Released today in 1983: Strip

CBS A3589

Adam Ant’s Stand And Deliver – The Autobiography contains a fascinating account of being famous in the music business in 1980s Britain. What follows are extracts from the book concerning the year 1983, which include details of the struggles he had with getting his second solo album Strip completed and into the shops.

February 1983 – Cleveland
21 February: Adam and the band are on the ninth gig of a 48-date American tour, intended to “seal the conquering of the USA by Adam Ant”.
“The pain was terrible. Three songs into the set and my knee had exploded. It felt as if someone was sticking a red-hot poker into it. I had to stop singing and slump backwards on to a drum riser…the band ended the number we were in the middle of and followed me off stage. The Cleveland crowd were booing and clapping at the same time. What a place to collapse, I thought – the home of rock n’ roll.”

March 1983 – Los Angeles
The tour was abandoned. Adam’s kneecap was found to be ‘floating’ and he had surgery in America while the rest of the band returned to the UK. It was during his convalescence that work began on the Strip album in earnest.
“Throughout my stay in LA I spent the morning having physical therapy on my knee, and worked on songs with Marco [Pirroni, his song writing partner and band member] for the rest of the day. In that time we wrote and recorded a demo for the next and only¹ single of the year, Puss’n Boots.”

May 1983 – Paris
About half of the songs required for another album were written and demoed by May 1983, but more material was needed if the album was to be released in ’83.
“I joined Marco in Paris where we’d booked a 16-track studio in Montmartre to write new songs. We wrote almost all of the seven songs needed to complete the new album, including Strip, which could, I thought, be the title track. All of the songs are about women, sexual encounters, love and romance, and all of them are more mature that previous Adam Ant songs. I planned a new look to go with them that would also be more ‘mature’, with less make up but keeping a Romantic element to the clothes².

June 1983 – Stockholm
Adam had not been happy in Paris and was happy to leave.
“I was glad to finally get to Stockholm and work with Phil Collins. He was a delight throughout the three weeks that we worked together. He and Hugh Padgham, who worked with him, were professional and adventurous, willing to try a number of different things in the studio and taking care of what I called ‘drudge’ work, making things sound exactly as they should. The drum sound was perfect, of course, as were the horns. One day they persuaded Frida of ABBA to come into the studio and record a spoken word section for the song Strip. Later both Benny and Bjorn would visit us at work in their studio, which was also a thrill. At the time they were writing a musical with Tim Rice (‘Chess’), and the following year they asked me to record one of the songs for the soundtrack, which was an honour, even though it didn’t make it on to the album.”

July 1983 – Stockholm
Adam took a short break after the sessions with Collins and Padgham, spending time in London and Los Angeles. Then he returned to Sweden.
“I had decided that the album needed more work, and wanted to re-record at least three of the songs. Unfortunately, Phil Collins was no longer available to produce them, and so Marco and I had begun asking around to find another producer. We tried former [David] Bowie producer Tony Visconti, but he couldn’t do it, so Marco and I began producing it ourselves. After a week or so we employed Richard Burgess, who had most recently worked with Spandau Ballet. He proved to be very efficient and very hard working, as I’d hoped he would be. July turned into August, and the album took shape. I worked on storyboards for the Puss’n Boots video at the same time as planning the next American tour. After finishing the Puss storyboards, I started writing a script for the video for the second single, which would be Strip. It wasn’t proving to be easy, probably because the album work was beginning to bore me. I had also begun to worry about releasing a single at the most competitive time of the year in the UK (Christmas) especially after almost a year away from England.”

September 1983 – London
The video shoot for the album’s lead single runs into trouble.
“I had brief second thoughts about Puss being commercial enough to succeed as a single, and decided that in America, Strip would be the first single from the album, both being supported by another big tour. In the meantime I could spend a whole week in London making the video for Puss’n Boots. The Puss’n Boots video had an enormous budget but no leading lady. I had asked for Suzanne Danielle, a small, sexy French actress, or Finola Hughes, John Travolta’s co-star in Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Staying Alive’, neither of whom could do it. I had employed Christopher Tucker to make me a rat face-mask (he had designed John Hurt’s make up in ‘Elephant Man’) but he couldn’t deliver it in time for the shoot. The CBS MD, Maurice Oberstein, then refused to foot the £50,000 bill for the shoot, so with only three days left before the filming was due to begin, I cancelled the original script and spent a weekend re-writing it, shaving the budget to £35,000.”

