Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #64: April 26th 1984 – Metal Mickey Dropping His Guts

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; does playing Legend by Bob Marley constitute a hate crime?Finally, Chart Music gets off its fat arse, gets on its bike and starts looking for a job, and it’s a particularly fraught one: rummaging through an episode from the arse-end of the Yellow Hurll era in an attempt to find anything nourishing and skill. It’s the other side of Easter ’84, and your panel are a) not bothering to revise for CSEs which are useless in Thatcher’s Britain, b) failing to understand the Greek alphabet and wondering why anyone in Coventry would need to learn it, and c) playing gigs in a Barry shopping centre and trying to make acoustic guitars sound like the Jesus and Mary Chain. The good news is that Top Of The Pops is still a beacon of Pop Nowness. The bad news: over a year ahead of schedule, the Dinosaurs of Pop have come lumbering back and Simon Bates – frighteningly – doesn’t look out of place in the studio for the first time ever. This, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, is your Dad’s Top Of The Pops – a half-hour Radio 2 of the soul.  Musicwise, oh dear; there’s only one teenager on stage in the entire episode. Morrissey shows how right-on and inclusive he is by letting Sandie Shaw borrow his band for a while. A cursed Mayan mask with the mouth of Phil Collins soundtracks some horrific morning dog-breathed snogging. Belle and the Devotions prepare to be booed at in Luxembourg. Island Records de-Rastacise Bob Marley by 110% and recreate the opening credits of Pigeon Street. Duran Duran make their long-awaited return to the UK and demonstrate that reports of their demise are premature. Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias practically come on to each other. Our Bands are represented by Echo and the Bunnymen. The Flying Pickets have one last warm against the brazier of the charts before the Massive Clay Head pulls us into its orbit. Neil Kulkarni and Simon Price join Al Needham for a long, hard stare at 1984, whirling off into such tangents as having Xmas ruined by Ed Sheeran, the majesty of studded gauntlets, recreating images of Bob Marley with football mascots, getting punched in the stomach by Eurovision winners, Effing and Jeffing in an Osmonds’ house, now not to commence that vital gig in a Chilean prison, petals in beer at Cardiff Uni, and the proud parents of Alien Sex Fiend. GO FOR IT, Pop-Crazed Youngsters – and enjoy all that lovely swearing… Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | PatreonSubscribe to Our Neil’s Substack Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Um... Chart music. Chart music. Hey! Up you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to the latest episode of Chalk Music, the podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and alongside me today are my dear friends Neil Kulkarni. Hello there. And Simon Price.

Hello. Jesus and Buzz ride again. Boys, come on, you know what I want. The pop things and the interesting things. Lay them on a brother right now. Well, the last time we spoke, Al I was just before Christmas, I think. And we all know what January is like. Precious little pop and interesting stuff happening.

The fucking interminable wait until payday. Yeah. And I've been a right tightwad. I've been a right Antarctic dad refusing to line the pockets of big heat. You know, I've been giving him the gym jams and stuff and clothes layers and gloves and looking at the emergency meters. In the midst of all of this, the only sort of light in it, in a sense, was my youngest's birthday.

She wound me up this month. She made me go to Hobbycraft and buy a shit ton of clay because she wanted to make a sculpture. Oh, no. Yeah, it turns out it was of Eddie, the Iron Maiden mascot. She knows I'm still a bit scared of Eddie. And she made this amazing sculpture, put it on the pillow next to me before I woke up, just so she could laugh at my shit scared reaction when I wake.

Which she didn't film, thank fuck. She asked for metal gauntlets and bracelets for her birthday. You know, Man O' War style shit. Oh, Jesus. Oh, yeah. I did my usual aged pervert shopping in blue banana she's now she's now fully gauntleted up she does look exactly like somebody from manor well inevitably i started trying them on and i'm getting a bit jealous to be honest with you they look amazing it's never too late

neil never too late it is never too late did you do a few forearm smashes on a cushion or something? Absolutely. You put them on. You are fucking the road warriors, Legion of Doom, aren't you? It just makes you fucking hench. And I've got a wedding coming. My band's got to play a wedding. And we'll be giving a list of cover songs, some fucking awful ones that the bride wants.

Oh, go on, such as? Well, she wants us to do a couple of Queen numbersoms which is kind of anathemical to my soul she wants us to do Crazy Little Thing called She's trolling you so much yeah

and she wants us to do Who Wants To Live Forever that fucking song from Highlander but I mean it'd be good to do them with the gauntlets Any Oasis?

No No Well there you go catch then look at you My bassist Has refused to do any Queen songs But I think he's coming round The thing with gauntlets is right

The male arm can be disguised to a point If you wear like particularly if you wear long sleeves Or kind of long short sleeves if you know what I mean Nobody really knows What you're packing at the top half of your arm You could be a bit hench You could work out they don't know But the giveaway is always the wrist If you've got weedy wrists right people know so this

this is why those kind of cheap heavy metal blue banana wristbands are such a godsend so you know yeah you know you put them on and everyone immediately thinks oh he's hard yeah because i do have like skinny girlish wrists so I'm definitely thinking of getting myself a pair. The only sort of pop and interesting thing that happened this month, really, was, I think, a somewhat delightful thing happened on Twitter regarding Lieutenant Pigeon. Yes. I can't help feeling that chart music's partly responsible for this.

A friend of mine who lives in Coventry, he's kind of like a curator of the Coventry Music Museum, he said, you know, Lieutenant Pigeon recorded Moldy Odd though at this house in Coventry. And kind of like a curator of the Coventry Music Museum he said you know Lieutenant Prism recorded Moldy Odd at this house in Coventry and I sort of shared it on Twitter

and suddenly a load of aforementioned as we mentioned on the last chart music Oldham Athletic fans sort of noticed this and before you knew it his request for donations

so that a blue plaque could be put up on this house was exceeded you know like in an afternoon amazing it was brilliant absolutely brilliant yeah big shout to the Pop Craze Latics so that a blue plaque could be put up on this house was exceeded, you know, like in an afternoon. It was brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant. Yeah, big shout to the Pop Craze Latics. It's been, in a sense, although it's usual January doldrums, it's been quite a hopeful January for me because I started up as substat because I was bored. Yes, let's talk about this now. Well, yeah, late December, I thought, look, I've got all this fucking music

that I listened to in 2021. Nowhere to stick it. And you cannot do an end of year list, you know, on the 1st of January. It's got to, you know, come in under the wire. So I rapidly published it, threw it out there, you know, free subscriptions, paid subscriptions for new writing. And I've had enough bites, you know. I've had like about 200, 300 odd quid of bites. So it owes me a plug it. But yeah it show neil show neilk.substack.com um please get a paid subscription you can do it

right now please you can get a paid subscription for about seven dollar a month and you know let me relive the dreams of freelancing again first week of january i was happy as a pig in shit i was just in my dressing gown smoking and writing so yeah please subscribe to my subs that i have a strange sense of impetus and hope um which has also actually been helped by having some slow time in the laundrette it's lovely going back to the laundrette because my washing machine's knackered oh Oh, mate. Oh, yeah. But I'm tempted not to get a washing machine because I love the...

I'm getting back into the laundrette and, you know, just parking myself next to the window and watching the pig people of Charlesmoor go by for 45 minutes. So, yeah, a strangely hopeful start to the year. Are you taking your jeans off and shoving them in and just sitting there in your box of short stil shorts i i honestly do not own a pair of jeans wow but yeah these gauntlets what what you want neil is you want a matching studded dog collar kind of thing yes and when you're

singing when you're doing your queen ramble right you want to do like that like the road warriors do the wrestlers when they're being interviewed. Really big hench fuckers. And when they do their interviews, they have their dog collars, they have them just a little bit loose so they can shake their head at the right moment and the collar falls off. Neil Kulkarni snacks on danger and dines on death. Too right. And in combination with a Freddy-style moustache, I think it'll be...

Yeah, definitely got to be done. I'm still processing this image of Neil waking up with the sort of clay head of Eddie the Iron Maiden mascot next to him. And I'm just trying to picture Neil's face. And in my mind, it's like that bit in The Wicker Man where Edward Woodward wakes up and there's that sort of hand candle lit and he just sort of screams and it cuts.

And yeah. It was fucking terrifying. And she'd been doing it in a room, you know, like sculpting this thing in private and hiding it. So I couldn't, because I am still scared of Eddie. I don't know what it is. There's something residual from way back in the day. He's the least favourite of the metal mascots, I think.

I much prefer um i much prefer motorhead snaggletooth simon it's been a while mate what you've been up to come on tell me all well i think one thing that's happened since i last spoke to you is i've started a new teaching job i'm at the lccm which is the london college of creative media near london bridge teaching the history of pop and as you can imagine i am like a pig in shit teaching that you know it's just it's expert simon price pop expert simon price exactly yeah yeah sorry i apologize pop yeah absolutely that's me what are you doing at the minute so for example it allows me to kind of really indulge my own obsessions while maintaining the illusion that i'm teaching

them the kind of official canon so so you know I suddenly stopped and played sort of seven t-rex videos in a row just because I felt like it or I kept sort of crowbarring sparks into every lesson saying well of course sparks are really important to you know it might be reggae or something and I'm saying well no it's great I'm yeah I'm really enjoying that um the other thing that's changed is I've joined the bourgeoisie. I know. The working class can kiss my arse and all that. Yeah, it's awful. Now, what's happened is I've moved house and we've moved to the suburbs. of a city whether that's london or brighton um or even paris uh and um the the evil landlady at the last place was going to jack the rent up by 200 quid a month which yeah i know and it was already not cheap let me tell you so you know that together with a few fortuitous things which made this possible means that we are now owners for the first time in my life um like narrowly

by the skin of our teeth i'm i'm 54 years old and i've been living like a student for all of that time all my adult life just like renting and like having to move every couple years uh well you know not wanting to move but just you know something will happen and or whatever and and it's horrible that kind of uncertainty i just imagined i'd be like that till i was in my 80s i just thought that's how life is but yeah but but here we are. So, yeah, we've moved to the suburbs. It's a part of Brighton called Bevandean.

And it's very much, it looks like the Metroland that John Betjeman wrote about. You know, it's all 1930s semi-detached houses. I can feel myself changing already. I'm putting some distance between myself and the immature, Jeremy Corbyn's unrealistic brand of student politics i think we need a more sensible mature centrist approach to solving britain's problems yeah i'm pulling the ladder up we literally bought a ladder the other day so we bought we bought a ladder to access our loft conversion

yeah yeah and just moving out to the burbs um it's it's a whole different kind of pace of life it's only a sort of 10 minute bus ride for the middle of brighton but it's deathly quiet here i mean apart from anything else we've we've got a front garden i've never had a front garden before so there's that kind of buffer between you and human beings walking past which it's just really alien to me i'm used to just hearing that kind of hubbub of life outside the window um and and and also you know you can walk around after dark and there is no one you can hear a pin drop yeah like the other day i i fell over right or maybe at my age i should say i had a fall yeah yeah um i i i say i say it the other day it was just before christmas i i was uh coming back home from central brighton with a heavy bag of shopping of sort of

christmas related stuff and um there was there's loads of kind of like plastic bins and recycling bins out on the pavement it's quite a narrow pavement so i kind of like swerved my walk to avoid bumping into these bins and it was dark there's quite a lot of like long gaps between street lights that's my excuse also um i was wearing these giant stack-heeled dr martin's these big sort of um sort of uh that'll get the neighbors talking oh god yeah i mean right this is it we're trying to do everything we can to to seem as sort of nice and normal as we can because the neighbor's going to be talking anyway or we've seen that pair of goths we've moved in so we're just trying to do everything we can

satan has moved yeah yeah and also just a change in um in the wildlife like in my old place all you saw out the window was pigeons and seagulls and i've seen a seagull ripping the head off a live pigeon out of the back window of my old place and the pigeons themselves look pretty dystopian because our house backed onto a row of takeaways and um there was kind of um an extractor thing an extractor from the kitchen one of the takeaways where the pigeons had built a nest in in the extractor which was i'm sure it was nice for them really warm but they came out all covered in chip fat and they all look like sid vicious these sort of sid vicious looking pigeons it was amazing so one of these sid vicious pigeon heads being ripped off by a seagull

was the kind of wildlife I was used to seeing. If you saw a mammal, it would be a rat. But out here, it's squirrels and foxes. Like right as I speak, I can see a squirrel kind of monkeying about because they are the kind of British monkey, aren't they? The squirrel, really. And the other day, there were foxes having sex in our garden. Obviously, I drew the curtains to give them some privacy.

I'm not a complete pervert, you know. But, yeah, and, you know, bird-wise, you've got rooks and robins and collared doves and most glamorous of all, jays, which are, you know, beautiful, really colourful and all that. And, yes, suddenly I'm sort of a changed man, living this sort of Terry and June lifestyle. Yeah, I don't know what it's like where you guys live, but this is novelty to me, all this.

It really is. It's very similar where I live. Just be wary, Simon, if anyone asks you to join a neighbourhood watch or something like that. That's where the Pampas grass connection really lies. Neighbourhood crotch, more like. Well, as far as chart music goes, Neil, I've got some very disturbing news to pass on to you.

Oh, my word. You know, I put the last episode to bed, reclined and luxuriated in the afterglow of it. And then all of a sudden I got a message from one of my mates, Ayo Bev, which reads as follows. Hey, Al, I just interviewed jay osmond on whatsapp and told him about your discussion of crazy horses on the last podcast oh my god as i was talking his wife was furiously searching for it online and i now feel completely responsible for all the sexual swear words that go into here. Neil, me and you have effed and chuffed in an Osman's house.

Oh, my God. I can just imagine the Mormon shock at that. That don't sit right with me now. Yes, same here. She also went on to say, P.S. I told them about the denim song and they started searching for that. Oh, fantastic.

So there you go, man. We've closed a circle. That is great. That is so great. that. Oh, fantastic. So there you go, man. We've closed a circle. That is great. That is so great. Yeah. That's mental. That is mental. That our outright blasphemy is in an Ottoman household like that.

That is nuts. I'd just love to know how long they lasted. Because I know within about five seconds I called Harry Nilsson a cunt. So I can't imagine they even got to you saying anything about how brilliant Crazy Horse is, man. So sorry about that, Neil. In other news, I had a fucking shit Christmas. Started off on Christmas Day. For the first time ever,

my mum's moved out of town and living up the road from my sister. So for the first time on Christmas Day, I'm getting to see me nephews and niece, which is fucking brilliant. The concept was fucking brilliant. But i woke up hung over as fuck at about i don't know 12 o'clock stumbled into the living room and there they are the little kids their faces all shining and smiling and i'd forgotten to take out money to give them so that those smiles disappeared

so i just said you know try and take the mind off it. I just said, you know, come on, let's do something familial. And I just thought, you know, you know what I reached for? The Christmas top of the pops that was on that day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I thought I'd sit down with the youth and, you know, educate them. As well as getting a little look into a window on their world. And, well, I lasted about 10 minutes.

Had to be turned off because I caught myself kicking off at a nine-year-old girl because she said she liked Ed Sheeran. And then fucking Coldplay or some twats like that were playing in a castle. And I just said, right, fuck this, we're not watching this. And I put on the episode of top of the pops that we covered in the last episode of charles talk them all about gary glitter and you know rolf harris the magic of christmas there but i mean i tried to question them on what kind of music they're into and you know one of them's nine one of them's nine, one of them's 13, the other one's 21. Absolutely blank stares in return.

So I could ask them what their favourite shape of drill bit is. Yeah, yeah. It means nothing to them. Oh, it means fuck all. It's like in previous years, right, with my kids and grandkids, I've bought them presents, you know, to see their little faces light up. All of my grandkids, all they wanted this year was robux right which is is it i know you don't know what it is no you're talking about roblox i'm talking about roblox

robux is a fucking american department no no but robux is the voucher for roblox i stand corrected i do apologize and that's all they wanted. And, you know, it's a little card. Fucking cryptocurrency. And they're always lit up with delight. All the specialness is fucking gone, man. And some of them wanted Minecraft fucking vouchers. I mean, fuck off. Oh, come on.

How much did we love getting a record token, though? No, no, fair enough. Yeah, but as a supplement to your big track or your Subutio or something like that. Yeah, I guess. I think I'm just resisting the fact they're getting old at. Because it does come that time, doesn't it, in your life, when you're about 10, 11, all you want is money. Really?

Yeah. Oh, and before we move on, I want to give a shout out to the members of Chart Music who are currently under heavy manners with the spiteful Armoured Bollock. Yeah. One's recovering. One's coming off the arse end of it. currently under heavy manners with the spiteful Armoured Bollock. One's recovering, one's coming off the arse end of it and I know that the Pop Craze youngsters will be joining us

in wishing them a swift and full recovery as they malinger in their sick beds, read comics and get stuck into another episode of Crown Court. Get well soon, duckies. Oh man, have you had it yet no no i've dodged it maybe this most boring chat going yeah yeah i had it back in august i did yeah yeah i didn't i didn't yeah yeah i'm pretty sure what we had was a delta variant which was like it wasn't

the og covid it was like when an album gets reissued on the fame label and it doesn't have the same kind of inner sleeve but yeah um we were fully jabbed up by that point so obviously the effects were kind of uh toned down a little bit because of that but it gave me enough of a window into what it would have been like if we weren't jabbed up and for you know about three days it was pretty fucking scary couldn't breathe my breathing's not great anyway so yeah um get jabbed everybody it's horrible yeah yeah regardless of what um van morrison or ian brown or eric lapton tells you yeah be more like neil young yes good old neil so we've come to the part of the show where we stop we drop and we bow the knee to the latest batch of pop craze patreons and in the five dollar section this time we have anthony stenson cra Shelton, Andy Crayford, James Fox, Brendan Stone, No Chorus,

Sarah LeClaire, Wayne Azarate, Brendan McCarthy, Tony Coles, Eddie Cockring, Stephen Moore, Bruce, Even more, Bruce, Caitlin Francis, Wraith and Dan Gent. Thank you, babies. Can I just stop there to thank Sarah LeClaire specifically? I know we shouldn't pick people out, but she used to write for Melody Maker way back. Did she? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And kind of lost touch.

And yeah, good on you, Sarah. Good to know you're out there. I'm just sort of also wondering which of those was actually Jay Osmond. Yes. And in the $3 section, we have Alan Elliott, Ian Hamilton, David Waring, Simon Mulvaney, Russell Young, Richard Walkington, and Joe Lathorn. Oh, you completers, you sexy bastards. We love you like our name was the Rolling Stones. Oh, and Stephen Metcalf, Chris Mitchell, Gavin Montgomery,

Richard Williamson and Riley Briggs. You know what they did, chaps? They only went and jacked it up as a Christmas box for us. Isn't that nice of them? Oh, lovely stuff. And one thing those pop-crazed youngsters get to do every month is fiddle and a diddle and a tinker and a tanker with this week's chart music top ten. Shall we, chaps?

Yes, please. Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to Tyler the XXX, privately educated Romo Cop and Jet Sex, which means none up, four down. Three non-movers and three new entries. It's a new entry at number 10 for Singleton Notes, Purvis and Judd. Holding fast at number 9, Rock Expert, David Starks.

No change either at number 8 for Staircase of Cock. And it's another non-mover at number seven. Here comes Chisholm. Yes. Last week's number one falls five places to number six, the popular orange vegetable into the top five and it's a one place drop for bummer dog down one place from number three to number four the bent cunts who are fucking real last week's number two this week week's number three, skin heady heady.

And straight in at number two, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Glitter, which means... Britain's number one. The first number one of the year and the highest new entry straight in at number one. Two Ronnies, One Cup. Oh, what a chart, dear boys. What a chart. Give me the bullet. Gives you hope for the new year, doesn't it?

I mean, we've already established that Singleton, Noakes, Purvis and Judd are a well Canterbury sound. And Crosby, Stills, Nash and Glitter essentially speaks for itself, doesn't it? Our house, hey, is a's a very very very fine house hey but what's the stitch with two ronnie's one cup i'm saying no gay electro disco it's gay electro disco kind of like bronski beat meets man to man featuring man parish that kind of vibe yeah yeah i i think it's a little darker than that i think it's kind of uh songs that throbbing gristle would have rejected as too offensive oh a bit white house you mean

yeah yeah i'm deeply upset that baxter woolard and rod didn't make the top 10 though but then again as that bloke in the melody makers letters page said last episode you know bands like baxter woolard and rod must always struggle because their music requires some concentration and you can't get off on it straight away. While bands like Skin, Heady Heady and Here Comes Chisholm who use simple repetitive chords and phrases will always flourish. Yeah, man.

Even in the chart music top ten, you know, the big bands squeeze out their pap for the mug masses to lap up. Yeah. This is pop. So if you want in on the pulsating go-ahead lifestyle of the pop craze Patreons who have already crammed this entire episode without adverts into their gaping maws, you know what to do. Keyboard, patreon.com slash chartmusic, Monair, G-String.

You can do it right now. Please. So this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to April the 26th, 1984. Now, chaps, we've taken a saunter down 1984 Street a couple of times, haven't we? But this one happens to be the first that doesn't have Frankie Goes to Hollywood at number one. So there is that. But there's a specific reason why we're doing this episode. And we'll come to that later. But, you know, going through this episode, quite an eye-opener, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. It's a right grab bag of bollocks, isn't it?

Yeah. Very much so. I mean, one of the basic tenets of 80s pop, according to the chart music odyssey, is that Live Aid was a fault line through the decade, which allowed the dinosaurs of pop to come lumbering back. But this episode clearly demonstrates that the surface of the plastic cup of water was rippling long before the summer of 85 yeah it

does in many ways superficially it still feels like the early 80s but there are things happening in it which you can sense the ground shifting beneath your feet and we are moving into the mid-80s haven't fully got there yet but yeah there are a lot of things which like you say would probably be associated with band-aid live aid and all of that but they were just sort of biding their time they were sort of affirming their status as the sort of acts who were worthy of being on that kind of global stage yes yeah it was very much you know a shift from brit-centric uh pop and pop charts through to more sort of americanized and globalized feel i think very much so yeah very much so which is odd because i mean in a way we could see that the

lines of things getting not as good as the early 80s in 83 but actually at this time in 84 i was really open and quite sluggish about pop music looking at looking at the chart i was i hadn't yet developed all the enmities and hatreds that would excise people from my listening so you know i was quite open to a lot of this stuff in the charts hip-hop had kind of gone away in 84 a little bit waiting for its renaissance in 85 we were in dmc so in a pop sense i was very open and getting from obviously getting tremendously excited about frankie in particular is probably a terrible time for pot but a time when my engagement with Pop

via radio, TV and smash hits was total and absolute. I mean without spoiler in this episode I'd like you to contemplate the following statistic chaps average age of the presenters on this episode of Top of the Pops 33

average age of the front persons on this episode of Top of the pops in all the bands and the artists and all that kind of stuff 35 wow yeah only three of the 10 acts we're going to see tonight are in the 20s only one person on stage in the entire episode is a teenager and eight of them are old enough to legally be our parents at the time in a nutshell chaps this episode is night of the living dad it's kind of a re-professionalization of pop the kids are not going to be allowed to take over anymore and these are the kind of re-exerting themselves i don't know i didn't really feel that way when i watched it i mean when you point out

the stats it's undeniable but those i mean, the stats of the age of the presenters, on average, and of the artists are pushed up artificially by one presenter and, let's say, two artists in particular. at least sort of three or four things there that are aimed at young people, I would say. But we'll come to that. Yeah. Let's move on. No, sorry. It's 1984. Let's go for it.

Radio 1 News In the news this week, American researchers have announced their discovery of human T-cell leukemia virus type 3, otherwise known as the AIDS virus. In the wake of the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher nine days ago, the Foreign Office have ended the siege at the Libyan embassy by deporting all 50 embassy staff with diplomatic immunity whilst closing down their embassy in Tripoli. Seven out of nine pits in Nottinghamshire stay open after the Easter break, defying calls from Arthur Scargill for an all-out strike. Don't start shouting scab at me! Bobby Kennedy's son has been found dead of a drug overdose in a Palm Beach hotel. Prince Fairclough has been coated down by American media after he sprayed his press pool with a paint gun on his visit to California

and said, I enjoyed that. Prince Fairclough. Count Basie has died today in a Florida hospital at the age of 79. Count Basie has died today in a Florida hospital at the age of 79. A male stripping troop have been paid £200 to put on a show at a hemp party at the Greenham Common Peace Camp next week. A programme broadcast by BBC Radio Merseyside claims that 50% of people aged between 14 and 25 in their catchment area are regular users of heroin. Liz Dawn, who plays Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street,

is waiting to see if she's getting sacked after she appeared in Cabaret at a restaurant in Halifax, opened the show by saying she was too pissed to perform, and then punched her agent in the face and had a go at the restaurant owner when she was told she wasn't getting her 325 pound fee look at there bill tarmare her on-screen husband jack was in the audience and stood in at short notice what a pro that's amazing liverpool have knocked dinamo bucarest out of the european cup semi-final and will play roma in the final That's amazing. Thanks to Anderlecht president Constant van den Stock bunging referee Emilio Guricetta-Muro 1.2 million Belgian francs to act the cunt on the pitch.

Fuck them both up the arse with a stick with a nail in it. Not that you bear a grudge or anything. Is that the reason we chose this episode, Al? You've been saving that up. Boy George accuses customs officers at Heathrow for being obnoxious pigs after John Moss was detained for two hours

over a pair of trousers he bought back from New York and Mikey Craig was detained for six hours over a guitar. George was still in America as he wanted to stay behind a bit to see Liberace in concert. George was still in America because he knew what the fuck would happen when he got through there with his luggage. But the big news this week is that the BBC have announced plans to launch a new soap opera, their first since The Newcomers finished in 1969, to replace the ailing news show 60 Minutes and in an attempt to lock viewers into BBC One all night.

According to the Sunday Mirror, the soap will be, quote, a cheerful slice of life set in the East End of London. Yeah, what happened there? Filming will commence in August and it will run twice a week from early 1985 with a chat show on the other weeknights with Terry Wogan and Russell Harter as the front runners to present. In terms of like what EastEnders

was set up to do to lock you into BBC One for the night, it kind of worked on me completely. I was massive watcher of EastEnders for the first 10-15 years. Yeah I guess I was really yeah. I've come to form the opinion that East enders is the prime culprit in the decline and eventual death of top of the pops but you know i'll lay

out my case when the time is right all right no seriously it was death by a thousand cuts i'm surprised you didn't mention by the way that on april the 26th 1984 sultan iskandar of johor became yang di pertuan Agong of Malaysia, the supreme ruler of Malaysia. I just assumed everyone knew that. Yeah, I mean, a bit of a colourful character. He's what's diplomatically known as a strict disciplinarian,

which basically means he was a right fucking arsehole, right? He was a motorbike enthusiast who kept peacocks, but he used to walk around with a pistol in his waistband. And he's most known for the gomez incident of 1992 where um he and his goons beat up a hockey coach that he'd come into a disagreement with right and uh yeah you can say what you like about him now he's dead it's fine yeah i just thought i had to put that out there for all our malaysian listeners i know we have many i think global simon always yeah yeah those mouse strippers are green and

common man there's another play for today isn't there well let me get this right were they sent I know we have many. Think global, Simon, always. Those mouse strippers at Greenham Common, man. There's another play for today, isn't there? Well, let me get this right. Were they sent by some kind of mischievous tabloid newspaper? No, no, no, no. It was actually hired by the Greenham women themselves. I mean, Al, if you'd have been part of that troupe, would you have... Oh, yeah.

You don't even finish that question. Of course I would. No, but I'm saying if you'd have been part of that troupe, how would you have adapted your costume and act to reflect it i'm just thinking of missile shapes intercontinental bollock stick missiles etc i mean well we could have kind of like got together if there was four of us we could have formed the cnd symbol yeah you can't kill the spirit, girls. I am like the mountain. On the cover of Melody Maker this week,

Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen. On the cover of Smash It, Frankie goes to Hollywood. The number one LP in the country is now That's What I Call Music 2. Can't Slow Down by Lionel Richie is at number two and over in america the number one single is against all odds by phil collins and the number one lp is a soundtrack to footloose with 1984 by van halen at number two so boys what were we doing in april 1984? I was 16 going on 17, like my name was Liesel von Trapp. My life was an empty page that men would want to write on. Eager young lads and roues and cads would offer me food and wine.

I was innocent as a rose, bachelor dandies, drinkers of brandies. What did I know of those? I was in transition, really. I mean, the pot crazy owners already heard what i was like at the age of 15 i guess you know wearing a burgundy cardigan with a big y on it dabbing detol on my acne damaged skin which only made it worse staring out the window listening to dexys all of that you know stuff but i was kind of shifting i wasn't yet writing for the local paper simon says. I was really open.

No, not quite. That was coming in the summer. But I was kind of just my whole interests and my aesthetics were moving along a bit. My best friend at the time was a kid called Andrew Hammond. And he was into Bob Dylan and I was into the Smiths, of whom possibly more later. We were both into vintage stuff, which I think it's a real shift when you're a teenager when you move from everything having to be brand new all your clothing everything to actually sort of think no i like old stuff and sort of understanding that it's not embarrassing to wear secondhand clothes and it can actually be cool and you can actually break away slightly

from wearing what every other fucker is wearing to just sort of adapting things and just coming up with your own style not that my style was particularly original but um we go into jacob's market in cardiff which was still is in fact um an indoor market over several floors uh in what what was then the red light district it's uh it's right by where the manics later recorded the holy bible right and we go in there and we buy old cinema posters and beads and old clothes and stuff we'd be wearing brothel creepers and granddad shirts and secondhand dinner jackets and brooches um i actually borrowed a brooch off my mum which was a family heirloom and i got into loads of trouble because um it fell off my jacket on the way home from a disco

at barry island and got run over in a back alley behind a chip shop. Yeah, and I later found it. I went back the next day thinking, oh, maybe it's there. And I found it, but it was all crushed by car wheels and all in pieces. Yeah, yeah. But we were just bored shitless, so we used to just run into church halls and working men's clubs into the doorway and shout,

communists with a bomb and run away just for something to do. This was around the same time as my famous crisp-sacrificing exploits on the Druid Circle. But we actually formed a band as well, like a duo. What were they called? They were called

The Mary Brennell Boys Murder. Wow. And it came to me in a dream and it was a weird dream. It wasn't just, it wasn't a dream where visual things happen. It was just a voice in this kind of slightly sort of spooky low tone, just repeating over and over the Mary Brennell Boys Murder. And I woke up with a real kind of shudder. And I decided it had to be the name of our duo. So yeah, there's just two of us with acoustic guitars. And we used to go into Cardiff and sit on

the floor in the pedestrian shopping street Queen Street with with our with our Ray-Bans on because not not to be cool but because we were shy and scared of catching anyone's eye and people would come up to us and throw money and we would get really angry because we're like no no that's not what we're doing it for and we we we pick up the money and throw it back at them, you know. We had this idea of, because the Jesus and Mary chain was starting to become known. We thought, well, the way they're fucking around with the electric guitar and getting feedback from it, maybe we can do that with acoustic guitars by going into like an indoor shopping kind of arcade

and playing a really loud chord and sort of swinging around with it and getting loads of echo and stuff like that. And our best song was 12 seconds long. It was called Pain Angel. I can still hear it in my head. This is a song about a girl and a boy.

I wrote one called James Dean and Natalie Wood, which was absolute shit. Andrew wrote one called Sylvia's Paris Adventure, which was about this elderly lady he fancied who worked in the chip shop where he had a part-time job. Wow. Which is, you know, a bit weird, but, you know, that's fair enough. But, yeah, we played one gig in Barry, which is down at the Boating Lake. And this was a bit later on when I did have my newspaper column

and I kind of announced it the previous week everybody turn up at this Boating Lake it's kind of like a concrete shelter with pillars next to the lake and we thought this would be good for our crazy acoustic experiment

so we said everyone's got to come here here in the end like about four people turned up and even even with four people in front of us we were so shy and embarrassed that we ended up not playing any of our own songs and just played jesus and mary chain covers um but there was a woman there who was from the rival local paper, the Barry Gem. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. And she actually wrote a review of it. But she obviously didn't get that it was cover versions. She thought that we'd written, like,

Taste of Cindy by the Mary Chain or whatever. And she actually did a write-up saying, they could be quite big in a bedroom sort of way. So, yeah, that was the Mary Brennell Boys murder and that's where I was at in 1984. Wow. Tape? There is no tape of it. Says you. Andrew, the other half of the

Mary Brennell Boys murder, Andrew, happens to live in Brighton now. Oh, come on! Reunion? Yeah, I'm thinking reunion, right? Listen, just watch this space, that's all I'm saying. Oh, man. And I'll announce it for some kind of boating lake in Brighton and see who comes along. Well, in comparison, my 84, my God, this is very mediocre.

Second year of senior school, between about 11 and 12. And just really starting to realise just what a strange institution my school was. Having done a fair few chart musics around about this 80s period i do worry that my memories kind of blur and overlap but luckily because i'm a hoarding old cunt i found in the mess that is my front room a little aperture into my 12 year old consciousness via a plethora of old exercise books from school which which to be honest with you don't really tell me much about myself other than that

i was fucking lazy but i could do a really great color-coded picture of plate tectonics and i was also i also did an excellent diagram of a locust oh man well what more do you need quiet but they did remind me that i did fucking greek at school i did fucking latin at school because my school had pretensions of being a public school you know presumably prepping us all for life's future captains of industry but i've got i found this this book called greek vocabulary i've written on the front of it i've spelt vocabulary wrong it's got all this fucking greek writing in it i'm i never even learned the alphabet which is the basics of learning Greek, I guess.

And we were taught this by an old teacher called Ted Norris, who's a fucking lunatic ex-military. But I always liked him in a weird way. He's very intimidating. But I remember I had a mate who was just a real tearaway and was really bad at pretty much everything. And he illustrated an essay about the fall of Troy. Yeah, this is the kind of shit we were taught but at the top of it he drew a massive apple going one way and a nuclear missile going

the other way and yeah the teacher gave him top marks he said that that's a real insight that is um it was the eyes but yeah it's demented school you know and and these exercise books really reveal that greek and latin mean, what was the fucking point? Well, you could be a doctor in Athens, I suppose. Well, I guess so. But beyond that, yeah, yeah, I was just apprehending what a strange school I was at. And unlike Simon, I hadn't developed these lines of call about what I was into quite yet. So I was really, yeah, I was into pretty much anything that floated my boat, particularly Frankie at this time.

Well, I'm five days away from a 16th birthday and five days away from my first exam, Maths CSE. And I've already decided that there's absolutely fuck all point in revising because, you know, there's no jobs to go to because, hey, it's 1984, Thatcher's Britain, etc., etc. And, you know, we're all going to die in a nuclear holocaust anyway so fuck it i'm ramming on ours ramming handfuls of fun-sized milky way into me gob and watching top of the pops on the portable telly upstairs i'm essentially living

the first scene of the first episode of going out and four idle hands and prospects and all those drama series about youth turning into adults i'm desperate to get the fuck out of school but i'm also aware that my entire support systems about to be kicked away we went on about alice cooper in the last episode and you know it might go on about no more teachers and no more pencils but he's never stopped to think that it also means no more football on the tennis court three times a day no more seeing the girls you fancy every day no more easy access to your mates and no more somewhere to actually fucking be in the week no more structure no more order terrifying because there were people there who i'd knock about with on a daily basis and then don't hear

a word from them until about 30 years later when they're tapping me up on Facebook. That's mad. Oh, it's a tremendously anxious time. My daughter's going through that at the moment because she's going to be doing her GCSEs. You know, but I've reassured her we're just going to get a big van and a big dog

and go solve mysteries, so we'll be all right. Well, I suppose nowadays for most kids they get funneled into further education straight away, don't they? Yeah, and I'm starting to feel that the whole system of education is bullshit. So, yeah, I might even be going the homeschooling route. Fuck it. She wants to be a music journalist, which strangely she does.

Maybe I can give her some help. Take her to go and see Simon's reunion gig. Give her honest appraisal. Like school, I'm watching Top of the Pops, not because I want to but because i have to you know to keep an eye on things whilst not expecting anything to blow my tiny mind yeah and i'm also noticing that that like you simon whatever money i have nowadays is starting to go towards the second hand record shops and second hand clothes shops of Nottingham. Yeah, yeah. That chasing after the 60s has begun in earnest.

Yeah, yeah. And we're going to see elements of that in this episode, aren't we? Oh, definitely, yeah. Yeah, it's a common thread throughout the grim mid-80s, isn't it? Well, boys, I do believe it's about time that we have a bit of a leaf through an edition of the music press from this week. And this time I've gone for the nme would you care to join me in this leaf through yeah let's all right then on the cover an extremely blue tinted

bananarama looking up at the clouds in the news well there isn't any really because bar a few tour announcements nme hasn't bothered with its new section this week and have given over that space to let Bieber Koff tell the world about the new pop sensation that all the kids are getting down to lie back seeing that the only news item

of note in Melody Maker this week is that Epic are denying that Michael Jackson is working on a new single called Tingle. It's safe to assume that pop is on its half term. Did you look into this? Because I did. The Tingle thing. Go on, please.

Well, it turns out it was an April Fool hoax that sort of got out of hand. Really? Yeah, I looked at this website. Well out of hand, because this is April the 28th. Yeah, well the thing is, people didn't realise it was a hoax, and they took it and run with it. So I found this. This is from hoaxes.org, which is a pretty good website for this kind of shit.

