are not enough" to prove that a girl's emotions are genuine. The song peaked at #19 on the UK singles chart, whilst in the US, it was released as the B-side of "Poison Arrow."


 
The version that can be heard on the Lexicon of Love album was re-recorded by the band and produced by Trevor Horn. It features lavish orchestration by Art Of Noise's Anne Dudley, one of several on the LP. According to Horn, they were her first ever string arrangements.



"The Look Of Love"

You need to read beyond the title on this one - it's not a chirpy love song, but about how to deal with it when love goes away. ABC lead singer Martin Fry told Uncut that this song is "genuinely about the moment you get your teeth kicked in by somebody you love f--king off. You feel like s--t but you have to search for some sort of meaning in your life."


 
A track from the group's first album, this was ABC's biggest hit in the UK, peaking at #4. It also topped the Canadian singles chart.


 
On the album, this song is listed as "The Look Of Love (Part One)," with the last track being a short version of the song called "The Look Of Love (Part Four)." What happened to parts two and three? They appear on the 12" single along with the others. Part Two is an instrumental, and Part Three is a remix.


 
Martin Fry mentions his forename in the lyric when he sings: "They say 'Martin, maybe, one day you'll find true love.'"


 
Trevor Horn, who was also involved with Yes, The Buggles and The Art Of Noise, produced this track. He also did a remix, "The Look of Love (Part 5)," using a Fairlight synthesizer. This 12-inch single, whic was issued to club DJs, may have been the first instance of a pop song being remixed with scratching and it was among the earliest remixes to be based upon samples.


 
MTV played a big role in ABC's American success, and the video for this song was a favorite on the network, which launched in 1981. The clip was directed by Brian Grant, and inspired by old Hollywood movies. Martin Fry describes it as a cross between An American In Paris and The Benny Hill Show. Grant's videos were all over MTV in those early years; his other work includes "Stand Back" by Stevie Nicks and "Saved By Zero" by The Fixx.


 
The band's appreciation of Smokey Robinson is well documented, and Smokey had "the look of love" long before ABC. In his 1971 song "I Don't Blame You At All" (a #11 hit in the UK), he sings, "What I thought was the look of love was only hurt in disguise."



Thought I'd share this interview with Trevor Horn, I found it rather interesting;


2 February 2012  Interview: Trevor Horn




 ‘That coldness; that precision’: Simon Price meets the man who invented the eighties  There’s a moment in ‘The Troggs Tapes’, the sixties band’s legendary studio outtake, in which drummer Ronnie Bond, during a heated debate over the sound of their new single, argues, in a richly agricultural accent, “You’ve got to put a little bit of fucking fairy dust over the baaastard.”



  If any man on earth knows all about putting a little bit of fucking fairy dust over the bastard, it’s Trevor Horn. If you hear any record from that golden period between punk and Live Aid which shimmers and sparkles and seems to fly above the earth, it was either produced by Trevor Horn (see: The Buggles, ABC, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Grace Jones, Dollar, Pet Shop Boys, Propaganda, Malcolm McLaren and countless others), or trying to sound as if it was (see: pretty much everyone else). The immaculate cleanliness of what Paul Morley christened ‘the new pop’ was Horn’s handiwork. He is, essentially, the man who invented the eighties.


 Lenses as thick as milk bottle bottoms, he relaxes on a brown leather sofa in the loft of his own Sarm Studios, the converted Notting Hill church whose history dates back to legendary seventies sessions by Led Zeppelin and Bob Marley And The Wailers. It’s very much a working studio: intermittently, the conversation is disrupted by thunderous bass explosions from the floors below, and he explains “Sorry, that’s The Prodigy recording their new album.”


 The pretext for talking to Horn is his involvement in 30/30, a collaborative project between the EMI label and the Roundhouse venue which offers unsigned artists the chance to work with top producers for free (Trevor’s recorded a track with 22-year-old Londoner Azekel), but at any given time, Horn has several plates spinning. He’s just announced, for example, that his old band The Buggles will go on tour for the first time ever in 2012.


 “I’m keen to get out on the road and play live,” he says, smiling and habitually squeaking his shoes together as he speaks. “I’ve been stuck in a studio for 30 years. The Buggles never played live at the time! That was the joke. When that thing [he means ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’] was a hit, I’d been a bassist for years, I’d played on all kinds of things…”


 Born in 1949, Horn’s early life, growing up in Durham with schoolteacher father and a mother from a mining family, could barely have been further from the swing of things.


 “I didn’t come to London till I was 21, and it was a different world then: all these ballrooms like the Hammersmith Palais would have a DJ, but they would also have a band. And it was a way to earn a living as a musician. Two nights a week, the ballroom dancing would stop, then we’d play whatever was in the charts. I could read music, and I could play bass, which was a very new instrument in the early seventies, so if you could do those two things, you could make a living. And I was really stupid and I used to behave badly and get drunk and do all kinds of silly things because I was bored out of my mind.”


 That boredom proved productive.



  “When I got to 25 I left London, went back to the provinces and built a recording studio — me and another guy, with our bare hands. And I started fixing up other people’s songs — people who’d won a local songwriters’ competition, and someone said to me, ‘You know, what you’re doing is called being a record producer.’ I’d seen that credit on records but I never knew what it was. And I just had this moment where I knew that was what I was going to do. From that moment, it took me six years to get my first hit, and I earned my living playing crap and whatever.”


 That “crap and whatever” included an album with CBS-backed flop John Howard, and his own “sci-fi disco” project Chromium, whose single ‘Caribbean Air Control’ featured an early example of Horn’s sonic inventiveness.


 “This was ’77, and I made a ‘drum machine’ using tape and getting my drummer to play fours,” he says. “People would say, ‘It sounds like fuckin’ machines!’ and I’d reply, ‘That’s exactly the point!’”
 Even though punk was going on around him, Horn was never a convert. “Being a muso, it wasn’t easy to be a fan of punk. Although I think I became more of a fan of punk when I was in America in 1982, and I got so angry with American radio, and then ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’ by The Clash came on the air and I had tears in my eyes. I thought, ‘It’s so crap, it’s fantastic!’”


 Nevertheless, in a roundabout way, the punk explosion did affect Horn’s thinking. “In the seventies there were rock gods — Elton John, Rod Stewart — everyone sounded fabulous, everyone could sing really well, and it was daunting. Then the punk thing happened, and I thought, ‘If people will listen to that, what am I afraid of? I can do anything!’”


 Horn wasn’t a lover of disco either, despite a stint playing bass for producer Biddu and his protégée Tina Charles, of ‘I Love To Love’ fame.


 “I hated that shit,” he remembers, “but that’s what I played. I was Tina Charles’s boyfriend for a while. I learned a lot from her. Tina came home one night with the first backing track from a professional producer I’d ever heard. I’d tried making my own backing tracks but they sounded wrong. Biddu knew what he was doing: the drum machine was tight, everyone played exactly what he told them to, it was all really well put together. And I played it all night, thinking that’s what I’m trying to get to: that coldness, that precision.”


 Horn’s dreams of being a renowned session man were starting to fade. “I flirted with jazz rock. I wanted to be Stanley Clarke. Tina Charles told me that if I practised for every minute left in my life I would never be as good as Stanley Clarke, and that all I was was a loser.”


 However, it was while he was on Charles’s payroll that he and bandmates Geoffrey Downes (keyboards) and Bruce Woolley (guitar) conceptualised what would become Horn’s ticket to stardom: The Buggles.


 The Buggles, ‘I Am A Camera’



 “The idea came about because Bruce and I loved The Man-Machine by Kraftwerk, and the records Daniel Miller was making as The Normal — ‘Warm Leatherette’. We even read JG Ballard’s Crash because of that. It was an interesting time, you could feel something was coming in the eighties. We had this idea that at some future point there’d be a record label that didn’t really have any artists — just a computer in the basement and some mad Vincent Price-like figure making the records. Which I know has kinda happened, but in 1978 there were no computers in music yet, really. And one of the groups this computer would make would be The Buggles, which was obviously a corruption of The Beatles, who would just be this inconsequential bunch of people with a hit song that the computer had written. And The Buggles would never be seen.”



