Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #72: October 3rd 1985 – Rod Vicious

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; so how do you set fire to a trophy?Like a man in a cage, we find ourselves trapped in the mid-Eighties, imprisoned in a lurid enclosure of neon and rolled sleeves and appalling Number Ones, with Gary Davies – fresh from a birthday party in a garage in Cumbria and looking well Bisto – in the Mr McKay role. Oh, it’s a grim time to be young, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, when the only thing the youth can look forward to is a Giro, a chance to see the frontwoman of All Her Looks in concert and – if you’re really lucky – landing a plum YTS gig, like Paul Jordan has. He’s making his debut tonight, and we try to work out who he actually was.Musicwise, hmm. Colonel Abrams pops up to deliver a telegram which reads HOUSE IS COMING STOP. Bruce Dickinson paints Paul D’Anno out of history. A pre-codpiece Cameo make their ‘first-ever television debut’ (thanks, Paul). Then the BBC runs an advert for a film made by someone from the Cradle Of Pop, followed by a double-whammy of Our Bands. The best duo in Pop history whose name begins with ‘Rene And’ pitch up and pretend to be Prince. The Top Ten gets fisted by Billy Idol. Red Box asks us if we’ve heard the good news about Jesus. A Success Coat containing Midge Ure receives its sympathy #1, and The Kids (and City Farm) have a sensible jig to Five Star.   Simon Price and Rock Expert David Stubbs join Al Needham for a good snuffle around the crotch of 1985, pausing along the way to shill their new books, followed by frank discussions about sexual awakenings under a massive poster of Pete Burns, the lamentable tale of Stubbs The Sap, the Great Top Valley Pupil Insurrection of 1985, Fetish Sporrans, being stared at by Morrissey at Chippenham Goldiggers, Quincy Punks, a comprehensive breakdown of the Chicken Dance, and a disgraceful run-in midway through the episode. SWEARING.Video Playlist| Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter| The Chart Music Wiki | PatreonGet your tickets for Chart Music at the London Podcast Festival HEREOrder Different Times by David HEREPre-order Curepedia by Simon HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language which will frequently mean sexual swear words sharp music Hey up you pop crazed youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Charm 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 the wind beneath my wings in this episode is being provided by Simon Price. Hello. And rock expert David Stubbs. Bogus. Hello, also. Boys, if you want to see me in me pants and ting, tell me something popping interesting.

Go on, David, you first. Oh, well, I suppose the biggest thing that's happening for me at the moment is that my book has just come out. Different Times, A History of British Comedy, with an emphasis on A. You know, if you use the, then people just think it's a directory

and the object when you don't have every single thing in, comedy-wise. It's sad, really. You can't include everything. I've actually dedicated the book to people who go straight to the index, look in it and see that the name's not in it. Sorry, sorry, but there you go. So who's not in it then, David? Well, I mean, there's...

OMD. Oh, there's no... Yeah, that's right, yeah. Those unfunny bastards. I mean, I didn't really go a bundle on people like Jim Davison and people like that, obviously, because it's kind of a category area, obviously, because, you know, it's kind of a category error, really, you know, talking about them in comedy. But

oddly enough, I didn't really talk about Peter Sellers that much, really. And people just think he's a great, towering comedy classic. Actually, I just think he's more of a character actor, really. So, you know, there's little emissions like that, really. I mean, I talk about Boris Johnson and the whole way that he was elected Prime Minister for a laugh, you know, because that's what British people are like.

And the sense in which we're kind of a bit overdetermined by comedy. You know, other countries use that energy and declare themselves republics and things like that, for example. But one of the things I touch on later on is in the 21st century, actually, that there was a lot of cruelty in the first decade. Some of it was brilliant. I mean, there's things like The Thick of It and Peep Show and all that kind of thing. But then also you had like Borat and then you had Little Britain and some of the horrible stuff.

You also had a lot of sort of blackface, whatever. And I just think it was a sort of time of, I don't know, lassitude, basically, that it was this like long period of Labour government, but nobody really believed in it. You know, people had sort of lost that sense of sort of idealism or that things were going to get better. But then from 2010 onwards, you've got a Tory government and, of course, they introduce almost immediately austerity.

And I think ever since then, there's been this kind of emphasis on kindness. Now, when I use kindness, you know, I've not gone soft, Al, because it is one of those words that's kind of bandied in a slightly kind of trite sort of way. I mean kindness as distinct to civility, like fuck civility. But you see it in a certain amount of comedy that there is a more sort of spirit of considerateness, inclusiveness, decency.

And again, you know, there's been a kind of reaction against that. You see it even in someone like Frankie Boyle. So in the first decade of the 21st century, he's making jokes about Rebecca Adlington looking like, you know, her face, she's looking in the back of a spoon or something and then he's just doing much more kind of inclusive kind of politically you know much more sound comedy you know it's a political reaction I think on the part of especially young people because they have experienced you know actual cruelty prospective cruelty perhaps you know in what kind of like world they're going to be left you know in

terms of the environment whatever and there's just a sense in which they're being absolutely fucked over in all kinds of ways in terms of job security in terms of rent environment or whatever. And there's just a sense in which they're being absolutely fucked over in all kinds of ways, in terms of job security, in terms of rent, all kinds of ways. But anyway, this idea about kindness, I've noticed it a lot quite recently, in quite a few manifestations in pop culture, especially in Glastonbury, for example. Rick Astley doing the whole Smiths covers.

What was great about that is that you were able to enjoy these songs, but not from Morrissey, because Morrissey's become this very toxic figure. So in a sense, having them delivered via Rick Astley, which is kind of fun in itself, also detoxifies these songs. You can really enjoy them in a communal, fun way. There was another one. There was that Billy No-Mates when she came on, and she did a really good set.

She did it to Back in Trap rather than having a real band there. And of course, the campaign for real music, people piled on her for that. But, you know, I'm not really upset. But there's this great counter reaction that says, no, don't worry. Don't worry, mate. You know, don't listen to these fuckwits. You know, there was Lewis Capaldi, you know, right at the end of his set where he basically loses it.

He just can't carry on. He's overcome by tics or whatever. And, you know, the crowd there, they're brilliant. They say, don't worry about it, mate. We understand. We've got you back. And fill in for him. And it was just such a touching moment

because you just wonder, 15, 20 years ago, when maybe people didn't have a kind of comprehensive understanding of mental health issues or whatever, they might have got booed for that. You know, they'd say, we paid 80 quid for this. Fuck you. And is it funny, this book? Yeah.

Is there a chalkle on every page, David? I like to think so. I mean, I've tried to be funny about funny, you know, which is, you know, where funny about funny you know which is um you know where i can you know i mean especially like with on the buses you can sort of take the mickey there a little bit but um yeah i'm trying to be funny about funny who's doing the audiobook joe pasquale or someone i don't know that's not been decided yet well not even remotely discussed yet oh what a shame don estelle's not still about. Oh, poor old Don.

I also hear that Farmer Price has a big fat book to take to market as well. That's right, yeah. My long-awaited, not least by my publishers, book, Curepedia, Anne A to Z of the Cure. It's interesting hearing David talk about using the indefinite article in his title because I was very insistent on that as well, that it's Anne A to Z of the C you know it's my personal take on them and I noticed that the American version of the book I've seen the cover they've gone with the a to z of the cure which I you know I'm not particularly happy about but you know it probably means I will get angry emails or

messages from American cure fans saying how could you have left out the, you know, engineer on their third B-side or something like that? But the thing is, the reason the book took so long is because it really is comprehensive. I've just gone over the top. I didn't know where to stop. No? It was just this monster of a research job.

And I think I went a little bit nuts doing it, to be honest. I think I just lost sight of everything. I was listening to every little bit nuts doing it, to be honest. I think I'd just lost sight of everything. I was listening to every kind of, you know, Australian radio interview from 1981 or something on audio that nobody else was even aware of, and, you know, like Swiss television appearances and reading interviews that he did in Belgium and just anything to find some little nugget

that shed light on a particular aspect of the band. And then trying to sort of shake that down into some kind of sense because I think always when when you're writing a biography you're trying to apply structure to chaos because life is chaos and in this case that structure just happens to be alphabetical which is completely arbitrary but it's no more or less sensible than any others and it's allowed me to sort of write thematically in a way. So I can write about, I don't know, the cure's relation to mental illness or sex or drugs or alcohol

or any of that stuff. I can put all that stuff into an essay or into its own section rather than just saying, oh, well, in 1983, they had a bit of a fight when they got drunk or something like that, you know, and then saying, oh, and it in 1983, they had a bit of a fight when they got drunk or something like that, you know, and then saying, oh, and it happened again in 1989. It's enabled me to sort of take this overview of things, this structure. It wasn't my idea, but once it had been given to me

to do it in a sort of A to Z format, I thought, well, you know, I can work with this. I can have some fun with this. So what's the first entry? Odd Vox. I cheated slightly because I decided that A, the indefinite article, counts, whereas the definite article does not. So that allowed me to have A Forest as the first entry because it's such an emblematic song.

If it wasn't for that, it might have been, I don't know, A is for associates who supported them on tour once or something like that, which just wouldn't feel right to start the book that way. So, yeah, fortunately that happened. I've also sort of done things like there wasn't a lot for the letter Q. So I thought, hang on a minute, Robert Smith supports Queen's Park Rangers. Oh, God, yeah. There's Q is for Queen's Park Rangers.

And into that section, I threw everything to do with their love of football. So, you know, the team's all the other members support and uh the fact that Robert did this sort of photo shoot with Stuart Adamson where Adamson's in a Scotland kit and Robert's in an England kit and they're jumping for the ball I remember that for the maker yeah yeah so yeah I played around with the alphabet a little bit when it gets translated into Spanish I wonder because obviously you know different words different language I wonder if that might fuck up the alphabet a little bit. What's the last entry? I think it's for zoology.

Z is for zoology. Because so many Cure songs are about animals. You know, you've got light cockatoos. You've got the love cats. You know, you've got all these... Caterpillar. Yeah, the caterpillar. Yeah, so Bird Mad Girl.

And yeah, there are just so many Cure songs that reference animals. And I sort of speculated as to why that is and what it all might mean. Also, Zoo, as in Zoo Wankers, have an entry. Oh, really? They have an entry because, yes. Do you know about that? Go on, you tell me. They obviously danced to something, did they?

Oh, no, no, that's no. It's know about that? Go on, you tell me. They obviously danced to something, didn't they? Oh, no, no, that's... No, it's actually not that. But one of the Zoo dancers was in a band with Robert Smith. Of course, yes. The Glove. The Glove was his super group. The Glove, yeah. With Steve Severin from the Banshees and Robert Smith, McHugh. But Robert contractually wasn't allowed to sing lead vocals on anything other than McHugh.

So they had to draft someone in, and it was Jeanette Landre, who was one of Zoo, which had spiky blonde hair. I don't know if you can picture her. Very sort of 80s-looking hair. So Zoo get a mention, as does chart music. Yay! That whole Zoo wankers thing in there.

The weird thing about doing a book like this is that the further you drift into the peripheral stuff and the absolute trivia, the more you think, well, actually, this is the gold. Because the peripheral stuff and the absolute trivia the more you think well actually this is the gold because the central stuff like oh just like heaven was released on blah blah the release dates that's stuff that they can get from wikipedia you know it's when you get to something like you know an instrumental track they recorded that came out on cassette only and was named after an obscure shetland island. Then you go into the history of that island and see if there's any connection with the history of that island to the cure

and why they might have named a song after this island, which is so obscure. It's so out there on the edge of the stuff. But then you think, this is actually what people are going to enjoy the most. That really weird stuff that appears to have fuck all to do with anything. But it's the stuff that took the really hard yards and took the deep research to get that stuff. and that's why the book is so long it's twice the length it was meant to be it looks massive have you actually got a physical copy no not yet

proper chunk of book isn't it i think it's um a third the length of the bible or something like that right maybe about half the length of the bible. I'm not sure. They've had to send it to China to get it printed. They don't normally do this. But because I wrote so much, the only way to make it economically viable was to get it printed in China. And that's why it's taking until November for copies to actually come out. But it's going to look quite deluxe when it does. Because we've got Andy Vela, who is one half of Parched Art, along with Pearl Thompson, ex of The Cure. The two of them have done most Cure record sleeves ever.

Andy's done these plates for The Letter, The Alphabet, 26 of them. And they look very, very Cure. And the whole design, yeah, I think it's going to look great. I think when I started it, I thought, well, it's a decent job and I'll just do it and you know it's something that I'll hopefully get well remunerated for but the more I got into it that the more I started to really love the process yeah and then of course about halfway through started really hating the queue I never want to hear a fucking queue record again in my life but I sort of came out the other end of that and decided I kind of really like them you know

if they asked you to do the same thing now about another band, which band would it be? That's a really good question. Could you follow up The Mannix? Two Man Sound? Two Man Sound, yeah. The Mannix book is something I do need to follow up that book and I don't quite know how I'm going to do it

because more time has elapsed since that book than is covered in that book. But it's also the period of their career where nothing very dramatic happened compared to the first ten years. So that's a difficult one to know how to approach. But in terms of doing an A to Z format, I don't know if I'd want to do it again, but it would have to be somebody whose work I would not resent diving into. So, you know, somebody like Prince, for example.

But there are enough fucking Prince books out there already. I mean, I mentioned everything, because it sounds like there's possibly a degree of that in this book, even despite the format that, you know, the meaning of the cure, as it were, you know, the kind of slightly thematic approach that you're taking, you know. And actually, some of the stuff that you talk about the periphery, but I guess that just shows that kind of cultural reach that they've had, I guess. You know, it sort of marks that as well. Well, that's it. Yeah. I mean, it is something I did in my Mannix book

where I ended up writing essays about the Rebecca riots and stuff like that. You know, the Chartists and things like that that, you know, were tied into this grand tradition of Welsh rebellion and Welsh cross-dressing as well. And that's a sort of idea that I stole from Greal Marcus from Lipstick Traces, where, you know, he starts off with the Sex Pistols

but expands it into this entire history of European descent. And it seems that I can't not write like that. I don't know if I'm able to write a straight biography. Maybe it's a failing of me now, but it's the sort of thing that once I start digging into a band and what they mean, I start finding all these threads and all these sort of parallels and cross-referencing everything and it just seems to be what I do I need to snap out of it I need to write a good short hundred thousand word biography of somebody who who didn't

last you know their heyday was about five years long and just get it done just so I can prove I can do it because the queue had been around for 40 odd years and so it's not not only the length of their career but so many literary references in in their works poetry and so obviously i've got to dig into all that and uh yeah it's it's it's going to be the mother of all toilet books put it that way this sort of thing i i don't think people can read it sequentially i think it's you know it's going to be something you dip into. You flip back and forth between chapters. So for example, if I mention Dylan Thomas in another chapter, that will link you

to the poetry section. And when we do the e-book, hopefully that will actually work. There'll be hyperlinks that will take you there. So it really will be this interactive book, skipping back and forth. And it comes out on the 9th of November, I ought to say. And around that time, I'll be doing a lot of promotional work.

I'll be sort of doing book signings and doing events up and down the country. So look in your local listings or look online and see what's going on. Hopefully, I'll be coming to a bookshop or a record shop near you. Well, I've got three things to impart, chaps. Number one, I've not written a book. I've got three things to impart, chaps. Number one, I've not written a book. Number two, tickets still available for our appearance at the London Podcast Festival, but not many.

Let me remind you, chaps, Saturday, September the 16th, 4.30pm, King's Place, King's Cross, London, 90 minutes of a concentrated evisceration of a Top of the Pops episode with Team ATV Land. So I suggest that you get your arse over to kingsplace.co.uk now and get them last seats. And don't forget, 20% discount for all Pop Craze Patreons. Sermon over at last.

Thirdly, you may recall that during our discussion about A-ha in Child Music 70, I mentioned that I'd been to Norway to speak about how the grot industry was making money off the internet while the music business was being rinsed by LimeWire and the like. And I was told that there'd been an article written about me. Well, I have it here. Yeah. All praise is due to Victoria Kleste,

a pop-crazed unger from Sweden who translated the following article for me. Now, chaps, before I read it, I want to make absolutely clear that none of the people who wrote or were quoted in this article spoke to me beforehand. I passed on no information to them

and this has absolutely nothing to do with me, okay? Oh, and in the interests of fairness and balance, let's run it through the lie detector, shall we? So, from Dag's A Vision, dated 23rd of November

2000. Looking to learn from the porn industry. Al Needham is the name of the man who will share his experiences from internet porn during the Norwegian Music Industry's annual gathering by-law in February next year. The Porn Industry, a model for success, is the title of the lecture he will give.

For several years, the porn industry has been a teacher and guide for how to best and most conveniently use the internet as a sales device, a marketing tool. Al Needham is considered the porn industry's absolute most skilled and visionary in the field, according to the press release from Bylarm. The porn industry is different from the music industry, but the porn industry was among the first to use the web commercially,

so we have something to learn from them, said Bylom leader Erland Mogdard-Larsen. He heard Al Needham speak to the British record industry during the In The City seminar in Manchester earlier this year and invited him to the Norwegian industry gathering. Bylom's head of seminars, Stein Björger, from the industry company Playground, says that Needham is a very frequent speaker in the record industry. The big record companies discovered Needham during the Indecity

and he is now a regular speaker and a consultant for, among others, entertainment giant BMG. Of course, it's controversial to gather information from someone who's worked with porn, but nobody has used the internet as efficiently as the porn industry, Björk says. But unfortunately, chaps, as you'd imagine, the bloody feminists get involved, don't they? And this is something the music industry should learn from.

How difficult is it really to sell sex, says Anita Overolv, leader of AKKS, Active Women's Culture Centre. AKKS works to recruit and make women visible in the music industry and has, amongst other things, been behind the girl band compilation CD, Stiff Nipples. Yes, so there we go. They must have been so fucking disappointed sitting there

expecting the Steve Jobs of film and me turning up in my fucking suit, starting off with an impression of that Norwegian football commentator. Of course. So, chaps, I just want to assure the readers of Dag's Vision that when they were reading that article over their herring on toast, my skilled and visionary abilities were being deployed on photoshopping zits and bruises off the arses of readers' wives, responding to emails from women who wanted to be porn models

by writing them a letter that basically said, well, if you're OK with all your dad's mates seeing you, finally get back in touch with them. And getting no replies back. And getting absolutely pissed off with the editor of Mayfair and just basically sitting in an office wondering when they were going to call me in and lay me off because I was absolutely shit at that job.

Mainstream media, man, they're all liars. Anyway, less about me, and more about the true visionaries of the age, the latest batch of pop-crazed youngsters who have paid their tithe to chart music. And this month in the $5 section, we have... Drew Barker, Sean Coward, John Mullen, Gordon Kennedy, Mark Cooper, and Lucky Piss. Oh, you fucking beautiful people. Let me kiss your face right now.

We do. We love you like the Rolling Stones. Love. Maybe a bit more sincere. Yeah, without that sardonic edge, no. We love you. And in the $3 section, we have Radio Atlantis, Rob Patterson, Ali B, John Thorpe, Chad Hayden,

and Action Edmonds, and Ben Squires, Martin Reilly, Denise King, and Jane Webber. Oh, you nudged it up a bit, and it hurt, but it hurt nice, let me tell you oh and by the way if you are a pop craze patreon in the five dollar or the three dollar tis and you've not heard your name read out yet well that's because i'm a thick twat and you've slipped through the crack somewhat so you know please send me a message on patreon saying come on out you cunt, sort it out and I shall respond in the adequate fashion.

Thank you. And we should especially thank all the Pop Craze youngsters this month because we've all got sexy new microphones, haven't we? Yeah. So, you know, it all gets ploughed back in to make this a better podcast. And also, speaking of Pop Craze youngsters, there's a group called Microfilm

that made rather an excellent album called Body Arcana. And these are like fans of the show. They're actually based in Portland, Oregon, actually, but big, big fans of the show. And they've made a cracker of an album. I mean, you know, no disrespect, Al, but it's a jolly slight better than a lot of the rubbish

that gets featured on this show. I'll put it that way. But no, no, it's excellent stuff. I mean, I'd compare it faintly to sort of the Junior Boys. It's kind of sort of got that kind of electronic edge, but a bit more sort of slightly out there, like, you know, nicely twisted. But yeah, very addictive.

You know, I've listened to it a fair few times. So good work, chaps. And as we all know, chaps, the pop craze Patreons get to distract the manager of the record shop with a full-size cutout of Brit Eklund with a crystal ball over her bits, slip into the back room and fiddle with the chart return book

for the brand-new chart music top ten. Are we ready, chaps? Yes. Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to Noel Edmonds' wank fantasy, Jeff's sex and my fucking car, which means one up, three down, three non-movers and three new entries.

It's a new entry at number 10 for Bjorn Bingebonger. Last week's number three drops nine places to number nine, the Birmingham piss troll. Last week's number eight stays at number eight. Here comes Chisholm. It's a two-place drop for this week's number seven, the bent cunts who aren't fucking real. Yeah.

And another two-place drop from number four to number six for Bummer Dog. Oh, yeah. Into the top five and up one place from number six to number five, Eric Smallshore of Eccles. New entry at number four, Toto Coelho Ultras. The highest new entry at number three, Ian Interesting. Another week and still no change at number two for the provisional UR URA, which means...

Britain's number one. It's still there at number one in the Char Music top ten. Ghost Face Ceylon. Fucking hell, what a char, boys. Yeah, it's good to see some movement in there, but without losing completely some of the all-time greats. Yeah, it's not the 90s here, is it? I mean, Bummer Dog's a bit of a dark side of the moon,

isn't it, obviously? Yeah, here comes Jism as well. Oh, yeah, indeed, yeah. But, yeah, I've grown very fond of some of the other ones as well that's hanging on in there. But, yeah, good to see a bit of churn. We like churn in the church. Yes, we do, yeah.

The provisional who are away are the Vienna of chalk music, aren't they? Yeah, yeah. So, the new entries, Bjorn Bingebonger. Well, obviously a Eurovision winner who thinks he's got a career now in the UK. Yeah, velvet suit, dress shirt, definitely. And wearing Harmony hairspray. Toto Coelho ultras.

No fucking idea, to be honest. A bit electroclash, I'd say. And Ian interesting. Well, you know, Howard Jones, Nick Kershaw, Ian interesting, the triumvirate. Yeah, or Jasper fascinating. I remember that was a character I did. Yeah, I remember in the Romo days,

you did get people who just tried a bit too hard and got a bit too on the nose. There was a guy called John Pretty in one of the Romo bands. too hard and got a bit too on the nose. There was a guy called John Pretty in one of the Romo bands. So if you want in on all the excitement of being officially pop crazed, as well as getting every episode in full without any advert ramble, you need to get that lovely little arse of your own over to patreon.com slash chart music.

Chaps, we're coming up to seven whole years of chart music now. Great. And what's kept it going is the love and the commitment of the Pop Craze Patreons. Because come on now, we've gone past podcasts. These are fucking audio books that build up month on month-ish

into a library of music and pop culture criticism and bummer dog. And it's thanks to them, the Pop Craze Patreons. Praise them, I say. Praise indeed. Yes. These are sort of like dark red leather bound installments with maybe sort of gold leaf writing on the spine. Yes.

It's classy. It's something that you'd see advertised in the back of the Sunday Supplements. So, this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to November the 3rd, 1985.

Oh dear, Chas, we're just on the wrong half of the 80s, aren't we? On the other side of Live Aid, which of course, according to Chart Music Orthodox, is a very bad place indeed. Yeah, yeah. It got people all standing together in fields

again. We thought we'd done away with that with punk, basically. And now look where we are. Those are the only gigs that happen. People standing in fields and paying 250 quid for it. Fuck me. If you ask people what happened in 1985 you know

Live Aid's probably going to be the first thing that comes out of their mouths or at least the only good thing after you know Heysel, Valley Parade all the plane crashes, the Mexico City earthquake, AIDS the end of the miners strike and you could say that this is a year that

pop gets pushed into growing up and being responsible for a few years, don't you think? Yeah. Yeah. It's also, I think, that with Live Aid, it's almost like the old order returned to sort of see off the last vestiges of post-punk and all that kind of thing,

and that kind of sort of fractiousness and scrappiness. Yeah, I always think that Live Aid, in a funny kind of way, was a sort of precursor to things like Rave, then later on Oasis, this idea of us all being together. Yeah. And after the kind of tribalism, the fragmentation of the 1980s. Yeah, that's the thing. You know, piling everybody together in a massive stadium

to all watch a load of pop groups that we all agree on. Four years earlier, that would have been unthinkable. You'd have had all the mods and the Teds and the Skeds and the skins and the rockers and stuff just having a massive fucking fight no by 85 no we'd all grown out of that and we're all together yeah yeah everyone's in their choose life t-shirts and everyone's responding to day from freddie and just one one big loving live aid a few years previous would have been the opening scene of the warriors wouldn't it with more parkers. Somebody shot Bob Geldof.

It was The Warriors. Come out to play, yay. It was a doldrums year in lots of ways. And yet, you know, you look back and actually there were some fantastic records made that year. I mean, you know, Kate Butch and Dabs Running Up That Hill. There's Steve McQueen, Prefab Sprout. Scritty, Cupid and Psyche, 85. You know, Prince, Surrounding the World in a Day.

You know, Dexys, if you like that kind of thing, you know, various other things that were kind of coming through. It actually feels quite halcyon, really, but no, at the time it felt like things were sort of getting a bit overripe. I didn't feel that the battle was lost yet, put it that way. Honestly, I had no idea how bad things were going to get

in the later 80s, but I think the main difference was that between 79 and 81, the good stuff was just laid in front of you on a plate. Look in the later 80s. But I think the main difference was that between 79 and 81, the good stuff was just laid in front of you on a plate. Look in the top 10, they're just brilliant record after brilliant record. Now it was more a case of if something good flew into the top 40, it was an event and you'd be cheering it on. And every half-decent record in the chart was a sort of cause

to rally behind and wave a flag for. Simon, you advance the theory that years of pop kind of stand or fall on the number ones of that year. Yeah. So let's have a look at the number ones of the year so far. So, do they know it's Christmas, Band-Aid? I want to know what love is, foreigner. I know him so well, Elaine Page and Barbara Dixon.

You spin me round, Dead or Alive. Easy Lover, Philip Bailey and Phil Collins. Banger. That's all right. We Are The World, USA for Africa. Fuck off. Move Closer, Phyllis Nelson. Trauma.

19, Paul Hardcastle. I never liked that. Oh, yeah, it was true. You'll Never Walk Alone, The Crowd. Fuck, man. Franke, Sister Sledge. No, absolutely no. That is to Sister Sledge what my ding-a-ling is to Chuck Berry.

There Must Be An Angel, The Eurythmics. I quite liked it at the time. No. Into The Groove, Madonna. Yeah, good record. I Got You, Babe, UB40 and Chrissie Hyde. No. And Dancing In The Street by David Boet and Mick Jagger.

South America! Oh, you're rubbing your hands looking forward to the Christmas Day top of the Pops of this year, aren't you? Fucking hell. Oh, God. It looks bad, doesn't it? It looks really bad. You had to look at the charts upside down in those days.

It was a question of, right, what's hovering around 35 to 40? That's's probably where the good stuff is whereas in the early 80s it was the right way round but it has to be said chaps that this episode that we're going to be looking at it's a proper lucky bag of randomness isn't it i mean yeah there is your dinosaurs and your mid-80s pap for the mug masses but there's also a hint or two of a more interesting future and a smattering of our bands, if you will. It's funny, revisiting 1985 for this episode, I get a recollection

of actually beginning to feel a bit old, actually. Because I think there were just so many, I mean, I don't know, just an example there, you know, UB40 and Chrissie Hynde doing I Got You, Babe. That was just the 80s just gone bad

really a lot of people just sort of lingering really you know probably sort of you know picking up sort of much bigger hits than they'd enjoyed in their early days in some cases but it just felt like everything the whole punk funk thing was petering out and and there was a sort of void that was just being filled by a lot of synthetic balladry and competent songwriting dullards whatever it just felt like you know despite the really good records that were made i mentioned It was just being filled by a lot of synthetic balladry and competent songwriting, dullards, whatever. It just felt like, you know, despite the really good records that were made, I mentioned earlier on,

it just felt like this kind of momentum was gone, that the old was malingering and the new wasn't quite being born yet. Yeah, everything was getting very Americanised. We've talked before about the influence of Jonathan King's Entertainment USA. Of course, you know, Live Aid opened the floodgates to a lot of American dinosaurs. There's no need for Jonathan King now in 1985

because all the American shit's here. But that said, you know, I complain about it, but at least a couple of the best songs on this episode are American. It tends to be black America, really, rather than white America. Of course. Oh, yeah. And I mean, you know, this is still the era of, like, Jammin' Lewis or whatever, and Prince is at the top of his

game. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's not to be sniffed at. Shall we tuck in, then? Yeah. Onward! Radio 1 News! In the news this week, rioting has broken out in Brixton over the weekend after Cherry Gross was shot in her bedroom by police looking for her son,

leading to the death of a press photographer, further riots in Peckham and Toxteth, and in two days' time, after Cynthia Jarrett dies of heart failure during a police search in Tottenham, the Broadwater Farm Riot. Meanwhile, the Scarman report on the Toxteth and Peckham riots of 1981 puts the blame on economic deprivation and racial discrimination.

Rock Hudson dies from AIDS-related complications at the age of 59 in Beverly Hills. While today's newspapers are plastered with a still from dinner stare, where he snogs linda evans in a forthcoming episode his admission and subsequent death leads private donations towards age research in america to double and by the end of the week congress approves a 221 million dollar cash injection towards finding a cure fucking hell you must remember that chaps yeah absolutely oh i remember my mom screaming at the telly when he kisses her on dinner's day. Fuck me. The weird thing was, I didn't really know

who he was because he seemed such a historic figure. And I know people talk about it as the first major star who died of AIDS, but he seemed like a figure from the days of black and white. And when you said he was only 59, that surprised me. That's younger than, I think, Keanu Reeves is now.

He's younger than me. Shit. And he's doing John Wick and that kind of stuff. I guess I suppose we know it was just the revelation that there are some gays out there other than Quentin Crisp, you know, and some of them are not the chaps you'd expect. And I think, I guess, it was just an eye-opener in that respect to a lot of people.

The Labour Party conference in Bournemouth sees Neil Kinnock winning a vote against the militant tenders here and Arthur Scargill over the reimbursement of fines imposed on the NUM and slapping down Derek Hatton for his council sending out redundancy notices by tax heir. A Labour council! All three of us there have to do it.

You can't not do it. The Achille Laro, an Italian cruise ship, has left Genoa today on its way to Ashdod in Israel via Alexandria and will be hijacked by the Palestine Liberation Front on Monday, resulting in the death of Leon Klinghoffer, the safe passage of the four hijackers in Egypt,

the pursuit of the hijackers while they're flying to Tunisia when the US government find out they killed one of their own, and their plane being forced down to a US Air Force base in Sicily. An article published in Vanity Fair this week, which claims that the marriage of Charles and Diana is up arsehole street, with him described as a wimp. Her compared to Alexis Carrington,

and both of them completely incompatible for each other, has been savaged by close friends of the couple. These claims are totally ridiculous. I don't know why people write that kind of stuff. They've just got their wires crossed somewhere because what they're saying is just sensational rubbish, says one of Prince Charles' closest friends.

Camilla Parker Bowles. Camilla Parker Bowles. I was going to say that as a joke. Doris Stokes pitches up on TVAM to tell Henry Kelly that she's had a very interesting chat with Elvis from beyond the grave recently after telling her that he's made up about being in heaven although he doesn't

like his bathroom which is black and horrible he tells her that he's well dischuffed about the way Priscilla has been coating him down in her biography and that he has a very special message for boy george you may be the queen of rock but i'm still the king there's a new madonna film out but she's not massively keen to promote it it's a certain sacrifice a film she made in 1980 where she has three love slaves one male one female and one trans and she ends up performing a satanic ritual in a theater it goes straight to video next week after a premiere in new york a nightclub in liverpool has caused a row after announcing that women will be given free entry and a complimentary glass of champagne at their disco nights, but only if the hems of their miniskirts are at least eight inches above the knee.

Adornment have been issued with tape measures to ensure the rule is adhered to. No fucking way. Jesus Christ. When asked to address the criticism emanating from Scouse women's livers, club DJ Chris Cross said, I don't know what some women are carping about. Let's face it, their main function in life is to be attractive to us guys. Personally, I would like all the girls to wear stockings and suspenders because that would be nice for our male customers all we are saying to the girls is come along have a fabulous evening and prove how attractive you are but labour councillor

anne hollins head counter by saying these male morons should be put in their place would they like to turn up in their underpants so we could measure their inside legs? Oh, crisscross. What a downfall from Arthur's song. He should probably fuck off somewhere between the moon and New York City. Yes. Man United have won their 10th game in a row in Division 1 after beating Southampton 1-0.

But the big news this week, according to the Sunday Mirror, Fizz star Mike in pub brawl. Bucks Fizz star Mike Nolan revealed yesterday how a pub landlord rescued him during a barroom brawl. Mike, still recovering from head injuries after a coach crash last year, had been having a quiet drink with singer Lin Paul. Suddenly, three yobbs burst in. When they were refused a drink,

they threatened to take the place apart and made a beeline for the hunky Bucks fizz star. But they reckoned without the pluck of Noel Farrell, landlord of the coachmaker's arms in Slough. He raced around the bar and tore into the trio. Noel floored one thug with a single punch and

bundled the other two out into the street. I can't thank the landlord enough, said Mike last night. Although I'm well on the way to a full recovery, I dread to think what might have happened if I'd been badly beaten up or hit over the head with a bottle.

Oh, man. Were there any photos to sort of back this up? You doubt the tales, Simon? Well, I just think the camera never lies, and I believe that. Yeah, that's true. The C-C-C-TV never lies. On the cover of Melody Maker this week,

The Waterboys. On the cover of Melody Maker this week, The Waterboys. On the cover of Smash Hits, Paul Young and Nick Kershaw. On the cover of Record Mirror, Echo and the Bunnymen. The number one LP in the country at the moment is Hounds of Love by Kate Bush. And over in America,

the number one single is Money For Nothing by Dire Straits and the number one LP Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits so boys what were we doing in October of 1985? well I'd actually just arrived in London lived here ever since like your name was Jimmy Somerville David I was, yes, I was a big town boy now

Yes Stick with a knotted hanky Seek my fortune, yes Working as a temping in a place Called Freightliners, that was my first job here Doing what? Oh, just, I don't know, clerical work Nothing, just Temping rubbish't know, clerical work, you know, nothing, you know, just

temping rubbish, you know. But I think at that point, I was still kidding myself that I wasn't going to be a music journalist, you know. If the call came, I'd refuse it, you know, with their loss, because, you know, music was in such a kind of terminal state and the fact that at that point, the only music I was listening

to was imported R&B and avant-garde classical and jazz. You know, I was a fun guy, a fun guy. I mean, Simon Reynolds actually started writing for Melody Maker about this time, but we were still putting out Monitor, which is the magazine that we did at Oxford. And I think one of the dominant themes in that was, you know, the exhaustion. You know, Simon talked about music being over-determined by punk. It was true. You know, that whole punk-to-pop thing hadn't really

succeeded in fully radicalising the world as we'd hoped. Everything just felt tired. So I kind of turned away from the music press. I'd been reading the NME or whatever, but I felt like, in a way, I was growing out of it. You know, and certainly I had that very credulous relationship I'd had with, you know, both Melody Maker and NME, you know, when I was long ago when I was in my teens.

But I think I kind of knew that the world of things as it was in 1985 just had to be torn down. It just had to be deconstructed. You know, the mullets, the big head synths, the jackets with the sleeves rolled up. You know, the Miami vice-ification of pop. The poodle hair, the highlighted hair, the big boxy empty productions, the post-Morley and Penn enemy. You know, this aimless discourse now, the white-sock worthiness. It all had to go so that something new, something already born, but kind of lacking the, I don't know, the rhetorical thrust to make it happen.

And I was going to have a role in that. But anyway, the moment I did get the call, I practically bit the telephone receiver in half, but that was several months away. Simon? I'd had a very eventful couple of months leading up to this. Ooh. Yeah, I hope you'll bear with me,

because I've been piecing together the sequence of events, just figuring it all out. I can just see your bedroom wall numb with all the Polaroids and bits of string. Yes, like something from The Wire. So some of it is stuff that we've kind of talked about. I was just starting the upper sixth of Barry Boy's Comprehensive School.

I should say Barry Boy's Comprehensive School for reasons I'll come to. And yeah, I'd started in music journalism in a tiny way by writing for the Baring District News, of course. Simon Says. Simon Says column was in full swing. I was chafing against the shackles of being a man, or at least the pathway of being a man that was offered to me

by the macho culture of South Wales. I honestly might have declared myself non-binary if we'd had the words back then. We just didn't have the words. You would have been like that Rock Hudson you do. But, you know, I was kind of forging my own identity. My hair was growing out from... I'd had this Dave Garn slash Morrissey flat top,

but it was growing out into something more approaching a Gothic mullet. And I was dressing more flamboyantly. I was wearing frilly shirts with my grandmother's brooch holding the collar in place. Oh, yes. Eyeliner, inspired by Robert Smith. Black lace gloves, very much inspired by Prince in Purple Rain. Wow.

My dad had dragged me to Fairport Convention's property festival in the summer because he was the compere. I hated the music. I didn't like folk music at all. But I got to play football with Robert Plant. Fuck! Yeah, yeah. Did he pass?

Yeah, he was pretty good. Better than me, although, you know, I was wearing Winkle Pickers, to be fair. Do you remember those games where Damon Albarn used to take part in at Regent's Park? Did you ever play in any of those? Oh, yeah, yeah. I played every Sunday with Damon Albarn. He never passed. He never passed.

But, of course, he was by far the most famous person who used to turn up. So everyone gave him a pass, as it were. Yes, I had a kickabout with Robert Platt. I met Billy Connolly and Michael Elphick, which was a boon. Fucking hell. Just to pause for a moment of respect for that joke. Yes, that's right. Elphick.

I'm just rolling in the aisle here. I should have said to him, what do you want, you old spunker? What do you want? The best thing about that festival was the market stores where I was able to buy a load of hippie beads and a peacock feather earring, because I was also under the influence of Ian Asprey from the cult. So I was developing this kind of outlandish look.

And on the one hand, I was very pleased myself. I thought I was fucking great. And I thought the world was at my feet and I thought I was going to go to Oxford University. I'd applied to do PPE at Balliol College, but they fucked me over and I failed. Not that I'm bitter. But back in Barry, I didn't fit in.

Almost willfully so, you know, you might say. Which brought its problems. I mean, for one thing, I had no luck with girls, OK? And this is where the school situation comes in. Barry Boys County Comprehensive School, to give its full name, was the largest single-sex school in Europe, we were told. Not sure if that was true, but there were about 2,000 of us. And I genuinely believe that's child cruelty, separating everyone off like that.

Because between the age of 11 and 17, I barely knew any girls at all, which meant I couldn't relate to them. I didn't know how to act around them. I didn't have to talk to them. And I entirely blame the school system for that. And I think that, you know, trauma from that kind of lives on a little bit, really, throughout life. But in 1985, something miraculous happened. I finally got a proper girlfriend. What had happened was a group of my friends and a group of girls from Bryn Havron Girls' School down the road

had sort of gravitated towards each other and started hanging out. There were maybe 20 of us in total. And most weekends, there'd be someone whose parents had gone away or gone out for the night. And we'd all descend on their house for a party, you know, tins of woodpecker, bottles of Malibu and all that. But I was always the one left out when it struck snog o'clock, you know. And Move Closer by Phyllis Nelson came on,

which is why I said trauma when you mentioned that one. Until suddenly I wasn't left out. And I figured out the exact date. It was Saturday the 3rd of August. And it was the birthday party of a girl called Claire, who was very much the Marilyn Monroe of our little group. Everyone fancied Claire. I was no exception.

But it was tactfully conveyed to me, Claire thinks you're nice, but she thinks you're a bit weird. And fair enough, I was. So anyway, we all turned up at Claire's house with gifts of seven inch singles. That was the currency. If it's someone's birthday, it's all turned up with singles to give them. I remember I gave Claire, We Don't Need Another Hero by Tina Turner. And then I just sort of retreated to do my thing, which was leaning against the wall, looking tragic and misunderstood like the pathetic Smiths fan that I was. And of course, being a pathetic Smiths fan, other people's rejection made me feel vindicated. It just proved that they were shallow and superficial and I was superior.