Right. And what they say is, On Cable magazine reported that a huge publicity blitz was being planned around an upcoming Michael Jackson song, Tingle. The song was said to be three minutes and 12 seconds long, and a video of it would feature Jackson walking out of a boutique Michael Jackson's song, Tingle. The song was said to be three minutes and 12 seconds long, and a video of it would feature Jackson walking out of a boutique and catching fire. Jackson's record company had reportedly also developed

a 37-minute promo clip to hype the video, and this promo was in turn being developed into a three-hour film by Paramount. So, I mean mean already you're thinking how did anyone not know this was a hoax but it carries on three video versions of the song would be sold michael jackson's tingle for 39.95 making the tingle video for 79.95 and the i know where this is going the making of the making of the Tingle video, for $99.95. Right?

MTV was supposedly going to show the 37-minute promo clip hourly. So basically, leaving 23 minutes for anything else. Parker Brothers would release a board game designed around it. Pepsi would be the official soft drink of the video and all states would sell exclusive fire insurance along with the video and yet despite all of that you know pretty much signpost telegraphed flagpole fucking obvious jokes in that um yeah um somebody in well several people in american media picked that up took took it seriously, ran with it, to the extent that it then ends up in the NME

with spokespersons for Melody Maker. Sorry. Don't blame the NME for this, Simon. It's your lot. And it then ends up in Melody Maker with spokespersons for the record label having to deny it. I mean, for fuck's sake. If you're going to hoax, go big, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bieber-Cott, prophetic there. I mean, if

any band defied the 80s, it was Lieback. Oddly enough, Al, I know you had problems with Bieber, didn't you? Because he slagged off, was it The Jam or was it? Paul Weller, yeah, slagged off The Jam, yeah. He's my current editor at The Wire, by the way. Not Paul Weller, but Bieber-Cop. No way. Is he?

He is. Chris Bone? Chris Bone, yeah. It's a strange thing, these names that we're conjuring with. You know, last month I had to bother him for an advance on some mag pay because I was so skint. It's just weird getting in touch with these people with these day-to-day hundred concerns.

But yeah, he's my current editor. He's a good one, actually. He doesn't like the jam though, so fuck him. In the interview section, well, Susan Williams, the current pen name of Stephen Wells, nips over to the offices of London Records to goad and poke Bananarama, who are still basking in the afterglow of Robert De Niro's weight in getting to number three, and their new LP Bananarama coming out next week. are coming out next week. Wells opens the article by pointing out that the LP is dedicated to Thomas Riley, a longtime friend of the group who was shot by British soldiers in Belfast.

Siobhan tells him how they were mithered at the funeral by the News of the World and News at Ten, who wanted shots of the three of them together, and says she regrets not telling him that the reason Riley, her ex-boyfriend's brother, is dead, is because the British government,

has got 18 year old boys, running about with loaded guns, they go on to tell Wells, that they were wearing headstaffs, to still sign on, while they were having top five hits, with a fun boy three, they're sick of being called cute, when they only wear sunglasses, to disguise how how hideous they all look without makeup.

And they don't get on with the current crop of Radio 1 DJs who didn't play Robert De Niro's Waiting until it got into the charts. Quote from Siobhan. One of the DJs said, Bananarama are harder to fuck than fives. Ha ha, very witty. They're all nicey nicey on the air, but after that it's all lads together.

We don't prop up the bar with them leering at secretaries. We don't fit in with that crap. Paul Morley has been tasked to interview Fish out of Meridian, but he completely forgot about it, so he's surprised when he gets screamed at by Fish over the phone

from an officer at EMI, who tells him that he's been waiting two years to have a go at the NME. Morley then tells us that all he knows about Fish is, quote, silly eye makeup, a pansy pageboy haircut, and songs that make the Bible look abbreviated. An interview is scheduled for the next day, meaning that Fish has to cut short his attendance of the Razzmatazz end of series party. And the interview commences with Mr. Dick apologising for being pissed up yesterday, telling Morley that he was the only NME hack he wanted to talk to after his recent confrontation with Phil Collins.

Then he asks him what his star sign is. Morley asks Fish, Are you a prat? And the tone for the interview is set. Fish claims that the NME doesn't like Marillion because they might be scared that a band influenced by the 70s could actually be the one true band of the 80s. He's aghast that some people laugh more at his band

than they do at Duran Duran, and he doesn't care if people bitch about him as long as they listen, man. Morley concludes the interview by saying that fish is a bit mad but a bit clever as well these confrontation interviews i'm i was all for them at the time and still are now have you ever had interviews like that where you've clashed heads properly with people yeah i've had a few what's your favorites i.e the ones where you won to be honest with you, with me,

it was never the context of the interview as such. It was my behaviour. So with the band Puddle of Mud, for instance, terrible, terrible band, I stubbed my fag out in their stash. That pissed them off. I got Jerry the Damager didn't get along with me. Marilyn Manson didn't particularly get along with me.

Just as well, eh? Well, quite, quite. I mean, but yeah, it was never sort of... I am too shy to ask questions. You're like, you know, why are you such a wanker or anything like that. I have spoken with bands whereby they're strung out. They're on their last legs.

They're all on heroin and stuff. And you do end up having to just take the piss out of them just to get anything out of them at all. That that certainly happened with smashing pumpkins in my experience um they were all strung out to fuck and i just had to start taking the piss the confrontational interview used to happen i suppose because of the power of the weekly music press in those days yeah because there was you know there were few other places for artists to go for record labels to go so you know somebody like fish would be sent along to be richly slaughtered by the nme because like where else they're going to get any publicity and that was still kind of lingering on in our day a little

bit but it tended to be more with indie bands so for me there was this band from hulk or kingmaker who hardly anybody remembers now but but they were briefly popular. Silver of the NME? Yeah, they were very NME, you see. They were very kind of bog-standard landfill indie, as far as I was concerned. And I interviewed the chap, Loz. You know, he was perfectly nice,

but he knew and I knew when we went in that I wasn't a fan. And that was the whole basis of the interview. And I thought, because he knows that and I know that, I'm not going to stitch him up. It'd be so easy to go in there and just sort of pretend that I love his band and I'm going to give him a fair hearing. You know, I laid my cards on the table and made it clear I didn't like him and sort of, you know, gave him a few reasons why.

And I think I wrote up a fair piece where we both sort of reasoned our point of view. And I remember the last line being, we leave by separate doors. You know? It was a pub in Soho, and we literally did leave by separate doors. So, yeah, it was a thing back in the day, but totally would not happen now.

Oh, good God, no. I can't even conceive of any situation where that would happen. Maybe only if it was somebody really fucking powerful, like, I don't know, Joe Rogan or somebody on his podcast would get to do that but um it's a dying art or dead art now the pr would simply not allow that to happen um you won't get the access yeah and the editor wouldn't even commission it um not a chance you've got a cheerlead sean o'hagan drops in on the latest contender to bob molly's throne winston foster better known as yellow man while he's on tour in europe he tells o'hagan that he

wants to make reggae popular again throughout the world with his cheeky tales of knobbing loads of women which is a big joke that the ladies in the audience are in on he also believes that reggae is in the doldrums because too many of its practitioners are banging on about politics all the time and ignoring the real issues, like telling people how many kids they've fathered and how great they are.

Edward drops a double-page spread about his sojourn through Louisiana and Texas in an attempt to dig into Cajun music, Zydeco in particular. He advises the readership that if they want in they need to get their arses over to New Orleans scowl the posters on the walls for upcoming gigs and then

work out their chances of getting shot there or not and not to kick off if you get barred out on the door for not coming from round here and this week's subject of Portrait of the Artist And not to kick off if you get barred out on the door for not coming from round here. And this week's subject of Portrait of the Artist as a Consumer is Alan Freeman. Who tells us that his favourite TV shows are Channel 4 News, That's Life and The Money Programme. He likes Making Love and Truth. And his favourite records include One Day I'll Fly Away by Randy Crawford

Rock and Roll Part 2 by Gary Glitter and I Like Big Tits by Joe Walsh Single reviews Well, Gavin Martin is in the chair this week and his singles of the week are a one-two punch of southern soul from 70s veterans. First up is Leave the Bridges Standing by Shirley Brown.

The lady famous for the stack standard woman-to-woman cuts herself a niche away from the empty gestures and trifling diversions of so many young bods. Let's hope the British distributors don't waste too much time getting their mitts on this, hence not losing any sales to the import markets, hence putting some real music in the

charts. The second, Gotta Give a Little Love by Timmy Thomas, is a jab of solar plexus bending New Orleans flavoured funk, a few lightning shards of scratch, and a spruce and prickly invocation to a fave soul-meeting place, the utopian dance floor.

Enemy's really into its old soul stuff at the minute, aren't they? Oh, very much so. And all of this singles stuff from Gavin Martin, it's a reminder of kind of... One of the delightful things about doing a singles page was it it was your chance really to push your vision of what you thought important part was because you weren't limited to one band or anything so you could accentuate some slag off others and it really was a page long chance for you to kind of say this is what

I think is important in pop music and this is me yeah yeah completely while martin wouldn't give electro house room as he thinks it's the worst thing to happen to music since elvis enlisted in 1958 because it's boring repetitive soulless and brainless but he is keen on jam on it by Nucleus, except he or the sub thinks it's by New Clues. A record that has dazzle, colour and imagination in its grooves that doesn't require you to spin on your head for three hours before you can appreciate it. That was a big tune on our estate, jam on it. Otherwise known as the wiki wiki wiki song.

our state jam on it otherwise known as the wiki wiki wiki song but it's a coat down for the lebanon by the human league more pop people with their serious hats on writes martin like their fellow sheffield socialists abc the league figure that musically the best way of showing maturity is to move away from their jewel enccrusted pop to the murk of rock density but there's no real thinking or provocation in this slf clash style banner waving sensationalism this is a propulsive streamlined slab of modern rock that bears its teeth and stamps his feet hopelessly immobile and incapable of agitation. Oh, dear. I do remember feeling a little bit betrayed

when the Human League had guitars on one of their records, to be honest. But then somebody like Gavin Martin would probably have thought that's a slight improvement because he hates all that electro crap. And that thing he said there about Nucleus and just his point that he made in that earlier Shirley Brown review, it's very symptomatic of a way of thinking that was at large at the time, which was that black American music is fine as long as it's old. It's got to be 20 years old.

And God forbid involves people spinning on their heads is to be, you know, you've got to be so wary of that. Yeah. And yeah, so he's very much one of these kind of keep it real, black music's fine as long as it's from the past kind of guys. Well, that's what I was like at the time. I guess I was to an extent, but then I also loved things like Let the Music Play by Shannon or, you know, Word Up by Cameo or Ain't Nothing Going On But the Rent by Gwen Guthrie and all this kind of stuff.

So, you know, I was open to both. It's a way for Martin to sort of reject new pop and simultaneously yeah just kind of sort of hypostatized black pot back to 77 much as people were doing reggae you know it all went down in what dancehall started and soul all went down and once synthesizer started getting involved king have put out their debut single love and pride and martin immediately puts the spray painted boot in it's gormless aesthetic over visit upturned extraneously performed london club goers dance music i suppose a few years ago we'd have had them as the inevitable next big thing

and put them on the cover nice to think how we've all matured can I ask Neil on this point because we all know what cov people think about two-tone because there's a fucking museum we know what they think of lieutenant pigeon because there's going to be a blue plaque what do cov people think about king

there's no pride let me put it that way you know any love a bit of love for maybe the single i think it's a class-based thing simon i think like specials orchids and all the others that kind and lieutenant pigeon they come from a sort of general cough background with king for me they occupy they're not as bad as the enemy you don't get me wrong but they're one of those don't start that again no i'm not gonna open up that can of worms but um they're a kov band but are they a kov band because they were kind of like you couldn't tell whether they were from kov and you didn't really see them out and about in kov much and they they were kind of like you don't see bobbies on the beat anymore wow this is the thing because it used to be a copper didn't it

no but you could never tell were they from Leamington were they from Kenilworth you know they were kind of a bit more middle class and and consequently there's no there's no love and pride in in King uh in Cov um there's no sort of fond reminiscences or anything like that and it's not like you've got to play Love and Pride at a Cov party, whereas you do have to play Moldy Old Doe and you do have to play special stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Helen Terry is striking out on her own with her

debut solo single Love Lies Lost, but Martin doesn't reckon it in the slightest. She should get her own group together and call it Helen and the Foghorns. It's a sad reflection on the inherent racism in the industry that, were the likes of Carmel and Miss Terry struggling lovers rock chanteurs as in Stoke Newington or Halston, they'd never see the inside of a recording booth, let alone a place in the charts.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Right, for a start, I mean, Love Lies Lost is a banger, but that's neither here nor there. What does he want Carmel and Helen Terry to do? I mean, black up? I don't know, it's just a weird thing to do, to sort of use them in order to sort of virtue signal about how black female singers don't get the breaks,

which I'm sure is true, but just whatever. But if he's talking about inherent racism, and it's odd, it's kind of revealing in the previous reviews that, you know, a black kid from Stoughton, Ewington or Halston spinning on their head isn't going to see the inside of the NME, are they? Exactly. Somebody Else's Guy by Jocelyn Brown would be dead good if it stayed like the intro all the way through.

Peace in Our Time by The Imposter, Elvis Costello whenever he fancies doing something political, is a woefully mournful dirge. Do the Square Thing by the Three Johns is flat and bland. And Country Girl became drugs and sex punk by Serious Drinking. Country Girl became drugs and sex punk by Serious Drinking. Is punk by numbers of the sort that the members and ruts excelled at? And Serious Drinking can only pay lip service to. Hang on a minute, right. But he likes the band name.

Jocelyn Brown, somebody else's guy, right? Yeah, the intro is great, obviously, especially on the full-length version, right? But come on, the entire song, start to fucking finish of the of the full length version is an absolute fucking battleship of a record it's a fucking juggernaut how can anyone not love that oh is it because it's got synths on it by any chance do you know what i mean for fuck's sake that is just one of the greatest records the 80s of all time i think we can all agree on that right yeah yeah jocelyn brown is actually playing a festival near me this summer, and I've thought about going along just to hear that one song.

You know what I mean? Fucking hell. It sounds like you want to write a letter to the NME, man. I want to write a letter to the NME, yes. In the LP review section, well, the main review this week is given over to Der Ostern ist Rott by Holger Zucke, and Richard Cook deems it one of his most sombre releases to date

and a departure from his last LP, 1981's On The Way To The Peak Of Normal. One wonders if this is a descent into the maelstrom, he writes. Stuart Cosgrove has been given three new Motown LPs, Don't Look Any Further by Dennis Edwards, In A Special Way by DeBarge, and Joystick by The Daz Band. And not surprisingly, he makes the X Temptations LP the pick of the bunch, even though he's sporting a wet look.

Thanks God and his hairdresser in the credits, and he's using Sims. Meanwhile, DeBarge are Pleasant Pop Soul, a band who thank Jesus and wear purple leather trousers, and the Daz band are a massive disappointment. So much promise, but so pedestrian, the funk band that falls asleep on you. But it's a big fat coat down for Grace Under Pressure, the 10th LP by Rush.

I don't suppose it's exactly news of any kind that the latest album by Rush stinks like a lorryload of whelks in August. But what perhaps is news is that the following penny has dropped. The Police are a very successful trio. Rush are a far less successful trio. Therefore, to be more successful rush must imitate the police they screw it up writes matt snow quite honestly if you can derive any pleasure or meaning from grace under pressure then you must be some kind of dickhead. And that's not snobber air. That's the truth. Demonstration Tapes, an anthology of UK subs offcuts, is given about this much shrift by Bruce DeSoto.

Like the national football team, the subs have undergone numerous personnel changes without tangible alteration in performance or fortune. In fact, why should they record a new album personnel changes without tangible alteration in performance or fortune. In fact, why should they record a new album when it would not sound a million miles away from this one? During the recording of All The Young Dudes, David Bowie miked up a toilet cubicle and crammed Mott into it. This LP sounds like the toilet has been miked up,

but the band are playing in the corner of the pub. Punk is dead. In the gig guide, David could have seen Dennis Brown at the Brixton Academy, Jeffrey Osborne at Hammersmith Odeon, R.E.M. at the Marquis,

or Billy Bragg and the Redskins at the Electric Ballroom. Yeah, Redskins, Simon. Nice piece you wrote in the quietest. Thank you very much for doing the plug for me. Yeah, I mean, what a gig that would have been. Billy Bragg and the Redskins. I would so love to have been there.

I'm very jealous of the fact that you saw them, what, three times or something? Oh, more than that, about five or six times. Really fucking hell. Yeah, I wrote a big piece about the fact that their, I was going to say debut album, their only album, neither Washington nor Moscow has just been reissued in all those kind of deluxe formats. So I wrote about that for The Quietest and it sort of like allowed me to expound my thoughts on just kind of left wing 80s pop in general,

but particularly the Redskins and the fact that I was, you know, the age of 16, this era that we're talking about, very exercised by the possibility of a genuine working class revolution because of the miners' strike and the Redskins are completely tied in with the miners' strike. And when the strike ended, they kind of fizzled out as well. The whole purpose for being just sort of went away.

But what an exciting album that was. Yes. But what were they like live? Come on, I want to hear about it. Oh, they were fucking mint. Yeah. Like a lot of people who missed punk, this was the nearest we were going to get to seeing The Clash.

And there was always that threat of a bit of aggro outside afterwards. Possibly whipped up by the Redskins. I think it was Martin, the bassist, would always say, oh, you look out tonight. You know, when you go out, we've heard there's some dodgy right wingers outside well it did happen once that you know one of their gigs was stormed by you know national front skinheads and you know there's a massive pitched battle going on so yeah martin hughes the guy you're talking about ended up having to sort of hide a baseball bat behind his amp yes this happened again taylor could have seen sw's Way at Birmingham Powerhouse, King Kurt at the Tin Can Club,

Talk Talk at the Birmingham Odeon, Naina at the Odeon or Camped Out at the Night Out for a whole week to see the Nolans. Neil would have gone through a gig famine, alas, as nothing is happening in Coventry this

week, but he could have seen Dion Warwick at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre. Sorry, Neil. No worries. No worries. Sarah could have seen Slim Whitman at Hull New Theatre, Swan's Way at the Sheffield Lead Mill, Prefab Sprout at the Sheffield Lyceum,

or REM at the Leeds Warehouse. Al could have seen Camel at the Royal Concert Hall, Alexi Sale at the Theatre Royal, The Cure at the Royal Concert Hall, Sisters of Mercy at Rock City or Crass and Fluck of Pink Indians at the Marcus Garvey Centre. And Simon could have seen Alien Sex Fiend at Bogies in Cardiff and fuck all else. I have in my hand a typed letter from the dad of one of Alien Sex Fiend. No, why? Well, here's the thing.

Why, no. In the 80s, my dad had a radio show on CBC, the local radio station in Cardiff, whose studios, funnily enough, were also in the Red Light District, along with Jacob's Market and the studio where the Mannix recorded the Holy Bible. you've got to keep all that kind of stuff together on yeah um so my dad had the sort of graveyard shift um show i guess it was sort of i don't know it

might have been sort of midnight till 3 a.m or something like that which was really handy if i was going to a gig or a club in cardiff yeah because i could just yeah and i could go there and he could drive me home but But because it was late at night, he could probably just play whatever he wanted to play. You know, he wasn't sort of bound by the playlist. So he actually played Alien Sex Fiends on his show. And the thing is, they were a Cardiff band, so he could justify it on the basis of them being local.

And since my dad passed away i've inherited um well as many of his records as i wanted um including all his alien sex fiend singles and lo and behold when i went to take them out of the sleeves there were letters tucked inside um some of them from and here's the first one it's tucked inside their single dead and buried it's not directly to my dad it's to the station it says dear sir dear sirs Because they couldn't imagine there being any mad ones No Considered you may be interested in the disc Dead and Buried by the Alien Sex Fiend Band

Write-ups in sounds on pages 3 and 54 and back cover On keyboards with the group is Chris Fiend Formerly Christine Alexander of the above address Ex-pupil of howell's school cardiff and latterly a microbiologist bsc surrey university if you require any further info please contact me as above sincerely yours ted alexander wow bless so yeah that's the that's the dad of the very proud dad of chrisiend. Yeah, that is such a dad letter. Yeah, talking about her academic achievements as well as, you know, the fact that she's from Cardiff.

A later single called Smells Like, there's actually a little, this is a bit more terse. It's a post-it note. It's like a little memo tucked inside, which I imagine is also for Mr. Alexander. It says, Chris Fiend, Cardiff girl on keyboards, support group for Alice Cooper. And then it's got a list of the Alice Cooper tour dates written underneath so in response to this my dad who was always looking for a local angle on any music he could play

he's really into that he's big into sort of helping local bands did start playing Alien Sex Fiends and then in one of their later still singles I found a letter from the mum of Nick Fiend the lead singer thanking my dad thanking my dad for playing her son's records on the air and it's so sweet it's just really sweet just you know because you don't think of these sort of scary you know war painted goth electro

bands as having proud mums and dads but you know they do yeah and it's it's just a really nice unexpected thing to find tucked inside a record yeah i went to my mum and dad and said oh i'm in a band at the minute called alien sex fiends i don't know if they'd be as encouraging as that fucking anyone in a band you know whenever they go back to the parents house their parents are saying how's the music going you know and they are encouraging. That's so sweet. Yeah. The alien sex fiend band. I love it. Talking of which, in the letters page this week, Paulo Hewitt is in charge of Gasbag,

but the vast majority of the letters are people licking the enemy's arse about their recent issue dedicated to soul and are a bit boring. So let's go over to this week's Melody Maker instead, which has a 20-page mini pull-out exclusively dedicated to Big Country where Backlash is being manned by Adam Sweetie. 20 pages, good lord. Yeah, a mini pull-out, but, you know, 20 pages on Big Country, Simon. I mean, I was a fan, but even I'd struggle to read that much on them, I'll be honest.

Yeah. Pete Burns was interviewed in Melody Maker a fortnight ago, where he told Sweetin how Dead or Alive got revenge on Nick Haywood for slagging them off in a singles review by chancing across him at the Epic Studios, waiting until he'd nipped off for a quiet shit, and then appearing over the top of his cubicle with a fire extinguisher each, and literally

coating him down in return. Anyway, despite the fact that Burns said nothing disparaging about Boy George in that interview, Isabelle of Swansea kicks off, telling Melody Maker that she has had her fill of this year's most lovable bisexual

okay pete burns enough is enough stop slagging george and remember your mediocre success is down to him george broke the media and had them eating out of his hand because he worked to become a showbiz personality, which you seem to hate. Because he made people accept him, you can now appear on top of the pops looking androgynous and wearing outrageous clothes. You won't become a millionaire like George because you're too sexual. But all the money you do make will be because of George's hard work appearing

on Russell Harter and Wogan. It's a strange defence that, isn't it? You're only making it because George sold out, I guess. It's odd. As we've already established, I have married into the family of this year's most lovable

bisexual. So so you know I'm saying back off Isabella Swansea alright you're definitely team Burns now aren't you part of the family and had fun with boy George yeah well you know we've had our ups and downs me and George mind you you know when I met Pete

the one time he wasn't exactly the friendliest but you know I mean I'd have been disappointed if he was any other way do you know what I mean it's like you meet Pete Burns you want the real thing don't you so yeah no I'm totally on his side even if he is too sexual unsigned of

Raven Road Walsall has decided to rip all their Duran Duran posters off the wall after reading Steve Sutherland's piece about the band swanking about in New York the other week and generally going about thinking the summit. Thanks for a really interesting article Steve. I am sorry to note that you have become just as disillusioned in Duran as I have. I have been a fan for three years and now I think it's time to move on. Please send my condolences

to the New York fan who they casually dropped off the back of their limo. I hope her broken leg gets better soon. It's nice to know they care about their fans so much. What did Duran Duran do there?

Was it some kind of wrestling move to do a fucking suplex off the back of a limo okay there is this perception isn't there definitely at this time that jiran jiran have gone too far or are getting too big getting too moneyed up they've gone too far this time and they're dancing on the valentine but they're brummies you know oh here we go they're not going to be tasteful about their newly acquired wealth they're brummies you know oh here we go they're not going to be tasteful about their newly acquired wealth they're brummies they're fulgarians you know in regard to a recent article published in your magazine on queen preparing a video for i want to break free i feel i must comment on the matter the subject was approached writes mc smith oh that brings up some fucking appalling visuals of a rap in morrissey doesn't

there are some members of the public like myself who would gladly welcome a praising a couth report on queen's activities however you chose to print articles which contain material making them out to be lower than a snake's belly. Unfortunately, this does not ensure my purchase in another magazine, except the one in which you print this letter. Yours disgustingly, etc. A Lionel Richie fan aged 28 and proud of it, is deeply offended at Dessa Fox's review of Hello. It happens to be an extremely good record just because it's

not punk junk or disco does not give that idiot the right to write such dribble it's people like dessa fox that are the zits on the face of the human race if she wants to pick on someone, then what about that grade A prize Wally slash Turkey slash head case Alexi Sale? Why does the melody maker allow idiots like Killing Joke to review the latest singles as Sandy Arnold of Ashford? Tamara Loftin of London thinks that Steve Sutherland looks like Kelly Monteith, and Linda Perkitt of Mordham is massively offended at Torval and Dean being made Wallys of the Week and points out that they have brought beauty and happiness to so many people, unlike Melody Maker, which is a cheap and nasty rag

which dwells on all that is rotten and is, quite frankly speaking speaking an insult to decent people he's quite proud of that actually yeah proud melody maker writers right here 52 pages 40p i never knew there was so much in it oh the main two ink is appealing off now aren't there enemies just backing away from the charts. Melody Maker trying to be the inky smash hits. Yeah, it's all changed, isn't it? I think at that point, Melody Maker still didn't know what it was or what it was for, to be honest.

It didn't really find its direction until Reynolds and Stubbs joined in 86. And Chris Roberts as well. Chris Roberts came over from Sounds. And then it became the kind of thinking person's music paper prior to that NME had been the thinking person's music paper with people like Paul Morley and so on

which means it's kind of weird to see Bananarama on the front cover because Bananarama, on the face of it you'd think having Bananarama on the front of the NME in 84 would be equivalent to now having something like Little Mix or something like that on the front of the NME in 84 would be equivalent to now having something like Little Mix or something like that on the front if it was now

just doesn't seem to add up but I guess Bananarama of all the kind of pop groups had this kind of slightly alternative pop edge to them you know their first single I Am Moana was very credible and then the next couple of records were with the Fun Boy 3.

So they had that kind of cred as well. And by the time of this, NME, they're with Swain and Jolly, the production team. But even so, the stuff they made with Swain and Jolly, Bananarama didn't come across as much as kind of, you know, production line factory pop puppets as they would later under Stock Aitken and Waterman, when they hooked up with Stock Aitken and Waterman. At this point point they still seem to be kind of in charge of their own destiny

and the fact that they weren't very styled and coiffured they were very much sort of DIY the way they danced, the way they dressed. Gimping as they used to call it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly so they did seem just about within NME's remit Yeah. Well they're the last of the

post-punk bands really really, aren't they? They are, and they even had, every now and then, a tiny little political message in their songs, like there's a B-side called Give Us Back Our Cheap Fares about London transport pricing policy and stuff like that. And, yeah, there's a whole business with the Troubles in Ireland that

came out in that article. So, yeah, they were kind of more credible pop act. You know, the best articles in this issue of NME are the pop people, Fish and Bananarama, because they've still got something to say and someone's poking them with a very critical stick. Well, this is why one of the best music books you could possibly read is Ask the Chatter of Pop

by Paul Morley, which is out of print now, but, you know, I'm sure you can find it on eBay or whatever. And it's just all his interviews, and a lot of them are with people who are very much on his home turf, like ABC or whatever. But then there'll be interviews with Meatloaf, or indeed with Fish from Meridian and stuff like that.

And it just gives you a brilliant kind of rounded picture of what pop was like at the time. real a brilliant kind of rounded picture of what pop was like at the time and of the kind of questions you were allowed to ask major stars yeah yeah yeah i mean this is the time when pop groups were still supposed to have a manifesto and that's been painted in a really poor light nowadays it's like what you're talking to them for what do they know about anything but it just gave the bands and artists a chance to prove that they were in the same world as us i was always pissed off the band didn't have a manifesto it's like i want to know what you stand for on the major issues of the day it was a huge deal to me

it was a deal breaker really and people are shit scared of saying that kind of stuff now because they'll lose half the fan base whatever they decide oh don't know. This fucking shit old century. Anyway, what else was on telly today? Well, BBC One commences at 6am with a half-hour CFAX data blast and then Frank Boff puts on his jumper, wipes his nose on the back of his hand and joins Shaking Diana on the sofa

for another edition of Breakfast Time. As it's Easter holiday, the morning is a non-stop barrage of Battle of the Planets, Look Back With Noakes, a mash-up of old episodes of Go With Noakes, Mighty Mass, and then the youth

of Bristol employ you to fuck off out and pull some statues down or something. Why don't you? After I've oared the engine and play school, there's a 35-minute CFAX data blast before the news. Then Paul Coyer goes sand yachting on Blackpool Beach and Gene Pitney does a bit of singing in the foyer on Pebble Mill at One. That's followed by a repeat of finger bobs.

Then Johnny Morris and Terry Nook can get shrunk down to two inches so they can find out what it's like to be a mouse in animal magic then it's the 1965 kids film zebra in the kitchen about a lad who frees loads of animals from the local zoo and lets them doss about at his place can we we just at that point pause to say RIP to the great Yoffie from Finger Bobs, Rick Jones, who was a lovely man and I became internet friends with for several years and just a great bloke. Anyway, carry on. After regional news in your area, it's Play School with Chloe Ashcroft, then The Hunter, Jigsaw, part 4 of Huckleberry Finn and His Friends, John Craven's Newsround,

and Blue Peter. Then it's 60 Minutes, the hideous mutation of the BBC News and Nationwide without the beer-drinking snails, followed by the brass division of Young Musician of the Year 1984. Fucking hell. Come back tomorrow's world all is forgiven imagine if you turn that on earlier and you saw young musician of the year 1984 and just

fucking know what is going on with pop in 1984 bbc2 starts at five past six with open university programmes about feminism, the evolution of fish and the designing of lorries, before embarking on a five and a half hour CFAX mega blast. Then it's over to the Crucible in Sheffield for the sixth day of the World Professional Snooker Championship, presented by David Icke. After a repeat of Risk, the peak experience, about the first two people to climb Mount Everest without oxygen, it's a new summary, followed by the 1957 comedy film The Naked Truth,

starring Terry Thomas, Peter Sellers and Joan Sims, and they're currently five minutes into the evening session of the snooker. ITV commences at 6 25 with good morning britain where the world is introduced to the latest robin hood michael praed who's there to shill the first episode of robin of sherwood which starts on itv in two days time then it's roland goes east where the-eared rodent superstar knocks about Hong Kong for a week with Kevin the Jerbil. After regional news in your area,

it's Sesame Street. Then Laurel and Hardy pretend to be Native Americans in Flying Elephants. Then it's a look at the Northern Tribes in Fascinating Thailand. Followed by Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Bene, Get Up and Go with Beryl Reid,

and The Sullivans. After the news at one and regional news in your area, Lord and Lady Banger talk about their war correspondence careers in A+, then it's Take the High Road, followed by a repeat of a celebration of British fashion from the Harrogate Centre, where Diane Keane shows us some pastel culottes or some such. After Sons and Daughters, Children's ITV is presented by Christopher Biggins and features Benny again, Aubrey, Mad About and the news quiz What's Happening,

presented by Tommy Boyd and Leonard Parkin. After The Young Doctors, News at 5.45 and regional news in your area, they're currently five minutes into Carry On Laughing. Channel 4 has a big lay-in, as it's wanted its early days, and opens up at five past three with the 1943 Frank Randall film Somewhere on Leave. Then it's Countdown, the kids show Everybody Here, a repeat of the ITV drama series Barriers, where a teenager loses his parents in a sailing accident

and then discovers that he was adopted, which makes everything alright really, I suppose, and travels through Europe to find his real ones. Then the Good Food show looks at the best supermarket wine salt-free cooking and what we can learn from medieval banquets then janet street porter introduces the women in advertising show hey good looking and they're now 10 minutes into channel 4 news, golden age of television there. What's jumping out at you, chaps? Probably all the kind of educational stuff, to be honest,

like feminism, the evolution of fish and lorries, or whatever it was, you know, seriously. I'd rather watch that than any of the kind of stuff that's actually aimed at your sort of casual viewer. What a degree, though, all those three things lumped into one. I've got to say, I mean, for the past minute, to be honest with you, I've just had the Sons and Daughters theme in my head. Love and laughter. Yes.

Tears of sadness and happiness. We'll find out our sons and daughters are what we too were once about. Yeah, what the fuck does that mean? I've never understood that line. I've been absolutely struggling to try and remember what Benny was. Yeah. Because, you know me, there's only one Benny when it comes to television. I don't think there's a children's TV show about him.

It's not a spin-off like Joey from Friends. No, if only. No, Neil? No idea, no. No. Benny Bullshit, I remember a variant of Itchy Chin was Benny Bullshit and Cop. No, I don't remember this. And the whole thing about the islanders

of the Falklands being called Bennys by the soldiers. And then when they weren't allowed to call them Bennys they called them Stills. And when asked why it was like Still Bennys. Although you know what? I have just found out what Benny is. Go on.

Benny was a show about a dog. um and um it featured an animated intro and um yeah in tv times in March 1984 and there's an article called uh with the headline Benny the hairy hero the latest star of children's itv is a lovable mongrel dog he He's the hero of a new 13-part series, Benny, starting Thursday, aimed at younger children. So the story is told as illustrated adventures, comic strip style, complete with dialogue and thoughts in balloons.

Oh, that's ringing a bell. Yeah, that's ringing a slight bell for me as well. The series begins with Benny being rescued by two children, Bella and Jack, from a cruel barge owner. And from then on, it's adventure all the Jack, from a cruel barge owner. And from then on, it's adventure all the way, we are promised by TV times.

Is he called Pippin? He looks like Pippin. Yeah. Pippin was all over the shop in the 80s, man. No, there's no name of the dog. Olivia Ward as Bella, Kirk Wild as Jack. He's a specky little sod, actually. He looks a bit like me.

That's disgusting, man. That's so animalist isn't it don't even tell you who's playing the title role that's disgusting they probably went through about six or seven of them I should imagine hey Neil that dog's dead now yeah yeah yeah yeah

all right then pop craze youngsters it is time to go way back to April of 1984 always remember we may coat down your favourite band or artist it is time to go way back to April of 1984. Always remember, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget, they've been on top of the pops more than we have. It's a quarter past seven on Thursday, April the 26th, 1984, and Top of the Pops, now into its third year and eighth month under the reign of Michael Hurl,

has firmly settled into the A-D-E-S. That's spelt A-Y- e s with the initial fripperies installed by hurl phased out or toned down gone are the celebrity presenters no more motor show tie-ins zoo are still hanging around but have been demoted from a dance troupe to cheerleaders, unmovable scenery. This is the 80s variant of Top of the Pops, chaps, in its leanest and purest form, wouldn't you say? Yeah, and it's great, actually, for a bit of contrast between the celebratory nature of the show and some of the acts who appear on it, because you get to feel that your acts are fighting the good fight against all this nonsense.

Absolutely. Even though Zoo have kind of been pushed to a slightly peripheral role, like you say, the contrast between them and some of the music that we hear is quite delicious. Yes, definitely, yeah. So your host tonight, Simon Bates, who is now into his seventh year as the overlord of the Housewives in the nine-to-half-eleven weekday slot,

where he's currently acting as the meat in a Mike Reid-Gary Davis sandwich. Already a busy 1984 for Pig Wanker General, isn't it? Because he took over from Tommy Vance as the voice of the Radio 1 chart run down in January. And he'd hold the fort until September when he passed the baton to Richard Skinner. Now then, Simon Bates. Normally at this point, I would say, Simon Bates, why? But I can't do that this episode because, you know, with a playlist like this, Simon Bates is in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Because out of all the singles on this episode,

I think there's only one that he definitely wouldn't play on his show. Yeah. I think two. But yeah, this is his time, man. Yeah, he looks comfortable. And even his sort of fluffed lines that we'll come to discuss, I'm sure, he gets through them, you know? He gets through.

And amazingly, it looks like he's getting 80s compliant. The cream sports coat has been flung into the back of the wardrobe and he's sporting a moderately fashionable dark grey jacket with the sleeves unbuttoned. And when I say jacket, I don't mean suit jacket. I mean, you know, jacket, jacket. I'm surprised you say it's fashionable, that jacket right right to me moderately fashionable to me right by bait standards he looks like a sunday driver in that yeah great jacket it's what

my nan would have called a wind cheater jacket yes and it looks like he's grabbed it from the passenger side footwell you know and uh and he's just popping in the petrol station for some antifreeze and um and a bar of Cadbury's old Jamaica and fries Turkish delight for the wife yeah it's not a show jacket really yeah you know it made me think about what he's going to do after he's done this show because he's not just going to rely on his usual avuncularity and charms have a good time tonight this is a jacket of someone who's going somewhere and has things to do yeah whether that's cleaning the streets of scum or um i don't know picking up a couple of nine bars of hash from a contact endeavor or whatever he's doing or standing

by the side of a five-a-side pit shouting i reckon reckon he's defo. He's got his car keys in there, I reckon. I couldn't stop thinking about what he's got in his pockets. Car keys, wallet, I think. I reckon he's probably got some PK Chuddy in there as well. And perhaps a knuckle-dust or a Chinese star as well. But yeah, he's going places. Do you reckon he's got one of them key rings that bleeps when you whistle at it? Or is that a bit too early for

1984? That's a bit early. That'd be later 80s, but yeah. He's got a busy night ahead of him, clearly. Sadly, he appears to have teamed it with a dark green rugby shirt, which it makes it look like he's about to nip down to the pub that's down the road from the campsite.