 That hit song, ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, took a while to materialise. “We had the opening line for ages — ‘I heard you on the wireless back in ’52’ — but couldn’t figure out the next line. Then one afternoon we were chatting and it just came — ‘lying awake intently tuning in on you’ — because we were talking about Jimmy Clitheroe and Ken Dodd and the classic age of fifties radio comedy. And I’d read The Sound-Sweep by JG Ballard, and some of that was in there — the abandoned studio, ‘rewritten by machine on new technology’… ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ just popped out.”



 Released in September 1979, the fiendishly catchy single was a number one across the world (and, famously, became the first song ever played on MTV). Suddenly, at the age of 30, Trevor Horn was a pop star.


 Regarding never touring, he says: “We were eminently able to play live — we were musos and ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ was relatively easy to play. What held us back was we went all over Europe promoting that single, then the follow-up ‘Living In The Plastic Age’, then we met Yes!”


 In one of the most incongruous transfer deals of the eighties, the sugary synth-pop act were swallowed up by the monsters of prog rock, who had a vacancy for a singer and a keyboardist.


 “Suddenly I was impersonating Jon Anderson in front of 24,000 people,” says Horn. “When someone offers you something like that, c’mon, you’ve got to do it…


 It was a great experience. And it makes you a bit fearless in a recording studio. What else can life throw at you?”



 Life in a touring stadium rock band wasn’t to Trevor’s liking, and after seven months he quit. Downes, however, stayed on board. “Geoffrey had had a taste of something other than novelty hit pop-dom, and he wanted to go and rock. And I didn’t blame him. The choice between staying in The Buggles and selling five million albums with [supergroup] Asia, as he went on to do, was an easy decision.”



 ABC, ‘The Look Of Love’


 Adventures In Modern Recording, the second Buggles album, was practically a Trevor Horn solo effort. Considered a cult classic by aficionados of studio-craft, it was a commercial failure. “I think the songs are terrible,” he admits, “but the production is great.” By the time of its release, however, Horn had already found his vocation: producing records for other acts.


 “It was kind of unconscious,” he continues. “My wife [Jill Sinclair] owned a studio. And when Geoffrey left The Buggles, Jill became my manager. She said, ‘My first bit of advice is that as an artist, you’ll only ever be second or third division, however hard you try. But if you go into production, you’ll be the best producer in the world.’ She was quite purposeful. And the first thing she suggested was Dollar. I said, ‘Why would I wanna work with Dollar!? A cheesy pop duo.’ And she said, ‘Do a Buggles record, but have them front it.’ So I met them, and that’s exactly what they wanted.”


 The saccharine duo of David Van Day and Theresa Bazar were all but washed-up till Horn took them on as his playthings and used them, on a run of singles including the sublime ‘Hand Held In Black And White’, as a vehicle to showcase his ideas.


 “There was something sweet about them — these little people living in this techno-pop world — and we wrote ‘Hand Held In Black And White’ on the spot. The same afternoon we wrote ‘Mirror Mirror’, which was about them looking at each other. I thought it came out well, but I never thought much about it until I ran into Hans Zimmer [Hollywood composer and Buggles collaborator], who said, ‘I heard your record with Dollar, it’s really good,’ and loads of people seemed to like it. Then an astounding thing happened: the NME liked it! Paul Morley liked it. And then I was on a roll. It was epic. I only did four songs, and the final one, ‘Videotheque’, was about them seeing themselves on film. So it was like a little opera.”


 The Dollar project led onto Horn’s masterpiece, ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love.


 “My wife found ABC, again. She was looking for a bright young band, and they were smart guys. And they were hilarious. They said to me, ‘If you work with us, you’ll be the most fashionable producer in the world, because this week, on Thursday, we were the most fashionable band in the world.’ They went to this club in Sheffield, where they were at university, and they used to dance to soul records, and they wanted to make their soul record. It took me a bit of time to get what they wanted, because to me, it was disco. But it was disco a generation on.”


 Horn says that “samplers were just starting to come in on that album” and indeed he and his team were pioneers of the use of sampling in pop.


 “Geoffrey had one of the first Fairlights [a digital sampling synthesiser] that made it to England. We used them on the second Buggles album, and with Yes on Drama. I think we were the first people to put a human’s voice in it, on Dollar’s ‘Give Me Back My Heart’.”


 Given that Horn’s aim was “coldness and precision”, the sampler was the perfect tool.


 His next big project was Duck Rock with Malcolm McLaren, who had just discovered the black American craze for scratching — a technique of ad hoc ‘sampling’ which must have seemed strangely primitive next to the Fairlight.


 “That’s what drew me into it!” he says. “At first, Malcolm was talking about ‘world music’. All that South African stuff that Paul Simon took up later, we were there two years earlier on ‘Double Dutch’. But Malcolm said, ‘In New York the black kids scratch European techno records.’ And I was like, ‘What? Don’t they like soul music?’ He said, ‘Nooo! They’re into Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode!’ And it was all starting to kick off. The first time I heard scratching was on ‘Buffalo Gals’, and I thought it was fucking amazing. It was the same thing as the Fairlight, really. What a great guy Malcolm was. If he grabbed onto an idea, you couldn’t stop him, even if it seemed so hopeless at times. You could listen to him talk for hours. I remember being sat on a New York street with Malcolm and [engineer] Gary Langan, going there at lunchtime, and the next time I looked at my watch it was eight o’clock in the evening.”


 In 1983, Horn reunited with Yes, this time as a producer for the album 90125, featuring one of his most revered creations: ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’, a berserk piece of sliced-and-diced symphonic metal.


 Grace Jones, Slave To The Rhythm


 The Art Of Noise, the entirely electronic act Horn formed with Gary Langan, Anne Dudley, programmer JJ Jeczalik and journalist Paul Morley, grew from those Yes sessions. They were the first band on ZTT, the Futurist-inspired label Horn set up with Paul Morley. It was a strange union: the studio boffin and the arch-conceptualist.


 “I didn’t realise what music journalists did,” says Horn. “Not really. Then I kind of got it with Paul. What they do is romanticise us. And there’s a need for that, because I’m not really going to romanticise myself. So I thought Paul would be an exciting guy to start a label with. And it was exciting for a while. The problem with record labels, however, is that when you start, everybody wants your input, but the minute the artists are established, they want you out of the way. And it’s ‘theirs’. If you wanna hang on in there, you need to be more pragmatic. And Paul, in 1984, was mental. He and my wife Jill would fight like hell, and I had to be in the middle of that. But out of that comes friction, fire…”


 ZTT’s biggest success, by far, came after Horn spotted a quintet of pervy Scousers in leather jockstraps on television.


 “I’d had a big row with Yes and I wasn’t speaking to anybody in the band. Then this group called Frankie Goes To Hollywood came on The Tube and Chris Squire [Yes bassist] said, ‘They look like the sort of band you should have on your new record label.’ I can’t remember being particularly smitten by the song, but what I did like was the drummer — the way he was playing four-on-the-floor. And then I was driving home listening to David Jensen on Radio 1, and he played a session of ‘Relax’. And the song was all about gay sex, but they were being ever-so-polite when he interviewed them. I came in and I said to my wife, ‘I think we should sign this band called Frankie Goes To Hollywood.’ I remember meeting them, and they said they wanted to sound like a cross between Kiss and Donna Summer, and I thought that was great.”


 Frankie’s first single, ‘Relax’, was one of the biggest-selling singles of the decade (with the unwitting assistance of a “ban” from Radio 1’s Mike Read), and pioneered the format of the multiple 12”.
 “We ‘performed’ the 7” version — the band playing their instruments, JJ on the Fairlight, me operating the drum machine, altering it as we went along. Then we did a version for 14 minutes that we called the Sex Mix that I did some pretty gross things over — just fucking around — and it didn’t have the song anywhere in it. The first 10,000 12”s that came out didn’t have the song: they just had ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’, the Sex Mix, and a Paul Morley interview on the back. And we got LOADS of complaints, particularly from gay clubs who were angry about some of the noises on the Sex Mix.


 “The record had been out for a few weeks and it wasn’t doing much. Then I was in New York with [then-Island Records boss] Chris Blackwell, and he took me clubbing to Paradise Garage, which really opened my eyes. The DJs — the New York Citi Peech Boys — were playing records including a lot of my 12”s, like the ABC ones, but they also had projectors and drum machines and synths, and it was huge. And when I saw that, I realised I needed to go and do another mix of ‘Relax’ so it would go over at a place like that — ’cos when you play it really loud, through those bins, you barely need anything else but the drum machine. So I went to the Hit Factory in New York, and the engineer there… I could tell he didn’t like it and I had to really push him, saying, ‘Look, I know this is all drum machine, but that’s what you have to do to make it work. Push that there, push this here.”