October 1983 – London
Ten days before its release, Adam still had doubts about Puss’n Boots and the campaign for the new album generally.
“On 4 October, I wrote in my diary, “Tonight the ground opens up and swallows me with fear and loathing. The fear is failure in the next few months with Puss’n Boots and the follow-up Strip, the album and then Playboy the next³ single. The plan is made.”

December 1983 – New York
The album had entered the UK chart at #20, which would be its peak position: a considerable disappointment. The single that Adam would lead with in the US at the beginning of 1984 is released in the UK first, but proves a failure.
“In New York I once again became unable to sleep because of worry about Strip. The video for the single release of the title track had caused a national scandal, apparently, and had been banned by children’s television. It never made it past #41 in the charts.”

¹ In fact, of course, there were two singles in 1983, including today’s featured release.
² The costumes Adam wore for the album cover and the Puss’n Boots video were by Susan Blane who designed the wardrobe for Peter Greenaway’s film ‘The Draughtsman’s Contract’
³ Plans for a third single from Strip were shelved when the title track failed to make the Top 40.

NEW SINGLES on sale from Dec. 2
1983
ADAM ANT Strip (CBS CBSA3589)
1985
David SYLVIAN Words With The Shaman (Virgin VS835)

Released today in 1985: Windswept

EG FERRY3

“I think this album is very beautiful,” said Bryan Ferry on the release of his sixth solo album Boys And Girls, from which Windswept was taken. “The playing that goes into it does come out. It was very hard to mix, technically… it was a very important album for me because Avalon was very hard to follow. It was the best-received album I’ve ever made, and it was the last Roxy [Music] album, and here I am trying to make a good record under my own name. Obviously there was a certain amount of pressure to make it good. It wouldn’t deny it was there, but it was probably a good thing. I’m pretty much exhausted at the end of a record. I’ve just given my all, which is a corny notion but it’s true. I believe in the whole notion of suffering for my art, believe it or not.”

He didn’t suffer alone, working with a huge number of musicians and technicians at eleven different studios to complete the recordings. The variety of locations explain why there are credits for 17 different engineers (recording, mixing, mastering and assistants) on a nine-song collection. Why so many locations? “It really fits into the fact that most of the musicians I work with live in New York. The whole thing of going to a place like Nassau, these sort of island studio in exotic places, is that you don’t get fed up over a long period with living a really unhealthy lifestyle, and it’s great to work there at night… for a while, not for too long. You can get bogged down. Swimming during the day and all that…” Nice work if you can get it.

All the talent brought in for the Boys And Girls sessions (numerous guitar players including big names like Nile Rodgers, Mark Knopfler and Dave Gilmour; ten backing vocalists including Ruby Turner and Avalon’s Yanick Etiene; David Sanborn on sax etc) resulted in the word ‘polished’ being used by most reviewers to describe the resulting product. “When you say polished what you really mean is that the musicians are on top of their instruments and they don’t have to think about technique because they have it all. It’s always something that you’re worried about when you’re trying to make a so-called state-of-the-art record, and if you’ve been making records for 12 years or whatever, you don’t feel that you’re going to make the same sort of record that you made in your first year, where obviously it tends to be more of a rough diamond. That’s wonderful, but it would be wrong and dishonest in a way to make a record like that, it wouldn’t be natural, because you always become more sophisticated in what you hear and what you’re trying to do as you know more about it. So you want to get to a higher level of technical facility … still, whatever I play is very rough and ready, so that’s some element. I actually take a [keyboard] solo on this album for the first time in ten years.” If the sound is smooth on the finished LP, then that might have been because “it was a very enjoyable record to make,” albeit one that “sounds much easier than it actually was. It did go very well for the first six months, very fast. I sort of had a severe writers’ block as far as the lyrics went for a while.”