But at some point during the night, I went to the kitchen to get myself a drink. And out of the blue a girl i'd never seen before sat on the sofa pinched my ass as i walked past which immediately solved all my problems right because i couldn't talk to girls but it didn't matter if someone pinches your ass yeah there's only one thing you can do and that's burst out laughing which kind of it shattered this tragically cool persona i was trying to create, you know. And it broke the ice. And bless her for being so forward, because it's not like I was going to make the first move,

you know what I mean? Yeah. So suddenly I had a girlfriend, and I wrestled with whether to give her name, but I'm going to. Her name was Wendy. And the amusement park rose bold and stark. Kids were huddled on the beach in the mist.

I wanted to die with Wendy on the street tonight in an everlasting kiss. Yeah, so we had very little in common. She had a horse and I didn't care about horses. She was obsessed with Pieros and I didn't care about Pieros. She liked Limahl and I liked Morrissey. But she was really nice, loads of fun to be around.

Most of all, we fancied each other and at that age i think that's kind of all that matters yes so you know we we spent the second half of 1985 just sitting on park benches snogging each other's faces off so basically in terms of girls i've gone from zero to a hundred i mean not wishing to be overly crude but i'd never seen an actual real life pair of tits in the flesh before you know and suddenly here they were all for me it was a lot to process. It was almost psychedelic, you know. Like Adrian Mould.

Yeah. I mean, seriously, I could relate to that. And Wendy had a poster of Pete Burns on her bedroom wall. So my first sexual experiences took place under the watchful eyepatch of Britain's most lovable bisexual. Of course, to whose cousin I am now married, weirdly enough. So it's funny how that's the circle of life right there and those those experiences took place to the sounds of now that's what I call music six so to this day I only need to hear that opening run of one vision by

queen when a heart beats by Nick Kershaw and a good heart by Fergal Sharkey and I'm triggered you know by the time it gets to lavender by Marillion it was game over I mean lucky if I got as far as Empty Rooms by Gary Moore if I'm honest oh man so so we've been going out for a few weeks uh when I had my 18th birthday party which was just a week before this episode of Top of the Pops in fact and uh I got together with this other kid called Soggy who shared my birthday and we held it at Feathers Nightclub over Barry Island's classic 80s disco name uh which was taking the piss because I'd already been going there for years telling the bouncers I was already 18 and suddenly I'm having my 18th birthday there but anyway and uh I remember Wendy walking in and some other girl was already sitting on my lap so it wasn't even someone I particularly

liked as I remember but there was a bit of a scene and I think we broke up for a few days and then we got back together again. We were always doing that. We were together for about 16 months on and off, which is an eternity when you're that age. When I went away to London for university, we did that whole cliché thing. It's such a fucking cliché of me solemnly promising we'd stay together. But by Christmas, I'd already dumped her

and started going out with someone I met at uni. Because men are trash, especially young men. Yeah, but women are like that, too. As soon as they're off to university, that's it. New world. Yeah, I guess so. So I don't feel so bad if you put it like that. But this very week when the Top of the Pops happens, I had been to a festival and it was a bit closer to home than the Fairport Convention one.

It was the Butlins Barry Island Festival of the 60s. And this is where, as long-term listeners will know, this is where I met the treacherous Steph the previous year. But this time around, her treachery was a distant memory because, as I mentioned, I had a proper girlfriend. So I don't care, treacherous Steph, you can't hurt me anymore, you know. Treacherous Steph's turn to cry. Yeah, right. So anyway don't care, treacherous Steph, you can't hurt me anymore, you know. Treacherous Steph's turn to cry.

Yeah, right. So anyway, I was working there at Butlins. I was carrying a wicker basket of cockles and muscles, a dead, a dead-o, you know, wearing a white coat and a little trilby. And my dad was working there as well that weekend. He was carrying a microphone and a massive tape recorder on a shoulder strap, interviewing the stars for Red Dragon Radio. and he also carried my autograph book everywhere

so i've got loads of signatures of those washed up 60s stars and i just wondered guys if i could get you involved a little guessing game here okay let's do if i tell you and maybe the listeners can play along but if i tell you that it was very much the second tier of 60s acts, as it would be being a Butlins festival. So obviously no Beatles or Stones, no Who or Kinks, no Monkees or Beach Boys. So we're talking the next level down, right? So if I give you three guesses each,

maybe we'll sort of do one at a time, one at a time, and see how well you do. There were 44 acts in total, so you've got quite a good chance. That next level down of 60s acts, who wants to go first? All right. Go on, David. Okay, Freddie and the Dreamers. 1-0 to David.

Obvious, obvious. The Tremolos. 1-0. The Searchers. 2-1 to David. The Swinging Blue Jeans. 2-1. Oh, my God.

That was going to be mine. Hang on. What did I say? Yeah, searches. Take your penalty, man. Jerry and the placemakers. 3-2 to David Sturbs. Have you got what it takes?

Okay. Well, I'm going to come out of left field here, and I'm going to say Leapy Lee. And it ends 3-2 to David Stubbs. There was no Leapy Lee. Leapy Lee. What a shit festival. Yeah.

That was a Chris Waddleman. That was right over the bar. Yes. So, yeah, that was quite tense. I enjoyed that. Yeah. It was, yeah, it was people like Swinging Blue Jeans, Jerry and the Pacemakers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, The Searchers,

Marty Wilde, Fred and the Dreamers, and Herman's Hermits. Oh, and Screaming Lord Such. I'll tell you who else was there. Peter Sarstedt was there. Aye. No. Yes. So I squandered the chance to accidentally on purpose

trip him up into the Olympic-sized swimming pool and performatively do a laugh. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. You had some acts who no longer had the full complement of members.

So there was Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch. Dave D had gone off to be an A&R man who was involved in signing ACDC, Boney M, Gary Newman. He appeared in the great rock and roll swindle as an A&R man. Yes, he was.

Alongside another real A&R man played by Chris Parry, manager of The Cure. A bit of a Chekhov's gun moment there, foreshadowing. This is my favourite one. There was The Tremolos and there was also Brian Poole, but separately. Yeah, Brian Poole with a different backing band called Black Cat. And you can imagine them glaring at each other from across the pig and whistle.

Or, you know, the real Tremolos throwing chips at Black Cat from the cable car ride, shouting, Who are you? Who are you? Was David Van Daze a Tremolos then? Yeah, basically. There were acts I would have loved to see, but I was probably shifting prawns and whelks to the boomers. I wish I'd seen Love Affair just to hear Everlasting Love.

I wish I'd seen The Trogs just to hear them put a little bit of fucking fairy dust over the bastard. I wish I'd seen The Fortunes just to hear Storm in a Teacup. And I wish I'd seen Edison Lighthouse just to hear Love Grows When My Rosemary Goes. And you'll be way ahead of me here. Edison Lighthouse were a 70s band, of course. And the festival of the 60s played fast and loose with the concept of 60s. Because there was also Mungo Jerry, Nottingham's Own Paper Lace.

Yes. And Les Gray's Mud. Good Lord. And I did see Mud, and this just freaks me out when I think about it. I wasn't bothered at the time. It blows my mind nowadays to think I was just stood there reeking of seafood, hearing them play Tiger Feet, and not particularly arsed, because now it's one of my favourite records of all time.

Just as well that the cat didn't creep in, eh, Simon? Oh, man, yeah. And the very least I could have done was go up to him afterwards and say, fuck Pertwee, fuck Stardust, fuck Keegan, fuck Bugner, fuck Prowse, fuck Tufty. You were the one who saved my life because I wanted to live to be ten. I got the picture. I took it from you.

Be smart. Be safe. Imagine that though, seeing loads of old bands from three decades previous. Thank fuck we don't do that now, eh? I know, right? Well, I'm still in sixth form at High Pavement College, but

this week I'm feeling absolutely jealous as fuck of my little sister because it's all kicking off at my old school. Article in today's Nottingham Evening Post. The scenes at a comprehensive school in Top Valley where 300 pupils staged their own demo over teachers' union strikes and eventually acted like irresponsible juveniles by stoning the police made it a sad

day for our education system fucking went on strike the kids at my old school amazing the main point 20 were arrested during the day and they could count themselves lucky to get off with a warning pupils organizing a bush telegraph between schools to make their demos bigger and more effective. Pupils arguing with teachers in public as if they were on the same level. And a teachers' union official alleging that somebody is behind this agitation

in trying to organise the children. I mean, come on. Can you imagine how fucked off I was to miss out on all this? Were there any flying pickets from other schools coming along to show solidarity? Well, on this very day, Simon, about half the school with other kids from other schools, from the Rodney Bennets of the area,

had all marched to County Hall on the other end of town. And there's an article in tomorrow's Evening Post that reads thusly. Children at Nottingham's Top Valley estate were back in their classrooms after a day of protest against the teachers' strike yesterday. About 400 children, mostly from the Top Valley area, marched to County Hall to present a petition complaining about the effects the prolonged dispute is having on their education. Well, that was bollocks.

I spoke to my sister about this and she just said, oh, no, we just wanted to bunk off school. Better than that than being anti-strike, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, from the Welsh perspective, it's just nice to hear that some people from Nottinghamshire actually went on strike in 1985. There was chaos yesterday when several hundred children arrived at County Hall. As County Council Leader Dennis Pettit tried to maintain order in the council chamber,

dozens of youngsters scrambled over the furniture while others shouted, catcalled and threw paper darts. The floor was left littered with plastic orange juice cups and broken biscuits. As the children dispersed, a team of four cleaners moved in to clear the debris. One of the pupils who helped set up the march said she was disappointed. It went badly. Many of the youngsters were just not under control, she said. I don't think coming here today has achieved anything. They just let me down. They were just a mob.

Yeah, I bet she came from Rice Park, the fucking posh estate on the other end of our school. But, oh, man, I was so upset that I missed out on all this. There was a similar kid strike a couple of years before i went to that secondary school and i remember seeing out the window my mom coming back from work and disarming a youth in flares and a star jumper who was running about wielding a big stick with a nail through it you know yeah serious times man music wise still listening to our favorite shop uh still

listening to the redskins yes buying loads of james brown and all that kind of stuff from record fairs and secondhand shops you know just not getting involved in this 1985 shit really because why would i yeah so chaps i do believe that it's time to go into the chart music crap room rummage through some boxers and pull out an issue of the music press from this very week. And this time I've gone for the NME, 5th of October, 1985. Would you care to join me on this journey? Yes, certainly would. On the cover, a nice painting of a bare-chested black man with an afro

raising his taped-up fist in the air for a Stuart Cosgrove article about boxing and soul. It's a weird front cover, that. It is. It's nice. It's a lovely fucking painting. Yeah, but it looks like Prince, didn't you think? This boxer looks like Prince. And it's got a purple cover as well.

So I did wonder how many Prince fans just bought the NME that week without looking too closely. I reckon it'd be quite handy. I mean, you know, he was little, but he was ripped, I reckon. Yeah. In the news, it's been a bad week for the men they couldn't hang a week before their UK tour, with all plans thrown into disarray

by the hospitalisation of singer-guitarist Swill Odgers. According to the NME, the band were having a drink in Dingwalls in Camden to celebrate the final mixes of their third single, Greenback Dollars, when Swill was attacked whilst nipping out of the club to make a phone call, leaving him with his jaw broken in three places and extensive bruising around the throat and chest. No one connected with the band has any idea what might have prompted the attack, but fears have been expressed that whoever did it was probably a martial arts expert

who aimed to damage the singer's vocal cords permanently. Him and Mike Nolan from Bucks Fears. It was a dangerous time to be a pop star, wasn't it? Yeah. The NME visited the unfortunate Swilling Hospital after an operation to reset his jaw, but obviously couldn't get much out of him, what with his jaw being wired up.

Although he demonstrated that he's been making the best of it by practising ventriloquism with a Dennis the Menace glove puppet. Possibly a plastic cover mount in the latest issue. Mick Jones, formerly of The Clash, has announced his new band, Big Audio Dynamite, and their debut release, the 12-inch single The Bottom Line. An LP called This Is Big Audio Dynamite is due out next month and gigs are in the pipeline.

In other Clash XL news, Topper Heaton is finalising his own solo album, Waking Up, after coming out of hiding early in 85 with a cover of Gene Krupa's Drumming Man. According to the NME, the LP contains a selection of classic dance numbers and autobiographical songs about his addiction to heroin and his successful bid to kick the habit. I remember a single off that called I'll Give You Everything being played a lot on Radio 1.

It's really fucking good. Seriously, because when I heard that description, selection of classic dance numbers and autobiographical songs about his addiction to heroin and successful bid to kick the habit. I just thought, fuck me. Imagine what that's going to sound like, the drummer out of The Clash. But you're saying it was actually pretty good? Well, the single's pretty good. Fair play to Topper.

Heed and Hayden Head and, yeah, good for him. Okay. Yes. Across the Atlantic, in the city that no one who lives there calls the Big Apple, Richard Grable files a dispatch from the sixth annual American New Music Seminar. It's the largest music industry convention in the world,

says Grable, offering the biz a chance to catch mid-afternoon sets by the Beastie Boys and John Sex or a rap battle between Roxanne Shante and LL Cool J. Oh, Shante would have battered him. Oh, yeah. But I want to know more about John Sex. Tell us about John Sex.

Any relation to John Pretty? Or Jeff Sex. Yeah. Yes. But his report paints a gloomy picture of the state of play. Independent labels have been entirely absorbed into the corporate structure of the music industry and can be marketed as an image and packaged as neatly as Madonna's navel

while the real indies are on the defensive, he writes Seminar highlights included Dick Griffey of Solar Records announcing that both his label and its distributor Elektra will now donate all profits from record sales in South Africa to organisations fighting apartheid. Jerry Damers flagging up the inherent racism built into the industry's chart-keeping practices and declaring that the music industry needs to put its own house in order. Frank Zappa and Dave March having another go at the PMRC describing the Record Industry Association of America's plans for voluntary compliance with the wishes of the Washington wives

as a toady in cave-in. Meanwhile, Claire O'Connor of Limelight and Chris Sullivan of the Wag Club had to stand up to repeated bullying from Hippodrome owner Peter Stringfellow on the nightclub's panel, with O'Connor revealing that Limelight is trying to open a London branch and Stringfellow has opposed all of their permit applications. What do they want me to do, Stringfellow asked? Throw them apart, eh?

Meanwhile, in the British indie label seminar, Tony Wilson of Factory offered his explanation of the slump in indie record sales in Britain in the British indie label seminar, Tony Wilson of Factory offered his explanation of the slump in indie record sales in Britain in the early 80s, blaming it all on music writers and an article by film critic Pauline Kael on Raiders of the Lost Ark. Paul Morley and Ian Penman had become bored with good music, Wilson claimed, and they picked up her theory of crafted schlock as art. According to Grable, the producers' panel,

featuring Jellybean Benitez, Mike Thorne and Arif Mardin, was boring as fuck, and the artists' panel, featuring Yoko Ono, Herbie Hancock, Jimmy Cliff, Deborah Harre, Adam Clayton and Martin Frye, were equally so bar the continuous interruptions from a tired and emotional Marianne Faithfull.

Faithfull kept screaming about the Washington Wives censorship campaign asking, Yoko, what are we going to do? I'm sure it's bordering on boredom to hear Yoko talk about peace and love again, said Yoko. That's a bit much from Tony Wilson.

I know. Paul Morley. Nonsense. The idea that, you know, even when the enemy was like selling what it was selling then, the idea that it could have that kind of tangible impact on sales, anything is complete rubbish. I just love this idea of Marianne Faithfull drunkenly yelling Yoko, what are we going to do? You know, which I can feel myself

wanting to incorporate into my daily speech patterns. Yoko, Yoko what are we going to do? The thing is about the Washington Wives though, again, versus Frank Zappa, frankly I have a bit of sympathy with the Washington Wives, you know, because the records that Zappa was putting out was just this crappy,utty shit you know and it's just like you know

in terms of like the whole censorship thing it's just like it's hard to defend on the ground is bollocks frank yeah sadly i don't think they're opposing zapper for his misogyny no you know yeah yeah yeah still in america the enemy reportsME reports that Vince Neil of Motley Crue is on his way to the big house as a result of the car crash that killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle Dingley late last year. After pleading guilty of drunken driving and vehicular manslaughter, Neil has been ordered to pay $200,000 to the estate of Dingley, $571,000 to Daniel Smithers, who was driving the other car,

plus another $1.8 million to Lisa Hogan, the other crash victim who spent several weeks in a coma as a result of the accident. Additionally, there's been a jail sentence of 30 days, after which Neal's on probation for five years and has been ordered to perform 200 hours of community service, hopefully in a decent band for a change. Neil would be released after 14 days on good behaviour and would take up motorsport in the early 90s. It's funny, Razzle, Raz from Hanoi Rocks,

I was reminded of him on a daily basis because a portrait of him hung above the rock and roll table at the Apporto where all the Melody Maker crew used to gather. Oh, was he mates with Clerky? Yeah, exactly. He was like the rock and roll table martyr. Who else was on the wall of the rock and roll table? It was him, really.

It wasn't like a whole kind of gallery. It was just him really. It wasn't like a whole kind of gallery. It was just him, you know, staring down from heaven. Rock and Roll Table sounds like a DIY show presented by Meatloaf, doesn't it? Yeah, or Roscoe's Roundtable. So you weren't well established there enough to start lobbying to have Stockhausen put on there? No, no, no. Oh, no, no. I didn't want to sort of tamper with the culture there.

Wham! Who are currently working on their next single, which is due out next month and is provisionally titled The Edge of Heaven, have quashed the rumours that they're planning a string of Earl's Court Christmas shows and emphasising that there are no immediate plans for a tour. Furthermore, it's been confirmed

that Andrew Ridgely will not feature in a Hollywood film being shot next spring the film is set in edwardian times and would have seen andrew playing the son of a wealthy aristocratic family said a wham spokesman andrew was offered a part but it was never finalized and the film company seemed to be having financial difficulties. Fucking hell, Andrew Ridgely finally vindicated. Well, yeah, it was actually an interview with him in the last big issue, and he was talking about his stalled acting career,

and he just said, you know, so the director just kept saying to me, why don't you just think about your mum dying? And he said, what's a terrible thing to think of? I wasn't going to think of that. That was it, really. I've just got to second what David said about the documentary, the Wham! documentary on Netflix.

I mean, I'm sure everybody's seen it already, but if they haven't, it is just a joy. It really is. The takeaway from it really is find yourself a friend who's got your back like Andrew had George's back, you know? But, you know, mostly I just kept finding myself laughing all the way through, not in a sort of mocking sneering way but just with pure joy because you know just the dance routines and the the utter camp of of their acts which i think sort of flew under the radar at the

time you know yeah so you know sitting on a floating lilo pouring cocktails into the swimming pool or putting shuttlecocks down their shorts and whacking into the crowd. It all just seemed like good sort of heterosexual fun at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also it really stresses, I mean, you tend to think of like Andrew Ridgely and Wham as being like Art Garfunkel, only mine is the voice sort of thing in terms of his contribution. But you mentioned that he was a really strong character, he was a really sharp wit, and it was really important that he be in the band. Yeah, I think he had a really strong idea of what Wham should be and also, yeah, it turns out that he

sort of wrote some of the melody or chords of Careless Whisper, so everybody thinks that George just put his name on the credits as a favour, but, you know, it seems like he earned his keep, put it that way. Because it was obviously a very, very early thing they did and I think that at the time it's like, you know, he was a bit older was Andrew Ridge at the time when that really, really counts

you know, and I think that he almost, kind of mentored George Michael to a degree. Yeah, yeah. It's fabulous. It's beautifully put together. It's beautifully edited, you know, like, you know, all of the old footage. It's, you know, it's marvellous. The stuff in China as well. I mean, that was...

Yeah. Yeah. Do you know about this other film that was made by Lindsay Anderson when they were in China? Ah, yes, yeah. It's called If You Were There, and it never got released because apparently there was hardly any wham in it.

Yeah, it was just a document about the Chinese people. Four songs by wham. You know, they've flown this director to China, and then he doesn't really bother putting them in the final cut. Instead, he was sort of going around just filming people's ordinary lives in China. And I think in order to see it, you've got to go to the University of Stirling. And that's the only place you can see it.

And yeah, I just really hope somehow whoever owns the copyright to that can get it together and actually get it released. Because I bet that would be interesting in its own right, even if there's precious little wham in it. There's precious little wham in it. In other Enormo gig news, Brent Council are taking Wembley Stadium to court over the sound levels at Bruce Springsteen's July concerts. At a meeting of the housing committee, Brent Councilers were told that the sound levels at Springsteen's gigs often reached twice the permitted volume and that the words and music were distinguishable half a mile away from the stadium. Well, that's a first, people being able to distinguish his lyrics. That's fucking hell, not to

Born in the USA. Yeah. I was born in the USA. Why don't you listen to the verses, man? When Brent Council takes over licensing arrangements after the abolition of the GLC next year, they will take enforcement action

against both the stadium and the promoter of noisy pop concerts and install electrical equipment that will give immediate warning when maximum noise levels are being reached. Wembley Stadium would not comment, reports the NME. And finally, in fuck all to do with music news, the Brewer Society have sent out a booklet informing publicans and their staff how to avoid falling foul of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act and losing their licence due to in-venue custard ganitre.

Resident-bent lynchers are now asked to watch out for pseudo-boozers who sit in the same dark corner table and frequently receive visitors. For where such activities were once a fairly innocuous province of Honest Burt, the friendly neighbourhood book air, today's denizens of the dark are apparently more likely to be the sort of business folk who are into skag rather than skull. Landlords are advised to inspect toilets frequently, especially late evening and after closing, and increase frequency of glass clearance and ashtray emptying from tables in order that the gloom cloak pushes and their clients shouldn't feel too secure.

The booklet also points out that bits of beer mats and foam upholstery can also be used to make filters for joints. Oh, man, imagine using a bit of fucking foam from a bar stool, man. Do you know what? I have seen pub chairs where the foam has been kind of ripped away, and I never understood why, but maybe that's it. Also, can I just say that Gloom Cloaked Pushers is a band name waiting to happen?

I mean, if they're not in next week's Chart Music Top Ten, then I don't know what, really. In the interview section, well, Bruce Dessau has a chat with Annabella Lewin, two years removed from her firing from Bow Wow Wow, and is back on the comeback trail as a solo artist called Annabella, and is disconcerted to discover that the interview has to be conducted with press officers in earshot.

Apparently a regular practice these days. Yeah, yeah. When asked about her old band and her ex-manager, she says, I was just a child then. I didn't know what I was doing. I can't believe that it was me that posed nude. RCA kept me and sacked the band

because they obviously thought I was the one who could be the most successful. And I am very grateful that they have had that faith in me. Maybe their decision was helped by the fact that you're a woman and an undeniably pretty one to boot, asks Dessau. Well, no, she answers, but the use of only your first name suggests to me that you were unimportant. You were simply a female body with a negligible identity, says Dessau, while the press officers start giving each other side eye

and the interview winds up. Press officers at interviews. Yeah. That's fucking not right. No, it's not. Have you had that? Yeah, yeah, I have. The first time it happened to me was TLC in the 90s.

Right. I remember them sort of telling me beforehand things I wasn't allowed to talk about. Such as? So the press officer before the TLC interview was telling me all these things I could and couldn't talk about. And what had happened was Lisa Left Eye Lopez was dating this American sportsman. I think he was a football player. Andre Rison. Rison, I think.

Rison, yeah. Andre Rison of the Chiefs. Yeah, and they lived in a big house together. For some reason, when he was away, she was obviously pissed off with him. And she got all his sports memorabilia and trophies, put it in the jacuzzi and set fire to it. And basically

burnt the whole house down. And there were, I think it was a front cover of Vibe magazine where they took the piss out of themselves, appearing in, you know, firefighter costumes. But, yeah, I was told, do not talk about the fire. Do not talk about the fire. My first question he asked is, how do you set fire to a trophy?

I know. So I thought, well, how am I going to get around this? You know, because I thought, Jonesy, the editor at Melody Maker, is not going to stand for it if I come back without questions about the fire. And of course, you know, my first question to TLC was, right, I understand there are certain things you don't want me to talk about. And meanwhile, the press officer is sat in the corner going puce, you know, and TLC just said to me, no, fuck it. We'll talk about anything, whatever you want. And I said just said to me, no, fuck it, we'll talk about anything, whatever you want. Yes.

And I said, all right, then, well, tell me about the fire. And they did. They just, like, told me all about it. You know, usually these edicts don't come from the band themselves. It's usually just overprotective PR people. Yeah. You had that, David. Nearest I've Got, it wasn't really a pop interview.

It was a feature I did for GQ with Ian Wright. And it was at some... God, no. It was supposed to be some sort of country club it was billed at. And it was basically a sort of sports centre

in Stanmore with a sofa that looked like it had been left out in the rain for several weeks. But anyway, it was supposed to be a feature about Ian Wright and some clothes

that he was modelling. I think it was Yves Saint Laurent or something like that. And they wanted the questions faxed over in advance. And I said to the guy, you know, the editor at GQ, it's not rubbish, isn't it? He says, oh, just send some And I said to the guy, you know, the editor at GQ, it's not rubbish,

isn't it? He says, oh, just send some questions and then on the day, you know, we'll talk about whatever. So I just made a list of utterly inane questions. You know, does your wife have any input into your clothing choices and all this rubbish, you know. So I get there on the day and Ian Wright turns up and sitting

in on the interview, not just a press office, but four other people, you know, representatives from the design company. And they're all sitting there clutching copies of these inane questions I sent over that I bashed out in two minutes. And actually, Ian Wright looked at me and he kind of said, we can talk around these, you know. And so that's why I started talking, something inane question, and then started digressing onto other topics, including racism, you know, and stuff like that. And Ian Wright would start talking, and then I'd get an intervention, and I said, from one of the people in the situation,

I've noticed that you've deviated from the questions, as we agreed. Fucking hell. I know. And Ian Wright, it was like, it wasn't the boss in the situation, apparently, you know. So I was like, fine, I've got a reasonable amount anyway, actually, at that point.

So then after that, I just very mechanically said, you know, does your wife have any input into your clothing choices? And the whole thing wound up. But it was just a shockingly ridiculous experience. I mean, just ask the questions yourself. Why waste my time? I've come to fucking Stanmore, you know. And that's about sort of 25 years ago.

Anecdotally, one hears that the situation's even worse now if you do manage to get an interview with a top-level footballer. Yeah, it's even more locked down, isn't it? But Ian Wright, I want to believe he was brilliant. Was he great? Yeah, he was cool. He was a nice bloke. He was cool. And when we're just talking about other stuff

than his wife's input into his clothing choices, it was interesting. I think it might even have been his manager that made the intervention. His manager was sitting in there. And it may just have been that when we started to talk about racism and stuff, that that perhaps was the... That's not going to shift no clothes, is it, though, racism? Yeah, yeah.

Unless you're selling white hoods. Simon Whitter links up with the dancey man of the hour, Colonel Abrams, who's in town to promote his new single Trapped and watches him bat away the accusation that he's modelled himself on Luther Vandross. No way! I admire him very much but I grew up with Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Teddy Pendergrass. I love Smokey Robinson's writing and the whole Motown era. I think Trapped could have been a Motown song. Its structure and lyrics are similar to what The Temptations would do with Dennis Edwards.

Womack and Womack chat to Stuart Cosgrove about their recent split with Elektra Records and how they're tentatively engaging with hip-hop. Elektra were treating us like meat, two steaks that they wanted to serve their way, says Linda. They wanted to remix our material. They wanted to tell us which vocals weren't right. They wanted to dictate our direction right down to the clothes we wore. I won't be too sad to leave Los Angeles. When asked about their new stuff, Cecil says, our new stuff is aimed at those too old to breakdance,

but too young to retire. If you're 60, it's a bit of a lie to say you dig hip hop, but it doesn't mean you have to give up either. It's so easy to stay stuck in the past, like signing Sam and Dave and re-recording Hold On, I'm Coming. We're not interested in being an old gold act.

We want new gold. I actually think that quote from, I think you pronounce it Cecil Womack. Cecil. Do apologise, Cecil. Yeah, I think that's actually an amazing quote. Too old to break dance, too young to retire. I feel like getting that made into a T-shirt, that's really got potential. Yes. I'm 60 and I

dig hip-hop. Yes. But then again, a 60-year-old in 1985, you know, who would now be well, God, who would now be 98, that's frightening. Probably wouldn't, I guess. Sean O'Hagan pays a visit upon the newest pop sensation from Scotland, Hip Sway, who are

very keen to let us know about their yearning to create classic pop. What we want is if you were to ask someone to think of their all-time favourite pop records, then say, now think of an 80s equivalent, we'd want them to say Hip Sway without hesitation. We want our records to be that good, says Johnny McElhone. We want everything we do to be right, including

the sleeves and stuff, because that's important in the 80s, as you have to compete with the Frankies and all, says Harry Travers. With time running short and the photo shoot not yet done, frontman Graham Skinner says, I hope we don't get laughed at. One time we were making this video up in Glasgow and I had to stroll down this deserted street about ten times till they got it right. I was just getting into it when this voice shouts out, what are you up

to, Skin, you big fucking poser? I'll never forget it. Felt like a right prick. These boys will go far, predicts O'Hagan reader they didn't you know what i actually thought they were pretty good hip sway um really just the three singles that that i had um the honey thief was the only one that was an actual hit but um there was ask the lord but the one that i thought was brilliant was uh the broken years which is a really amazing bit of kind of Scottish white funk. And

yeah, I think they were an underrated band. They're often sort of the name that sort of casually dropped to sort of mock the hubris of mid 80s bands who thought they're gonna be big, but weren't. But yeah, I thought they were decent. This week's Melody Maker cover star, Mike Scott of the Waterboys, finds time to sit down with David Quantick to chat about his new album This Is The Sea and is rewarded by a critical ambush. The sound you make is a crashing thing, an overstuffed mattress. Have you ever felt the desire to write something sparse, asks Quantick. I disagree with that, says Scott. You talk about the records being rough and spiky and the voice being shouty and all that. Well, if that's the way I am, that's cool.

Undeterred, Quantic starts having a go at the lyrics. Three LPs of almost unrelenting seas and mountains and churches and spirit and pagan places and big musics. Almost every Waterboy song seems to deal with an aspect of the big plan. The listener longs for the potterings of a madness or a Ray Davis among the small loves and everyday concerns of folks. Is nothing small in this big music, Mike? I just write songs about what I'm thinking about and must think about them in that way, counter Scott. People have written in that kind of language for centuries and will continue to, so it must be a valid language to express things that people feel can't really help you. Mike Scott, constantly trying to evoke some sense of the meaning of life and just ending up making a racket.

I like these three LPs, but they just aim and aim again and keep missing. Mike Scott will keep making a noise and not quite getting it right, and he'll keep banging the drum until no-one wants to listen any more, says Quantic as he walks away, shaking his head. Probably lights up a strand and walks off alone

while a harmonica plays. I just wonder if it was quite as confrontational as it's made out on the page. I mean, I wasn't a massive Waterboys fan, but I'm kind of sympathising with Mike Scott there a little bit because I'm not sure I did want to hear about the potterings of ordinary folk you know

I think it is valid to write in a kind of widescreen way and okay that wasn't to Quantic's taste but you know I'd rather hear something that's approaching the majesty of early simple minds or something like that than something that's really kind of quotidian if you know what I mean Yeah I was never particularly a water wars fan but there's

something slightly pointless i suppose about this kind of exercise it's like me going along interviewing and saying why aren't you the young gods and well i'm just not you know this is what i am you know maybe they should have said somebody that's you know remotely interested in me you know so it's a bit strange really at the same time, you just get the sense with these interviews that a lot of the writers at NME were just feeling that kind of dullness of 1985, that lack of momentum. And it's getting filled in by people like Mike Scott. So you can sense a sort of frustration from that point of view.

Meanwhile, Matt Snow heads to a diner in Greenwich Village to meet none other than Suzanne Vega and presumably have a coffee. Naturally, the first thing he does is to quote Robert Criscow's review of Joni Mitchell from The Village Voice in 1973. Then he starts having a go at her. Your songs embody a passivity which I find irksome because they're clothed in a language of fae self-absorption, long familiar from Joni Mitchell's Blue and onwards through the Me decade.

Vega, politely, tells him to fuck off. That's really interesting. I don't consider myself to be an aggressive person. I hold my ground. I've spent a lifetime holding my ground. The 70s make me realise that a song can't save you from your political situation, so a kind of cynical feeling of futility crept in. I felt very isolated, but in the back of my mind, I had the myth of a solitary person jumping a freight train and exploring the country and just having an acoustic

guitar and that did not include fancy costumes and making yourself a cartoon character. How are Dylan and Leonard Cohen allowed to be symbolic and I'm not? When Dylan sings I in a song he's talking for every man. When I say I in a song, people say, oh, she's talking about herself again, being precious again. I want to get beyond that. It's a bit rude, isn't it? It's weird that all of these interviews are all quite confrontational.

They're like Andrew Neil interviewing politicians. Yeah. You're shit. Why are you so shit? I could never do those kind of interviews. Not because, you know, I was a cow behind a tightrope who was going to do a coat down.

But it's just the pointlessness, the extreme social awkwardness of it as well. You're David Stubbs, the world's friend. Yeah. Well, you know, there's that as well. But, you know, I could never be able to do that. We just see the point. I think it's okay to take people to task for certain things.

But I don't understand what Suzanne Vega's done wrong here. Well, not being Joni Mitchell, I think. I mean, man, if you listen to something like Marlena on the Wall, I don't think she's being passive in that song. I think it's a brilliant bit of songwriting. I actually think she accounts for herself very well, actually. Yeah, definitely, as it turns out.

But yeah, I mean, it'd be one thing, say, to go and interview PJ Harvey, you know, and say, look, I love the records, I've had a chance to talk about them, but we have to talk about this fox-hunting business, you know, something like that. But when you're just going along and reading something and saying, look, I love the records, I found something to talk about them, but we have to talk about this fox hunting business, something like that. But when you're just going along and eating something and saying, look, I find you fundamentally useless.

Danny Kelly makes his way to a pub in Kensington to chat with Depeche Mode and first sits down for a one-on-one with a very K-lied Martin Gore. His tiny girlish frame is armoured from head to foot in creaking black leather. His platinum quiff has been squeezed like toothpaste through a hole in his otherwise shaven head. His make-up is ghostly white and thick.

His nail varnish iron cross black and chipped. He's taken up with a fraulein called Christine and deserted Basildon for the last stop on rock and roll's main line, Berlin. I'm quite a pessimistic person and I see life as quite boring. Our stuff is love and sex and drink against the boredom of life. I see love as a consolation for the boredom of life and drink and sex when we're on the road is consolation. Drinking is enjoyable and collapsing is enjoyable. Don't you ever feel like casting off the careful consideration of Depeche Mode's rise and do something extreme, disturbing or dirty, asks Keller. If I make boring records and people identify with them,

I've achieved my aim, replies a clearly shit-faced Gore. I wonder if Martin's dabblings in Berlin meant that he'd outgrown his fellow moders. At the moment, they're most worried about the way I dress. About my dresses, in fact. Maybe I'll get them all wearing them. When the rest of the band join in, Dave Gayen says we're very dependent on Martin's ideas, his writing, whatever his whim at the moment. That's what the songs are about.

We have to accept that. He has totally changed. Mark missed out on his teens, going out, seeing different girls every night and getting drunk all the time. He's living all that now. It's not a bad thing. Everyone should go through that phase, wearing tons of makeup and dresses. Now, if I want to go to a club, I just want to have a good time, not to shock. But Martin says that he hates going into the street and feeling normal.

He does enjoy it when we go through customs. And they asked him if he wants to go into the men's or women's cubicle to be searched. It's really interesting hearing from Martin Gore at that moment where he's just entering into that kind of goth phase, if you like, where he's experimenting with cross-dressing and he's writing about these kind of perverse, sadomasochistic sexual dynamics and so on. And hearing Dave Garn's perspective on it, which is that Martin had missed out on that in his teenage years, I found that really interesting.

And also just this suggestion that Dave Garn wasn't really on board with that. He seemed a bit like, oh, all right, mate, you do you. And he sort of got dragged board with that. You know, he seemed a bit like, oh, all right, mate, you do you, you know, and he sort of got dragged along with it. Yeah, because he apparently has no creative input. Yeah, that's the interesting thing. So he's not really got any choice, you know. It's like when Roger Daltrey, having to sort of be the mouthpiece for Pete Townsend all that time, you know.

And the other thing is, just from the NME's point of view, they've got an interview with Depeche fucking Moe, and it's not the front cover story. Instead, they've got a painting of a fictional boxer. What the fuck? Single reviews. In the chair this week is Gavin Martin, who tells us before the reviews start. According to Music Week,

3,000-odd singles have been released so far this year, which averages out at about 75 per week. This week the Christmas rush starts and there are 118 pieces of plastic vying for your attention. To cover them all would be a waste of my time and your money. So here's a selection from an industry in overload. selection from an industry in overload. Single of the week one, rightful heir, is Slaved to the Rhythm by Grace Jones. An undeniable jewel in Little Miss Maneater's crown, a definite monster.

Trevor Horn's execution matches the record's dizzying conceits. he's brought all the threads together into a real rich tapestry. Breathtaking. Single of the week two, Just Like Honey by the Jesus and Mary chain. A sulfurous French kiss, Spectre's symphonic dreams dragged screaming into a miasma of feedback and searing cackles from the best pop-titions of the day. Good pop music has always captured the zeitgeist as a matter of course, so it's no accident that along with the compulsive melody and sweetness, the JAMC plunder shocking a trophy, fear, waste and impotence no one else would dare. But it's a coat down, for this is England by the clash. Their first record in 700 years, and they manage to miss the real riots once again.

Still determined to slay the totems, bear the social ills, attend the wake of our crumbling banana republic. Strummer's rant bears all the signs of agic rocker well into a vancinility. Busking would appear a more fitting vocation. I mean, he's not wrong. No, he's not been wrong so far at all. Jimmy Somerville has wriggled out a Bronski beat, teamed up with Richard Cole and returned with the Communards.

But Gab doesn't reckon their debut single, You Are My World. It continues where the Bronskis left off with a few musical adjustments. Viennese tea party string section, the piano line from Queen's Seven Seas of Rye and an operatic vocal cadence, says Martin. All these elements are overloaded, overwrought and embarrassing in their attempt to attain qualities of reach and emotional pungency. It's hard not to cringe at the mega melodrama of I Will Follow You to the End of Time, I Will Be the Blood Throwing Through Your Veins, when sang with the usual hysteria and stride and say i'll pass also on the comeback trail fergal shark air with a good heart open brackets is hard to find

close brackets which martin reacts to in the same way as if he'd been shown the contents of a chimpanzee's nap air the first fruits fruits of his partnership with David A. Stewart see Sharky casting his vocal pearls to swine, blundering MTV rock out bombast. Remember the wit, the maelstrom, the magic of positive touch? Sharky sure helped me forget that in a hurry. Future number one single. Preposterous over-inflated pomposity

from a group that seems to have lost all sense of their roots, their aims and their proportion, says Martin of Alive and Kicking by Simple Minds. Fair enough. There's little semblance of a song here, just an exercise in U3 gushing. Jim Kerr sounds like he's been sick trying to clamber over the effluent of Megaton multitrack mad, churned out by the band and the clear mountain eye of I'm Production Follet. The closing howls could be a chorus of stadium yuppies and with a record this bad this brainless the cries may turn out to be

for their own funeral gambler by madonna is an up-tempo fm butch broad pose unredeemed by the superior dance track of into the groove or the flighty cheek of material Girl. Sweetest Taboo by Sade is a serious case of too much blamonge pulled down the listener's lughole from a one-dimensional singer with a lifeless sheen unable to zap or sting. As the column continues, Martin reviews get shorter and shorter. Closer to the Heart by Clannad, a hopelessly preppy piece of Barbara Dixon-style whinging. Just Another Night by the OJs, a drippy

candlelit ballad for two in a velveteen wall restaurant of your choice. Don't Look Back by Michael McDonald, an FM freeway romp ordinaire, and One of the Living by Tina Turner, Grace Jones for Headbangers.