 The Art Of Noise, ‘Moments In Love’


 Not everyone got the Frankie thing, especially Stateside.


 “I remember I was working with Foreigner when ‘Relax’ came out, and someone sent over the video — you know, the pissing one. Foreigner said, ‘You think this is GOOD!?’ And I was like, ‘Um, yes I do, actually! Although I wasn’t expecting the pissing…’”


 Another eighties tour de force was Horn’s one-off collaboration with cuboid-headed, chat show host-slapping fembot Grace Jones.


 “Grace was a trip. I only did one track with her, ‘Slave To The Rhythm’, but I got a bit carried away and did six different versions. When she did that song at my Prince’s Trust Concert at Wembley in 2004, it was such a moment: I saw hardened musos in the band with tears in their eyes. But when I asked her to do it, she had a right go at me about how I never return her calls, how she hated the music business, and at the end of it all I said, ‘Sorry, but will you do this show?’ She said, ‘I’ll do it, but it will cost you.’ I said, ‘Cost me what? From my pocket? From my soul? From whatever else?’ And she said, ‘ALL OF THEM!!!’”


 I wonder whether Horn consciously distinguishes, in his own mind, between records where he’s simply doing a professional job and records where he’s creating art.


 “It’s an interesting question,” he says. “They’re all pop records, really, and they’re either hits or they’re not. ‘There You’ll Be’ by Faith Hill is a very good record, but it’s completely different from ABC. But there was a point in the eighties where I suddenly just stopped messing around with all the sampling stuff. I’d had enough of it. There was too much of that stuff by that point anyway, and everyone was all over it.”
 One of Horn’s biggest post-eighties successes, Seal’s ‘Kiss From A Rose’ (for which he won a Grammy), is also one of his most conventional.


 “Yeah, well I don’t determine those things. The song determines it. ‘Kiss From A Rose’ was unusual. It reminded me of a song from the sixties or something. I always try to make records that aren’t going to date too quickly, because if you do records that are exactly what’s now, and make the song fit into some sort of… new brutality, it doesn’t work. ‘Kiss From A Rose’ is meant to be normal and lovely. The originality comes in all that stuff he does: [sings] ‘Baby!!!’ in amongst that funny old folk song vibe he’s got going on. And he had all that in his head. I grabbed it as fast as I could.”


 One of Horn’s most eyebrow-raising hook-ups in recent years was Belle And Sebastian’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress in 2003: the master of hi-gloss studio sheen meets the icons of ultra-schmindie lo-fi.
 “I know, but I loved that song of theirs, ‘Stars Of Track And Field’. My daughter used to play it all the time. And my PA in LA, a girl called Marianne, did their caravan at Coachella, and she set it up. They’d had a bad experience with a producer, and I thought, if they’re gonna be produced, I don’t want anyone to spoil them, you know what I mean? The album after Dear Catastrophe Waitress I didn’t like as much, because I thought the guy tried to make them sound like something, whereas I just tried to get the best version of them.”


 And then came a two-headed pseudo-Sapphic pop phenomenon called T.A.T.U.


 “I went to see [Interscope chairman] Jimmy Iovine, who’s a real character. He played me the Russian version of ‘Not Gonna Get Us’ by T.A.T.U. and I loved it. He said it was the first time he’d sold a million records in Russia, which probably meant 40 million, because most of them don’t get accounted for. They asked me to write an English lyric, and I sat down with the Russians, which was daunting. So I wrote ‘All The Things She Said’, and I was gonna imply it was more of a teenage infatuation rather than embarking on a lifetime of… whatever.”


 Weren’t they really lesbians, then?


 “Naaaah! They weren’t really 14, either! They were under 20, which in music business terms means you can get away with it. But they were great girls; a good laugh. As my daughter said, ‘They snogged their way across Europe.’”


 There are so many other records we haven’t had time to discuss. I’m kicking myself for not mentioning Marc Almond’s Tenement Symphony album or Propaganda’s ‘Dr Mabuse’ single. As I hand him my copies of the fairy dust-coated ‘Hand Held In Black And White’ and a rare ‘Relax’ white label to sign, I wonder how he’s avoided burning out.


 “I have a really good team,” the über-nerd genius says, peering up through those milk bottle specs. “We’re diligent. We don’t go to the pub in the evening. We’d rather work on some vocals. 


 

Great album, and a fantastic vocalist in Martin Fry.

I saw him with ABC, touring with Culture Club and Heaven 17 in the 'nineties at the SECC: easily the best act, blew the others off the stage and a great voice still. All the more remarkable then that he had suffered Hodgkin's Lymphona at only 28 in 1985.

Pre Karaoke becoming popular in this country, I used to (try to) sing Poison Arrow in the pub close to closing time in order to impress, but it didn't and I was usually asked to leave. Friday or Saturday nights only.

Thank goodness I've grown up.

Now you’re talking!!

Last edited by japanarab (07/3/2019 6:54 am)

Album 497.
Prince..............................................1999   (1982)














Right so here we go, let's talk about the " Minneapolis Midget," was he the "ful shillin?' " probably no', was he talented? Hell yeah, was Sheena Easton a "purple people eater?" ........I'd like to think she was, and if Prince fancied dining at the Lady Garden Cafe, would he be going down or more than like having to go up?


Anyways "1999," I fair enjoyed side one, and if you could buy just side one, I'd certainly buy it, but fuck me the other three sides were brutal, in my humbles, sounded like the matinee at the "Tiv" back in the day, a' they clorty fuckers wi' false arms in their raincoats, giving their old man a polish to some shite Scandinavian washing machine repair man having his wicked way wi' some gorgeous housewife who has conveniently forgot to put her knickers on that morning (or so I've been told .) This reminded me of Michael Jackson with all the squealing and grunting,somebody who really been should have been made to live in "Nonceland" rather than "Neverland," (but we''ll get to that fucker later, I'd imagine)



Prince allegedly plays every instrument,wrote every song, and probably had a hand in Italy winning the world cup that year as well, seems like one of those cunts we've all worked who comes oot with "am meh the only fucker graftin' here" So "1999" with tracks ranging from 4 minutes to 9 fuckin' minutes, for me sounded quite the "self-obsessed" album, side one apart I found the rest of the album to be "wanking fodder" at best.



One thing to take away from this boy is, from his humble beginnings as a "test pilot for Airfix" he went on to become quite the pop star, so there is hope for us all yet.



This album wont be going into my collection.




Bits & Bobs;


On his 35th birthday (June 7, 1993), he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, a mixture of the male and female signs combined with the alchemy symbol for soapstone. The media began referring to him as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince," or simply "The Artist." His staff at Paisley Park, on the other hand, called him "the dude." In May 2000, he changed his name back to Prince.


 
His birth name is Prince Rogers Nelson, taken from his father's stage name - Prince Rogers - in the jazz band The Prince Rogers Trio. His father's real name is John L. Nelson.


 
Raised in Minneapolis, his nickname in school was "Skipper." Despite his small stature, being only 5'2" tall, he was a very talented basketball player as a teenager and played for one of the best school teams in Minnesota. His brother, Duane Nelson, was also a basketball and football player for Central High School, which they both attended.


 
He played all of the instruments and wrote all of the songs on his first album, For You (though "Soft and Wet" was co-written by producer Chris Moon). He continued to write, produce arrange and play most instruments on all recordings since.


 
He wrote hit songs for several other artists including "Manic Monday" for the Bangles and "The Glamarous Life" for Sheila E. Covers of his songs have also been hits, including Chaka Khan's "I Feel For you."


 
Getting his record deal at 18 and his first album For You coming out at 19, his arrangement with Warner Bros. made him the youngest artist in its history to be given complete artistic control in the studio.


 
Prince became a Jehovah's Witness in the late '90s, and in accordance with the faith, stopped using profanity in his performances and recordings after his conversion. Prince was known to visit homes randomly in the Minneapolis area to spread the word of the Jehovah's Witnesses. It is believed that he was introduced to the church by bassist Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone and Graham Central Station.