It's a very camping holiday jacket, isn't it? Yeah, he won't feel the benefit when he goes outside. Yeah, it looks a bit flimsy, though, doesn't it? Yeah, but you see, it is a wind cheater. It cheats the wind. It's got poppers on the wrists and at the top. So, you know, you make yourself into this kind of hermetically sealed...

No poppers in the pocket, though. No poppers, no. Frankie Goes to Hollywood, not that influential yet. All right, press studs. You've got to be childish about it, Al. His partner tonight is Janice Long, who is still currently a strictly weekend concern at Radio 1. She's presenting the request show Select-A-Disc

on Friday afternoons, and on Saturday, she'll be hosting her evening show live from the Solihull Conference and Banqueting Centre as part of Radio 1's all-day broadcast of their marathon music quiz. Wow. It runs from noon to midnight with, well, guess who the team captains are? Radio 1 DJs. Hmm.

Ooh, Gary Davis? No, he's commentating. Oh. Along with Steve Wright. Mike Reid? Of course. And they'd have to choose somebody who actually knew about pop, I guess. Yes.

Yeah, that eliminates most Radio 1 DJs of this period. Exactly. Peele? No. Jensen? No. Paul Gambachino?ino, of course. Oh, of course.

Makes sense, makes sense. But she's biding her time waiting for Kid Jensen to defect to Capital Radio and ITV and become the first woman to present a weekday show on Radio 1 in September of this year. And yes, Pop Craze Youngsters, this is why we're doing this episode. Yeah. We had to, man yeah definitely i mean it's pretty clear that after 63 episodes of chart music when it comes

to our favorite presenter it's clearly been a straight fight between kid jensen and janice long hasn't it yeah yeah i'd go along with that and i think a lot of the time with kid jensen it's just that he doesn't piss you off yeah it just seems a fairly kind of likeable guy. But with Janice, I mean, I think it's fair to say she's possibly the only Top of the Pops presenter who's universally liked by all of us, you know, actively liked by all of us at Chart Music.

Yeah. Because even Peel's problematic in a sense, you know, even though we enjoy him on Top of the Pops, there's aspects to Peel that's problematic. Janice, no. She's just wonderful well janice is usually spoken about or often spoken about in relation to peel and she's often she's spoken of as a gateway drug a sort of um yes like an early learning version of john peel with with water wings and stabilizers but you know i i think that's to undervalue her and i think it's

to overlook the qualities of of her show in and of itself. Because, you know, truth be told, Janice Long was more my speed than John Peel was. I was happier hearing, you know, soft alternative stuff by the likes of Bunnymen and The Smiths and The Cure and Wah and Teardrop Explodes. Or even like the lesser acts like It's Immaterial or Interferon on her show than I ever was tuning into Peel later on and hearing Sessions by the Three Johns or Swell Maps or Napalm Death or whatever. I knew her, I knew Janice. I'm not going to pretend I knew her well, but it started around 2013 when I kept running into her

at things like judging panels for awards, which I was invited onto because of my column in The Independent on Sunday. And we bonded straight away. She seemed to figure out that I was more her sort of person than most of the industry bods in the room, if that's not flattering myself too much. And she had that kind of conspiratorial mischief about her that was really familiar from her tv present and her radio presenting i think like you know there'd be a

break in proceedings and she'd say follow me there's a kitchen over there with a stash of wine in it and we'd go off and mix some wine she invited me onto her show on vintage tv um along with seymour steen of sire records oh yeah the guy who signed the ramones and soft sell but also signed madonna and i i was there on the show to slag off madonna right in front of him which is a bit of a bit of a stitch up on janice's part but i understood my my role as the baddie there but um and then then she got me on her radio 2 show for this thing called the spoken word sessions uh where i read out an extract of lipstick traces by grill marcus right and and she asked me about my life my career and we played a few songs that i chose including one by east india youth who was

this brilliant electronic artist who had an ep out via the label that's run by the quietest website right she was really positive about it and that's's the thing. Obviously, you know, a large part of my role as a critic is to be negative about things. Janice was a pure enthusiast. I could never be like that. But I'm glad that she was. And she was so kind and so helpful. And that's something that came across in all the tributes

from musicians and media people after she died. And just that thing I said about conspiratorial mischief is something, you know, I think I tweeted when the news broke, something to the effect that she always felt like she was sharing this best-kept secret with you of this band that she just discovered and loved and really wanted you to hear. And she knew that you, yes, get it you know um and that's that was a really kind of special thing i think yeah i mean i i really liked her and even though i hadn't actually

seen her for a few years i'll miss her i will miss her massively and and and you're right simon the sort of universality of everyone's tributes to Janice after she passed. I think so many of us were genuinely properly upset by it. I know I was. People tend to over-egg it a bit when someone famous dies. But in this case, it seemed like a really genuine outpouring of regret. Absolutely. I mean, because of the age of pop and rock, it's inevitable that for many of us,

the current period is a kind of time where on a weekly even daily basis we learn of another pivotal figure that has passed yeah and i think the reason obviously it hits so hard for a lot of us is because music is in our lives you know at the time that this episode comes out for instance 1984 i woke up thinking about music and spent all day thinking about music and all night chasing it's part of our lives in a deeper way than anything else and radio of course as i've said before when talking about the commodore's night shift it's just the most magical way to make discoveries at this time about music because mtv is just some expensive dream no one has and at a time for me you know i'm 12 13 i'm starting to listen later to radio well not just have poppin on in the day but keep listening

into the night and I'm with Pricey in as much as I was feeling sleepy by the time Peel was on you know and Janice was the voice really for me and she used that position where she could magically over the airwaves completely change the horizons of your life and your consciousness just with a track DJs can do that unfortunately they've realized this and they play on it now i always think of zane lowe's hysterical overhype of things that he played for instance but when you listen to janice it wasn't like being spoken to by a media persona it was a fellow pop fan telling you about and playing you the music she was digging and in a world in which so many at radio one and bbc one were seemingly using pop to further their own careers and only

really saw fans and other people as kind of automata to be manipulated janice really shone out as just a fucking normal lovely person yeah i think simon said it she she was a fan now the word fan is is much overused i, in pop talk and the pop business. Usually, it's a mask for people who are actually exploiting those fans, whether it's football fans or music fans. But Janice always felt like a true fan, a genuinely open-eared listener. That was key. And also, we forget, when she did finally get the evening show,

her evening show wasn't just music. She did interviews. She interviewed amazing people who would just, know rock up to her show like i was listening to some interviews this week with janice that she did on her evening show with meli mel and mick jagger and loads of other people and i always found her really smart and intelligent in her interviews even with people i didn't like she was a master of getting the best out of people through the use of sort of genuinely open questioning and she was a good listener as well yeah it's often said that you know joe wiley say edith bowman have been inspired but but honestly there's a sycophancy that the likes of wiley do this endless kowtowing to musicians

yeah and stuff and acceptance of the cliches they rotate about and themselves i never got that with janice and crucially think about janice's story how she got this gig you know she's working on radio merseyside paul gambaccini comes up goes back to london and tells the controller to get in touch and within two weeks he's got a show it's really nice to remember especially in the current era when in the sorry ghastly phrase but creative industries you know people have to jump through hr hoops or have enough social media traffic to be considered or have enough mates and parents in positions of influence to even dream of getting close to the national broadcaster or the mainstream media that janice was hired by radio one two weeks you know

before she started is nuts but that is I think me and Pricey probably feel that that reminds us of how we got hired in a sense in the media um you know a sudden mind-blowing dream and what happens then is when you're in that position you make it your job to be better than everyone else in a way you make it your job to be do it as well as you can and that's what Janice did no agenda to grind just a real genuine fondness for pop music in all its myriad forms. She was funny and she was sharp and she was self-deprecating in a radio one

that was stuffed with colossal egos. I suppose people would say her spirit is now in Radio 6, but I actually think, no, I think she actually found her home, curiously enough, at the tail end of her career back on BBC Wales. You know, supporting local scenes, playing sessions, stuff like that. And she wasn't just an advocate for indie rock she was likable and kind of malleable enough that she could also you know deputize on daytime shows and still do really well she was always a pop fan and not a snob it's upsetting because when you

lose someone like janice you start feeling that in the media sense as a radio listener you know you start feeling outnumbered you start feeling that what you're missing will have to be explained laboriously whereas janice required no explanation you understood why she was good from the off it's really saddening she's gone because such idiosyncratic people are not replaceable and those claiming an influence like Wiley and Bowman just simply weren't as smart as critical or as likable as Janice so yeah it really hit me in the heart Janice going everything appears to be going really well at the minute for Janice but it's been a difficult transition from local to national radio I mean she was extremely let down apparently when she

she moved down to London and expected radio one to be the most amazing mind-blowing work environment ever and discovered that it was like working in an insurance company she's working for a corporation that employs hundreds of people but she's only one of three women at radio one at the moment who isn't a typist wow she's clearly hankering for a weekday slot and according to a book i read recently called the story of radio one by robert sellers when she asked them why there hadn't been a woman on radio one in the week she was told because they're all at home doing the ironing i mean even when she arrived Radio 1, she was almost immediately told by someone that, oh, there was a woman at Capital we really liked, but she was fat.

So you were lucky there. So, yes. I mean, pretty rapidly. I mean, she was obviously cognizant of this. Pretty rapidly, as soon as she gets the chance, she starts making documentaries about women musicians and about women artists. I read a Smash Hits interview with Janice from 85 where this is pointed out, the kind of sexist parochialism on Radio 1. And she's realistic about it and says this will change.

It has. It has. And it needed pioneers like Janice, I think, to start knocking those doors down. Definitely. And as well as being the only woman on Radio 1 at the moment, she's one of the few provincial voices as well, and that's just as important.

Absolutely. Massively important. Yeah, you've got people who, you know, the male presenters may be from Stoke or Manchester, but you don't really hear that in their voices. They talk in a BBC voice. No, no. Yeah, Janice is kind of unapologetically Scouse, you know, in so many ways.

Janice is kind of unapologetically Scouse, you know, in so many ways. Hello and welcome to Top of the Box. Isn't it hot? We've got some great stuff tonight. Duran Duran and Echo and the Bunnymen. And what's more, we're live from Studio 6 at Television Centre and to prove it is Sandy Shaw with the Smiths and Hand in Glove.

The drums pound. The TV screen hovers. That voice goes, and the pink vinyl explodes to reveal baits and long. The former in that jacket, the latter in some kind of black shiny ball gown with exceptionally long opera gloves

and extremely dyed red hair, standing at the corner of the balcony as the stark neon backdrop flares away. Janice opens by saying, isn't it hot? And we don't know if she's talking about Bates' new look or the weather. After she selectively previews some of the acts on tonight, Bates barges in to tell us that once again, it's a live broadcast, immediately demonstrating that by not being able to say television centre.

He then points towards the stage and tells us that the first acts are going to prove just how live it is as janice gives the thumbs up to sandy shore and the smiths with hand in glove we've already covered sandra goodridge of daggingham in chart music number 10 when she failed to get by tomorrow into the charts in february of 1970 it was the beginning of a period of transition for Shaw, who announced her retirement from recording when her deal with Pi ran out in 1972. She would make sporadic appearances on shows

such as assorted Top of the Pops anniversary shows, The Good Old Days, Music My Way, and most infamously on 2G's On The Pop People, where she reggae'd like it used to be. Sandy, you are a liberated, uneducated woman. That clip keeps disappearing, by the way, off YouTube. I don't know if it's back up. I'll put it back, don't worry.

But she also played Ophelia and Joan of Arc on stage, co-wrote a musical with Herbie Flowers and Roger Cook from Blue Mink, set up a publishing company and session booking agency, and dabbled in writing and illustrating kids' books. In 1977, after shouldering the debts accumulated by her husband, she attempted a comeback when she signed to CBS, but the two singles released failed to chart and a serious illness nearly killed her. After getting back on track and finally paying off the debt,

she got divorced, took a break from music and worked for a short time as a waitress in London. By 1982, she got married to Nick Powell, one of the co-founders of Virgin Records who introduced her the year before to the British Electric Foundation the production company formed by Martin Ware and Ian Marsh of the Human League and Heaven 17 who got her to cover Anyone Who Had A Heart a year later for the LP music of Quality and Distinction and after being invited to sing Girl Don't Come

with Chrissie Hinder to Pretenders gig and putting out her first LP in 14 years, Choose Life, in March of 1983, she was back in the game. In August of that year, however, her husband, who was mates with Jeff Travis of Rough Trade, passed on a letter given to Travis by one of his bands. It read,

Dear Sunday, We could never begin to emphasise the endless joy we would feel if you would care to listen to our song with a view to possibly covering it. Obviously the song was written with you in mind. It is an absolute fact that your influence more than any other permeates all our music. Without doubt we are incurable Sandy Shaw fans. Studying all your material as we do day and night we feel that your future musical direction must avoid the icky momism trap that most of your 60s contemporaries seized.

You must surely realise that your name is sufficiently on the lips of young people to demand interest in new, vital product. We would be honoured to provide material for your consideration. The Sandy Shore legend cannot be over yet. There is more to be done. Love forever. Morrissey, wordsmith, voice. Johnny, multi-instrumentalist, composer. The Smiths.

After a flood of letters from Morrissey and encouragement from Jeff Travis, she decided to meet him, only to be put off by a Sun article about the subject matter in Reel Around the Fountain and Suffer Little Children and her concluding that she couldn't have a pervert in her house with her kids. After Travis convinced her that Morrissey wasn't a child murderer, they held a summit at Shaw's house, and a few guest appearances at Smith's gigs later,

they decided to work together. After recording three tunes, this one, a cover of the Smiths' debut single, which came out in May of 1983 with a man's arse on the sleeve, made it to number three in the independent chart and 124 in the proper chart and was remixed for the smith's debut lp which came out in february was picked out as the designated single and put out a fortnight ago her follow-up to i wish i was which came out in april

of 1983 and failed to chart and their follow-up to what difference does it make which got to number 12 in february of this year it's entered the charts last week at number 44 and this week it's nipped up eight places to number 36 reason enough to get her and 75 of the hottest new band in the nation into the studio for her first top of the Pops appearance since the last week of 1973. Oh, chaps, this is the third time we've done the Smiths on chart music. You know, we've never shied away from taking the opportunity to coat down Morrissey. But, you know, this is a good opportunity to remember that it wasn't always that way, was it? Absolutely.

Although he's not in attendance here, the shadow of Morrissey is looming large over this performance. And he's coming off as a very benevolent and extremely right on one, you know, letting a woman and an older woman like that take over his band for a bit. Yeah, but, oh man, I'd love The Smiths so much more if Sandy Shaw was a singer.

I mean, it's weird for me because I think I must have liked Morrissey at some point. Before going into this song, I was actually listening to a Morrissey interview on Janice Long's evening show that was upon Mixcloud. I know there's this kind of acceptance now that Morrissey only grew intolerable in a way

after the fame got to him. But fuck me. He was always the most disgracefully self-important, arrogant cock and almost parodic self-regard and self-importance that's so fucking punchable and loathsome. I came away from the interview just thinking this man's an uber cunt and always was. So seeing the Smiths shorn of his presence with Sandy, I think,

looking amazing and basically doing an amazing Moz impression, I think it's a big improvement. I know that's daft. I know Simon's going to rep for the Smiths, and he quite rightly should, but it's strangely shocking to see a 37-year-old woman give a performance like this. But I also like the more polished up Smiths that it seems to bring out. Johnny Marr looks like Mark Allman. Yes, he does. He really does.

I was going to say that. Yeah. Sorry, but he's got this glittery kind of collar thing on. He looks great. So I'm not saying they could have been a much better band. Of course,rissey's lyrics and his voice are usually important to those those records but sandy has none of that snotty aloofness that morrissey cultivated so even though the sight of the kind of zoo wankers

giving it the old thatcherite stride behind them it's still a kind of jarring juxtaposition for a song that's essentially about misery and poverty it a kind of jarring juxtaposition for a song that's essentially about misery and poverty it starts feeling less jarring because sandy just feels more generous and she's a singer who doesn't have this kind of ultra white sub-cylinder blanched wine for a voice i find morris's voice difficult now i just want to punch it in the chest and sandy still has that touch of 60s r&b-ness to a voice yeah so that for me immediately transforms the song from one that's kind of closed in an elitist almost to something a bit more convivial i mean i immensely prefer it to the smiths for to the sorry the morrissey smiths version i'd love it if they'd done a whole

album of smiths covers with her and i'd probably listen to it and hear the songs better without, yeah, that twat distracting me. So my hatred of Morrissey means that I prefer this. Apocryphal though that might be, I prefer this to watching him. Simon? Yeah, first of all, I just wanted to talk about the intro because after that, you know, yeah,

it's the multicoloured clay pigeon shooting one, you know, the yellow pearl, the twop of the pwops. And I noticed that Bates' caption comes up first, you know, like, who's this woman next to him? You know, the alpha male seniority must not be challenged, you know. And yeah, Janice does look very fetish glam, doesn't she, in that black lacy frock with the elbow-length black silk gloves and the um

diamante choker massive earrings and um what i thought was ruler lensker hair um yes yes yeah it's a bit cillerish isn't it yeah yeah if you're a woman from liverpool and you dye in your hair red you've got to really think i guess so it can so easily tip over into cellar i guess so and yeah we've already talked about what bates looks like and janice picks out a couple of bands whose names we won't spoil her but she's absolutely beaming about one of them and yeah bates does his but yeah bates butts in he sort of tramples over her and goes oh and what's more we're live um meaning of course that the show is not that the music is so he is the one who gets to introduce the smiths

but janice does a little finger jab of victory to let us know this is her music not his i really noticed that little gesture and the smiths were my music as well you know i was i was the smiths fan who thought that only morrissey understood me and only i understood Morrissey. And that he was communicating directly with me in my dead-end town. They took the place vacated by Dexys in my life, which we talked about before. He's the only one who really knew you at all. Oh, I like it, Al. I see what you've done there.

That's amazing. I'll be honest. I was a bit put off by the Smiths. Something about them rubbed me up the wrong way. And I guess it was that arrogance that Neil was talking about. But I think there came a point where I actually thought, no, I like that. I like a band telling me, forget everyone else.

We're the only band who matter. And something clicked in 1984. I went into the legendary Spillers Records in Cardiff. And I bought all their singles up to that point and their one album. And I absolutely learned them off by heart. I sort of taped them and blasted them out in the sixth form common room,

defiantly earning the disapproval of all the lads who wanted to hear Dire Straits and Queen and stuff like that. It was a real battle, you know. And another thing I bought in Spillers that day was a ticket to the Smiths show in Cardiff University. Fucking hell, you went all in. I went all in, yeah.

25th September, which was my 17th birthday, which was just amazing that the Smiths were playing Cardiff on my birthday. And it's still one of the most vivid gig experiences of my life. I remember that there were a few of us from Barry went in to see it. And obviously we knew that what you were meant to do at a Smithscape was bring flowers with you. But I couldn't afford to go to a florist.

So what we did when we arrived at Kitei Station in Cardiff, which is the nearest one to the uni, there were various kind of, I think they were rubber tyres like tractor tyres that had been turned inside out to make them into plant pots full of petunias and stuff like that. And we just grabbed them

and nicked them. So we had some... I know, it's terrible. Your teenage years are just a litany of flower destruction. Yeah. Crime spray. So yeah, I went in there with these raggedy, diesel-encrusted stolen flowers. I really remember going... Well, first of all, I took the time on the ticket, literally,

so it said 7 o'clock. I thought, fucking hell, got to get there at 7 o'clock. The Smiths are going to be on. And then, of course, you get there and there was... God, I think it might have been Cactus World News or maybe it was James. It was James, actually. That's who it was.

But even before James came on, you had to wait for fucking ever while the student DJ played these interminable dub reggae 12s, you know. Or Morrissey would have loved that. Ah, yeah. I mean, I was blinkered enough at the time that I did not want to hear that either, you know. Did you say it was vile, Simon? I didn't say it was vile. Just, no, no, don't put words in my mouth.

Especially not Morrissey's words. No, but I found it a little bit dull. And I just want to see Morrissey in the flesh now. Anyway, I remember queuing up at the bar and there was just spilt, it was a student venue, there was spilt beer, spilt lager everywhere. What seemed to be like an inch deep on the floor i'm probably exaggerating but i'll never forget standing there looking at the floor all this lager and there were petals floating in the lager and that just seemed so symbolic of what was about to happen and then when the smiths finally come on there are a lot of students who are probably they're just there to take the piss and and to

sort of troll this this band who thought they were all that and a bag of chips you know so somebody during the first song the first song was william is really nothing and somebody threw a can of heineken at morrissey's head and i remember it hit him and i can just almost remember in slow motion the foam from the heineken going all over his head and he just sort of defiantly ran his fingers through his quiff and just carried on and i thought you are cool as fuck if it was now and someone did that he'd just go off in a huff and there have been examples of that where he just he's you know um throwing his toys out the pram or taking his ball home or whatever metaphor you want to use but yeah just just a huge experience for me seeing the smiths

i actually got a small piece of the fir tree that he swung around his head during the gig which is like a holy relic to me you know like a splinter from christ it's a cross yes exactly and the thing with the smiths was and i mean i'm not going to go on about what they meant to me too much because i've written about this loads. There was an article for The Quietest I did about the Queen is dead. So I'll keep it fairly brief. I'll just urge people to read that so I don't go on and on about it. I'll just go the one on about it.

The Smiths were pure. They were pure. Everyone else with their fucking ripped knees and their drugs. They were slags. All the other bands were slags. And theiths had this purity to them they were rejecting all that they were rejecting rock and roll masculinity that this outright rejection of masculinity was crucial to me and in a way that is exemplified

by morrissey stepping aside and having a female singer come on this record and just um taking over yeah for one record a lot of what appealed to me about them was, I guess, borderline incel, right? They made me feel validated for my romantic failures. When I was walking home alone from a teenage house party under that sodium orange glow of the streetlights you used to get in those days, while everyone else was getting off with each other to move closer by Phyllis Nelson, it was them who were wrong and me who was right because morrissey said so or when i was being betrayed by the treacherous

steph for example so yeah i mean this now simon yeah yeah so i took my wages from my job as a seafood seller at butlins where i met the treacherous steph And I literally invested in this band. And this was one of the singles I bought. Prawn is murder, Simon. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. Well, the thing is, I was a vegetarian at the time. So I got the worth of both worlds. I couldn't even eat the fucking food.

But I stank of it. I love that, Simon. I love the fact that it's so true that pop can sometimes be that that justification for that enforced celibacy i mean the reasons for it but but but yeah pop can provide that validation and justification of it in a way it makes it righteous it does and morrissey was my absolute hero for that um among other reasons and i mean of course what makes this clip magical and so so watchable is that we don't have to look at the cunt no you know because now that he is pop's biggest racist who thinks that the chinese are a subspecies and i could give you a whole fucking list but we all know what we're

talking about yes we do i mean it is problematic for me to even listen to the smiths now i need a few stiff drinks yeah before i can stick on a Smiths album. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I've got friends around or whatever, or the wife and I are having a bit of a sesh. We'll stick the Smiths on. But I can't listen to them sober, just because I've got to get past that revulsion that I feel towards what he's become now. Put Gary Glitter and Michael Jackson on instead.

In some ways, those two are easier to listen to. They are. I didn't buy into their persona. They were just the front men of brilliant pop records. But Morrissey, it was all about him and what he stood for. And when we find out that what he stands for is actually something

completely appalling and beyond the pale, then listening to him, now even though you can think, well, at the time, as Neil says, maybe he wasn't like that or as much like that as he later became. It's still his voice. And I'm listening to these songs. And I maintain the Smiths are the greatest rock and roll band who ever lived.

But to listen to them now and to hear that voice makes it really difficult for me. It really does. And I think they were the greatest rock and roll band of all time not just because of the music you know obviously johnny marr was completely brilliant and they were literally a rock and roll band on stuff like rosham ruffians or shakespeare's sister the kind of rockabilly moments but they were rock and roll in the sense that probably the most rock and roll thing you could be was to overturn the cliches and accepted modes of behaviour of rock and roll, which is what they did. They were the most revolutionary and rebellious band you could be in 1984, I think. So here in what to me are some of the greatest albums of all time.

And by the way, for me, it's Meet Is Murder over The Queen Is Dead. The Queen Is Dead is a 7 out of 10 of ten album seven good songs three comedy ones i mean mixed feelings to say the least about the band who meant more to me probably than any band ever did before or did since because they caught me at just the right age and uh yeah but but i've got to be honest with myself i don't want to be one of those people who cling on for dear life. And, you know, the real dregs now of Morrissey's fan base who just cannot let go. Yeah. And I get it.

I get how difficult it is. I think a lot of us were in denial up to a point, but there comes a point you've just got to fucking face up to it. Yeah. And anyone can say, yeah, separate the art from the artist. Yeah, we've all heard that a million times. And it's never... Particularly on chart music. Yeah, and i think we've talked about this before that it's never a simple easy cut off you will

have anomalies within your own kind of decision that you make on that yeah there will be people who have done worse things but you find their work easier to listen to and it's it's patchy and it's messy um but for me the sm Smiths are really quite a problem and I have to get shit-faced to really enjoy them. It's because you feel betrayed by them. Totally. Total betrayal, which only a fan can feel. I really was taken by what Simon said about them being the greatest rock and roll band because it reminds me of...

I think Simon Reynolds made this comparison as well between the Stones, who are traditionally called the greatest rock and roll band in the world, and the Smiths. They are similar in a way in that they reflect their time absolutely. But the thing is with the Smiths, as well as reflecting their time, they crucially reject their time as well. And, you know, set against the aspirational 80s, the Smiths are definitively rejecting of that era and positing

something completely different so i i kind of go along with what simon says about them you know at the time being that greatest rock and roll band in terms of summing up both the spirit and also the kind of dissident spirit of the age absolutely but incredibly difficult as simon said to listen to anymore yeah and and he's right because like you know i listen to led zeppelin and when i think about what jimmy page has done in say comparison to morrissey i know which one is more morally heinous but morrissey sails on kind of smugly being even more morrisseyish all the time and his fans just cling on i don't want to offer condolences or anything but that

must be tremendously upsetting simon not to be able to hear something like that because it is a true betrayal i mean it's a band who once stood up for the downtrodden and for the underdog and for the outsider and their lead singer now being absolutely on the side of the oppressors and punching down and it's horrible to see but anyway he's not on this episode he's not on this let's talk about her right sandy shore punched me in the stomach once wow no in the house of parliament but i'll come on to that second yeah yeah i'm gonna leave that hanging um first of all i want to talk about her age, because you mentioned that, you know, she was 37. She was born in February 1947.

People who are 37 now, right? Obviously, I'm doing that kind of calendar maths, right? People who are 37 now include Mutia from the Sugar Babes, Nadine and Nicola from Girls Aloud, Bruno Mars and Carly Rae Jepsen, right? So these are all people who do not feel like old people no but you know the the exchange rate has changed yes really with age obviously obviously you are younger longer these days um but when she was when sandy shaw was on top of the pops with the smiths i was 16 she was 37 i'm thinking calm down mum. Yes. I was embarrassed. And I feel awful saying that now. My mum was born in 1947,

so Sandy Shaw's literally the same age as my mum. So to see her there, like, romping about, I was cringing. I mean, we're now as far from this episode of Top of the Pops as she was from her birth. So, yeah, things have changed a lot. It would be the equivalent now. I mean mean because this

was 16 years after her peak shall we say her peak being you know i guess the late 60s but 16 years at that time felt like 100 years ago um but it would actually be the equivalent now of let's say fontaine's dc working with leona lewis or or Wet Leg working with Nelly Furtado, you know, which would be a little bit jarring, but it doesn't seem like a million years ago. And watching it now, she looks great and she's awesome. She's got this belted black leather dress with a thigh-length split in it

and the leopard print tights, black stiletto shoes. Shoes, sellout, Sandy, sellout, wearing shoes. But did you notice that the Smiths were barefoot? Ah, I sell out sandy sell out wearing shoes but did you notice that the smiths were barefoot ah you see yeah i see what they did there yeah yeah so she's rolling around on the floor and yeah i i was embarrassed at the time but it's brilliant it's like fucking iggy pop or something it's just it's really quite punk what she's doing there and her voice uh is well the thing with sandy shaw's voice to begin with is she wasn't i i was surprised you said that there was a kind of r&b um timbre just a little touch yeah she's not she's not like dusty or no she's not yeah right but just a little touch i detected that just took

it away from kind of morris's whininess basically the thing that she has in her voice that I really treasure is a kind of insouciance and nonchalance. She's kind of offhand. She's not really belting it out. She's not really delivering the lines in capital letters. She's almost throwing them away. And that's in her own work as well as in this Smith's cover. And her voice is a kind of semitone flat, which is slightly sullen it reminds

me actually a little bit of Susie Sue uh with whom Morrissey would of course later collaborate and Susie Sue thinks Morrissey's a cunt as well but that's a whole other thing um I think it's a really good version first of all musically it's very different from the the two original Smith's versions a single in the album Because the thing with the original, it's got harmonica all over it. And for me, the harmonica is an undignified instrument. It lacks dignity. And it's just blasting away like it's a fucking 60s Bob Dylan record or something.

I don't like it. I don't like it. But this version, the intro, is this very sort of light, tinkly guitar sound from Johnny Marr. And I think it works really well. I mean, it's funny you talk about the in-soulness of Smith songs. Because this is, oh, you know, this is us. We're gay.

We're going out. And if the people stare, let the people stare. It's quite upfront for 1984. Yeah, exactly. She changes the lyrics the original goes so the good life is out there somewhere so stay on my arm you little charmer she sings so i'll stay on your arm because you are charming half the time morrissey is singing about how he can't get along with women and uh you know he can't find love and love is trivial and useless and worthless anyway.

And then the rest of the time he's singing either very sexually, as he is actually on the B side of the original Hand in Glove, which is Handsome Devil, which is a very sexual lyric. But he also sings about this kind of idealised version of romance, which is what he finds on Hand in Glove, that it's really you and me against the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's them taking on the world.

It's, you know, the sun shines out of our behinds. It's not like any other love. This one's different because it's us, which I think is just a brilliant lyric. And it's a really nice counterpoint to Long Live Love, which is a fucking brilliant song. I love that. Yeah, it is yeah it is one of

the greatest i'm getting some singles ever her performance of that on top of the pops right long live love um have you seen it i've seen one of them she's barely moving her lips and she looks she's really not asked about it and it really undermines the song in a wonderful way you know she's singing long live love blah blah blah but the way she delivers it makes it seem sarcastic and it really puts a different meaning on the song for me. And when I met her, and this is where she punched me in the stomach. So what it was, it was an event for the 50th anniversary,

I think it was the 50th, of the charts. And it was held in the House of Parliament in this meeting room. There are various people there, including Mike Reid mike reed 275 and 285 uh and um yes exactly i i think the uh hop security had to turn her away um there was uh uh one of one of the ladies from boney m who had a nice chat with um did you smell his breath, Simon? It was beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I actually sort of did stand quite close and I just wanted to check out his breath. But Sandy Shaw was there and I didn't used to get autographs for my mum very often because, you know, I don't think she was that bothered. But there were two that I did get don't think she was that bothered but there were two that I did get for her that she was really bothered about one of them was Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet um because she fancied him off EastEnders right and the other was Sandy Shaw

because as I say she was born the same time as Sandy Shaw and she sort of grew up in that era and she just loved Sandy Shaw so I got Sandy to sign like the fucking event program for my mum. She was really delighted by that. And we got talking and I asked her about this performance of Long Live Love. I said, oh, that's so great how you did that. And she said, no, that's not what happened. What happened was this. The footage that you see now, saw on Top of the Pops,

it was only meant to be a rehearsal. She was just sort of making sure she was on the right spot for the lighting and the cameras and yes and what it was she wouldn't do the actual proper record of the show because of jingle nonce jimmy saville because really he was creeping her out so much in the backstage area that she walked out okay now so this clip already put a different meaning on the song for me. Now it's got this third meaning of why she's really doing that. Right. And there was lots of white wine flowing at this event.

And she was a really good laugh, like quite kind of bonkers, to use a sort of very Radio 1 word. Quite sort of scatty and sort of, yeah, random, I suppose. Yeah. But great, just really likeable. Anyway, the drinks reception was held in this little side room, but the toilets were elsewhere in the building. And I remember I went off to go to the loo.

When I came back, she was heading the other way across the main kind of assembly room that we'd been in. She was walking towards me. She's like, hey, all right. And she whacks me in the stomach in what was meant to be a jovial way. But it really hurts fuck she's stronger

than she looks but yeah this is a fucking brilliant performance and you know to my mind this is the definitive version of the song

I listen to the Smiths doing Hand in Glove and it sounds like a cover version of Sandy Shaw yeah absolutely what Simon was saying about her voice

having that nonchalance to it is really important to why this works I think because the Smiths to me i mean i'm sure i'm just being ignorant but they've never sounded better yes listening and gliding this is beautiful and the way her the weakness of a voice when she leaves those kind of notes hanging and just lets johnny marr do something special and delightful it's wonderful obviously morrissey and the smiths are amazing amazing songwriters um who perhaps should have been covered a bit more by sandy because i think she does an amazing job yeah

they could have got an album out of this couldn't they perhaps i mean perhaps it's nice that it's just this because it keeps it special but yeah i really love this and like i say i do think she looks great unlike what i would have thought when i was 16 oh god i totally and um and uh johnny marr looks great as well you know you say he looked like uh mark almond yeah he's got this he's got the black polo neck with a diamante necklace around it which i thought was a bit like janice's joker actually it was a very diamante year 1984 i wore a lot of diamante myself that time you know because it was cheap but he's got his hair in that sort of backcombed mod do that's mostly swept back towards the crown, but

leaves generous fringe at the front. At the time, though, at the time, I preferred Andy Rourke's hair, because he had that immaculate 80s indie boy hairdo. It's like a flat top that's grown out a little bit, and it's been quaffed by a pro, you know? And I even like how Mike Joyce looks here.

Not so much for his look fashion-wise or hair-wise, but just for how he is. He's sitting upright with his drums sensibly horizontal, like he's doing a job, like he's a jobbing drummer in a jazz band. And his drums aren't set up in that ergonomic way that heavy metal drummers have where all the skins are tilted inwards to you know facilitate a big show-off drum roll yeah they're just there nice and flat just tiny details like that felt defiant to me at the time and and it's good that all the idiots the zoo wankers presumably in their hooped tops lots of hoops going on like yes sailor hoops.

It's good that they're there, dancing on the platform behind them. And it's good that there's the balloons and all that kind of stuff. And it's good you've got these twats in their crop tops and their espadrilles and their sailor hats, because it provides that contrast. And it gave me that feeling, just like when Janice does her little finger jab, this is for me, this is my music. And we've broken through. For two minutes, is my music. And we've broken through.

For two minutes, 20 seconds or whatever, we have broken through. City Farm in full effect. You know, they're towering over the band in the background, being totally unable to dance to the single and generally looking like an animatronic window display for a very big top shop. Possibly in Oxford Street.

I wonder if this started a kind of trend, because obviously this is out in 84. You've got What Did I Do To Deserve This in 87 with Perkshop Boys. And you've got Art of Noise and Tom Jones' Kiss in 88. I don't want to talk about that record. Well, it was started by B.E.F. Yeah, I'm glad you pointed that out, actually, Al.

Yeah, it was Heaven 17, yeah. And of course, yeah, they sort of resurrected Tina Turner and all that kind of thing as well. Yeah, I think those albums are really important, the two BEF albums. Yeah, it's a win-win situation for both parties, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah, it really is.

Great start to the show as well. So the following week, Hand in Glove rose nine places to number 27, but dropped four places to 31 the following week Handing Glove rose 9 places to number 27 but dropped 4 places to 31 the following week and exited the chart although the two entities never collaborated on vinyl again Shaw, Morrissey and

Ma remained tight apart from the Morrissey and Ma bit obviously the Smiths followed up with Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now which of course was inspired by shaw's 1969 single heaven knows i'm missing him now which got to number 10 for two weeks in june of this year while shaw went off to appear at various major charity gigs and eventually got around to record the lp hello angel named after morris's regular salutations to her in his many letters in 1988,

which featured the single Please Help in the Cause Against Loneliness, which was written by Morrissey and Stephen Street. She retired from recording in 1989 with a single Nothing Less Than Brilliant, which initially failed to chart but then got to number 66 in November of 1994 when it was put out alongside a compilation album. It featured Chrissie Hynde on harmonica and on castanets, Janice Long. Wow. Thank you. We cut back to Bates and it's blatantly obvious that the new look is paying off

as two young ladies have been asked by the floor manager to voice their attentions upon him. One even draping herself upon his shoulder. Yeah. She doesn't look that interested. She's looking away. She's not comfortable. Well, that's it.

I mean, she's a very pretty girl, and she's hanging off Bates' shoulder. Presumably, I mean, I presumed without any coercion, but, you know, you've now put the doubt in my mind that maybe she was told to do it. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, it takes all sorts, I suppose. Yeah.