I'd love to listen to Grace Jones for Headbangers, man. That'd be fucking mint. But he gets in a two-line shooing for Sweatbox by Wolfgang Press from the 4AD stable. An interchangeable bunch of ex-Maldeutschlanders and Cocteau-type people get together to produce the wearisome dirge that is customary from this label. Dance music if you're into leg irons. And he winds up with a review of the intriguing Only a Conservative Dream from Bernard Haywood on the Red Flag label.

conservative dream from Bernard Haywood on the red flag label. 40-year-old Vernon's contribution to scoundrel Kinnock's campaign trail, a piece of Lowry land mock released and financed by the Labour Party. It's aimed more at working men's than youth clubs, though I wonder if or lads will readily accept such blatant politic profiteering from the unemployment industry. I have a record collection and a political conscience, both of which will survive very nicely without this. Oh dear. The thing with that singles page, first of all, I think it's pretty well written and there's not a lot to disagree with in what you said there. But the presence of Grace Jones and the Jesus and Mary chain as his two singles of the week, both very different acts, but both reasons why I would have been thinking at the time

that all is not lost, you know. There were these sort of disparate strands that were, you know, still offering hope. In the LP review section, the lead review this week is given over to mad not mad by madness a bieber cop breaks the news to a nation of youths wondering if the nutty boys can still cut it in this the wrong half of the 80s entropy is colloquially speaking all energy being absorbed in a losing battle against irreversible decay.

The surface flakes and crumbles, despite all the frantic efforts to shore it up. Entropy really belongs to physics, but it aptly describes the physiognomy of Britain. Putting a brave smile on things when your insides are being eaten away by doubt, tears of frustration never far away. For a proper sense of the nation's increasing entropic state, you'd do no better than listen to a madness song, as no one else in popular music is presently reading Britain's physiognomy so accurately. If their turns have become more serious, their tunes imbued with a weightier sadness, it is because things have taken a turn for the worse.

When madness recalled the toll of the big issues on the spirit, the time has finally come to worry. For they are a valuable litmus test to the national sentiment. They are a valuable litmus test to the national sentiment. Mad Not Mad manages the impressive shuffle of being revealing and therefore bleak and light-footed both at once. I think he likes it. It's funny, knowing Beavercott, he's perhaps about the last person in the world you can imagine sort of bouncing around in tight trousers

and white socks to House of Fun. Doing the bummer's conga. That's right, yeah. But I think he kind of makes a point there, in a way, about a group like Madness are actually reflecting that sort of sense of just things sort of slowing down and kind of bleakening, you know, and I guess they probably do mirror that at that point.

Some good tunes on that album, Yesterday's Men. Oh, yeah. Do very well, yeah. ABC have returned with their third LP, How To Be A Zillionaire. But Adrian Thrills skips the hearts and flowers, skips the ivory towers.

It has one or two moments, but that's it. The orchestras of Lexicon and Flaming Axes of Beauty Stab have given way to a billion pounding beatboxers, brass staccato slabs of rhythm and spongy, grungy dollops of fearlight and emulator. The new ABC are gaudily excessive and Zillionaire is a simply not very good record.

I think that's the sort of misunderstood and underrated phase of ABC that it's one in which they kind of presented themselves as human cartoon characters in a way that gorillas would do later on and they were adopting kind of retro kitsch in a way that I think D. Light picked up on later on

and stuff like that and I think the title track How To Be A Millionaire, is a pretty great single. You know, I've seen the future, I can't afford it. It's a great opening line for a song. I think it's just in 1985 the looming, sort of towering achievement of Lexicon Of Love is

still, you know, it's very much in the shadow. I mean, it still is. They're touring Lexicon Of Love on its 40th anniversary now, you know, playing Brighton next year. And who can blame him, really? If you've got an album that good, rinse it. Einstürzen der Neubauten. David, help me.

Einstürzen der Neubauten. Have put out their third LP, Half Mensch, which makes Sean O'Hagan go off on one. The collapse continues. The noise of a nervous system under attack. the sounds and struggles of a body disintegrating. Almost the entire landscape of half-mench maps out a world where death is enticingly close, is another flirtation, is waiting for an unlucky throw of the dice or a final turn of the screw. Nor about an event at a place few others choose to explore. Not so much because of the subject matter, but more through an instinct that is pursuing such bleak paths

leads to an emotional, spiritual and artistic impasse. Where do you go when you plumb the depths? The virus continues to spread and the collapse continues. Yes, sure, but can you tap a toe to it? Is that any good, David, by the way? Because you'd know. Yeah, particularly the title track, yeah, which is just a sort of like

a purely choral vocal piece. It's superb. Electro 9, the latest Street Sounds compilation, is out now featuring Doug E. Fresh, the Fat Boys and Mantronics, and Simon Witter spins on his head with glee. You might not like what the entrepreneurial capitalists at Street Sounds are selling, but you can't deny that they're the most on-the-ball compilers ever. ever. They're also by necessity very streetwise, championing the critically unfavoured electro phenomenon which, despite bad press, is decidedly happening. The LP is stronger than their previous electro LPs, the cuts are also hotter, having been picked up with a speed that will madden

the nation's import dealers. Electro 9 confirms and pins down exactly where Electro is right now. If it's your bag, this is the real beef. Yeah, Morgan Kahn was really onto something, you know. Those Street Sound compilations were very exciting every time a new one came out. And in a very quiet week for LP releases, Leave the Best to Last by James Last finds

itself being reviewed by Stuart Crosgrove. James Last would be perfectly at home at an SDP conference. Ooh, sick burn. He's bland, short on ideas, and sits comfortably on the fence somewhere between Muzak and orchestral

pop. Jimmy has a massive David Owen factor, a high rating in the middle-aged opinion polls, and the kind of swept-back hair which simultaneously tries to be young and old. Polydor liked to boast of last ubiquity. Apparently, he is known to 93% of the German population. Less people know Hitler. But what's his line on cruise missiles? A bit like Owen, soft options and silent night. Since when has a cover version of Hooray Hooray It's a Holly Holiday

been the best unless you're lying pissed on a beach near Parma? Culture Club's Karma Chameleon and the Bushy Boys' Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go come ready primed for the James Last treatment. Easy listening. Just swap the Catherine Hamnet strides for a pair of golfer's leisure pants. And lovers of black lace will have to stomach

Agadou rubbing shoulders with John Lennon's tiresome Imagine and another predictable romp through his self-celebratory signature tune, Do The Conga, the song that guarantees reptilian dancing at his live concerts. Oh, man, I would love to hear a fucking mash-up of Agadou and Imagine.

Yeah, of course, ten years later, hipsters couldn't get enough of 80 listening cover versions. Yeah, exactly. Pop hits. In the gig guide section, well, David could have seen Ornette Coleman at the Forum, but might have preferred to spend the same evening in the company of Fred Rickshaw's hot ghoulies

at the Knightsbridge Grove or dump his rusty nuts at the Marquee. Later that week, he could have checked out Gary Glitter at Mile End Queen Mary College, Joe Boxers at King's College and perhaps actually did see Jurati Column at Greenwich Theatre, but probably didn't. David?

Unfortunately, I didn't get along to that. And, you know, it was nearby as well. I saw Sun Ra that year. Oh. That autumn, yeah. Taylor could have seen Gary Newman at Birmingham Odeon, Joe Boxers at Birmingham Powerhouse, got his corpse paint on for Venom at the Birmingham Odeon,

or his tam on for Tipper Eyrie and Pato Banton at the Birmingham Triangle Arts Centre, rounding off the week to have a good scream at Davidid cassadair also at the birmingham odian sarah could have seen the membranes at sheffield's george the fourth hotel a certain ratio at sheffield pollard seen the fall support the long riders at sheffield unair the water boys at leeds pollard or gone none more goth with balam and the Angel at Leeds Warehouse. Al could have seen the Waterboys at Rock City, Van Morrison at the Royal Concert Hall,

or the Spinners at the Royal Concert Hall. Neil could have seen Joe Boxer's skint video or the Flaming Mussolini's at Tory Shitter Warwick University, Streetlight at Wrighton Bridge, Dave Berry at the Jaguar Sports Club, and pretty much fuck all else. And Simon could have seen John Hegley at Cardiff University Union, Billy Connolly at St David's Hall,

and wound the week up with everything but the girl at Cardiff Uni. Can I just say, Balam and the Angel, the only goth band named after two tube stations. Of course. I actually didn't go and see John Hegley in Cardiff, but I met him once and it didn't go well. Oh no.

Yeah, what happened was, my girlfriend in the late 80s, early 90s was a fan of his so I was familiar with his work, you know, the album was played around the house. And he had this song called Eddie Don't Like Furniture. Yeah. Which is very memorable, very catchy. What happened was, like, years later in the noughties,

I went to see the actor-turned-country singer Billy Bob Thornton do a gig at the Union Chapel in London. And I was invited downstairs into the basement, which was a sort of green room slash dressing room, beforehand to meet Billy Bob. And there was no furniture in the dressing room. Tables and chairs all being completely... It's a really big room, but there were no chairs.

And somebody sort of signed up to me and explained, he's got this phobia of furniture. And I thought, oh, my God, it's like the John Hegley song. So I stored that information away. And then I happened to see John Hegley play a show at the Red Lion Theatre pub in Islington. And I went up to him and said, John, this really weird thing happened once.

You know your song, Eddie Don't Like Furniture? Well, I met Billy Bob Thornton and I told him this whole story about how Billy Bob Thornton didn't like furniture. And he looked at me, John Hegley, like I was completely insane. He started sort of shrinking away from me, like I'd said something completely mad and I was really, really disappointed.

In the letters, Paige, well, gas bag has been handed over to Neil Taylor who discovers that the main topic of conversation this week is how much the readership hates Neil Taylor, who discovers that the main topic of conversation this week is how much the readership hates Neil Taylor. Yeah, you know, I think Neil Taylor's much maligned, you know. I mean, it's not cool that he broke Seamus Coleman's leg back in 2017. I was there, and what he did led to quite a tense and terrifying atmosphere that night in Dublin. But what you have to balance against that is the fact that he also gave me one of the best nights of my life the previous year in Toulouse,

when, much to his own amazement, as well as everyone else's, he scored against the Russians. And, oh, wait, not that Neil Taylor. Sorry. One for the Welsh football heads out there. It is comforting to know that once in a while you serious rock critic type persons relax from discussing the merits of post-modernist, neo-structuralist, post-stoicism in modern day society or some such. Step down from your ivory tower and visit an actual rock and roll gig to get on down with us morgles, writes Ricky Hill

from Deptford. At a recent That Petrol Emotion spotted Cowboys hoedown at the old Tiger's head, Lee Green, luscious, pouting wild man of rock Neil Taylor, was seen to really let his hair down. Yes, he strode seductively past the rows of bopping funsters at the front of the audience, stopped right in front of the stage, took off his shoulder bag and removed his shirt and pogoed madly like a man possessed. Ho, ho! No, of course he didn't.

Our extremely hip and cool man of the people proceeded to take out his Winfield Cup reporter set and from there on in spent the whole of the set taking notes. What a rocker, what a fan, what a prat. Yeah, taking notes. Imagine that journalist being diligent enough. Because if you don't take notes, they'll just write to you and say, oh, were you even at the same gig?

You've, you know, said nothing about what happened. Also laying into Mr Taylor is Paul Haywood from Bristol, who writes that he is mostly thankful, but sometimes sad. That's the way NME makes me feel. Revulsion takes over when your cynicism gives way to savagery and hysterical viciousness. Richard Cook is right. To Neil Taylor, 100% of everything is shit.

Presumably, the man has self-respect, yet he can write of Ian Curtis. Thankfully, the dead pop star can't make records anymore. Very selective, Neil. However, it's simply not true that Neil Taylor hates everything, as Stig from Dundee attests. This has gone far enough. Week by week I have watched as each new creation

act has been paraded through the pages of your rag. Each more brattish, arrogant and untalented as the one preceding it, and each granting Mr Neil Taylor an exclusive interview. It is time Mr Taylor showed himself to be the thing I suspect, i.e. either on the payroll of creation,

a close friend of McGee, and or the Mary Chain, or simply misguided. Granted, there is little or no new music to get excited about at the moment but that is no excuse for giving space to dross mr taylor continues to come up with any dross that pervades from east kilbride in its environs and the enemy prints it as As Creation and Taylor are no doubt aware, this is a whole lot cheaper than advertising. Who is

this new recruit, Neil Taylor, whose outpourings have started to decorate the NME? Asks Brian Savage from Battersea. In the last couple of weeks, this writer has informed us that the Bunnymen are dreadfully run-of-the-mill. The Cocteau twins

appalling, everything but the girl atrocious, and Elvis Costello an ageing bore, all in the middle of articles or reviews of other groups. Of course, there is nothing wrong with holding these opinions on such NME readers' favourites, but merely slagging off name groups for the sake of it seems silly, pointless and not at all original. Would it not be better when hiring young graduates to write for the NME to find those who can mix genuine enthusiasm for popular music with constructive criticism?

Mmm. Please thank Neil... Fucking hell, what a pylon. Yeah. Please thank Neil... Fucking hell, what a pylon. Yeah. Please thank Neil Taylor profusely for his witty article on how much he hates all musicians, writers and record companies. Well done, Neil,

writes Quentin Bissell from London. Perhaps in future he can voice his opinions in the local pub so folks can hear them for free instead of wasting 45 pence. And finally, we have Neil Taylor makes me puke. Love, Marco Croydon. Fucking hell.

Oh, man. Did you ever get such a slagging in the letters page? Yeah. Oh, it was great. I mean, a coat down was like, it's like the bebop jazz generation. You know, every time they got sort of slated by these kind of you know trad jazz music there were little badges of honor like being on the daily mail's woke watch list exactly no it was great it just felt like a vindication because it was usually dellards and they're usually writing in a very

you know there's usually usually the thing was like i believe you might have been to a different gig altogether you know there's a lot of that I mean, I've already said that when I wrote for the Barrington District News, Simon says, I loved it if people wrote in angrily, so how dare you say, you know, the Smiths are better than the Beatles. And it was the same at Melody Maker. I'm sure Neil Taylor would have been sort of

digging through that mailbag looking for anything with his name on it. It's only human to do so, I think, you know. Oh, of course, yeah. I've just got one here, actually, because it was somebody sort of trying to do a kind of like a comedic conceit

which is fair enough I think I'd given I was never much of a fan of Theatre of Hate stroke Spirit of Destiny Kirk Brandon oh and the Spirit of New Kindness

apparently he's not been well lately but he's on the mend so you know big shout out to him big go all soon all is forgiven yeah but anyway I'll try and do it in the owl voice if I can so anyway He's on the mend, so, you know, big shout-out to him. Yeah, big go, all suits. All is forgiven, yeah.

But anyway, I'll try and do it in the owl voice if I can. So anyway, you know, it's a riposte. So basically the review, I was effectively making out that Kurt Brannan was a dead horse, and I think I extended the metaphor to kind of tins of meat in Brussels supermarkets or something. But anyway, so I think this is what inspired this. So anyway, sorry. Picture the scene.

Ten minutes before the Grand National is due to begin and Willie Carson's horse drops down dead. Willie sprints instantly to the stables to find a replacement. Only two horses remain. The mighty Brandon and Stubbs the Sap.

Willie has to choose between the two. I need a horse that can bounce back whenever down. The mighty Brandon neighs. I need a horse which won't give up no matter what the odds are. The mighty Brandon neighs again. But what about you, Stubbsy? Willie asks. I'm afraid I won't be much good,

he says. People laugh at me all the time. All I do is make myself look silly, but I don't mind really. Once a failure, always a failure. And with that, Willie rides off into the distance on the mighty Brandon to storm home first in the race,

while Stubbs the Sap is left to contemplate what might have been. There you go. That's how to extend a metaphor. Jeez, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Stubbs the Sap. Yeah, very chastening. Yes.

But that was in 1987, so there you go. He's not the only enemy, Giorno, that gets coated down this week, however, in the wake of Stephen Wells' interview with Steve Wright the other week. Did Wells get paid for rewriting the 1984 slag-off of Steve Wright, asks John Carr from nowhere. I hope not, because he's offered me no new insights into the DJ. What it boils down to is that Wells can't stand Wright's show. Big deal.

Whatever anyone thinks of Wright's show, it does bring pleasure to millions. In fact, most of my mates love it, and they do not read the NME. Obviously, Wells feels himself above Steve Wright. But what is the man of the left's contribution to society? A, he goes on tour with Billy Bragg. B, he writes for the NME. C, he used to attempt humour on Whistle Test. I remember Steve Wright saying how disgusting it was that unemployed people were forced to live on £20 a week. That will have more impact than any number of smart slaggings from someone like Steve, man of the people, Wells. Perhaps he'll provide some witty response to this letter,

being the man that he is. Reader, he doesn't. Just a note to tell you that at least one long-term reader of your paper does not appreciate the amount of space you're currently allowing Stephen Wells. It is becoming increasingly obvious that he cannot wait for blood to be spilt. The most trivial and yet illuminating example of this macho attitude occurred when Mr Wells poked fun at a correspondent who used the word crap in his letter. Mr Wells' reply, you tinker, obviously meant to put this wimp, read, non-macho, reader in his place for not swearing vigorously enough. Yours, violently, vigorously enough.

Yours violently, Paul Kennedy, Liverpool. Matt Snow also comes under the microscope in a letter from a dickhead of Manchester who writes, there are dickheads and dickheads and Matt Snow is a dickhead. And finally, someone remembers that the NME is a music paper and writes about the new direction of Dex's Midnight Runners. Kevin Rowland, you have the mind of a retarded skate.

The dress sense of the jerks I used to work for in the stock exchange. And your music has fallen to bits. The Emperor's new clothes indeed. For four years I was Dex's number one fan, but I'm into CND. My parents used to live in Notting Hill, and if you call me scum, I'll kick your fucking head in, turbot brain. Seems like quite a few music journalists have been fooled, though. Ha!

Reminisce Part Two, awful, writes Attila the Stockbroker of Essex. 64 pages, 45p. I never knew there was so much hatred of Neil Taylor in it. Attila the Stockbroker used to write quite a lot of angry letters like that. You know, the punk poet. I don't think he was really quite with the programme of the 80s NME. I remember there was one time where he just got so enraged that

at the end of the letter he said, what are you even talking about? He said, you've said it now, you've done it now, Morley. You've done it now. You've pissed on whatever reputation you have, you piece of scabby... And that was the end of the letter to the top row. What's he done? What are you referring to exactly? I think I actually know what he was referring to as well,

because the previous week Paul Morley had interviewed he talked about Simple Mind and he referred to them as think actually know what he was referring to as well because the previous week paul morley had interviewed um uh he talked about simple mind and he referred to him as being post abba rather than post punk and i think that's what really kind of got him going but he was so seething with like rage he couldn't even bring himself to you know specify the complaint but uh yeah this it's interesting hearing that that is the actual attila the stockbroker because i've run into him down here. He lives, you know, some Sussex. He's, I think it's Southwick, right next to Brighton. And I met him once at a Labour Party event. And the letter signed from Essex, that's the only thing that threw me.

But anyway, yeah, this letter, what it's specifically referring to is This Is What She's Like, which is the 12-minute epic from the Don't Stand Me Down album. And it's a song on which Kevin Rowland tries to describe the woman he loves by listing what she's not like. And a lot of it is about class antipathy. He says the English upper classes are thick and ignorant, but he also hates the nouveau riche he calls them newly wealthy peasants with their home bars and their hi-fis and he has a go at people who put creases in their levi's and people who use expressions like tongue in cheek people who use words like fabulous who describe nice things as wonderful and the line that's pissed off Attila here is the line,

you know those scum from Notting Hill and Moseley, they call the CND. The thing with that is, it upset me at the time as well. I remember I was a very pro-CND teenager and I felt seen, I felt criticised, I felt attacked. And it's not as if Kevin Rowland himself is some sort of hawkish pro-nuclear warmonger you know i mean

he's a jeremy corbyn supporter for fuck's sake he's very much of the left and all that but what he's doing there it's not about the belief so much as what that belief is a badge of and the sort of people who wear that badge if you know what i mean because sometimes i don't know if you feel this as well about anything but sometimes the most aggravating people are the ones you basically agree with. So, for example, I'm massively pro-Europe and I was massively pro-Remain. But if I see FBPE on someone's Twitter bio,

my hackles go up. I can't help it. I don't know why. My guard is up, at least. Let's say that. FBPE? Oh, is it Fuck Brexit Pro Europe? Right.

Yeah, yeah. And it's become a thing that people put in their Twitter bios, you know. And the same with Ukrainian flags. Now, obviously, I'm a supporter of the Ukrainian cause. But there are certain things which are signifiers of nicey-nicey liberal centrism, you know, and I don't get along with those people as Kevin didn't, even if I'm 100% in agreement with them on certain causes, you know, fuck Brexit, fuck Putin, you know. Kevin, CND supporters from Moseley and Notting Hill were the 80s equivalent of that. And this idea of alienating the very people you agree with is something that totally fits with Dexys and their mentality at the time. I mean, for a start, even in a world, you know, the mid 80s, a world of left leaning soul based pop. Kevin didn't want anything to do with the the rest of the left-leaning soul-based pop groups he always wanted to stand alone and he didn't even want people to agree with him this sort of perversity of it that um if you go back to the two rye a album and the track liars a to e that's all about he doesn't want his fans to follow him and to copy him to be like him

so it's almost like i'm not saying his mind worked this way but it's like you know dexys fans are probably sort of like you know cnd supporters or whatever i'm gonna really fuck them off and if if dexys lost the support of attila then you know fuck it it was worth it but but but you know what i mean though that that thing about just feeling this antipathy towards your nominal allies. Yeah, 1985 there. Yeah. So what else was on telly today? Well, BBC One kicks off at 6am with a 50-minute CFAX data blast. Then it's breakfast time with Frank Boff and Debbie Greenwood.

Then it's the morning session of the final day of the Labour Party conference from Bournemouth. Then it's play school. Then it's back to Bournemouth. Afternoon's afternoon. It's Pebble Mill at one. Okie-kokie with Don Spencer and Chloe Ashcroft. And back to Bournemouth for another two hours. At five to

four, it's up our street, Super Ted and Beat the Teacher. Then it's Cheggers plays pop with bernadette nolan and depeche mode fucking hell depeche mode on cheggers plays pop working it oh martin gorby aged himself after john craven's news round janet ellis nips over to darwin to talk to the survivors of cyclone tracer who flattened the place on Christmas Eve 1974. Then it's the six o'clock news, followed by regional news in your area.

You know what, Al? I think, you know, even if my home had been destroyed ten years earlier by a cyclone, I think meeting Janet Ellis would have cheered me up. Definitely. And seeing it on TV as a teenager would also have cheered me up. But one thing you skipped over in the listings there, it was straight after Blue Peter,

Rolf Harris cartoon time. Oh, did I miss that? Yeah, yeah. And that would not, see, that would not cheer me up. No. So you've got light and shade there from the BBC Kids programme. All human life is here. BBC Two commences at 6.30am with geometry, axioms and energy closing

the gap in Open University then closes down for an hour and 40 minutes, springing back at 9 for a 36 minute CFAX data blast. Then it scores programmes all the way to 3 o'clock, followed by a 50 minute CFAX

data blast before they pick up the last knockings of the Labour Party conference. After another 25-minute CD, it's the new summer air, followed by Jeremy James and William Hartson who take us to Moscow for an update on the World Chess Championship. Then Captain Kirk and Spock get trapped in a dungeon by a woman who can turn into a giant cat or something in Star Trek. And we're now 10 minutes into a repeat of the adventure game. ITV starts at a quarter past six with Good Morning Britain, followed by a concentrated dollop of schools and colleges programs until noon.

Then it's the giddy game show Puddle Lane, The Sullivans, The News at One and Regional News in Your Area. After a repeat of Falcon Crest and the Home Cookery Club, we're treated to the first semi-final of the Goya Snooker Matchroom Trophy and Horse Racing from Newmarket.

Then it's Regional News in Your Area, a repeat of this morning's giddy game show Doris, Scooby Doo them and us, Blockbusters Crossroads and they've just started Emmerdale Farm where Amos Brearley starts

troubleshooting at the wool pack and makes a dog's arse of everything as usual Amos Brearley was the funniest ever soap opera character for me bar was the funniest ever soap opera character for me, bar none. The greatest ever soap opera creation. Channel 4 actually gets out of bed

at a decent hour for a change, all the better to provide their coverage of the Labour Party conference at half nine, before closing down at noon for an hour and a half, and then going back to Bournemouth for the rest of the afternoon. At five o'clock, they run The Lion of Judah,

the 1983 two-hour-long documentary about the fascist invasion of Ethiopia, and they've just started Channel 4 News. Not much there that's leapt out at me and brought back sweet memories. Apart from the giddy game show i used to like that bernard breslow being a gorilla i never heard of that probably one of the last things he ever did really game over i'm impressed that you found anything out about the

lion of judah i looked it up on imdb and there's nothing you know not from 1983 anyway uh which is the owner listings i just presumed it's rastafarian propaganda from the loony left Channel 4, you know. Channel 4 was still Channel 4 then, wasn't it? Yeah, Lennon bombing a Rastafarian. Yeah. Al, you mentioned Super Ted. Super Ted's from Barry, you know. Really?

Yeah, yeah. Well, Mike Young, who invented Super Ted, is from Barry. He was at school with my mum, actually, which meant that Super Ted was the most famous person from Barry when I was growing up. I mean, nowadays there's Derek Brockway, the weatherman, who I was at school with. There's Mike Bubbins, the comedian.

There's that woman who was Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard. And in fifth place is probably me. Barry's not overly blessed. None of you are as good as Super Ted, though. No, absolutely. Can any of your lot fly? I don't think so. Well, I used to tell people I could when I was about 10 years old,

but that's a whole other story. All right, then, Pop Craze youngsters. It is time to go way back to October of 1985. Always remember, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget they've been to Top of the Pops. And welcome to Top of the Pops for the very first time to Paul Jordan. Thanks very much indeed, Gary. Have we got a great show for you tonight? It's seven o'clock on Thursday evening, October the 3rd, 1985,

and Top of the Pops, about to broadcast its 1,123rd episode, has spent the year adopting to the choppy waters of the Michael Grade reformations. After beginning the year ensconced in its usual post-Tomorrow's World slot, After beginning the year ensconced in its usual post-Tomorrow's World slot, enjoying the 40 to 45 minutes it deserved, it was all change in late February, when the timescale was chopped to a rigid 30 minutes in order to accommodate the launch of EastEnders, whose first episode pulled down 13 million viewers,

which wasn't that brilliant in 1985. Desperate to get his flagship drama series into the top 10 of the ratings, Grade mashed up the schedule, moved EastEnders to 7pm, and pulled our favourite Thursday evening pop treat up to 8 o'clock, which saw the former drop to 8 million as it was in direct competition with Emmerdale Farm, and the latter lose its faction of pop-crazed, extremely youngsters who needed to go to bed at a decent hour, especially on the last Thursday of June, when Top of the Pops didn't start until 8.30pm. Upset that his bi-weekly slab of cockney misery was losing viewers to rural issues

great shuffled the deck again and on september the 3rd top of the pops began at 7 p.m as the prelude to whatever was going on in albert square that week a format that would stay in place for the next 11 years before it was dumped into the Friday evening schedules. Long story short, chaps, Top of the Pops is being fucked about within 1985. That's not right, is it? It definitely isn't. And EastEnders is another thing.

You know, Live Aid ruined everything. Ruined soap. Ruined Top of the Pops. Even Coronation Street felt he had to get more miserable in order to kind of keep pace with EastEnders and started having kind of stupid, spurious kind of character shifts and regular characters turning out to be wife beaters after about several years, you know?

All that kind of nonsense. Yeah, EastEnders ruined everything. And Top of the Pops. And it's just really thoughtless of them to hack it back to 30 minutes. How are we meant to get seven hours of podcast out of a mere 30-minute television programme? You know what I mean? It can't be done.

Absolutely, yeah. Have I said this before? I used to own Michael Grade's computer. What? Yeah. When I bought my first personal computer in the 90s, Apple Macintosh LC2, I got it from a company in Reading called Second User Mac Systems,

who had somehow got hold of a load of old Channel 4 stock, clearly. And I expected all the discs to be wiped and everything, but I plugged it in and started looking about. And yeah, it had previously belonged to Michael Grade. And I was like, I know, I was so excited, thinking I might find something, some dirt that might, you know, back up Chris Morris's famous interstitial subliminal frame that said, Grade is a cunt.

Was that a screensaver? Yeah. Sadly, and really boringly, all that was on there was a load of folders with plans for Channel 4 schools programmes. Oh, fucking hell. I know. I thought there was going to be some real juicy stuff on there, but yeah, that's my claim to fame, my link to Michael Gray.

Furthermore, after 24.5 million people in Britain sat in front of the telly for Live Aid, which was the biggest television audience of the year in the UK in 1985, it's beginning to dawn upon the television industry that folk rather like watching music TV, and they want more of it, meaning that Top of the Pops is no longer the only game in town. The new series of Whistle Test started last Tuesday. Billy Idol, Squeeze, The Long Riders and John Parr. Channel 4 is putting

out the final episode of Bliss, presented by Muriel Gray, with performances by Sade, The Cult and Jessie Ray, with King Kurt modelling the latest in cycling gear, and Soul Train, with Jeffrey Daniel introducing Loose Ends, Ashford and Simpson and the Stylistics. The new series of The Tube kicks off next Friday, with Pete Townsend, Dexys Midnight Runners, Depeche Mode, The Thompson Twins and Madonna. But the big event of this week musically happened on Tuesday night on ITV when the white hot sounds of the mid 80s clashed with the cold realities of real kids issues. From the Daily Mirror television pages, chaps. ITV, 8pm, Elkie and Al gang. Song and dance show based on the day in the lives of some unemployed young people

on their way to an Elkie Brooks concert. They amuse themselves with various routines from ballet to break dancing and on their travels meet jemma craven an american singer sam harris whoa chaps you know i've wasted so much of my valuable time trying to source a video of this but oh sadly to no avail oh but would you care to guess where it was set not in him well i automatically assume liverpool because everything on the telly about unemployment was set there in the eights but yes simon i was fucking appalled to discover that the gig was filmed at central's lenton lane studios in nottingham the home of Bullseye and The Price is Right. Fucking hell, man.

The cradle of pop delivers once again. Who thought that the unemployed youths of the 80s craved Elkie Brooks? Yeah, this is the reality of it. Everyone thinks they must have been sort of, you know, going to see the Style Council or something, you know, a band who would show solidarity with their plight.

But no, it was Elkie Brooks. No, the one the one pulls a singer yeah and and all her looks so your hosts this evening are gary davis who's still holding down the early afternoon slot between simon bates and steve wright and is still recovering from radio one's 18th birthday party three days ago. Chaps, would you care to guess where such a prestigious event was held? What, the 18th birthday party? I don't know. Kettering. It was actually a garage in Cumbria. What the fuck?

Article in the Daily Mirror two days ago, girls radio wonderful party in her garage. Teenage Rachel Miller threw an 18th birthday party yesterday and Radio 1 turned up. Rachel was born on September 30, 1967, the day Radio 1 was launched. So when she invited the station to her coming-of-age party, the BBC sent disc jockey Gary Davis to broadcast his midday show live from her garage.

Late night DJ John Peel also joined the party. Rachel from Colbrecht, Cumbria said, When I sent the invitation, I never thought they would accept it. It was really wonderful. I don't know how I'm going to cap it on my 21st birthday. 50 guests dance in Rachel's garage as DJ Gary broadcast the show. He said it was a knockout, just like a real party. John Peel was even more delighted, for Colbeck was the home of the legendary huntsman John Peel.

I was shocked to see the local pub named after me, he said. Fucking hell, BBC, chucking the money about just on a whim. Yeah, and if I was born five days later, that could have been me. Gary Davies, I mean, he looks absolutely basic. He looks like he's sort of fallen asleep in the tanning lamp. This is his first Top of the Pop since his extended holiday, and by the look of that tan, it seems like he's spent a fortnight on the planet Mercury. Absolutely.

He looks like he's been carved from a block of oxo. He's over-ridgelyd, I think the term of the time was. Yeah, over-ridgelyd. I'll tell you what it reminds me of. You know, back in... I used to get this quite a few times in the 70s and 80s. You'd occasionally get these white tabloid journalists

or even TV reporters going undercover to find out what it was really like to be a black person in Britain today. And they'd adopt this ludicrously unconvincing black face. You could even see a bit of the white sometimes, you know,

between the shirt and their neck. Oh, my God. And, you know, of course, they'd wander around getting very funny looks. Yeah, he kind of looks like that, really. Black like Gary. Or they'd be putting a tea towel on their heads

and trying to sort of trick Bruce Grobbelaar into accepting a bribe or something. It's like when Beadle was an oil sheik. Yeah, yeah. This is his 26th go at presenting Top of the Pops, and he's become a permanent fixture in a talent pool which currently features Peter Powell, Mike Smith, Steve Wright, Dixie Peach, Mike Reed and Simon Bates. And there's a new addition to the pool this week.

Born in London in 1959, Paul Jordan spent his university years dividing his time between reading law and working in hospital radio. And just before his final year of passing the bar at Grains Inn, he decided to jack it in and make a go of becoming a DJ. After sending a demo tape off to various stations, he was contacted by Radio City, the independent station for Liverpool and surrounding area, who were looking for a new DJ after Janice Long had departed. And by 1982, he was holding down the graveyard shift on City for three months, eventually moving to the late-night slot and finally bedding down in the 6pm to 9pm slot by 1984. Advert in the Liverpool Echo, February 1984. Wind down to the best sounds around.

Paul Jordan, 6 to 9. Essential listening for people who are really into today's music scene. Starting with the charts, Paul goes on to explore fringe music, especially from local bands, pop news, top ten videos and all the latest film reviews, plus scoop interviews with pop stars. Miss it, if you dare.

Fucking hell, interviewing local Liverpool bands in 1984, he must have sniffed around Frankie's crotch a few times. By 1985, he started to make a play for the top of the mountain and started sending demo tapes to Radio 1. And at the third attempt, he was signed up, beginning his career at the station on July 1st of this year, filling in for Gary Davis while he was doing the Radio 1 Roadshow. The following week he filled in for Adrian John at the 6am to 8am slot and spent the rest of the summer bouncing

around the weekday schedule as a de facto holiday cover, including two weeks in Janice Long's chair before bedding down last Sunday in the 2.30 slot, taking over from Steve Wright. And we'll be beginning a regular 3pm stint on Fridays tomorrow. So, chaps, it appears to be only a matter of time before he becomes a big part of Radio 1. And this is his debut appearance on Top of the Pops. Yeah, but it's so weird, isn't it? I've never heard of the geezer.

No? It doesn't even have a wiki page. That's ridiculous. I mean, talk about Radiohead's how to disappear completely. I mean, talk about being un-person, you know, airbrushed out of history. I mean, just wondering whose nose did he put out of joint? You know, what did he eventually do that was, you know, so sordid, so unforgivable that even 1980s top of the pops presenters

couldn't abide to have him in their ranks. I thought that when I was doing research on previous chart music, his name turned up. I just thought, ooh, what did he do? Yeah. I can just imagine, actually, if he went down to actually investigate all this. You know, if he'd actually gone down to BBC Television Centre and asked about, you know, Paul Jordan and been gaslit by the senior receptionist. Paul Jordan? There is no Paul Jordan. And there has never been a Paul Jordan. But, you know, the senior receptionist. Paul Jordan? There is no Paul Jordan,

and there has never been a Paul Jordan. But, you know, why don't you look in your database? There is no point in my looking on the database because there is no Paul Jordan, and there never has been a Paul Jordan at the British Broadcasting Corporation. Do I make myself clear? But I would advise you to leave the building, Mr Stubbs,

with immediate effect. No, it's just extraordinary, really. I mean, it's the mystery. It's a mystery, as somebody said. Yeah, I mean, I'd absolutely never heard of him either. And, you know, this was an era where I had very little else to do other than sort of, you know, watch Top of the Pops and listen to Radio 1.

So it's bizarre how he's faded from not just my consciousness, but it seems everybody's, you know. I know he only did Top of the Pops six times, but six is enough to leave some kind of's, you know. Yeah. I know he only did Top of the Pops six times, but six is enough to leave some kind of impression, you know. Both the presenters here, there's an interesting dynamic. They both look well, sort of Miami Vice with their lawyers. Oh, yeah. And Paul Jordan's winning the battle of the sleeve push.

Most definitely. But he does have this energy of a sort of competition winner, of somebody who's just kind of looked their way into being there. Because the thing with Gary Davis at this point, he's a safe pair of hands by now he's oh yes he's slick and confident crucially and professional the thing with paul jordan is when you see people in any walk of life who are nervous it makes you nervous yes and i got that instantly from him he's trying too hard he's got and it's interesting that you say he sort of was a guy who would stand in when janice long or whoever went on their holidays because he does

have this kind of supply teacher energy about yes but it's like definitely it's a sort of trendy the trendy supply teacher so like every time he goes woo or way whatever it sounds really forced you know and he does this thing you know apart from the sleeve push which i guess everyone did because it was fashionable at the time he puts his hands in his pockets it's it's as if he sort of you know thought what are the signifiers of being the cool kid that i can do yeah it's like i always used to crack up at um everyone saying eric canton i was so cool right because to me what he'd done can Cantona was he popped the collar of his football shirt like he thought he was the Fonz, you know?

And everyone thought, oh, he's so cool. But I just thought that's such a kind of French person's idea of what being cool means. It's like turning up your collar. And yeah, Paul Jordan's a bit like that. Yeah, he's sort of like, you know, his sleeves are rolled up. He's got his hands in his pocket. He's sort of slouching in a kind of slightly kind of insolent cool way and and all the way through it's just trying really

hard to be down with the kids and he's only 26 but something about that trying too hard makes him seem older than he actually is like an old person trying to be cool you know what i mean and 26 in 1985 was probably about 32 in a sense, really. Yeah, at least, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, Jordan, as a DJ, he's definitely in that young guy who's really into his music vein that's currently in vogue at Radio 1. And, you know, him and Dixie Peach, the other new recruit of the era,

they've already nudged out Richard Skinner from the line-up, and it's Mike Reid's turn to fuck off next. But as far as Jordan goes, even though he's been on the same career path, he's clearly no Janice Long. Well, it's interesting you say, like, young guy who's really into his music. I mean, did you get that from him?

Because I think we've both listened to the same audio interview that is out there with him. Oh, that's the look, that's the image that Radio 1 want to portray of people like him and Davis. Oh, that's the look, that's the image that Radio One want to portray of people like him and Davis. But yeah, you're right, Simon, there's an interview of him floating about. And he seems like a perfectly nice bloke, you know. But he's a careerist DJ, isn't he? Well, this is it. To me, he shares that fatal flaw that so many of the Radio One lot had, which is that he loves radio more than he loves music. And he loves the idea of being a presenter more than he loves music.

I'm sure he was into his music as well. But for him, you know, it does seem to be all about the airwaves and all that kind of stuff rather than the sounds that he's playing. I think it's almost a prerequisite that you're not really into the music that much, you know, otherwise that shunts you towards the kind of the evening slot or even the graveyard slot. In some ways, i don't mind him not being this kind of strutting alpha male you know because we've had plenty of those on top of the pops yeah and they are monstrous you know and i'm sure i would rather spend a couple of hours in the pub with paul jordan than with

dave lee travis you know what i mean would you sooner sooner see Paul Jordan play Macbeth, though? But sadly, the way that these kind of alpha male bullies like Travis hold down their job is by their completely unearned confidence that they have. And someone like Jordan, who just doesn't seem to have it, was probably never going to hold down that position in quite the same way. Hey, how you doing? Welcome to top of the box and welcome to top of the box for the very first time to paul jones thanks very much indeed gary have we got a great show for you tonight we've got a wonderful show we have cameo we have iron maiden we also have renee and angela and a brand new number one but first to get us underway a superb song at number ten in the charts. Here is Colonel Abrams and Trap. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The syndromes pound. The TV screen flies through the ionosphere and the pink vinyl explodes to reveal Davis in an appalling light grey suit with sleeves are rolled and American football-like shoulder pads welcomes us to our Thursday evening pop treat and then introduces his YTS lad Jordan, who's wearing a huge flimsy black and grey jacket over a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up even more. Jordan runs down some of the bill of fear on tonight in a manner more suited

to blokes in flat caps and gilets selling sets of crockware in the market and then pumps his fist fist and goes way as Davis announces trapped by Colonel Abrams. Born in Detroit in 1949, Colonel Abrams, yes that's his real name, was relocated to New York in his teens where he learned guitar and piano and won an amateur night at the Harlem Apollo. After expelling the funk band Heavy Impact in the mid-70s, he started his own group, Conservative Manor, in 1976 before relocating to Minneapolis and becoming the lead singer of the funk band 94 Street until they split up in 1979 due to their guitarist getting a solo deal. He moved back to New York, got involved in the post-disco scene and linked up with the WBLS DJ Timothy Regisford. And in 1984, they recorded an eight-track demo

which included the song Release the Tension, which absolutely blew up across the clubs of the five boroughs and beyond, even though it wasn't available in any shops and a cover was released by someone else. Unperturbed, he landed a deal with Streetwise Records and recorded another set of demos, including Music Is The Answer, but it was this track which got his contract bought out by MCA, who, after throwing loads of different producers at him, including Cerrone, finally linked him up with Richard Burgess.