New Musical Express headed their review of the album ‘Mild Green Ferry Liquid’, saying “the tenor of ‘Boys And Girls’ is exquisitely smooth, beautifully varnished. After the day’s fashion among rich people, it was recorded in six months around the world with the customary stellar cast: but Ferry moves nowhere, takes not a single step outside Prospero’s cell. He is already like an old man with his memories.” Both this review and the one in Smash Hits (which revised the estimate of the recording duration to 18 months) said that Ferry had made an album about what boys and girls “do to each other,” Smash Hits arguing that he has done so “in a slick but not wildly exciting manner” and NME saying that he “seems to be saying … that he can never be one of the boys and girls. His ‘I’ is a ghost in somebody else’s affair.”

Melody Maker’s review was titled ‘A Sloane Square’ and said Ferry was “now utterly removed from the hurly-burly world of current pop… brushed and scrubbed to within an inch of their lives, these performances actually have very little to say…. Ferry simply retains too much a stiff upper lip in the face of disaster.” It was the “sound of Bryan Ferry trying to grow old gracefully in an arena that doesn’t usually allow its performers much dignity in middle-age. It’s an immaculately crafted record, meticulously assembled, its every detail honed, every nuance chiselled to a fine degree of often chilling perfection.” Smash Hits concluded that “if Boys And Girls was a book, it would be one for the coffee table – glossy, almost perfect, expensive-looking but hardly essential.” Its rating of 6 out of 10 was probably the general consensus.

NEW SINGLES on sale from Nov. 29
1985
Bryan FERRY Windswept (EG FERRY3)
THOMPSON TWINS Revolution (Arista TWINS10)

Released today in 1989: Prisoner Of Love

EMI USA MT76

Prior to the release of the first of David Bowie’s Tin Machine albums in 1989, Q magazine was invited to what the Americans call a “playback” – a listening session with the press and the artist present. “This situation could prove uniquely embarrassing should the album – as Bowie’s last two LPs, Tonight and Never Let Me Down, with their blustery pomp, cod-reggae ‘treatments’ and twaddlesome lyrics have intimated – turn out to be a whimpering artistic failure,” Q confided. “Indeed, because of these two records, the latter promoted by the ludicrously overblown Glass Spider tour, Bowie’s career had reached an impasse so sticky it necessitated a hasty acquaintance with the drawing board.” Bowie confessed that he was nervous before the session began, and expressed relief when it over: “Phew! That was like having an argument with your girlfriend in front of a crowd of people.”

In the interview that followed, Q asked Bowie if Tin Machine was a brief indulgence or a long-term project. “There’ll be another two albums at least,” he said. [There were exactly two in fact: one more studio album and a live one.] “Oh yes, this will go on for a while. [Till 1992, as it happened.] While we’re all enjoying playing with other so much, why not? The moment we stop enjoying it, we’re all prepared to quit. I’m so up on this I want to go and start recording the next album tomorrow.” The inference was that Bowie was enjoying being part of a group, but was aware that at some point his ‘solo’ career would resume. Tin Machine was very different from a lot of his previous output: a much harder, aggressive rock sound than recent material and lyrics that were in part playful, in part angry and in part vaguely political. Q asked: “There’s a couple of lyrics that leap out. Could you explain them? The line in the song Pretty Thing: ‘Tie you down, pretend you’re Madonna.’ (Bowie laughs.) ‘Hey, we were hanging out with Sean [Penn] and he told us a few things! You know what I mean? Nah. It’s a throwaway. I was just trying to think of a … it’s such a silly song anyway.’”

The key question Q had for him was, what criticism was he expecting about this new band, their new album, and this latest phase of his career? “There’s going to be a whole bunch people who’ll say it’s just not accessible,” he said – something that had been said about several of his projects through the decades. Here’s what the British music press actually had to say. The reviews ranged from the bad to the cautiously optimistic.