 
Prince was a child prodigy - he learned to play over a dozen instruments before the age of 15. The first song he learned to play on the piano was the original Batman theme when he was 7 years old. In 1989, Tim Burton enlisted him to create the soundtrack for his Batman film, which produced the hit song "Batdance." None of this is coincidental in Prince's mind.



"There are no accidents," he told Details magazine in 1991. "And if there are, it's up to us to look at them as something else."


 
In July 2007, he gave away copies of the album Planet Earth for free in the UK newspaper Mail on Sunday. It didn't seem like a good marketing move until he announced 21 consecutive London concert dates and sold out all of them.


 
Prince shunned collaborations. He turned down an offer to duet with Michael Jackson in the '80s, and also refused to perform on "We Are The World." The controversy surrounding Prince's exit from the charity single inspired a Saturday Night Live skit spoofing the event. Billy Crystal played Prince, who led the song "I Am Also The World."


 
On his 2004 tour, Prince required a doctor backstage to administer a B-12 injection. His rider for that tour also asked for tables at all entry points for collection of gifts and flowers.


 
In 1980, he was the supporting act on Rick James' tour. Later that year, James headlined for Prince's Dirty Mind tour.


 
Prince loved ping pong. He and his band played a lot of the table sport when touring. When his Under the Cherry Moon co-star Kristin Scott Thomas was a guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, the host shared a funny story about Prince's love for the game.



Apparently, the singer wanted to play a game of ping pong with Fallon on the show, but he kept changing his mind. His representatives kept calling the host to say Prince wanted to, then didn't want to, then wanted to again, then didn't want to again. It even got to the point where he told Fallon he would play with him off-camera because "he just thinks you'd be fun to play ping pong with." Finally, Fallon said they would have a table set up just in case. Prince did come on the show, but there was no mention of ping pong again.


 
In 1993, during negotiations regarding the release of Prince's album The Gold Experience, the Purple One realized his contract with Warners meant they owned his master tapes. The Minneapolis star sued for release from the label, and vowed to display the word "Slave" on his cheek until he was free. "If they made jokes I'd say, Go right ahead," Prince told Mojo. "I had their attention."


 
During an appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show, Prince was asked what household chores he does. He replied: "I can cook, but only one thing - omelets. All my friends have high cholesterol."


 
Prince was always finicky about giving interviews. When he did allow them, he often confounded journalists by not allowing them to use a tape recorder or even a simple pen and paper to take notes. Sometimes, he didn't even speak at all.



"I used to tease a lot of journalists early on," he told Rolling Stone in 1985, "because I wanted them to concentrate on the music and not so much on me coming from a broken home. I really didn't think that was important. What was important was what came out of my system that particular day. I don't live in the past. I don't play my old records for that reason. I make a statement, then move on to the next."


 
Prince and his wife Mayte Garcia had a son named Boy Gregory who tragically died of a condition called Pfeiffer syndrome just one week after his birth in 1996. According to Andrews' Diseases of the Skin: Clinical Dermatology, Pfeiffer syndrome is a "rare genetic disorder characterized by the premature fusion of certain bones of the skull (craniosynostosis), which prevents further growth of the skull and affects the shape of the head and face."


 
The singer's first TV interview was with Oprah in 1996, with the host visiting Paisley Park.


 
Whilst on a 1987 UK tour, Prince discovered there was no way of getting a baby grand piano up the stairs of London's Chelsea Harbour Hotel for him to practice on, so the workaholic star hired a crane and brought it in through the window.


 
Prince shared the stage with James Brown when he was 10 years old. "My stepdad put me on stage with him and I danced a bit until the bodyguard took me off," the Purple Maestro told MTV News.


 
The first song that Prince appeared on was "Stone Lover" by Music, Love and Funk. Recorded in 1976 and released in 1977, the seven-minute plus funk track features him on guitar.


 
Prince famously repped all things purple in his song titles, album covers and wardrobe. However, according to the singer's sister, Tyka Nelson, it wasn't his favorite hue. "It is strange because people always associate the color purple with Prince," she told Britain's The Evening Standard newspaper, "but his favorite color was actually orange."


 
Prince was really good at programming a drum machine. He was one of the first to get his hands on the first unit that sampled real drums: the LM-1, of which only about 500 were made. He was able to process the sounds in creative ways, resulting in patterns like the one heard on "When Doves Cry" According to Roger Linn, who created the LM-1, Prince was the most creative user of the device.






ROLLING STONE


December 9, 1982 5:00AM ET  



After the critical success of his Dirty Mind LP in 1980 and the subsequent notoriety of last year’s Controversy, Prince, at the tender age of twenty-two, has become the inspiration for a growing renegade school of Sex & Funk & Rock & Roll that includes his fellow Minneapolis hipsters Andre Cymone, the Time and Vanity 6. Yet regardless of the jive that he hath wrought, Prince himself does more than merely get down and talk dirty. Beneath all his kinky propositions resides a tantalizing utopian philosophy of humanism through hedonism that suggests once you’ve broken all the rules, you’ll find some real values. All you’ve got to do is act naturally.


Prince’s quasi-religious faith in this vision of social freedom through sensual anarchy makes even his most preposterous utterances sound earnest. On the title track of 1999, which opens this two-LP set of artfully arranged synthesizer pop, Prince ponders no less than the future of the entire planet, shaking his booty disapprovingly at the threat of nuclear annihilation. Although that one exuberant dance-along raises more big questions than Prince can answer on the other three and a half sides combined, the entire enterprise is charged with his unflagging will to survive — and a feisty determination to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow, given the daily news, we may die.



 Before “1999” whooshes into life, Prince assumes an electronically altered, basso-profundo voice and impersonates the imagined authoritative tone of God himself, creator of libidos as well as souls, prefacing the song’s Judgment Day scenario with this reassurance: “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. I only want you to have some fun.” This intro serves Prince well, since 1999 lacks the tight focus of Dirty Mind, his best and most concise LP, which had the feel of emotionally volatile autobiography disguised as vividly descriptive sexual fantasy. Yet the new album doesn’t fall prey to the conceptual confusion that plagued the second side of Controversy, during which Prince raced from politics to passion, funk groove to rock blitz, as if there weren’t room enough for all his inspiration. This time there is, and then some.


 Prince develops eleven songs, basically a single album’s worth of material, over the four sides of 1999, with each side comprising two or three extended tracks. Both discs are distinguished by palpably individual moods — the first contains the funkiest, most playful cuts, while the second is made up of slower, more introspective pieces. Two tracks, “D.M.S.R.” and “All the Critics Love U in New York,” qualify as unadulterated filler, and gone are any attempts at the classic three-minute pop song — Dirty Mind‘s “When You Were Mine” was the last word on that, I guess. On 1999, size counts.
  Having graduated in record time from postdisco garage rock to high-tech studio wizardry, Prince works like a colorblind technician who’s studied both Devo and Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, keeping the songs constantly kinetic with an inventive series of shocks and surprises. As “1999” proceeds, for example, he geometrically increases the overdubs until there’s a roomful of Princes partying almost out of bounds, then deftly brings it down to rhythm guitar and percussion while a childlike chorus asks, “Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?” until — boom! — the groove disappears at its hottest.


 Prince’s funniest and slyest effects are reserved for “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” a string of offhandedly vulgar suggestions transformed with the most basic tools into a quintessential Princeian comic-erotic epic. He first employs minimal but propulsive synth riffs to conjure the atmosphere of a computer-age arcade, pickup bar or, maybe, a space-station lounge. Then he chooses his most angelic falsetto to lure a prospective partner (“My girl’s gone and she don’t care at all/And if she did…”), suddenly switching to his gruffest lower register to complete the couplet: “…So what? C’mon, baby, let’s ball!” Between his ever nastier entreaties, a breezy non sequitur of a chorus (“Ooh we sha sha coo coo yeah/All the hippies sing together”) rushes by like a snatch of transmission from another galaxy, until most everything drops out except a pulsing synthetic bass and Prince himself, desperately aroused, liberally sprinkling his come-ons with the f word. But before his pleas fade into lonely space, he pulls out one last gimmick, a phalanx of cloned voices testifying that he is indeed the Prince of Uptown U.S.A. in a rap wildly mixing the sacred and profane: “Haven’t you heard about me? It’s true/I change the rules and do what I want to do/I’m in love with God, he’s the only way/’Cause you and I know we gotta die someday/You might think I’m crazy, and you’re probably right/But I’m gonna have fun every motherfucking night….”