Yes, Mr. Einsteiner Go-Go himself. After ripping through the clubs of America and getting to number one in the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, it was put out over here, entering the charts at number 95 in early August and took five weeks to get to number 34. The following week, after it jumped six places to number 28, some city farm wankers did the Thatcherite stride to it at the end of that week's Top of the Pops,

which helped it jump another six places to number 16. This week, after yet another six-place jump, it's at number 10, and here he is, fresh off the plane, making his official Top of the Pops debut. And it's got to be said, looking like he's got a telegram to deliver to someone as he's sporting that non-more 1985 garment, the Bolero jacket,

beloved of Christopher Dean and Les Dennis, that's festooned with gold braid around the shoulders and sleeves and adorned with golden buttons. It's quite the look, isn't it? Yeah. I think, you know, it's meant to be a sort of visual pun on his military name. Yes, indeed, yeah. There's lots of scrambled egg.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, he's got the epaulets, the brocade, brass buttons. There's lots of scrambled egg. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, he's got the epaulets, the brocade brass buttons. I thought it was a play on the Colonel thing. But to me, he looks more like a bellboy in an upscale Hollywood hotel. I actually think he looks kind of amazing in he's got these pleated trousers

and this Cab Calloway moustache. And he's never not doing something. If he's not singing, he's sort of windmilling his wrists around in a sort of come and get it, you cunts kind of way, you know, or he's never not doing something. If he's not singing, he's sort of windmilling his wrists around in a sort of come and get it, you cunts kind of way, you know. Or he's sort of bunny hopping up and down the spot during an instrumental break or whatever. Everything's very literal, I think.

You know, the jacket and how, you know, he's on a small podium. He literally is trapped. He's surrounded by the city farm wankers, you know, and, you know, just general audience members who are going mental, by the way. They're loving this. Oh, yes. They're fucking loving, aren't they?

In their very British, hand-clappy, very much not-soul-trained sort of way, you know what I mean? And, yeah, there's lots of weird camera angles shot from his waist height, up chin or up nose, as it were, like a sort of blowjob POV, but from the POV of the giver, not the receiver. Of course, you know, yeah, this is his big moment. But I remember when he was just Lieutenant Abrams,

you know, and I watched him push up the ranks, Captain Abrams, Major Abrams, and here he is, Colonel at last. We thought he could push on and become a brigadier, maybe even a major general, but it wasn't to be. And listen, right, if you think that's a shit joke, just be grateful that I abandoned a whole riff based on Colonel with a C being a homonym of Colonel with a K, meaning seed. There was kind of nothing there. But it is confusing, though, right, because there wasn't just one other Colonel Abrams.

There were two, right? During the first Gulf War in 1991, the US Army had two Colonel Abrams, Colonel John N. Abrams and Colonel Robert B. Abrams, both of whom went on to greater things. as a war under the supervision of Oday Hussein, Saddam's son. They were subjected to starvation, mock executions, mock castrations and chemical injections, as well as brutal beatings. How can you mock a castration? I know. And they were made to appear on TV, famously

battered and bruised, denouncing American war policy while blinking out the word torture in Morse code. However, the Allies themselves took 69,000 Iraqi prisoners of war, and it's less well documented what happened to them. Fancy that. Yeah, although Human Rights Watch expressed concern that the US Army was reneging on its obligations under the Geneva Convention in terms of their treatment. And let's not kid ourselves, we know what happens when the Americans take prisoners of war,

especially in Iraq. But I like to think that at least some of them, somewhere around Al-Basaya, perhaps, in the Al-Muthana province, just over the border from Kuwait, were under the watchful eye of either Colonel John N Abrams or Colonel Robert B Abrams, and they were able to heckle their captors. Hey, Colonel Abrams, I'm trapped. I'm like a man in a cage. I would love to think that happened.

There's a lot of confusion around this song, as we'll dip into later on, and the singer, particularly his name. So let's go back to that interview with Simon Witter in this week's nme where he says before i made it in music i used to work in a personnel office and people would come in and say i spoke to you on the phone but when i heard colonel abrams i thought you'd be an old man in glasses they expected me to look like the guy from Kentucky Fried Chicken. In fact, I was asked to attend the opening of a KFC joint in New Jersey,

but I didn't want to. And one photographer wanted me to pose with a rifle. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. There we go. What he should have done, he should have mashed up Colonel Sanders and Father Abraham of the Smurfs and turned up looking like that. Which is just basically Father Abraham,

but with some glasses and one of them stringy tie things. A far-right chicken pimp, yeah. Yes. The same thing struck me, you know, as it did some of the great minds and all that. The same thing with Colonel Abrams as it did Colonel Gaddafi. If you're going to make yourself out to be the big man, the top man, you know, why don't you just go for the top rank?

I mean, if you're Colonel Gaddafi, you're outranked by your generals, it's going to make you a bit of a shit dictator. So Colonel Abrahams is outranked by the funkadelic associate General Kane. So if General Kane gets on top of the post... Or General Johnson. Yeah, you're going to have to salute him. It's like you say, just call him Field Marshal Abrams. Major Lance, yes.

Then again, that logic, like king, as in love and pride, outranks prince, you know, so it's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was quite work, yeah. I mean, as regards to the song, I mean, I was eating this sort of transatlantic electric funk for breakfast. Oh, I think this is a fucking tune, mate. Yeah.

In 1985, it's mint. Yeah, I'm afraid I'm slightly less enthusiastic about it myself, personally. No. Well, you know, I get it. And, I'm afraid I'm slightly less enthusiastic about it myself, personally. No. Well, you know, I get that way, and then you can sing its praises. Oh, I guess I think it's not good enough for you. Yeah, well, you know. I can tell by the way you act and your attitude, David.

No, but when it wasn't dipping into a bit of Stockhouse and all Sunrise, it was this sort of affair. But, you know, so I was all set when I was first listening to this, and I'd have sat there and waited patiently for something to happen, you know, a sort of explosion, a little release, a sort of ejaculation. But for me, it's just a bit stiff. You know, it just sort of robo-twitches inside

this sort of self-imposed straitjacket. I mean, obviously, you know, it's called Trapped. I guess, you know, it's the idea. And I mean, I know Prince was doing this sort of minimalistic thing at this time, but things happen with Prince. And for me, it just doesn't here. It's like a sort of moonwalk minus the walk and the moon you know I'm kind of stunned here I thought David was going to love this record I really did yes me too yeah no I did as well when I first started I thought yeah this is this is for me and it just something just doesn't quite

click on it for me you know what it is for right, I think people talk a load of revisionist, self-aggrandising bullshit about house music, OK? Nowadays, you get British people who pretend they were completely across what Larry Levan was doing at Paradise Garage, what Frankie Knuckles was doing in the warehouse, what the Belleville Three were doing. Everybody is basically the person James Murphy from LCD Sound System is addressing in Losing My Edge. Everybody claiming they owned Don't Make Me Wait

by the Peach Boys in 1982 on an import, right? Everyone claiming they had their fingers... Did you, David? Yes, I did. Oh, for fuck's sake. Well, I suppose, yeah, all right. A fiver, I suppose. That was a fiver, a proper fiver back in 1982.

Well, everyone likes to make out nowadays that they had their fingers on the pulse of New York and Chicago and Detroit. Bollocks! David did, but most people didn't. If they're honest, the first house music most people heard in the UK was Love Can't Turn Around by Farley Jackmaster Funk featuring

Daryl Pandy, which was number 10 in September 86. And the thing that softened us up to make us receptive to that wasn't Derek May or whoever. It was this kind of thing. It was Love Can't Turn Around. It was a hit because of things like this coming first.

True. It's proto-House, really. Yeah, true. Have you heard Release Attention, Simon? No. Oh, it's housey as fuck. This is Colonel Abrams, another track, right? Yeah.

Recorded in 1984. And you just listen to it and go, ooh, fucking hell. Right. Here's the foundations of the house if you will. And stuff like this, stuff like Trapped is what I was dancing to at the aforementioned Feathers Disco at Barry Island and the other one Tramps at the land

end of the causeway. And I mentioned I had this little gang of mates in the sixth form at Barry Boys and we all went to house parties together. That's house with a small h but we also went to Feathers and Tramps together and there was me, there was my um but but we also went to feathers and tramps together and there was me there was my mate neil who's a listener to the pod hello neil hello neil there was richie and there was symes and the problem was i was also called symes so uh we

needed some form of disambiguation um and simon bates yeah yeah did you really let yourself be called syne yeah yeah yeah i mean it was partly inspired by simon base i suppose it's a bit of a piss take of that but okay so you know i i called him sims he tried to call me simesy or simesy baby right um but it never stuck um perhaps thankfully there was a half-hearted effort on my part to call him big sims and me little sims but that was never going to fly because i'm not i'm six foot foot. He's six foot six. So it should have been big Symes and one inch above average height Symes over here. But anyway, the thing is, there's this gang of us. We all had very different tastes in music in terms of what we were listening to at home.

There was a ghetto blaster in the sixth form common room. And everybody's trying to fight over what tapes got played on it. And I was into the Smiths and the Cure. And Neil was into Scritty Politty and Howard Jones Richie was into U2 I think and Symes was into Springsteen the one common denominator was that we all loved Prince but when we all went out to Tramps or Feathers all that went out the window all your kind of tribal things all the stuff you cared about and you know that was your musical DNA it kind of tribal things, all the stuff you cared about that was your musical DNA, it kind of just flew out the window and we were just happy dancing to stuff like Trapped. So there was this and there was We Don't Have To by Jermaine Stewart.

There was Let The Music Play by Shannon. That is a tune. Ain't Nothing Going On But The Rent by Gwen Guthrie. Also a tune. And sometimes I'd pester Sammy Black, who was the local DJ, to play something by the cult, selfishly. But that would clear the dance floor. That would clear the dance floor.

This is the stuff everyone fucking loved. And when Morrissey comes along and goes, burn down the disco, hang the blessed DJ, because the music they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life. Even as a Smiths fan, I thought, fuck off.

The music they constantly play doesn't have to say something to me about my life even as a smiths fan i thought fuck off the music they constantly play doesn't have to say something to me about my life it cheers me up right it's possible to be a miserable teenage indie fan six days a week but put your shiny dancing shoes on and go out on a friday and have some fun so i absolutely love this record and so did all of my friends you've touched upon something there, Simon, because we need to remember that in 1985, this sort of thing would have been lads' music. You know what I mean? All the rough-arse youths I knew at school

wouldn't be listening to indie guitar rubbish or whatever the equivalent of Oasis was in 1985. They'd be getting their chinos on, piling into Chivago's or Barry Noble's Astoria and shaking their arses to this. I mean, it wouldn't be until, I don't know, the Happy Mondays came along that the lads started drifting

towards that end of the spectrum. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's interesting because this sort of music was also considered music for girls, or perhaps that was a little bit later on when handbag house came, that pejorative term, handbag house, that all the girls be dancing on their handbags but i guess above all it was music for normals it was music for you know just your ordinary townies yeah um and the thing is it was superior music for normals this was an era when when the stuff that your normals went to

feathers and tramps were dancing to was was fucking brilliant. And this record, it just fucking kicks ass. The producer, you mentioned it, was Richard Burgess, Einstein or Go-Go. You wouldn't necessarily expect him to come out with something with this much funk to it. Although he did produce Spandau Ballet, Chart No. 1, Paint Me Down. So he got the funk as well.

It might not be the most obvious person to produce a track like this. But yeah, I think it's an amazing record. Very strange lyrics though, eh? God, yeah. He says that he doesn't want her folks to turn him over to the hands of the law. What's he done?

What have you done, Colonel Abrams? What have you done? He's 36. So why is he bothered about what her mum and dad think? Yeah, yeah. Fuck them. I mean, if he wants legal representation, fortunately Paul Jordan is right there. 36 here. So why is he bothered about what her mum and dad think? Yeah, yeah. Forkham. I mean, if he wants legal representation, fortunately, Paul Jordan is right there.

But yeah, there's definitely some kind of backstory to this song. What it's like, it's like it's part of a bigger piece. Like you imagine it's part of some kind of opera or some kind of concept album. Like, you know, Keith West's excerpt from a teenage opera or something like that. But, you know, if you hear the whole thing, you know why he's running from the hands of the law and there's all that thing you know if you think

i can afford to support you if you want to ever think about ever settling down yeah he's the one who wants to get trapped because you think the song's trapped it's like oh i've got my girlfriend pregnant i'm fucked yeah i've got to get married but no he's the one who wants to settle down yeah you alluded in your intro to the guitarist in his former band who went on to greater things. This is a bit of a myth. Someone in the press department of MCA has played a fucking blinder here because we're talking about Prince, obviously, perhaps not obviously,

but Colonel Abrams' connection to Prince is minimal, apart from also having a first name that is a rank or title, but it's actually his real name. What happened was there was a funk band in the mid-70s in Minneapolis called 94 East, and they were led by a guy called Pepe Willie, who was married to Prince's cousin and was a sort of mentor figure to Prince and to Andre Simone and all the other Minneapolis funk musicians. And 94 East's lineup at various times included Prince,

Andre Simone, Matt Fink, Dr. Fink and Bobby Z, all later members of the Revolution, of course. The only recording that 94 East made with Colonel Abrams was a couple of tracks for a single called Fortune Teller in 1977, which was written by one of the Motown backing band, the Funk Brothers, Hank Cosby. And by the time that was recorded, Prince had already left and was working on his first album, For You. But according to Matt Thorne's Prince biography, what happened was that Prince just ran into Pepe Willie and said, oh, you know, yeah, I'll play a bit of guitar on this track for you.

Also, according to Pepe Willie himself in the other Prince book by Dave Hill, A Pop Life, the two never actually met. So Prince played his guitar in the studio separately to Colonel Abrams recording his vocals. Prince played his guitar in the studio separately to Colonel Abrams recording his vocals. And by the way, I've got about a dozen books on Prince and I looked through all of them to research this. Only two of them even mentioned Colonel Abrams in the index. Right. The single never actually got released because the deal they had with Polydor fell through. So for that very tenuous Prince connection to get mentioned, as it does in this episode of Top of the Pops, in fact,

just makes you think that, yeah, someone at MCA is working overtime and deserves a pay rise. Funny you should say that, Simon, because in next week's Daily Mirror White Hot Club, there's this headline, Colonel's Rocket. Hit singer Colonel Abrams has launched a blistering attack on his old pal Prince.

He has a dreadful voice and no sense of style, says the good Colonel, whose song Trapped is at number four. He once played in the same band as Prince and claims, man, he couldn't sing, I had to do it all. Fucking hell, that's some severe over-egg. Yeah, I mean, come on, this shows that I was right, isn't it? Come on, he's bogus. Him saying that he was in the same band as Prince

is a bit like anybody in the current Blackpool FC squad saying they were in the same football team as Stanley Matthews. Yeah, and then saying he was shit and I had to do everything. I had to do all the dribbling for him. Top of the Pops has relatively new neon set working to full effect here you have

to say. It's essentially recreating what Colonel Abrams must be doing all over the country right now. It's a PA at a sparsely attended but comfortable night club. it's it's a pa sparsely attended but comfortable nightclub you know he's standing on a black circular platform surrounded by the kids on the floor and members of city farm on site he's short of plinths and and the only disappointment i had from this performance is that there's some nubby white stripes around the colonel's plinth that makes

it look like he's on a trampoline and when he starts doing that weird little skipping dance you think oh fucking hell he's gonna start doing some proper somersaults any minute now but alas no well there you are you see there aren't the somersaults i mean you're not easily pleased david you expect somersaults from your proto house singers yeah metaphorical you know he's giving it loads he's even grabbing his wrist david what more do you want to indicate how trapped he is yeah true the thing is um yeah it is quite housey sounding from this distance because it's got that sort of synth the top line of the synth that's quite housey it's quite busy though rhythmically it's quite busy and that's what makes it not house i think i think it's only when things get stripped down and boiled to the very basics, you know,

or basics, that you actually get to what house music is. But all the elements are here, really. Yeah, Richard Burgess has added a bit of high-energy-ness, hasn't he, with the stubby synths. Yeah, it is quite stubby. It doesn't have the house cadence, but it... But I think what I was trying to say is a point, actually, about the sort of the straightness of it, the lenientness of it, you know,

perhaps preparing people for house, yeah. That NME interview we alluded to earlier that they're clearly painting him as the next in the line of soul men when yeah you're right he is a house pioneer and i'd go as far to say is that we as a public are being house trained in this performance don't you think yes the other thing that was in that enemy interview interview that you read earlier was that people kept comparing him to Luther Vandross and Teddy Pendergrass and people like that. I actually listened to a radio interview

with Colonel Abrams from 1987, where he acknowledged both those influences, but he said he was more influenced by female singers like Nancy Wilson, The Supremes and Dionne Warwick. But he also said that he thought singers like him had a duty to be a male role model, which meant he comes out with quite a lot of unreconstructed stuff. Like, you can look good without looking feminine

and you can be the head of the household. All this kind of strong black man kind of rhetoric, which is kind of interesting. I found another interview, a tv interview this time from 92 by which time he's claiming to have been one of the inventors of house music you know inventor you know that's that's a bit of a stretch you know even i'll say that um and he now considered himself by 92 to be part of acid jazz interestingly right he was saying he's added a new aggression to his music which he thought was gonna you know finally make

him uh break through and be a star in the u.s uh listener it didn't yeah but it's interesting that in the uk we went fucking crazy for this stuff yes we did this was number three you know number three in the proper charts half a million copies sold but in america you know stuff like this just you couldn't get arrested well Well, ironically, you know. Or even court-martialed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've often wondered why it is that great black American pop struggles or has struggled historically to chart in the proper billboard charts.

And I don't know if it's just to do with how the charts were compiled over there because surely, you know, the African-American population must have been buying stuff like this yeah fairly significant numbers is it just not getting registered uh by by billboard or is it you know sort of segregated off and sort of lumped into their their r&b chart their dance chart or whatever or is it the records like this were selling through shops which by their very nature were segregated whereas in this country, yeah, you know, maybe in cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester,

there might have been kind of black music specialist shops, but mostly people were just buying this stuff from your local HMV or your local Woolworths once it started. I don't know. You got any theories on that? Yeah, we're skill and Americans are twat. Yeah, I need to work on that a bit more. But, you know, that's the basic crux of it, isn't it? Yeah, it's interesting, though. We can sort of slap ourselves on the back a bit sometimes

where we look at the chart positions of these what to us seem like classic tracks and you see that they absolutely fucking bombed. But it even goes back to the 70s, things like, I don't know, Odyssey, well, that's more the early 80s, but Limmy and Family Cooking that we talked about before yeah stuff that just did nothing in this state and i suppose radio stations have got something to do with it you know we didn't have black radio stations in the 70s and 80s no radio wasn't segregated so if something like this was getting played it was getting played to everyone

it wasn't sort of being racially profiled and you know and sort of um ghettoized as it were in in radio terms and in marketing terms and everything else so the following week trapped made its fourth six place jump on the bounce getting to number four and the week after that it began a three-week stand at number three spending seven weeks in the top 10 his next dent upon the charts came at the end of the year when Streetwise Records released Music Is The Answer Over Here, but it only got to number 84 in November. But the official follow-up, The Truth, only made it to number 53 the following month. He'd get back into the top 40 when I'm Not Going To Let. Made it to number 24 in March of 1986. But his last MCA release in the UK, the painfully apt How Soon We Forget,

only got to number 74 for two weeks in August of 1987. And he never troubled the charts again. And sadly, he dropped off the radar until a GoFundMe crowdfund was started for him in 2015 as he was homeless and suffering from diabetes. And he died a year later at the age of 67. Oh, I'm dropping down. Can't you see I'm so dry? And I don't know what to do.

That you see our souls out And I don't know what to do His six-foot-three inches tall comes from New York. Used to be in a band with Prince, Superb, Colonel Abrams and Trap. Right now, here's the highest new entry in the chart this week, straight in at number 20 for Iron Maiden. David, on his own in front of some Ponce 80s iron mongrel, tells us about the Colonel Abrams Prince lie before pitching us straight into running Free by Iron Maiden. Formed in Leighton in 1975, Ash Mountain were a group put together by the bassist Steve Harris,

who told him that his band name was shit and they wanted to be called Iron Maiden instead. After they played their first gig at St Nick's Hall in Poplar in May of 1976, they took up a residency at the Carton Horses in Stratford and underwent myriad line-up changes, with band members being sacked for not having enough on-stage charisma, pretending to be in kiss and coughing up fake blood during gigs, getting the arse about the band recruiting a keyboard player, being that keyboard player and it not suiting the band, and pretending to play guitar with their teeth, which led the band to split up at the end of the year. In early 1977, however, Harris and the guitarist Dave Murray decided to have another go, finally completing the line-up where their new drummer Doug Sampson recommended Paul Andrews,

new drummer Doug Sampson recommended Paul Andrews, a hotel chef who changed his name to Paul D'Anno to play up his Italian heritage as lead singer. After recording a four-song demo, they passed it on to Neil Kay, who ran a disco in the back room of a pub in North London called the Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse, who was so taken by it that he listed one of the tracks from it

prowler at number one in his sound house chart which was published every week by sounds after the tape crossed the desk of rod smallwood a student gig promoter who managed steve holly and cockney rebel for a while he expressed an interest in managing them and set up two pub gigs, although the first one fell through when the band didn't fancy playing so early in the evening and they had to play the second one without D'Anno because he'd been arrested outside for showing off with his knife in front of a copper. Undeterred, Smallwood encouraged them to set up their own label and put out their demo, with the run of 5,000 copies selling out immediately, which led to record company interest and eventual deal with EMI,

who immediately put two of their tracks on the compilation LP Metal for Mothers and catapulted them to the forefront of the new wave of British heavy metal. At the same time, their debut single, This Tune, was put out and it entered the charts at number 46, leading to the band being immediately rushed into the top of the pop studio, sandwiched between Carrie by Cliff Richard and Coward of the County by Kenny Rogers, which helped it get up to number 34. By mid-1981, after the band had notched up

three more top 40 hits and were midway through a world tour, Deano had become a proper custard gannet and the rest of the band decided to knob him off and replace him with the former frontman of Samson, Bruce Dickinson, which propelled Maiden to a run of six top 20 hit singles in a row and three top three LPs, including Number of the Beast, which spent two weeks atop the LP charts in April of 1982. This single, a cover of their debut and the follow-up to Ace is High, which got to number 20 in November of 1984, is the lead-off cut from their next LP, Live After Death,

which comes out next week and was recorded in Long Beach, California, and Hammersmith Odeon during the World Slavery Tour, which started in Warsaw in August of 1984 and ended in California in July of 85. The band preferred the Hammersmith version but according to Bruce Dickinson the lighting engineer had a cob on with the film crew and deliberately made the lights too dim to render any shooting usable so they had a go with what we're seeing here because video rules the music industry these days it's thudded into the chart this week at number 20 this week's highest new entry and here they are getting some american lads worked up so chaps the world slavery tour 331 days 189 gigs, 25 countries, four continents. Apparently there were going to be some dates in South Africa,

but they were cancelled by the South Africans who objected to the word slavery. Loads of cash raked in, one very knackered band who have taken the rest of the year off, hence them putting this out as a stopgap and a prelude to the live album. Apparently after Bruce dickinson's first big european tour with iron maiden he suffered a real bout of depression because all of his

dreams had been fulfilled it was a i was reading andrew o'neill's book the history of heavy metal and he compares it to alexander the great weeping because there were no worlds left to come yeah like paul jordan yeah exactly yeah my mate andrew the the metal that i've talked about before um that's andrew who lived next door not andrew who was a member of the mary brennel boys murder with me um he had that album metal for mothers but the thing is we didn't know what that meant so we thought it was metal for muthas who's muthas then and he said i don't know just metal for Muthas. And I said to him, who's Muthas then? And he said, I don't know, just somebody called Muthas. Sounds like a Doctor Who villain.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, God, Iron Fucking Maiden. I've got to say, we've had some metal bands on Chart Music before. I've really enjoyed watching Twisted Sister and Motorhead and things like that. This has put me in a really bad mood about heavy metal. Yeah, it's just sort of made me revert to my sort of not that deeply buried view

that heavy metal is just fucking stupid, you know. It's just sort of thwarted masculinity. It's power fantasies for inadequate teenage boys, you know. It's all about male heroism. And people will sort of scream in disagreement about this but for me heavy metal is very right wing i mean there's literally you know quite a lot of far right stuff going on in the world of metal but i just mean there's something inherently right wing about this music that is based around fantasies of power in this song okay dickinson

didn't write it it's a paul diano song but yeah it's it's about you know this this this 16 year old who's you know is running free and it's so oh god this american bullshit man the american bullshit in the lyrics just 16 a pickup truck you know fucking pickup trucks in eastland no you know apparently paul diano wrote this about when he was a skinhead right this is a skinhead song it's hersham boys yeah with more hair a skinhead who somehow got a pickup truck and is hitting the gas and ends up in an la jail for fuck's sake maybe a layton jail yeah the thing with maiden to me right is that i don't know if you ever read those war comics as a child. You know, like, they were kind of A5 sized things.

Oh, Commando. Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, it's all sort of square jawed Germans who would go, aye, if you threw a grenade at them, that kind of thing. Don't know where to eat lead frits. Yeah, and Maiden aren't coming from rock and roll. They're coming from that. That's where Maiden are coming from.

So many of their songs are about war or enslavement and things like that. Well, the World Slavery Tour, every gig begins with We Shall Fight Them on the Beach is the Churchill speech. Right, exactly. And, you know, they've got that beer that they sell, trooper beer. I mean, it's got this picture of Eddie in sort of military uniform, Eddie, their mascot, waving a tattered Union Jack and all of that. Looking like he's in the Liberties.

But Maiden's attitude to the horrors of war is really ambiguous, I think. It's this kind of mix of disgust and glee, right? There is this sort of craving for gore and mayhem among prepubescent boys, isn't there? And grown men who've never quite stopped being prepubescent boys. And Maiden kind of have it both ways. That's their modus operandi here.

Because, like, Run to the Hills, right? Run to the Hills, you can make a defence of it, saying it's this kind of excoriating critique of the genocide inflicted on the indigenous peoples of America. But the relish, the sheer relish with which Dickinson rasps the words raping the women and wasting the men, right? That is just made for the adolescent fans of Iron Maiden to punch the air, you know, drooling like,

yeah, rape, death, you know? So you have this kind of having it both ways thing. And I think in some ways I'm quite grateful to Iron Maiden because we live in a time now where metal and alternative music have kind of merged. Yeah. And a lot of people think that metal is goth, goth is metal, and it's all part of this continuum. But for me, Maiden served this kind of useful reminder

that metal was all about reinforcing patriarchy and hierarchy, all that royalist imagery and all that flag-waving and, shall we say, traditional attitudes towards sexual equality. That stuff was never alternative never cool and metal existed for for weaklings you know kids at my school who into metal they were not the tough kids no they were sort of acne encrusted bespectacled runty kids really and they'd wear their leather jacket like a protective carapace you know yes and metal allows them to live out these vicarious power

fantasies that kind of stinky doddington rock allows them to feel hard and to feel tough you know and i think that's what metal's all about and and all of that that i just said is is an opinion that i have and i sometimes try and suppress that and i you know i've got really good friends who like you know john doran um from the quietus gives talks about this, about how great metal is, and I think I'm going to be interviewing him at one of these talks later in the year, so this is going to be interesting. I respect their view, but I can't... Things like Maiden make it so hard for me

to get on board with it, you know. I'll shut up for a bit and let David talk. Yeah, let the rock expert have his say. Yeah, I mean, it's fucking rubbish, isn't it? I mean, you know, it's absolute fucking garbage. I mean, you've mean, you know, it's absolute fucking garbage. I mean, you've got, you know, these adolescent West Coast dreams, you know, they're wearing trousers that make spinal taps

look positively semiotic. Desperate rubbish, absolute piss garbage. But, you know, I mean, I absolutely agree with everything that Simon says, you know, about the kind of, you know, the sense of trying to reimpose patriarchy, having a vicarious joy in war and rape and death, etc, etc. And it was felt like that. It was despised

heavy metal. I suppose now, the only way I look at it is that I see it as perhaps a sort of equivalent to the, you know, World Wrestling Federation or something like that. Or whatever it is. WWE. Oh, careful. Al's going to come for you now. It's part of me that kind of likes all of that. And I mean, I was always very much more,

I became much more endeared towards heavy metal people. I never interviewed Iron Maiden. When I actually interviewed them, and it was like, bless you, you have something to say, you know, that you knew part of their job was entertainment. And I suppose the most charitable thing I can think is that like all of these elements are there, but perhaps they're not necessarily insidious because everybody involved is aware that it's a fantasy,

perhaps at some level and it's just a way of getting the rocks off you know i'm being around this time you know they're well established by this point but i just think that they feel that heavy metal will be taken more seriously there's a double standard there was an interview with steve harris around this time it was in an american magazine you know and he says like hey look somebody will go along and see a david bowie show and he brings on a big scary monster on stage or something, and they go, it was wonderful, it was very entertaining, and everybody had a party.

Then they go to an Iron Maiden concert, we bring a big scary monster on, and suddenly we're worshipping the devil. We're worshipping scary small children, or whatever particular bogey you want to lay at the door of music. People love to lay at our door. I mean, first of all, layingy bogey at Steve Harris' door is a bit of a slightly... I think there's a sort of a double standard

and that David Bowie is revered more than Iron Maiden is perhaps to do with things like Ziggy Stardust and the Berlin Trilogy and I don't think Iron Maiden produced quite an equivalent of all of that. Around this time, in 84, 85, I used to have mates who were heavy metal fans and fucking hell, he used to like have mates with heavy metal fans

and fucking hell we used to call myself sweaties of course and there was no sweaty quite like a Yorkshire sweaty I tell you I mean piss hurling Cro-Magnon meatheads seriously not even the missing link between man and ape you know but the missing link between ape and divot you know I mean just fucking awful horrible people actually in fact actually thinking about them makes me kind of, yeah, I'm beginning to kind of get my gander a bit like Pricey now, actually, now that I'm thinking about these fucking... What's weird is it seems to be, as Simon said, there's now sort of metal, goth alternative,

kind of sort of all merged into one. And you've got people like Sun, you know, who are kind of avant metal and are brilliant. You know, it's become kind of respectable. But I think that the sort of the crapness of an Iron Maiden, I don't know that there's an equivalent for that these days. Certainly not on a kind of mass scale. You know, metal seems to be one of those, in some respects,

in the Iron Maiden sense, a kind of extinct genre in some ways. I don't know. I mean, people like Rob Zombie can fill the O2. I mean, don't underestimate it. It is still fucking massive as a live thing. If you look at this concert, it's clearly a massive gig that they're playing. But Maiden can play those kind of venues still now. They really can.

Oh, yeah. But I just wonder if it's like new generations and kids coming through. You never hear metal blasted out of an open-top car. Not around that end, anyway. No, I don't know, man. I think it's still huge. I mean, even by 1985, metal. No, I don't know, man. I think it's still huge. I mean, even by 1985,

metal was passe. Yeah. I don't know, because metal is split into two directions by the mid-'80s. On the one hand, you had glam metal,

that whole L.A. thing of Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses and stuff like that. But you also had thrash. Thrash was coming along at this time. You had the big four

of thrash, who were Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer. Yeah. I mean, the new wave of British heavy metal. Oh, in Britain? Well, the thing is, the first Newobham lot had actually started cracking America, as we see with Maiden.

So basically, the two that really made it are Leopard and Maiden, aren't they? And Judas Priest. Yeah, did they? Right, OK. If you've not seen it, have a look at Heavy Metal Parking Lot. All right. Which I believe was filmed round about this time, before a Judas Priest concert.

And it's just loads of youth drinking pissy beer and throwing up the devil horns and everything, saying all rock and roll woo. And then the bloke interviews them and he talks to one lad, says, oh, what are you up to now? He says, oh, well, I'm joining the army next weekend. Right. rock and roll woo and then the bloke interviews them and he's you know he talks to one lad says oh what you what are you up to now he says oh well i'm joining the army next weekend right yeah woo yeah yeah well rock and roll the thing is with maiden is that there's no sex in their music i mean this this song is actually a really rare example where they talk about girls you know

and that's because it's a song from their very early days written by paul yes where it's like pulled her at the bottle top whiskey dancing disco hop now all the boys are after me and that's the way it's gonna be yeah um but yeah it's quite rare for maiden to sing about something like that about girls because normally they they are all about war and death and in that respect they have more in common because there was this you know dichotomy that I spoke of in this split in mid-80s metal. Even though they're not thrash, Maiden have got more in common with Slayer than with Guns N' Roses or something like that. Because Slayer famously sang these really dodgy, questionable lyrics about Nazi death camps where it's really not too clear that they disapprove. Let's put it that way. And, you know, as I said, with Maiden,

they seem to really revel in the blood and gore of war. Yeah. So I think maybe it's the same kind of mentality, just very different musically to bands like Slayer. As we've discovered, chaps, within Lizzy and Motorhead, Meckler bands are very keen to put out live singles or EPs. And, you know, it's a win-win, isn't it?

The fans get a souvenir of being wedged up against other people in denim and leather while having their senses assailed. And, you know, the band gets a knockout on an old song as a single. But I'm detecting an ulterior motive here because, to me, this is Bruce Dickinson painting out the image of Paul D'Anno

by covering the latter's own song and having a bigger hit with it. Yeah, like when Taylor Swift re-recorded all her albums to obliterate the earlier Taylor Swift. Yeah. What's odd, though, once again, I interviewed Martin Fry recently, and he was talking about the very early days of ABC, you know, perhaps like Vice vs. ABC, and he was talking about the very early days of ABC, you know, perhaps like Vice vs ABC and he was talking about

the Sheffield scene and I thought I might get him on to like, you know, Klopp DVA and Carrie Voltaire and people like that and he says, oh no, it was alright yeah, the drummer from Saxon, he was great, he was a really good bloke, you know he really helped us out, you know, and he helped us out, gave us tips you know, and all that kind of stuff, you know, gear and whatnot

and I was like, you fraternise with the foe, the enemy the arch enemy, you know, and he helped us out, gave us tips and all that kind of stuff, you know, gear and whatnot. And I was like, you fraternise with the foe, the enemy, the arch enemy, the idea. I've been absolutely horrified if I'd have known that Martin Fry was consorting with fucking Saxon. Shoot that poison arrow through David's heart. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, Saxon, another example

of a band we've talked about that I really enjoyed sort of reacquainting with them. There's just something about Maiden that rubs him the wrong way. And it's probably the whole Brexit thing. That's part of it as much as anything else. You know, he's obviously not a complete idiot. He can fly a plane, which is more than I can do, right? But I just don't think Dickinson's the brightest bulb in the box

because he voted for Brexit and then he started complaining that Brexit made it difficult for bands to tour. Like, what the fuck did you think was going to happen? Yeah, yeah. Jesus Christ. As far as the video goes, it's your bog standard, you know, band on stage job. But they are singing live.

They're not miming to anything. And as you'd expect in 1985, there is a lot of spandex on that stage. There is. And it kind of works in a metal band because you know it allows free and easy movement as bruce dickinson capers about and rests a foot on the monitors and the rest of the band um just i don't know just stand about and lean forward when they're doing a solo but it's not practical for the metal fan, is it, wearing spandex? Because where are you going to put your keys?

You need to have a very big belt buckle, which Dickinson does. Or a codpiece. Yes, in order to hide what's going on there, because they're quite indecent. You mentioned the guitar solo. I don't know if you noticed, and I think it might have been David who described Big Country's bagpipe style as being the most pointless guitar innovation ever. But Maiden do this thing where the twin guitarists play exactly the same solo at exactly the same time.

It's just a really ridiculous stunt. It's like something out of ice skating more than rock and roll. Yeah, absolutely. I also noticed there's someone in a really shit homemade eddie costume in the crowd did you see that yes it looked like the head was made out of foam from an old sofa or something amazingly we don't see eddie in the video oh well because by this time he was a 30 foot sarcophagus because they were going for a very egyptian theme for this uh well you know, maybe Michael Grade wouldn't have it. You know, he didn't want to scare people.

By the way, chaps, do you know how Spandex got its name? No. Because it expands. Well, nearly, Simon. It's an anagram of expand. Oh, right, yeah, of course. And I was going to say that Spandex would be superseded in the early 90s by Lycra, but I did a bit of research.

Actually, it turns out that Lycra is a brand name of a company that makes spandex and the term was adopted across the industry to help the fabric move away from the image portrayed by bands such as iron maiden that's what i thought because i got right into the lycra game in the late 80s let me tell you did you now yeah yeah when i arrived in london and started going on the goth scene because the the thing with PVC or leather trousers is they're never tight enough. You know, if you wanted shiny, but sort of drainpipe like legs, there was no point getting PVC or leather because they were just all sort of flaccid and baggy and saggy. So what you needed was lycra. So I would buy these lycra leggings and people would say to me, oh, nice spandex you've got going on. What are you talking about?

Never heard of spandex. But yeah, it turns out it's exactly the same fucking thing. Did it help reduce our sweat at clubs? I mean, I couldn't possibly comment. Is it better or worse than PVC? I mean, it's better for the sweat point of view. You haven't got to put talcum powder down it or anything like that. Better at wicking.

It tucks nicely into your sort of little pixie boots with with skulls for buckles put it that way and which you put your keys that would be revealing too much um yeah yeah i i'd always have like a leather jacket something that was the trouble with it yeah you've got no way to put things yeah um i tell you what i've come up with now as a solution to that problem is a sporran I've got this kind of fetish sporran it's a black PVC sporran that I got from a kind of fetish wear retailers and it's perfect for that kind of thing if you're wearing a garment

which doesn't allow stashing of your keys a sporran is your friend so there's a fashion tip for the pop craze youngsters anything else to say? seriously, fuck Iron Maiden, man. What? Who's that? Neil! What the fuck are you doing here? Fuck's sake.

Hiding under the desk. My metal dial was twitching, man. I heard Maiden chat and I cannot let it pass without sticking my tup in a thing. There's something wrong with you, man. I'm calling the police. Every time the subject of Maiden has come up, Neil said he can't wait to get stuck into it. Who am I

to deny a lad his opportunity? So come on, Neil. He's rising up like the Coventry Maiden troll. It needs saying, man. It needs saying. No, for me, to be honest with you, I massively agree with Simon and David on this. I have to say that Maiden, like, say their American equivalent would be i don't know wasp or something they're that point

they're that marking point as simon was kind of saying that i needed metal they're a kind of mark off point that says you know just stop you've gone too far you know my daughter as previously explained is quite a retro metal head and she burns a lot of cds for the car called a poisonous metal we're actually up to volume 12 now um you know and they've pushed things into my life you know that if you'd have told me back in the 80s daughters but they've pushed things into my life you know if you'd have told me back in the 80s that i'd be earnestly sort of singing along to these things in my car in my 50s I'd have seen that as a colossal defeat in my life really

Quiet Riot, Accept Scorpions Michael Schenker Group all of them Tigers of Pantang, Witch Find Walpurgis Night by Storm Witch these little things that i now sort of dig

but she peppers these compilations i mean she put on one kiss track on one of them and i just i'm not having that one that one could just comes out the cd player as soon as it gets that but she does pepper these compilations with maiden tracks which only ever sort of kicks off arguments all of which eventually end up with me and you know just driving down the a45 with my with Maiden tracks, which only ever sort of kicks off arguments, all of which eventually end up with me, you know, just driving down the A45 with my thumb down like the audience for Spinal Tap's Jazz Odyssey. And me getting a dead arm, you know? But, I mean, as I patiently explain to her, Maiden suck.