But she does do an amazing eye roll towards the end yes like the professional he is bates gets on with the task of introducing the next act phil collins with against all odds take a look at me now born in putney in 1951 phil collins was a child actor who received his first drum kit as a Christmas present at the age of five, made his singing debut at the age of seven at a talent show in Butlins where he sang the ballad of Davy Crockett and stopped the band halfway through telling them they were playing in the wrong key. He then formed a school band called The Real Thing at the age of 11, started playing piano at

the age of 12, was an extra in A Hard Day's Night at the age of 13 and played the artful Dodger in two runs of the musical Oliver, also at the age of 13. Sadly his balls dropped halfway through the second run meaning he had to shout his vocals and was eventually removed from the cast. After honing his drumming skills and practically living in assorted London clubs throughout the late 60s, he started casting about for a band, and after failing the auditions for Vinegar Joe and Manfred Man Part 3, was invited by John Anderson to audition for Yes, but he didn't bother. In July of 1970, he answered an advert in Melody Maker

and was drafted in as the fifth drummer of Genesis, who had just finished their second LP and were on the verge of splitting up, occasionally singing lead on the odd album track in a Ringo style and fashion. In 1975, when Peter Gabriel went solo, the band put another ad in the maker looking for a replacement, with Collins singing back up during the lengthy audition process, and when they couldn't find anyone suitable, installed him as the new front person, kicking off a transition period which eventually slimmed the band down to a three-piece, period which eventually slimmed the band down to a three-piece, stared them away from progginess towards a more radio-friendly style and reaped five top 10 singles throughout the 80s and finally

put the band over in America. In 1978, on the verge of the announcement of a nine-month world tour, his missus told him that she was well dischuffed about her husband not being about and if he went on the tour she would not be there when he got back and when he finally did she already had at the same time genesis were on an extended break so tony banks and mike rutherford could work on their solo albums so collins decided to have a go at one of his own, signing a deal with Virgin and rackling out a string of songs about divorce and the like. That LP, Based on You, eventually came out in February of 1981 and the lead-off single, In The Air Tonight,

immediately shot up the charts, getting to number two that month. And a year later, his cover of You Can't Hurry Love by The Supremes went one better, ascending to the summit of Pop Mountain, pushing off Rene and Renato, and staying there for two weeks. He spent the rest of 1983 working on the Genesis LP, Genesis, and during the tour for that album was passing through Chicago

when he was approached by the film director Taylor Hackford and asked to participate in the soundtrack for his forthcoming film Against All Odds. He immediately rummaged through his bag of musical off cuts and pulled out a tune called How Can You Just Sit There which was composed during his post-divorce songwriting blitz five years previously and deemed not good enough for his first two LPs. As time was pressing and Genesis was still on tour, Arif Mardin was drafted in to co-produce, the piano, bass and strings were recorded in New York

and Collins bolted on drums and vocals the following week in Los Angeles. This single is the follow-up to Why Can't It Wait Till Morning, which only got to number 89 in May of 1983. It entered the charts at number 26 three weeks ago, that soared 16 places to number 10, and this week it's up two places from number four to number two. And here is the BBC running a big advert for the film boys songs for move is a huge deal in 1984 yeah i mean the best original song nominees that

year for the oscars go as follows i just called to say i love you stevie wonder footloose kenny loggins let's hear it for the boy denise williams ghostbusters by ray parker jr and this you know yeah in a lot of those cases the song was bigger than the film and that that's definitely the case for this one you know oh yes the song was much more successful than the film was i've not seen the the film against all odds but just from the glimpses because why would you i know i i yeah if i had limited pocket money i was going to spend it all on smith's records rather than this kind of thing the film looks pretty bog standard mid-80s fair doesn't it yeah action-packed american things like

like driving fast cars recklessly or playing sports that we don't play here or um punching snake-eyed men in suits played by James Woods. Or, you know, if it was the 90s, it would have been James Spader. Isn't it interesting how James Woods seamlessly handed over that kind of typecast role to James Spader, that kind of piggy-eyed coldness of the kind of corporate baddie? But, yeah, the film's got Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward, both of whom have been in one of my all-time favourite films each, Bridges in The Big Lebowski and Ward in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is slightly problematic in certain ways now, like the bit where Steve Martin basically feels her up while she's unconscious and then justifies it by saying, your breasts are out of whack when she wakes up, but made up for by the moment where she sucks a bullet out of a hole in his arm which is uh really quite quite startling um but yeah um in in this film they're basically um um yeah let me help you out here simon i think the word you're looking for is cat shit you know this is the sort of thing that would be a tv movie on itv at the same time as top of

the pops yeah and your dad would watch it so you couldn't watch top of the pops and he knows it's going to be shit but he still watches it all the way through while it's being shit and then at the end he'll say oh that was fucking ramble it looks fucking rubbish i mean yes this is the thing you know a lot of uh pop videos as trailers this year, as you point out there, with that list of Oscar nominees. But imagine being dragged to see Against All Odds. Fucking hell. Yeah. All we get from this trailer, what, as Simon said, a ton of inexplicable American sports action.

Which I would have been interested in. Oh, American football. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah but there's there's also this motif um it reminded me of my mom because there were two things my mom hated massively on telly one of them which i might have mentioned before is uh actresses who show their teeth when they smile so their rest face she hated she hated sue ellen and pam ewing for that reason but so there's a bit of that but but also you know that thing in films where people have just woken up and they start snogging? Yeah.

My mum, whenever that happened, she'd always be like, oh, God, their breath must stink. Yeah. She'd be right. She'd be brilliant. She'd be absolutely right. So there's a lot of morning breath kind of beardy snogging here. Oh, yeah.

And, yeah, this song is a total ball eight that seems to go on for weeks really drags not helped by this video because the literal translation of the lyrics is so forced from the off you know you get the line about turning around they find a clip of someone turning around yes you get the line empty space they show some empty space the trademark phil collins drum roll which was obviously had to be in there because it's such a such a success in uh in the air tonight i mean it's basically dairy milk gorilla the dairy gorilla bit yeah yeah exactly it's become his trademark like fucking big daddy's belly buster or whatever that you know his drum roll comes in and they show a bit where somebody's thrown into a drum kit, you know.

And throughout this video, when it was on in 84, I would have walked out of the room having to watch it for chart music purposes. It reminded me of other videos in a sense where I'd like to be in the video and give the person in it a really hard shove, a really hard push. Like, I always thought that when I, you know, Jon, Bon Jovi's video for A Blaze of Glory. You probably blotted it out of your memories, but it's shot in the canyons of Utah. I always used to dream about running up and just giving him a shove.

And this is one of those throughout it. You know, he's got that water coming down behind him and in front of him. And he somehow magically manages to stay pretty much dry. I really just wanted to give him a fucking push into that water because this song was winding me up so much. I thought that the water looked like red rain,

perhaps in a foreshadowing of Peter Gabriel's dire warning of world destruction. Maybe Gabriel nicked the idea off him. Phil Collins has got this really shit jacket on, hasn't he? He looks awful, man. He's rich. He shouldn't look this shit. And Flashdance has already done this trick of making a video, you know, a movie trailer.

And as the decade goes on, we get more. We get Billy Ocean and others doing this kind of thing. Yeah. So a part of pop really becomes this feeder for the movie industry. Cross-platform brand synergisation. This is it. And getting at least one pop hit on the soundtrack is guaranteed to get bums on seats.

I expect not many people went to see this film, but I expect 90% of the people who did go and see this pile of dog shit went because of this song. Yeah, but if you want to listen to the song, you buy the record and play it. Yeah. You know, instead of sitting through a film

for an hour and a half. Apparently it's at the very end of the fucking film for an hour and a half and yeah apparently it's at the very end of the fucking film you have got to sit through the whole thing yeah and the song it really does seem to go on for like a fucking week or something and that's a week that basically you're spending in the company of a guy whose wife has walked out on him and by the sounds of it for good reason because he's a whiny little fuck it's not a pop song it's a middle-aged divorce song you know it's a decent trade-off for all concerned, the movie soundtrack game, because, you know, the film gets to glom itself onto a pop star

and then thus promote itself on MTV and top of the pops. The label that's handling the soundtrack album sometimes gets to nick an artist from elsewhere for a bit. The artist gets half the video made for him. You know, the only losers in this case are us poor twats at home as we have to sit through an advert for what appears to be a really shit film that says nothing to us about our lives if you're going through a breakup right you want the dignity of i don't know as wads don't turn around or you just might see me cry by our kid yeah this is like i'm

not going to let you leave with my dignity intact here i am being the pathetic blubbery mess that you left i would in no way like to suggest that the mariah carey fucking boy zone or whatever it's westlife when it version is better but at least there you get some sense of release here phil just remains this kind of pent-up unlovable guy which perhaps makes it a more interesting record to be honest look this is a great well-executed example of perhaps one of my least favorite types of music the power ballad um you know which seems to have been rehabilitated but people forget most of them are fucking awful so i mean we start off with a terrifying bit of cgi oh god what the fuck is going on there which in this case stands for crappy graphics, isn't it? Of an Aztec mask.

No, it's Mayan. It's Mayan out. It's essentially an Aztec mask with Bill Collins' mouth. No, get it right, Al. It's not Aztec. It's Mayan. Is it Mayan? It's Mayan.

Oh, I do apologise. Get it right. Yeah, come on. I apologise to the pop craze Peruvians. Then it's just shots of Jeff Bridges snogging the woman he's supposed to be finding for James Woods in between Collins singing in his bad 80s jacket and doing some Hadley fisting on a neon triangle, which is, you know, supposed to be symbolic, but it looks like he's just standing on a Bronski beat logo. Yeah, that bit where his mouth is superimposed onto that Mayan mask.

It reminds me of, I don't know if you remember this, you've seen it, that song that became a bit of a meme in the noughties called what what in the butt by samwell right it's and we've basically got this sort of chocolate starfish ring piece with a mouth talking in the middle of it it's basically like that it's really quite disturbing it's also disturbing the way that collins's real mouth goes when he does the first in the song. He just does something weird with his lips that kind of creeps me out a bit. Oh, by the way, the story with

Neil mentioned the literalness of the lyric. He's crowbarred in. What happened there was that he had this song lying around already. Yes. Because it was written at the same time as In The Air Tonight. It was when his wife Andy was cook holding him with a painter and decorator hence the you know the paint pot on top of his keyboard uh when he

was performing on top of the pots back in those days wow um so he had this song just uh knocking around as it was just meant to be a b-side i think at first it was just a demo he had a demo of it and it was originally called how can you just sit there and then taylor hackford approached him while he was on tour in america and said look i'm making this film can you write something for it and and he said well no i can't write when i'm on tour he just couldn't do that but i have got this other song hanging around and he played him a tape of it and um yeah hackford insisted that he incorporated the exact title into the lyrics so it it does feel Crowbar-ed in. And then, yeah, he sort of nipped off to studio in New York with Arif Mardin.

Yeah, thank God he wasn't making King Kong versus Godzilla. Exactly, yeah. Or, you know, romancing the stone. You coming back to me is romancing the stone or something yeah fucking hell yeah um i actually i got phil collins's autobiography not dead yet for christmas nice uh it's it's the book the daily mirror called jaw-droppingly honest um my my brother kev got it for me um it was on my wish list but i can't remember putting it there i must have been pissed i absolutely must have been pissed when i put it on there but i was glad to

get it thank you kev i think he listens um okay one reason i wanted to read it is that my mother in law used to go out with phil collins wow when they were teenagers fucking hell revelation top revelation simon i know i wanted to see obviously if she gets a mention right because that would be hilarious to me um she doesn't sadly but in a way oh it's not surprising that he couldn't pick her out of the fog of his memory because according to his own account he squired his way through the entire student body at drama school squired his words squired so um the first time he squired anyone is he says uh he lost his virginity in an allotment with a mod girl um who was called cheryl so it's not well that's you know the name he gives her that's uh not my mother-in-law um

surrounded by potatoes and carrots i've been surrounded by potatoes seems like a very phil collins thing thankfully for us you know the phil collins version of this song does not invite us to imagine phil collins having sex surrounded by potatoes and carrots or otherwise instead we're shown rachel wars and jeff bridges giving it the full from here to eternity. See, he could have done a song called Against Some Spuds. They're giving it the full from here to eternity, aren't they, in the film? And that was almost as much of a kind of trope of 80s films as the whole thing from Battleship Potemkin

of the pram falling down the stairs. That kept cropping up everywhere, including in The Untouchables, which I watched in a pub the other day so yeah it's just one of those tropes isn't it yeah you've got a couple you've got to have them making out as the Americans would say in the surf on the

beach so that comes in there man I don't think I'd be up for that no because at some point you're going to get some ocean spray up your nose aren't you you're going to get sand in your foreskin it's just yeah it's just bad isn't it yeah yeah yeah seashells up your fanny I mean it's You're going to get sand in your foreskin. It's just bad, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sea shells up your fanny. I mean, it's just, no, it's not good.

And also, fucking, you know, you get fucking jellyfish everywhere these days. Yeah. Of course, the thing to do if you get stung by jellyfish is to have someone piss on you. So I guess at least there's somebody literally naked right next to you. So, you know, there is that, I suppose. Hey, and you live in Brighton, Simon. No one's going to take a blind bet. No, you get stared at more if you're not shagging in the surf and pissing on each other in brighton yeah yeah absolutely right um it's it's funny that that

neil mentions the the westlife and mariah carey version because yeah this song was number one twice but not for phil of course it didn't get to number one for him. Once from Steve Brookstein, the X Factor man who is now having opinions on the internet, man rather than a singer. But yeah, the Mariah Carey and Westlife cover. Have you seen the video of that? It is fucking hilarious, right? Most of it is just filmed in the island of Capri,

which is interesting. We say Capri for the place and for the drink capri sun but we say capri for the car i've never figured that out but yeah they're mostly mucking around on on boats and jeeps and on foot but there's this bit and it seems like they only had access to mariah for about six hours and they just shot a lot of stuff on the fly really there's a bit where they're all sat in a row, as if, like a team photo, as if it's a photo session. Waiting for a key change.

Exactly, yeah, right? So they're all there with Mariah and Pride of Place in the middle, and it's pretty hard to figure out which one it is who does this, because three of the coats had blonde curtains, right? You've got Kian Egan, Nicky Byrne, and Brian McFadden. But after much google image searching and just uh compare and contrast i found out it was mcfadden who does this he's staring down mariah's top the whole time really blatantly it's so funny and to be fair the director is more or less doing

the same throughout the video the director would now be prosecuted for this video. You know those scumbags who invade women's privacy by filming down their tops on a bus or a tube train? And there was actually legislation about this. Yeah, that's what the director's doing. And it's definitely what McFadden is doing with his eyeballs. He's definitely storing it in the bank for what... Neil mentioned the phrase, a sense of release you get from the Westlife and Mariah vision.

He's going to have a fucking sense of release later on that day. You can absolutely tell. And it looks like it's filmed on a potato, as they say. And I thought, well, who is it? Who's this sort of sex pest with a camera who made it? And that video for the Westlife and Mariah one is directed by Bill Boatman and P. Snide. Now, P. Snide, can't find out anything about him. Bill Boatman sounds like a fake name, like Post P. Snide, can't find out anything about him.

Bill Boatman sounds like a fake name, like Postman Pat or Bob the Builder, doesn't it? Yes. But his credits after this are basically two more Mariah Carey videos and a Mariah Carey documentary, Central Park, Christmas Special, and Cooking with Mariah Carey. Some of these under the name William Boatman. So either he's her guy or she liked what he did. Because prior to this, he'd mainly done cheap horror films.

But in amongst all that, there's a Telltale title, Totally Nude Aerobics. So, you know, yeah, that probably explains his shooting style in the Against All Odds video. But for them to cover it was a weird setup in the first place when you think about it, because it's a song about regretting the breakdown of a relationship. And it's being sung by five men to one woman

and one woman to five men. Now, you've heard of throuples. This is a sex couple. And, you know, I'm a modern guy. I'm open-minded. I'm not going to shame anyone for that kind of domestic setup i mean it worked for snow white at least some of the versions of snow white that i've seen um but you've you've got to assume that even in the most extreme scenario that it leaves at least two of them literally holding their dicks because there's only a

certain number of orifices available um but yeah thankfully the, the Phil Collins version does not invite us to imagine him having sex with Mariah Carey or Dwarves or Westlife or anyone. It's just Rachel Ward and Jeff Bridges, and that's fine by me. Because yeah, he does look crap in his bad jacket and his receding hair. Nothing wrong with that,

of course. And I guess that was his whole shtick, wasn't it? It's just, oh, you know, I'm the anti-pop star. I'm just the everyman. I'm the ordinary Joe. And I guess that was his whole shtick, wasn't it? It's just, oh, you know, I'm the anti-pop star. I'm just the everyman. Yes, I'm every bloke. I'm the ordinary Joe. And I suppose, in a way, in hindsight, I've kind of warmed him a little bit because there's a particular memory I've got.

He reminds me of this kid at school called Eddie. Simon Edmonds, Eddie, used to sit next to me in history. And even at the age of 15, Eddie had a receding hairline, unfortunately, for him. And he owned a pair of wraparound sunglasses, which meant he was able to roll up the sleeves of his black school blazer, put the sunglasses on and do an amazing impression of the You Can't Hurry Love video. So whenever I see Phil Collins, I think of Eddie.

So there is that anyway. Hope he's all right. The song gets rather lost in this video because it's not the thing that's really being sold here. But as you've said, it would almost immediately outlive the film. And, you know, as dad divorce songs go, it's one of the better ones, isn't it? Yeah, I'll give it that.

You could almost see Phil's version as almost like, I don't know, laying down a guide vocal for future suburban gentlemen who are going for marriage difficulties. You know, when they're going to throw this down at some karaoke bar or something, they're going to be aiming for exactly what Phil is doing here. But really over-egging it on the turn around and see me cry bit. But when you're 16, you don't want this in your

life good god no it's neither use nor ornament but they do now though young people now because obviously it's hip to be square oh yeah it's hip to be square now everyone under 35 loves phil collins and they love sting and they love toto and they love fleetwood mac yeah don't slag off phil collins in front of stephen gerrard he'll headbutt you with his three head but you know I fought those wars at the time and I can't let it go, except with Fleetwood Mac who I love I love Fleetwood Mac, but I can't let it go, you know, I do have this

weird conflict because as some of you may know, I'm involved in a club night called Late Night Minicab FM where we basically play power ballads and we play the sort of songs that make you feel emotional when it's 3am and you're pissed in a taxi and it comes on the radio and you get a bit, you know, maudlin about somebody you fancy

or somebody you're missing and all of that. We just do a whole night of that. Now, obviously, if you stick on Against All Odds... It sounds fun. No, but it is. It is, honestly. You stick on Against All Odds by Phil Collins and people absolutely lose their shit. They're just fucking belting it out.

And I can kind of give it a pass on that basis. At the time, I wanted him to squire off. Fucking squiring, squiring, squire, squire off Phil Collins. Mother squirer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But when you're 16 and you hear this, there's only two reactions both of them bad it's

either oh my god this shit's on the radio again i've got to sit through this for fucking hours or oh shit dad's playing that song this ain't good yeah yeah i'm guessing this would have had completely different context had my parents say been going through divorce at the time but um i guess yeah it might have some really horrific context and like that but yeah it's dreary grown-up divorce pop when you're a kid by the way neil i i love the fact that uh we can now imagine what you look like when you were listening to this stuff because there's that amazing photo that you shared on social media of uh you sat with your parents on the sofa in 1984. That is it. Yes, exactly.

That was me. That was me. I mean, Mira was taking the photo, but for top of the pops, my dad would have been in the other room. My dad would have been in the kitchen, eating chillies and drinking homebrew. But my mum would have been on that sofa with me and Mira.

Brilliant. Telling us who was on drugs. I hope Simon Bates likes his song because fucking up he's gonna hear it a lot of times at the end of his how tune segment from here on oh yeah yeah well it's right in his wheelhouse isn't it i've just realized i've never used the phrase in your wheelhouse before oh well done it feels weird in my mouth i don't know if i'll use it again but right um so obviously we've been talking about the film tie-in a lot and it was Oscar nominated and all that.

Have you seen the Oscar performance of this? No. Oh my God. I've heard about it. I've heard about it too. It's extraordinary because that year, for some unknown reason, the Academy decided that the artists would not perform their own songs.

The songs would be performed by someone else. And Phil Collins really drew the short straw. It's introduced by Jeff Bridges, the dude, which is nice to see him as a younger man. But what it is, it's a dancer, a Broadway dancer slash singer, but very much dancer, we find out, called Anne Reinking, who was at one time a partner and protege of Bob Fosse so she's from that kind of showbiz hoofer background and jazz hands yes and she sings

and dances the song and she's not a singer with the best will in the world I don't care how many Tony Awards or whatever she may have the first verse she's kind of she comes out of the smoke at the back and she's she sort of lumbers forward aimlessly on her own but then for the second verse she's joined by this man in a billowing silky shirt he looks a bit like ice dancer john curry or maybe a camp john hannah and together they start doing modern dance to the song yeah it's a bit like that bit in in the amazing sitcom nighty night where julia davis does a special routine to lavender by marillion oh there's a bit where and obviously it's lip synced but uh where anne rein king's vocal goes weirdly breathy and sharp on the so take a look

at me now she goes so take a look at me now like that it's really freaky and the thing is phil collins was there yes he yeah he had to sit through it he was in the audience and uh and this comes over in his book that he hated it yes uh he's he's really fucked off he's squired off he's like he's like squiring out he's squiring hell for squire's sake and there was a review of it in the la times that said the best that can be said about her performance is that the stage set was nice. And that's really true. Fucking hell, so true.

Before we leave Phil Collins behind, I just wonder if we could just quickly talk about the reasons why he was so hated, apart from the kind of blandness of his music. And I think part of it is because he seems to have no sense of humour about himself, despite giving off this kind of, like, only me only me jokey kind of every man demeanour. He used to phone up music papers and complain.

Yes. Did he ring up rock expert David Stubbs? I believe he did. Yes. Which is just incredible. But the other thing is that his political views have been i guess misrepresented because there was this whole thing it was around the 92 general election wasn't it where the son said that he was one of the artists who was going to leave the country if if labor got in he didn't actually say that uh much as much as i love to tory shame people what he actually did he threatened to fuck

off if to squire off if the government took loads of his money in tax, which was, you know, Labour policy at the time. But he is adamant that he's never supported the Conservatives. And, you know, there are other things, like he issued a cease and desist against Donald Trump when Trump used his music. And he's been involved in anti-racism campaigns. And nonsense, let's not forget.

Nonsense, yeah, yeah. There's a clause in his contract whereby all the royalties he earns in South Africa stay in South Africa and stuff like that. So, you know, maybe he's all right as long as you don't have to listen to him. And even then, I mean, you can't argue with In The Air Tonight, can you? That's a fucking great great track and even stuff like there's a single that wasn't such a big hit after that called If Leaving Me

Is Easy yeah it's got a sort of Philly soul feel to it so you know I wouldn't I wouldn't completely cast him beyond the pale critically some of the Aventus Genesis stuff that we've covered it's been like oh fucking hell we actually like this it's been alright but there's fucking hell, we actually like this. What's going on?

It's been all right, but there's something curiously unlikable about Phil. I mean, which actually comes out in this song. He sounds angry, you know? I mean, I know he's upset and all that,

but he sounds, yeah, like, uncommunicably angry. And I definitely tied him in with That's Right Politics. Yeah. You know, probably wrongly as simon says but that yeah that whole rolled up sleeve yuppie aspirationalism seemed to be

intimately linked for me in the 80s with phil collins was it this year that he was on miami vice oh that rings and introduced americans to the word wanker you know the word wanker. You know, the word wank in America is so clean that David Bowie was allowed to include it on the single version of Time that came out over there. Because, yeah, four's wanking to the floor. Americans are just like, oh, it's just some British thing. Who knows, you know. So the following week, Against All Odds stayed at number two

and would spend three weeks there. It would eventually become the 19th best-selling single of 1984, one above What's Love Got To Do With It and one below Like A Virgin, win a Grammy for Best Vocal Male Performance, Pop, and, as we've mentioned, was nominated for Best Original Song in the Oscars, losing to... I Just Called. Yes.

What film was that in, anyway? Woman in Red. Oh, of course. Right, yeah, yeah. The follow-up, Susudio, would get to number 12 for two weeks in February of 1985, and he'd have eight more top ten hits throughout the rest of the 80s, including one and a

half number ones. Easy Lover, it's contentious. That's a banger, though. I'm sorry. That is great. No, he's rolling it. It's contentious. Oh, it is a banger though i'm sorry that is great no he's wrong he's rolling it yeah yeah contentious oh it is a banger without oh i love that chin i love that chin and the song as we've mentioned would be bound at the wrists and frogged march to number one by mariah carey and westlife in september of 2000 and steve brookstein in jan January of 2005. Oh, and Against All Odds is released in British cinemas in a few weeks' time, and we'll be fighting for attention with Footloose, Silkwood, Police Academy, Amityville 3D,

and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. So, yeah, good luck with that. that take a look at me now well the old boom banga bang Eurovision song contest is looming and representing us this year

is a band called Belle and the Devotions. Here they are now with a catchy little ditty called Love Games. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Janice, surrounded by the females of City Farm, including one woman in a hoopy vest who appears to be doing some stomach muscle exercises to her right, reminds us that the old boom-banger-bang Eurovision is looming, so it's time to promote the UK entry,

and here it is, Love Games by Belle and the Devotions. Formed in London in 1983 Belle and the Devotions consisted of Kit Rolfe who was born somewhere in Yorkshire in 1956 and had put out a string of singles in the early 80s which failed to chart and no one else as the backing vocals were also done by Rolf. While putting out a couple of singles under the name which failed to chart, Rolf was drafted in as an off-stage backing singer for Sweet Dreams, 1983's UK entry for Eurovision, and at the beginning of the year, Linda Sofield and Laura James, who were born in London in 1963 and 1966 respectively,

were bolted on in order to take part in 1984's Song for Europe. They performed this tune, which was written by Graham Satcher, who had knocked out songs for Tony Christie and Baccarat, and Paul Curtis, who wrote the kiddie glam anthem We Want a Superstar for Christmas by the angels of islington in 1975 but had become absolutely obsessed with eurovision having already written 12 songs for the song for europe competition by 1983 but only winning once so far when let me be the one by the shadows was the uk entry in 1975 this year he had written or co-written four of the eight songs for Song for Europe which took place at the beginning of the month including one performed by

Sunita and one by a Bucks fizzle-like group called First Division but it was Love Games that came up on top by Miles thanks to his instantly recognisable harkening back to the 60s girl group scene, which had recently been mimed by Tracy Ullman and Phil Collins. Immediately signed up by CBS, they rushed it out as a single, which entered the chart of Fortnite to go at number 87, then soared 39 places to number 48, and this week it's just got under the line at 39,

meaning the BBC finally have their chance to shill their coverage of Eurovision 84, which takes place in Luxembourg a week on Saturday. Chaps, another participant in a song for Europe this year, Hazel Dean, having her second go after failing to win in 1976 probably for the best that she didn't win because searching i gotta find a man had been re-released after failing to chart last year and would get to number six next month so would have been problematic for her to um be plate spinning if you will and it's so incestuous because um

not long before this um paul curt Curtis had released a record with Hazel Dean under the duo name Curtis and Dean. Yeah. So there is that. I'm just surprised that you didn't start this bit by saying, Bell and the Devotions are Bell and the fucking Devotions. Yes. Yeah, yeah, not really an act with much chart longevity, are they?

No. Paul Curtis that you mentioned there he wrote over i think all in all over 20 songs that became entries to you know the year of song contest not all of them british ones and uh so yeah he was hedging his bets he wrote for some you know entries for other countries as well i call that being a traitor i agree out well you know but he has form for this or he had form for this because because later on, he wrote the winning FA Cup final song two years in a row for different teams. Really?

Yeah. Fucking hell. Right, 1989, for Liverpool, he wrote Kenny D, The Pride of Liverpool, which is very similar to Con Can's I Beg Your Pardon, by the way. Okay. Then in 1990, he wrote for Manchester United. Oh, man! Yeah, We Will Stand Together,

which has got a lot of the vibe of the Bee Gees' You Win Again in search of a tune, to be honest. That's fucking mercenary, man. It's bad. Anyone knows you just don't do that. No! You don't play for both Liverpool and Man United. No.

There haven't been many. He's the Paul Ince of songwriting. Miller, Chilton, Chisnell, Beardsley, Ince, Owen and Curtis. But he obviously was a fairly decent job in songwriting. Have you heard the Northern Soul tune that he made? Oh, yes. Mickey Moonshine. Mickey Moonshine, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's called Name It, You Got It.

And I've got to say, it's brilliant. It's got a sort of a Frankie Valli begging meets Isaac Hayes shaft feel to it. Released on Deco in 1974. So it's not one of those really obscure Northern Soul things. It's a white guy doing Northern Soul, which is known to aficionados as crossover. And some people don't like crossover stuff. But it genuinely did get played at the Wigan Casino. And, you know, that's something I like about Northern Soul.

It was very kind of omnivorous. It would just scoop up anything from anywhere that you could dance to. Yeah, the suggestions as to who Mickey Moonshine was, was Alvin Stardust. Really? And Paul Nicholas. The voice of authentic black everything. Northern Soul like it used to be.

Yes. Well, you know, had Alvin Stardust done that, it wouldn't to be Yes Well you know Had Alvin Stardust done that It wouldn't have been completely surprising Because the DJs at a place like the Wiccan Casino Would play anything you could dance to There was stuff like Afternoon of the Rhino by Mike Post Coalition

Which is just some kind of Library music for TV themes Which was a real dance floor hit there But yeah Whatever else we're about to say about Paul Curtis, and I don't know whether we like the song or don't, I don't know what our consensus is going to be. He did write this absolute Northern Soul banger, so just, you know, give him that up front.

So, yeah, Bell and the Devotions, shaking Supremes. Yeah. Really. I mean, they look like they've been loaded into a cannon and fired through Sue Pollard's wardrobe let's get that out of the way from the beginning apart from the fact that two of them are wearing

yellow coats yeah they look appalling I can't tell if I like this song or not because look we all love Motown there's a lot of this stuff about it this time in part but I can't tell whether it's a lot of this stuff about it this time in part. Oh, loads.

But I can't tell whether it's good because it's hooky, it's memorable, or it just feels a bit too cynical to the point where every single turn it takes, you know, reminds me of a Supreme song. It's as if the Supreme's 20 Greatest Hits LP has been fed into a bot and kind of regurgitated. So you've got bits of reflections and stopping the name of love and keep me hanging on and where did our love go to the point where it sort of barely seems like a song it almost seems like a medley record of hits you didn't know the Supremes had had I mean the thing is if you're doing a song in this style and you

have your backing singers going baby baby your game's up isn't it yeah but I mean truth be told doing a totally retro bit of pop like this, it's kind of not a bad idea when it comes to Eurovision. And, you know, the eventual place that they get is kind of par for the course for your Eurovision entries. You know, Bucks Fizz had proved popular.

I mean, even the winner this year, Diggy Lou Diggy Lay by Harry's, a.k.a. The Dancing Deodorants, as they were called by a local critic. You know, that's very dated as well. Perhaps I'm over-inflating the excitement of Bucks Fizz. But I remember when Bucks Fizz were doing, you know, making your mind up on top of the pops,

it was like, I don't know, it was like you were waving off an aircraft carrier to the Falklands or something. There was that feel, this is going to win. I counted them all out and I counted them all back. There was that feeling. There were four of them. Yeah, and we were waving our contender off

with the sounds of triumph almost already in our ears. But with this, you don't get that feeling, really, from the audience. And as it emerges, of course, in their final performance on Eurovision, it doesn't happen for them. Although, it emerges, of course, in their final performance on Eurovision, it definitely doesn't happen for them. Although, you know, coming 7th, actually, comparative to now, wouldn't be that bad for a UK. It would be triumph, wouldn't it? It would, for a UK Eurovision entry.

But, yeah, there's not that sense of triumph that we felt waving off Bucks Fizz. No. We're not as confident that these lot are going to go to Luxembourg and do anything. For the benefit of you and the Pulp Craigs i sat through the the song for europe of 1984 and you know the minute this song comes on you just go oh well that's gonna win yeah because you've instantly got it you know everything else was a was a bit cat shit even sunita for god's sake wasn't very

good would you believe by the by i think it's out of order that he was allowed to have four different entries in song for europe i don't think that's right yeah it shouldn't be allowed the thing with that is everyone's songs entered blind you know you don't know who's written the song so yeah i mean it wasn't as if people knew who he was he even had a crack at performing one once did you see this um in 1980 in the uk song for europe um paul curtis was in a group called duke and the aces right uh the the lead singer of whom was bruno tonioli of strictly really what yeah yeah yeah yeah there's footage of it they're wearing those i mean it was 1980 so how you got away wearing these at that time when when punk was four years ago, I don't know. But those kind of flared jumpsuits,

where the top half looks like a very tight waistcoat and the bottom half is just massive Saxons, you know? Yeah, yeah. I know what Neil means, right? I know what Neil means about not being able to decide if this is a good song or not, because it's like a simulacrum of a good song. Yeah, yeah.

It hits all the points of a good song, all the points that a good song or not because it's like a simulacrum of a good song yeah yeah it hits all the points of a good song all the points that a good song's meant to hit what it's like you know those channel four stings where you've got odd shaped pieces of masonry hanging from a crane and just for a second they appear to assemble themselves into a giant four it's like that it's like all these elements of a song which just coalesce and for a second you think oh it's a good song while you hear it but then you think oh i don't know it's just a little bit like you say cynical is the word yeah but then i then i think well how is that different from a good song just on a cognitive level if something seems like a good song then isn't it a good song i mean i'm i'm like i'm like matt goss on that point i can't answer that yeah but you've got

to compare it to the other songs of that ilk that was floating around at the time. I mean, the trend for the retooled 60s girl group sound, it's been a thing for a couple of years by 1984, and it's reaped plenty of rewards. You know, Tracy Ullman's singing career, Mary Wilson, early Bananarama, Lord Mason and the Masonettes,

and even Phil Collins' cover of You Can't Hurry Love. But this feels like the end of the line here. I suppose, but I was still so much into Motown that I would have given this a pass. In fact, more than that, I would have, like Neil said, I would have been cheering them on. I would have been cheering them on when it came to Eurovision. As soon as the competition was over with,

that would be the last I even thought of them. But just for as long as it took, I would have thought, yeah, you know, it's a bit Motown-y. And also, as well as the Supremes, it does reference other soul things. So, for example, there's that bing, bing, bing, bing guitar bit that is actually directly lifted from his own Mickey Moonshine record. Right, right. That's a direct lift. So, yeah, it's a little nod for the heads there

for the casino faithful the way they look though really doesn't help that's the thing it's very proto Madonna isn't it it's Madonna without the millions of accessories I've got to be honest I've got to kind of on behalf of my 15 year old self

politely disagree because as a horny teenager at the time, I would definitely have been triggered by the devotions, if not by Belle, because of the white miniskirts and the big hairdos and all of that. Yeah, I think at the time, I would have possibly been storing something up

just like Brian McFadden was in that Mariah video. It's the colours of their outfits. They're so garish. It just reminds me of Hilda Baker on Crackerjack or something um going through some shit pop song dressed modern like you know that there's that aspect that their look doesn't help i suspect and i don't remember hearing it on the radio much if i'd heard it on the radio i probably wouldn't have had a problem with it but this appearance probably makes it me have problems with it are you being racist now because they're white uh no i wouldn't actually say it's explicitly that although you might be right but no it isn't it isn't just that it isn't just that i think if

i did hear this on the radio i might assume it was a it was an all black girl group by this time though by 1984 if you'd have heard this on the radio you would have gone okay they're probably white yeah probably a bit tracy allman-ish this has been co-opted by white is this kind of music by yeah 1984 hasn't it yeah no it has um it's not that they look awful or anything but i come back to that word cynical they're not going for 60s kind of looking in what they're wearing or anything or the way they're moving so i mean look it's eurovision for god's sake maybe i'm being a bit too uh up my own ass about this but yeah i think it's a good record but this appearance would have put me off it i think i think the fact that it has this special status has some bearing on the way that it's presented um because every eurovision entry every british

eurovision entry would be allowed to go on top of the pops beforehand yes whether it was a hit or not it would just get sort of you know parachuted in there and it's kind of hermetically sealed off from the rest of pop and in the way it's presented they're performing in this inside this kind of pyramid like pod aren't they it's yeah it looks like they're in a hydroponic chamber yeah yeah and obviously yeah we we now know that they didn't exactly set Eurovision alight. And there is this conspiracy theory about that, isn't there? About why they didn't form as well as they might, which is that England football fans, only a little while before this, had rioted in Luxembourg where the competition was being held

after England had beaten Luxembourg 4-0, and that still wasn't enough. And if you see the footage of it, it's so of its time. Apart from anything else, they've all got Union Jacks instead of Cross of St. George, which is what England used to do in those days. But yeah, supposedly the people of Luxembourg

were sufficiently pissed off about this that they poo-pooed Bell and Devotions and even booed them. I don't recall seeing any footage of Wright and in Luxembourg and seeing Bell and Devotions chucking a bit of garden furniture through a window. It's not fair. Any more than Gemini didn't bomb Iraq schools or anything like that. Do you think that was the reason?