 1999 reaches its climax, however, with Prince’s shortest and sweetest offering, “Free,” which concludes the moody, dub-style third side without any electronic pyrotechnics whatsoever. Prince steps from behind the clanking machinery like a sentimental Wizard of Oz to remind us that “if you take your life for granted, your beating heart will go.” More important, he restates his utopian vision in the most inspirational terms, as if all the battles had been won and he could finally be a lover, not a fighter. “Free” reeks of skewed patriotism, describing the state of the union as much as a state of mind, its march-of-history grandiosity recalling Patti Smith’s “Broken Flag.” Like Smith, Prince is not afraid to be misunderstood — or wrong.



 But I think Prince can separate a vision of life from a version of it, as the disturbing postscript “Lady Cab Driver” illustrates. A sequel to Controversy‘s “Annie Christian,” in which Prince tried to duck fate by living “my life in taxicabs,” “Lady Cab Driver” finds him bidding his cabbie to roll up the windows and take him away because “trouble winds are blowin’ hard and/I don’t know if I can last.” But midway through the song, the pain of both personal and public injustice wells up inside him, bursting out in an angry litany of verbal thrusts — “This is for the cab you have to drive for no money at all/This is for why I wasn’t born like my brother, handsome and tall/This is for politicians who are bored and believe in war” — suggesting an ugly backseat orgy of sex or violence. Prince, the lover, not the fighter, then retreats to the demilitarized zone of the bedroom, where he can safely bid us goodbye under the guise of “International Lover.”



 A natural goodbye for Prince, but hardly as powerful as the final moments of Dirty Mind, when, during the antidraft “Partyup,” he challenged, “All lies, no truth/Is it fair to kill the youth?” before defiantly commanding, “Party up!” Just as Prince must face the contradiction of creating music that gracefully dissolves racial and stylistic boundaries yet fits comfortably into no one’s playlist, he must also decide whether he can “dance my life away” when everybody has a bomb. All you need is love?



"1999"

 
Written in 1982 during the height of the Cold War, this party jam has a much deeper meaning, as Prince addresses fears of a nuclear Armageddon. Under the Reagan administration, the United States was stockpiling nuclear weapons and taking a hawkish stance against the Soviet Union, which he referred to as the "Evil Empire."



This scared a lot of people, and Prince voices their concerns:


Everybody's got a bomb
We could all die any day



He's far more optimistic though, responding by making the point that we should enjoy whatever time we have on earth while we still can, even if it all ends by the year 2000:


But before I'll let that happen
I'll dance my life away



In this purple-skied world, life is just a party, and parties weren't meant to last.



 
Prince doesn't sing on this track until the third line. The first lead vocal is by backup singer Lisa Coleman:


I was dreamin' when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray



Next up is guitarist Dez Dickerson, who sings:
But when I woke up this mornin'
Coulda sworn it was judgment day



Prince takes the next part:
The sky was all purple
There were people running everywhere



All three voices come in on the next line:
Trying to run from the destruction
You know I didn't even care



Originally, Prince envisioned the whole song as a 3-part harmony with Coleman, Dickerson and himself, and they sang it all together. Prince later decided to split up the tracks, letting each voice solo on a line (this is something Stevie Wonder did on "You Are The Sunshine Of My LIfe"). The second verse follows this same pattern, dividing the vocals amongst the three singers.


 
Prince gave a rare interview in 1999 when he spoke with Larry King on CNN. More surprisingly, he explained the meaning behind this song. Said Prince: "We were sitting around watching a special about 1999, and a lot of people were talking about the year and speculating on what was going to happen. And I just found it real ironic how everyone that was around me whom I thought to be very optimistic people were dreading those days, and I always knew I'd be cool. I never felt like this was going to be a rough time for me. I knew that there were going to be rough times for the Earth because of this system is based in entropy, and it's pretty much headed in a certain direction. So I just wanted to write something that gave hope, and what I find is people listen to it. And no matter where we are in the world, I always get the same type of response from them."



When the new millennium approached, there was a great deal of concern over the "Y2K Bug," since programmers didn't always account for the change to 2000 in their code. There was minimal impact: When the new year hit, we still had dial tones and internet access, and no major networks were compromised. Prince had no fears. "I don't worry about too much anyway," he told King.



 
Prince was a creative volcano during the time he created this song. After completing a tour for his fourth album, Controversy, in March 1982 he set to work on 1999, but also produced albums for The Time (What Time Is It?), and for the female trio he put together, Vanity 6. Those albums were released in the summer, and in September, "1999" was released as a single. The album followed a month later, and in November, he launched a tour. By the end of the tour in April 1983, the second single, "Little Red Corvette," was climbing the charts and his videos were getting airplay on MTV. With 1999 on its way to selling over four million copies, Prince had crossed the threshold into superstardom.



 
According to Rolling Stone magazine, when Prince recorded this track, he would go all day and all night without rest, and turn down food since he felt eating would make him sleepy.



 Prince grew up in a household that adhered to the Seventh-day Adventist faith, which believes in the Book of Revelations and the apocalypse that will lead to the return of Christ. Prince rejected the religion as "based in fear," and in this song, he puts his own spin on the end-of-the-world prophesy, turning it into a party.


 
Leading up to his pay-per-view that aired New Year's Eve 1999, Prince said it would be the last time he performed the song. The special a broadcast of a concert held on December 18 at his Paisley Park Studios, with some additional footage from a show by Morris Day & The Time recorded there the night before. "1999" was the last song in the set, which was later released on video as Rave Un2 The Year 2000.



Prince did retire the song, but brought it back in 2007 for his Super Bowl halftime show performance and kept it in many of his subsequent setlists.


 
A fourth vocalist appears on this song, most notably on the line, "Got a lion in my pocket, and baby he's ready to roar"). That's Jill Jones, who was a backup singer for Teena Marie before teaming up with Prince. She released a self-titled solo album in 1987 on Prince's Paisley Park label. She also appeared in Prince's movies Purple Rain and Graffiti Bridge.


 
Prince re-recorded this song in 1998 after leaving Warner Bros. Records, who retained rights to the original recording. Prince had serious beef with Warner Brothers when he found out they owned his masters, so he re-recorded this song in an attempt to keep them from profiting from the original version as the titular year approached. The new version reached #40 US at the beginning of 1999.


 
 
Many listeners, including Phil Collins, have compared this song to Collins' similar-sounding "Sussudio," released three years later. Collins admitted he was a big Prince fan and often listened to the 1999 album while on tour.


 
The song only reached #44 in the US when it was first released, but after "Little Red Corvette" took off, the song was re-released, and this time it landed at #12.


 
Following Prince's death, "1999" re-charted on the Billboard Hot 100 at #27, making it the first song to reach the Top 40 in three different decades ('80s, '90s, '10s) with the same version. "Bohemian Rhapsody" became the second song to reach this milestone when it charted a third time in 2018 following the release of the movie of the same name (its second chart run came in 1992 following its inclusion in Wayne's World).




"Little Red Corvette"

Prince got the idea for this song when he dozed off in backup singer Lisa Coleman's 1964 Mercury Montclair Marauder after an exhausting all-night recording session. The lyrics came to him in bits and pieces during this and other catnaps. Eventually he was able to finish it without sleeping.



Coleman's car was often reported to be a pink Edsel, but she later explained that it was a Marauder (far more sexy than an Edsel) that Prince helped her buy at a 1980 auction.


 
The song is about sex, but it's just ambiguous enough not to offend most listeners. Many of Prince's earlier songs, like "Head," "Dirty Mind," and "Soft and Wet," were blatantly sexual, which scared off radio stations.


 
This was Prince's his first Top 10 US hit. It helped propel him to superstar status, a title he lived up to with electrifying live shows and a startlingly prolific output of material, including music, movies and videos.


 
The album version runs 5:03, but the radio edit was chopped down to 3:08, eliminating the reprise where Prince breaks it down and exclaims, "You must be a limousine!"



The resulting edit (also used in the video), was his most radio-friendly single to this point, with more shiny keyboards and less raw funk than much of his earlier material.


 
1999 was Prince's fifth album. He had just modest success to this point, his biggest hit being the #11 "I Wanna Be Your Lover" four years earlier.