Sounds wrote the album off with a rating of 1½ out of 5: “This is not the guerrilla warfare it purports to be. Nor is it the heavy metal half-nelson David Bowie’s been promoting in the colour supplements. And no way, Josephine, is it the resurrection of the newly-bearded one’s long, strange career. Bowie’s much heralded ‘new band’ plays some of the most heinously tasteless music you’ll ever hear… Lyrics? Don’t talk to me about lyrics. Bowie’s concerned. He’s into social docu-drama at the moment…” NME’s headline was ‘Tinned Ham’ and its rating was 4 out of 10, but it admitted that it was “a bastard bitch of burning vinyl that will have you changing your mind about it every time you give it a spin”. Ever cynical, it concluded that “what Bowie has done with Tin Machine is he’s looked at what sells on a global scale – vicious rock – remembered that when he was at his height commercially and critically he was often doing the same thing, and has gone back to the root of money. So much for the context… average fare.”

Record Mirror noted that the concept of Tin Machine had not come out of nowhere. “Tin Machine is a 12-year-old collaboration that has only just evolved – an idea Bowie had with Hunt and Tony Sales when they worked on Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life album. Reeves Gabrels came later, So, Four Men, A Hendrix Riff And A Drum Kit were formed, bonded together by one thing – musical nostalgia. They called themselves Tin Machine, which is a good name really because the music trudges along mechanically in a kind of soft metal mould. The result is an idea based on even older influences ending up as a dusty trip down self-indulgence street…” The album received 3 out of 5, a reasonable rating, but the review ended with “Thanks David, but no thanks.” The general tone of the review from British Rolling Stone was similar, although it scored the album slightly higher, with a 3½ out of 5. “Frankly, Bowie belabours the obvious on much of Tin Machine. Yeah, life is a bitch. The future looks grim. Your idols are bound to turn into whores if the temptations are great enough. And yeah, there is plenty of music out there today which sucks big time. (Did someone mention Never Let Me Down?) But some of the best songs on Tin Machine are about not giving up, about finding the will to love and survive. And the rest of the best transcend their grim lyrics with the electricity of performance. If Tin Machine is a hit-and-miss proposition, there are still enough direct hits to send you, as Bowie puts it in Under The God, “one step over the red line/ten steps into the crazy”. And with ‘crazy’ like this, you can put up with anything.”

Melody Maker provided the most favourable overview, urging listeners not to dismiss the collection lightly. “Delve deeper, stick with it, and the realization dawns that there is greatness here. It comes in flashes at first… when Tin Machine is great – which it frequently is – the songs contradict the metal/reality equation, forget the strategy and get lost in Bowie’s private mental movies… Tin Machine is a triumph in that it illustrates there’s still imagination and desire burning inside a man who we’ve really no longer any right to expect it from. Whether it serves as another cul-de-sac or an opening elsewhere is, of course, the next mystery.”

NEW SINGLES on sale from Oct. 30
1981
The BELLE STARS (Jennie Mathias) Another Latin Love Song (Stiff BUY130)
Clark DATCHLER You Fooled Him Once Again (Blue Inc INC14)
DEXY’S MIDNIGHT RUNNERS (Kevin Rowland) Liars A To E (Mercury DEXYS7)
IMAGINATION (Leee John) Flashback (R&B RBS206)
JAPAN Visions Of China (Virgin VS436)
PRETENDERS I Go To Sleep (Real ARE18)
STRAY CATS You Don’t Believe Me (Arista SCAT4)
TEARS FOR FEARS Suffer The Children (Mercury IDEA1)
ULTRAVOX (Midge Ure) The Voice (Chrysalis CHS2559)
1989
Jimmy SOMERVILLE Comment Te Dire Adieu (London LON241)
SWING OUT SISTER Forever Blue (Mercury SWING8)
TIN MACHINE (David Bowie) Prisoner Of Love (EMI USA MT76)