There's a bit more to it than that. So I'll leave that there for now. Anything else to say about this? Well, as you can tell from the crap I've talked already, go down a Bell and Devotions rabbit hole, which, you know, even if it's the sort of rabbit hole that ends up like the Warren in Watership Down, like, bloodily churned up by a JCB

following the river of death downstream. But a rabbit hole, nevertheless. And, you know, I found out a few other things. Tell us. Well, first of all, Paul Curtis, which, you know, I've a few other things um tell us well first of all paul curtis um which you know spoken about a little bit already yeah i stalked him on social media shamelessly oh good lad he tells a story about when one of the bands he was in he doesn't say which were on a european tv show it might be music laden one of those top and pop top and pop

on the same yeah on the same show as rainbow and apparently richie blackmore came up to him and well i'll just read it out i'll read what he says i would like to share a weird but funny story my band was number one in europe first of all pause there for a second was he number one in europe okay um at that time and we were at the TV studios in Hamburg. Also there were Deep Purple and many other great artists. Okay so it's not Rainbow. I met Richie Blackmore one of my heroes outside our dressing room and he asked me if he could borrow my plectrum. I laughed he smiled so I gave him my plectrum. We were on last so we watched Deep Purple perform in the studio. Richie turned his guitar backwards and pretended to strum away on the wooden back of his guitar. When they finished, he came over to me and said,

Thanks, and smiling, handed me my plectrum. Apparently the TV director was not amused. How could I forget a moment like that? Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Ah, plectrums for goalposts. And he comes across okay he's very um he's very sincere and a bit christian and uh he's he's obsessed with dua lipa for some reason and he keeps posting about her but he's anti-trump so you know he's all right but yeah the other thing is about kit rolf herself the leader who is basically bell well kit rolf before being in bell devotions was

in a sort of canadian electro goth band called vega right who i looked into um in the same vein as berlin or gina x performance that kind of thing um if that means anything to you but um i also looked into what she's been up to since bell devotions sad to say, she is a mad anti-vaxxer. Oh, right. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've got basically Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Ian Brown, Kit Rolfe, all of it.

Bell and the Yens. Lest we forget as well, one other thing about Rolfe, of course, is that single that she did with Eddie the Eagle Edwards, Fly, Eddie, Fly. Oh, yes. Don't bother listening to it. No. So the following week, Love Games soared 18 places to number 21,

but Belle and the Devotions would have a torrid time of it in the Grand Duchy, when Dutch newspapers accused the group of outright lick and pickerage of Diana Ross and the Supremes, and even worse, accusing the filthy, cheating British of installing extra backing singers behind a curtain during dress rehearsals and that Sofield and James' microphones hadn't even been switched on. Oh, dear, oh, dear.

Even worse, on the morning of the competition, the Daily Mirror reported that neither of the Devotions sang on Love Games and Rolf had dubbed the backing vocals. That evening, as the group finished their song, boos could be heard from the back of the theatre municipal, which startled and upset Terry Wogan. Bastards. It went on to finish seventh,

well behind Diggy Lou Diggy Lay by the Swedish entry, Hairies. Although the instant assumption was that the booing was due to England twats in Union Jack's shorts, who had picked up Luxembourg and threw it through a pub window five months

earlier, an article in the Aberdeen Press and Journal reads as follows. British delegates at the Eurovision Song Contest in Luxembourg were still angry yesterday over Bell and the devotions being booed by the Dutch section of the audience after singing Britain's Hope Love Games. But they will not be making official complaints about the booing, which shocked the audience and was heard by more than 500 million people in 30 countries. The anti-British reaction by the Dutch was understood to have come after newspapers in Holland carried stories

claiming Love Games was similar to an old Supreme song. So there we go. The truth at last. Bringing shame and disgrace on a once great nation yes it's odd to expect i don't know i suppose people want people not to mind but i mean come on it's eurovision yeah i think i think yeah it is important to point out that not the entire crowd were booing because it's just typical isn't't it? The majority of Eurovision fans are decent, upstanding citizens, but there's always a tiny minority of Eurovision hooligans who spoil it for all the rest.

Exactly. Also, that thing about the microphones being switched off. Imagine that, a music programme where people's microphones aren't switched on. Who would watch that? And of course, it would only be a year later when Ken bates installed electric fences around the eurovision song contest the following week love games jumped

nine places to number 12 and the week after that it got to number 11 its highest position the follow-up all the way up failed to chart when it was released in June of this year, and the group were dissolved shortly after. Kit Rolfe went on to tour with Gary Newman as a backing singer, sang backing vocals on Fly Eddie Fly, the 1988 single recorded by Eddie the Eagle Edwards, and would reunite with Hazel Dean as the backing vocalist for Samantha Janus when she represented Britain in the 1991 Eurovision. And she now trains horses in Essex.

Oh, instant supply to all that ivermectin, eh, Simon? Exactly. Exactly. Well, to Eurovision people on track,, Cassandra Shaw was on earlier on. There's Bell and Devotions and Love Games. They're going to Luxembourg on Sunday. Wish them lots of luck for the Eurovision Song Contest. Bob Marley's video is a star-studded celebrity package. Bates, once again getting himself involved with the women folk of the studio,

reminds us that Sandy Shaw is a former Eurovision participant, which she wouldn't be happy about at all, and she'd sought to disassociate herself from it and the song she won with puppets on a string the minute it won in 1967 i had a dig into that fucking hell it's a it's a very interesting story in january of 1967 chap she'd been lined up as a singer of the next eurovision entry and she was lined up to sing one of five Song for Europe entries once a week on the Rolf Harris show on a Saturday evening. But then she was named as the other woman in a divorce case and described by the judge as a spoiled child

who felt she was entitled to do anything to gain her own ends. Okay. The publicity and the fact that Rolf Harris and his manager were actively campaigning behind the scenes to get Shaw replaced, saying that her presence was ruining his reputation as a family entertainer, steps back, strokes chin, forced the BBC to have her perform in an empty studio in case the studio audience dragged her off the podium and into a ducking stall to her disgust puppet on a string a song

she immediately disliked won and she found herself in vienna still being given the cold shoulder by the bbc and the host of the eurovision Song Contest for the BBC, Rolf Harris. Although she's since come to terms with the song, which is still the biggest selling Eurovision single of all time, she was still pissed off with it and the BBC's attitude to her and Eurovision by 1984. And as for Harris, well, in 2015, Shaw said, knowing what we all know now, but I knew then I found this hypocrisy as a 19 year old minor very hard to understand. Yeah, fucking too. Absolutely right. Yeah, I mean, it really gives you some insight into the place of young women in popular culture at that time.

I mean, talk about fucking frying pan into the fire when you connect that to the story that I relayed earlier that she told me about Jimmy Savile and Top of the Pops. So from Savile to having to work with Rolf Harris and the way that she was treated by the media and by the judiciary, from what you're saying there. Yeah, it really gives you a bit of a chilling insight into how young women were treated. Yeah, very much painted as the Scarlet Woman.

Swinging 1967, everyone there. Thank God all that's changed now, eh? I mean, we don't need sort of extra reasons to hate Harris, but fucking hell, I'm adding that one. I didn't know that at all. Yeah, so hopefully Belle and the devotions didn't knock on her dressing room door asking for advice, particularly as the lead singer was called Kit Roll. Bates then tells us that the next video is a star-studded celebrity package.

It's One Love, People Get Ready, by Bob Marley and the Wailers. love people get ready by bob marley and the whalers born in nine mile jamaica in 1945 bob marley is for fucking marley as the lead singer of the whalers he had been part of the biggest band on the island since the mid-60s and instrumental in popularizing reggae across the world in the early 70s but it it wasn't until 1975, when the original Wailers had split up and he created a new band called Bob Marley and the Wailers, that he had his first UK hit, when No Woman No Cry got to number 22 in October of that year. By his death in May of 1981, Bob Marley and the Wailers had notched up eight top 40 hits in the UK, and when Island Records rushed out No Woman No Cry as a tribute, it got to number eight in July of that year. in May of 1983, Island began work on their first Marley compilation LP, Legend, which is due out next month. And this, the 1977 remake of the original Wailers 1965 single, which was featured

on the LP Exodus, is the lead-off cut from it. It entered the charts last week at number 35, and this week it's jumped 13 places to number 22. So here's the video, which was shot by Don Letts, who documented the punk scene in 1976 and introduced Marley to it, which inspired him to record Punky Reggae Party. So chaps, the video, let's get into that first. Half footage from the promo film for Is This Love, which was shot at the Keskady Art Centre in Islington in 1978, features Bob Marley at a kid's party having a lovely time and apparently has a seven-year-old Naomi Campbell in it.

And then half modern-day footage from Let's in World's End. Yeah, it's basically like fucking Pigeon Street or something. Late 70s, you couldn't have a kid's party without some fucking pop stars turning up man sex pistols in others field bob marley and islington yeah it's like the walton hop for reggae yeah it pedals the same sort of revolting message of the song in a way it's kind of everyone's getting along isn't it all lovely there's even that horrible moment where arasta i might even be don let's himself you know shakes hands with a copper it is don let's obviously the copper's gonna go hello hello what's going on here then and was explaining that oh we're shooting a video yeah and it's like oh okay well you know you've got a camera there so i can't club you around the head it's the copper from not the nine o'clock

news going right you gay black bastard i'm going to oppress you but you can't because there are cameras there yeah i think that moment's there to kind of reassure the middle class living rooms of britain that reggae poses no threat in a sense it i mean it just reminds me of when you know when fucking william haig went to the notting hill carnival 1984 is the year the scarman report comes out there's racial tensions on the streets and in the terraces and and you know this video isn't having any of it everyone's getting along it's all it's all fine and it does of course give us the lovely sight of paul mccartney limbering up for what we all know is his greatest moment yes but yeah it's fucking pigeon street and there's a

mini molly isn't there uh jesse lawrence yeah jesse lawrence that young british jamaican boy he's he's the spit of ethan amperdue the uh um defensive central midfielder of wales and of on loan uh before he got his haircut he's not just some actor from a stage school he's been parachuted in no he actually lived up there on the 18th floor of one of those blocks in the world's end estate in west london where it's filmed and and it's filmed actually in his house in his flat yeah yeah his parents uh his parents bernardine and paul they've been involved in the punk scene so let's would have known them bernardine used to cook meals for johnny rotten did you know yeah used to get johnny rotten's tea on at gunter grove didn't you amazing and she went on to be a cookery

writer yeah she wrote how to feed your family for five pounds a day which would be an aspirational book nowadays right yeah jesse studied painting and photography in the chelsea school of art design later on himself and became a filmmaker like don let's i think it's um you know it's it's a logical choice to get let's in to do this because he was actually a friend of Marley's. He managed to sneak in after a gig in London and got talking to Marley and they sort of became friends. And I think it's a nice choice filming it on the world's end of state.

You know, it's West London. It's, a lot of it's on the King's Road, which connects with Don Letts' punk past, of course. So we see the kid walking around and yeah, it's intercut with that archival footage of Marley at a children's party and looking like a family man. Robert Family Man Marley.

A joke for the heads there. There's a scene where a young girl's playing with his hair, which, of course, all black people absolutely love it when white people do that. Oh, have you got funny hair? Can I touch it? Christ. And there's loads of punks and goths hanging around on the street. They're looking shifty and distrustful of the whole thing.

But it's really nice for me to see them because I'm thinking, God, two years later, I was probably stood next to you at the Kit Kat or sat next to you underneath Eros on Piccadilly Circus, but too shy to speak. Yeah, it's just quite a nice little preview of my future life. Yeah, because at the end, when they're all sort of marching about and getting the carnival spirit going,

you actually see, and this is a demonstration of how diverse pop culture was. Even in 1984, you see a prile of Weetabix, don't you? You see a pulp, a psychobillet and a skinhead all sitting together

getting on. Not staged in the slightest. I mean I quite like all that stuff. I'll tell you what I could

live without though I'll be honest is all the celebrities goofing around. We've got Suggs and Cole Smith

and Madness. Two thirds of Bananarama. Junior Giscom. Yeah. Brinsley Ford and Drummy Zeb of Aswad. Right.

Neville Staple and yes, of course, Paul McCartney. Uh-huh. All giving Bob Marley the thumbs up. Literally so

in Paul McCartney. Of course. Did you notice that Suggs has got a Malcolm X t-shirt on? Has he? Yes, he has. Yeah.

Yeah. Predating Spike Lee by about five years. Yeah. It's X t-shirt on. Has he? Yes, he has, yeah. Yeah. Predating Spike Lee by about five years. Yeah. It's the t-shirt, the promotional t-shirt for Malcolm X No Sellout by Keith LeBlanc. Ah. Of course, yes.

I recognise those names, and I spotted them. Yes. But there are others that I didn't recognise. I have no fucking idea about it. It's been doing my head in. Yeah. Particularly that one woman

who looks like she's in Cachavaya. She looks very Peruvian. I originally thought that was Alana Corre. Yeah, I did. But it's not. Even more bemused. There's one bloke who is the spit of Brian Murphy

in George and Mildred. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who's having a right fucking rank in skanking, isn't it? Who knew George Roper is ital ital but there's no way of finding out who the fuck these people are when i was doing my research i was convinced that george roper was someone who worked at ireland and i think those people are all island staff members i think i'm not sure if there's anybody out there who wants to educate me

don let's video if you're listening, mate. I've been where all is. Because seriously, that woman you were talking about who's got that Alana Curry look, that was killing me watching this. Who the fuck is she? I do know who she is, I'm sure. But I just kept coming back to a Tara Bentovan and it can't have been her. So, yeah, real confusion there.

There's also loads of vintage stock footage, isn't there? Oh, that thing, yeah. Because the lads watching the telly, and there's clips of VE Day, four West Ham players from the 60s celebrating a goal, Khrushchev kissing his missus, a majorette, Ronald Reagan as a cowboy, of course,

a space rocket, Haile Selassie, an old car failing to jump over some other cars and some 70s dance troupe

it was the law that you had to have those clips in pop videos at the time wasn't it I mean it turns out that most of those

exact same snippets were in Return of the Last Palmer 7 by Madness so it's a great chance to have a good look at

Old London both from 1978 and 1983 stroke 4 where the only difference is the quality of the film stock really isn't it it's actually quite nicely cut together in that if you didn't know marley was dead you might think he really was at the same kids party with all the other ones i don't know yeah because there's a scene where mini marley looks through a window yeah yeah exactly like a dickensian ur Yeah. It's just a shame about the soundtrack.

Well, this song, there's nothing about it that would make it look out of place between the pages of Come and Praise, really. You know, as long as you're not aware that it's actually about some other god. And you feel it's a very deliberate move by Island to repackage Bob Marley and knock off the rough edges. Yeah.

We can't talk about One Love without talking about the album it was sent out there to sell, which was, of course, legend, the best of Bob Marley and the Wailers. For me, it's a very problematic album, and I'll explain why. First of all, I just want to tell you a story that my wife told me about a place she used to work in South London, and there was a works party that was organised by a very well-meaning older lady, a white lady, which is important here. And this party was being held in a Caribbean restaurant. By the way, have you noticed how everyone says Caribbean now?

Yeah, fuck that, no. It used to be Caribbean when I was growing up. That's Lobo's fault. Maybe it is. There's an advert on TV now for Royal Caribbean. But it would have really fucked with uh billy ocean yeah um caribbean but anyway yeah um so this party going on organized by this well-meaning older white lady where my wife used to work um and it was in a caribbean restaurant and uh um because all the staff in the restaurant were of west indian heritage

this woman put on bob marley and the whalers legend on repeat in order to make them feel at home which made my wife cringe herself inside out but that tells you a lot because that is what legend exists for right if you go into someone's house and they've only got one reggae album or perhaps even only one album by a black artist it's going to be legend by bob Marley and the Wailers. They're not going to have Handsworth Revolution or Forces of Victory or Heart of the Congos or King Tubby's Meets Rockers Uptown.

And, you know, God knows those aren't particularly deep cuts. I mean, I'm barely more than a dilettante myself. But you know what I mean? I mean, Legend has become the token reggae album to show that you're down with reggae, that you're cool with it. And that album comes out in july when the weather's warm and you're having a barbecue all right and it was quite deliberately calibrated that way dave robinson the founder of stiff records earlier of course had been brought in um to ireland by chris blackwell

to be the president of island records uk and the first task that Blackwell gave him was to sell Marley to a mainstream audience particularly an American audience and Blackwell wanted to show Marley's militant side but Robinson disagrees he wanted to aim Marley at not just the college kids who might get turned on by radicalism but also at the parents of the college kids so we're basically talking about white people. Dave Robinson later said in an interview, a quote I got here, my vision of Bob from a marketing point of view was to sell him to the white world. So Robinson commissioned focus groups to survey white suburban listeners in the UK.

And what he found out was that most of them didn't own a Bob Marley album but they didn't know why they didn't own them because they they were kind of theoretically on board with it but so what Robinson did first of all was choose a track listing that isn't going to spook the white horses you know so you're not hearing songs like Small Axe on there, with vengeful lyrics like, and whosoever diggeth a pit, Lord shall fall in it. And if you are the big tree, we are the small axe sharpened to cut you down. And you're not hearing things like Down Press a Man,

when you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting. And when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling. You know, Legend pivots away from that fire and brimstone stuff it's new testimony yeah yeah it pivots towards sappy sentiments like don't worry about a thing because every little thing's gonna be all right have i already told the story of one of the lowest points of my life involving ian brown when i was this is um oh god it's got to be getting on for 20 years ago now i suppose it's sitting in the noughties. When I was working for The Independent on Sunday,

I used to get invited to all kinds of stuff, and I got invited to the NME Awards at Hammersmith Palais. And basically the rule was, while the live act was on, you weren't allowed to buy drinks. And whoever had won, I don't know who even voted on who the legend was going to be, you know, this sort of lifetime achievement award, essentially. But it was Ian Brown. Ian Brown gets to perform three songs.

And we weren't allowed to buy any drinks while he's on stage. Oh, man. I don't know if that's his rule or the venue's rule or what. But I didn't know this. I just thought, fuck it, Ian Brown's coming on. I go, I'm going to get a drink. Yeah, the natural thing to do. Yeah, of course. Did they shut the toilets as well?

Fucking hell, yeah, probably. But I get to the bar and the steel shutters are done. I think they were, in my mind, the shutters were sort of being pulled down as I arrived, you know, in this cinematic way. Indiana Jones, did you roll under them? Yeah, right, yeah, exactly. But I'm just stood there forlornly looking at them,

like gasping for a pint. And it's bad enough that Ian Brown's on stage. And then Brown starts honking Three Little Birds by Bob Marley. Oh, no. at them like gasping for a pint and it's bad enough that ian brown's on stage and then brown starts honking three little birds by bob marley oh can you imagine and i really really started to question my life choices in that moment um so yeah not not only did day robinson tilt the track listing towards stuff like three little birds and also, of course, the bad busker's favourite. Oh, God, yeah. Have no fear for atomic energy.

Yeah, tell that to the people of Pripyat and Fukushima Prefecture, Three Mile Island, you know. But, yeah, he also, what he did was soften Marley's image, posthumously, of course, but they chose a cover photo where Marley's looking reflective and not rebellious. Reasoning. Yeah, yeah. And apparently, and this is really interesting, when they tried to market the album in America, they never

used the word reggae once in the marketing. They just didn't use the word. And the songs, of course, they even sequenced. Well, I don't know, they just said he's some kind of legendary Jamaican performer. They didn't use the word reggae because Americans wouldn't have really understood. Or they might have been turned off or freaked out by it.

They wanted permission to listen to it without thinking, oh, we're listening to reggae. So there's that. And even the way the songs are sequenced, right, it eases people in gently. Side one starts with, is this love? Yeah. Side two starts with one love, people get ready.

Which, again, you starts with one love people get ready which which again that you know one love mostly devoid of fire and brimstone apart from that briefly let's get together to fight this holy armageddon but apart from that it's very much oh can't we all be nice by the way it's robinson who tapped up paul mccartney to be in the video for one of them i think the presence of mccartney in the video is very important because it is oh yeah's to say to white people, you know, come on in, white people. The water's warm. The water's warm. It's safe.

And the video also deliberately emphasises Marley as a family man, as I said, you know, smiling and surrounded by kids. And, you know, it worked, all this. Legend sold 44 million and amazingly for a reggae album, about a quarter of those are in the US. Yes. And the success of that album, I think of those are in the US. Yes. And the success of that album I think has become a real problem. Right there's a problem generally with

how white people enjoy Bob Marley. Now I'm not going to presume or explain or describe how black people feel about Bob Marley and the Wailers. That's really not for me to say. But I know how white people feel about Bobley in the whalers because by and large they cherry pick they just want to hear the stuff that basically gives off the vibe of can't we all just be nice to each other you know as if a bit of stoned skanking to jamming is going to erase 500 years of slavery and colonization you know and sadly it's easy for them to do that because Marley did write plenty of can't we all just be nice bollocks right the sort of material that's basically John Lennon's

imagine with a reggae beat and One Love is perhaps the most emblematic of that Bob Marley but there's another Bob Marley who was a radical and a revolutionary and a black nationalist who wanted all the peoples of the African diaspora to return to Africa and so on. White audiences, by and large, don't want to hear that. They don't want anything to make them feel uncomfortable or to remind them that the luxury they enjoy, the splendour of the grand civic buildings in their city centres, is directly due to the theft and rape and murder and enslavement that brought Bob Marley's ancestors to Jamaica in the first place. They just want to hear One Love. It was named Song of the Millennium by the BBC. Yeah.

For fuck's sake. And because of this airbrushing and simplifying of Marley's complex persona, he's become an icon in the worst sense. He's a high-contrast black-and-white image on a cheap nylon flag, like Che Guevara, superimposed onto a red, golden, green master flag with a marijuana leaf to be blue-tacked to the living room walls of students and stoners. And I know what I'm talking about.

I live in Brighton. I'm surrounded by these cunts, right? Now, obviously, I don't want anyone to misunderstand what I'm saying. Obviously, Bob Marley is fucking brilliant. But the best favour that white people can do to Bob Marley is fucking brilliant. Yes. But the best favour that white people can do to Bob Marley is to stop listening to him and let black people have him back. Well, yeah.

The thing is, in a weird way, I think Legend almost put me off reggae nearly. And songs like this, you know, are also what almost put me off. Legend, as Simon said, it's a very telling, very cynical and selective collection that that definitely tries to marginalize and edge out bob's most sort of interesting work and propound this view of him as just this positive-minded liberal sort of come one come all reggae ambassador and when you look at the track listing yeah what we got we got one track off catch a fire

because any other track might reveal you know that peter tosh and bunny whaler were better singers for a start off we've got nothing off natty dread we've got the likes of like simon said three little birds and redemption song and satisfy my soul and one love we don't get 400 years or stop that train or slave driver or anything that might suggest actually that marley was at his best in collaboration with other equally determined people rather than being this figurehead this international face of reggae that you know Chris Blackwell and himself turn himself into and I've been writing a piece this week actually about a Lee Scratch Perry album from the mid-80s and I was digging deep into some interviews from the late

70s and early 80s and I was reading a brilliant quote Max Romeo talked about how so many reggae artists in the late 70s, they found their work just sacrificed on the altar of Bob. You know what I mean? So people like the Congos and people like Max Romeo, they had sort of a hit album, which maybe, you know, you could say that Bob Marley raising reggae's profile might have had a part of that. But when it came to the second album, no,

Isla didn't really want it and didn't really put him out properly because it was all about Bob. And all you get on legend is that smooth side of bob the side that basically says to white audiences and american audiences you know hey you don't have to decode this music or interpret it just sink a beer have a joint feel the spiritual communion with these red stripe yeah yeah and then feel the spiritual jerk chicken some jerk chicken. Some jerk chicken, yes, of course, from Turtle Bay. And, you know, feel that spiritual connection with these essentially kind of totally tropical ideas, if you like. And crucially, legend's all you need.

Don't worry about anything else. Certainly don't worry about what's actually happening in Jamaican music right now. In the early 80s, you know, don't worry about Barrington Levy or Yellaman or Ecom House. This'll do you. Yeah.

The general perception was, because Ireland had lumped so heavily on Bob Marley and the Wailers, Bob Marley in particular, reggae was seen as a spent force the minute Marley died. Yeah, absolutely. And that's what happens when you create a messianic star like that. And that star goes.

What's not being pushed on Legend is the Marley of, you know, Catch a Fire in Arms like that. Political. And also, you know, he wasn't just pretty. He was the pretty boy front man of one of the tightest, greatest bands ever. You know, the Wailers. By now, by this time, the Wailers are clearly, you know, just background. Bob's the messianic star.

I think, to be honest with you, he's a participant in this. He started believing his own hype at the messianic star i think to be honest with you he's a participant in this he started believing his own hype at the one love concert getting manly and sega to shake hands and it's no accident that you know that kind of messianic mantle passes on to the likes of bono and galba yes throughout the 80s you know and that sentiment of one love you know this kind of why can't we all get along thing i can i only imagine what Peter Tosh thought of that. And this video, yeah. I bet he felt like bombing a church. Probably.

But like I say, you know, this video in 1984, which not only is the year the Skyman Report comes out, it's also the year when I think about what's going on in British reggae, for instance. You've got Saxon sound happening and smiley culture starting to make stuff. You know, entirely different rules for reggae in the uk and in jamaica one love just just isn't you know really it's not what's going on to be honest with you but as simon is so so brilliantly pointed out yeah it's a tokenistic kind of by this that's reggae sorted you don't need to bother with anything

else or what's happening contemporaneously you know this is it and the basic underlying message is yeah um it's the totally tropical taste yes what we're seeing with legend is is pop marley isn't it what island are doing here it's no repackaging job of people like nick drake an artist who's been forgotten about for two decades you know bob marley was a living breathing entity in the british charts in the late 70s he's even appeared in the top of the pop studio a time or two you know people know about him oh yeah look the hits have to be on there don't get me wrong I didn't know any of that stuff that Simon was saying about you know the decisions being made about this and the way to portray him and the way he's portrayed on the sleeve but you know there could have been a great posthumous collection of Marley,

which would have actually reflected not just kind of white experience of Marley and what white people wanted to hear about Marley, but black experience of Marley for an awful lot of West Indian Jamaican people in Britain. Yeah, Marley was something they grew up on, you know. And those early albums, so utterly neglected by legend, they're formative biblical documents i mean to completely cast the black experience of marley aside and just go for this kind of that these are the hits and also these songs you'll get along with there's nothing

that will make you stop and think for a moment here that's a very deliberate strategy i don't actually hold any enmity towards bob marley you know he had some messianic delusions towards the end i i would say but i think he made some some great great music you know and looking back into his history i mean even beyond the 70s when he's you know in the 60s some of the singles he's making and being part of are fucking astonishing yes he's ill-served hugely by this reductive viewpoint that legend casts upon him um that unfortunately still adheres to this day i i think you know he he's still a signifier of of this kind of ease um this lilt feel um but you know his music is intensely more problematic than that yeah and i i do think

that they could give him a double vinyl yeah you, like Brian Ferry and Roxy Music around the same time, I think it was. Yeah, and T-Rex, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Why not? It's a really interesting point Neil made there, actually, about the way that contemporary British reggae was being treated. And there were hit singles, but it was just usually hit singles. So, you know, somebody like Smiley Culture comes through

and, you know, he'll be allowed to have one hit, but there's no investment in him as an artist. Yeah, it's seen as a novelty hit, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the lighter side, Lovers Rock, stuff like, you know, Sophie George or Boris Gardner and stuff like that. You do get these one-off records in the UK charts, but there is no kind of investment,

and I mean that in the financial sense but also kind of intellectually or emotionally in the idea of reggae and reggae artists being artists yeah yeah they are just people who turn up with a hit every now and then and what's mad is it's not so bizarre that it wouldn't be marketable to a white audience when i think about the people involved in sax and sound you know ash banton and and smiley these people are stars man and the way that they talk they look amazing their music's amazing and the lyrics are amazing it really wouldn't have taken that much stretch to try and market this stuff but no get a single then leave it alone leave it alone we don't really understand it don't know what to do with it and of course all of this i guess essentially stems from the

institutional racism of the music business at the time the fact that these people in our positions the people who decide this shit are almost uniformly white blokes who don't really understand what they're you know getting into in a sense i mean we've had this before with elvis and particularly with john lennon i mean when elvis died he was immediately repackaged as a bit younger and less fat. Lenin just basically had his rough edges and awkward politics knocked off. And Ireland are doing very similar here. They're Leninising Bob Marley. Or, to put it in a more Simpsons way, they've de-rasticised him by 10%.

Yeah. And it's lucrative, don't get me wrong. It's probably a wise business decision. Oh, definitely. Because the thing is, these are all fucking amazing pop songs. They are, but you know what? I can't listen to Legend. I can't look at it.

I own it, you see. That signifier, that tokenistic tick-off, that's what it sums up to me. I can't put it on because I feel like I'm committing a hate crime. I've got it in my record collection, but only because I nicked it off my sister. As mentioned before, for some bizarre reason, she wrote,

Trey Lobb's blood clots on Bob Marley's forehead. Amazing. By spring of 1984, we're at the absolute midpoint between UB40 turning into Jar Waddy Wadder and Purcell running Three Little Birds in an advert. Yeah. See, this is it. The after effect.

I mean, I don't know if Blackwell and Robinson thought beyond the bottom line when it came to the after effects of Legend. Maybe they just wanted to make as much money as they possibly could. But I would like to think that there was at least some kind of vague good intention, particularly given that all that Blackwell

had done historically for reggae, of a Jamaican artist, even though he's a controversial figure, I know that. Chris Whitewurst. Right, yeah. According to Peter Tosh. Yeah, yeah.

And I, you know, Lee Scratch Perry's had some things to say about him. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, yeah. But considering that I do at least believe that Blackwell was sincerely, that he sincerely cared about reggae, maybe on some level he hoped that

legend would kind of have a Trojan horse effect or a batting ram effect, just kick the door down. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And pave the way for other reggae artists. But it just, for one reason or another, it didn't seem to happen, even with Other Island. You know, it's not as if Gregory Isaac suddenly became a massive breakthrough star on the back of this or something.

Do you know what I mean? They let the brand leader win. And that's always dangerous. And he was conveniently dead, yeah. But Bob Marley had a fucking huge back catalogue of stuff that people like me wouldn't have heard of. I get that, Al, but you were the sort of listener who would listen to Say Legend.

Say if Legend was the first thing, you know, first Bob Marley album you had, you would have dug back. You would have gone backwards. I think for the vast majority of the people who bought legend that was that with reggae um and if they wanted to conjure that vibe they put that album on and they wouldn't investigate the degrees in the shade as i'm sure you did you know and and this is the problem with the document like that the thing is with legend did it have to all be like that could they not have squeezed in something you know just some sort of taint of his past which was actually fascinating you know those first few

whalers albums they're fucking amazing and you know chris blackwell's got a lot to answer for don't get me wrong but actually the way he makes rock and reggae meet in some of those early records it's thrillingly exciting and it's not reflected on legend which is a real shame i think after legend comes out i i encounter people in my life just so i don't like reggae and i think what they mean is they don't like this kind of reggae and if they if they knew just exactly what a an amazing because you know jamaica is for its size i think it's probably the most astonishing place in pop history in terms of what's created you know and punches well absolutely yeah perhaps more than anywhere else and and it's ill served by legend being the main reggae album that people own i mean as simon mentioned that you know a lot

of people it'll be the only reggae album they're in the only black album they own actually i mean i say again as i said in a piece for the quietest about reggae in 1976 you know the rolling stone top 500 list contains one reggae album and it's legend by bob marley so you know that's supposedly a survey of the 500 greatest albums ever made you know i mean it's not bob's fault perhaps it's maybe not even legend itself's fault but but the way it has been used is ruinous. In an interview last year, Don Letts himself said, in the 21st century, Bob Marley has been somewhat castrated. What did he do in this video?

Do you think he's got some... He's got his hands on the shears. I like Don Letts, and obviously he's a very important figure as well, very influential. Yeah. He's done so many amazing things. So I am reluctant to blame him for the wider phenomenon of what happened with Marley.

But, yeah, this doesn't help, does it? No. Another celebrity appearance in the video is, of course, musical youth who are right at the front of the throng. I wonder what they'd be thinking, because they're kind of like fading from the scene at the moment, aren't they? Yeah. Maybe they were hoping that the release of this

might give them a shot in the arm and maybe get them back. Or maybe they were in the crowd hiding from that truant officer in the video for Pastor Dutchie, which of course was directed by Don Letts. Yeah, Don Letts, yeah. Obvious question, chaps.

If Bob Marley had lived, what would his 80s have been like? Ooh. It's interesting. Would he have embraced things like dancehall, you know, and more electronic sound? I suspect not. I mean, I think he'd end up collaborating with British reggae artists, but, you know, McCartney and all that lot would be lining up to work with him,

so he might have just entered kind of rock aristocracy or reggae aristocracy, as it were. Would Marley have done Live Aid? Oh, yeah. So he might have just entered kind of rock aristocracy or reggae aristocracy, as it were. Would Marley have done Live Aid? Oh, yeah. Abso-fucking-lutely he would have done Live Aid. Do you reckon? Why would he not have done Live Aid?

Maybe he would have seen through it and said, you can't just chuck money at Ethiopia. You've got to do more than that. A handshake between Michael Manley and Edward Seeger isn't going to solve Jamaica's civil war problems in 78. But he still creates that gesture and it's a meaningless gesture it's good though it's a really good picture it's a great picture but I recreated that when I did a documentary for BBC

East Midlands about the rivalry between Derby County and Nottingham Forest yeah I got Ramé who's the Derby County mascot who's a big ram and Forest's mascot at the time, who was Robin Hood. And I linked their hands together and put my own hand out in front, just like Bob Marley in that picture. Amazing. Look, it's a lovely image of the unifying power of music and all that.

But I taught a module last year called Events in Context, where I looked at important gigs. And I was teaching this module, and one of my students was like a very very mature student he was in his late 50s early 60s who was from jamaica and you know i did a lesson about that precise concert the one love concert he said look how this was portrayed is complete bullshit um for starters a lot of people in not only the musicians i mean we know about about Peter Tosh not exactly behaving himself that day and various people having problems with what was going on. But he said out in Kingston after this concert, it wasn't, oh, everything's all together.

It was a brief little holiday, if you like. But of course, straight away, the violence between streets just continues. Marley is able to then, and perhaps Ireland and Chris Blackwell, are able to use that incident as some sort of proof of his messianic status. And I really do think it has a dangerous effect in the 80s when it comes to people like Bono and Geldof thinking that they can change the world.

I mean, I'd argue there's a direct line from that concert to Live Aid. Maybe he would have done the same thing with Reagan and Shenanko. Or Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill. Yeah, or Margaret Thatcher and Colonel Mengistu or something.

I don't know. But I think he wouldn't have been able to resist that playing Live Aid. Oh, he would have fucking killed it though, wouldn't he? Yeah, he would have been great. Maybe, yeah, he'd have been the Freddie Mercury. I don't know. Speaking of Live Aid. Oh, he would have fucking killed it, though, wouldn't he? Yeah, he would have been great. Maybe, yeah, he'd have been the Freddie Mercury. I don't know. Speaking of Live Aid, one fact I found out recently,

and this is from listening to the Rock On Tours podcast, which is Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt. Yeah. It's about Bob Geldof, because Geldof was on there. Well, actually, it's from Bob Geldof. He was on there, and he's a man not devoid of ego, shall we say. He certainly has a not exactly underplayed view of his own role in rock history. But one story he told is that when the whole Live Aid thing was going on,

I guess it was in the period between Band Aid and Live Aid, is that he was in conversation with David Bowie and Mick Jagger about doing a charity-raising duet. And Bowie originally wanted to do One Love with Mick Jagger. Fucking hell. Yeah. David Bowie, Mick Jagger, One Love, people get ready. South America!

It was Geldof who persuaded them to do Dancing in the Street instead. But if Bowie and Jagger had done One Love, I mean, God knows what accent they'd have done. And, you know, maybe it would have changed history and the people wouldn't now think so harshly of Spies Like Us, Paul McCartney's Meat Free Mondays rap. You can do it right now, please. I mean, Bowie hasn't got form, but Jagger has,

because Cheerio Baby off Black and Blue. He's got some dreadful cod reggae accent going on there. So, yeah. Fuck. So, the following week, One Love soared 13 places to number nine, and two weeks later made it up to number 5, its highest position. By that time Legend had entered the LP chart at number 1 and stayed there for 12 weeks. The LP would sell well over 25 million copies worldwide, over 3.4 million copies in the UK and has been in the British top 100 LP chart for a combined total of

19 and a half years. The follow-up Waiting in Vain got to number 31 in July this year and Ireland rounded off 1984 with Could You Be Loved getting to number 71 in December. loved getting to number 71 in december when three little birds only got to number 76 in july of 1985 despite or because of it being known as the personal music island gave up on releasing molly singles but in 1992 while preparing the box set songs of freedom they dug out an unreleased track from the early 70s called Iron Lion Zion, remastered it and put it out as a single, which got to number five in October of that year. I don't care what you say about Legend.