And I use that Americanism carefully because I think, something Simon said said there's a real incipient americanization of so many aspects of metals revival and rehabilitation in recent years it's entirely along kind of american lines of fandom that i would suggest yeah include wrestling also include the kind of consumption of hot sauces you know You can trace a lot of it back to Wayne's World and Bill and Ted, I think. But the reason I really don't like Maiden and I cannot get along with Maiden

despite an awful lot of dreadful metal shit being sort of rehabilitated in my mind, well, several reasons. I mean, Simon's mentioned the kind of, the warfare aspect of Maiden. And, you know, metal obviously uses a lot of warfare imagery from sort of War Pigs onwards, you know, and through bands like Thin Lizzy,

who obviously Maiden are taking musical and lyrical ideas from. But Maiden's obsession with military stuff, it never becomes critical in a kind of War Pigs or Emerald style. It's firmly a sort of really celebratory, boy's own air-fixed view of history. Because it's firmly a sort of really celebratory boy's own airfix view of history yeah um because it's for those kind of boys who would have you know collected a 24 part series by orbis on tanks of the eastern freight or something you know it's that sven hassel ie thing as sign and said and you know that obviously feeds into diano and dickinson's brexit nurse and right

wingery and that's why maiden sleeves and eddie becomes this flag shagging thing this there's the union jack is often on maiden product whether it's terrible awful wallets in shops called fantasy and reality or or trooper beer you know they're like the ukip of metals and and beyond beyond the politics beyond the politics just sonically uh you know there's often this thing you know maiden or priest and i love priest right and unlike priest who they're often contrasted and compared to maiden just don't groove they can only gallop that's all they can do they have this sort of giddy up kind of rhythm to their music which which really reflects that this is metal now entirely shorn of the sort of blues or black music influences that fed into bands like zeppelin and sabbath yeah so that

there's smiths of metal yeah there's something to that there's definitely something to that you could argue it was priest that really birthed heavy metal by melding kind of prog with heavy rock and these sort of heavily arpeggiated twin guitars that are kind of a metal a signal if you like but priest how can i put it they always just had plenty of ass to their sound they always had a groove maiden are all about the treble and and the kind of detail and they're much more engaged with kind of proving their chops in a really entirely sort of european almost classical kind of way it leaves me cold and and it's perfect for metal boys and and you know maiden exclude women in all kinds of ways not only from their

audience but also from their music. But it's perfect for metal boys to feel, because, you know, metal boys want to feel that metal is the best music, because, you know, to play an instrument that fast, etc. But if you're out of metal subculture, and you're aware of pop in any way, Maiden feel really cold and undanceable. They're kind of headbangerable, but not danceable.

And consequently, at the time, you know, in the 80s, among my few friends, Maiden with the band clung to by the most sort of squalid of my friends. How can I put it? Yeah. The friends who made swords and played D&D and that. And, you know, and even back then, those guys, I gave a wide berth to because they kind of stank and I didn't want to get nicks and stuff.

So it's that side of metal. And finally, I mean, really, awful, awful frontman for Maiden. And, you know, the frontman kind of decides whether you like a band or not quite often. You know, I mean, the first singer, benefits cheat Paul D'Arno. He was a nasty piece of work. And his lyrics, I mean, if you dig into lyrics for Killers or Murders in the Rue Morgue, you know, they show a really appalling attitude to women and violence against women.

And beyond that, D'Arno's a total fantasist. I mean, there's a fantastic quote from D'Arno in Michael Hamm's oral history of Newobham, Denim and Leather, where he's recalling one of maiden's early shows at the the music machine and he goes um you know the direct quote he goes we went up there and we had kate bush up on stage with us i remember that i was seeing her at the time oh my god um he's like the Aldridge Pryor hopeless liar. I mean, to Michael Hansen's credit, he swiftly follows that quote up with a quote from Murray Charmer, Kate Bush's PR, which just flatly says, Kate doesn't know that guy and has never been on stage at the Music Machine. And then there's a good quote straight after as well from Malcolm Doan, which says, you know, it didn't happen. I was there. It didn't happen. But I think he genuinely believes the stuff he comes out with he lives in a fantasy

world to some extent so you know there's diano province dickinson is just this awful brexit sort of top gear adjacent cunt isn't he and the thing is with the other and the wobbleham bands the front men were really key in those bands appeal i think you know whether it's saxon's uh bill bifford's sort of being just dead funny or just the magnificent Rob Halford. You know, these guys are hilariously kind of unembarrassable and lovable because of it. And it's kind of wonderful that these people,

who were essentially fans of glam rock, really, became stars. Whereas with Maiden, from the moment they started, there's just this feel of management and business really guiding them to the top. They're signed in the early days because when EMI come see them play in the middle of a bill that also included White Spirit and Angel Witch,

Maiden, for that show, they knew that EMI were coming and they bought tons of pyro and they kind of secured that record deal. There's something cold and calculating about maiden you know the band themselves when they used to get on their leathers and their kind of clothes and spandex and stuff they used to call dressing up for the shows getting on the cunt kit and um getting on the cunt kit and i think i mean it's funny but it kind of reveals something about them and their attitudes with their audience so for all those reasons i kind of proudly state fuck maiden and fuck dickinson and fuck this kind of sexless groveless bo rock in 1984 i mean simon's mentioned the big four you

know the big four thrash bands swinging that that was where i was listening to the metal and and really the major impact maiden had in my life in 85 was probably i mean this is three years short of of nico mcbrain's drum battle with sooty don't forget um you know their major impact is them soundtracking you know daily thompson i'm gonna swig a lucas oh yes in the advert no no no no no no no no, no, no, no. Indeed, voiced by fellow Brexiteer, you know, Des Lynham. So, yeah, no, fuck Made in Man. Metal in athletics, man. Not two things you'd naturally put together.

No, not at all. I mean, later on in the noughties, of course, we do get a kind of sports metal. Oof. Horrific. Yes. But, yeah, no, at this period, no. I mean, yeah, the metal fans were the guys at the back of the cross country you know they're walking um with some soap bar on the go or something

i've got something i want to ask neil in fact um it's kind of um a question oh by the way the police are on their way don't you worry about that for your breaking yeah what it is it's a question in two parts don't you fucking hate it when when someone does that by the way a q a it's like um a question in two parts the only thing worse than that is if they say um not so much a question more of an observation yeah something like that yeah yeah but anyway what is this this um said that, you know, metal in general and Maiden in particular are all about these sort of male power fantasies. And you said yourself, you know, it's all about,

it's boys, stinky boys are into this. Your daughter loving this music is the kind of hole in my argument. And I wondered, and here's the two parts. First of all, how do you explain that? And secondly, when she started showing an interest in this kind of music, did you feel like a bit of a failure as a parent? No, the thing is, the thing is right. I know sort of, you can't fail as a parent.

I mean, I think as a parent, you've just got to kind of let your kids get into what the fuck they want to get into, you know what I mean? And not guide it in any way whatsoever. So it is thrilling when her... And then cut them out of your will. No, it's nice, you know, when their own reconnaissance sort of loops around with yours to a certain extent. But you're right, there is an odd thing,

because not many... How can I put it? When she listens to stuff like Maiden, when she listens to songs like Murders in the Room or Go Killers, which are quite misogynistic in a way, listens to stuff like made and when she listens to songs like murders in the room or killers which are quite misogynistic in a way i think the place she puts it in her head is purely alongside horror um as a genre um both in literature and in film so she's watching giallo movies where she is she's watching horrifically violent shit to be honest with you you know my daughter when i walk in the front room the telly suddenly goes muted and and stops fuck how many knows what she's

watching she's watching a lot of really gruesome shit but i think she sees it as it doesn't speak to her as a kind of like you know i want to go out and do that to women or i want to go that out and be that violent for her it's kind of in a sense yeah pure fantasy and just an evocation of violence but yeah it is problematic because like we the major thing that I always say in the car when she's punching my arm saying maiden are great is but they're so fucking brexit and and that's important to her she's like no no they're not brexit anymore he's apologized if she knows that i don't know a singer is right wing or a trump supporter or doesn't agree with her politics she rapidly falls out of love with that band um she's had to rationalize in her head that maiden

you know aren't brexit bruce has apologized etc um you know to to be into it so yeah yeah i don't feel embarrassed that she's playing fucking storm witch or has convinced me of the value of the scorpions she's inspired much more by women in metal i think than she is by by all the blokes as opposed to women in uniform but did bruce sorry did bruce dickinson apologize or did he just moan about the consequences of Brexit? I think that was it. He kind of, he said, yeah, he moaned about its impact on touring bands, didn't he? So I'm sticking to my guns.

I don't care. She can keep giving me a dead arm. But those political problems haven't shoved Maiden out of her listening because musically they appeal to her, I guess. But yeah, the grovelessness, it's a constant sticking point with me and Soph that Kiss fucking suck and Maiden suck.

And yeah, I will never, ever retract those opinions because they're true. Maybe she, I think she'll grow out of them. I hope. And wasn't it totally unsurprising that about 20 years ago when metal t-shirts became fashionable and were in Top top shop it was Iron

Maiden yeah and it still is you can still get Maiden t-shirts in places like Primark and stuff like that because it's an instant signifier or something but people I've got to say I mean Maiden of course are still selling out big stadiums and stuff like that but in terms of the records I'd still keep from that period um they're the worst and and you know there's no place for women in their music made never sing love songs or sex songs there's no place for sex in their music either because the boys that they're appealing to are not having sex so they don't want to hear about a front man who is having sex they want to hear about a front man who's obsessed with their small you know wank sock world of warfare and horror movies

and all of that. I always remember the boys that I used to teach. I used to teach them gaming. They used to want to be games designers. They were horrible and hateful and kind of right wing in that way that alternative culture has got a bit right wing in recent years. But I always remember kind of stepping out of the room

to go and have a fag and and coming back to this room of these 10 metal boys and fuck me it just stank i know that's a prejudice and it's kind of a cliched prejudice but but it's true but it's true and and it you know i mean teenage boys are pretty gruesome in whatever they're into. But, yeah, that kind of horrible, squalid grubbiness of the fans of Maiden in particular, it's an undeniable truism, I think. And it percolates into their music. Priest, for instance, as another metal band of the period, they're writing really quite interesting songs.

You can hear Halford, you know, having to cover up his gayness so that songs like Breaking the Law, et cetera, are kind of reflective of something really, really interesting. Whereas Maiden are just unproblematically telling little boys that, yeah, their tiny penises matter and, you know, women are all bitches, et cetera. So it's kind of unretrievable yeah although you know the the horned hand and all of the other americanized kind of aspects

of metal culture now seem to be dragging everything back into the fold in terms of their influence on other metal bands yes you of course you're going to hear most metal people saying yeah umiden were important. But in terms of their influence, I don't hear it much in modern metal. A teenage dirtbag. You weren't listening to Judas Priest. No, no. But I mean, yeah, in that particular war,

Priest went hands down. And yeah, Maiden are this groveless kind of... You know the way Alan Freeman used to pepper his kind of show, his Friday Rock show, with flourishes of classical music? Yeah. Maiden are very much on that side of things. They've got no groove, because they're not really coming from a heavy rock background,

by which I mean something that's informed at least tangentially by R&B or something. They're coming purely... They listen to Lizzy, they listen to these wiggly, wiggly, wiggly bands, and all they got was the whittle. Theyzie they listen to these wiggly wiggly wiggly bands and all they got was the whittle they didn't listen to the to the groove underneath it i feel really grateful to neil for this i feel like he's kind of sort of fastidiously dissected and examined this enormous great turd you know which i just sort of like flushed from my kind of he's the

gillian mckeith of chart music no you know, you know, we've said in the past that everything ends up rehabilitated. We've had discussions in the past, you know, why is Toto's Africa now considered a classic? It's this thing, that passage of time happens. And because those old things that people are into are just sort of charming and quaint, they end up getting rehabilitated. But Maiden should not be rehabilitated.

Their music's dreadful. I mean, it always was. And, you know, I knew this as a child. I knew this even when Number of the Beast came out. I thought, how dare you exploit Omen for your mercenary ends. So, yeah, no, a cold, calculating and somewhat unmoving bandmaiden. You are not wrong to dislike them. Thank you.

So, the following week, Running Free would only manage a one-place jump to number 19, its highest position. The follow-up, a live version of Run to the Hills, became the Christmas number 26, while Live After Death entered the LP chart at number two, held off the summit of Albenburg by Love Songs by George Benson on KTEL. And of course, the original version was used to devastating effect

as the soundtrack to the Maiden Minute in In Bed With Chris Needham, where Manslaughter take time out from the stress of being Loughborough's top-ranked thrash metal band by running down a school corridor, wrapping sellotape round Chris's little brother's head and filming themselves having a big wazz into a toilet. Hello! We're drinking! Thank you very much, Neil.

See you down the line, brother. No worries. See you later, guys. See you very much, Neil. See you down the line, brother. No worries. See you later, guys. See you, Neil. Bye. That's the way to do it. Straight in at number 20 this week. It's Iron Maiden and Running Free.

Now, here come a group that come all the way over from the States to appear with us on Top Of The Pops this evening. It's their first television debut in this country. They are Cameo. They're at number 21 this week, and this is The Single Life. That's the way to do it. Straight in at number 20, says Jordan, let loose into the studio and surrounded by a smattering of the kids.

He then tells us of a group that have come over all the way from America, where they make all them films and that, to make their first ever appearance on British television. It's Cameo and Single Life. Formed by Larry Blackman in New York in 1974, the New York City Players were a 14-piece funk band who were signed to Casablanca Records a year later as The Players, but were forced to change their name after the Ohio Players

wagged a finger at them and tuttered. Changing their name to Cameo, after a packet of fags one of the band had bought while they were on tour in Canada, they put out the LP Cardiac Arrest in early 1977, scoring an R&B hit with a single Rigor Mortis. After being pulled into the orbit of disco, they ended up on the soundtrack of Thank God It's Friday in 1978. They go on to be a regular presence in the Billboard R&B charts throughout the early 80s, but it wouldn't be until 1984 that their label, Phonogram, decided to release anything in the UK after they sold out their debut tour over here, and She's Strange got to number 37 in April of that year.

This single, the follow-up to Attack Me With Your Love, which got to number 65 in July, is the second cut from the LP's single Life, which came out in June, but only got to number 66 in our charts. It entered the singles charts at number 47, then soared 12 places to number 35, which led to about 20 seconds of the video being played in the breaker section of Top of the Pops that week, kicking it up another 10 places to number 25.

This week, it's jumped four places to number 21 and here they are for their first chance to have a slink about in the top of the pop studio. Come on in cameo. Named after a packet of fags. If they'd been on tour in Britain at the time they could have been called Silk Cut

which is a great name for a band of their ilk. Yeah it would be actually. Or Rough Shag. Well, yeah, that would do it all right, yeah. That's more like an album track of theirs. Yes. Do you notice that Paul Jordan says it's their first television debut?

Yeah, as opposed to their second television debut. This is exactly what I'm talking about, that I get nervous watching him. I know he's a really nice bloke, but anyway, yeah. Yeah, funk expert David Stubbs, the floor is yours. Yeah, I love this. And I mean, you know, when I was talking about something happening... It's mint, isn't it? Yeah, in Colonel Abrams, yeah.

I mean, things happen here. Yeah, this is absolute mint. There's no argument about it, you know. You know, they're assuming the stances. They look terrible dress-wise, but most people did in 1985. Yes. Shocking. I didn't. I-wise, but most people did in 1985. Yes. It's shocking.

I didn't. I was fine, but we'll get on to that later on. But it's a bit like that scene in Wings of Desire when Bruno Gantz's angel goes and gets these clothes, he exchanges his suit of armour for some terrible clothes that have just been randomly thrown together. So many people dressed like that in 1985. I mean, the 80s have got a fucking nerve

having a laugh at the 70s, put it that way. They really have. You know, there's so much of that. There's a lot of that about 1985. I mean, the 80s have got a fucking nerve having a laugh at the 70s. Put it that way. They really have. There's so much of that. There's a lot of that about tonight. And the late 80s, early 90s, even more so. Fucking hell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, this I love. I mean, I get always cameos that are a bit like Prince, but minus the sort of androgyny, the sense of gender fluidity.

You know, it's very much an all-male thing. But no, I mean, this loves a beautiful piece of music. I mean, that little sort of bass drone that you get that runs through it, it's kind of subtly quite wistful, really. It's like, yeah, he's living the single life, but could that be the aching, mute voice of his subconscious there? You know, there's that kind of weird, lovely little undercurrent going on there. Yeah.

I mean, the beauty of this sort of record, it's the sort of record that no one makes anymore. And if they did, they'd make a Pharrell-sized fortune. I mean, that's what Pharrell, I think, was specialised in, you know, making the kind of records they don't make anymore, you know. I'm sure that someone could absolutely clean up by just flat-out emulating this.

I mean, I remember being at a barbecue hosted by this British Jamaican family, and when this struck up, you know, everyone across the generations put down their paper plates and, you know, they just got generations put down their paper plates and, you know, they just got right down as one. You know, it was lovely. But I did interview Larry Blackmun about 1988, this would have been. It really wasn't my finest hour, actually. Oh, no.

He was late, you know, for the interview, you know, and I was a bit peeved about that, you know, because I'm a stickler for punctuality, you know, being the old wing commander and all that. But it wasn't the most sort of scintillating of interviews. And I think that when I kind of wrote it up, I think I was getting a bit smug. I'd been like a staff writer at Melody Maker for about a year and felt a bit on top of the world. And I don't know, there was a sort of slightly kind of unappealing

waspishness that was creeping into my copy. And at one point, you know, he was talking about Tommy Jenkins. I think he was talking about how he was going to be helping work on a Tommy Jenkins album. And I wrote something like, oh, well, good luck, whoever the hell he is. Something like that. I actually wrote that. Now, what happened is, in those days, they had Channel 4.

They had, late on Friday nights, they had a sort of What the Papers Say. And it was like What the Music Papers Say. Oh, no! Yeah. And Charles Shaw Murray was doing it. And he picked up on this little piece. Because I watchedray was doing it and he picked up on this little piece that i this thing because i watched the bloody thing and he picked up on this and he said david tommy jenkins is one of cameo yes it's like oh my fucking and that was a very very properly humbling experience you know and and rightly so i mean this is the pre-codpiece era of cameo so you, what we're getting here

is a more masculine imagination with more clothes on. They've stripped down from 14 to 10 to 4. And Larry Blackman is obviously the front man wearing a jacket that appears to have parakeets on it over a light

green vest and dark green trousers. And the only instrument on stage is a bass which stays slung around the shoulder of erin mills he's he's not going to put it down and start capering about like ashley blessing yeah weird choice that yeah you know there's one instrument but it's the instrument yeah yeah just this track coming on at the time and this time was just like fucking yes. What a joy. Yeah, 1985 is skill. Yeah, I mean, I think this song has kind of been obliterated a bit

from people's memory by the megalithic presence of Word Up. Yes. But this is the one, really. I mean, OK, you know, She's Strange had been a minor hit, but this is the one that really kind of broke them through the thing with Cameo is they came out of nowhere and they didn't at the same time it's like you used to see their records in the racks I remember my dad dragging me around record shops and I'd be sort of looking through the funk sections and you'd see their albums I mean they didn't even get an album release in the UK until their seventh album which

was Nights of the Sound Table great nice 1981 um they they had get an album release in the UK until their seventh album, which was Knights of the Sound Table. Nice. 1981. They had played live a bit in the UK. They had a bit of a following. I mean, when they did their first tour the year before, I remember seeing an advert in the local paper for the Royal Concert Hall,

and it said, cameo sold out. And it's just like, who the fuck are cameo? I thought I was on top of everything in the music world. I'd never heard of them. And I assumed because of the name that they must be some kind of prog band or something. Yeah, I guess they're getting played late at night by Robbie Vincent or whoever. I don't know. But they obviously had a following on the kind of soul circuit.

They were like Maze, weren't they? Nobody knew them apart from all the people that sold out their gigs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is it. I mean, I used to see their records in the racks alongside Rufus and Shaka Khan, who I also didn't really know who they were. You know, just these sort of like dog-eared records, second-hand records.

Did you think Rufus was called Rufus Khan? No, I didn't. But the thing with Cameo, the name and the logo they had in those days, the logo was a kind of Art Nouveau thing. It looked more like a bar of soap. Yes. You know. A cameo.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Than a funk band. But obviously when they had their big rethink, they changed everything. They slimmed down from 14 members to, you know, four or five. And the logo became more kind of blocky and chunky and modern. The music did too. The music became more blocky and chunky and modern as well.

Yes. I listened to an interview with Larry Blackman recently by Questlove. It's on the Questlove podcast. Right. And in that, he talks about the fact that he really enjoyed being at the end of the old school, but at the start of the new technology.

He really enjoyed being in this position where he was part of that changeover. Yeah. And you can really hear that. Because this record and this era of cameo is all about minimalism really in the interview with questlove he's talking about some kind of piece of machinery he's got and he says it's a mitsubishi now i looked into this i couldn't find any bit of audio equipment that's made by mitsubishi so maybe he's got that wrong or just my searching skills aren't up to it but anyway whatever this piece of machinery was he says it could make silence sound good and that's clearly that's clearly what cameo were about at this time it's all about the gaps and the spaces between everything um there's there's some amazing stuff about the sort of

backstory of cameo in that interview by the way way. There's a thing, you know, you said they slimmed down from 14 members, but when they had 14 members, they needed a massive tour bus. They bought that tour bus from Muhammad Ali. No! Fucking hell! Larry Blackman's dad was a boxer, so maybe there was some kind of connection there. I don't know how it happened, but yeah. You can imagine that sort of like handing the keys over.

That might have been about 1981, because that's when Ali had his last fight. Right. He lost to Trevor Burbick. And of course, at that point, his entourage would have just disappeared, you know. So he's definitely going to have a bus going begging, definitely. The thing with his backstory, Larry Blackman,

he talks about growing up in New York. And when he was just a child, he was hanging around the Apollo. And he saw live people like Sam Cooke and James Brown and right through to Funkadelic and maybe I'm extrapolating too much from this but you know and maybe I'm drawing lines between things but you can see the kind of showmanship that Larry Blackman must have learned from watching people like James Brown and George Clinton and Sam Cooke but also the other kind of musical element in his life was he was in this thing called the Junior Guard, which is like an even more paramilitary version of the Boy Scouts.

It was basically funded by the FBI. In the interview, Larry compares it to the Hitler Youth. Right. And he joined the drum and bugle corps of the Junior Guard. And in that, he learned drums first and then the bass right from that you know his family moved to atlanta and then he takes those skills to form a school band which becomes cameo and maybe this is a stretch by me but he's in this kind of quasi military organization playing military music and he's playing the drums and the bass and he's

learned all this showmanship and that's cameo you've got this kind of robotic military beat backbeat to it which is the best bit in the song eyes right yeah all of that and that kind of minimalist era of cameo for me it's their best stuff i mean i've tried with the old fun material i don't know if david has for me it's quite sort of second tier second to me now this is this. Yeah, yeah. I think it starts with the album Style in 1983. Questlove goes further than that. He reckons I Just Wanna Be, single, they released in 1979,

is where that kind of thing starts, the sort of futurist bit of what they do. But the first that we, the general public, as opposed to kind of specialists and soul boys, I guess, would have heard of it was She's Strange, which was, you know you know top 40 first time round later reissued got slightly higher and again you know this is the UK being ahead of the game Cameo didn't make the billboard top 40 until Word Up in 86. Ridiculous. And it was number three in

the UK number six in the billboard charts but yeah we were way ahead of the game with Cameo. I remember getting hold of the reissue of She's Strange. And on the B-side of that, there was this Cameo Megamix with various hits all welded together. And it hit me that their music is modular, like Lego. It all fits to a template and you can mix and match bits together. Which isn't to say that they all sound exactly the same. bits together, which isn't to say that they all sound exactly the same. But if you listen to She's Strange, Single Life, Attack Me With Your Love, Word Up, Candy and Back and Forth, Candy fucking hell.

Oh, Candy's fucking amazing. That's their best tune, Candy. Yeah, probably is, to be fair. They all sound related, though, those tracks. They're brothers from another mother, all those tracks. And the thing in pop music, you only need one idea if it's a brilliant idea. Yes, totally. Whether you're the Ramones or Lana Del Rey, just that one idea will sustain you.

God, Candy. I mean, David talking about witnessing how people reacted to single life at a barbecue. If in the UK, you go to a black wedding and Candy comes on, have you seen that dance?

There's the dance that everyone does to it. No. There's a particular sort of dance routine, sort of like a group dance routine that everyone does to it. And it's just, I try learning it. It's kind of a, it's just an amazing thing to watch. When Cyril Regis died, the footballer, that dance broke out at his funeral wake.

It's just the most amazing clip, if you find it. Yeah, I've seen that too. But not everybody liked this new thing that Cameo were doing. The critic Jeffrey Himes in the Washington Post called them shamio on account of all the studio trickery that they were doing. Oh, fuck off. You know, yeah. And yeah, obviously there was a lot of studio trickery.

That's the fucking point. That's what's so brilliant about it. They're cheating. They're using synthesizers. Yeah, yeah. And Larry Blackman is a genius. You know, he was the genius behind it. You know, he was the producer and all that,

but they were a group. That's the thing. It wasn't just him. You know, you've got Nathan Lieutenant. He's the guy with the two rows of little baby dreads. He was on vocals and played trumpet on some of their records. You've got Tommy Jenkins, who David mentioned, and Kevin Kendrick.

Those guys co-wrote most of the songs with Larry, so they really were a group. But the thing is, they did have gimmicks. They did have gimmicks. That was the whole... Like, Larry Blackman going, on most cameo hits. Yeah, later on, we're not quite there yet. He hasn't started singing like he's got a massive

hunk of special toffee in his mouth just yet. Yeah, or a clothes peg on his nose. Yeah. But I actually tried to trace the history of the funk. Ow. Yes. It's almost like a lockdown project. I got so bored.

I tried to make this happen. So it's there on September by Earth, Wind and Fire. Yeah. And It's Your Thing by the Isley Brothers, 1969. And that was as far back as I could go, 1969. It's Your Thing. Ow. Yeah. the Isley Brothers, 1969. And that was as far back as I could go, 1969. It's your thing, ow. So if any pop-crazed youngsters have got a credible earlier instance

of the funk, ow. You know, some people saying Sly and the Family Stone, but I couldn't find an example from pre-'69. So, yeah, I'd love to hear it. And the other gimmick, of course, is the Ennio Morricone Good, the Bad and the Ugly gimmick. Of course, yes. That we hear on this record.

And that's a bit like, you know, Anne Dudley from Art of Noise. She always had that, hey, hey, sound in the background on everything she produced. I quite like that, that they had that gimmick, that you instantly recognise the cameo track because of the... Yeah. Even if it's not an, ah, which we don't get on this track. The thing is, it's absolutely nothing wrong.

You've only got one idea. If it's a brilliant idea, it's great. All of these things are saying, hey, you know you like cameo and you liked all those cameo records. Well, here, and this is to indicate it, is another cameo record. An intro to a Motown song.

You know Motown, you like Motown, don't you? Well, here's some more Motown. Well, the individual drummers on Motown tracks, the Funk Brothers, each drummer had their own individual fill that they would start the track with, so you could recognise which drummer it was. That's how extreme it got there. I mean, there's very little here in this performance

that will anger or unbalance the dads, but the BBC could have had a lot of fun with a full play of the video, which, as you'll recall, begins with a very chunky black man with a high top fade and a uber mercury of a moustache in a wedding dress which he then rips off and stomps out of a church so he can jump into a ferrari and bomb around town with a selection of ladies from the 80s with massive sex frizz hairstyles quite the thing to put out in 1985 in the middle of the AIDS scare.

Yeah, the thing with cameo is, particularly when you get to the codpiece era, they are incredibly camp. Yes. But they were completely heterosexual. They're kind of the opposite of Wham in a way. Because Wham appeared, at least to somebody in my generation,

to be these young straight lads. But, you know, obviously we now know the reality of that. But yeah yeah cameo candle bar mustache red codpiece and yet utterly straight which is kind of amazing like pj probie said i was camp but i put some beef into it the dance moves are amazing i think the coordinated dance moves on this performance you know they're really going for it and also they had the guys and girls audience participation down way before Timberlake, way before Outcast.

That single guys clap your hands, and single ladies clap your hands and all that, which is just fantastic. What a great hook that is. Yeah, I don't know if they've been instructed to perform and respond, but the kids are well into it, aren't they? They clap their gender-specific hands on Cube. Absolutely perfect there. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know you know a good way if this came on in the club a good way to signal your

availability yeah exactly or a really good way for your mates to turn around and just stare at you when he sings that uh-huh you haven't got you just go fuck off yeah yeah you wouldn't know where she goes to a different school yeah Yes, exactly, yes. I mean, Simon, you speak eloquently of the music of the 80s that emboldened you when you weren't in a relationship. And, you know, you could say here's another example, but, you know, I doubt Larry Blackman and his mates are staring out of their bedroom windows,

taking in the landscape of Barré. No, because it's not the single life as in the celibate life. It's not the chaste life. No, certainly not. It's the promiscuous life, if anything, you know. It's the sluggish about life. Yes, exactly. Even though I think that there is an underlying sadness

because, you know, life isn't all cock. Yeah. Yes. Fucking hell. Are they funk, though? These people are in their late 20s, early 30s. They're veterans. But unlike Prince or Michael Jackson a few years later,

they can breathe in hip-hop and breathe it out again in their own style. They're not intimidated or encumbered by it. Exactly. You've put it perfectly there. They took hip-hop on board, but they also had an effect on it. The sound of R&b post cameo does bear their dna i mean teddy riley was definitely listening larry kind of mentioned him in that quest love interview i did and he mentored teddy riley to some extent and almost signed him to his

label right and you can hear that similar kind of use of emptiness and space on no diggity by black street for example and you also i mean david correctly mentioned pharrell williams think of something like drop it like it's hot and the sort of empty spaces on that track and outcast i mean it turns out half of um oh yes of cameos backing musicians ended up playing on stanconia and speakerbox the love below notably the bassist aaron mills uh yes playing on on outcast records so so this this kind of influence of cameo does does carry on even if their one gimmick kind of um runs its course they did really make a mark on hip-hop and r&b after their time yeah i mean they're

this kind of retro futurist in a sense isn't it because you know things like the dance routines that harking right back in as the pips and beyond or whatever, you know. But, you know, like you said, they're a functioning band. But, you know, they've got a handle on new technologies and fresh style and all that, you know. Because there'll be an interview in the NME a few months from now with Simon Witter. And he talks to Larry Blackman and he says, you know, I heard you don't like being termed as a funk band.

Why is that? And he says, oh, we've just never seen ourselves as a funk band although i suppose you might say the same thing if i heard cameo for the first time when i think of funk i think of guys who don't take baths and i don't like that i mean his big influence were earth wind and fire they were what he aspired to be um and yeah i mean cameo mark one you can you can see that so it's kind of weird that he doesn't identify with funk, but I suppose that's because he was trying to move things forward. You know, maybe for him, funk meant the 70s

and he was trying to move things in a different direction. It's interesting, the whole, the lyrics to this song. Yeah, it's about being a single guy, putting it about, but it's also got that kind of S&M undercurrent to it. Every little thing you do makes me smile and if I had my way, baby, I'd tie you up for a while. Influence of Prince. The Prinfluence

if you will. As we're going to see later on eh? So the following week Single Life jumped five places to number 16 and a week later it got to number 15 its highest position. The follow up, a re-release of She's Strange got to number 15, its highest position. The follow-up, a re-release of She's Strange,

got to number 22 in December. And although the last cut from the LP, A Goodbye, would only get to number 65 in March of 1986, they roared back at the end of the summer with Word Up, eventually getting to number three in September. Word Up's my karaoke song, by the way. Is it now? The thing is, in some ways, it's a very foolish choice

because all of the lyrics are in the first minute and a half and then there's a load of instrumental fanning about. You've got to dance, man. Or you could just go for a piss and come back. Yeah, yeah. That was the song in which I basically defeated a member of the boy band Blue at karaoke. Have I told this story before? What? was the song in which i basically defeated a member of the boy band blue at karaoke have i

told this story before what yeah um a friend of mine uh was having her birthday uh a chinese elvis restaurant in hamstead and uh so oh paul chan i think that might have been the south london guy i don't know because but there's one all right and when the chinese elvis had finished doing his thing it would be karaoke time for the punters. And what's his name? Simon from Blue got up and did a Blue song. He actually did a karaoke version of one of his own hits. Oh, that's like David Van Day in the Falkland Islands. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did he do a cartwheel? He was a bit subdued and didn't get really a great reception from the crowd. I was up next. I did Word Up by Cameo, and I really fucking went for it and brought the house down. Everyone fucking loved it. So in a way, I should maybe have quit when I was ahead, and that should have been my karaoke retirement.

But to this day, if for whatever reason I'm forced to get involved in karaoke, I'm looking through the list for Word Up every time. Simon Whiteman. Yeah, my karaoke song is Barry White, Can't Get Enough of Your Love. Oh, fucking hell. I want to hear that.

We need a chant music karaoke night. Fucking right. Brilliant. My go-to karaoke song has always been the Ramadan number one of 1974 itself, Kung Fu Fighting. Oh, yes. But I did it in a pub in nottingham once did a really decent round

ass kick but my loafer flew off went right to the back of the pub caught by some bloke threw it back to me over the heads of all these people caught it again put it on carried on you can't improve on that no that's very good it's a little bit frightening. Yes, it was, man. They were expensive loafers. And by the late 90s, I used to finish it off by going into the rap on the first mission of Parappa the Rapper on the PlayStation. Do you remember? Yeah.

Kick, punch, it's all in the mind. If you want to test me, I'm sure you'll find the things I teach you are sure to beat you. Nevertheless, you get a lesson from teaching how to kick What percentage of the audience knew what the fuck you were doing? There were enough of the heads in the audience to nod and appreciate And my mates fucking loved it And that's the only thing that matters

You don't play to the gallery at karaoke You play to your mates Yeah, true enough By the way, talking of Parappa the Rapper, David I was delighted to learn that it actually samples Cannes. Did you know this? Oh, my God. Not so much sample, but do you know that mission

where you get a driving lesson off a moose? Right, OK. The openings, it's an interpolation of the piano intro from Turcles Have Short Legs. Yeah, go back and listen to it. Never mind that. Go back and rewrite your book. It's the most important fact.

Yes. My biggest fuck-up with karaoke was actually The Darkness. I went to the Caroline Brunswick, which is a kind of goth pub in Brighton, and they had rock karaoke. And I chose Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Motherfucker, by The Darkness. And I know that Justin Hawkins sings in quite a high voice um in quite a lot of

their songs i'd forgotten that that entire song pretty much is in a falsetto so um immediately the silly games of metal yeah i i throw myself into the first verse in a very high voice thinking it's gonna oh mate where can you go i know where can you go and and basically after about three minutes of screeching, I'd almost lost my voice, and pretty much the pub had lost its audience as well. LAUGHTER Hey, it's a Mac Group move.

They're up to number 21 this week. Cameo, single life. Hear the charts. And there's a chart entry at number 40 for The Alarm and Strength. And a chart entry at 39, level 42, Something About You. Down 9 at 38, King, Alone Without You. Down 7 to 37, I Wonder If I Take You Home, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam. Child entry at 36,

Aha, Take On Me. Down to 35, Go The Damned, Is It A Dream? Down 7 to 34, Dire Straits, Money For Nothing. And dropping to 33, Running Up That Hill, It's Kate Bush. Princess Samuel, number 1, goes down 6 at 32.

And a new entry at 31 from the cult, Rain Down 11 at 30, The Cars and Drive And down nine to 29, Into the Groove, Madonna Up seven at 28, Five Star, Love Takes Over Up to 27, St Elmo's Fire, John Parr New entry at 26, The Boy with the Thorn In His Side, The Smiths. And down to 25 go UB40 and Chrissie Hynde. Up 12 places, 24, The Cure, Close To Me.

Up 8 to 23, My Heart Goes Bang, Dead Or Alive. Renee and Angela, I'll Be Good goes up 2 to 22. Up 4 to 21, Single Life, Cameo. And the highest new entry at number 20, Iron Maiden, Running Free. Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, up 3 to 19, Brand New Friend. And up 3 to 18, It's Called a Heart from Depeche Mode. Cliffs up one place to 17, She's So Beautiful. Down 7 at 16, Baltimore, A Tarzan Boy.

And down 5 to 15, Mai Tai, Body and Soul. Amy Stewart, Knock on Wood, goes down six at 14. Climbing four to 13, The Style Council, The Lodgers. Down one at 12, Maria Vidal, Body Rock. And up one to 11,

The Power of Love, Huey Lewis and The News. And that's the way the chart stands up to number 11. We'll have more charts for you a little later. That's when we take a look at the top ten. Right now, here are some tips for the top. Here are the top 40 breakers. This guy had to make it in America before he could make it over here.

Up 11 places this week to number 27. It's John Pass and Elmo's Fire. places this week to number 27. It's John Pass and Elmo's Fire. Hey, can that group move, says Jordan as Davis grabs us by the wrist and whips us into the charts from 40 to 11 because we're already at the stage where

the charts start to matter less and less. That's terrible, isn't it, chaps? 75% of the top 40 just done in one go. Oh, yeah. So anticlimactic. Yeah, it goes on for too long. Yeah. Yeah, it really does.

Yeah. It's like the classified scores at the end of Grandstand. Yes. You realise they have to do it, but yeah, it just goes on and on and on. Yeah, and we're hit with the images of saxophones, guitars and keyboards. I always say this, but that awful soft rock version of Yellowpill, fuck it, I hate it. Yeah, those crappy clip art images of guitars and saxes and piano keys.

And I don't know if you noticed, but the backgrounds of loads of the photos have been blacked out or whatever the background was has been replaced by some other solid block of colour. It's like a Google pixel. It's like somewhere between Joseph Stalin and the Google pixel. Top of the Pops was kind of intermediary between those two things. Oh, man.

A few jumped out at me. Princess, say I'm your number one. She's trying on a red bowler hat. And I kept thinking of, you know know a bit in the wire where bubbles has identified um some of the the gang members um and and you've got keema greg the cop up on the roof watching and bubbles goes over to the dealers and puts red hats on their heads so you know to try and sell them the hats but also to show keema up on the roof yeah these are the bad guys that you're looking for cars drive still hanging in there it's god

it's fucking october and we're still in the live a hangover period i didn't realize it dragged on that long um i know it's cameo themselves only three of them made the photo cut yes why that is and the other weird one was renee and angela um the whites of renee's eyes are too white i don't know what's been done there it's like a horror movie poster or something. Good see-a-ha finally got take on me into the chart, though. Fucking hell, after three goes... Oh, that feels like a bit of a moment. Yeah, in at 36, it's like, oh, here we go.

You know, it's almost a new age of pop coming. I didn't realise it was so late in the 80s. You forget that there weren't even a thing in the first half of the decade. And while we're still trying to digest all that data, Davis and Jordan immediately throw us into the breaker section, starting with St Elmo's Fire by John Parr. Born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire in 1952,

John Parr formed his first band, The Silence, at school at the age of 12, which he was a part of into his late teens. In 1968, he joined the band Bittersweet, spelt S-U-I-T-E, which were a regular feature on the Yorkshire wheel-tappers and shunters circuit, before he poached musicians from other top-working men's club bands and formed Ponders End. I wonder if they ever played a few gigs with Punch. After getting his hooks into the music industry through his songwriting,

he signed a deal with Carlin America in 1983, which led him to link up with Meatloaf, who was looking for songs for his next LP, Bad Attitude. He introduced him to John Wolfe, who had been The Who's tour manager and was looking for something to do after they'd split up. He offered his management services and Paul was signed up as a solo artist to Atlantic in 1984. His first single, Naughty Naughty, was an instant success in America, getting to number 23 on the Billboard chart in March of

this year, while Paul was supporting Toto on their American tour. And it was during that tour that he was approached by the composer David Foster, who was doing the soundtrack for the forthcoming Joel Schumacher film St Elmo's Fire, was impressed by Naughtyughty and drafted him in to record the theme tune. When Foster played Pa the track he had in mind, Pa told him it was cat shit and sounded well flash dance and suggested that they have a go with a new song which they wrote together. As neither of them had seen the film and had little idea what it was about, Parr struggled with the lyrics until Foster showed him a news clip of the Canadian Paralympian Rick Hansen, who had just started an attempt

to go round the world in his wheelchair. Taken by Hansen's name for the event, the Man in Motion Tour, he hammered out the lyrics, chucking in the name of the film, even though Schumacher told him not to. It immediately scaled the billboard charts in the summer of 85 and two weeks after the film came out it reached the summit of Mount Popmore in early July spending two weeks there. Naturally because we're Britain

and shit the film won't be out here until November. But thanks to Jonathan King, whose new BBC Two show No Limits plugged the single Relentless Lair, it entered the charts on the first week of September at 82, then soared 26 places to number 56. After jumping nine places to number 45, then seven places to number 38, this week it's gone 11 places up to number 27, meaning that Top of the Pops is finally screening the video,

which is a Melange of Paws standing outside the titular bar in the rain and a big advert for the film. And alas and alack, chaps, the true face of 1985 reveals itself. God, it's mulletedness. I mean, Work Stop, that's basically your neck of the woods, isn't it, Al? It is, yes.