Released today in 1983: Union Of The Snake

EMI EMI5429

The obscure lyrics and reference in Duran Duran songs have been the subject of articles in this blog before, the opening track of their third studio album for example. The album itself had a strange title: Seven And The Ragged Tiger: “The Seven is for us — the five band members and the two managers — And The Ragged Tiger is success,” Simon Le Bon explained. “Seven people running after success. It’s ambition. That’s what it’s about.” The album’s lead single was Union Of The Snake, which came with more unfathomable words to ponder over. In 1984’s The Book Of Words, a collection of Duran Duran song lyrics, Le Bon suggested that the ‘borderline’ mentioned in the song referred to the line dividing the conscious and subconscious mind; what the cult-like ‘union’ involves remains unclear. (The focus was on visuals rather than the words for this single’s release. The promotional clip was aired on MTV before the demo copies of the single itself had been sent out to radio stations, so the first opportunity to hear it came with the opportunity to see it as well.) Even more difficult to interpret were the lyrics to follow-up New Moon On Monday: “Shake up the picture the lizard mixture/With your dance on the eventide,” Le Bon intones. “I light my torch and wave it for the new moon on Monday/And a firedance through the night/I stayed the cold day/with a lonely satellite.” The album met with mixed reviews.

NEW SINGLES on sale from Oct. 17
1980
SIMPLE MINDS I Travel (Arista ARIST372)
UB40 The Earth Dies Screaming (Graduate GRAD10)
1983
DURAN DURAN Union Of The Snake (EMI EMI5429)
1986
BON JOVI Livin’ On A Payer (Vertigo VER28)
SPARKS Music That You Can Dance To (Consolidated Allied TOON2)
1988
BIG COUNTRY Broken Heart (Mercury BIGC6)
Bryan FERRY Let’s Stick Together (EG EG44)
GUNS N’ ROSES Welcome To The Jungle [Re-issue] (Geffen GEF47)
YAZZ Stand Up For Your Love Rights (Big Life BLR005)

Released today in 1985: King For A Day

Arista TWINS7

Taken from pivotal album Here’s To Future Days, King For A Day was Thompson Twins’ last Top 40 in the UK. Some of the unfortunate incidents surrounding the creation of the album have already been covered in this blog. Most of the songs on it were written in early 1985, as Alannah Currie told Record Mirror a year later: “We were living in a place called Mount Le Jolie, which was a sort of 15th century house in the middle of nowhere. It was a freezing cold place with no central heating. We had to go down to the supermarket and buy space heaters, and we bought one each. We just sat for a month and a half in front of these space heaters. There was absolutely nothing to do for entertainment, except go down to the local supermarket, which was centrally heated, and wander round. It was the coldest winter Europe had ever had. Birds were literally freezing and falling out of the sky.”

The location had an effect on the album’s lyrical themes. “This whole place was bizarre,” she continued. “This house had all animal heads and old organs, a sort of very strange old museum full of centuries of this family’s possessions. It was very weird, that’s why I think a lot of the songs on the album were about dreams. We wrote a lot of them there. There was nothing else to do except dream, write songs, and look outside. It was just a wasteland of white. A few times we got snowed in and couldn’t get out. Then the telephone lines went down and the electricity kept going off. We fought like mad and threw things at each other, but had some good times as well. Got drunk and fell down in the snow a few times.”

The ended up with a record they were pleased with, as things came together in the end. “It could all fall apart just as easily as it came together,” Tom Bailey said, “and we’ll be similarly powerless to prevent it.” Soon, the existing arrangements for Thompson Twins would fall apart and Joe Leeway would leave. It’s difficult to know if, at the time of the interview (December 1985), that anyone in the band could see this coming. The Record Mirror piece ended with the following comment from bailey: “We don’t plan that far ahead, or we’d just turn into business people, which would spoil it for us and spoil it for our fans.”

NEW SINGLES on sale from Oct. 11
1985
THOMPSON TWINS King For A Day (Arista TWINS7)

Released today in 1985: Alive And Kicking

Virgin VS817

Despite joining a major record company, building up an audience through solid live work, writing some commercial tunes, working with a “name” producer in Steve Lillywhite, and turning in competent studio performances, Simple Minds didn’t make the UK Top 10 with any of their singles in the first half of the 1980s. Then in 1985, their contribution to the ‘The Breakfast Club’ movie soundtrack, Don’t You (Forget About Me), was a huge hit, paving the way for their most celebrated album to that point, Once Upon a Time.