Anything that gets waiting in vain back in the charts is all right with me. That's a fucking tune. And I will feel all right Let's get together and feel all right Bob Marley and One Love. OK, it's time for Janice Long's solo. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you

Roger Taylor, live on a Thursday. Top of the pops, Duran Duran and Replay. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Top of the Pops, Duran Duran and Reeflex. Bates and Janice, now reunited, are hanging over some surprisingly tatty railings for stupid streamers. Janice attempts to sing Happy Birthday to one of the members of the next band, but Bates gets in the way with a time check. She slaps his arm jovially,

but I reckon she meant it. Yes. And combined with the long black gloves, it made me think of Russell Harty being slapped by Grace Jones. Later, of course, to Be The Baddie in a Duran Duran video, and the guest Scary Lady on an Arcadia single, of course, to Be The Baddie in a Duran Duran video and the guest Scary Lady

on an Arcadia single, of course. That band, Duran Duran. That single, The Reflex. We last chanced upon Duran Duran in Chant Music No. 56 when they were trotting around the winner's circle in the 1983

Christmas special with their first No. 1 Is There Something I Should Know. Since then, they've been playing the second leg of the Sing Blue Silver Tour, playing seven dates in Japan, six in Canada, and 45 in America. That tour finished last week, and they've just put out this, their 11th single. It's the follow-up to New Moon on Monday, which only got to number nine for two weeks in February, and it's the third single from the LP, Seven and the Ragged Tiger. It was supposed to be the lead-off single back in October of 1983, but EMI put their foot down and Union of the Snake went out first. it's been extensively remixed by nile rogers

and was put out a fortnight ago and this week it smashed into the chart at number five this week's highest new entry and although there's a video with the band playing in toronto before they drown the audience with a computerized waterfall here here they are, standing among the top of the Pops audience like actual human beings for their first studio appearance on the Pops in 13 months. And you've got to say it's a very inauspicious start to their return, isn't it? You know, the return of the biggest band in the country right now, mark you, because we see Simon Le lebon handing a cup

of something to a runner yeah and fucking up the miming right at the beginning and also did you notice that the graphics department have got this single down as this week's number two it is a big moment them coming back yeah and it seems really odd i mean you know the juxtapositions at top of the pops throws up it seems really odd now from our vantage point to recall that this existed in the same pop time as the smiths because one seems so redolent of something perhaps already passing and the other so redolent of what's ahead but i remember there being massive anticipation for this as there was for every duran single because the singles were an event it was actually becoming easier to get excited about the singles with their attendant videos yes actually becoming easier to get excited about the

singles with their attendant videos yes than the albums anymore seven and the ragged tiger was a bit of a disappointment around our way uh we were a rio house i guess you know uh we we absolutely came that out maybe it was just because my big sister was moving on for the pop stuff a bit but seven and the ragged tiger was a bit of a disappointment and not just because of its sleeves strange visual proximity to culture clubs color by numbers it's like same sleeve designer isn't that and and right yeah assorted images i think there's a vague prognosis to geran as brummers was always bubbling under the surface and that's what seven and the ragged tiger scene seemed to be for me i hadn't been grabbed by union of the snake and new moon and monday because you want the duran single really to hit you with a kind of biff bang power the reflex got me more than those

but pretty soon i started wondering even as a 12 year old sort of do i like this what what am i listening to is this a song or just the procession of kind of gimmicks and weird sounds it was like this thing you entered with a big grin on your face and initially you were mad excited about it but once you're in there it started to seem ever so fragile and and the grin you had on your face started feeling a bit a bit forced and by the time i'd seen the aforementioned video about you know replete with that relax style cum tsunami going up the crab that turns into just a bucket of water i mean that was another thing because relax is in the charts and this is called reflex i know it's a daft little thing but you notice these things when you're kids two records starting with our ending in x from big bands the video seemed to cement this idea that joram were now an international concern and i was i was

i was becoming increasingly disbelieving because the thing is with the reflex it's gimmicks wore off pretty quickly and dated pretty quickly to the point yeah where the best bit of the record you know what i'm gonna say it's when those uh y-i-i-i-i's that george chorus yeah and that was why it wasn't the lead-off single because the label didn't like that i think that's crazy yeah it's clearly the lead-off single or should have been the lead-off single. It's the hookiest thing in the whole single, isn't it? Well, no, the hookiest thing is that sound of Metal Mickey dropping his guts after. Yes. Which apparently is Andy Taylor saying, yeah.

You've had a bad atomic gargle blast there, mate. Yeah. But for me, Duran, as a kid, they'd gone from making this kind of classic Japan-influenced new romantic dance pop to kind of mullet-headed for the rock market within about 12 months yeah so the first one's dead solid seven and the ragged tiger for me anyway was weak i must reinvestigate that album though maybe i've grown into it by now but um they had become already by now i think not really an albums band in a sense the the singles were always an event you know wild boys becomes an event view to a kill becomes an event. You know, Wild Boys becomes an event. View to a Kill becomes an event. Yeah.

But, you know, the live album arena just continued this kind of downward trend. The first half of their career, album band, second half singles band, their second number one is The Reflex. It's their biggest British hit. But you can't help feeling their careers are on a bit of a downturn. Yeah. I mean, at the time, I didn't... Around about this point, Duran duran with that band where you

thought oh fucking hell they're gonna be around forever yeah they're not gonna go away and i'm gonna be 50 and they're gonna be celebrating their 120th number one well to be fair right this performance is actually pretty good i know lebon oh yeah at the beginning i think one thing i can't believe i didn't notice at the time was just fucking how much was David Bowie continuing to exert an effect on people. It's pretty blatant how the Berlin period affected early 80s UK pop. But I really do think Let's Dance is having an effect here. There's this kind of international territory marking going on. And that focus on kind of danceability and rhythm means that the most memorable touches of the song are the percussive touches, the steel and the wood blocks and and the vocal stuff uh the flex flex flex flex but that's the trouble

for me the the the trouble with the reflex is it's a continuous stream of kind of three second hooks that doesn't quite coalesce into a song it's like non-sequitur pop yeah time doesn't really matter when you're in this song you can kind of turn it on at any point there are big Duran moments in this era is there something I should know I think it is one of those wild boys is another one and this is one of them but that you know crucially we're watching the young ones we're seeing Rick Mayall sitting on a turntable singing this pretending to be a Duran Duran record and people are starting to take the piss a lot allow me to return to this week's Melody Maker chaps and and the singles page in particular which was handled by colin irwin and this very single came up right he writes at a

time of day when most righteous souls are tucked up in bed with agatha christie certain public houses around these parts have shuddered to the sound of melody maker personnel debating the rather dubious merits of this band. And blatant attempts at assassination have been attempted on this writer, following his loudly voiced theory that by the end of this year, Duran Duran won't mean a light in Britain. Perhaps already alarmed by the relative failure of their last single, New Moon on Monday These Duran persons have turned to Nile Rodgers to remix this track Presumably to give them the character they so patently failed to engender themselves

Rodgers does fine, there's a new zest in the music And lots of those damn snazzy technical ploys producers are famous for But this ain't David Bowie, and Duran Duran need more than studio trickery to restore their flagging impotence to a decent song. No matter how much mass hysteria and tribal devotion they may inspire, there comes a time in every band's life when they've got to put up with the goods on record.

Duran Duran badly need it now, but this isn't it. And frankly, they seem incapable of achieving it. Hush. This idea that Duran Duran were going off the boil. Yeah, well, the chart stats don't lie. This was their equal biggest hit. I think it was their biggest selling single, wasn't it? Yeah, I think Newman and Monday was a disappointment

in that it only got to number nine and all of that. But you got that with a lot of bands, I think, that they were still allowed to be perceived as huge bands and not every single had to be top three. Because singles came thick and fast and albums were just rinsed to death and just milked for loads of singles and stuff like that. So, yeah, I didn't really perceive it

as much of a kind of wobble in their career. The thing with Duran is, right, I love Duran Duran more than I can really justify. I love the existence of them more than I love sitting down and listening to their music. If I'm sitting down and listening to music kind of broadly of that type and from that time, it's more likely to be the human league or soft sell or,

or even visage. But I just love them for, for being Duran Duran. And I know all the arguments against them. And I know people think they're Japan for dummies, but in a way that's exactly the point. And I really value that. I value the fact that they were pretty boy pinups

and they wrote strange cryptic lyrics and made weird arty videos. They were Wham and Japan at the same time. Jawam. Yeah, because Duran occupied the space in British pop culture that would later be occupied by Take That or Boyzone or Westlife or One Direction

who are all boring as fuck, right? You didn't get The Wanted or JLS doing songs called Union of the Snake or albums called Seven and the Ragged Tiger or making videos with weird lizard-headed people in pools of fire, you know, or putting out books of their own Polaroids, you know. I've interviewed Duran a few times, and they're really great, and they're really self-aware about their own ridiculousness. But also I think they're very aware of what's good about them.

They're aware of why they're great. Because Duran, for me, they are the fizz in the champagne of 80s pop. That's what they are. If you listen to Hungry Like the Wolf, those kind of super-fast arpeggios of Nick Rhodes' synthesizer literally sound like champagne bubbles to me and I guess I feel about them the same way that a lot of people feel about Andrew Ridgely you know that he's living the good life out there for the rest of us I once put it to Duran Duran

that being in Duran Duran looked like the most fun it's possible to have in a band but they reckon that being in the Rolling Stones looked like even better fun, so I suppose the grass is always greener. The thing with this performance on Top of the Pops, it's a rare case where I felt short-changed by seeing the band in the studio. Normally, if a video's on, you think, oh, God, well, they couldn't be bothered to turn up.

I don't want to see Duran in the studio. They're a band who exist in the imagination on video and yeah neil's talked about it and i i know the reflex video is mostly a performance one but there is that huge pixel waterfall that comes shot and neil talks about that um explodes in the screens over the heads of the audience and i want to see that instead we get one cheap domestic television behind the drum kit, like a fucking Sony Trinitron or something, right? Yeah.

And I guess it might be a smartass sort of reference by the production crew to the lyrics. Sometimes I think the reflex is just absolute bollocks lyrically. They say it's absolute bollocks lyrically. Yeah, but you see a bit like this and you think it's actually a really acutely perceptive description of showbiz cocaine addiction. Where it goes, I'm on a ride and I want to get off,

but they won't slow down the roundabout. I sold the Renoir and the TV set. Don't want to be around when this gets out. I think there's something to that, you know. That's a great couplet, that last line. And like you said, Simon, imagine take that right in a line like that, line and like you said simon imagine take that right in a line like that not in a million years no yeah no no no and uh i think given that i've

grudgingly accepted we're not seeing the video i think they look pretty fucking great in their individual ways oh yes so lebon he's got that kind of alpha male lead singer swagger all the time that's pretty much why they hired him when they first met him he was so cocky just the way he walked up to them in a pair of i think bright red trousers and they what the fuck's this guy doing they just thought you know he's got it and he's confidence incarnate totally he's got that alpha male lead singer swagger but his shirt right his shirt it's i think it's sort of red white black and grey or something. It's got so many competing diagonals on it. It looks like dazzle ships. It looks like he could have sailed his yacht, Drum,

through the Battle of Jutland and he'd have been fine, right? And then you've got John. John is the most rock star in capital letters, obviously, you know. And I love how he reinvented himself. Do you know the whole thing about Nigel with him? Go on.el's his real name right for a start and he sees nigel as being an entirely different person to john taylor because when he was nigel he was bullied at school he he was spotty and he wore glasses and he's a bit geeky and he just wasn't a sexy guy he was an ugly duckling um and then he thought no you know what fuck that and he basically a bit geeky and he just wasn't a sexy guy. He was an ugly duckling.

And then he thought, no, you know what, fuck that. And he basically completely gave himself a makeover, restyled himself and became John Taylor, maybe the most fancied man on earth at various points in the 80s. And yeah, he's there with his fucking shoulder pads. If he's not wearing shoulder pads, he wears his shoulders as if they're padded, just the way he moves. It's a great bit where because it's balloon time at top of the pops a blue balloon

sails towards him and he just sort of looks at it with kind of amused curiosity like he's he's never seen one before he's just fucking great exuding charisma and sex on stage roger the drummer who by the way when i interviewed them, was kind of the nicest, just surprisingly down to earth, as Limmy would say. He was the one my sister fancied the most, by the way. Was he? Well, he's a sort of classically good-looking, hunky male, and he's not kind of puffy in the way that would put some people off,

because that's the word that would be used in the playgrounds. Oh, you like those puffs, Duran Duran. And this performance, he has got a hell of a lot of blusher on his cheekbones. And I don't know if you noticed, Roger is never not pouting, even during the really tricky drum fills. And there's some, you know, pretty fancy percussion going on in this track. But he knows the exact angle to sort of tilt his head. He knows where the camera is.

He's not going to look at the camera, but he knows where the camera is. He does know how to mime playing the drums, though, in this bit, man. Yeah, I know. Calling mime drumming. Or at least a very unchar the camera is. He does know how to mime playing the drums, though, in this bit, man. Yeah, I know. Calling mime drumming. Or at least a very uncharitable camera angle, which would not have gone unnoticed by the playground detractors. But that happens a few times with the whole band. I find the guitarists don't quite know what to do sometimes

because the track is so synthetic and full of... It's so pieced together, isn't it? Yeah, it's pieced together. So possibly until they toured it, they probably hadn't played it as a whole thing very often. I even think Andy looks all right, because Andy was always the last one to get picked at games, if you like, of Durant in terms of fancy ability.

Do you know what I mean? But even he looks okay. He's got this big Japanese jacket with Japanese symbols all over it. He's got a full mullet, hasn't he? He's got the full Nino Ferretto slash Gaz top mullet going on. But obviously my favourite one, my man crush, is Nick Rhodes. Nick Rhodes in this, he looks beautiful. Yeah, beautiful.

Beautiful. Nick Rhodes has got beautiful brown. What he looks like... Blue tulip Simon Rhodes. Yes. rose has got beautiful brown what he looks like he looks like simon rhodes yes nick rhodes in this performance looks like life on mars bowie in his away kit right because life on mars bowie is pale blue and yeah nick rhodes has sort of flipped the colors around uh in that beautiful red sort of military looking suit jacket he's got on. And a nice neat tie underneath here. Just the slightest hint of a mullet in the hair.

Not like a proper Andy Taylor mullet. No. Just a sort of tasteful little Bowie mullet. He just got married in a pink Bolero jacket and matching top hat, hasn't he? What a fucking legend. Yeah, I love him, man. Yeah, of all the members of Duran, he is the most Duran of all of them. Yes. man uh yeah of all the members of Duran he is the most Duran of all of them yes he's I think and he

he is aware of his own absurdity in many many ways and he plays up to it and uh when I when I interviewed him I asked him about the fact that you know you you must be aware there's a little bit of a cult of Nick Rhodes around you and he kind of a little kind of smirk played around his lips he's aware of that he you know he's a little bit of a sort of self-created caricature. And I absolutely adore that about him. But the first time I met him, it wasn't for an interview. And I kind of embarrassed myself because I got overexcited. Yeah, it was at a Duran Duran gig at Birmingham City Stage in St. Andrews.

It was in the noughties when they were making one of their big comebacks. I think it was the time that all five of them had got back together. So it felt like a proper comeback, right? And, you know, big enough for them to be playing stadiums. So there was a party afterwards and it was in the clubhouse of Birmingham City FC. There were members of Duran Duran walking about and I was sort of playing it cool because I didn't want to sort of be the first person to go over and bother them.

But I thought, oh, maybe I'll talk to them at some point. So I just sort of kept my distance for a bit and had a few drinks. But then, because I'd had so many drinks, I needed to go to the toilet and it was down some... Oh, no, it's not going where you think it's going. Don't worry about that. It's not a Bruce Foxton letter, is it?

It's not a Bruce Foxton letter. Oh, dear God. But yeah, I had some liquids to offload. by that it's not a bruce foxton letter it's not a proof it's not a bruce foxton letter oh dear god but yeah um but i i had some liquids to offload have it uh no not in that way um you know having drunk so much uh and then when i came back and it was down the stairs to these toilets when i came back out of the stairs i'm sort of stumbling back up the stairs and nick rose has come the other way and i sort of glance up and he's pretty much right in front of me before I know it and um I didn't have time to compose myself or to and I just said without almost any gaps between the words hello Nick Rhodes like that hello Nick Rhodes not even hello Nick or oh hello hello Nick Rhodes like that like like Nick Rhodes is this kind of singular

entity hello Nick Rhodes and I just immediately I done it i said oh fuck fuck fuck but he just kind of laughed and walked past me and i i think i think he laughed in a kind of forgiving charitable way of like yeah it's like it's like yeah i get it i'm nick rhodes yeah yeah yeah i get that all the time people just blurting out hello nick rhodes at me yeah i fucking love nick rhodes he's he's the best one so um the, yeah, I mean the Nile Rodgers remix, imagine the cocaine going around when that was going on, by the way. What's the difference between

the remix and the original? Because I've never heard the original. When you hear the album one, you do feel it's a bit flat and it needs a bit of jazzing up. What I think he brought to it, I interviewed Trevor Horn once and I asked him about Owner of a lonely heart by yes that he was involved in obviously and he said that that was the best whiz bang record he ever made

and i understood exactly what he meant yeah it's all his production tricks thrown in at once and it's brilliant on that basis and i think that's pretty much what nile rogers did and yeah neil's right it's a load of trickery in search of a song but I don't mind that it's a great record rather than a great song yeah it's all about the record and I really think it works on that basis it is exciting you don't want to analyze it too much you don't want to think too much about what the lyrics are but that's always the case with Duran nearly always the case with Duran I even really like the B-side I don't know if you heard it. It was a live recording of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebels' Make Me Smile. And that, they brought the same feel to it, that kind of brio,

that kind of exuberance to Make Me Smile that they bring to their own material. It's got these kind of triumphant flourishes between every line, these kind of synth swooshes and Andy Taylor at thelor at the end of every line and it kind of almost changes the meaning of the song and yeah despite what they say i i do think being a member of joanne in their pomp at this exact moment must have been pretty fucking amazing oh yeah it is very cocaine you're right simon and and much like another record that we're going to come to later yeah am i going to seek this out and listen to it? No, but I am very glad it exists.

I'm glad it's there and I know it's out there because it does offer amusement and delight in equal measure. Yeah. I mean, they're back in the country after months on tour and they're putting themselves about on various TV appearances and whatnot. But in this very day's issue of the Daily Mirror, there's a two-page spread on Duran as part of their week-long series called

Britain Rocks America, with a graphic of a very 70s-looking guitarist thrashing away while the Stars and Stripes backdrop shatters under the onslaught of the Thompson twins and the Eurythmics. It reads, 20 years after the Beatles, Britain's rock stars have conquered America all over again. Duran Duran are one of the top bands taking the American road to riches. Their popularity here might be waning, but across the Atlantic, their future looks brighter than ever.

You know, it's an interesting enough piece. They've done two nights at Madison Square Garden, but they still have to go to a school in Coney Island as the prize in an inter-school competition. But they get to doss around with Andy Warhol and Jeremy Irons, and they do an advert for Suntory Whiskey for Japanese TV. Classic 80s. Classic 80s doing that, wasn't it? Yeah, whiskey for japanese tv so classic 80s classic 80s doing that wasn't it yeah you can't get no more 80s than that do an advert in japan that no one would

see over here it's basically you know the foundation of the plot line of uh lost in translation even though he's bill murray's an actor in that madness did it didn't they with that that oh god what was it yeah in the City, the song. But hanging around with Andy Warhol, obviously you know which member of Duran Duran loved that more than any of them and became his mate. It was Nick Rhodes, obviously. Their own little Warhol, their mini Warhol

in the band. You know, we're bragging on that British bands are bringing in export money and all this kind of stuff. The trade-off is the band isn't as good as it used to be because it has to be that way so thick americans could get it a bit unfair to the americans there i feel and also they were just spending a lot of time over there because what happens in 1983 of course is mtv is launched and that meant fuck all over here because nobody even

had cable in this country no yeah but in the states it meant that bands who were the stars of the new pop in this country in 82 83 were able to break america almost overnight just by having a great video in a way that previously they'd have had to tour for five years like you know we've talked about how slade tried and failed to do that culture club would have had to do that in the old older days just like 10 years, or even less than 10 years earlier. But suddenly you've got these bands who are very visual, very glamorous looking, the English haircut bands as grumpy American rockers

would call them. But Duran Duran's videos are fucking made for this, because their videos have got the same production values as Dune, or Dune as they say in America, or Blade Runner or something like that. So, yeah, the trade-off was that a lot of these bands were kind of, because they'd already had their big moment

in the UK in 82, 83, they were naturally kind of running out of steam a little bit. And at that exact moment, they're running out of steam, and then maybe they need to take a bit of time off. They are being forced to go over and pedal themselves in America. Yeah, obviously, a lot of that can be done by video but even so it's going to be knackering them out yeah yeah even ABC you know ABC were kind of a one or two year wonder in this country and one album wonder really in terms of

how we perceive them but they were doing really well in the States while we weren't looking Culture Club went over you know Culture Club with the album Waking Up With A House On Fire which I think was 84 I haven't got my facts in front of me but certainly it felt that that was they were kind of running on empty a little bit even though there's some stuff on the album that I love they were just fucking burning the candle at both ends

and going over to the States and flogging themselves over there and I guess that's what was going on with Duran and I think when you compare all the bands who did try and do it Duran. And I think when you sort of compare all the bands who did try and do it, Duran made a better fist of it than most. And you could say that having

the biggest selling UK single of their career is papering over the cracks a little bit. And I guess we do know in hindsight that it was only a year later that they basically break up or they certainly dissolve into two factions, Arcadia and The Power Station. And they're never quite the same again after that.

But still, at this point, it looks like they're getting away with it. Yeah, and I think they could perhaps have continued to go away from it if they hadn't detached into those two factions. Because, you know, Wild Boys, when that comes out, that's still a major event. I remember the excitement about that video coming out, and even of U2 Akil as well. They are right pair of number number twos aren't they but um yeah i i think i think that yeah it's the detachment into arcadia and power station

that ultimately does for him but i guess trying to break america even if you're doing it with videos it's going to do that you know that plus cocaine it's a recipe for a breakup isn't it yeah the involvement of niall rogers i think on this record is a really sweet bit of wish fulfillment for duran because famously their kind of template when they began was to combine Of Nile Rodgers, I think, on this record, it's a really sweet bit of wish fulfilment for Duran because famously their kind of template when they began was to combine Sex Pistols and Chic. I would say that they're a lot closer to Chic than they ever were to Sex Pistols.

But apparently John Taylor was sat in a pub somewhere in Brum and a track by the Pistols and a track by Chic came on on the jukebox one after the other. And you thought, well, you know, what if you jam those two together? And finally, you know, quite a long way into their career, they're getting to work with Nile Rodgers, who would also go on to produce Wild Boys. And of course, after the whole Arcadia power station business,

which, let's not forget, involved Tony Thompson from Chic, as well as Bernard Edwards. Essentially, they make some of their best material with Nile Rodgers, even though the world's not listening so much anymore stuff like notorious and skin trade one final question that needs to be addressed what the fuck is this to reflex bollocks that simon lebon's coming out yeah you're right never thought of that like his fucking bill oddie and eckie thump oh like reflex right outrageous to reflex like when uh when when limmy does blamange living on the ceiling Oh, like, reflex, right? Outrageous. Reflex. Like when Limmy does Blamange living on the ceiling,

it's like, I'm up to bloody tree. Yeah. Fuck it. Ridiculous. I would have thought Le Bon was taking the piss out of me. If I'd heard that when I was 10 or 11 or 12, because I had such a bad stutter, right? And I was in a school play once.

I had to play Prospero in shakespeare's the tempest and i got that lead role because i was the best at english but um i had a real problem saying lines particularly any lines that began with the word the it was ths in particular that i couldn't i couldn't manage so i had to almost rewrite Shakespeare, remix Shakespeare in my own head, in my own mouth, to sort of start the sentence with a word that wasn't the, which is quite tricky. So yeah, if I'd heard

Le Bon going to reflex or do reflex and then go flex, flex, flex, flex, I'd have thought, fuck you. So the following week, the Reflex swept aside the current number one from the summit of Mount Pop and stayed there for four weeks

before it gave way to Wake Me Up Before You Go Go by Wham. The band pretty much then went on hiatus, dabbling in the side projects Power Station and Arcadia, getting married to various models, arsing around on yachts and putting out the live LP Arena in November. The only studio track on that album, The Wild Boys, was put out as the follow-up single to this and it got to number two in November of this year, Unable to Dislodge I Feel For You by Shaka Khan from the top. into the actor Erkan Mustafa, Roland Browning in Grange Hill, off set and said, fuck off, fatso,

which was picked up by his mic and broadcast live. Fucking hell, Gripper Taylor. Yeah, I can't believe that happened because that would have electrified the playground, man. Yeah, never mind Gordon Brown and that bigoted woman. I mean, fucking hell.

Maybe Duran Duran got him to roll about on the floor and then made him eat a sandwich with a grasshopper in it or something. Bastards. A black king clover is only that big door and a little

thingy-flutter needs to be answered with a question and a question and a question The reflex does lead to answers, through the questions. And I reckon that that one could be number one next week. You remember that Julio Iglesias guy? He's teamed up with another guy by the name of Willie Nelson. They've come up with this one, and it's called To All The Girls I've Loved Before. To all the girls I've loved before We cut back to Janice

flanked by another woman in a hoopy vest dress and some bloke who still feels it's acceptable to dress up like your man in tight fit in 1984. With a smattering of actual real life kids at the back, one of whom is clearly arsing about and demanding our attention by jumping about and that. She asks us to recall the dark days of late 1981 and prepares us for To All The Girls I've Loved Before by Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias. Born in Abbott, Texas in 1933, Willie Nelson began his musical career at the age of 13, playing guitar in bars and dance halls so he could avoid picking cotton on his school holidays.

After joining the Air Force in 1950 and then being cashed out due to a bad back nine months later, he landed a job as a disc jockey with a view to financing his own recordings, but they were all rejected by local record labels. After a DJ stint at Washington State, a nightclub residency in Colorado, and another DJ gig in Waco, he moved to Houston and divided his time selling Bibles and encyclopedias by day and doing club gigs at night whilst working as a jobbing songwriter on the side. Convinced his future lay in the latter profession, he moved to Nashville in 1960. Once there, he started knocking about with the cast and crew of the Grand Ole Opry and was linked up with a

touring band called the Cherokee Cowboys. And a a year later he'd written Ain't It Funny How Time Slips Away for Billy Walker and Crazy for Patsy Cline. After signing to RCA as a solo artist in 1964 he became a regular fixture in the Billboard country chart in the latter half of the decade including getting to number 13 in March of 1968 with a cover of Bring Me Sunshine, the Morecambe and Wise theme. But it wouldn't be until 1982 that he made any kind of dent on the British chart when his cover of Elvis' Always On My Mind got to number 49 in July of that year. A year later, while Nelson was in London on tour, his third wife heard a singer on the radio she'd never heard of before and told him that it'd be nice if he did a

duet with him. That singer turned out to be Julio Iglesias, the son of a Franco-supporting gynaecologist and former Real Madrid B-team goalie, whose cover of Begin the Big Ean got to number one for a week in December of 1981. After getting his manager to get in touch with him, and still unaware that he was actually one of the biggest-selling artists in the world at the time, they met up in Los Angeles and got on like a house on fire. Albert Hammond was roped in to produce, and he suggested this song,

which was written by himself and Hal David, with Frank Sinatra in mind, which ended up on Hammond's 1975 LP, 99 Miles From L.A. Although it's Nelson who's done all the legwork, or his missus in any case, it turns out to be the lead-off single from Iglesias' new LP, 111 Bel Air Place, a concerted effort by CBS to put the Spanish lad over in America, as it also features collaborations with Diana Ross and the Beach Boys. And it goes without saying that it's been played to death in this country by Terry Wogan.

It came out in mid-March and took five weeks to get into the top 40, and this week the needle has barely moved, as it's only gone up one place from number 36 to number 35. But the BBC are clearly obliged to do something for the oldens this week. So here's a video of a concert performance. And chaps, the average age of the talent pool in this episode has been jacked up considerably. I'm really proud that it only got to number 17 here. Because it feels like a much bigger hit than it was.

Because yeah, it was on the radio all the fucking time. It was getting to that bit of the 80s where we were being forced to bow down to American stuff, whether we liked it or not. And it's good that there was still a bit of rebellion in us that we wouldn't do that. But, yeah, to all the girls I've loved before who've travelled in and out my door, does that make it the first Billboard Top 5 hit about pegging?

I don't know. So Willie Nelson, right, he's dressed like he's on american pickers or something he's got yeah he's in fucking pigtails and a headband you won't believe what barrel the peril looks like today it's bad he's got he's got these brown trainers that look like those kind of unbranded ones you might get in a market yes and he's got a T-shirt of his own name in the shape of Texas, which is, it's not cool. It's not cool.

No. On the back, it says Willie 83. A lot of people think that's the year. It's actually millimetres. But we see him side on, I think before he's joined by Julio. And because he's side on, he looks two-dimensional. He by julio uh and uh because he sides on he looks two-dimensional he looks exactly like his king of the hill caricature yes seen that the episode

of king of the hill have you seen that one i think i have it's oh man i'm a huge king of the hill fan and it's this one where it begins with hank um dreaming about hanging out with willie nelson and it's got um willie saying to hank and it is willie nelson voicing it he's going you know hank i always wanted to sell propane and propane accessories like you do but then this music thing came up and got in the way then they play golf together and then hank introduces his guitar betsy to willie nelson's guitar trigger the the irony is that um Nelson would be more likely to befriend Dale Gribble because of Willie Nelson's 9-11 truther tendencies. Because, yeah, he expressed his doubts, didn't he, regarding the attacks. And he couldn't believe that buildings could just collapse due to the planes.

He instead thought it was an implosion. He said this on Larry King and later to Alex Jones. Bill O'Reilly on Fox called Willie Nelson the pinhead because of that. And also a creep, not for that, but for glamorising drug use, because, of course, he probably did as much for the legalisation of marijuana as Bob Marley did. But let's remember that Bill O'Reilly's a cunt. Well, of course he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can't be stressed enough oh look, William Nelson's basically a good guy when you add it all up his positives and negatives I think he's in profit he's a good guy he's a supporter of LGBT and stuff like that

he released a track Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond Of Each Other for a country artist that's something to value yeah yeah but there's yeah he's alternative that's another thing that happens in that king of the hill episode actually right bobby the idiot child goes i like willie nelson he's got long hair he's alternative and hank goes now you take that path he goes i followed that man from country and western to country to adult contemporary, and that's as far as I'm going. I love that.

It's one of those weird American TV performances, isn't it? The other one, obviously, around this time was Kenny and Dolly, where it's filmed on an American TV show, and you've got that weird picture quality, for a start, of it being American TV. Is it Grand old opry maybe that it's from maybe i i i watched a full length clip on youtube and it starts with an audience shot of uh the women all look like farrah fawcett and the men have all got cowboy hats and yeah it does look very opry the strangest thing i mean it's strange enough already that you've got this guy willie nelson you know the way he looks he's got he's got an odd look but then julio iglesias yes and like to be fair iglesias is at least dressed up you know he was got his dinner jacket on hasn't he he was

born in a dinner jacket he'll probably die in a dinner jacket you know so there's that that weirdness and that's exacerbated by these two worlds colliding. Yes. But it's also weird how they're singing it at each other. Yes. Really tenderly, and dare I say it, sexily. He's singing in that usual Lydda Dye style, which makes it look like he's getting a nosh while he's singing. He is, yeah. He's really smouldering at Willie.

Yes. There's a strange moment where uh he leans forward and pats willie on the stomach and then a little bit later he slowly looks willie up and down his eyes end up on nelson's crotch you're looking awful good in those jeans yeah it's a strange combination really this very stoner renegade with this international sex symbol um but they're both of a sort of similar age in a sense that you can almost imagine them dressed Strange combination, really. This stoner renegade with this international sex symbol. But they're both of a sort of similar age in a sense. You can almost imagine them dressed as soldiers in World War II singing this song.

What are we watching here? Are we watching a pop song that deserves to be on top of the pops? Clearly not. We're watching a business decision. Yes. I mean, you know, that seems to be what's coming across. Iglesias is practically unknown in the States. He's played some gigs in LA,

mainly playing to the Hispanic community, obviously. He's selling out. They've gone down well in 83. We've had by now, of course, Islands in the Stream and We Got Tonight and things like that. By now, Nashville is becoming this place that isn't just a kind of music town. It's a tourist destination.

It's the center of a global fandom for this stuff that records like To All The Girls further mopped up. But to be honest with you, you know, usual thing. As soon as I saw this, I was like, I want to leave my notes completely blank because if I was being honest, I'd be out the fucking room. This is mumbane. This is not for me, you know?

This is not a song that should be sung as a duet, really. Because it just comes off as two old bastards bragging on about all the times they got their end away. And by the end of it, you expect to see them humping away like the fat blokes on French and Saunders, don't you? I've had some fun, Amy. It is really reflective of what's happening to country music at this time. If the 70s was a time when country sought crossover with rock, some fan of me it is really reflective of what's happening to country music at this time if the

70s was a time when country sought crossover with rock then 80s is where it seeks crossover with the pop so it makes sense in all kinds of business ways but yeah it drives me from the room yeah do you know that as well as targeting the spanish or hispanic market iglesias also tried to sort of paint himself as having jewish identity he's he said that he's jewish from the waist up which is uh i mean in order to establish the veracity of that i suppose we'd have to ask some of the girls he's yeah yeah um the things yeah the the lyrics the lyrics this song is this whole business of addressing your exes for a start it's something that your current missus is never going to remember.

No. So it's weird that it has this status as a kind of romantic ballad. And, you know, personally, I think these things are best left unsaid. But if I was going to talk to all my exes, probably it would just be one word, sorry. Yeah.

For all sorts of reasons. You know, but I would imagine, certainly, I don't know about Willie Nelson, but certainly in the case of Julio Inglesias, all the girls he's loved before, I mean, that's a lot of letter writing. That's a lot of doors he's going to knock on. You know, if he's doing the 12-step, it's 12-step, isn't it? He's making amends.

That's a record that's going to be too big for anyone's turntable. Exactly. Never mind the Bob Marley box set. You're going to have to play it on a fucking merry-go-round. Yeah. I mean, it's basically, it'll be a WhatsApp group now, a really big WhatsApp group, because basically Iglesias has seen a lot of Fanny,

right? More even than his dad, and that's saying something, because Julio Senior was a gynaecologist. Yes. There's one fact everyone knows about Julio Iglesias, which is that he was a goalkeeper. There's basically him, Pope John Paul II, and Albert Camus are the three famous former

goalkeepers i don't know what to do with that except we just have to i know you've acknowledged it already but i just have to get it in there the thing is um you think he'd be quite well traveled certainly with um living in in in the states and and his football activities and all of that just sort of touring everywhere he doesn't sing English very well, does he? He apparently went to one of those shonky English language schools in Cambridge for three months. You know, those ones where it's basically a house, but it says, like, the Cambridge School of English or something like that on the door.

Brighton's full of those, by the way. So, yeah, and surely you can pronounce English lyrics better than you are doing. And then I thought, well, maybe that's a commercial decision itself. Maybe he's just keeping his really strong Madrid, his Castilian accent to make it exotic and sexy. I don't know.

I don't get the lyrics to this song at all. And like Simon, I question why it was written. Because if you're writing a song to all your exes, you're letting them win the breakup. Yes. You know what I mean? You cannot let that happen. I don't get that at all.

You're letting them win. Yeah. You know, I know there are no winners in breakups. I mean, if the song was called To All The Girls I've Loved Before, fuck off off then you could understand it a bit more maybe it should have been julio iglesias and eight ace yeah you know to all the girls i've loved before i faked every orgasm i don't know something i don't know it's a bit like do you know that bit in i'm alan partridge where he's been having it off with his secretary but then he dumps her and

he actually basically addresses her on the radio show that night and you see her in the back of a taxi and he goes I thank her for that stolen afternoon but it had to end it's basically like that so you know obviously we've established that Willie Nelson's on the side of the angels and all that and there's lots of evidence for that but I'm not so sure about Iglesias, right? Because, right, for a start, he's a supporter of PP, which in Spain is the neo-Francoist Partido Popular, which, you know, you've got to have concerns about that. But there's this weird incident where he tried to do a Johnny Cash.

Do you know about this? He sang in a prison in Chile. Oh, really? Yeah, this is 1975, so we're talking about high Pinochet time. He sang in Valparaiso prison in Chile. It's a really strange decision, but

it went really badly wrong. Because you know when Johnny Cash played San Quentin or whatever, and the prisoners welcomed him as one of their own. And he did have some kind of prison heritage himself, even though it's been talked up a bit. He didn't really spend that long inside. But anyway, Johnny Cash was convincingly a man of the people and on the side of the prisoners.

Iglesias didn't really manage to convince the audience shall we say and he blew it before he even started singing he gets up on this little stage which basically look more than a couple of wooden pallets right in a corridor and uh before he's even sung anything he says apparently i'm a free man but actually i'm a prisoner of my commitments of singing here and there of hotels and planes. My fans do not leave me in peace. I understand you very well. I bring you a fraternal hug and hope you recover your freedom as soon as possible.

Oh, mate. Yes. I've got this and I've got a credit to it. Hang on, this is a men's prison he's singing at. Yes, it is. Oh, no, it's not Chilean Wentworth. That would have gone down a lot better. Yeah, maybe if it's Holloway. Yeah, exactly.

But credit where it's due, I'm quoting this next chunk from Dr. Katya Chornik from The Guardian in 2014. But here's a report of what happened. The singer's words did not go down well. The political prisoners, because obviously there are lots of political prisoners, were offended.

He was laughing at us, Fidel claims, whoever Fidel was, I can't remember, one of the political prisoners, were offended. He was laughing at us. Vidal claims, whoever Vidal was, I can't remember, one of the political prisoners. We began yelling in unison, you son of a bitch! And we called him worse things than that. There was a surprised expression on Iglesias' face. He looked this way and that, clearly disconcerted.

Rezoles, another prisoner, adds, Iglesias asked, you up there, why are you so angry? Someone explained to him that his rowdy detractors were political prisoners then the manager announced that iglesias was leaving and he left without singing a single song two years after this didn't even begin the beginning begin the begin no right and here's a coda to this right two. Two years after the Valparaiso episode, Iglesias released an album containing the song Soy un Truján, Soy un Señor, I am a knave, I am a sir.

The Pinochet regime kept secret detention and torture centre at 3037 Iran Street in Santiago. One of its nicknames was the discotheque because detainees have testified to hearing this Iglesias track and other select songs at the centre. Torturers would play them non-stop at ear-splitting volume to drown out the sound of their victims' screams. Oh, mate.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, a strange history that Iglesias has in political terms, to say the least. To say the least. I mean, it's no mitigation, but I do recall in 2015, he did an interview with a Barcelona newspaper where he said he would never, ever play a Donald Trump casino ever again. Fair play. All right.