It's the cradle of pop. I know. Another union of democratic mine workers size stain on your region, though, isn't it? Fucking hell. We got Colonel A. Ramson and sent John Parr the other way. Honestly, I wasn't aware of the existence of this. I did kind of follow the charts reasonably assiduously,

or was impacted by them, but I think I managed to zone this one out at the time with dark rum or whatever, so I kind of vaguely hoped, is this going to be a cover of the Brian Eno track from Another Green World? It isn't and it's uh you know it's just that wretched bruce springsteen influence you know that's singing like you're trying to hurl up a greenie from the base of your throat you know horrible sustained grunt that you know it's supposed to say passion it's not even like lustful passion urgent sincerity or whatever you know yeah it's not so much you know like man in

motion it's just this walking compendium of every mid-80s transatlantic, you know. Yeah. It's not so much, you know, like man in motion. It's just this walking compendium of every mid-80s transatlantic cliché, you know. Oh, yes. Chromium played field to that brassy bat beat, you know. The eagles are higher, you know. It's just like... You know, anything like high school movies, coming-of-age movies, killed rock.

You know, you've got this. You've got Don't You Forget About Me, you know, Simple Minds. Oh, God,s. Such a destructive influence. There's no St Elmo's Fire for us yet at the ABC or Odeon. At the pictures this weekend, we've got

a choice of Pale Rider, Fletch, Life Force, The Holcroft Covenant, Cocoon, Rambo First Blood 2, Code of Silence with Chuck Norris, Desperately Seeking Susan, Year of the Dragon,

The Return of the Living Dead, and the Care Bears movie. But by the look of this video, I would have definitely cocked my nose up. Because the film appears to be about a load of American wankers having a better life than me. Has anyone seen St Elmo's Fire? No.

No. No. No. No, me neither. I mean, why would we? Yeah, exactly. This is the thing. It was the 80s. I had very limited money.

I was on £10 a month from the Bowery District News, so £2.50 a week. That's NME 2023 wages, Simon, there. Exactly, yeah. Plus another £2.50 I could scrape together from my mum and my dad and my granddad so I was on I had a fiver a week to spend I had a look that's the equivalent of 14 pound 72 now right I'm not spending that on seeing fucking mainstream American films you know I wanted

to culturally enrich myself I was really craving culture and if I was going to see a film, it would be maybe something worthy and British and kitchen sink, like Letter to Brezhnev, a bit of social realism. It might have been something surreal and arty, like Eraserhead or Betty Blue, if I was going the French way with things, you know. Or I'd watch whatever Channel 4 threw at us, which is usually sort of classic things. So it might be The Defiant Ones

with Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis. It might be Night of the Iguana with Robert Mitchum or something like that, you know, and these sort of black and white classics that felt enriching in some way. And that's what I wanted. I wanted culture, whether it was secondhand or brand new. And this stuff, it's everything I hated and still do.

Even from the video you you can tell even though i've got no clue what the storyline is you kind of know what the storyline is it's triumph over adversity it's people being successful and going for it man just go for it yeah you know all this kind of shit and it's everything i hated i i can't even be ironically nostalgic for it because people younger than me, people maybe 10 years, 12 years younger than me, they love all this shit, you know, because to them, this is the fun 80s. And, you know, if you go to a club

where that generation are in charge of things, that's what you're going to hear. What it reminds me of, you know, in the film Boogie Nights, where Dirk Diggler and his mate try and make a record and it's, you got the touch you got the power and you know it's it's it's all that kind of fucking go for it go getting bollocks it's do you know what it is it's Tory music it's Tory music that's what it is and uh it totally

makes sense to me that the backing music is played by members of Toto. He's backing man are basically Toto. It's like a youth wing of Reaganism, isn't it? Definitely. I mean, essentially, there were two records made in the mid-80s in 24 hours to be the lead single from a film, right? One of them is the greatest record ever made. It's When Doves Cry by Prince. The other one is this piece of absolute shit um yeah 24 hours to make it what it makes me think of those 24 hours were basically spent

in constipation like you know he just sat there on the bog just shitting out this massive bowling ball sized turd of american frolics yeah i'm sorry i'm sure he's a nice bloke it's a sort of thing that's in the kind of elephant's graveyard of like pre-dawn minicab rides, isn't it? Oh, God, yeah. I suppose in some ways this is the sort of shit that we should play at Late Night Minicab FM. We're going to be totally real about it. Yeah, yeah.

I think in some ways music like this and films like Joel Schumacher's films and John Hughes' movies, they kind of signal the breakdown of the post-war consensus. Because, you know, from the Clement Attlee government onwards, there was this idea, essentially in Britain, that we're all in it together and we look out for each other and that there is a safety net if we fuck up and all this kind of stuff. But this kind of individualism, it's the worst kind of individualism has crept in. it is a very reaganite thing and it's yeah it is just

young people being yeah go for it while an an older man with bouffant hair encourages them yes by the way he's not even that old he looks older than he is he's like 33 when he's younger than colonel abrams yeah this fucking clarkson looking fucker yeah i mean this is your bog standard movie trailer that thinks it's a pop video that was in style at the time with the pa walking about the set of the bar that the film's named after and then doing the show right there on the stage while some bellends embraces strut about and make the nerds get off their table yeah but yeah, I know fuck all about the film. All I know about the film is that this is the theme to it and the theme to it is shit, so why would I bother? I always get mixed up with John Farnham,

who sang You're the Voice. I never know which is which. You're the voice, train and... Yeah, they might as well be the same person. Yeah, I think he's Australian, but I don't think that was from a film. But it's all the same bollocks. He's already been interviewed on the first episode

of the new series of Whistle Test this week at his home and yet he's come far from his workshop roots. He's being interviewed in his home in Doncaster. Living the dream. His Wikipedia page is one of those ones that's definitely been written by the person themselves. You know where you get one that says at the top, this biography of a living person needs additional citations or verification.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of those words, right? Because you mentioned his band, Ponder's End. The little bit about them, it said, you know, he formed a super group with musicians from other working men's clubs and named the band Ponder's End, a band that set a new precedent for the bands in the North. What a weird thing to say. Set a new precedent.

In what way? Precedent of shitness. I don't know. It's like in Cabri Voltaire. Anything else to say about this? No. No. Of course there isn't.

It's fucking shit. Exactly. So the following week, St Elmo's Fire soared 17 places to number 10, then spent three weeks in a row at number six, its highest position. It was tipped as a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for best song, but when Parr opened up his gob about the song being written about Rick Hansen, it was disqualified because it wasn't about the film,

and Lionel Richie won instead with Say You, Say Me. Good. The follow-up, the release of Naughty Naughty in the UK, got to number 58. And after his duet with Meatloaf, Rock and Roll Mercenaries, got to number 31 in September of that year. He never troubled the top 40 again. Fucking hell, rock and roll mercenaries.

I wonder if Putin's rang them up yet. Yeah, well, come from workshop, it should be rock and roll scabs more like. But Paul went on to do all right for his send, supporting Tina Turner on the private dancer tour, linking up with Pepsi to play a gig which was broadcast live in America, Japan and Australia and making quite a bit of money

co-writing an advertising jingle of the late 80s. Would you care to guess which one? Oh, go on. Well, it'll be blatantly obvious when I tell you. Gillette! The best a man can get! Oh, of course.

Yeah, yeah. Take me where my future can lie and send hell those fire! And zooming in just one place above that one from John Parr come the Smiths. A new entry at 26, the boy with a thorn in his side. We've done the Smiths loads on chart music and this, their eighth single, is the follow up to That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore, which only got to number 49 in July of this year. only got to number 49 in July of this year.

Although we don't know it yet, this is the first cut of sorts from their next album, The Queen Is Dead, which isn't coming out for another eight months and is a new entry this week at number 26. They've just finished a tour of Scotland earlier this week and are not available, so to celebrate them courageously breaking the Top of the pop's colour barrier once more, here is their first ever promo video the band have ever made.

And let's get that video out of the way first because it's the bog standard, the band having fun in the studio trope, or at least as much fun as a band can have when Morris is in it. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's it's kind of an anti-promo thing really in lots of respects you know and you've got the band and you've got the singer and the twain don't really connect really you know it's like they're doing their own thing Morris he does his thing there's no harmonies there's no harmonization you know there's just a sense of like one person delivering a monologue and then the rest of them having a

sort of instrumental conversation and it's a very un professional studio isn't it because it's got massive windows and blinds and candles yeah soundproofing must be fucking awful and yeah morrissey takes his jacket off at one point and whirls it around a bit and uh yeah that's your lot you know adam and the ants this is not exactly i mean it feels willfully slapdash you know so, so like, fine if we must, you know. I mean, I've not done Morrissey, I don't think, on chart music before, actually. I don't think I have. Oh, well, come on, David, take the floor. Yeah, we all know what became of Morrissey,

you know, what he descended into and what he sort of bloated and hardened into, you know, to the extent that, like for a lot of people, as we mentioned earlier on, it's now only tolerable to listen to Smith songs if Rick Astley is delivering them. But at this time, 1985, I mean, I wasn't obsessive about the Smiths, not enough to actually buy and play their records at home,

because the thing is, you just saw and heard plenty of them anyway. But actually, I have to say, I thought at this point, Morrissey was a male model of divineness, to the extent that even if I didn't quite admit it to myself, I was actually modelling myself on him. Oh, man. You know, I wore my hair big on top, short at the sides. Stubs, I see.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I wore big, baggy shirts. I had similar eyebrows to him also. You know, it's not like I was cutting pictures out of smash hits and sellotating them to my door. It wasn't a crush. It was just that, to me, he looked like a young man ought to look in 1985. But anyway, if it was unconscious, it was bumped right up to my conscious

at a school reunion I had in Leeds around this time. Right. And I met Steve Turner notice. Fucking hell, have you seen Morrissey here? I was like, no, it's a customised look. It's my own creation. Is it? Fuck. It's my own creation. Is it, fuck? You're fucking Morrissey.

Hey, lads, come and have a skig at this charming get here. Hey, Morrissey, you're fucking what? Bad skit. Bad skit, exactly, yeah. Actually, what Stephen Turner, or Stephen Andrew Turner, I suppose I should say, we're talking about Morrissey, failed to notice, I think since when we blokes give each other the up and down and tend to stop at the waist,

is that below the waist, I was all soul boy, you know, jeans at half-mast, white socks, plimsolls, anyway, there you go. Anyway, I thought the Smiths were at the height of their powers in the mid-80s, with The Queen Is Dead, especially the title track. I mean, everything from the queer provocation and just the wah-wah velocity of Mars guitars, which is like graffiti spray paint. There was a series of videos that Derek Jarman made of tracks from the album, which I taped and watched a lot. So my take on the Smiths wasn't as yet affected by their non-blackness. I saw them as twisted, very well-inflected Indian, and to the idea of maleness that was still very prevalent, which I saw in the mid-80s. I think they're the first group in British rock history to pine for the monochrome, to pine for the black and white, to prime for this kind of sort of, you know,

pre-era Ian Sharples in the snow or kitchen sink drama. You know, it's one of the fascinating things. And it's just ironic really, because I do actually like them in their most colourised moments, you know, like the Queen is Dead track, you know. But this is supposedly Morrissey's favourite Smith song, but it's not mine. It's a bit like Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now.

It proceeds at this sort of leafy amble. It's a bit grey and drizzly and wrapped with swooning self-pity about how misunderstood and hard done he is by the music industry. And it's all, for fuck's sake, man. That terrible music press are just tongues bollocks at every turn. I know, I know. It's like he's addicted to feelings of persecution, you know, whether they're merited or not, you know.

And there's a bit too much of the kind of, whoa, whoa, you know, vocal ketchup on it. Oh, yeah. Even so, you know, you look at this and you listen to this and it still feels well above and beyond the surrounding 1985-ness of which, you know, there's so much in this episode. Yeah, you're right, David. It is apparently Morrissey's favourite Smith song,

which is very easy to believe as it's three and a bit minutes of him whining like a big jesser about how the music biz doesn't understand him. And it's all their fault that his singles hardly ever get into the top 10. I mean, the Smiths' chart run up to now, Smith's chart run up to now, 25, 12, 10, 17, 24, 26, 49. That's level 42 numbers, isn't it? Maybe he's going on about mainstream media.

Because, you know, we like to believe that the Smiths dominated the mid-80s. But I had a trawl of the newspaper archives of 1985 and the dominant Morissette is the tram mayor Rovers winger Johnny Morissette there's even more references to a singing group in Ireland called the Morissettes than there is an actual Morissette the jazz fusion band Morrissey Mullen get more mentions than him but I only saw one or two references to Morrissey in the papers so yeah maybe that's what he's concerned about yeah yeah there's a lot of revisionism these days that has it that uh the smiths were massive in the 80s that you know sort of u2 or simple minds kind of size they were not they were not no very much two or three rungs below that yeah obviously their impact uh was

huge and it sort of reverberates down the decades far more than the new two or Simple Minds. But I think they became popular after they split, really. I think people started to realise what they'd lost and started buying up the old albums. But at the time, they very much did feel like this quite fragile cause that was only just making it into the charts and needed every little bit of support it could get from right-minded people.

Anyway, this song, fucking cat shit. I fucking hated this song when it came out. This was a song that just put the tin lid on it and my opinions of the Smiths, particularly at the end where he's just reduced to just mewling. He's just like, oh, fuck off, mate. Put cameo back on. I'd sooner have...

Well, I've got to disagree. I mean, it's... No, no, no, disagree away, man. We live in democratic England, not communist Russia. I mean, OK, it's no single life by Cameo, but then what is? I think it's a delightful record. I really do. Right.

Yeah, it really speaks to me, actually. There's a bit in The Wire, and I do quote The Wire almost as much as I quote The sopranos but in in season four of the wire which um all civilized people agree is the best season of the wire that's the one with the school kids the correct order of how good the seasons of the wire is is four three two one five by the way right um anyway there's a bit in in an episode of season four and it is all about school kids, where one of the kids, Dookie, asks Cutty, who's kind of their mentor, the sort of youth group mentor,

how do you get from here to the rest of the world? It's such a poignant question. Cutty just says, Cutty just says, I wish I knew. And there's a bit in Boy with a Thorn in His Side by the Smiths that goes, and when you want to live, how do you start where do

you go who do you need to know and that really spoke to me as as a teenager trapped in in South Wales and not really knowing many people who were like-minded and just reading about exciting life going on in in in other places through the face magazine or or whatever it's a lightweight song but I think that's one of the delights of it, that it's quite flyaway. It doesn't have the attack of Big Mouth Strikes Again on the same album. But I think when you take it together

with the B-sides of this record, Asleep and Rubber Rings, it really proves the depth and breadth of their songwriting at this time. I don't know if you know those songs, but Asleep is this incredibly haunting suicide ballad, essentially. And Rubber Rings is this incredibly perceptive lyric about what it is to be a pop star

who knows that they will one day soon be discarded by the people who love them. The Rubber Rings, of course, being records, you know, the circular seven-inch single. They're both fantastic songs. And Rubber Rings, particularly, great bass line, you know, the circular seven-inch single. They're both fantastic songs. Rubber Rings, particularly, great bass line by the late, great Andy Rourke, RIP. First of the gang to die.

Yeah, yeah, indeed. Who we see on this clip. It's lovely to see him on there. This song, yeah, I don't suppose it would be Exhibit A if I was trying to convince somebody of the genius of the Smiths. But it's part of the picture, definitely. Yeah, he is second-guessing the way in which he's perceived by the media and the public in the lyric here.

And that's always where things start to curdle with any band when they are too obsessed with their own perception. But is it? Because, I mean, look at Public Enemy, you know, Don't Believe the Hype and stuff like that. Or the first public image single. Yeah, but maybe with Morrissey, it was always there. You know, David mentioned Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, and that's almost self-parodic,

and that's what, their third single, I think? Well, it's his own fault that he's not getting more media attention. Go on Live Aid. Go out with Linda Lassade. Come on, sort yourself out. Oh, but that's exactly it though as you well know that's exactly the point that he wasn't that guy and you know david said that morrissey was almost his kind of platonic ideal of mid-80s manhood that you know it was

worth aspiring to be and i i completely felt that too he wasn't the healthy, tanned, mainstream ideal of 80s youth. He wasn't a typical kind of boy band pretty boy or rock god. You know, he's prognathic of chin and heavy of brow. But it doesn't matter because he's filled with self-love. I found something quite subversive about the self-regarding vanity of, you know, the way he touches himself so much in this video clip. You know, he's running his hand in his shirt, which is open to the navel almost.

Men who look like him are not meant to fetishise their own bodies, not meant to love their own bodies in that way. And I found that absolutely fantastic. More memorable to me than this video is the performance they did of this song on Top of the Pops where he's got marry me written on his neck in eyeliner it's this guy who's not classically handsome or some people would say he was but uh he wasn't the 80s ideal of handsomeness you know he wasn't george michael

or morton harkett or something like that i think morrissey would have married himself if it was legal definitely yeah yeah fair point oh yeah it's but he's wearing a very nice blue sort of paisley patterned shirt in that in this i was quite envious of that and he does have a hairless chest which i don't know if he shaved it he's i think it's quite hairy now it comes with age but i just think as as a sort of an exhibit of non-masculine manhood but not being ashamed of that and and actually in a weird way sort of fetishizing yourself i thought it was it was it was a wonderful thing i do look back and wonder why i loathe the smiths so much and i think it might be something to do with the fact that people expected me to be a smiths fan because i'd by this time i'd become this really quiet introspective youth who kept to himself yeah people probably just thought you must like the

smiths and i'd just go no what the fuck are you going on about yeah i can see that because not only did i not like the smiths i didn't want to hang around with people who like the smiths either yeah guess i caught smiths off them you know what i mean like i've said before by the time i was at college a few years later you know there'd be prince people and morrissey people and i always wanted to be around the prince people well this is the cruel irony of it i thought you know how do you get from here to the rest of the world? When you want to live, how do you start? Where do you go? Who do you need to know? And all of my hopes in that line were directed towards getting out of Barry and going to university. And I thought once I got to university in London, I'd be surrounded by all these amazingly erudite people who were probably Smiths fans.

Well, guess what? I did get to university. I was surrounded by Smith these amazingly erudite people who were probably Smiths fans. Well, guess what? I did get to university. I was surrounded by Smiths fans, and they're a bunch of cunts. They're really just terrible people. And just all my hopes came crashing down, really. And nowadays, of course, they're even worse. The people who will still defend to the death

anything Morrissey says, that rump of his fan base who's still there, are almost by definition the worst people on earth and they'll probably come for me now when they hear this but i don't give a fuck yeah they are terrible the thing now is though of course the only way in which it's possible to like the smiths or to enjoy the smiths for a lot of people is to say oh well i always preferred johnny marr yeah and of course yeah sure, sure, Johnny Marr, boy genius, an absolute musical genius.

And he is a boy. He looks so, so young in this clip. I guess he was still only about, I don't know, 20 or something. He's about my age, yeah. Yeah, so there's that kind of tendency of people now to say, oh, no, I never liked Morrissey. I never liked him anyway. It was always about Marr for me. But I remember the time I was always deeply suspicious

of people who said that. People who said, oh, yeah, that band, the Smiths, they're not bad but I remember the time I was always deeply suspicious of people who said that who said oh yeah that band the Smiths they're not bad I like the guitarist you know because it's basically a way of saying uh yeah don't worry I don't like that weird poof they've got as a lead singer yes there was that idea among lads and and I was very I I'm not going to rewrite history I was very very pro Morrison I hung on his every word um i thought only he understood me and perhaps only i understood him and earlier this year 1985 i went to see my second smith's concert right at chippenham gold diggers i think i've spoken about my first smith's gig in cardiff heckles in bear yeah yeah in a previous chart music but this one i just remember being

transfixed by morrissey i remember standing in the middle of this whirling seething mass of humanity in in the mosh pit and i was just standing still and morrissey actually noticed me and he thought there was something up you know like and he sort of like looked at me and sort of did a thing with his eyebrows like tilted his head like you're right kind of thing right everyone else is moving i'm just stood staring and it must have looked really quite odd but yeah it was almost uh religious for me to to be that close to him and obviously my view of him as a human being has changed dramatically now but i'm not gonna lie and say it wasn't how it was no i think that's absolutely yeah it was a tremendous validity about morrissey it's interesting, that lyric that you picked out,

which I think, you know, it's a very fair point, but I think for me it shows that part of Morrissey's appeal was to kind of preserve that period prior to him being remotely famous at all, you know, like adolescence or whatever. It's almost in a sense becoming as famous as he did. It's a slight inconvenience, you know, in the kind of narrative that he's often presented because, you know, I think he wants to preserve perpetually

that sense of adolescent exile from things. I thinkon reynolds when he interviewed morrissey for melody maker it would have been around the first solo albums i guess 88 he asked morrissey what are you going to do when you've exhausted the diaries yeah and yeah i think i think you know morrissey kind of accepted that's a pretty good point it's essentially what you're saying now yeah and of course the answer is that he'll start writing twee whimsical songs about carry-on actors or whatever it is you know i mean this ineffectual songwriting of the 90s and i think a little smith's affection from the 80s carried him a long long way with very little justification in in the 90s i probably clung on longer than i should have done but just stuff like dagging

him dave or whatever yeah the one for me fatty yeah fuck off yeah and that's even before he really outs himself as a you know well we all know what he is we don't charge to get sued but one of the things that that i really valued about the smiths and this is also tangentially related to this record is that they were a group that came with a cultural hinterland previous bands had done that for me you had dexys you know singing about oscar wilde and brendan b and all of that yeah and and you had the style council doing a similar thing there was so much to unpack with with their records you know the record sleeves with how all these kind of quotes from french philosophers and stuff like that yeah and the smiths come along and and there

was so much of that with them. Obviously the two big ones being James Dean and Oscar Wilde, but this record sleeve has Truman Capote on it. And I didn't know who he was. And stuff like that fires your curiosity. It's like, okay, well, it's a nod to you as a fan of the Smiths. All right, well, if you want to know where we're coming from, investigate this stuff and dig into it.

And it only took me 40 years and I did i during lockdown i read music for chameleons the short story um collection by trim capote which which i i did enjoy although i admit i only bought it because it shares a title with a gary newman song but the value of that stuff can't be underestimated particularly to a sort of voracious teenage mind yeah absolutely i think that all of that is true and i think there is i would say the tremendous validity you know to the smiths but retrospectively i think kind of what probably galls me the most is seeing how they broke the relationship between i don't know white post-punk whatever and black music which had been something that had been right there at the beginning you know punk you know like punky reggae park etc etc you know the whole regular funk thing the pop group beginning, you know, punk, you know, like punky reggae park, etc, etc, you know, the whole reggae, the funk thing, the pop group, certain racial, you know,

there's always this strong relationship. Well, I know what you're saying, but it is in there, I mean, you know, this charming man has got a Motown bass line, and you know, there are bits of sheet like guitar on Big Mouth Strikes Again, in fact, Johnny Marr named his son Niall after Niall Rogers, you know, and

there is all that in there. But it's not as kind of overt as it had been before, I mean, you know, yeah, you're right, there are all these kind there. But it's not as kind of overt as it had been before. I mean, you know, there are all these kind of slightly Motown-ish, and of course it's always like, if it is black music, it has to be like very, very historical black music. You know, there's no relationship at all with contemporary black music. No, they weren't doing what, you know, the Jesus and Mary chain or Susan and the Banshees were doing,

which is sort of incorporating hip-hop beats into their music. There was never going to be anything like that with The Smiths. No, no, no. And it's, you know. And it's just the statements that he made about black music, as we know, about Diana Ross and reggae and vile and the conspiracy to get...

So it was all of that as well. What's it going to be like when Morrissey dies? Is he going to go back to being the Morrissey of the mid-'80s, like Elvis became the Elvis of the late-'50s? I think the word but will happen a lot.

There'll be 280 character tweets or however many characters you can put on Mastodon or what's the new one called? Threads. Where people say blah blah blah racism blah blah blah but and then they sort of like say how much she meant to them. I think it'll be light and

shade. It'll be both sides of it. Anything else to say? I've remembered exactly where i was when i watched the uh marry me performance of the boy with the four new sides um at our school we had french assistants assistant um who would come over on i guess their sort of gap year from from uni in france and help to teach us french there were two of them one that taught me in the lower sixth one that taught me in the upper six that ended up being a couple um Corrine and Didier and uh because I was you know uh in the upper six you get to that sort of stage where you kind of become mates with your teachers and because they were so close to me in age I guess

they were only in their early 20s themselves they kind of took me under their wing and one time they invited me around for dinner at their flat which was uh above a shop in high street in barry and it was the first time i tasted exotic foods like couscous and polenta um yeah yeah imagine that in barry but didier was a massive billy idol fan right and And in a way, he was such a nice guy, Didier. And I don't want to mock him. I don't really want to mock Billy Idol. But Billy Idol is very much a French person's idea of what is cool again. Do you know what I mean?

It's that pop in your collar thing. Whereas the Smiths, for me, were in a way more rock and roll and more subversive. But as a Frenchman, I don't think Didier could completely understand that. I think that, you know, the Smiths and Morrissey do have their constituency in America among Anglophiles. But I wonder if it's a very, very British thing

to see what Morrissey did as being subversive and indeed rock and roll. You know, that idea that the way to be rock and roll is to abscond and renege and drop out of the aesthetic of the dominant society whereas i think yeah my friend didier was like why isn't he wearing a leather wristband and going we had ashley stance also in um our school to help us with our french and the upper six um but we also had ashley stents who helped us with our german um the other six. But we also had Ashi Stentz, who helped us with our German.

Same sort of thing. So I remember going to a party of various Ashi Stentz in Leeds. You know, it's like you say, as Simon says, you can be kind of mates with us. And I got talking to one of them. I think his name was, I don't know, Rolf. And he said, I'm von Hamburg. I said, Hamburg? Wow.

You must know all about Faust then. And he says, Faust, I do not know of this. I have only interest in the important groups, like Rainbow. Fair enough. So the following week, the boy with the thorn in his side trudged up five places to number 23, which got them a studio performance on Top of the Pops next week, but then dropped five places and was out of the top 40 in a fortnight.

They dropped out of sight for the rest of the year, resurfacing in the summer of 1986 with the follow-up single Big Mouth Strikes Again, which got to number 26 in June of that year. Mid-twenties again, come on. 20s again. Come on. Here's a follow-up to In Between Days, up 12 places to number 24 this week. The Cure and Close To Me.

Formed in Notre Dame Middle School, Crawl Air, in 1973, Obelisk were a five-piece rock band which featured Mick Dempsey on guitar, Lowell Tolhurst on drums and Robert Smith on piano, who played a one-off gig at the end of Term Review, like manslaughter. Three years later, Smith and Dempsey joined a local band called Malice, who were led by Martin Creaser and did assorted sets that covered Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and the Alex Harvey band. But when punk came a-knocking,

they changed their style and their name to Easy Cure after a song written by Tolhurst. After winning a battle of the bands in spring of 1977, they signed a deal with the German company Hansa, like Japan did in the same year, but the label wanted them to do covers, hated their demo of their proposed debut single Killing an Arab, and the partnership dissolved in March of 1978. After myriad line-up changes, we saw Smith taking over on vocals, the group, now called The Cure,

recorded a new demo, which found itself in the hands of Chris Parry of Polydor, who signed them to the Polydor Offshoot Fiction Records and became their manager, finally releasing Killing An Arab in the last week of 1978, where it failed to chart. After putting out their first LP, Three Imaginary Boys, in mid-1979 and supporting Suzy and the Banshees on their UK tour

with Smith eventually doubling up on guitar for the Banshees when their guitarist walked out, they made their first dent on the UK charts and their first ever Top of the Pops performance in May of 1980 when A Forest got to number 31 by this point they become a regular fixture on the charts and this single the follow-up to in between days which got to number 25 in August is the second cut from their six LP the head on the door which came out last month and entered the album chart at number seven.

It entered the chart of Fortnite ago at number 44, moved up eight places to number 36, and this week it soared 12 places to number 24. And here's an all too brief clip of the video, which was directed by Tim Pope, who has been the band's go-to video bloke since 1982 filmed at beachy head and fucking out i felt like i was given an oral exam to master price there did i get anything wrong simon i think he did a really good job of summarizing the the lineup changes in their early days which is actually uh way more complex than that and i ended up writing you know probably about six pages just on that in the book

because it's ridiculous. There are all these people coming and going as lead singers, somebody called Gary X, who's right, his whereabouts nobody knows anything of. Peter O'Toole, no, not that one, and so on. Who fucking hell? Yeah, and Mark Ciacciano, who again is sort of lost to history and all these kind of members of the crawly, haughty mafia.

It's ridiculously complex. But I suppose it is in small towns, you know, where there's only a handful of people who are into music and people who own a drum kit are even more kind of prized. So everybody ends up playing in each other's bands, you know. Yeah. I think there are anything up to 15 people involved. Fucking hell.

So well done on making it sort of tolerable in your preamble there. I mean, I think this is really, really good, actually. I mean, you know, you've got that kind of soft, muted feel in a production. You've got that lovely little glowing keyboard line. And, of course, you know, the way it anticipates George Michael's faith in ripping off the old Bo Diddley riff and in singing about faith as well. And it's a really good video. And I guess that was a time where there's enough money sloshing around

in the industry that the top tier could make videos like this, which, of course, therefore tended to exclude like these little two Bob Indy outfits in the charts who simply couldn't budget for what was becoming a it would have a chance of charting. But we're very much post all of that, of course, you know, post MTV and all that. But this video, I'm in an absolute claustrophobes nightmare. I bet Robert Smith wished he'd called the song Ample Breathing Space or something like that, definitely. Well away from me. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as for The Cure,

generally, I was just thinking about why they never absolutely riveted. In their early days, I didn't like them as much as Susie and the Banshees, but I liked them a lot more than Bauhaus. That's kind of where I sort of placed them in that scheme of things. Right. I mean, I suppose maybe I just find Robert Smith a little bit kind of floppy and swoony. Wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully.

But really, I don't think the reason is any failing on their part. I think it's the same reason why I was never absolutely riveted by the Smiths as a rule, much as I appreciated them. It's just that I think the sort of group that invited you, regardless of, you know, gender orientation, sort of become besotted with them at some level, infatuated, you know, that sort of... And I suppose I was never really up for that sort of relationship,

you know, which can tend towards the monomaniacal. And I just never had space for it because I was just listening to such a huge range of music in the mid-80s. But, you know, listening to this again and seeing this again, you know, I just wonder if I didn't miss out on something. I mean, obviously, Simon, to celebrate you finishing Curepedium, because we've never done them before, I asked you to pick out a Cure single for this episode. Yeah, yeah. So why this one? Well, this is the song that sealed the deal for me as a Cure fan. I mean, I'd previously enjoyed and admired them. You know, I suppose I was mostly familiar with their occasional forays into the charts.

So, you know, stuff like the Love Cats that David alluded to there, the Caterpillar, the Walk, stuff like that. Yeah. that David alluded to there, the caterpillar, the walk, stuff like that. But yeah, this song, and I guess the album itself, The Head on the Door, is kind of where I really fell for them. And I mentioned before that I was sartorially under the influence of various people, whether it's Morrissey or Prince or Ian Asprey around this time.

Well, Robert Smith's definitely part of the picture by now because I'd started, I remember turning up to one of the aforementioned house parties wearing eyeliner for the first time. I thought, oh, I'll try this out. Dare I do it? You know, and yeah, it seemed to work and I carried on with it.

And I nagged my mum to knit me a massive baggy mohair jumper like what Robert Smith would have worn, you know. I still got it actually. Not so baggy anymore um but uh yeah this is what sealed the deal for me but it was only after this and I suppose shortly after this you you get the greatest hits album um standing on a beach that everybody had because if you're a fan of alternative music in the 80s there weren't many greatest hits albums you had once upon a time by Susan the Banshees. You had things like Singles Going Steady by Buzzcocks

and maybe a few others. I think later on, Echo and the Bunnymen, Songs to Learn and Sing. But really, if you want to sort of bang for your buck, value for money in terms of greatest hits, there weren't many. And Standing on a Beach by The Cure was a real kind of primer.

And it was this single and stuff like this single that made me buy it in the first place but then it had things on it like The Hanging Garden which then piques your interest you think well where did that come from and you end up listening to the album Pornography which for me is their greatest album

and yeah I was kind of interested that David wasn't sort of really grabbed by that I would have thought Pornography and Faith would have been the two for a fan of, let's say, Joy Division, like yourself, that they might have spoken to you a little bit. Oh, yeah, no, I mean, I probably just didn't get around to, like, buying them, to be honest. The thing with me is, you know,

I've mentioned my love of Motown before and also my love of Motown-derived pop of the 80s. And The Cure, at this point, are sort of dabbling with that really aren't they? I mean this is the second single from The Head on the Door, it's the second Cure single in a row to have a detectable Motown influence. You mentioned

In Between Days, the single before it, which has more of a kind of crashing, exuberant Detroit clatter. That's Boris Williams, the drummer, he was incredible he was widely considered their best drummer. There have been many. But this single, it's got that kind of wonky Tamla Motown beat.

Robert Smith told Record Mirror that it reminds him of Jimmy Mack. In Between Days was sort of everything in the kitchen sink thrown in. It was a big sort of Motown production. But on this one, you've only got the very barest rhythmic skeleton of Motown. It's got this minimalism, it's got this minimalist sort of punch and snap between Boris Williams and Simon Gallop on bass, it's back and forth and it's got this exquisite discipline to it I think. And David mentioned the video and how it takes the lyrics very literally. The song

is musical on a matter peer as well because from the instrumentation and the really excellent production from david allen that's not the guy sitting on a stool with a glass of whiskey and um you know one finger missing by the way um and and robert's very up close and personal vocal the way it's recorded so it sounds like what it is it's a song about claustrophobia and it sounds airless and desiccated and sort of freeze-dried and oppressively intimate i would say but the thing that opens it up and just gives you that little bit of breathing space is the brass section yeah the brass section absolutely makes it for me right that was um provided by a south end jump jive revival band called Rent Party. Right, yeah.

They play these sort of muffled trombones and trumpets and it makes it sound sort of ragtime, doesn't it? A little bit in the same way that the Lovecats had that kind of Aristocats feel to it. The brass comes in after every musical phrase, almost like an answer to a question. And it's just wonderful. And that's only on the single version, by the way.

If you hear close to me in the context of The Head on the Door, you don't get the brass. You don't even get... You know there's that creaking hinge at the start of the single? That was actually a sound effect from the video, which they then tacked onto the single. So it's missing that, it's missing the brass.

And you feel a bit short-changed when you hear it on the album. And the reason that the brass is there, it's because there was internal disagreement about whether it should even be a single right which seems seems mad now but god yeah yeah the rest of the band were convinced it'd be a hit robert wasn't so sure um and he agreed to put out a single only with the addition of a brass section and that turned out to be a masterstroke i think so yeah let's talk about the video because we all know it so well. You know, the band trapped in a wardrobe on a cliff edge at the third most notorious suicide spot in the world after the Golden Gate Bridge and some wood in Japan. But, you know, loads of other things have happened there.

It's where Jimmy crashed his scooter at the end of Quadrophenia, where it could have landed on David Bowie's JCB in the Ashes to Ashes video. where it could have landed on David Bowie's JCB in the Ashes to Ashes video. And for all we know, it could also be on the same spot where Throbbing Gristle did the cover shoot for 20 Jazz Funk Grace. Sadly, the wardrobe doesn't go off the cliff and then fly off like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang did in the same location. But, you know, we can't have everything. It's not even the only Cure video to feature Beachy Head. Oh, really? Well, first of all, because there's the part two of this, have everything yeah it's not even the only cure video to feature beachy head and really well first

of all because there's the part two of this because they put out the remix version that came from their mixed up um remix album uh oh yeah and and there was a video for that which sort of starts at the bottom of the ocean but you know you see the cliff falling off the edge but also um just like heaven by the cure has a video which is also it's supposed to be set on Beachy Head, but it was actually recreated in a studio. But yeah, it was about a real life sort of camping trip that Robert and Mary and some friends had at Beachy Head. So yeah, it recurs in sort of Cure mythology quite a lot. For me though, they were the greatest video band

of their generation. I think the only rivals would be Madness for that. Yeah, The Cure and Madness in the 80s were just always brilliant for videos, I think. band of their generation i think the only rivals would be madness for that yeah the cure and madness in the 80s were just always brilliant for videos i think and yeah that that is mainly down to tim pope who i think if we're looking at the cure's body of work he's the other genius in in this story i think yeah we've spoken about him before haven't we when we did long hot summer by the style council yes and i think this is the cure's best video despite all that strong competition it starts um beachy head in that wardrobe filled with clothes and filled with The Cure.

And there is that creak that we then hear on the single. The first face you see is Simon Gallop and he's all trussed up. And his mouth is lit from inside by a light bulb. The camera then moves to Boris Williams and he's clapping out the rhythm. And this is the thing thing they're all using objects instead of instruments so oh a lot always to be fair does have this tiny little Casio keyboard but then on the top shelf you've got Paul Thompson nowadays Pearl Thompson um picking out the notes on an orange plastic comb yeah like that and then finally he sort of rises up through all the jackets

and the shirts and the hangers you've got robert smith and as he starts singing you've got these finger puppets which represent each member of the band yeah and they're made by tim poats uh company he was called glow and and he sort of manhandles them quite roughly robert you know and then um every now and then we see that these external views of the wardrobe teetering on the edge and in this episode of top of the pops that is all we see is just the teetering of course yes in And in this episode of Top of the Pops, that is all we see is just the teetering, of course. In the full video, two minutes in during the trumpet solo, it does topple and, you know, down past the chalky cliff and we see the red and white striped lighthouse

and, you know, onto the rocks below. But instead of shattering on impact, which you'd expect and killing everyone inside, it miraculously hits the sea and begins filling up with water and soaking and implicitly drowning everyone within drowning is a sort of recurring trope in cure songs there's loads of cure lyrics about drowning and yeah i just think it's a masterclass from tim pope and i think robert's acting performance is superb uh in this because the other members of

the band they stay quite neutral quite understated Instead of sort of mugging or portraying panic, they just look quite calm, but he does look kind of traumatised. Apparently Robert Smith has quite the affinity for water, doesn't he? According to a Daily Mirror guide published round about this time about where the pop stars go on their holidays, we learn that fish goes to Amsterdam whenever he can. Roger Daltrey loves West Island for the trout fishing. Holly Johnson spends loads of time in Hawaii

with his boyfriend Wolfgang. And the Lake District is Robert Smith's favourite place where he indulges in a go on water skiing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he used to go to Lake District or Wales. According to the article, the Lake District is also popular with fellow spiky haired person

howard jones yeah i can just see howard jones and robert smith water skiing there yeah probably on each other's shoulders yeah it's funny that there are so many um cure songs about drowning that i've actually got a section in the book just drowning um it is for drowning it's a recurring thing but he had plenty of time to think about that in the video shoot for this, because as David alluded to, it was kind of horrific by all accounts. It was Robert's least favourite cure video to make, and partly that was just the sheer discomfort of being in water for such a long time. They filmed it in this huge tank filled with 1,000 gallons of water.