Not that their first Top 10 single featured on it, as Don’t You (Forget About Me) wasn’t one of their own songs. Jim Kerr and his colleagues wrote the eight songs that were included, which with production from Jimmy Iovine were very much in the style of the song that had taken them to #1 in the US. Iovine’s contribution helped to increase the record’s appeal for American audiences but that wasn’t to say the singles from Once Upon a Time weren’t successful here. Today’s featured title made #7, follow-up All The Things She Said reached #9, Sanctify Yourself was their fourth consecutive Top 10 hit in the UK, peaking at #10, while Ghost Dancing broke the run, but only just, when it stopped at #13.

NEW SINGLES on sale from Sep. 30
1983
FIVE STAR Problematic (Tent TENT4)
SINITTA Never Too Late (Midas MID3)
1985
The COMMUNARDS (Jimmy Somerville) You Are My World (London LON77)
EIGHTH WONDER (Patsy Kensit) Stay With Me (CBS A6594)
The JESUS AND MARY CHAIN Just Like Honey (Blanco Y Negro NEG17)
MADONNA Gambler (Geffen A6585)
SADE The Sweetest Taboo (Epic A6609)
SIMPLE MINDS Alive And Kicking (Virgin VS817)
THEN JERICO (Mark Shaw) Fault (London LON63)

Released today in 1987: Welcome To The Jungle

Geffen GEF30

Who would have predicted that the debut long-player from American thrash rockers Guns N’ Roses would emerge as one of the most successful albums of the 1980s? Not the British music press, that’s for sure. On its release in July 1987, some titles passed on reviewing it altogether, including Smash Hits. In that magazine’s case this was fair enough, as Guns N’ Roses hadn’t had a hit at that point. Their first single It’s So Easy fell short of the Top 75 here, and the follow-up, Welcome To The Jungle (which went on to become one of their most enduring hits) was only a very minor hit on its first release. Gradually their reputation and popularity grew however, and by 1989 the group and their lead singer Axl Rose had earned appearances on Smash Hits’s cover due to a pair of singles reaching #6: Paradise City and a re-issue of Sweet Child O Mine, the latter having reached #24 the year before. (The second issue of Welcome To The Jungle, coupled with Nightrain, had also made #24 in 1988; Nightrain was released as a single in its own right in 1989 and made #17.) All these tracks were taken from Appetite For Destruction, that slow-burning debut album which few critics had spotted the potential in.

A few words about the record before we look at the contemporary reviews in the British media: work on Appetite For Destruction began in earnest in January 1987, with basic tracks recorded based on songs written at different times by different members of the group. Following this, parts of the recording were done very quickly and others were laboured: drummer Steven Adler says the percussion was completed in around six days, but Rose took a long time to complete his vocals (recording them line by line until he was happy with them) and guitarist Slash worked closely with producer Mike Clink over multiple sessions to perfect his solos. On release, instead of side 1 and side 2, the album had sides G (drug culture, big city life – ‘guns’ music) and R (sex and relationships, ‘roses’ music) and had distinctive artwork courtesy of Robert Williams. The sleeve was to have been a photo of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion but their record company rejected this saying it was “in bad taste”.

In 2000 Q magazine called it “a riotous celebration of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll,” in a list identifying it as one of the greatest metal albums of all time. Back in 1987, though, the magazine was more cautious in its appraisal: “Cynical, amoral and nasty, Guns n’ Roses are ideal villains for the next Dirty Harry movie. Their slash and burn hard rock is hardly original, and short on melody, but they possess enough attack to suggest they’re probably genuinely offensive on stage. If drinking and driving is your idea of a good time, these are your soul mates.” The review gave the album three out of a possible five stars, so it wasn’t entirely unfavourable. Over to NME for that job: “I feel like I’ve heard Appetite For Destruction a zillion times already… Guns N’ Roses show that they can write a mean lyric, but why do they come across sounding like dumb dinos? As one gash of white hot riffery welds into the next the result is boredom, and angry boredom that eventually is replaced by apathy – the debut record’s greatest enemy. Lead singer W Axl Rose alternates from being a passable impersonator of Robert Plant to coughing up something that sounds remarkably like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith fame. Meanwhile lead guitar grinder Slash bubbles but fails to boil over. This sounds like hard labour, the sweat of prisoners as opposed to the perspiration of creation.”