And I've got the quote. It was after Donald Trump came out with a load of anti-immigrant comments, as usual, and when he was a presidential hopeful. And the Iglesias quote is, I've sung many times in his casinos, but I't do it again he seems to be an asshole um he thinks he can fix the world forgetting what immigrants have done for his country he is a clown and my apologies to clowns so maybe he's softened a little bit but that still doesn't make him not right winged you know i mean he's kind of sticking up for Hispanic population. But yeah, that's disturbing.

It is kind of strange that Iglesias is hooked up with Albert Hammond, who's vaguely a kind of hippie-ish counterculture figure, I guess. Because, yeah, as you mentioned, the album was, you know, Hammond was involved in that. The previous single was a cover of The Air That I Breathe with the Rich Boys, which was also written by Hammond. There were five Albert Hammond songs in total on 1100 Bel Air Place, which was his actual address, by the way.

It's a bit weird giving out your home address as an album title. So basically, the success of this song and of the album was paying, a couple of years later, for the expensive Swiss education of the guitarist from The Strokes. So the following week, to all the girls I've loved before, jumped 11 places to number 24, and a week later it got to number 17, its highest position. In America, it went all the way to number 5

and sparked a colonial variant of Julio Mania, with five of his LPs being in the Billboard LP chart at the same time. Nelson never bothered the UK chart again, but Iglesias would have one more top 40 hit in 1988 when he teamed up with Stevie Wonder and took My Love to number five in June of that year. and took My Love to number five in June of that year. And Nelson and Iglesias would reunite this year to do a cover of Al Martino's Spanish Eyes, but it failed to chart. Good.

We dedicate this song to all the guests we've loved. We belong This way Here's the charts, all right? Woo! Number 40% up single by Weird Al Yankovic, Eat It. At 39, a chart entry, Love Games by Belle and the Devotions. 38, Pearly Dew Drops Drops by the Cocteau Twins. 37, What Do I Do, Phil Fearon and Galaxy. At 36, a chart entry for Sandy Shaw, Hand in Glove. 35, To All the Girls I've Loved Before, Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson.

34 is Lucky Star by Madonna. This week's 33, Doctor Mabuse and Propaganda. 32, PYT from Michael Jackson. Jocelyn Brown's at 31 with Somebody Else's Guy. At 30, Silver, Echo and the Bunnymen. Relax at 29 for Frankie Goes to Hollywood. At 28, It's a Miracle by Culture Club. This week's 27, Raining Men by The Weather Girls.

And Shannon at 26 with Give Me Tonight. Right, it's 22 minutes to 8 on Top of the Pops. Let's go back to number 30 and over there to echo and the bunny men and silver baits with a black member of city farm in a marge sim Simpson style necklace absolutely draped around his neck while a lad in a white top with complicated fastenings pretends not to notice says no that's what I call slushy and leads us into the first third of the top 40

and chaps as is the style in 1984 chart pictures they're competent I don't know I think I was quite excited by some of them just because they represented my cultural values. So, for example,

at number 38, there's a shadowy picture of the Cocteau twins with Pearlie Dew drops. And I would have been really glad that that record was in there. And just seeing that kind of

music press photography in there, I guess, at 4 AD. Oh, if only Zoo would dance to that oh yeah with balloons and then you got um sandy shore with the smiths and i really like that photo because she's kind of the photo makes them look like server land flaked by avon vela and blake from blake seven um yeah you got um madonna with two people who are not Madonna which I think is interesting

they're presenting her in the early days as part of some kind of little group or collective there's another woman there as well isn't there another woman yeah good to see Jocelyn Brown in there in your face Gavin Martin and propaganda propaganda yeah

they've had to make do with using a record cover for Shannon and the Cocteau Twins but you know that Shannon track Give Me Tonight fucking brilliant and yeah Jocelyn Brown as well even Madonna Lucky Star there was some great kind of dance pop coming out of America at that time and making it into the UK charts

really was. Dancy Reagan yeah I mean I liked the bit when he looks at his watch uh bates yes he goes back to 30s he checks his big chunky watch and you can go it's 22 minutes to eight yeah yes i reckon that watch is a seiko yeah with calculator maybe so it's seiko with a kind of ford mondale of watches or something Is that it? He then points firmly at the stage and introduces Silver by Echo and the Bunnymen. Formed in Liverpool in 1978 by Ian McCulloch, who'd just been sacked from a shallow madness by lead singer Julian Cope

before they mutated into the Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen consisted of McCulloch, Will Sargent, Les Pattinson and a drum machine. They played their first gig in Erics in November of that year in support to Teardrop Explodes, playing just one song, but for 20 minutes. In 1979, they signed to Zoo Records and put out the single The Pictures on My Wall,

which got to number 24 on the independent singles chart. Naturally, a peel session was inevitable, and after they took on Pete De Freitas as a real-life human drummer, they signed a deal with Corova Records, an offshoot of WEA. They also played their first ever gig in London in support of Madness and Bad Manners at the Electric Ballroom. They lasted two songs. I'm surprised it went that long, man.

The Nutty Crazed Youngsters wouldn't have appreciated this, I feel. A year later, they made their first dent on the singles chart when Rescue got to number 62 in May of 1980, and they became a regular-ish fixture on the charts and even scored two top ten hits. This is the follow-up to The Killing Moon, which got to number nine in February of this year. It's the second cut from their fourth LP, Ocean ocean rain which comes out next week and already has a promotional campaign on the go where mccullough claims it's the greatest album ever made it's entered the chart last week at number 32 and this week it's nudged up two places to number 30 and here they are in the studio

surprisingly chaps and probably deliberately they've not given this to janice but then again she's probably just charged off and piled down the front she liked her echo and the bunny men she did she loved them a lot of people i love loved them yeah and i still don't get it i mean who knows why a band from a large large northwestern city who trade in gobby arrogance and play music massively in hot to the 60s might rub me up the wrong way. But I'll give it a go. For me, the big bands I was meant to like in this period, Bunnymen, New Order, U2, they had this thing of being proper and big. And I mean, a couple of songs I liked maybe. But crucially, visually, they didn't grab me at all.

And oddly enough, pop got me sonically, but for rock to work with me in a way, these big proper bands, they had to grab me visually. I never really fancied Mac, and I was intrigued by, say, the look of Frankie, the look of The Cure, so I went kind of that way. These bands seemed drab to me at the time but i'm willing to accept that you know that shallow teenager that i was has maybe grown up a bit so i came to this performance uh for chart music thinking maybe this is the one that will convince

me and win me round but but midway through a guitar solo that was so fucking listen to the flower people i was part expecting the bass player to mouth we love you you know yes yes i just thought you know i got those vibes yeah i just thought you know what fuck this i don't get the adulation because it hurt which hurts me because people i love like my wife who loved the bunny man chris roberts one of my favorite writers loves the bunny man you know even the cameramen here clearly love the bunny man the main one seems to be attempting some sort of upskirt maneuvers on that throughout this clip but no it leaves me cold and by the time he's what's he singing at the end um la la la chuck us in the chips or whatever

no sorry it's not i'm waiting to be convinced by the Bunnymen with their big, big sound and their 60s retrograde pop. But no, it leaves me cold. I'm sorry. Because this is the first time Echo and the Bunnymen have actually appeared on the top of the pops that we've covered. But they've already been given moderately minuscule shrift on chart music. So, you know, it was about time we covered them. Simon, come on. Yeah, you're probably expecting me to come back and trash everything that Neil said,

but I'm in agreement with quite a lot of it. Despite being, you know, somebody who makes part of my living from running an alternative 80s club night, spellbound, ticket still available. Yeah, I'm more of a Bunnymen sceptic than you might think. For a lot of the same reasons and a few more

one thing i do disagree with neil about is mac visually i think he is beautiful oh he's beautiful yeah yeah but not interesting to me he's very pretty there's no yeah and he's he's got great hair a hairdo that was emulated with varying degrees of success by everyone from me to Richie Edwards up in the valleys to loads of kids all around the UK. That boo falls. I think you have to be lucky enough to be born with very straight hair to carry it off because you've got naturally wavy hair, you're fucked.

You just look like a farmer if you get it right. And his lips, of course. He's got lips like Salvador Dali's sofa. And yeah, just a very pretty face. The face that launched a thousand gray raincoats you know i've probably bought a raincoat off the back of that but that's one of the problems with the bunny man to begin with is everything is too styled if you look at them on this top of the pop stage they all look too perfect you've got um that teardrop shaped 12 string guitar that will sergeant's got you've got that gretch looking bass that les pattinson plays they've all including peter freitas on the drums got perfect hair whether it's a bird's bowl cut

or a sort of 50s quiff they just look immaculate and very tasteful. And even though I realised earlier on in this episode I praised the Smiths for how cool they look, in so many ways, everything the Smiths are is everything the Bunnymen are not. And I can't not juxtapose those two bands and find the Bunnymen wanting. So for a start, their lyrics were always shit, right? They were always embarrassing.

Neil's mate, Bieber Koff, wrote of them in the NME that their lyrics were tired juxtapositions of mysterious buzzwords, nonsense and banality. And I would 100% agree with that. I mean, this song, for example, and I know we're coming off the back of, not long ago, the reflex, but even so,

half the lyrics of Silver are t-t-t-t-tips and la-la-la-la-la. Yes. Right? Which did sound like t-t-t-tits to a 16-year-old boy, which would have, you know, that would have killed some time in the playground. But this is exactly the thing. The sort of people, the sort of studenty types,

the sort of, as me and my mate Andrew, who was the other member of the Mary Brennell Boys murder, would have called them long-coated trendies, right, who followed the Bunnymen, right? They would have thought that the Bunnymen's lyrics were really deep and meaningful and profound, whereas what Duran wrote was superficial froth. I don't think there's any difference between them, to be honest.

I think it's exactly the same thing. In fact, maybe possibly a little bit more thought went into Duran's lyrics, I don't think there's any difference between them, to be honest. I think it's exactly the same thing. In fact, maybe possibly a little bit more thought went into Duran's lyrics. I don't know. To me, the Bunnymen's lyrics always smacked off, written on a kind of cocaine or speed come down in the studio when you've only got half an hour left before you've got to pay another grand to hire the room. Written on the back of an envelope.

Written on the back of an envelope, will this do? And this was basically confirmed by an interview I read the other day from this period bunny man interviewed by max bell in the face where he notes that mac scribbles out lyrics on old envelopes literally writes lyrics on the back of an envelope and you look at this song swung from a chandelier my planet sweet on a silver salver bailed out my worst fears because man has to be his own savior what the fuck? That's meaningless bollocks. Do you know what though, Pricey? Sorry to interrupt,

but what it reminds me of is that Noel Gallagher game of half-smart lyrics that an idiot would think are smart that are just fucking lazy and hack together phrases. Yeah, sorry to interrupt. Well, that's something that the Bunnymen have in common with Oasis and it's no coincidence that once Oasis were the biggest band in britain they gave the bunny men a bit of a leg up for their sort of comeback in the 90s because um they are both the sort of bands who would say oh we prefer people to come up with their own meanings to the lyrics you know when challenged on what what these songs mean they just oh no we don't like to

talk about that just now and Everybody's got their own meaning and they're all equally valid, man. And I would think, fuck off. No, you wrote this. It means something. What does it mean? Tell us what it means. Fucking tell us.

Right. And that's why they were, to me, everything that the Smiths weren't and they were nothing that the Smiths were. So there was actually around this time, in fact, very close to this time, April 1984, there was a front cover of Number One magazine where they brought

McCulloch and Morrissey together Yes they did, yes and I was really offended that that even existed I was fucking, just because of everything I've just said the way they billed it was Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen and Morrissey of the Smiths are the enigmas of rock as frontmen, spokesmen

and lyricists of the most popular are the enigmas of rock. As frontmen, spokesmen and lyricists of the most popular cult bands in Britain, the pair must have more than their vertical hair in common. And then it goes on to try and find common ground. But as a reader and a fan of the Smiths, I'm thinking, no, no, you have no fucking right to be there. One thing that comes across in that number one magazine piece is McCulloch's attitude to his own lyrics

because he describes his lyrics as phrases in common use put together in an evocative way i like cliches and bits of conversation so that's it he's just chucking stuff together just cliches together you know all that stuff i hate all that stuff on you know cellar tape and knives and cutting the mustard and all that kind of bollocks on their other songs. The Bunnymen, to me, were exactly the slags I was talking about when I played the song. They really were, right? They were just fucking charlatans. They were frauds to me.

They really were. And in the rest of the interview, they do find common ground. They go on to slag off disco and to slag off synthesizers and stuff like that. Right, right. And then, inevitably, the arrogance comes to the fore. And, you know, he then, Mac, this is, starts to try and make excuses for this stuff. You know, he says, when I say I'm a genius or I'm the son of God, it was only supposed to be funny.

I said those things as a way of taking control of boring interviews. But this is something that people always praised McCulloch for. They praised him for being gobby and mouthy and lippy oh yeah he was he was mac the mouth wasn't he around about this time yeah but but beyond having a notable mouth literally i don't really get it he never said anything of any worth you mentioned this thing of the greatest album ever made yeah supposedly he said that as a joke to rob dickens at warner but dickens went with it but that does pretty much sum up the Bunnymen. They were, in so many ways, all mouth and no trousers, you know.

They just didn't have anything to back it up. What they did have to back it up is a magnificent sound. The sound, I thought, was wonderful of their records. It's huge. It's got this sweeping grandeur to it. And a lot of the credit for that, of course, has to go on this record, on the Ocean Rain album, to Gil Norton, who later worked wonders with Pixies, of course.

And also to the perhaps less celebrated Henri Lusto, who was a French producer, also a violinist, so he knew his way around the string section. He'd been around since the 60s in France because they recorded this in Studio des Dames in Paris, which was the previous year, it's where The Cure had recorded The Love Cats. And Lusto had worked on records by Nana Muscuri

and Johnny Alliday and people like that. And, you know, he would have been involved in these sessions in sort of manhandling and coordinating the 35-piece orchestra, which is why Ocean Rain does sound so huge. But in terms of Bunnymen singles, I mean, as the title suggests, Silver is very much second place on the podium. Its appearance on Top of the Pops, I think, is a two-minute imposition of a set of cultural values.

It's a two-minute window of, we're all into this indie stuff, aren't we? If you're into indie, here's your thing. This is your two minutes of indie. Have two minutes of indie. It's our band. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But the song, I mean, don't get me wrong.

There's some Buddy Men stuff I love. You mentioned The Killing Moon came before that. What an incredible record that is, The Killing Moon. I'd also heap the same amount of praise on the cutter and i've got a lot of time for some of those other sort of imperial phase singles like the back of love and never stop particularly the discotheque non-stop version where it's called the um the 12 inch version of that it's called the 12-inch version of that. It's interesting that they put a picture of the Royal Albert Hall on a record sleeve and also they played a gig at the Royal Albert Hall because that in itself was a statement of intent and the symbolism of that, of course, is grandeur.

It wasn't normal at that point for little scouse indie bands to play the Royal Albert Hall. They wanted everyone to know how big they were and I get that. I mean, we've talked before about the Jesus and Mary chain being the first indie band to talk themselves up huge, which the Stone Rosers would go on to do and then Oasis. But this is where it begins, isn't it? With Echo and the Bunnymen.

Or with Ian McCulloch in any case. I guess it probably does. I mean, Morrissey certainly talked himself up. But I think, you know know he did have the chops and the smiths had the chops to back it up really i really believe that and i'd be lying if i said i didn't sit at home and play the bunny men of course i did i was shifting into that kind of music yeah i was shifting into indie music and if you're into that kind of stuff at that time apart from listening to the janice long show on the radio or ann Annie Nightingale on a Sunday, if you wanted a fix of that stuff, there weren't many LPs you could stick on. And

their greats hits album Songs to Learn and Sing, which I think came out in 86, was one of a handful of compilations by bands of that type, along with Once Upon a Time by Susan the Banshees and Standing on the Beach by The Cure. And I guess you had things like Hatful of Hollow by The Smiths. So, yeah, sometimes if I wanted a break from listening to bands who I actually loved, I'd stick on the Bunnymen because, you know, it sounds good and it's that kind of thing. And, yeah, like Neil, I know loads of people who I love and respect who love and respect the Bunnymen.

I'm even good mates with Dave Balfe from the Teardrop Explodes who was their manager and all that kind of stuff and was involved in them in a big way so um i'm never going to completely cut them off but i do think that the bunny men are not gods to follow they are false prophets i did not worship them i mean at my school very minuscule amount of people were into echo and the bunny man and they were always from the nice estate who were going on to do their A-levels it was made pretty clear early on that this was not for me

but yeah, Killing Moon's a fucking tune it is, but I could only ever, I mean I mentioned the Cocteau Twins and the chart run down I could only ever love them as sound because the Cocteau Twins, at least the Cocteau Twins lyrics didn't purport to be anything other than babble. Yeah. Gibberish.

Yeah. But Bunnymen tried to have it both ways. They wrote their lyrics on the back of an envelope, and they tried to, with that kind of Scott Walker croon that he would put on, they tried to imbue those bad lyrics with some kind of import that they just could not carry, I think. The thing that does my head in is that they were a big enough band in the 80s, and it confuses me that ian mcculloch isn't treated with the same love and respect nowadays as as people like nick cave who who

got nowhere near to the chart success that echo and the bunny men had well when whenever the bunny men come back and play live those gigs are massive sellouts and they played a godiva festival in coventry a couple of years ago which my wife dragged me to. And they went down a storm. And I have to say that they can still do it, without a doubt. Without a doubt. But for me, they are kind of always, they're the tape that gets put on in the fifth form centre a few years down the line,

whilst my tape is torn out, because it ain't proper music. I just wanted to play the cult electric, but they wanted the bunny man. Fuck them. So the following week, Silver stayed at number 30 and slid down the charts while Ocean Rain entered the LP chart at number four, its highest position. They righted the ship with their follow-up, Seven Seas, which got to number 16 in July and remained an intermittent chart presence

until 1988 when McCulloch left the band a year later sadly De Freitas was killed in a motorbike accident and the remainder of the band struggled on until they split up in 1993 Echo and the Bunnymen were that in McCulloch's that ain't right there's a lot of that in the late 80s early 90s like bands like the Stranglers and the Undertones. Of course, yes. Struggling on with the wrong, even Iron Maiden struggling on with the wrong lead singer.

Yeah, and one thing you have to say for Ian McCullough, maybe the reason he was such a big gob and putting himself about in the music press was an attempt to not be known as Echo. Like Mick Hucknall was known as Simpler to certain thick people. So, you know, hats off to him for that.

Max from The Bunnyman has just told me to tell you that he is the greatest thing that ever lived, so I won't. We shall go back to the charts. Number 25. At 25, The Gap Band with Someday. That's the way I like it. Dead or Alive at 24.

Banama Arma, Robert De Niro's Waiting at 23. One Love, People Get Ready, Bob Marley and the Wailers, this week at 22. And Thieves Like Us, New Order, a chart Waiting at 23. One Love, People Get Ready, Bob Marley and the Wailers, this week at 22. And Thieves Like Us, New Order, a chart entry at 21. Automatic, The Pointer Sisters at 20. The Caterpillar, The Cure at 19. Nick Kershaw, Dancing Girls, up to 18. SOS Band, Just Be Good to Me at 17.

At 16, Nelson Mandela, the Special A.K.A. Band. And The Bluebells, I'm Falling, up to 15. At 14, Would Bees, Pray Like Aretha Franklin, Squitty Bellitti. The Flying Pickets, When You're Young at 13. Ain't Nobody, Rufus and Chaka Khan at 12. And at number 11, it's Blamonge and Don't Tell Me. And let's go back to number 13, to the lads who are standing over there. It's the Flying Pickets, When You're Young.

APPLAUSE everywhere when you're young and in love Janice informs us that Ian McCulloch has been going about thinking his summit backstage before throwing us back into the charts. Again, not a lot to talk about, although I did notice that Janice is following BBC

guidelines and calling the special aka single Nelson Mandela, omitting the three. Yeah, and calls them the Special AKA band. Yes. Fucking Mac from the Bunnymen, though. Mac from the Bunnymen just told me to tell you he's the greatest thing that ever lived, so I won't.

I mean, good for her, but doesn't that just fucking back up everything we've been saying about him? Yeah, yeah. Jesus. But then again, she snaps off the title of the next single, presumably as a dig at the age of the band. It's When You're Young and In Love by The Flying Pickets.

We've covered The Flying Pickets twice on Chart Music after they unexpectedly landed the Christmas number one of 1983 and stayed at the top for five weeks with their cover of Only You. This is the follow-up and the lead-off single from their forthcoming debut studio LP Lost Boys which comes out at the end of July. It's the cover of the 1964 single which Van McCoy wrote for Ruby and the Romantics but better known for the version by the Marvelettes, which went to number 13 in July of 1967. It entered the charts at number 30 last week,

and this week it soared 24 places to number 13. And here they are in the studio. I mean, we know the rules by now, chaps. You know, when someone gets a surprise number one, the follow-up usually gets a free pass into the charts. But in this case, and by that chart showing, a very popular single. And, you know, it looks like they're going to be around for a bit this lot.

Yeah, it's done all right. I mean, personally, if we're talking British band doing unusual covers of Motown songs in the late 70s, early 80s, I'm more of a flying lizards man than a flying picket. But I broadly thought these guys were okay. I would have been wishing them well, much in the same way as I was wishing Bell and Devotions well, without actively liking them, if you know what I mean. Mainly because of their commitment to socialism, obviously.

I mean, some of them had actually been flying pickets in the minor strikes of 72 and 74. That's right. They actually picketed Drax Power Station in the 84, 85 minor strike. Right. Much to the dismay of Virgin Records. And I found a personal file with Red Stripe,

who's the bald one. Yes. You know, the Uncle Fester and eyeliner one. Yeah, yeah. I found this in an old smash hits hosted by brian mccloskey on his like punk never happened archive hello brian and red stripe talks about going up to snaith near ghoul on humberside to take part in a picket um that year in 84 he had connections up there because he went to whole uni and this this sent me on a bit of a red stripe rabbit hole not least because I've realised how much I now look like him yeah um

give or take you know a couple of spikes and three stone uh so yeah it turns out he's he's from Manchester he's a former PE teacher called Dave Gittins. But he spent loads of his time in Brisbane on the punk scene there. Really? Yeah. Yeah, and he took part in civil rights protests in Queensland, which I guess is a protest on behalf of Aboriginal people. Yes. And then when he got back to the UK,

he was actually involved in lesbians and gays support the minors, as depicted in the wonderful film Pride. Yes. And he actually put Welsh min miners up in his house and everyone should watch pride by the way i'm sure you agree just brilliant yeah of course the the other bands who actually went to picket lines around this time the redskins yes i mean imagine that right imagine them being at the same protest imagine you've got the flying pickets and the redskins huddled round a brazier and, like, hashing out an a cappella version of Keep On Keeping On.

You know, ba-da-da-da-ha! You know, Christine trying to persuade the Flying Pickets to do Kick Over the Statues or something like that on Wogan or Parkinson or Pebble Mill. Perhaps it was the Redskins who put the idea in the Flying Pickets as to give away Mark's tea towels on Saturday Superstore. Oh, yeah. Yeah, maybe.

But, yeah, do you know what? It's true what you were saying about following up a number one hit. Because with this song, When You're Young and in Love, you can see the thinking. They're hoping lightning will strike twice. Yeah. Because they're only you who have been

the Christmas number one. And it did okay, didn't it? You know, it got to number seven. But I think there was a sense of, yeah, we get it now, about their whole it? You know, it got to number seven. But I think there was a sense of, yeah, we get it now, about their whole stick, you know? Because they're not a pop group. They don't feel like a pop group.

They feel like a cabaret turn. Which is pretty much what they were. It is what they are, yeah. And because of that, there's always going to be a sense of, okay, you've had your fun, now move along. And they were like a busted flush, really, after this. Because that is where they came from, that cabaret world. The first that most people would have seen of them, I guess, was on Jasper Carrot's show, Carrot's Lib in 82.

Yes. And by 1983, Granada had given them their own TV special. And if you look at a lot of their early TV performances, they are very much playing it for laughs, right? There's a version of You've Lost That Loving Feeling on that Carrot's Lip episode, where one of them provides percussion by popping his finger out of his mouth.

Yeah. Like that. Patsy Kenseth, bird's eye, I thought. Yes, exactly. Patsy Kenseth, bird's eye, yeah. And the studio audience falls about laughing, you know. And they're doing funny dances And they do the do-ron-ron

And one of them keeps shrieking Like that And on the Granada special Which I actually watched by the way 97 views, 0 comments Oh man It becomes abundantly clear That they are first and foremost a comedy turn

They have their own songs And those songs are first and foremost a comedy turn they they have their own songs and those songs are about being in a band and or being too skint to buy nice clothes they they do a bit where they recreate the sound of a tropical thunderstorm using their mouths it's all very gimmicky they do um the jazz standard summertime but they make it to be about smoking spliffs and all that right right so you know it's just a bit barren nights i suppose now i love vocal harmony groups i love doo-wop and yeah but i i like it done sincerely and the flying pickets are at their best for me when they're being sincere on that granada special they do bill withers lean on me with the actor debbie bishop out of linda

laplance widows as a guest. And it's really moving, actually. But I think that whiff of novelty was always going to hinder the Flying Pickets' career as a recording act. That and the fact that they couldn't complete their tour in 84-85 because the police wouldn't let them enter Nottinghamshire. Royal Ink grassed them up. Scab! And every time they went to Yorkshireshire they got beaten up by coppers. The appeal about Only You was

a modern song being done in a traditional style. And bringing a bit of nuance and shade to it. But this time they've gone a bit more traditional and old school. And I don't like it all of a sudden. It's weird because I liked Only You.

Perhaps that was just residual just because I love that song in its original iteration. But, you know, yeah, this one, when this comes on, I mean, yes, I watched it for the purposes of chart music. Of course, I was thinking of being in the kitchen asking my mum if there's any Wotsits going because I'd have left the room. Bizarrely, it sort of reminds me of fucking Caravan of Love

two years down the line, which I hated in this period, you know? And it of reminds me of fucking caravan of love two years down the line which was hated in this period you know and it also reminds me actually speaking of their many television appearances of course their appearance on live at her majesty's on um sunday the 15th of april 1984 the show that tommy cooper died oh yes and they yeah and they were on the second half as i recall and i remember we could all tell something had gone down. Oh, I remember watching that. Yeah, yeah. So watching them sort of, you know, japing around with Dustin G and Les Dennis,

I've got that memory as well. And I also, of course, keep thinking of the Marvelettes version. Which is amazing. Which is amazing. Which sounds young and sounds fresh and sounds believing. I think that's the crucial thing. Put in the hands of old fellas, that puts this song in another place it's kind of like old guys reminiscing but almost as if they're watching some young lovers which is like oh god it's like

bloody julio and willie nelson isn't it again people banging on about how they used to get their end away this is it and they've had their one song. It's not good, man. Not good. I mean, I love Doo-Wop. I love the ink spots and stuff like that. But just in general, I hate most a cappella stuff because it always seems so pleased with itself. This kind of smuggery inherent in it of, you know, look, we don't hide behind instruments and we don't hide behind effects,

even though there's lots of effects on this record in terms of the vocal production. And there's this kind of look at our raw talent aspect to it that I really don't like. And this kind of, you know, isn't it clever what we're doing? In general at this time, I hated soft music, you know, slow, soft music. I started hating UB40 at this time

because their drums started to sound so fucking weak. This doesn't even have drums. And it's just way too soft for me. Then and now it's got no edges and no joy. It's just this softness like cotton wool. It really stinks of calamine lotion, this record. So yeah, not into it.

I would have left the room. This really is a textbook example of horses for courses. A load of lads standing about being all solemn and singing soulful. That works perfectly at Christmas time time but it's april man we've had easter we want to kick on with summer we want a bit more life and excitement yeah red stripes very animated in this performance compared to only you but the problem is as sarah

pointed out when we covered them last he really should be sat at the back and away from the rest of the group playing chess very bergman style but there they are standing in front of a set that looks like a giant guess who board which has been tipped on its side as we've said this is a very old person's episode at top of the pobs we want a bit of zest and we're not getting it yeah and the novelties run out you're right at christmas this is fine. But, yeah, at this point, it's just not what we want at all. Yeah, I mean, they are just stood there, ankle deep in dry ice. I mean, they might as well not be wearing shoes. I bet there's some brothel creeper action going on beneath that smoke, definitely.

Maybe the odd winkle picker. Or there's this phenomenal pair of silver dr martin's in the case of red stripe uh i saw him wearing them on the granada thing um there is actually a video for this they could have shown um very cheaply made i don't know if you've seen it it's got roughly the same level of production values as something like emu's all live pink windmill show um around that era um but in the video um the band are all in beds in a hospital ward um but through the power of acapella singing they they float out of their beds and they start flying across the night sky like like raymond briggs's snowman and then they all get chased around by a doctor and a nurse it's a bit carry on and then they all get chased around by a doctor and a nurse. It's a bit carry on, and then it all ends up in a big pillow fight.

And the weirdest thing of all, the big reveal at the end is that it's been taking place in a hospital for sick children, Great Ormond Street, as if, you know, we're made to somehow believe the flying pickets are children. Jesus. But, yeah, it's very true what you said about... I mean, right, for a start with the song. It's the first time I would have heard this song.

I wasn't aware of the whole history of it, you know, written by Van McCoy, Ruby and the Romantics, bigger hit for the Marvelettes in 67, despite my love of Motown, because it didn't crop up on any of the compilations I owned. Yeah, because it's the Marvelettes who were so fucking criminally underrated.

Yeah, they were screwed, really, weren't they? If you read up on them. I'll Keep On Holding On is a fucking tune, mate. Yeah. And My Baby Must Be A Magician. Fucking hell, that's a great one. Yes. And yeah, it's now,

when you're young and loved, it's now one of my absolute favourite Motown songs. The orchestration on the Marvelettes version is utterly magical. And like you say, Neil, the Marvelettes were young. I mean, they were singing in the present tense. They were 22 years old. And the song does take on a different meaning when it's a bunch of middle-aged men doing a cappella.

It becomes a song of nostalgia, of looking back to a time when they were young and in love and and without the music without those euphoric crescendos of the motown version it's a bit flat uh what i'm saying is it's the same old song but with a different meaning with the music gone yes well played the main vocalist this time is brian Hibbard, the one with the sideburns and the gold army jacket. Yeah. He's, again, this is the old kind of mortality maths thing. He's only 37 when this is done.

Oh, no. Just like Sandy Shaw. Sandy Shaw. Same age as Sandy Shaw, but fuck me, he looks a lot older. Yeah, and again, you know, same age as Mutia from The Sugar Babes, Nadine and Nicola from Girls Aloud, Bruno Mars, Carly Rae Jepsen. But yeah, God, he looks older. Tell you what, right, if he was a footballer, he'd be a candidate for that amazing Twitter account,

at 80s aging. Have you seen that? It's the one which... It tweets photos of footballers from the old days who looked 50 when they were 29. To be fair to Brian Hibbard, he'd been a steel worker in ebba vale and uh you know i've got family members to whom that applies that is a tough paper round as they say but i really don't mind them being here they they've introduced me to a wonderful song and while they haven't exactly done it justice they haven haven't murdered it either, I would say.

It's an interlude of sweetness, I would say, this performance. Yeah. What happens to them next, though? I mean, I'm sure you're going to come on to this, but just what I said about them being cabaret and showbiz does check out when you look at the afterlife of Flying Pickets because Hibbard went on to be an actor at Coronation Street, Pobble O'Cum, Twin Town, Emmerdale.

David Brett, who was the one who was the main vocalist on Only You, I think I'm right in saying, went on to be in a Harry Potter film. Red Stripe, he just went back to a normal life and a normal job as a bread delivery driver. Wow. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. One of my mates is a bread delivery driver.

No. But just imagine... Agent Courtney records. Imagine, right, opening the door door and seeing red stripe there handing you a pallor of crusty cobs with a big french stick on his shoulder like a sickle yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah so the following week when you young and in love jumped six places to number seven where it stayed for two weeks its highest position but they decided to go with one of their own songs so close for the follow-up and it only got to number 88 in july oh yeah they attempted to go back to basics for their next single a cover of who's that girl by the eurythm, but it only got to number 71 in December.

And when they put out a cover of Only the Lonely in April of 1985, it only got to number 79, and they warmed their hands upon the brazier of the charts for the last time. They did a cover of the Eurythmics, Who's That Girl? Yes. I'm going to seek that out. Yeah, that's what they should have done. It's almost like a reverse BEF, isn't it?

They should have done an entire album of 80s electronic hits in an acapella style. That would have been interesting. You would have listened to that at least once. Yeah, they couldn't resist the Mikey Arwood though, could they? You know, And Here's Me. Yeah. That's what B-sides are for, lads. Yeah, yeah they're still going but it's a bit of a triggers broom situation or

sugar blokes you know that they're still going no original members you'd be pretty pissed off if you bought a ticket and it's just six randoms yeah we ought to form the bank called sugar blokes man yeah and then one by one replace ourselves with people from the nme yes you can remember the marvel x version of that, you can watch Kenny Everett afterwards. Charts, ten. At number ten, it's orchestral manoeuvres in the dark locomotion. This week's number nine, People Are People, Depeche Mode. At eight, Glad It's All Over from Captain Sensible.

Number seven, When You Say You Love Somebody in the Heart by Kool and the Gang. Shaking Stevens at six, A Love Worth Waiting For. At number five, The Reflex, Duran Duran. At four, You Take Me Up, The Thompson Twins. This week's number three, I Want to Break Free by Queen. At number two, Phil Collins against All Odds. And this week's number one, the sixth week for Lionel Richie and Hello.

Listen up, everybody. Tony, Billy Boy has been in prison for 25 years. He's only been out for three days. The last time you were a free man, the Brooklyn Dodgers were still the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Eisenhower was your president. Laura, Amanda's intrigued with Billy Boy. Billy Boy, ask Amanda for a date. Hey, Amanda, I've just come out of prison.

Do you want to see him too? You never forget your drama training, dear. We cut back to Bates and Janice, unencumbered by the kids in front of the video screen. Bates tells us that if you remember the Marvelettes version of that, then Kenny Everett is on next. What the fuck is he going on about now? No idea. Like Kenny Everett's

X-rated or something. Yes, it's for the oldens. And that's bullshit because Kenny Everett on after Top of the Pops is perfect scheduling, isn't it? Yeah, it's totally for kids, isn't it? Even in 1984 when he calmed down a bit after his move to the BBC. Janice, no nonsense as always, yeah, it's totally for kids, isn't it? Even in 1984, when he calmed down a bit after his move to the BBC, Janice, no nonsense as always, says,

charts, ten, and whips us into the final quarter of the hip parade, culminating in this week's topmost of the popermost, Hello by Lionel Richie. Janice gets to the top ten countdown, and there are quite a few kind of new wave post-punk things in there. You've got OMD, Depeche Mode, Captain Sensible, Duran Duran, even the Thompson twins, who I hate. But then you get to the top three, and suddenly it's Queen, Collins, Richie,

and, yeah, you're feeling the cold hand of death on your shoulder, aren't you? Yeah. We covered Lionel Richie in Chart Music 56, when All Night Long was given an airing on the 1983 Christmas Day episode, death on your shoulder right yeah we covered lionel richie in chart music 56 when all night long was given an airing on the 1983 christmas day episode while running with the night was camped out as the christmas number 41 and would eventually get to number nine this january this is the follow-up and the third cut from the lp can't Down, which got to number one on the album chart last November and crept back up to the top earlier this month. It entered the charts at number 25 in the second

week of March, then soared 20 places to number five and bedded in at number one the week after, dispatching 99 red balloons by Naina. This is its sixth week at number one and has kept It's Raining Men by the Weather Girls, A Love Worth Waiting For by Comrade Shake Air, You Take Me Up by the Thompson Twins and Against All Odds by Phil Collins at Bay. And here for the six-week running is the full-length five-and-a-half-minute version of the video,

which was directed by Bob Girardi, who did Beat It for Michael Jackson and Love Is A Battlefield for Pat Benatar. Fucking hell, chaps, where do we start with this? Song or video? Well, it's difficult disentangling the two. In a sense, this is one of those songs that's both made and destroyed by the video yes

at the beginning we've seen an example of the movie trailer that thinks it's a pop video now we've got the flip side which is the music video that thinks it's a fucking film or thinks it's an episode of fame i mean it's difficult oh god it's difficult now to imagine the song in isolation from the video you know even before i started making notes for chart music and i realized hello by lionel richie was on this i was thinking about my favorite line from the song which is actually it's mr reynolds there's something going on in the sculpture class i think that's like my favorite line and that's what was stuck in my head let's try and get the song out

of the way. Because, you know, not because it's cat shit. Because, you know, if you're going to have to be made to listen to an 80s ballad, it might as well be this one. There's a lot worse knocking round, don't you think? In terms of the kind of song it is, which I was never into anyway, these kind of big ballads. No.

But it's an effective song, yeah. Yeah. It's quite a dark,ramatic song um about obsession yeah so obviously you know before watching this i thought right stop the video and remind yourself of the record and try and listen to it in isolation and of course you know it's a brooding obsessive melodramatic haunted dark and tragic record but of course i keep seeing the clay head. The record itself has no narrative. It's a kind of trapped moment of longing, very akin lyrically to the kind of small,

cramped voyeuristic space inhabited by the protagonist of something like just my imagination. But the video gives it, yeah, this mini episode of fame feel that even as a kid I could, yeah and laugh at as as sort of immensely immensely kitschy oh yeah i mean this was kitschy right from day one wasn't it without a doubt and if you're our age you don't even have to hear the fucking song we could all gather together and someone could just hold up a photo of the bust of lionel richard yeah everyone could just look at it for five minutes and go, oh yeah. Absolutely.