And the state of the water didn't help. I mean, first of all, he's thinking about dying a slow, painful death the whole time, just being gallons of water. And the state of the water didn't help. I mean, first of all, he's thinking about dying a slow, painful death the whole time, just being in the water. But then the tank was filled from a fire engine. And the water in the fire engine had been sitting there for two and a half weeks. And everyone was ill after that, apparently. To make matters worse, Lowell Tolhurst had been for a curry

the night before oh no yeah with toxic results as you can imagine this is I've got a quote from Tim Pope

this is what Tim Pope said later Lowell's bowels were a problem in a very confined space suddenly I saw the crew retract

and the band all shot over the other side of the studio but Lowell was just standing there with this bestial look on his face, grinning, and I had to go outside and throw up.

Fucking hell. But yeah, the video was rarely shown on TV, certainly in full. There's a myth that the BBC banned it. But everyone knew it. This is it. How do we all know it? I mean, I don't know about you, but I sort of spent my 20s in the company of people

who had the VHS of The Best of the Cure, so you've just seen it on there. But, yeah, it was on MTV on heavy rotation, but we didn't have MTV in Britain. Yeah, so, but it does seem so familiar, maybe just from tiny little clips like this one. But, yeah, Robert reckoned presumably the BBC was scared it would incite kids to climb into wardrobes and then fling themselves off cliffs. Yeah. Little finger puppets of themselves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talking of illness, I mean, this is only in the breakers and they never get to perform it in the top of the pop studio. But that's a place that Robert Smith probably wants to stay away from for a bit, judging on their last appearance. Article in the Daily Mirror last August, the Cure spiky-haired singer Robert Smith was recovering last night from a stomach complaint

which has laid him up for nearly a week. Robert was struck down after celebrating the band's top 20 single In Between Days last week. After performing the song on Top of the Pops, he had a few pints in the BBC bar before really letting rip in a Chinese restaurant, Right. It's not been well in 1985. It's been quite a stressful year because according to another daily mirror article i dug up entitled love cures a nightmare it reads a vivid recurring nightmare

turned cure lead singer robert smith into a nervous wreck now as the group rocket through their charts with their brilliant single close to me He has found the perfect remedy by falling in love with a nurse called Mary. It sounds silly, but I dreamed again and again that a plate glass window would drop down on me on Valentine's Day, injuring me horribly. Then I dreamed that the accident would end my life on April the 21st, my birthday. The dream terrified me and resulted in me lying awake at night, sweating. Robert was so distressed that he said he would drink himself senseless every night to forget about them. I don't think it mattered what I did because I wouldn't be alive much longer. mattered what I did because I wouldn't be alive much longer.

When February the 14th came around, I went through the whole day feeling very anxious, but obviously nothing happened. Again, just like Chris Needham seeing his own gravestone in a dream. A fairly big gravestone, let us remember. It's sloppy journalism there, saying that he's found a remedy by falling in love with a nurse called Mary. They were together since they were 14.

It's not just... No! Actually, just going back to what you were saying, Simon, about the whole Motown thing, that's really, really interesting that you sort of think about Jimmy Mack because it's such a kind of an oblique relationship with Motown because I kind of felt that at times in the 80s, Pop was a bit over-determined by Motown, you know, and he had the whole Phil Collins can't hurry love thing.

And it almost seemed to be a sort of reproach on contemporary black music. And I kind of really resented that. I mean, you got that. But also in terms of the production as well, it's really good. And you really sort of notice the stark contrast in this between that kind of sort of big, slightly cliched, big boxy sort of Trevor Hornish type production that's kind of very, very prevalent elsewhere in 1985, you know. So I think, again, Iy, sort of Trevor Hornish-type production that's kind of very, very prevalent elsewhere in 1985. So I think, again, I think that's really, really appealing.

Yeah, and it's The Cure's second most sampled song, which is quite interesting. Yeah, I mean, Lady Sovereign, Afro Man, Youngblood. There's 21 different artists used close to me. So there's obviously something about the rhythm section of it that appeals to people. It's interesting you're saying that that year might have been a particularly traumatic and terrible year for robert it wasn't his worst his worst was or maybe his best in some ways as well was 83 i've got a

whole section called 1983 robert's maddest year robert's craziest year in the book because and it starts in in late uh 82 and carries on through to May of 84 because it's all the same narrative. But what happened was he got himself into three bands at the same time. Right, yes. So he's formed this sort of spin-off supergroup with Steve Severin called The Glove. He's a member of the Banshees again, you know, for the second time. And this time he wants to make an actual album with them.

So he's recording their album Hyena, as well as making the live album nocturne uh he's still in the cure and they're making their album the top and he's doing various side projects like you know um making a song with mark and the mambas he's touring with all these different bands um when when he was making the top and hyena the top of the cure and hyena by the banshees he was traveling The Top and Hyena, The Top by the Cure and Hyena by the Banshees, he was travelling back and forth between Eel Pie Studios in London and Genetic Studios in Reading, sort of doing back-to-back sessions, like not sleeping, basically. He got on his bike and he looked for work. Yeah, exactly.

He ended up having to quit the Banshees, really pissing them off. But he had to quit the Banshees in early 84 because his doctor basically just took one look at him and said look if you carry on doing this you're gonna die you know but on the other hand he made loads of amazing records in that in that year so yeah i had a weird relationship with the cure i mean as soon as they came on the radio somewhere i'd just go and then i'd stop and think why have i done that this is a fucking tune yeah it's odd i probably pinned them down as a goth band and i didn't like goth bands i like goths but i didn't

like the music they listen to well the thing is they got it from both sides because they made these pop singles um a lot of goths thought oh they're not a real goth band then they're the soft option because they make these pop records but it's just because they'd gone so far with the album pornography which they described as the ultimate fuck, but it's just because they've gone so far with the album Pornography, which they described as the ultimate fuck-off record. It's most famous song, probably 100 years, starts with the line, it doesn't matter if we all die, you know,

and it's just this sort of nihilistic record. They couldn't take that any further, so they sort of, you know, go and make Let's Go to Bed, The Walk and The Love Cats, these sort of quite frivolous pop singles. And they've always flitted back and forth between those two extremes. And probably their best albums, you know, for me, things like Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, are the albums where there's a bit of both on there.

But, yeah, if you were a very serious goth into the Sisters and Bauhaus and the Nephilim and whatever else, those sort of people would sneer at the Cure and say, oh, they're soft. Of course, at this time, and I remember because I hung around a load of goths. I mean, the goths... Goth expert David Stubbs! David Stubbs!

Bogus! I don't know what was bogus or not. No, but in America, if you were goth, you'd go, yeah, I'm a goth, I'm a goth, and I'm goth, I'm proud of it, goth to the max, goth all the way. But in the UK, it was all, oh, we're not goths, we're not goths, you know. So it would have been a bit weird, like, British goths condemning the Cure for betraying the spirit of goth, because, of course, well, we're not goth either. You know, So it would have been a bit weird, like, British goths condemning the cure for betraying the spirit of goth because, of course, well, we're not goth either. You know, you've got a fucking spider tattoo on your neck.

You've got your hair in a... The one weird thing about goths that they wouldn't denial about being goths, I mean, mods weren't like that. It's, you know, I'm not a mod. A mod? You're on a fucking scooter. You know, it's just very weird. Very weird.

Yeah, it's pretty much how you spot a goth is they will say, I'm not a goth. Yeah. You know, I know that's the logic of the witch's ducking stool, that if they say they're a witch, they're a witch. If they deny it, well, just duck them anyway. And if they drown, well, they're dead, you know. Yeah, yeah.

So that's kind of how it is with goths. In snakebites. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think the Cure can't really deny being a gothic band, even though he has denied it. And other times he's admitted being this kind of figurehead. They went to the Batcave Club, for fuck's sake. They were hanging around there.

They were part of the whole thing. They're definitely the gateway drug for goths, aren't they? Yes, that's a good way of putting it. For a lot of the youth. Definitely, yeah, yeah. I was never a goth, by the way. Which means he was. Yes, exactly.

Maybe the reason they weren't seen as a goth band was because they could knock out tunes. Yeah, that's a crime. Banger after banger after banger. They're too pop. It wasn't just stentorian drones. I mean, really, looking back on it now, I equate The Cure with being in student discos

years after the event and the Lovecats coming on and all these people just getting up and dancing and me going, oh, should I? I shouldn't be here. I don't belong here. By the way, in the early 80s, whatever, all the goths I knew did the chicken dance. Yes.

Did you do the chicken dance? You know, it wasn't just, you know, maybe it's a Northern Stroke Nottingham thing. I don't know. But I've heard other people say, what the fuck's a chicken dance? Come on. I'd demonstrate.

You know, of course, I think I was taking the piss, but no. Demonstrate now, David, in words to the Polk Rays youngsters. Well, it's just a sort of you know you sort of flap your arms in a kind of well i suppose a chicken like ways of attempting to take flight you know elbows out you know there we go um simple as that kids by the time i arrived in the goth scene it was more about this kind of gothic two-step where you'd you know do two steps forward and two steps back while flinging your arms in the air in sort of special moments in the song. You'd sort of throw these mystical shapes with your hands in the air.

That was the sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like people did at new model army gigs. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And if there was a smoke machine, all the better. Picked up by the ravers a few years later. Yeah, right, exactly. Fucking hell, the rave goth link needs to be examined a bit more.

Oh, listen, that actually happened. You might be joking, but, you know, glow stick goth became a thing. Of course it did, yeah. That's kind of when I lost interest, to be honest. I wasn't having that. That video of the goth used dancing and someone slapped Thomas the Tank Engine over the top, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anything else to say? No, amazingly. Buy the book. Read more about it, yeah. So the following week, close To Me stayed at number 24 and would get no higher, ending a run of four singles on the bounce, getting into the top 20.

I think if we had asked the Pop Craze youngsters to guess which chart position Close To Me by The Cure got to, they'd have gone way higher than number 24. Yeah. Because this is such, you know, chart position Close To Me by The Cure got to, they'd have gone way higher than number 24. Because this is such, you know, it's like immortal, iconic, universally loved Cure song. If you ask people to name a Cure song, this is probably in the top three. And it only got to number 24.

It's extraordinary, isn't it? I suppose it just had a long afterlife. However, a remix of Close To Me was put out in 1990 and entered the charts at number 15 in November of that year, eventually getting to number 13. The follow-up, a remix and re-recording of their second single, Boys Don't Cry, got to number 22 in May of 1986

and they'd have five more top 40 hits before the 80s ran out. So those were the top 40 breakers. Talking of breakers, this next song was a breaker a couple of weeks ago. This week is at number 22 in the charts, and they're here in the top of the pop studio. It's Renee and Angela and I'll Be Good. I'll be good. We cut back to Davis, the Bisto kid,

standing in front of the wrought iron and tube lighting. There's some sort of staining on his lapel, presumably caused by one of the maidens of the studio floor laying her head on his chest, as he tells us how prescient the breakers' section is, because here comes one of its alumni i'll be good by renee and angela born in st louis in 1955 angela winbush was a part-time gospel singer who recorded a demo in 1977 which was heard by the new york dj gary bird who passed it on to his mate Stevie Wonder, who invited her to move to Los Angeles and

join his backing singers, Wonderlove. While she was in LA that year, she linked up with a local singer called Renee Moore, and they began a career as a duo with a songwriting side gig for the likes of Janet Jackson, Rufus and Chaka Khan, and Odyssey. After signing a deal with Capitol Records and notching up a string of hits on the Billboard R&B chart throughout the first half of the 80s, they moved to Mercury earlier this year and their first single on the new label, Save Your Love For Number One, was their first strike on the charts, getting to number 66 in June of this year. This is the follow-up, which entered the charts at number 54 in the first week of September and took two weeks to get to number 31,

which led to an appearance in the top of the pop studio a fortnight ago and a seven-place jump to number 24. This week, it's jumped another two places to number 22, and here they are again. Well, chaps, I have to admit that this totally passed me by back in 1985, and it kind of did again when I watched this episode again 38 years later, mainly because of what we're seeing on stage.

Rene's costume, fucking hell. Yeah. His purple rain costume, isn't it? Yeah. He's taking off Prince. It's blue instead of purple, but there's that. Yeah, blue rain. He's got the rough sleeves and he's got the frothy cravat thing.

Yeah. You're trying to be Prince, mate. What's going on? Yeah. Unnecessary, really, you know, because they've kind of got their own identity. Yeah. If Lenny Henre was going to take off prince yeah with big ron out of eastenders in the chink huntsbury role this is the outfit he's going to wear isn't it talking of lenny henry it

appears that renee's massively influenced by him because in the video he wears this shiny tiger print jacket which was beloved of the zimbabwean comedian joshua yarlong you know katanga my friend oh yes yeah i'm surprised he didn't dress up as David Bellamy for one of her videos. But anyway, once you've seen it, you cannot take your eyes off it. You know, Angela might as well be bollock naked as opposed to the baker foil over shirt with the sleeves hoiked up that she's chosen to wear.

With this amazing bouffant, it's like a quiffy girly mullet plastered with glitter on the side. This is the trouble. I was listening to this kind of stuff all the time, as I've mentioned before, but the outfits were always, always awful. I just had to avert my eyes, basically. Yeah, Rene's attention to detail of trying to mimic Prince in Purple Rain

extends to violence against women, unfortunately. Yes. There is the story that he hit angela on stage uh which was kind of the beginning of the end for them as a joke yeah yeah so he's dressed like a minor member of the revolution um yes but um you would have thought because i was so obsessed with prince i'd have thought oh brilliant this is for me and you know i i might have made it sound earlier as if me and my mates were just lapping up black american pop willy-nilly but if cameo and colonel abrams were willy then this is nilly i'm afraid

it does nothing for me i mean for what is nominally a modern soul record it's cold and soulless to me it's got a similar kind of register to do you remember loose ends that brit funk band they had this kind of noise that was their recurring motif. Yeah, hanging on a string. See, I didn't like that stuff. It just froze me out. It just sounded cold. But I feel weird saying that because sometimes I like chill in a record.

But I suppose it all feels very professional. I mean, you've spoken about their backstory. They were jobbing songwriters. They're basically a shit Ashford and Simpson in that respect, aren't they? But, yeah. It didn't really work for me. How about you, David? I mean, I definitely think that this is the best ever duo whose name

begins with Rene and... ever to appear on Top of the Pops. And to record a song with the words Save Your Love in the title. I think at least say that much. That would have confused a lot of people. Well, it's it. So my ex, Dara's mum, Roshi, she's doing this show up in Edinburgh

at the festival called Ram-a-Lam-a-Ding-Dong, just to plug it a bit. And at one point, she makes a reference to Black Lace, except when she does the read-through,

she keeps calling him Black Great by mistake. I mean, you know, that's kind of understandable. But more so, Black Great. Well, imagine Black Great doing Do the Conga. Well, exactly.

It's like, you know, Black Great had recorded a song called Agadou, very unlike the original Agadou, but purely coincidental use of the same verbal motif, you know. Imagine Black Lace doing England's Irene. Oh, doesn't bear thinking about. Well, no, I mean, I think we've got Colonel Abraham's situation reversed here

because I did like this. I think she's really, really good. I mean, you know, you mentioned that she started off with Wonder Love, Stevie Wonder's backing singers, and that's a great foundation course in electric funk composition. Oh yeah, you can't be shit if you're in Wonder Love. I mean, this is it. She's connecting from

right back in the day, the kind of inauguration of electricity in funk, right through to the present day, where she's getting sampled or whatever. I think she does probably a great deal more props than she ever got, actually. And as Simon alluded to, yeah, the reason they didn't continue as a duo is probably because of old Prince Boy's twatty violence. I mean, I think one of the particular aspects I like about this is this sort of viciously

viscous synth bass thing chomping all the way through it. I mean, you know, for me, this is serious stuff, you know, with a decent pedigree, and I think it's the sort of thing that gets, you know, definitely gets harked back to. Like the SOS band. This is something that I like now, but back in the day, I would have just conked my nose up it because, you know, synths, oh, that's not proper music. Yeah, but SOS band, I mean, you know, Just Be Good To Me

is this all-conquering steamroller of a record, you know. Yeah. It absolutely just drives this into the ground, to be honest. I don't think you can even compare the two. Yeah. just be good to me is this all-conquering steamroller of a record you know yeah you know absolutely just drives this into the ground to be honest i don't think you can even compare the two yeah i mean both renee and angela have synths on stage but they might as well be an iron in because they remain pretty much unused for about 90 of the performance but you know what synths are like chaps you know you just push a button and I'll Be Good comes out. Anything else to say? I don't think so. No.

So the following week, I'll Be Good stayed at number 22 and got no further. The follow-up Secret Rendezvous was immediately rushed out, but it only got to number 54 in November and they never troubled the chart again. 54 in November and they never troubled the chart again. In 1986 the partnership began to crumble when Angela Wimbush linked up with Ronald Eisley and was drafted in as a songwriter and co-producer for the Eisley Brothers LP Smooth Sailing which led to violent disagreements between the two backstage and on stage particularly during a gig in Cleveland, and they split up, refusing to communicate with each other without attorneys being involved.

Moore embarked upon a solo career and would co-write Jam for Michael Jackson, while Wimbush started her own solo career, continued to work with the Isley brothers, and married Ron Isley, and wrote Something in the way

you make me feel for Stephanie Mills, which is a fucking tune. Especially the hip-hop remix. Oh, that's astonishing. I'll be good. Hey, they're looking good. At number 22 this week, Rene and Angela. Right now, here's the top ten on video.

And you've got six places to number ten. Colonel Abrams and Trapped. It's the same fucking thing as the top of the pop performers this video. What's the point of either of them? Weird choice. Ooh, Merillians dropped two places to number

nine this week with Lavender Blue. Singing Dilly Dilly with this look of seriousness on his face. Dilly Dilly! Like, angrily. Taylor's karaoke song.

Well, we are five places to number eight. Billy Idol, Rebel Yell. We're the Rebel Yell. Hey, they're looking good at number 22 this week, says Jordan, still with his hand in his pocket as Davis introduces a top ten through the medium of video clips. But as Michael Hurl is clearly keen to jam in as many acts as possible,

a couple of them get an extended play, and the first one is Rebel Yell by Billy Idol. Born in Stanmore, Middlesex, in 1955, William Broad was relocated to America at the age of two, where he spent four years before his family returned to the UK and moved to Dorking. In 1975, he started an English degree at the University of Sussex, but he only lasted a year and started knocking about with a gang of youths who'd caught an early gig by the Sex Pistols and started to follow them around.

And when Caroline Coon devoted an article to them in Sounds when they travelled to Paris to see the Pistols in September of 76, they were given the nickname the Bromley Contingent. Soon afterwards, Broad, who by that time had adopted the name Billy Idol after a negative school report, had become a guitarist of a new band called Chelsea and was encouraged by lead singer Gene October to ditch his glasses, dye his hair blonde and be a bit more rock and roll. However, musical differences set in very quickly and Idol and bassist Tony James fucked off to form Generation X. After three LPs and three top 40 singles, Gen X split up in early 1981, and Idol was immediately persuaded by their manager Bill

Alcoyne, who was also managing Kiss, to return to America and start a solo career, where he was teamed up with the guitarist Steve Stevens and signed to Chrysalis Records. His debut LP, Billy Idol, was put out in May of 1982 to moderate success in the US, but the first cut from it, Hot in the City, only got to number 58 for two weeks in September of that year over here. And when this single was belatedly put out in March of 1984, after it got to number 36 on the Billboard chart 11 months earlier, it struggled up to number 62 and no further.

He visited the UK in June of that year and reintroduced himself to the pop-crazed youngsters on Radio 1's Round Table, where he immediately necked a bottle of champagne and was escorted from the building after 10 minutes and then popped up on top of the pops for the first time in five years, but only in a guest appearance, where Steve Wright asked him what he was doing there

and he said, I'm here to rock and roll. But he finally landed a hit in Britain with the follow-up, Eyes Without a Face, which got to number 18 in August of 84, which led to Chrysalis relaunching his career in the UK by putting out the remix compilation LP Vital Idol in June of this year. And the lead cut from that, a revamp of his 1982 single White Wedding, got to number 6 in August. This is the follow-up of sorts, which entered the charts at number 38 in the middle of September, then soared 13 places to number 25.

After an appearance in the top of the pop studio, it soared another 12 places to number 13. And this week, it's nipped up another five places to number eight. And finally, chaps, Billy Idol enters the arena. Yeah, Billy Idol. I mean, he's reet daft, as no one says up north. But it's, you know, I mean, it's kind of a two Ronnies take on punk, you know it's kind of Sid Snot, whatever, but it's I mean, I guess he's just got this kind of slickness

which I guess gave him a particular American appeal, you know, that kind of lack of Finnish, and I dare say the French but, you know, and I think the British audiences might have been a little bit more sceptical of it it's odd because, as Al mentioned, he's the real thing he's part of the Bromley contingent, but it's a bit like, I don't know, Hal Jones turning out to have, like,

recorded with the early Cabaret Voltaire back in the mid-'70s or something, you know, because it's just weird because he's essence of punk cliché, you know, and a dreamer punk, whereas, in fact, by and large, actual punks at the time were dressing in flares, had centre partings in their hair, crap jumpers and, you know, little scabs with the tripod safety pins in the noses.

Yeah. I think then is now that the whole idea of any sort of rock music is to take Billy Idol as your point of departure and depart as far away as possible from him. He says as much to me about my life as discotheques and the sexolettes said to Morrissey's. But then again, they're redeeming features, they really are. I mean, the funnest thing, what I really like about it is he's the same age here as is the Billy Idol.

He plays in The Wedding Singer, you know, that 1985 self. And, you know, and I did enjoy that film, I've got to confess. But anyway. Yeah, I mean, I hated Billy Idol at the time because he'd gone over to America and sold out to my mind. Never mind that punk actually started in America. And never mind that Billy Idol was actually fucking there in 1976 and never mind even more that I wasn't and had never been a punk. It just felt wrong to me.

I mean, I wasn't aware of the term at the time because it didn't exist, but if I had have done, I would have dismissed him as a Quincy punk. An example of Americans getting punk all wrong long after the event, which obviously was named after that episode of Quincy MD in 1982 called Next Stop Nowhere, where Jack Klugman takes time out from making police cadets vomit on the floor to investigate the death of a punk lad at a club and deduces that the nihilistic worldview of punk had a factor in his

death but not as much as the ice pick that someone hit him in the back with yeah that's got to go on the old youtube list that yeah but discounting the punks on the punk cd oh yeah of the 90s which had fucking karma chameleon and hold me now by the thompson twins in their punk compilation but the greatest quincy punks of all were pain the punk band in that episode of chips did you ever see yes oh yeah yeah oh simon fucking hell there are a meat-headed jocks with mohicans who nick a load of instruments off a new wave band called snow pink and they throw one of those bases off a roof onto a car and then they enter a back leather bands contest and trash the club toilets before singing their song i dig pain which is fucking mint it goes

get a hunk of concrete and stick it in my face i like to play with razor blades i hate the human race. I dig pain. The pain in my brain. The smashing, the bashing, the clawing, the trashing, the giving, the getting and the talking, bloodletting, driving me insane. I dig pain. You've watched this a lot. I know, I was going to say, yeah. It's a classic what kids think punk sounds like song, you know, along with Gob on You by Mel Smith.

But luckily Chip sought it all out and the episode ends with Ponch as special guest at the Battle of the Bands, singing Celebration by Callum the Gang. So yeah, disco has won again. It's like, do you remember that episode of The Sopranos where Adriana starts managing a grunge band and they're called defiling right yes get

out of my way and don't be so gay because I'm gonna defile defile you this whole genre is something that that really is is of interest to me when mainstream film or mainstream tv tries to do kind of alternative culture and gets it slightly wrong. You know, like if there's a scene in Beverly Hills 90210 where they go to a nightclub, like a bit of an edgy, sketchy nightclub. Or I think there's Crocodile Dundee, you know, when he goes to a nightclub. Terminator 2, you know, whenever that happens,

it's always an absolute joy. It's always a bit like the Baby Sham advert, you know, hey, I'll have a Baby Sham. Everyone's wearing fucking leather and stuff, you know, and everyone's, like, super mean and nasty. Yeah, yeah. And the punk band in Milk's got a lot of bottle. Exactly.

Affronted by Daniel Peacock, I believe. All right. So, yeah, to my mind then, you know, Billy Idol was Rod Vicious. You know, he crushed punk down into a sneer and a fist yeah he absolutely did and the cure literally pissed all over billy idol i've got to tell you this right no i'm going to read to you from lol tolhurst's autobiography cured a tale of two imaginary boys and the setup for this is that the cure were on their first national tour as support to Generation X.

Okay, so here's what Lowell has to say about that. Two nights later, the highlight of the tour occurred. I was searching desperately for the gents to relieve myself of several pints of free Gen X lager consumed after the Bristol gig at the Locarno, a throwback 1960s mecca ballroom complete with sparkly curtains and glitter balls. It was the kind of place that was more accustomed to hosting beauty contestants in bikinis and grass skirts

than punk gigs. I finally spied the men's toilets and burst into the room, unzipping my flies as I entered to save precious time, as the pressure had built up substantially. As I rushed towards the urinal, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Billy Idol perched somewhat precariously in the next stall, with a young lady clasped to his bosom, or maybe he was clasping her bosom. Time distorts such distinctions. A guttural sound passed from my throat, which might have been recognised as,

hello Billy, were I in a more sober mood, but it just sounded like a low grunt after that much alcohol. The young lady looked somewhat startled by the fact that there was another musician in the vicinity of their love nest. So the ever chivalrous Mr. Idol tried to calm her down with a valiant, don't be nervous, love, or something to that effect, while she anxiously eyed the toilet door unfortunately by this time i'd reached the point of no return and a stream of

urine shot outwards to the porcelain bowl next to billy regrettably for me as well as billy and his date my aim was not improved terribly with the consumption of so much cheap lager and as i looked Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. and hightailed it out of there in a flurry of drunken apologies. On the drive home, as I sobered up, I'd already perceived that this event might not be seen in the jolly japes or lads together kind of way one might hope. However, I thought, not unreasonably, that someone who was bathed in spittle every night wouldn't find much wrong with a little urine on his strides

as he was caught in flagrante delicto with a local lass. It might even be seen as punk camaraderie of sorts right how wrong i was on that count and uh yeah basically um it goes on and and the upshot was the billy idol didn't see the funny side and the cure were booted off the generation x tour oh yeah yeah yeah at the time this is a bit of a disaster um one thing i found out when researching my book, Curepedia, if I've mentioned that yet, is that the Billy Idol golden shower

wasn't even the only incident involving Lowell Tolhurst and pissing, by the way. There was one where he nearly got shot by Margaret Thatcher's special branch officers while pissing in the bushes. What? Yeah. They were up in Scotland at the same time as Thatcher was in town

addressing a conference, and Lowell was pissing in the bushes, and he noticed a red dot, like a laser dot, on his leg. Shit! There's another incident where he needed a piss in the middle of a gig and went behind the curtain to piss in a bucket, but the lighting cast a shadow against the backdrop, so the entire crowd saw a silhouette of his cock. Oh, man!

There's another one where the cure got thrown out of a bar in Rotterdam because Lol pissed in a phone booth thinking it was a toilet. No wonder they didn't want to be in a fucking wardrobe with him all afternoon. Exactly, exactly. There's another also in the Netherlands where Lol went on a drunken rampage around a hotel that annoyed Robert so much that Robert pissed in Lol's suitcase.

So normally when a young rock band out on the road can't control their penises, it's fornication. With a cure, it's urination. Urination, yes. So there's a whole section in Curepedia just called pissing. Glorious.

Anyway, back to Billy Idol. Yeah. So, my French assistan Didier, aforementioned, would have been punching the air in an imagined studded leather glove when this came on. Yeah, and quite rightly so. Oh, I've got a couple of gross-out stories involving Billy himself, by the way.

The first one I've told before on Chart Music, that's the one where Billy approaches David Bowie in a nightclub and halfway there he vomits all over himself, wipes his mouth on his sleeve and then shakes Bowie's hand. But the other one is that story of when he was, not to sort of put too fine a point on it, fisting somebody after a gig and she kind of clamped up and he couldn't extricate himself and he had to dangle his fist

in an ice bucket to bring it back to normality. But what I love about both of those stories is that they feed into our folk memory of Billy Idles, this kind of dumb, blonde bozo who's sort of puking and fisting his way through 80s America, you know, occasionally crashing his motorbike or getting busted for drugs and making millions along the way. And I use the word dumb about Billy

and it might feel like I'm dissing him there but i think dumbness in rock is distinct from stupidity yes the ramones for example did dumb better than anyone right and joey ramone blatantly a genius i think right so yeah billy idol and this becomes really apparent from his book dancing with myself he is more thoughtful and articulate in real life than you might have expected, despite those stories. But even without that, he was clearly a smart bastard with a canny knack for self-marketing.

You've talked about how he pitched up in America. I mean, it's kind of masterful what he does after the end of Generation X, because Generation X kind of fizzled out, really. He didn't leave them on a high, let's put it that way. They weren't top of the world. No. So he turns up supposedly with only one suitcase and a gretch guitar and a pink elvis

jacket um which sounds a bit like self-romanticizing but that's what that's his story but importantly that face that beautiful face he's i think he's a really beautiful man and yeah he hooks up as you mentioned with kisses manager bill o'coyne also Blondie's label, Chrysalis. And if you think of it, he carved out a career that combines the pop-punk hooks of Blondie and the cheap thrills of Kiss, showbiz-wise. So, yeah, he did sell this kind of airbrushed, streamlined version of punk to mainstream America.

Very much so. And he was the perfect sex god for the MTV age, really. He's this sort of peroxide Presley who never got old, fat and dead. He was the Sid Vicious who wasn't going to murder anyone, you know. And I also think he was reassuring, even though he's beautiful, he was reassuringly

macho among the more effeminate cockatoos of the second British invasion. So therefore, he could bring Heartland America on board. Yes. And if, yeah, if you look at the timeline that you gave us, the fact that British invasion so therefore he could bring heartland America on board yes and if yeah if you look at the timeline that you gave us the fact that a white wedding was originally from 82 the Americans caught on to this way before we did yeah we weren't ready for that dumb macho approach to things in 82 but by 85 maybe British culture changed enough Billy Idol was always seen

as a retrograde chancer because you know while the while The Clash was singing, you know, Elvis Beakles or Rolling Stones in 1977, Generation X was singing about Elvis Beakles and the Rolling Stones and Kathy my fucking Gowan. And by the mid 80s, he's having massive success in America. But over here, he's still seen as a bit of a prat, particularly in the music press. At the end of an NME interview, where he banged on about rock and roll again, Matt Snow wrote, I mean, have you ever read such crap in your life? Billy has become a big star through his looks, his expensive videos, his ex-Kiss manager, and his well-established record company. Yet just because he's stuck to that bottled hairdo for the best part of a decade he reckons he's still a punk whatever that is but at least he's never sold out for the only

difference between 77 and 84 is that now billy idol is a dickhead on a cosmic scale you know a lot of this stuff that we're talking about the dumbness is very much at surface level and the songs are actually lyrically a little bit more interesting than that, you know. So I think, yeah, there is that little bit more to him, and I think, as someone again pointed out, there is definitely a sort of a canniness in terms of, like, the kind of career he made for himself. I don't think there's any...

I mean, look, part of the problem for me, actually, I realise now, is that I always had him down as the idiot who sang, Be bop a loogler, I've got a Luger, on You Don't Need a Gun. Only to... Yeah, and I thought, fucking hell, man. Only to Google the lyrics and to realise, some 30 years on, that he sang no such thing.

Oh, what? Wow. I know, it was something the Stud Brothers made up. So basically, it turns out that I'm the idiot. I'm the idiot who thought Billy Idol was the idiot who sang Bebopalula, I've got a LLa-I've-Got-A-Loo-Gah on You Don't Need A Gun. That is so zig-zig-spotting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just think in pop, you will never be forgiven for being pretty. You certainly won't be forgiven by David Stubbs. Like Bauhaus are the other example of this to me. Because to my mind, Bauhaus are this incredible, inventive, experimental post-punk group who should be thought of on a par with Public Image Limited or Wire or Magazine or any of those bands, Joy Division even. But to David, they're these kind of preening idiots

because they're good-looking and because Peter Murphy was in the Maxell advert. Am I right? I mean, that's how you think of them, right? Well, I don't think of them as highly as you do, certainly. I mean, I like, you know, Bela Lugosi's Dead, you know, is kind of quite a sort of kind of dubby thing going. But I probably find it a bit facile, whether it's some sort of unacknowledged prejudice against cheat bones. Yeah, yeah.

Maybe so. Well, I'm glad you partly copped to that. But yeah, Billy Idol, I think, again, I'm not really pointing the finger at David here, but... Waving a fist, you mean. Waving a fist at David. But yeah, the music press in general, certainly the Inkeys were suspicious of him

because he was so slickly presented, he was so good-looking, and it was very much a package. And it was a bit of a sort of throwback idea of what punk is, you know, like studded leather and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, and never actually was, you know. I mean, but what can you say? There's a thing. It's Billy Idol. What are you going to do? I mean, it's easy to get sort of steamed up about. It's like having a fight with a cardboard cutout

outside a record store, you know. And actually, unlike Morrissey, he's probably brought nothing but fun to the world. Yes. Ultimately, really. And of course, you know, in 1985 the UK have finally caught on, presumably to a generation who can't remember anything about punk or their older brothers and sisters who just couldn't give a toss about all that and just want to go a bit mad in the dance area of the wine bar every now and then. rebel yell at this woman. The rebellion isn't Extinction Rebellion, you know, just

stop oil, but rebels against the hegemony of not wanting sex with rock stars. Yes. None of that bourgeois restraint for her. Yeah, she wants more, more, more, even if they're being pissed on by Lowell Tollist. Yes. Yeah, yeah. In this video clip, apart from

Billy himself, obviously it's Steve Stevens who catches the eye with his... Yes. He's the long-serving guitarist with... Yeah, the Randy Rhodes to Billy Idol's Ozzy Osbourne. Exactly. And he's got that Motley Crue hairdo. And he's got the ankle-length, shoulder-padded success coat.

Yes. But I want to talk about the unsung hero here, who's Keith Forsey, right? Right. The producer. The thing with Rebel Yell is that it's not a rock record really it's a dance record and yes it is and that's all because of Keith Forsey yeah so Keith Forsey was a producer but first and foremost he was a drummer he'd been around

since the 60s he played with Udo Lindenberg and there's there's a kraut rock connection as well, because he played percussion with Amon Dool too. Well, what, Amon Doll 11? Yeah, exactly. But then he joins up with Giorgio Moroder and plays drums on Donna Summer records like Bad Girls. And he played on Number One in Heaven by Sparks. So he knew about the metronomic. about the metronomic okay and uh you can hear that the very first time he works billy idol because that's the 1981 album kiss me deadly by gen x as they were then called that's right before they split up it's like when ultra vox changed the name to you vox for a bit yes but um that album included the single dancing with myself which was later rebooted as a billy idol solo

single which might be about wanking, but it's very much a dance tune. Oh, yeah, it is, yeah. You can do both. Well, yeah, you can. Depending on what club you go to. Kind of comes to where you get 30 sporns. Yeah, Berghain, basically.

But yeah, Keith Forsey, as much as Steve Stevens, is the musical architect of Billy Idol's solo career. And you can hear that metronomic precision through everything they do together, Rebel Yell being no exception. So for all the kind of lip curling and that fist, that big swollen fist, and for all the rock guitar riffing, Rebel Yell is a dance record in the same way that Eliminator by ZZ Top is a dance album. It sounds machine-tool. It doesn't swing.

It doesn't rock. It's got a mechanical shudder to it. And some people will dislike that about it. I love it. And I guess ZZ and Sputnik take that on still further, don't they, with their kind of machining. Yeah, his old mate Tony James. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think David's right. You just have to love Billy Idol, even if you wouldn't sit down and listen to his records. You wouldn't sit down and listen to his records, but you'd sit down and listen to him. Oh, God, imagine. In a pub. Imagine, yeah, Jesus.

And I just think there's something badly wrong with anyone who doesn't enjoy Billy Idol as a great pop thing. You know, like, I mean, David mentioned that bit where he makes the cameo appearance in the airplane scene in The Wedding which i think is a bit of a ropey film to be honest but billy in that moment it just lifts the whole film and i just yeah yeah that's what he does billy idol just cheers everyone up just by existing i think yeah he's a good interview billy idol is you know he's got a lot to say about rock and roll he evangelizes about about it. Here are a few quotes I pulled out, which sound like Facebook inspirational JPEGs.

Rock and roll is a pair of dice. Rock and roll is a thing of beauty and velvetness. Rock and roll is flecks of human fire. And rock and roll is one man's heart jump-starting another's. Brilliant. And of course at the moment he's getting absolutely coated down by his peers who think

he's a knobhead. You know, Boy George has called him head without a brain and John Lydon famously called him the Perry Como of punk. That whole rock and roll thing, you on side yeah he's on side billy idol is on side that song i mean boy george can make fun of eyes without a face you know whatever face without a brain but yeah that is a magnificent track eyes without a face that

it almost seems that you know if that if that was recorded by someone with a bit more gravitas, like, I don't know, Talk Talk or The Blue Nile, everybody would be rhapsodising about it. But because it's Billy Idol, it's nice. Yeah, totally. I actually agree with that. So, the following week, Rebel Yell nudged up two places to number six, its highest position. The follow-up to Be A Lover only got to number 22 in November of 1986, but he'd have one more top ten hit when his cover of Mo'ni Mo'ne, which was his debut single in America in 1981, got to number seven in October of 1987. and of course later this year a version of rebel yell was used in an advert for kp honey roasted peanuts because apparently if you had one of them you'd want more more more oh she never quite made that number one spot now this week she's down to number seven bonnie tyler holding out for a hero in 1985 i probably rather pompously detested bonnie tyler she's down to number seven bonnie tyler holding out for a hero in 1985 i probably

rather pompously detested bonnie tyler she's clearly a great human being down one at six here's madonna an angel you notice this right um bonnie tyler gets oh for not getting to number one or whatever madonna gets from gary favis there it's really weird last week he was at number three. This week, he's at number five. Stevie Wonder, part-time lover.

This is all right. It's not that bad. And it's a good week for Redbox. They're up two places to number four with Lean On Me. Gary Davidson's reaction to Madonna, though, fucking hell.

Yeah. That's not very smooth, Gary. No. Oh, can you imagine that Gary Davis would probably flicker in his tongue while he said that as well. Formed at the Polytechnic of central London in 1978, Harlequins were a student band who changed their name to Red Box after a scarlet receptacle which had been left behind by Slade after a college gig that the group stored their microphones in. After most of the band had graduated, they signed a one-shot deal with Cherry Red in 1983, which produced the single Chenko. 1983, which produced the single Chenko. Despite plenty of airplay on Evening Radio 1 and a session for Janice Long, it just missed out on the top 100 and the deal expired, leaving the band looking

for a new label. And when a potential deal with MCA was put on hold, most of the band pissed off to get proper jobs and the lineup had slimmed down to a two-piece, Simon Toulson Clark and Julian Close. However, the single had caught the ear of Seymour Stein, who signed them to Psy Records in 1984, and their first single on that label, a cover of Buffy St Marie's Saskatchewan, also just missed the charts.

This is the follow-up, which is immediately played out by Radio 1 and entered the charts at number 79 at the beginning of August, where it took four weeks to enter the top 40 at number 30, Bagsy in a slot on the breakers section in that week's Top of the Pops. The following week, it soared 12 places to number 18, forcing Top of the Pops to bring them into the studio that week, which helped it soar once again to number six. This week, it's nipped up two places to number four,

and here's a longish clip. And, oh, boys, this feels like the real 1985 has descended upon us doesn't it oh i mean fucking hell you know i mean good on julian close aka prince edward for breaking royal precedent and being one of a pop team but you know it looks like a sort of botched laboratory attempt to create a go west and um you know it should have been dispensed with out hand clearly they're well intentioned you know there's a lot of we are the worldliness about them, you know, and their anti-American militarism, you know. But it's like, why must the angels have all the worst tunes?