Melody Maker was similarly unimpressed. “The best thing about Guns N’ Roses is that they have a guitarist called Slash and another called Izzy Stradlin. The worst thing is everything else but most of all the music. Welcome To The Jungle is the first song and as good a demonstration as any of what the band like to do with their noise. Basically this consists of playing all the instruments very loud and very carefully along the kick-ass school of things, nodding towards sentimentality but never so much that people might think they’re soft… it’s a gruelling business wading through their creations, trying to think of some world where what they do could be seen as having even the slightest point, looking for signs that beneath the skulls and the shades there’s a suggestion they can do something to thrill. The world is probably their house and the thrill, splitting up. The rest as they say, is crap.” The review ended with this prediction: “When the great book of pop comes to be written, Guns N’ Roses will have forgotten their library ticket,” an unfortunate assertion as all the books of pop that have recently been written identify the album as a classic. Only one paper in the UK saw its potential at the time of its release: Sounds. It gave the album its highest award of five stars and said, “Appetite For Destruction exists on a ragged knowledge of what great rock n’ roll is and the industry’s eternal capacity to be both thrilled and shocked by such bad-boy boogie antics…with all the hallmarks of a shooting star (except shooting stars don’t usually make albums as good as this), Guns N’ Roses have won the first battle by proving they have the songs to back up their attitude problem, and if anyone else mutters the word ‘hype’ in my ear again I won’t be responsible for my actions.” (cf NME: “‘Contains lyrics which some people may find offensive’ – thus bleats the sticker that’s been stuck on the end of this cartoon monster’s snout. What kind of people? The kind of codger that G ‘N’ R might offend are all relegated to walking frames. This ‘warning’ smells like a hype.”)

Sounds finished with, “By the way, boys, just one thing: if you’re still around in ten years’ time, we’re all going to be very disappointed.” An accurate prediction, as Guns N’ Roses in its 1987 form had ceased to exist by then. But Appetite For Destruction long outlived the line-up that produced it. The album’s growing popularity can be traced through its certification history by the BPI in the UK and the RIAA in the US, and by its chart performance in both countries. Here in the UK, it initially charted in 1987 for three weeks reaching #68, then disappeared. Its 17 weeks on the chart the following year, during which time it reached #15, earned it a silver and gold discs in quick succession in the summer. But it was its 48 week run during 1989, where it bettered its previous highest position by finally making the Top 10 and reaching #5, that saw its biggest uplift in sales. It was certified platinum at the end of April (300,000 sales) and double platinum in August. It returned to the Top 75 in the last week of the 1980s and then made appearances on the chart for at least one week every year for the next two decades. It finally earned its triple platinum certification on 22 July 2013, duly returning to the chart at #88 shortly afterwards as if in recognition of this achievement. Its most recent appearance on the Top 100 was at #92 at the end of March this year.

In the States, the album’s appeal has been similarly constant, but the sales have been far greater. It began its chart run in the lower reaches of the Billboard Top 200 in August 1987, and made a slow climb upwards until being certified gold by the RIAA for half a million sales in February 1988. At the end of April, it arrived in the Top 10 and received platinum certification for a million sales. It then remained a permanent fixture in the Top 10 for a complete year, spending four of those weeks at #1 and achieving new sales thresholds almost every month: it was double platinum in July, then triple in August, with further multiples in September, October, December, and then 7x platinum in February 1988. In July 1989, at the point at which it finally fell out of the Top 40, it was recognized by the RIAA for eight million units sold. It received further certified sales awards during the 1990s, the most significant of which was being one of the inaugural recipients of the new ‘diamond’ award for sales of over ten million copies: Adler accepted the award on the band’s behalf at the ceremony introducing the category on 16 March 1999, although by this time Appetite For Destruction had in fact sold over 15 million copies. Today, it is certified 18x platinum and is the 11th best-selling album in US history.

Worldwide sales currently exceed 30 million.