My problem with this song was the chords, right? I didn't understand them. It has anything up to 11 chords in it, depending on which transcription you believe. Good Lord. Including E suspended 4th, A minor 9th and F major 7th. The chorus features

a Neapolitan chord, B flat. And for those who don't know, a Neapolitan chord b flat and for those who don't know a neapolitan chord is a chord made from chocolate strawberry and that's that's too many chords yeah and the first dozen times you hear it you can't even pick out a melody because it's also muted it progresses in sad colored mocking shadows to quote poor weller yes what it's like imagine you're in a garden right and there's a washing line with a pale grey bed sheet hanging off it and you run towards that bed sheet and your face goes into it and as you push through it there's another washing line and your face hits another pale grey bed sheet and then another and another and you end up looking like René Magritte's The Lovers.

And that kind of progression, it owes more to the European classical tradition than to any American R&B tradition. Or at least it owes something to musical theatre, I think, to Sondheim or to Hamlisch. That bit where it's, Are you somewhere feeling lonely? Or is someone loving you?

That melodic passage. That tentative way it climbs up the scale. Two steps forward, one step back. Do you know what I mean? There was something else we covered like this. It might have been Love on the Rocks by Neil Diamond or something like that. Love on the Rocks! I don't know. But in its composition Hello is not a soul record

in any meaningful sense. That's probably why I didn't like it, I think. Yeah, yeah. There are some songs with that kind of chord structure that I've grown to love as I've matured, like One Day I'll Fly Away by Randy Crawford. But I've never got there with Hello, I've got to say. I mean, look, for Lionel, I think ever since 1978,

he'd been attempting to rewrite Three Times a Lady at some point. And, you know, this this in an era of kind of things like endless love is probably his most successful attempt the thing is with most of those soul ballads they rely on the singer singing to the listener directly and they tend to be performance vids but this video is so totally different it dramatizes and colonizes the song completely um so the video becomes everything and it's still yeah i mean let's face it this is a massive safeguarding issue turned into a video oh god you know it's still creepy as fuck from the moment he starts with the line i've been alone with you inside my mind

onwards um it's it's lovers yeah massively unprofessional safeguarding issue. It's stalking, ultimately. Yeah, where is American Ofsted? Exactly. So the video, then. The basic... I mean, I don't even know why I'm bothering to explain it to anyone, because anyone listening to chart music knows it's shot for shot.

First of all, I mean, making fun of this video is shooting fish in a barrel. It's stealing candy from a baby. It's kicking a stick away from a cripple. It's a piece of piss is what I'm saying. It's almost hack to do it. Do you know what I mean? But we've got to do it.

We've got to do it, haven't we? We have. Because it is objectively fucking hilarious. We didn't shy away from Renny and Renato. We're not going to shy away from this, man. Exactly. First of all, it's quite surprising after six fucking weeks at number one

that we're getting the extended cut with the acting bit of the stuff. Yeah, yeah, completely. This is what happens when you get rid of legs and co, isn't it? You've got to show the fucking video all the time. Oh, God, yeah. So, you know, I think possibly they didn't show the full-length video every week, but it just so happens that this week they did. So we find out that Lionel's a drama teacher at some sort of fame type school for the arts yeah the sort of american

school that as scabby british cunts could only gore patting jealous or it's very breakfast club isn't it we don't see him straddling a chair but we know he is a chair straddler because he's doing that on the cover of can't slow down. He is, yeah. Yeah, he is, of course. He gets two of the class to improvise a scene. Yeah, listen up, everybody. Tony, Billy Boy's been in prison for 25 years. He's only been out for three days. Last time you were free, man, the Brooklyn Dodgers were still the Brooklyn Dodgers

and Eisenhower was your president. Doesn't say the obvious first thing, which was, why were you in prison for 20 years then? Are you a murderer? And he's got that cool energy, yeah, that kind of cool trendy teacher energy. A nice big flowing coat with the sleeves rolled up as well, man.

Of course, yeah. Almost a success coat. The paid drama teacher's a decent whack in America, don't they? I'm missing a trick teaching in London, I tell you. So then, tells a student called Laura that she has to play billy boy's love interest of course fans of a clockwork orange oh yes expecting billy boy to basically look like

zodiac mind walk but how art thou thou globby buckle of cheap stinking chip oil come and get one in the yarbles if you have any yarbles you eunuch jelly thou yeah right that'd be why he's been in prison for 25 years then they they start improvising and while they're improvising lionel starts fucking singing yes like like he's not in the room and they can't hear yes and that's only the first of so many weird moments right let's clear this up right now so both of you are further education teachers aren't you yeah higher education teachers higher education teachers sorry sorry sir so by the law of averages one or two of your students must be right little cunts yeah yeah yeah they give you chelp all the time that they don't respect your authority they refuse to conform yeah have you not considered

starting a lecture and then just drifting off to the side and just behind them while they're doing the work or whatever and just starting to go i've been alone with you inside my mind i am thinking of it now yeah man i'd shut the cunts i may well use that i've got a right cunt in a seminar that's worth a thousand board rubbers to the edge surely so we start singing and then just before the first chorus we get the big reveal that she's blind and this is where shit gets controversial obviously because the actress is not blind she was 26 year old laura carrington who went on to play uh dr simone revell hardy on general hospital and made history as part of tv's

first black and white interracial couple, by the way. And of course, she was fully sighted. And you wouldn't do that now, I don't think. The American Foundation for the Blind have campaigned on this sort of thing. And obviously, cinema history is littered with examples

of sighted actors playing blind characters. So you've got everything from Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman to Stephen Lang in that horror film Don't Breathe. But it's been compared to Blackface. And you can see the point, because basically what it comes down to is if blind actors can't get blind roles

because they're all being done by sighted actors, what roles are they going to get? Yeah, no fair dues. And that choice would have been made by Bob Giraldi the director i wouldn't have given it a second thought well exactly but as you mentioned he previously directed michael jackson's beat it and he was handpicked for that job after directing an advert where an elderly blind couple throw a block right right so the warning signs were there he was obsessed with blinding i mean he he later directed a stevie wonder video what he should have done there right was get stevie to play a fully sighted

person just to fuck with everyone right but the thing is lord barrington hello isn't even the maddest casting choice that giraldi made he directed as you mentioned pat benatar's love is a battlefield where benatar plays a troubled teenager who fights with her parents and runs away from home. Benatar was 13 at the time. But, oh, God. Anyway, yeah, so, yeah, we see Laura wandering around the corridors, having lunch, doing some ballet,

and, importantly, doing some clay modelling. Importantly. But then, yeah, then Lionel phones phones her up and this is where lionel really oversteps the mark we see her reading braille in bed yeah yeah and he calls her he's wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders just like paul hogan was doing at the time you know that very aussie rules look that was current because oh yeah very much so as i mentioned uh i watched that granada special with the flying pickets um the youtube version of that uh preserves the ad break and in the ad break there is paul hogan in a cut-off shirt putting um putting a cocktail stick with some fruit on it on top of

a pint of fosters that's right yes and he calls her and he doesn't say anything at first like a heavy breather yeah like a heavy breather the big old fucking freak yeah then he starts singing at her right and either way silent or singing i'm calling the police at that point yeah yeah too bloody right she's well happy though isn't she no she's happy about that's that's the fatal moment you know her response at that point is key it's the emotional hinge of the video in a way and the fact that she smiles at this dirty old man ringing her um it's faithful rachel rich is nice man he's a teacher he's in a position of responsibility the thing is giraldi just just to point out he's he doesn't seem like the most sensitive person let's put

it that way i read something where lionel had actually said to him you know firstly that the story about a blind woman had no connection to the song and giraldi just replied you're not creating the story i am yes but the one i really liked was that giraldi added that um lionel didn't think that the bus looked like him yes until giraldi pointed out that the girl making it was supposed to be blind i mean that's a fair point that is a fair point well is it a fair point I don't well not the most sensitive director I don't think but the thing is like you say there are huge ethical dimensions to this I mean I'm a teacher I'm a teacher Neil's a teacher we all know that dating your students is a no-go area it's a line you do not cross even if it's legal it's unethical it's a conflict of interest There was a girl at my uni

who was shagging one of the French lecturers at UCL. And we all knew that's why she got A grades. It was a massive scandal. So basically, Mr. Reynolds is getting the sack if he pursues this any further, isn't he? But yeah, then a guy comes into Lionel's classroom and says the immortal line, Mr. Reynolds, there's something going on in sculpture class.

I think you should check it out. And that's when... He's thinking there's going to be a clay fire going on or something. You would, man. But that's when we find out that Laura Carrington is part of an elite triumvirate. There's Emmanuel Santos, there's Cecilia Jimenez, and there's Laura Carrington, right? Yeah. Emmanuel Santos is the sculptor who created the bust of Cristiano Ronaldo

for Madeira Airport when it was renamed Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport, which was so bad that it became a worldwide meme and was taken away and put in storage. And Santos responded to criticism by saying, even Jesus did not please everyone. And Cecilia Jimenez is the amateur painter who restored the eke homo fresco of Jesus in a church in Zaragoza in Spain

and made him look like a monkey. Yes. And then you've got Laura Carrington, who somehow, somehow made Lionel Richie look even more chinny and prognathic than he already is. You know? Yeah. And I've often wondered...

It's very good, though. I think Lionel wanted him to look a bit more like Jimi Hendrix. Well, he probably wanted it to be a flattering version, yeah. Because apparently he was a bit obsessed. Apparently he'd go up to people and go, don't you think I look like Jimi Hendrix a bit? Oh, my God. Look, I think it looks faintly Neanderthal, doesn't it?

I'm not saying it's racist. Like, my passport photo is so terrorist-y, it's racist, basically. This isn't quite that bad. But, yeah. What a moment, though. What a moment. Yeah. I've often wondered, because, you know because it is a notoriously bad video,

I've wondered how it affected everybody involved in it. And I've often wondered whether Lionel is haunted or scarred by Hello. Apparently the phrase, Hello, is it me you're looking for, follows him everywhere. Even Prince Charles said it to him, apparently. Oh, God. But he's got a sense of humour about it. I mean, maybe he's protesting too much

You know what I mean Like people do sometimes They kind of own it But he's sung it on helium on German TV What? You know, to subtract credibility from the love song Like Steve Coogan's IRA spokesperson On the day

Yes Hello, it's a legitimate love song And he's done it on Tonight with Jimmy Fallon On the day. Yes. Hello, it's a legitimate love song. And he's done it on Tonight with Jimmy Fallon with his actual head on a wooden plinth. Oh. While Fallon sings it to him. Wow. Does that head still exist?

That's the question. I'm coming to that. Oh. And Lionel's even reenacted it on a Doritos advert with Chance the Rapper. Oh. Where he remoulds the clay head as a sort of hybrid of himself and Chance with a baseball hat.

So you could even say Lionel's gone beyond having a sense of humour about it. It's now fucking milky, to be honest. But yeah, I wondered if it affected his co-star or the director in their later life. After the video came out, apparently Laura Carrington went to quite a few Lionel Richie concerts in various cities, and people would recognise her and treat her as if she was really blind. Oh, no! Which I kind of... I suppose is understandable, really.

And, yeah, as for Giraldi, despite making what was voted by viewers of The Box as the worst video ever made, Bob Giraldi did have a... you know, he's had a fairly successful career. He's directed a few films. One of the National Lampoon franchise was by him and a highly acclaimed independent film called

Dinner Rush. But he runs loads of restaurants now in New York and I did wonder if you get your dinner free, if you can sculpt your mashed potato into a convincing facsimile of Lionel Richie's head, you know, like in Close Encounters, but Lionel instead of a mountain. But yeah, apparently, straight after the video wrapped,

Lionel destroyed the head because he hated it. No! Yeah, yeah. And of course, it would be priceless now. It would just be the ultimate kind of piece of rock memorabilia oh god yeah the only missed trick here i guess is wouldn't it have been wonderful if um in a sort of ray harry alston style moment the head had started singing that'd be fucking awesome like the video for reek petite Yeah, exactly. Oh, God.

But it's the first time that someone's given Lionel Richie head on a video on top of the post. Well done. Who's buying this? Well... And who's buying it by week six of it being at number fucking one? Yeah, that is crazy, isn't it? I've never understood that. Because an awful lot of people would have had the album to be honest with you it's an album that's got only

got eight songs on it and this is the last song on it which obviously nothing could come after this the 10 million sold i don't know who's buying this still in week six um it's the fucking dads again isn't it they're bought against all odds met and feel a bit sorry for them sen and now they're seeing the flip side of dad divorce isn't it all that all Against All Odds, met and feel a bit sorry for them, Sen. And now they're seeing the flip side of dad divorce, isn't it? All that, all that young crumpet just gagging for it. Yeah,

but that's not what the song is about. That's the thing. Well, that's what they get from the video. It's so intimately connected with its video. And I can't even think of another example where the video and the song are so connected in this fashion that you cannot imagine one without the other. The thing is with this, I'm glad it exists. I'm still glad it exists.

I'm glad it's there. I don't need to watch it again. Like you said, Al, it's instant recall with this stuff. It can play in your head whenever you want it to be there. So the following week, Hello was stood down from the number one spot to make way for the reflex. I think that's why Top of the Pops decided to show the full version. The encore presentation, if you will.

Even though it was at number one for six weeks, it would only finish the year as the seventh biggest selling single of 1984. One below Last Christmas by Wham! and one above Agadou by Black Lace. The follow-up, Stuck on You, got to number 12 in July and Can't Slow Down went on to sell 20 million copies worldwide and win the Grammy for Best Album. And Lionel was reunited with a copy of his massive scary head last decade

in an advert for American idol apparently simon you can buy your own copy but the website of the company that made it wants you to contact them for a price so you know it's not going to be affordable and that's a shame because i think one of those would look absolutely skilled by your turntable when you're doing your minicab fmc every home should have one yeah it'd be great wouldn't it i'll tell you what i'll tell you what pricey i'll get my little sofa on it because if she can do eddie yes she can do lionel surely yeah just do eddie with a wet look yeah amazing even better simon if they did masks of the lionel richie bus that would be fucking great wouldn't that's your halloween costume sorted out in it. You just put the song on and then you just nip out and tap people on the shoulder.

Hello? Is that me you're looking for? I love you. Mr. Reynolds? Excuse me, but there's something going on in the sculpture class. I think you ought to check it out.

I've wanted you to see it so many times but I finally think it's done tell me what you think of it oh it's wonderful this is how I see you Hello Is it me you're looking for? Bob Durrell, this is Richard, on with Hello.

And next week, Mike Reid. Hello to Motherwell Football Club. We shall leave you with a point to assist us at automatic. Bye-bye. Good night. Good night. We rejoin Bates and Janice amongst the throng of youths. Bates gives the video director of Hello a credit,

but calls the artist Lionel Richard. Imagine Cliff Richard with a wet look and a moustache. Or even Keith Richards with a wet look and a moustache. Before warning us that Mike Reid is presenting next week. Janice says hello to Motherwell Football Club. Not sure why, but they're currently bottom of the Scottish Premier League. So they could do with a bit of a boost. I can help you there.

I looked into this. I wondered which member of the Motherwell squad of 1984 would have written to Janice asking for a shout out. Now, I don't think it was the teenage Tom Boyd or the teenage Gary McAllister, who was in the squad. I don't think it was the exotic Icelandic import Johannes Edvaldsen. I reckon it was the goalkeeper Hugh Sproat. Do you remember this guy?

Ooh, that rings a very faint bell. If you collected Panini stickers in the late 70s, early 80s, you would have come across Hugh Sprokes. He was quite eye-catching. He became a bit of a cult hero, even at my school in Wales, because of his look. Really? By this time, in 84, he's in his last season at Motherwell.

And he was definitely a candidate for that 80s-aging Twitter account, because he had a sensible grey centre-parting and a bushy moustache at the age of only 31. He basically, by the time he's 84, he's looking more like Renato from Rene Renato. But I remember him a little bit before this. I remember him as the punk footballer. He had short, spiky red hair.

Because everybody knows that in Scottish terms, Patton Evans, your post-punk footballer. But Hugh Sprote was thepunk footballer. But Hugh Sproat was the punk footballer. He had short, spiky red hair. This is when he was playing for Air United. And he turned up in Shoot magazine in 1977, revealing

that he was such a fan of punk rock that he regularly wore earrings shaped like razor blades. And one of these razor blades was green, the other blue, in a nod to the old firm, right? And this was quite, just having these tastes was quite rare at the time,

because most footballers were into George Benson. That was always a cliche, wasn't it? Or maybe a little bit later on, Phil Collins. So, I mean, it would make sense if his musical tastes developed through into post-punk and new wave, that Hugh Sproul would be a Janice Long listener. That's my theory anyway. And it's a good one, Simon.

And on just a bit more about Hugh Sprout, right? He was voted Motherwell's all-time cult hero in a BBC poll. And the more you find out about him, the more you understand why. Because, right, he wasn't in the Scotland squad for Argentina 1978, the World Cup, but he flew there to see them, did Hugh Sprow, on a one-way ticket. He didn't even have a return ticket. He hitchhiked all the way through South America

and North America after the tournament to get home via Canada. I reckon you'd need balls of steel to hitchhike through South America in 1977. You need balls of steel now. But Hugh Sprow clearly did have balls of steel to hitchhike through South America in 1977 you need balls of steel now but Hugh Sproat clearly did have balls of steel

because he when Air United or Motherwell whoever played against Celtic he would wear a blue shirt

and when they played against Rangers he'd wear a green shirt that is some next level trolling there so yeah I reckon it was Hugh Sproat what a shame

Sproat and Nevin and Pierce never had a sort of jam session or something. Yeah. Sadly, we can't ask Janice what the reason was behind this, but if Hugh Sprote is out there, maybe he can confirm or deny. Just before one of the youths pushes Bates onto Janice in a, ah, my mate fancies you sort of a way,

and they both end up sprawled over the railings. They sign off with Automatic by the Pointer Sisters. We covered Ruth June and Anita Pointer in Chart Music 20 when they failed to get their cover of Everybody Is A Star into the top 40 in February of 1979. Since then, they managed to get their follow-up Fire to number 34 for two weeks and then kicked it up a gear when Slow Hand got to number 10 in September of 1981. In 1983, they put out the LP Breakout, but the lead-off single from it, the down-tempo I Need You, but the lead-off single from it, The Down Tempo I Need You,

failed to chart on both sides of the Atlantic. However, this track was picked up on by American Radio and clubs and played to death, forcing their labels' hand and making them rush it out. It immediately soared to number five on the Billboard chart and was put out over here last month, taking three weeks to get to number 38 last week. But this week it soared 18 places to number 20. So here's a bit of the video and a lot of zoo wankers. I mean, this song is fucking skilled.

I love this. And I can't believe the record company didn't make it the lead-off single. I mean, that is just daft, isn't it? But I remember hearing this on the radio sort of well before i knew who it was by and being initially like really confused about the lead voice about yes male is it female you know yeah ruth's vocals really key to what makes this so amazing and it's still a startling thing this record it's their best, I think, since How Long Bet You Got A Chick On The Side,

which is one of their most amazing tracks. This is all there, with it. Great video as well. And another thing is, here's another dagger of ice for the kids. Ruth Pointer has just become a grandma at the age of 38.

So we've got grannies on top of the pops now. A granny at 38. But who gives a fuck? Because this is the absolute highlight of the episode, to my mind. Yeah. Little known fact, they're known as the bird dog sisters in the States, arranging their bodies in a straight line to indicate the presence of a partridge or a grouse. They had a really strange career trajectory, the Pointer Sisters, didn't they?

Because their Indian summer of their career was more fruitful than the original heyday. It's not just that they were a 70s act who adapted incredibly well to the 80s. They were a nostalgia act, even in the 70s. There's a New York Times live review of a Pointer Sisters gig I found from 1973, in which they're described as doing Cab Calloway style scat singing, dressed up in 1940s clothes, and their support band is actually

Louis Jordan and his Timpani Five. Fucking hell. So they were just touring around doing this kind of jazz scat stuff. Bette Midler style. Well, oh my god, funny you should mention that, because I also found an album review, Ian MacDonald in the NME reviewing the debut album, and that's also from 1973, saying,

though not as histrionic as Bette Midler can be, the pointers are in the same suspect rock cabaret category, and I can't say that they have any positive meaning for our music beyond their own dazzling voices and beautiful legs. Still, let's give them a chance to prove themselves. Oh, Christ. Hear MacDonald there. The thing with the Pointer Sisters, though,

they could turn their hand to anything. I mean, it's the fact they're so adaptable from doing that kind of old-style vaudeville stuff to country and western to rock to soul. It meant they were very well placed to be the kind of R&B soul act who could take on board the new synth bass sound of the post-disco they would just like take to it like a duck to

water i mean they they wrote a country song called fairy tale which won them a grammy and um and elvis covered it and they were yeah yeah and they were the first black group to play grand old opry right yeah yeah their experience in nashville wasn't entirely positive. There was a private after-party following their performance. When they arrived, they were taken around the back of the house and left to sit in the kitchen because the person who answered the door thought they were the hired help. Oh, man.

Fuck me, yeah. That's not a rare thing. I mean, we talked earlier about Count Baze and I read the other day that in 1974, the suite were playing america and they were in the same hotel as count baysing count baysing went up to um your man brian connelly and said oh boys you know nice to meet you uh did a really good show last night and brian collins said fucking never mind that help us get our stuff into the valley oh god yeah but

they had a very eventful 70s and this is kind of before most of us in this country had even heard of them they were having this crazy time in the states at least two of them had recurring drug issues and if a member missed a show a statement would be put out saying they were suffering nervous and physical exhaustion which was like one of the euphemisms in those days and the thing is if you look at this top of the pops that we're watching if you had to pick any act on this tltp who would be secret smack heads i'm saying the pointer sisters would be at the bottom of the list but there we go and i i don't want the top flying pickets i don't know um i mean i i i don't actually let's be serious it's andy rourke from the smiths isn't it but um i i don't want to play amateur psychology here, but I'm going to anyway, right?

I suspect religion really fucked them up, the Brothers and Sisters, because I saw an interview with Ruth, the deep voice lad, and she's the eldest, and she talks about how her father was a pastor, and that meant she was always under scrutiny around town by everyone in case she did anything that wasn't respectable. Something that was ungodly. And ungodly, in their eyes, included such things as wearing lipstick, right?

And if you indulged in such sins as wearing lipstick, your destiny was the devil and spending all eternity in a pit of hell fire, you know, and the only path to salvation was to repent from wearing lipstick and allow Jesus to mend your ways. So, I mean, she tried to distance herself from all that yeah she got older and perhaps being let off the leash from that without your parents and the church and the local congregation watching over you when you're in a successful musical group I mean it's a recipe for disaster if you haven't already tasted those pleasures when you're a teenager you know you're gonna go

crazy aren't you and they did some serious living. Like you say, by the time we get this song, Ruth is 38 and she's a grandmother. She'd been married five times. I mean, that's going somewhere. Fucking hell. Yeah, yeah. Their life was crazy. They partied really hard in the 70s.

They hung around with Richard Pryor and Muhammad Ali. Oh, right. Yeah. And the excitement was obviously all a bit much for Bonnie Pointer because she left. Either it was all a bit much or it went to her head because I think she thought she was all that. She was about to lose control and she thinks she didn't like it. Hey!

Exactly. And she didn't do very well as a solo act. She must have been so pissed off because no sooner does she go solo than the Pointer sisters start having hits like their cover of Bruce Springsteen's fire in 79 which i love by the way yeah and um slow hand in 81 which i also love and then you've got this really imperial phase with jump and i'm so excited and neutron dance and and this song what i like

about automatic here on top of the pops is the video because it looks like it's filmed in a kind of automatic video booth um very reminiscent of a famous scene in fame where leroy does a dance behind a screen and all these you know these usual mad asian wedding video effects start happening also reminiscent oddly enough of chikuni youth's madonna cover into the groove later on when sonic you've been a bit mad but we don't really get enough of the video because we get so much of the audience here. Oh, man, man, man. Or do we get the audience? That's the thing.

Well, we cut between the video, which is a bog standard, shove the group in front of the camera and let them get on with it sort of thing with phasing effects. Yeah. Very early 70s, top of the pops phasing effects as well.

Yeah. It's that kind of vibrating ready break glow, isn't it, around them? Yes. And we get cuts back to the studio filled with writhing figures, but sadly, as always, City Farm get precedence. City Farm. It's horrible. It's a horrible picture of the dynamic going on in that studio

because we get a line of these City farm cunts doing their shit striding but perhaps more upsettingly a line of girls behind them trying to copy it yes oh it breaks your fucking heart it does break my heart as if that's dancing you know it's like watching two little girls pretending to be the kardashians your heart sinks man it's terrible and city farmer doing cna fashion show moves aren't they well if i can identify one thing in this episode about zoo that really pisses me off beyond their idiotic expressions of enjoying the music if anyone looks like that enjoying music i just want to slap them but um it's their fucking arms they're the arms of someone who's never really been on a proper dance floor you try pulling that been on a proper dance floor.

You try pulling that shit on a proper dance floor, you're going to hit people and you're going to piss people off. So, yeah, it's very, very vexing. Not only that they're doing it and the camera frequently cuts them, but the horrible sight, like you say, of people trying to emulate this. This is not dancing. This is not dancing. One or two of the male members of the audience try on with members of City Farm, which is amusing. They make their presence felt at the end of the lads. I don't know if you spotted this, but there's a girl, probably an audience member,

well, if my theory's correct, definitely an audience member rather than a City Farm wanker, who really looks like Susan Tully from Grangeange hill and more importantly from bbc one's new soap eastenders indeed soon to be new soap eastenders yeah yeah and i do wonder if she snuck over from the albert square set very very possible i i tried having you know i haven't seen it on a bigger screen but yeah it just looked like her that's all yeah so tina turner shaka khan pointer sisters soul acts of the 70s and earlier, had a really bad time during the disco age, but fucking completely au fait with the new synthy scene

and just fucking producing gold. Shitting out gold they are. That's a good point. I bet the Pointer Sisters did try disco. I've not heard it, but I bet there's some amazing 12s out there that I don't know about. Yeah.

But yeah, they didn't have hits in that era. You're absolutely right. And this song, it's not written by a sole songwriter. It's written by Mark Goldberg, who has many credits, mostly middle-of-the-road and adult-oriented rock. He'd written for people like Andrew Gold and Linda Ronstadt and Peter Frampton. So, yeah, even though this is kind of what you would call a post-disco

record, it was coming from that sort of middle-of-the-road side of things. Oh, this guy, the weirdest credit many years later is Nova Came for the Soul by Eels. Really? Right, right. Bizarre. But yeah, this record, it is all about Ruth, the contralto with a

deep voice. And yeah, Neil's absolutely right. I mean, I don't think we talk enough about what a strange thing her voice is. It reminds me of this story about Cher. When Cher brought out a single called I Love Ringo when she was really young, it got banned from the radio because her voice was so deep that DJs thought it was a mouth. Right, right. And in a way, it's Ruth's voice that is the song's hook as much as the keyboard motif which is the more you know the pointer sisters in this era that they are even though they're from a past

era they are really emblematic of the high 80s yes it's the sound of success and hard work isn't it it's the sound of people in leg warmers doing aerobics and driving deloreans you know it's very john hughes movie This is very Hollywood. I was actually going to say, it sounds like it ought to be in Beverly Hills Cop 2 or something. Yes. And I checked, it's actually in Beverly Hills Cop 2. It's also in Miami Vice Series 1, Episode 4, Calderon's Demise. And it's a scene in which Crockett and Tubbs are meeting a drug dealer in a club. Didn't that pretty much happen every episode? I don't know. And there's another episode called Calderon's Return

where I'm so excited by the Pointer Sisters as playing in a club. So they're very Miami Vice. Automatic is also on the Grand Theft Auto Vice City soundtrack on the Fever 105 radio station. There's a bit, see, I'm not a video games guy, so you probably know this already, but there's a bit where you can walk into a bar

and the village people, not the sisters are performing it yes and you can go and shoot them all dead if you want but you've got to be careful of the construction worker because if you get too close he'll kick your head in i don't mind automatic i'm not so much into jump or i'm so excited that kind of fatuous facile reaganite pop. But with all those songs, the weird thing is how state of the art the Pointer Sisters became around this time, considering what a veteran act they already were. I know you guys think it's skill and mint.

I could never love Automatic, but I can really admire it. It's really got something. I love it, Matt. My favourite bit is the middle eight, because it sounds like, you know when you go to Skegness on your holiday and you're in an amusement arcade and every now and again all the one-armed bandits would just go off at the same time that's exactly what it sounds like it's fucking brilliant this song is this this is the the summer song of 1984 to my mind yeah it's very evocative of that time

definitely do you know the pointer sisters have not only have they got a star on the walk of fame in hollywood there's a pointer sisters day in oakland really california yeah yeah yeah it's the first of september that day you'll always remember oakland was dishing out a lot of days to pop stars around then they gave sheila e a day um 28th of february right which is a shitty day to have in the Northern Hemisphere at least it wasn't the 29th of February I suppose which is really shit only every four years

yeah but when they have days it's just that day it's not every year oh really yeah oh that's bollocks isn't it

I think we should I think every 1st of September should be Pointer Sisters Day guys just take a load of heroin and sing in a deep voice

I mean speaking of Oakland August the 25th is Digital Underground Day. Quite right, too. Oh, nice. So that's the day where, yeah, you can do the Humpty Hump, I guess. Well, you can do what you like.

With a plastic nose on, yeah. Like Mr. Potato Head. So the following week, Automatic soared 15 places to number five and a fortnight later spent 2 weeks at number 2, held off its rightful place on the summit of Mount Pop by The Reflex. The follow-up, Jump, got to number 6 for 2 weeks in June and they would round off 1984 with a re-release of I Need You getting to number 25 in September and I'm So Excited getting to number 25 in september and i'm so excited getting to number 11

in november on may the 26th 1984 a month to the day of this episode being broadcast the soviet union launched a nuclear attack on britain which led to the country having a population of 4 to 11 million people living under medieval conditions by 1994, according to the documentary threat. As that country had decided to put the reflex at number one over automatic that week, Britain fucking deserved it, if you ask me. Any country that thinks the reflex is better than this can't live.

And that, pop craze youngsters, brings us to the end of this episode of Top of the Pops. What's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with a compilation of the Kenny Everett television show, followed by We Got It Made, the American sitcom about two bachelors who employ a beautiful blonde maid and was absolute cat shit. After the news, it's part four of Missing From Home, the drama series where Judy Lowe's husband drops off the radar, but she gains a new spirit of confidence and independence, which is nice. There's a big argument about strikes and nuclear missiles in Question Time, then Mike Cocker pricks about on a dead expensive computer in the technology show Electronic Office Tony Sopa flags up a link between hamburgers

and the destruction of the rainforests, and then wonders why some animals like shoving it in in springtime in the wildlife show Nature. After half an hour of Mike Harding in Belfast, the documentary series 40 Minutes gives us the point of view of an alien who has come down to Earth for a nose-about. Before going back to the snooker for a bit.

Then it's news night, more snooker, and then an hour of open university, before knocking it on the head at 1am. ITV is half an hour into the made-for-TV film Agatha Christie's Sparkling Cyanide, starring Anthony Andrews. Then Alistair Burnett and Dennis Tewa examine the link between MPs and political lobbyists in TVI. Afternoons at 10 and regional news in your area. It's a repeat of Shelley,

a repeat of the Channel 4 documentary series The Spanish Civil War, New Heart, Night Thoughts with Richard Causton, and they turn it in at half past midnight channel four eventually gets around to the sea a documentary about people stranded or disappearing in the middle of the pacific including an interview with an old sailor not the old sailor who ended up on a raft after his ship was torpedoed and describe him that by a month in the survivors were so dehydrated

they had to pull strings of urine out of their own penises oh my god yeah i remember watching this after top of the pops and that memory has stayed with me to this day that was far more memorable than anything in this episode of top of the party sim Simon Bates had done that then. Bert and Saul travel back in time in Soap. Then it's the final part of Caught in a Free State, the drama series about German spies. Then it's the Tony Randall sitcom Love, Sydney, and they finish off with Isolation, a sketch for someone, a collection of poems.

Then it's the television opera series Perfect Lives and Ian Breakwell's continuous diary closing down at 20 past midnight. So boys, I know it's Easter holidays, but what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? Well, there's lots of stuff

to kind of moan and laugh about. And maybe I'd have been talking about who that milf was on stage with the Smiths. But to be honest, it'd be Duran. I think all the talk would be about Duran for better or worse yes they were the sort of biggest thing on here and you judged them according to the singles and kind of whether it worked or not so I think all the talk would be about Duran to be honest yeah tell you what I'm thinking about now knowing what know now, I'm trying to imagine what it must have looked like when Lionel Richie, in a fit of rage, destroyed the clay effigy of himself.

And I do wonder if Bob Giraldi's cameras were still rolling when it happened. That would be the greatest bit of lost and found footage known to humanity. I mean, fuck the Beatles and get back, really. How would he have done it? Just put a fist in it or baseball bat or thrown it off a building or... I mean, was it hollow? He'd have just torn at it and thrown clods around

like a shit-flinging gibbon. It had just been crazy with it. But at the time, I definitely remember that if I was talking about anything from this performance, it would have been Sandy Shaw. It would have been, who's that old woman rolling around on the floor with a smith? Imagine being 37. Oh, God.

What are we buying on Saturday? If I'm honest, Duran and Pointers. I'm buying Sandy Shaw and the Smiths, along with all the other smiths records i bought at spillers in cardiff but not straight away it would have to wait till summer when i doing a bit of money at butlins um handing over my cash with my fingers still whiffing of cockles and muscles but um the boy with the prawns in his tray. Exactly. Well done. Yeah, I bought Reflex by Duran Duran not for myself,

but for my mum as a birthday present because weirdly she liked it, even though it wasn't her usual kind of music at all. I just don't know why she just latched onto that song. In reality, though, it was one of those things where I bought it for her, but I played it loads more than she did. And I basically co-opted it into my own collection.

Of course you did. It's how I know what the B-side sounds like. Did she write her name on it, though? No. And what does this episode tell us about April 1984? What it tells us is, they'll split your pretty cranium and fill it full of air and tell you that you're 80, but brother, you won't care.

You'll be shooting up on anything. Tomorrow's never there. Beware the savage lure of 1984 no no what it tells us is what it tells us is this right the oldies are coming right band aid and live aid may still just be a twinkle in geldof's eye but already the chart is full of 37 year olds the oldies are taking over yeah we were told to worry about big brother but it's massive dad exactly right and and and this episode sends out a wake-up call and what it's saying is let's get together to fight this oldie armageddon yes yeah yeah that's definitely what comes across new pot by now

is dead the old guards returning also american dominance very soon um the underground is kind of becoming behemoths these big bands like echo and the bunny men the charts are still home to oddity here and there but top of the pops is increasingly not going to be left out a chance and like pricey says those you know those our band moments oh it's one of our bands uh they're going to get very rare indeed very very soon i mean this episode was intended as partly a tribute to Janice Long, but we haven't really said that much about her, simply because she's just doing her fucking job. Yeah, she is.

She knows what she's there for, and she gets on with it, and she does it. But oddly enough, the pop that we see on this episode of Top of the Pops is precisely why a lot of us were listening to Janice late on, you know, late in the evening, to find out what was actually going on rather than what this episode of top of the pops presents to us yeah yeah she's just great and really likable she doesn't try too hard to impose her personality or to crack jokes or anything like that um but she's just a really warm presence on there

particularly contrasted with the sort of partridge isisms of Bates. Yes. And that, pop-crazed youngsters, brings this episode of Chart Music to a close. Usual promotional flange. www.chart-music.co.uk facebook.com slash chartmusic Reach out to us on Twitter at chartmusic, T-O-T-P Money down the G-string, patreon.com slash chartmusic Neil neil substack oh yeah neil k.substack.com

please let me live the pipe dream and it's just an innocent pipe dream not a crack pipe dream of um being a writer again neil k.substack.com please subscribe thank you very much simon price ah cheers you're welcome god bless you neil kulkarni. No worries, Chuck. My name's Al Needham and let me end by saying I love you. I love you. Chart music. The American Music Award is brought to you by Kraft,

which brings you good food and good food ideas. And McDonald's. It's a good time for the great taste of McDonald's. What a night. What a night. What a night. What a night it has been. I'm telling you, I am floored all the way around. When I said the word outrageous at the beginning, I had no idea it was going to be outrageous.

Let me say this to you. Tonight we have a very special way of saying goodbye. Although 1984 has been a great, great year for the music business, in the rest of the world they've been faced with problems of freedom, of hunger, and of peace. faced with problems of freedom, of hunger, and of peace. And tonight, I want to take this opportunity to ask all of you, now that I have all of you watching, to take, thank you, to take time right now to feel all the other people of the world who are in trouble right now tonight. So I think that since we have, Since we have so many beautiful people watching tonight I want you to know that the world's in trouble and there are people that are crying out for your help And I thought I'd take this opportunity right now tonight to use the words of Paul McCartney and John Lennon when I say Let it be. When we find ourselves in times of trouble,

that's the time for you and me to join with all the people. Let it be. For if we come together, can the world be safe and free? Free from war and hunger, let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be.

Free from war and hunger. Let it be. And when the broken hearted people living in the world.