It's, I don't know, it's sub-Tears for Fears. I mean, but also, I don't know, just the confidence to be this boxy, this empty of everything except decent intentions. I mean, I just tried to figure out other stuff. I just cruised around YouTube, you know, and I just drew an absolute blank. I mean, they just seem to be running on absolute empty,

and they're still running. You know, and they've got the nerve to criticise the American media for its style over content approach when they've got neither style or content. It's... Simon? Have you heard the good news about Jesus? What it is, right, they really creeped me out, Redbox,

because they seemed like evangelical Christians. I don't know if that was actually their agenda, but it seemed like their tour bus was a Jesus Army bus. Right. Every time they were on the radio or on TV, I felt like I was being groomed to be part of some kind of cult. Yes. I felt like, you know,

if you get too close to the band Redbox, you're going to end up at some kind of happy-clappy summer camp where everyone's sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya or swinging their pants. Yeah, they just made me feel weird in a way I couldn't quite... Their expressions were beatific,

that's the word yeah and it just seemed all wrong for pop yeah I disliked them disproportionately maybe maybe they weren't as evil as I thought but sort of made my skin crawl maybe Simon it was the fact that one of them went to Harrow well there is that Simon Tolson Clark I actually looked up the surname Tolson Clark to see where the family fortune came from. Didn't really come up with anything, but I did find somebody who does a lot of eventing, as in horse eventing.

So that's clearly the sort of social milieu that they come from. You know me, though. I would never hold somebody's privately educated background against them. Frankly, Al, I think it's beneath you to imply that I'd have a problem with that. So, the song. I've looked at the lyrics online. I still don't know what the fuck they're going on about. Can you help me?

Together we are strong, a flame that can't be dimmed. You know, lines like that and lines like, you've got to lean on me. You can fight alone without solidarity. I think it's really important to have lyrics like that in 1984, 85, the time of the miners' strike, you know, class struggle. Oh, oh, wait. Oh, oh, no, hang on. Sorry.

That's the Redskins' Lean On Me. Oh, shit. I mean, in the Lean On Me league, this trails far behind Lean On Me by Bill Withers, Lean On Me by the Redskins, and rap summary Lean On Me by Big Daddy Kane. But you get the feeling that this is what the BBC and Radio 1 in particular wants pop to be in 1985.

You know, a couple of nice, sensible young lads who use sims but aren't gay about it, with a social conscience. It's been played to death on Radio 1. They've already been on Wogan, which has become the TV show to get your acts on, but, you know, this isn't real kids' issues, is it? No. I mean, I don't know what it is. It just seems...

Yeah, it just seems to be filling some sort of required space, but it's just empty. I zoned it out completely at the time. Yeah. The video, what we see of it, looks expensive and glossy with images of naked babies with their bits tastefully obscured

and the duo arsing about on a playground roundabout on a park bench with a big clapperboard with assorted people of the world but to me the really disorientating thing is the overlays of words throughout the video because they look massively similar to the band names that top of the pops uses at the end of performances and it just threw me even though you know some of those words were in foreign but it's like oh what's going on i don't understand this yeah they are quite a post live a band and it's all very one world isn't it you know they've they've got a bunch of chinese teenagers holding on to the singer guy and yeah and all of that a band just waiting for Q to be invented. One world with them mysteriously at the top of it. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it was all very happy-clappy. It reminds me of when I was in infant school, junior school, we'd always have a trendy teacher who would do RE and make us sing Lord of the Dance. Yes. It's very Lord of the Dance, all that. From the very, very young to the very, very old, all that sort of stuff.

Oh, God. Oh, my God. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Yeah. I think maybe the Harrow thing is it just gives you kind of this unearned confidence, basically. And the fact that they have Red in the name, at that time, bands with Red in the name, you thought they were kind of on the right side of the political divide,

whether it's Simply Red or the Redskins, or Well Red, I i think was another one when those bands who were always playing events that were sponsored by the greater london council and i thought okay give them a fair hearing maybe they're one of those but yeah there's just something a bit off about them and the fact that even i uh a man who analyzes pop far too much can't quite figure out what it is no such thing thing, Simon. Ah, yeah. That in itself unsettles me. It's almost like meta unsettling. I'm unsettled in the first place,

then I'm unsettled because I can't quite work out why. But I do just think they're not quite noncing us, but they are just trying to enlist us. Religious cults don't show their hand immediately. You know, they always appear to be very sort of feel good and very innocent and it's only

when they've got you in their grip that that their dark agenda yeah comes to the fore and i just thought there was something like that going on yeah like that massive poster you used to see in tube stations in the early 90s of a drawing of someone on a motorbike and someone else playing a guitar yeah and at the end it says check out the facts down at the tab. Oh, the tab, the tabernacle. Yes. Gotta remember that one, yeah. But yes, they are being inclusive, Simon. You know, as an article in Kid Jensen's pop column in the Sunday

Mirror bears out, headline silent protest. Eagle-eyed viewers of the video for the Redbox hit Lean On Me will have noticed the girl in the lower right-hand corner giving a sign language performance of the song for the Redbox hit Lean On Me will have noticed the girl in the lower right-hand corner giving a sign language performance of the song for deaf people. Lean On Me is about communication,

and Simon Toulson-Clark and Julian Close tell me they were concerned that deaf people were missing out on videos. But I can reveal that the hard-of-hearing get more than a straightforward version of the song. Halfway through, the girl deserts the lyric to protest. Hey, I don't know what I'm doing here. I really don't think I'm being paid enough for this. And it's really weird because she's semi-opaque, isn't she?

So she just floats around the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. She's not as full-on as the woman who does the signing at that Public Enemy gig, but, you know, never mind. It's a start. Anything else to say about this? Just that if they are sort of, you know, sort of not playing their religious hand, then they've not been playing it for a very long time, if I'm saying it right, because they're still knocking around.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, my accusation just doesn't bear much close analysis, but it's just how they made me feel at the time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the following week, Lean On Me, our Liao, nudged up one place to number three, its highest Number three? Fuck me!

Its highest position. After taking the rest of the year and most of next year off to work on their debut LP, The Circle and The Square. They re-emerged in late 1986 with For America, which spent two weeks at number 10 in November of that year.

Fucking hell, a year later they do nothing, release a song, back in the fucking top 10. Who's buying this? Exactly. Yeah, it's extraordinary. I mean, number three, pissing from on high on The Cure. It's extraordinary. Exactly. And For America was another fucking swing on high on the cure. It's extraordinary. Yeah, exactly. And For America was another fucking swing-your-pants campfire number one. Oh, to Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray, USA.

Yeah. They all had that kind of Karma chameleon feel. Or do you remember the single Passengers by Elton John? Oh. It was that. Oh, God. Fucking hell. But the LP only got to number 73 the following month. Their next single, Heart of the Sun,

straggled up to number 71 in February of 1987. And when a revamp of Chenko only got to number 77 in August of 87, they were dropped from the label. Julian Close took a job in A&R for EMI and Tulson Clark pissed off around the world. The latter was tempted back into reactivating the Redbox brand in 1989 by East West Records and he put out their second LP Motive in 1990. But band and label had a serious falling out and the LP was pulled from the shelves very soon after its release

and the band split up for 20 years, coming back with the LP Plente in 2010. We have a brand new number one because Bowie and Jagger are down to number three. On the streets of Brazil. Here's the biggest climber on the chart this week, up 13 places to number two. It's Jennifer Rush and the Power of Love. Oh, fuck off.

Fuck me, make it stop. Sarah's karaoke song. She'll kill me for that. I want to hear that now. That's Jennifer Rush at number two this week on The Power of Love, which means we have a brand new number one. The last time he was number one was together with Band-Aid. He now has his first solo number one.

Here's Midge York, If I Was. If I Was If I wanted to be a better man Better man Would fell Fucking hell, I wish I'd gone to that Elkie Brooks gig now. Davis and Jordan, the latter with his hand out of his pocket but now behind his back, tell us that we've got a new number one

and we've been spared an extended stare at the state of Mick Jagger and David Bowie in 1985. What is wrong with Paul Jordan's hand? Has he got a swastika tattoo on it or something? Yeah, I noticed in an earlier link he had his hand in his pocket and he's doing gun fingers.

Do you think this is why he's been airbrushed out of pop history? Do you think it's to do with the hand in some way? A cab across the knuckles. Unfortunately, the new number one is If I Was by Midge Orr. Born in

Cambuslang on the outskirts of Glasgow in 1955, James Urr was a trainee engineer at the National Engineering Laboratory in East Kilbride in the late 60s when he joined a Glasgow band called Stumble. In 1972, he joined the covers band Salvation as a guitarist who played the Glasgow and Edinburgh club circuit, but as the bassist was already called Jim, they got him to change

his name to Midge, Jim spelt backwards, and the name stuck. In 1974, when Salvation's lead singer left, Err took over as front person and the band linked up with Shang-a-Lang songwriters Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, changed their name to Slick, signed with Bell Records and went to number one with Forever and Ever in February of 1976. When Diminishing Returns rapidly set in and teeny bopper bands fell right out of favour, they dismissed Martin and Coulter, went a bit punky and changed their name to PVC2, putting out the single Put You In The Picture.

But in October of 1977, he was poached by Glenn Matlock for his new band, forcing a relocation to that London where he soaked up every post-plunk influence that came his way. By 1978, Ewell was getting right into synthesizers and he and drummer Rusty Egan were on one half of a rift against the more traditional Matlock and Steve New, which led to the breakup of Rich Kids. And as mentioned in Chart Music 71, Euronegan approached Steve Strange to fill the studio time he was owed by EMI to create Visage. Thanks to Visage bulking up their lineup to include Billy Currer, who joined after the dissolution of the original line-up of Ultravox,

Jürgen Egan were invited to join the band in 1979, which he did full-time after a stint playing keyboards on a thin Lizzy tour of America, resulting in a run of 14 top ten hits from 1980 to 1984, including a number two with Vienna. On November 2nd, 1984, while Yule was in Newcastle sound-checking for a live performance for The Tube with The Vox, he was called over to the phone by Paula Yates

to discover Bob Geldof on the other end, who went into one about Michael Burt's BBC News report on the Ethiopian famine and that something ought to be done about it. Working on lyrics provided by Geldof during a meeting in a restaurant three days later and eventually lifting the tune from a song that had been lying in his drawer for a while, he and Geldof eventually bashed up

Do They Know It's Christmas, which ended up being produced by you when their original choice Trevor Horn couldn't get out of other commitments you know the rest in early 1985 with Ultravox having a break and their only commitment being their appearance at Live Aid which you're co-organized with Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith he returned to the solo career he began in 1982 when he took his cover of the 1968 Tom Rush song No Regress to number nine in July of that year. And he spent the first half of this year working on his debut solo LP The Gift which comes out on Monday. This is the lead cut from that LP, which came out in the first week of September and entered the top 40 as the highest new entry at number 29 the week after

and was immediately bunged onto top of the pops, which helped it soar 21 places to number 8. A second top of the pops performance moved it up to number four and this week it scaled the summit of ben chartis deposing dancing in the street by jagger and boe and here he is the peter taylor of band-aid in the studio to receive his triumph or is he because to me this seems like a repeat from a fortnight ago because you know top of the pops they're very fond of having the camera sweeping from the presenters to the stage but this time it looks like the cameraman's just finished having a quiet piss underneath the scaffolding

on the other side of the studio just in time for the performance to start i think it is a new performance but it's hard to say really isn't it yeah i new performance, but it's weird that. It's hard to say, really, isn't it? It's funny, with Midge, I always used to have him down as this kind of really evil, scheming, moustached, sort of bandwagon jumper and pops in, you know, whatever. The zealot. Yeah, exactly. But he's actually a terribly nice fella.

If you listen to interviews with him, in the way that Jim Kerr is actually, quite similar to him. Very disarming when you hear him being interviewed nowadays. But the fact is, this is just a mystifying waste of everyone's time. I mean, really, what sort of mediocre soul buys a record like this, surges with vicarious pride as they put it on, swells their chest and stands tall? If I...

I mean, Al mentioned, you know, he's the Peter Taylor of Live Aid. And perhaps there's a sense that he hasn't had quite his due, he hasn't had quite the recognition. Didn't quite get to number one, of course, with Vienna. And you just suspect that maybe, just maybe, all these megastars, they had a bit of a whip around backstage, you know, 50,000 here, half a million there, thank you, Elton. And then basically used the money to dispatch Boy Scouts

and Girl Guides posing as pop fans to buy this up from Virgin and HMV en masse because I can think of no other reason why it could have ascended to number one. And the weird thing is he looks himself a bit surprised to be up there. It's like, I don't know, something like Steve Koppel being cajoled on stage to deliver a sing-song. Are you sure this is switched on? There's just something... He looks as bewildered as anybody.

Well, this is a question that's always been on my mind. Is it a sympathy, number one? Poor old Midge, good on him. Oh, he deserves it. Oh, go on. When I was a kid, about five years old, my mum and me would walk from town across the forest recreational ground

to get to Ice and Green. And every now and then then there'd be some lads playing football and my man would walk out onto the pitch talk to the referee and say can my lad have a kick of the ball and every time they'd stop the game and go yeah go on then and i'd run up and give it a massive hoof or what i felt was a massive hoof and everyone would go hey and then the game would continue and I'd walk home with my mum feeling massively proud

for scoring a winning goal. And I get the feeling that this is what's being done here by the music business and the media for mid-year. So anyway, this single, I mean, there's loads of soppy ballads getting to number one

in the latter half of the 80s, but at least, or worse, they lodged in your brain. But this one's massively forgettable even for midge yeah because in an article in john blake's white hot club later this month quote midge yore has a confession to make he keeps forgetting the lyric to his own songs i made a real prat of myself on Wogan recently. I was singing If I Was, and I just couldn't remember whether it was Soldier or Sailor or whatever came next. It was terribly embarrassing. Even when Midge is on tour with Ultravox, he can't remember the words to their hits. I know Vienna was a huge success, but I still find the lyrics a problem.

Vienna was a huge success, but I still find the lyrics a problem. Lyrics, they mean nothing to him. Okay, pop music is always in two minds about the conditional tense, right? For every If I Were a Carpenter by Tim Harding, there's an If I Was

Your Girlfriend by Prince. For every If I Were a Boy by Beyonce, there's an If I Was by Midge Ewer, or If I Was a Sculptor, huh. But then again, no, by Elton John. Fuck yeah, now. But grammatical inaccuracy is far from the worst offences committed by this song. I just had to put that in there because my wife's an English teacher

and she tells me that it's the second conditional is what we call this tense. The Midge Ewer gets wrong in this song. But the lyrics are basically, you know, kind of river deep, mountain high or ain't no mountain high enough. It's all about prowess. It's this elongated boast. Or, you know, I will always love you by Dolly slash Whitney. It's all about how devoted he is to his woman. But it has none of the charm or passion of those songs so it's written

mostly by danny mitchell of the messengers who are this scottish band who midge discovered and produced and it's got weird moments in the lyrics there's that bit where it goes if i was a stronger man carrying the weight of popular demand would that alarm her that's an odd little couplet there the bit that gets repeated a few times if i was a soldier captive arms i'd lay before her so what he'd show off like look at all these grenade launchers we stole from the russians now how about a shag you know is that it the thing with midges and you mentioned that the zealot factor that he turns up in different eras of pop but in any of those incarnations, whether it's Slick or Rich Kids or Visage, Ultravox, whatever, I never feel that people are buying into the idea of Midge Ure himself.

They aren't buying it, whatever it is, because it's him. He's just this sort of competent, pencil-tashed singer who's fronting it. Until now, and I think you're right al i think they they very much are now buying if i was because it's him and yeah you say the peter taylor i say the cat from hong kong phooey of band-aids or live it oh and it does feel like a sympathy number one because he never did much after this chart wise i mean still he he did he did better than bob geldof and the vegetarians of love i suppose yes god so he can cling to that i suppose but the massive success coat uh the second success coat we've seen on this episode that he's wearing um seems symbolic it's making

a point that he doesn't need to ride on anyone else's coattails. He has massive coattails of his own. Yes, they are very long indeed. A very sober success coat though, isn't it? Not adorned with any brooches or anything. No, it hasn't got diamante shoulder pads or anything like that. No. When I was watching him in this moment of triumph for him,

I just kept thinking, imagine if Joe Dolce had a surprise second hit in October 85 and kept it off the top. That would have been fucking amazing, wouldn't it? I don't get what all the fucking fuss is about anyway. I mean, Forever and Ever by Slick was number one. He's had a go, you know, so what's the problem here? I mean, there is a feeling that Midge has been hard done by.

Not least, it turns out, by Midge himself, although he's keeping it on the download by now. I found an article in the Daily Record from October 2004, which goes, he's one part of the duo who created the greatest musical fundraiser the world has ever known. But despite kick-starting a massive humanitarian aid project and helping to bring life to the starving children in Ethiopia, Scott's music legend Midyur has carried a 20-year grudge over the way he was treated at Live Aid. The former Ultravox singer has kept a lid on his resentment after he was left feeling like a second ranker, pushed to the back as Band-Aid co-founder Bob Geldof gloried in the limelight.

But now the Glasgow-born singer has confessed he felt snubbed when asked to move down the Live Aid bill at what is now known as the greatest show on earth. Mitch said, I didn't realise it had happened until the press boys round the bar pointed it out afterwards. One of them came up to me and asked how it felt to be shafted like that. I had no idea what they meant, as I'd been told a story about having to swap round the order of appearance because Adamant was having technical problems.

At the time, it didn't bother me in the slightest who went on before who. But as the dust settled, Mitch couldn't shake the feeling that he'd been done over. Mitch is convinced the swap was arranged so Bob could play before Prince Charles and Princess Diana left. Mitch said Bob wouldn't give a shit if he was performing in front of royals or not. In fact, I'm sure he's blissfully unaware any of this happened because it wasn't his decision. But I realised it was all so that the Boomtown Rats could perform

before the royals had to leave. Bob was being pushed forward and I was being pushed back. So of course my nose was a bit out of joint, but it was pure ego. Nothing could have spoiled the day for me at the time but the more i thought about it in the months afterwards the more it ate away at me in the weeks leading up to live aid i felt increasingly sidelined i could feel the whole thing change i spoke to my manager about it during that period and he agreed that there was something That sounds like an interview rewritten in tabloidese, doesn't it? As I guess they all were. The performance, I mean, no synth or any form of instrumentation,

and no tash either. It had gone by late 1984, which makes him look weird. Yeah. He's kind of replaced it with some pointy sideys though. Yes, he has. And he has got rid of that ponytail as well, just at the moment when twats in the media were taking them up

with big thick red glasses. He's progressing in a way. He's progressing as his hairline is regressing. I remember in the early 90s, his comeback then, he was very much in the early 90s you know it's a his comeback then he was very much in the hat wearing brigade um you know and fair enough i've been there done that but um yeah very heritage chart yeah yeah exactly so if i was would only spend one week at number one

giving way to the power of love by Jennifer Rush. Oh, Jesus. But would spend two weeks at number two before slipping down the charts, while The Gift got to number two in the LP charts behind Hounds of Love by Kate Bush. Yeah, that really fucking offended me. The Gift. Oh, yeah.

I think The Jam had an album called The Gift three years previously, Midge. Yeah, I thought that. Why don't you call it fucking All Mod Cons? Yeah. For fuck's sake. The follow-up, That Certain Smile, would get to number 28 in November of this year and Diminishing Returns set in on his solo career,

which he tried to maintain with the reformation of Ultravox, who would put out one more lp before splitting up in 1987 hey that's great so good to see you at number one I couldn't take it up I couldn't take it up I couldn't take it up Hey that's great, so good to see you at number one Mitch Yor and If I Was Next week on Top of the Pops, Steve Wright and Mike Smith Yep, that's more or less it, thanks for watching tonight

from Paul and myself, we hope you have an enjoyable evening, the rest of it and we'll leave you with the number 28 record at the moment from Five Star and Love Takeover Bye bye, see ya I couldn't take it up the number 28 record at the moment from Five Star and Love Takeover. Bye-bye. See ya. Jordan, who now has his left hand on display and we can see it hasn't been mutilated or has an offensive

tattoo on it, tells us that it's so good to see Mijor at number one. That was the general opinion. Isn't that nice? He then warns us that it's so good to see Mijor at number one. That was the general opinion. Isn't that nice? He then warns us that it's Steve Wright and Mike Smith next week, leaving Davis to tell us that he hopes we have an enjoyable evening, the rest of it, which makes Jordan smile evilly. It is supposedly more experienced co-host fucking up.

Eventually they sign off and leave us with Love Takeover by Five Star. We came across Shakin' Shalamar in Chalk Music 24 when they took Find The Time to number 7 in August of 1986 and this,

their sixth single, is the fifth cut from their first LPp luxury of life which came out in july and is currently number 43 in the album chart it's a follow-up to let me be the one which got to number 18 in late july and was written by the dutch production duo bernard oats and rob van schalk who called themselves the Limit and had a number 17 hit in the UK with Say Yeah in January of this year. It entered the back end

of the chart three weeks ago and slid into the top 40 at number 38 but this week it's jumped seven places from number 35 to number 28 after an appearance on Top of the Pops a fortnight ago and here it is again being played over the credits as the kids shuffle with a bovine grace and glide in syncopation oh let's get the

song out the way first chaps because you know it's perfectly acceptable r&b that would sit nicely on channel 4's soul train or yeah or at the end of Top of the Pops. You know, obviously got a clear eye on America. You know, Doris could easily have been in Janet Jackson's position if they hadn't lumped the rest of the family in with her. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's perfectly decent. As Five Star always were, you know, just very bright, bubbly,

sort of bubblegummy, chaste brick funk for all the family, you know. But I was surprised, really, subsequently, at how precipitously they declined. The slightest hint of sleaze was enough to wipe them out like a virus. And, of course, they did sort of make that decision to change their image and go a little bit more kind of, you know, rocket weather. But, you know, for me, they were clean cut or they were nothing,

to be honest. I guess that accounts for it, really. But, yeah, it's nice. I was really surprised to see that this single only peaked at number 25 and also that it was their 6th out of 7 singles in a row

that didn't make the top 10. I didn't realise there was such a long build up with 5 Star. Yeah, 1986 was there. Yeah, I sort of perceived them as being sort of instantly massive but yeah, the record label showed faith in them and kept them going a long time. They obviously determined that this group is going to be big

no matter what. That surprised me. But when they did, they did seem like this sort of unstoppable hit machine and it was, you thought they were never going to leave us alone. Janice Long said that on top of the Pops, they never seem to go away. Like the wasps of pop. Yeah. I didn't hate them but we

we'd already by this point in the 80s we'd had uh musical youth in terms of a family-based uh british pop group um and then there'd been new edition who are sort of manufactured non-family american version and i think i was of an age now where I was very aware of the process. I wasn't just accepting, oh, this is what pop has thrown at us, either like it or don't. I was very much, oh, I can see the strings. And, you know, it's pretty well publicised anyway that Buster Pierce and their dad was the Svengali behind it all.

And I suppose I was still enough of a precious alternative slash indie kid that I didn't like it when people were trying to hoodwink us and trying to pull a fast one whereas you know once I got over myself a little bit and got a bit older I just thought you know just enjoy it for what it is so I think I resented Five Star at the time I think I thought they were part of the forces of evil but in hindsight that seems a bit ridiculous you know they were part of the forces of evil. But in hindsight, that seems a bit ridiculous. You know, they were a decent enough British take on American R&B. And some of those records are actually pretty good. System Addict I would stand up for.

Yeah, that's a good one. I remember System Addict was the name of a little-known Romo band. And I'm saying that, I'm thinking, who were the well-known Romo bands? But yeah. Yeah, they were all right, weren't they? And in a way, it's a shame that their fame didn't endure long enough for when Stedman had his public indecency incident, that they could have done what George Michael did with the outside video

and really owned it and maybe sort of changed attitudes. But this song, the fact that i'm not even talking about it um yeah it does sort of tell you a little bit it's just you know in one ear and out of the other to be honest with you it's all right it's functional and we can see the function that it's performing is to make people dance and that that's why that's why actually it's perfect for an end of top of the pops song rather than a during Top of the Pops song. Yeah. And speaking of which, Simon,

this is a glorious opportunity to have a good hard stare at the youth of 1985. And, oh dear, all the girls look like Claire Scott in Grange Hill. All the boys look like they're wearing the new clothes man bought them for the summer holiday. And, you know, we do see the remaining members of City Farm up on a podium like the cool fifth years at the school disco who clearly can't dance for shit.

It's a little group of four who've got something nice going. I mean, yeah, the camera panning across the audience is like a sort of audit. It's a survey of 1985 youth. And, yeah, they are the Australians' nightmare we've become grimly accustomed to. But I have to say, look, I do admire their enthusiasm. I mean, you know, which I think they got overenthusiastic

in the early 80s. But, I mean, you know, it's all right. It's a bit gopher in places, but at least it's not like the bloody 70s audience where they all look like they'd much rather be at home drinking tea and watching Crossroads. Even as David Bowie's got his arm draped around Mick Ronson doing Starman, you know. So there is that.

I mean, by this point, City Farm have been expunged from the credits, and rightly so. Their time is up. The thing with City Farm is when I teach about the disco era and I teach about Don Cornelius and Soul Train and all that stuff, the wonderful thing about Soul Train is that the audience and the stars were kind of indistinguishable because everybody looked like a star.

Everybody could dance. And that's the whole point of the disco movement. You know, the best case scenario way of describing disco was that it was a way in which everybody on a Friday or a Saturday night could be the star in their local discotheque as long as you had, you know, just one outfit, decent glad rags, and you had a few moves. And then the rave movement is often described as the opposite of that because nobody's a star.

And that's seen as being this great positive thing that everyone's just very normal and everybody looks the same as each other. And nobody's really showing off. They're all losing themselves in their music. I feel like in 1985, we're in this kind of mid-period between the two oh yeah so what's happened is you've got city farm who are you know nominally professional dancers and are meant to look the business and you've got the audience um and they don't look particularly starry either everyone's just kind of merged together i honestly couldn't tell you which were the the professional dancers and which were not and that's not a compliment to anybody involved.

But also in 1985, there's a very clear fashion difference between the people on the stage and the people in the audience. There's nobody wearing success coats or purple rain outfits on the studio floor. Who stood out for you in this melange of clock tower at C&A wearing youth? There was this intriguing little chap with blonde hair. Oh, yeah. He looked a little bit in his own world, you know. Do you remember that episode we did, Simon, from the early 70s with Lulu?

Of course, of course. And all those students were dancing and there was one lad who looked like Gareth out of The Office. I think I spotted his cousin here with an extremely lank mullet dancing like an old man trying to catch a fly next to his leering mate in a shit jumper and an awful blonde rinse that makes him look like a future member of birdland oh yes yeah having a wonderful time yeah can't dance with shit but who cares get down in a, a bit of crapness as opposed to slickness does seem quite welcome in the context of 1985. Yes, extremely so.

Chaps, if you were in the audience for Top of the Pops in 1985 and you know that a camera swept past you while you were dancing to Five Star, would you tell your mates about it before it was broadcast? Yeah, probably. Would you brag on? Yeah, yeah. Even though you look like a complete knob? I'd mention it offhandedly, yeah. I you brag on yeah yeah even though you look

like a complete knob i've mentioned it off-handedly yeah i don't think i'd watch it back yeah i would just say i have been on top of the pops i don't know i think i'd hide it if i was getting down to five star and the camera swept past me and i just thought oh god i better look a right bell end there yeah i keep it quiet and hope my peers were uh nipping to the pantry for some toast toppers or going out to play football or something before that came on. I would say to all my classmates, always remember and never forget,

I've been on top of the pops more than you have. I think if my mate Steve Turner had seen me on that, I'd have had grief, you know. Fucking hell, in a fucking now. Fucking Morris, eh? The cameraman are doing the usual upskirting trick upon the maidens of the studio floor,

but they're being roundly defeated by the fashions of 1985 because it's all clots and very tight and long dresses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No gossip for you, Dad. Yeah, yeah. So the following week, Love Takeover nipped up three places to number 25 and stayed there for two weeks, its highest position.

The follow-up, RSVP, only got to number 45 in November, but they roared back at the beginning of 1986 when System Addict, their seventh single from Luxury of Life, got to number three in February and they'd have three more top ten hits throughout the year. their seventh single from Luxury of Life, got to number three in February, and they'd have three more top ten hits throughout the year. Paul Jordan, on the other hand, would have a less successful 1986. He went on to present five more episodes of Top of the Pops, the last one being in February, but was immediately bombard with other television work,

including being offered the first CBBC presenting gig in the broom cupboard but turning it down, forcing them to go with Philip Schofield. This and a stray comment to a secretary at Radio 1 that he didn't listen to music at home and he didn't own a stereo. Yeah, DLT must have been disgusting. We started to put extremely big noses out of joint at Radio 1, who started to see him as a DJ who wasn't into his music

and was using the station as a stepping stone to get into telly, because that's never happened before, has it? Imagine that, yeah. Like every other cunt, honestly. By mid-January, he was eased out of his Sunday afternoon slot and replaced with Chartbusters, where Richard Skinner showcased the latest releases about to breach the top 40 and chart tips from the other DJs. In April, his option wasn't picked up by Radio 1, although they offered him the Janice Long slot, which he turned down.

offered him the Janice Long slot, which he turned down. So, after his Friday drive-time show on May 2nd, he put down his headphones, left the studio, and never returned to the BBC again. As he wasn't on Radio 1 anymore, all the TV offers dried up, and he went back to Radio City in 1988, moving on to Rock FM in Preston in 1992 in a managerial role, as well as doing The Breakfast Show, before moving around the digital radio landscape.

And he currently does The Golden Hour on Dune Radio in Southport. Better music and more of it. He got shat on there, didn't he? The absolute fucking nerve of that generation the previous generation of radio and djs this is a time when british tv is just you know basically owned by the likes of mike reed but especially noel edmonds no lemons i mean say what you like about paul jordan he didn't fucking kill someone all the other people in paul jordan's generation you know simon mayo nicky campbell they've never done any telly, have they?

Yeah. Justice for Jordan. Justice for Jordan. As far as late 80s top of the pops presenters go, he's not done too bad. Better than Simon Parkin. I mean, he does make me nervous with that trying too hard thing. There was a bit in the link to Midge where Gary Davis

looks at Paul Jordan with this sort of disbelief as if to say, stop shouting, you know. Television presentation is fucking hard though, Simon, because, you know, in acting, they say, oh, well, if you're doing film or television, you've got to dial everything down. In television presentation, you've got to turn everything up a bit. You've got to gesture more.

You've got to be a bit clearer and a bit slower and a bit louder and you know if you have to walk as well fucking hell i guess yeah i've done bits and bobs of telly presentation only local stuff i've seen you yeah walking and talking yeah but it's fucking hard man because you you basically got to train yourself to be inhuman yeah you got to walk around you got to gesticulate like a bastard talking to no one that's there and you've got to walk at the same time yeah i watch telly now and if i see a good presenter walking around i'd go oh that's textbook that's fantastic walking mate yeah if you're walking towards the camera do you have to sort of practice that by walking away from the camera while doing your bit so you

know how many steps to do so that you hit the spot. Is that how they do it? Well, that's how I did it, yeah. And the worst thing of all is that I was doing this in Nottingham City Centre where you've just got everyone looking around going, oh, look at that cunt, he thinks he's summer on fucking telly. And that,

Pop Craze Youngsters, closes the book on this episode of Top of the Pops. What's on telly afterwards wow bbc one kicks on with the televisual event of the week as eastenders finally reveals who's got michelle on the stick it's dirty den if you weren't aware spoiler alert nearly 18 million viewers that got fucking out yeah han ph Philbin, Stableford and McCann look into the latest developments in construction and introduce a disaster spot feature in Tomorrow's World.

Then loose ends pop up on the Lenny Henry show doing a cover of Golden Years. The only thing I can remember about the Lenny Henry show was the theme tune. Because if one of my mates started eyeing up or going out with a younger girl, we'd all sing, Lenny, Lenny, Len, Lenny, Lenny, Len, Lenny Fairclough Show. Shut up, for fuck's sake. After the news, it's a repeat of Just Good Friends,

the sitcom about the interracial relationship between jan francis and paul nesta nicholas o.n then it's the proto true crime podcast series rough justice the air and spelling drama series glitter about an entertainment magazine a repeat of the documentary series the past at Work about the Industrial Revolution, and they close down at 10 to midnight. BBC Two has just finished The Taste of Health, the healthy eating show presented by Judith Han. If you think healthy food has to be brown and boring,

you're in for a surprise, it says here in the Radio Times. Charles Bowman is taken to somewhere he doesn't know and goes on a five-mile walk with the writer Anthony Burton and attempts to work out in what part of the country he's actually in in the geography show Lost Souls. You can't make that nowadays, man, unless you take the phone off. That's followed by the curious case of Victor Grayson, the former socialist MP for Colne Valley, Yeah, yeah. who unexpectedly inherits an earldom, followed by the last in the series of Alec Clifton Taylor's English Towns,

where the recently dead architectural historian has a good doss around Durham. After part two of Dennis Potter's adaptation of Tender is the Night, it's Newsnight, the weather, and they round off with a bit of Open University before closing down at 25 past midnight. ITV has just started Give Us A Clue with Cheryl Baker on one side and Mike Nolan on the other.

We'll hope there's no more brawling. Followed by Up The Elephant and Round The Castle where Jim Cunt Cunt Davidson leans on his mates to help repair his house. But they're all cunts too. After Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, TVI interviews Margaret Thatcher and asks her why everything is so shit and why she doesn't just fuck off.

Then it's the news at ten, regional news in your area, and then an hour and a quarter of more snooker before closing down at quarter past midnight. Channel 4 is still halfway through Channel 4 news, then the Bandung file is taken over by Linton Quasey-Johnson, who is dead good, as always. Then we're whipped open to the Openshaw Lads Club in Manchester for the last quarterfinal of the Intercity Boys Club Boxing Championship in Henry Cooper's Golden Belt.

After the final episode of the Australian drama series The Flying Doctors, it's a repeat of Dream Stuffing, the sitcom about two women on the dole in an East End tower block, and they finish off with Tube Extra, the great Hollywood

swindle, where Jules Holland nips over to Los Angeles and meets Malcolm McLaren, Brian Ferrer, Lone Justice and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, closing down at 25 past 12. Probably the first time we'd ever seen the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Yeah. Thanks, Channel 4. So, boys, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow?

I would say cameo. And maybe the cure, but we don't see enough of the video to get the full effect. So, yeah, for me and my mates, it'd be, fucking hell, did you see cameo? Yes. Eyes, right. I mean, you know, at this point, you know, in the playground, we've had a wide-ranging conversation. I've actually been wondering how many copies of George Orwell's 1984

have been sold so far in 1985. Good point, Romain. You'd get a bit of a drop-off, wouldn't you? But other than that, yeah, cameo. Absolutely a little bit of The Cure, although it was only an extract. I think cameo primarily. What are we buying on Saturday?

I can state with some confidence, because I still have these records in my collection. So I bought two alternative rock records by white British people, The Cure and The Smiths, and I also bought two dance funk records by black American people, Cameo and Colonel Abrams, and I bought one Anglo-American hybrid, Billy Idol. The rest can fuck off.

All of those minus Billy Idol and Colonel Abrams and plus Rene and Angela. What does this episode tell us about October of 1985? You know, I was going to say something about how it teaches us that it was a time that you had to cling to the good stuff because there was so much shit out there, but there still was good stuff. But mainly I just thought that Paul Jordan existed. I almost feel like I've been sort of gaslit

by somebody doing a deep fake that, you know, somebody's invented by AI, some kind of TV presenter from the 80s. And there he is doing his pigeon-necked grooving over Five Star at the end. And I just thought, I must have watched this episode of Top of the Pops. So he's trying so hard with his shouting and his finger pointing and his hand in his pocket

and, you know, all this pigeon-neck grooving thing to make an impression. And he's making none. All I can say is that I probably walked out of the living room like Trader Union's Eric Heffer out of the conference hall when Red Box came on. That's the only thing I can say is that I probably walked out of the living room like Trader Union's Eric Heffer out of the conference hall when Red Box came on. That's the only thing I can say, really. I think for me, right, there's a feeling that we're deep, we're very, very deep into the 80s. The 80s started a long time ago, like Thatcher,

and it's a long way since they began and they've got a long way to go yet. I think that's kind of the feeling of it, you know. And that brings us to the end of this episode of Chart Music. Usual promotional flange, chart-music.co.uk, facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast. Reach out to us on Twitter. And yes, it is still fucking Twitter. I still call them marathons.

Fuck off, Elon Musk. At chartmusic, T-O-T-P, money down the G-string, patreon.com slash chart music. Thank you, Simon Price. You're welcome. Bye, Curepedia. An A to Z of the cure. It's really good.

God bless you, David Stubbs. Bye-bye, folks. And don't forget, different times, a history of British comedy on favour. My name's al needham and i'm here to rock and roll chart music You What you doing while you're here, I'm here to rock and roll I hear the find out where we're gonna play later on this year Great. We're Honey Roasted.

Ooh. Mmm. Yeah. Now, a honey roasted peanuts from K.P. They're strangely savoring. You know what really makes us mad? It's wasting money on CDs with only one or two good songs. Yeah.

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This Punk CD has 36 tunes, man. And I'm telling you, they're all great. Yeah. You also get Huey Lewis and the News. Romantics. And The Fix. You can only get this CD by calling this 800 number, man. Yeah.

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I take pain The feeling in my brain The stretching, the bashing, the clawing The trying, the giving, the getting clawing The trashing, the curing, the getting And the total bloodletting got me dead I'm dead Hey, Pop Craze Youngster Do you love chop music but hate London?

Do you want to see our new live show but would sooner stop at Tom and Doss about in your pants on a Saturday? Are you going to our live show but want to see it again and again and again and again for a week or so? Well, it seems to me like you need to get booked into our live stream at this year's London Podcast Festival. See that keyboard. Use those fingers. Mash out tinyilm.com slash cmlive23, all lowercase.

Step up to the pay window, lay your money down, and get ready to see Team ATV Land throw down live and direct on Saturday, September the 16th. That link again, tinyearl.com slash cmlive23, all lower case. Come on, Pop Craze youngsters. Stick that money down this G-string and watch Team ATV Land grind and thrust just for you. No wanking, though, OK? Rock expert David Stubbs! Rock expert David Stubbs Rock expert David Stubbs Hi, I'm David Stubbs

Rock expert David Stubbs Rock expert David Stubbs Rock expert David Stubbs Bringing you a hard-driving mix of hard rock and hard facts today i'm here to talk to you about the maiden iron maiden riding high in 1985 literally putting thunder in our bellies with running free formed in layton in crosstown east london just 5 000 miles from los angeles california iron maiden were named after britain's Minister, Margaret Hilda Thatcher, who ruled the Kingdom of Britain with a fist of steel,

the way Maiden ruled the Kingdom of Heavy Metal. The biggest beast of all in the jungle of the Iron Maiden discography is Number of the Beast. Catalogue number 6666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6,66666 You see there's several hidden messages there, huh? Think about it. He's a rolling rockin' rockin' rollin' rock expert David Stubbs Lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson. Not content with being the greatest singer of all time,

with the possible exception of Sammy Hagar, he is ranked as one of Britain's finest swordsmen. Don't believe what you read in the papers like a robot sheep. When they say swordsman, they're not talking about fencing like they make out. They mean one of Britain's finest at having sex with women. Time and again, he's proven himself in sex competitions, regional,

national, international, having sex against other men. And time and again, it's Bruce who comes first. But let's face it, when you're talking about Iron Maiden's main man, you're talking about Eddie. 10 to 15 feet tall, everresent at every Maiden gigs, spouting blood, dangling Satan like a marionette.

There are some conspiracy theorists who will try to tell you that Eddie isn't real, that he's some sort of papier-mâché creation designed to pull the wool over our eyes. Sure, a 9-11 was carried out by Muslim terrorists. Bogus! What kind of idiots did they take us for? Sure, tell yourself Eddie isn't real if he helps you sleep at night. But we Maidenheads, we know. We know.

But of course, calling Iron Maiden heavy metal is to piss directly into the mouth of Steve Harris. It's an insult. It's tying them up in a bogus box created by the media because they were running scared of rock. If you want to compliment Iron Maiden, don't call them Heavy Metal. Don't piss in their mouths. Don't even call them rock. Iron Maiden transcend all categories.

Call them nothing. Iron Maiden are a nothing group and that's the best that can be said of them take it away out if you want to hear more from me rock expert david expert David Stubbs, subscribe to me on YouTube. Address, HTTPS, full colon, slash, slash, www.youtube.com, slash, watch, question mark, V, equals, QKLEH-OOFD, 8 amps and T, equals 134S.