The title track was issued as the first single in September 1982, about a month before the album was released. That song reached #44 US in December, and "Little Red Corvette" was released as the second single in February 1983. The song made a slow climb up the charts, reaching #6 in May. The next single, "Delirious," didn't come out until August and reached its chart peak of #8 in October.



From November 1982 to April 1983, Prince toured behind the album. As "Little Red Corvette" rode up the charts, he drew far larger crowds - the early dates proved to be some of his last theater shows, as he was a clear arena headliner by the end of the tour.


 

The line, "She had a pocket full of horses, Trojans, some of them used," refers to Trojan condoms. The "Jockeys" represent men who have previously slept with the girl. These were veiled sexual references that not enough people got to make the song be considered offensive.


 
Stevie Nicks got the idea for "Stand Back" from this song. She heard it in her car, drove to the recording studio, and put down some tracks. "It just gave me an incredible idea, so I spent many hours that night writing a song about some kind of crazy argument, and it was to become one of the most important of my songs," she remembered in the liner notes for Timespace.



Prince came in and added the keyboard bit. As Nicks tells it, he came up with the riff as soon as he started playing it.


 
This was one of the first videos by a black artist to get regular airplay on MTV. Michael Jackson was the first to break the color barrier on MTV with "Billie Jean," and "Little Red Corvette" came soon after. The band shot the clip during a tour stop in Jacksonville; the song was already a radio hit when they made it.


 
In concert, Prince would do some impressive James Brown-style dancing during the instrumental break in this song, complete with an array of spins and splits. These moves are seen in the video, which captures one such performance.


 
In 2001, Chevrolet put up billboards with a picture of a red 1963 Corvette Sting Ray that said, "They don't write songs about Volvos." In 2003, Chevrolet used this in a commercial that aired for the first time during the Grammys. The ad showed old footage of The Beach Boys performing "My 409" followed by Don McLean singing "American Pie" ("drove my Chevy to the levee"), and then Prince performing this. The camera then goes outside the club to show Chevy's latest model.



 
There was a Billboard for the Chevrolet Corvette made from this song as well. It had the lyric "Little Red Corvette, baby ur much 2 fast" and Prince's logo over the Corvette. It was displayed behind the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 2003.


 
After this song became a hit, "1999" was re-released, giving it a second chance. This time, it went to #12 in the US

     

Last edited by arabchanter (09/3/2019 1:14 am)

PatReilly wrote:

But what a talent! Not just as a songwriter, fantastic musician with many instruments, great singer, showman, dancer.

This boy's shows similar attributes to which you mention above Pat, but eh widnay buy his album either 




 

arabchanter wrote:

PatReilly wrote:

Far far better than Michael Jackson in every way.

But what wis he like at the baby sitting 
 

Far better than Michael Jackson at that too, I'd imagine 
 

Album 500.
The Cure...........................Pornography   (1982)











The overpowering gloom of Pornography serves as a chronicle of “an extremely stressful, self-destructive period” of the band, especially for Robert Smith. He said “The band was falling apart, because of the drinking and drugs. I was pretty seriously strung out a lot of the time.”


 Smith later explained how he had hit rock bottom in this period, saying, “I had two choices at the time which were either completely giving in or making a record of it and getting it out of me. And I’m glad I chose to make the record. It’s really the key action of my life, really, making that record. It would have been very easy just to curl up and disappear.”


 Soon after finishing Pornography, Smith announced that the group was ‘too sick and exhausted to make another record’ and had ‘imploded’. He later admitted “I don’t think I would recognize myself around that time. I was undergoing a lot of mental stress … I was a pretty monstrous sort of person at that time.”


 Reception of the album was poor, with Smith himself saying “at the time, most people hated it. They’re the only songs we’ve ever played where people would walk out or throw things.”


 The album was so morose, the British publication Rip It Up, “Ian Curtis (who had recently committed suicide), by comparison, was a bundle of laughs.” In 1987, Spin called Pornography “possibly the most dismal long player of the decade so far.” In 1996, Alternative Press called the album “the sound of a band tearing itself to pieces and taking everybody with them.”


 Despite how poorly received the album was (and how destructive it had become to the group from the songwriting process through to touring in support of it), Smith would call it his favourite Cure album in 1986. He later mused, “I suppose doing an album like Pornography and coming to those depths and coming out of it proves that something can come out of nothing.”


 Eventually Smith would call Pornography the first of a connected set of dark albums (Disintegration and Bloodflowers being the second and third) that were more of a solo effort than collaborative project. The band released a film in 2003 named Trilogy – a live performance of these three albums in their entirety.


 It is noteworthy that it was during this era of the band’s history that Smith developed what would become his trademark look by spraying his hair in all directions and wearing lipstick.



Taken a tad longer than I thought,but half way there-ish.

Two things regarding the last two albums rated (so not The Cure: I didn't realise there were two Kid(d) Creoles! That one out of Grandmaster Flash got done for murder a year or two ago. It's not just young folk who carry out knife crime.

And you are right about the Elvis albums, generally they got less appealing following the debut, to me, although Armed Forces stands out. But the yankees seemed to like later Elvis' stuff more than the early music, maybe that explains so many albums being included.

Album 502.
New Gold Dream......................(81,82,83,84)   (1982)













Although Simple Minds had five albums under their belt before New Gold Dream, it's release marked the breakthrough that would ultimately establish them as one of the big rock names in the late 1980's.


"Glittering Prize" and the albums other big single, "Promised You A Miracle," encapsulate Simple Minds ability to craft dazzling and sophisticated pop anthems. Combining a warm romanticism with their blend of new wave pop, the album illustrated just how capable and diverse a songwriting unit Simple Minds was.


The pop-savvy "Promised You A Miracle" and "Glittering prize," along with "Someone, Somewhere in Summertime," indicate collectively why this was the album that broke Simple Minds in America.


 

Album 500.
The Cure...........................Pornography   (1982)













I think The Cure are quite the love or hate band, I don't think there's any middle ground/grey area with them, you either like them or canny stand them.


Me, I tend to fall into the rather like them side, this album was slagged off in some quarters as "comes off as the aural equivalent of a bad toothache." Another reviewer said "It's downhill all the way, into ever-darkening shadows... passing through chilly marbled archways to the final rendezvous with the cold comfort of the slab" Ken what I really enjoyed it, for me it was a bloody good album, it may well have had quite morose lyrics at times but that didn't really effect my enjoyment of "Pornography"


Smith's voice has always been a bit of a magnet for me, it tends to suck me in and listening to his lyrics I always feel he's saying a lot more than my tiny brain comprehends. This is a really good album, "Hanging Garden" in my humbles is an absolute classic, as is "A Strange Day" and the great opening track "100 years"



I had "Standing On A Beach" album back in the day, and to be honest that's the vinyl that I'll buy as it has all the songs that I particularly liked all on the one album, so this album, as good as it is wont be going into my collection at the moment as "Standing On The Beach" gives you a bit more value for money in my humbles.





Bits & Bobs;




Have already posted about The Cure in post #1742 (if interested)


On May 4th, 1982, The Cure released their fourth studio album, Pornography. The record, brimming with bleak nihilism and dark psychedelia, is often lauded as the band’s best work by many fans and critics, and is in retroactively considered by Robert Smith to be the first record of a trilogy of albums including 1989’s Disentregation and 1999’s Bloodflowers.


 It was also during this period that singer/guitarist Robert Smith emptied his first can of hairspray (Despite having his trademark big hair, it was not until rejoining Siouxsie and the Banshees later that year that Robert Smith became known for his questionable but charming use of lipstick).


 Pornography, the archetypal paradigm of a “Goth” album—was the follow up to the band’s previous morose efforts; the funereal dirge that 1981’s Faith, and the haunting the non-album single “Charlotte Sometimes“.


 Regarding the album’s conception, Robert Smith, had stated in an interview: “I had two choices at the time, which were either completely giving in [committing suicide] or making a record of it and getting it out of me”. He also claims he “really thought that was it for the group. I had every intention of signing off. I wanted to make the ultimate ‘fuck off’ record, and then sign off [the band]”.=13.3333330154419px 



 Smith was mentally exhausted during that period of time: “I was in a really depressed frame of mind between 1981 and 1982”.=13.3333330154419px  The band “had been touring for about 200 days a year and it all got a bit too much because there was never any time to do anything else“.



 Smith also wanted to make the album with a different producer than Mike Hedges, who had produced Seventeen Seconds and Faith. and settled with Phil Thornally who would later join the band on temporarily for the Japenese Whispers era singles, and The Top.=13.3333330154419px 



 Pornography is also the last Cure album to feature founding band member Lol Tolhurst as the band’s drummer before migrating to synths. (Andy Anderson would later by enlisted to take over


 On the album’s recording sessions, Smith noted “there was a lot of drugs involved”. The band took LSD and drank a lot of alcohol, and to save money they slept in the office of their record label. The musicians usually turned up at eight, and left at midday looking “fairly deranged”.


 Smith related: “We had an arrangement with the off-licence up the road, every night they would bring in supplies. We decided we weren’t going to throw anything out. We built this mountain of empties in the corner, a gigantic pile of debris in the corner. It just grew and grew”.


 According to Tolhurst, “we wanted to make the ultimate, intense album. I can’t remember exactly why, but we did”.=13.3333330154419px 



 The recording sessions commenced and concluded within a period of three weeks.  Smith recalls that “at the time, I lost every friend I had, everyone, without exception, because I was incredibly obnoxious, appalling, self-centered”. He also noted that with the album, he “channeled all the self-destructive elements of my personality into doing something”.


 Following the album’s release, Simon Gallup left the group after several incidents, including an infamous barfight in Strasbourg:



Gallup:


“I was about to leave when some guy came up and told me I hadn’t paid for my drinks. He thought I was Robert. I was knackered but the bloke took me up to the bar and Robert appeared to see what was going on. I hit him, he responded and we had a fight”.


Robert:


“I was on the first floor of this club when they came up and told me there was a problem downstairs. Simon was so wound up that no-one could talk to him – he was screaming at the barman, this young kid who was nearly in tears. By himself, Simon would have never behaved like that but he was surrounded by the road crew so he was behaving the way he thought a rock and roller ought to behave. He didn’t want to pay for his drinks because he thought I wasn’t paying for mine. I told him to shut up and he punched me. It was the first time he really laid into me, we had an enormous ruck and I said ‘That’s it’, walked out, got a cab back to the hotel, got my suitcase, my passport from the tour manager’s room and got on the first flight to London. That was at 6.30 am and I was home by half past 10. I left a note saying I wasn’t coming back. Simon returned the same afternoon. I’d left so I suppose he thought he could do the same. Good idea … we had three days off!”


 Gallup would then complete the band’s Four Explicit Moments Tour in support of Pornography, concluding with the June 11th 1982 performance at Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, Belgium with an improvised song, "The Cure Is Dead" featuring Gary Biddles on vocals, Robert Smith on drums, Simon Gallup on drums and Tolhurst on bass. Gallup would then leave to form Fools Dance with Biddles, not returning to The Cure for 3 years.


 Interesting Fact 1: Both “100 years” and “The Hanging Garden” were released along with two other tracks in a limited edition called “A Single”, which is the official title of “The Hanging Garden” single.



Interesting Fact 2: The Hanging Garden’s lyrics are featured in the original James O’Barr comic book The Crow. During the production of the 1994 Brandon Lee film version, Robert Smith was asked if the single from Pornography could be used on the film’s official soundtrack.  Smith liked the comic so much he instead opted to write the original song "Burn"for the movie instead.



"Pornography"


 
The Cure's Pornography album was borne out of frontman Robert Smith's depression combined with the band's heavy drug use. He explained in Jeff Apter's Never Enough: The Story of the Cure: "I had two choices at the time, which were either completely giving in [committing suicide] or making a record of it and getting it out of me." The resulting dark album was dubbed by NME as "Phil Spector in Hell," and solidified the band's place in music history as a proto-goth rock band.


 
21-year-old Phil Thornalley, then a recording engineer for acts like Duran Duran and the Psychedelic Furs, was brought in to produce the album (making him a "producer of Pornography"). In a Songfacts interview, Thornalley - who would go on to co-write pop hits like "Torn" - reflected on the album's legacy: "At the time, it was just another album that was made along with the Psychedelic Furs or Hot Chocolate. But with that one I think because I was at the same age as the guys in The Cure, we were more like contemporaries and all the nutty stories you've read about the making of the record, they're all true. It was just over the top."



He added: "In the end there was no hit single, but there was this great legacy of this album that you put on and you go: 'That's something different.' So I'm very proud of that, but the mythologizing, I guess maybe it has got something special about it; it's so different, it's so not what anybody was doing then or not what anybody's doing now."


 
The beginning of this track samples a debate between feminist Germaine Greer and Monty Python comedian Graham Chapman on the subject of pornography. The song was already written when Thornalley and Robert Smith happened upon the clip by accident. Thornalley explained: "It was just one of those freaky things that has happened in my career in the studio where we tried this approach that Brian Eno and David Byrne from Talking Heads were doing. They called it 'Found Music.' You turned on the radio or the TV and tried to find some disparate elements and sometimes it just worked. I suppose in this case it was very literal, you know, the song was about pornography - in fact I don't know what the song was about – but the title was 'Pornography.' But we happened to try this experiment coincidentally just as this highbrow program was discussing the subject. So it's just weird."




A classic example of this "found music" is the snippet of a radio broadcast that The Beatles used at the end of "I Am The Walrus".


 
The drug-fueled sessions obliterated most of Smith's memories of crafting the album. He told Creem in 1986: "I don't remember writing a lot of it, particularly 'Pornography.' I don't remember writing much of it at all. I understand it, I know most of the references that are in the songs, but they're so disjointed, it took me a long time to figure out. A lot of it was written when I wasn't really, I wasn't sitting down and writing, I just remember going to the studio and having this big sheaf of words. I was so possessive around that time, of the record. I was very difficult to work with. Simon and Laurence didn't enjoy it at all."



The album opens with the bleak lyric "It doesn't matter if we all die," but as it reaches its conclusion with the title track, it's clear Smith isn't giving up the struggle against his personal demons:



I'll watch you drown in the shower
Pushing my life through your open eyes
I must fight this sickness
Find a cure
I must fight this sickness






Lol Tolhurst first met Robert Smith when they were five-year-old schoolmates in Crawley, England. Twelve years later, they formed The Cure, a group that helped define the sound of alternative rock.




Smith quickly emerged as the leader of the group, taking over on lead vocals and becoming the primary songwriter. Tolhurst was his stalwart sideman in their tumultuous early years, starting off as the band's drummer and then moving to keyboards (an instrument he had to learn) a few years later. His tenure in The Cure ended during the 1989 Disintegration sessions when his alcoholism caught up with him and Smith let him go. He filed an ugly lawsuit (which he lost), and eventually patched things up with Smith, returning to play some reunion shows in 2011.




In 2016, Tolhurst published Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys, his memoir detailing the formation and rise of the band. The overarching story is his relationship with Smith and how they won over audiences in hardscrabble England, which wasn't always friendly to their look and sound. Lol took the time to answer some questions about the book and discuss some of the songs he helped create with Smith.




Carl Wiser: To research Cured, you returned to England. What did you find most surprising?




Lol Tolhurst: Two things: How much things had changed and how little they had changed! By which I mean that it was obvious that the country has come into the 21st century in many ways with new technology etc., however the type of people that we wanted to get away from still exist there.




CW: "The lyrics have always spoken to me in a very helpful and healing way," you write. What specific lyrics have been particularly helpful to you?




Lol: I had a hand in some Cure lyrics so obviously they were from my own experiences, like "All Cats are Grey" which was about my mother's death. But also Robert's words have always helped me too. We went through many of the same things together growing up so they are relevant to me also.




CW: You write about dealing with the "Neanderthal-like" kids where you and Robert grew up. Was "Boys Dont Cry" directed at them?




Lol: I don't recall that was why Robert wrote those particular words, although I can see how it could be taken that way. It's more a love song I think.




CW: "Killing An Arab" is a very bold choice for a debut single. How did you feel about the song?

 Lol: I didn't think it was so bold back when we wrote it. It was about alienation and existentialism - things more relevant to us then. Obviously events of the last two decades have changed the perception of the song's meaning. Totally erroneously I might add, as it has nothing to do with racism or killing at all.




CW: What Cure song got the strongest fan reaction when you played it live?




Lol: Cure fans always sing along to the keyboard line of "Play For Today," which is pretty wonderful to experience!




CW: You tell a great story about creating "The Walk," but what's going on in the lyric?




Lol: I would say that quite a few of the Cure's lyrics are open to a free interpretation of the listener. This is one!




CW: Phil Thornalley [producer of the Pornography album] told us, "The nutty stories you've read about the making of the record, they're all true." What was the nuttiest thing that happened to you at this time?




Lol: Actually Phil was a bastion of sanity at this time, so I believe anything he says about it. Consumption was at an all-time high. We kept a beer-can mountain in the studio with all the drink cans and bottles we had drunk throughout the album. I slept in it at least once. It was very comfortable! On reflection, I think the nuttiest thing is that nobody died.




CW: What Cure song represents your best work, and why?




Lol: Any song on Pornography. For despite, or maybe because of the insanity, it represents the pinnacle of the three-piece Cure for me.




CW: You discuss your transition from drums to keyboards. How did that affect your songwriting?




Lol: In terms of songwriting it obviously opened up melody to me more. Before, I either wrote drum parts or lyrics. Once I had the keys I could add to my arsenal sonically. It also gave me access to lots of great and weird sounds which I loved.




CW: What were some of your main contributions to Cure lyrics?




Lol: There are quite a few: "All Cats are Grey," "Grinding Halt," etc.




While I understand why people want to dissect the song-making process, it has never been like that for me. I contribute where I can and don't keep score. I have always been a writer and so my book is the logical end to that process.




CW: Cured deals with far more than music - friendship is an overarching theme. Was this your plan all along?




Lol: Absolutely! I had no interest in writing Behind the music volume 203, you know? I used The Cure as the framework to hang the story of a lifelong friendship on, and a tale of redemption. This is something applicable to all, not just Cure fans or even other music fans. All people experience something along these lines to a greater or lesser extent. I just experienced some of mine in public!

 


"One Hundred Years"


The first track off of 1982’s Pornography, The Cure open up their gothic “piece de resistance” with an innovative wildly flanging guitar, and African polyrhythmics. Smith’s opening words: “It doesn’t matter if we all die” are a sampling of the bleak existentialism and in many cases pessimism that will dot the album. The song is about the drollness of post industrial life and at some points a parallel to the book 1984 by George Orwell in allusions to police patrolling streets under the night and shooting rebels down.


 “One Hundred Years” showed up on the 10" single and double 7" gatefold single of “The Hanging Garden” (often labled as A Single). However, a UK promotional 7" was released that put “One Hundred Years” on the A-side and “The Hanging Garden” as its B-side.



 What have the artists said about the song?
Seven years after the release of “One Hundred Years”, in a 1989 fanzine, Robert Smith said:


“One Hundred Years” is pure self loathing and worthlessness, and contains probably the key line – the line that underpinned this period of writing: “it doesn’t matter if we all die”…everything is empty. This song is despair.

 However, the same year, Smith also shared a small dose of optimism in response to the lyrics of his song:



"If you hold that sense of futility in your head for too long, it can begin to eat into you. You can still be aware of it but find a place for it where you can actually exist comfortably and enjoy things. So it still doesn’t matter if we all die, but given that, you may as well do something that’s really good fun."





"A Short Term Effect"


 The second track on the Cure’s gothic milestone, Pornography, is centrally about the “short term effect” of drug-taking, something the band had been doing a lot of during the production of the album (and its predecessor,Faith), although, on another level, it deals with the same themes of the shortness and futility of life that are touched on on a number of Pornography’s other tracks.


 Sound-wise, it continues in the same vein as "One Hundred Years", sustaining the already-intense atmosphere with a quick, driving drum pattern and screaming, backwards guitar noises. The major triad that opens the track also strikes an unsettling dissonance with the dark, whirring backing.


 What have the artists said about the song?In a 1989 fanzine, Smith shared:





“a short term effect” is about a drug and its effect. short-term i thought.




"The Hanging Garden"



 Cure frontman Robert Smith said, “The Hanging Garden is something like about the purity and hate of animals fucking.” While it’s not very specific, that’s all that’s really known about “The Hanging Garden”’s meaning.


 The name “The Hanging Garden” could be a reference to The Hanging Gardend in Mumbai, Inda which is well known for its view of the Arabian Sea and its hedges, which are carved in the shapes of animals.

 



 The lyrics to “The Hanging Garden” appeared in the original comic book The Crow. The group was asked if the song could be used in the 1994 film based on the comic, but Smith reportedly liked so much he opted to write a new song for the soundtrack instead – "Burn".


 What have the artists said about the song?
In 1984, Robert Smith spoke of his dissatisfaction with the song’s music video:




For The Hanging Garden video, we got the two people who did Madness videos but it was a really awful video. They wanted to make us look serious and we wanted them to make us look like Madness.




"Siamese Twins"


 After stating that “The Hanging Garden” was written about “the purity and hate of animals fucking”, he added “And I think "Siamese Twins” is about the hate and purity of people fucking too…"


 Some fans believe the song is a metaphorical description of a quite psychologically traumatic first sexual intercourse, losing virginity to a prostitute, as seen through the prism of narrator’s twisted, morbid, traumatized imagination in a style somewhat resembling stream of consciousness (Smith stated that Pornography was written in ‘a stream of consciousness’), involving a series of striking images, torn out of time just like our memories are, as if he painfully recalls every single detail of the past night over and over, exaggerating it to the point where narrative becomes nightmarish & disturbing. The name of the song is a metaphor for a heterosexual intercourse, where a man & a woman become intertwined as if they were a single creature, just as Siamese Twins are, and, in case of the narrator, start hating each other, just as the aforementioned Siamese Twins would.




 What have the artists said about the song?
Robert Smith saidt in 1987 that Mary Poule, his girlfriend (later, his wife)…:



… sat in a chair and stared at me when I was singing ‘Siamese Twins’ … it was very weird to have Mary sitting there watching me."




"The Figurehead"



 In a fanzine, Robert Smith shared that “The Figurehead” was inspired by “a grotesque skull sculpture I discovered in the disused asylum we used in the "Charlotte Sometimes" video. I took it home to talk to – to confess to – and this song is about guilt.”




"A Strange Day"




“A Strange Day”, a song about, according to Robert Smith, “how I would feel if it would only be the end of the world”, is backed by the same driving force that appeared on"
A Short Term Effect", only this time it’s slightly slower. The drums and prominent bassline are also reminiscent of the band’s 1981 single, "Charlotte Sometimes"



.What have the artists said about the song?

 Robert Smith said

:
“A Strange Day” was how I would feel if it would only be the end of the world.



"Cold"



Introduced by an ominous cello line (played by Robert Smith himself), crashing, plodding drums soon pull “Cold” into a synth-laden abyss of noise. The track is slow and formidable, with lyrics dealing with the effect of drugs in Pornography’s uniquely ambiguous manner.



  What have the artists said about the song?


 Robert Smith said:




“Cold” is another song about another drug and its grip…




"Pornography"



   The Cure’s 1982 Gothic keystone album, Pornography, closes with perhaps the group’s most harrowing and difficult track to date. It opens with a cacophony of voices whose words are near-impossible to make out, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere that mirrors Robert Smith’s drug-induced schizophrenia. Lol Tolhurst’s pounding toms gradually fade in, followed by a menacing organ and bass sound. Smith’s vocals and dissonant guitar bursts merely add fuel to the fire of this hellish symphony.


 The lyrical content is akin to that of the album’s opening track, "One Hundred Years" a series of images which don’t really connect or flow in any way, painting a picture of violent and chaotic destruction. The precise meaning of the lyrics is frequently debated amongst Cure fans, as most of Pornography was written streams of consciousness while Smith was high or drunk, making the words extremely difficult to interpret.


 What have the artists said about the song?
Robert Smith said:


"The last song, and in fact the last song I wrote for a while, is fueled by the same self-mockery, self-hate, that burned in “One Hundred Years”, but it is, if only very slightly, a little more hopeful than the others… I am escaping (I escaped) by blaming someone else. A murder or suicide? “I must fight this sickness…”

 Robert Smith revealed  that the background noises in the song are:



"various television voices of people who happened to be on and annoying during that period of recording – germaine greer is the only one i can remember by name.