NEW SINGLES on sale from Sep. 21
1984
BIG COUNTRY (Stuart Adamson) East Of Eden (Mercury MER175)
Billy IDOL Flesh For Fantasy (Chrysalis IDOL4)
1987
BEASTIE BOYS Girls (Def Jam BEAST3)
GUNS N’ ROSES Welcome To The Jungle (Geffen GEF30)
Billy IDOL Mony Mony (Live) (Chrysalis IDOL11)

Released today in 1984: Smooth Operator

Epic A4655

The most-hyped newcomers to the music scene in 1984 released their debut album in July that year. Melody Maker was quick to clear up one issue: “Well, she can certainly sing so let’s hear no more debate about that,” they said of Sade Adu. The other critics agreed, but as usual New Musical Express’s appraisal was somewhat grudging: “Her voice lacks timbre but is furry and dusky, and wends its way skilfully through low-tempo sub-Grace Jonesish numbers like Smooth Operator to soul/jazz fusion numbers like Cherry Pie and Hang On [To Your Love],” they said, going on to comment that these were “songs that lie and flatter and conciliate, plumping out the fat outlines of the pleasure of playing games with desire. The overall effect of the record is an ago fragmented into thousands of tiny little bits, shot through with authorial detachment (as clever strategy), but at its core, this is a most conventional style of pleasing.”

Damning with feint praise was the best they were going to get from NME, but elsewhere the response was generally positive. Smash Hits gave the album 8½ out of 10: “The idea of the ‘summery sound’ is of course one of the biggest clichés in the book. So I’m sorry, but this debut LP has accompanied me swimming, sunbathing and all sort of summery things like that, and the selection of nine cool but finger-snappingly sharp songs proved the perfect soundtrack for such activities. Mind you, it sounds pretty good late at night too. Both singles are included, so is a fine cover of Timmy Thomas’ Why Can’t We Live Together? and there’s only one duff track (Cherry Pie) that I can discern.” Sounds disagreed with that point and said Cherry Pie “grows from a subdued funky opening and builds with a soaring majesty that is totally hypnotic,” and Melody Maker said “her exceptional vocal performance on Cherry Pie lifts the spirits.”

“The problem with all these nouveau-jazz buffs is that they usually wind up sounding so wretchedly self-serious and ultimately dreary – worthy, but dull,” Melody Maker continued. “For Sade, though, there are genuine signs of hope. Your Love Is King is one side of her – acceptably romantic and exquisitely crafted – but it doesn’t prepare you for the semi-epic ruggedness of Smooth Operator or Sally, a story of unexpected squalor doubling as an anthem for female fortitude. The fact that Sade manages to get to grips with a song of this drama and intensity without resorting to histrionics or overtly dynamic arrangements suggests she is one of those rare creatures with natural feel and inherent flair.” Record Mirror recognised the hype and clever production techniques, but agreed that Sade had pulled it off: “This LP is confirmation of her talents and charms, and confirms that the hurt is bigger than the hype. ..Her slinky blinkered muse on Men and When is given a polished production by Robin Millar, leaving the songs with an air of black loud compassion: no quarter and no short time. Cherry Pie is pure Young Americans, Sally is pure pleasure, and the big bag of tricks simply glimmers.”

The most gushing review came from Sounds which gave it their highest award of five stars and said it “could just as well have been called sheer perfection, such is its quality…Backed by a bunch of soul boys who concoct a blend of jazz funk and sophisto-soul with a pure pop finish that Gary Kemp would swap his record collection for, Sade has quite simply produced a classic, proving that all the hype about her was, if anything, underselling her ability.” A classic it was and a classic it remains, although I was surprised to see that it never actually made #1 despite being a staple of background music in restaurants and bars throughout the mid-80s and beyond. However, it did enter the chart in the Top 10 immediately and remained there for the rest of the year winning multiple platinum discs, and was album of the year at the 1985 BPI Awards.

NEW SINGLES on sale from Sep. 3
1982
The BEAT Jeanette (Go Feet FEET15)
CULTURE CLUB Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? (Virgin VS518)
DOCTOR AND THE MEDICS (Clive Jackson) The Druids Are Here (Whaam! WHAAM006)
1984
Nik KERSHAW Human Racing (MCA NIK5)
Philip OAKEY and Giorgio MORODER Together In Electric Dreams (Virgin VS713)
SADE (Sade Adu) Smooth Operator (Epic A4655)
U2 Pride (In The Name Of Love) (Island IS202) 

Released today in 1984: Madam Butterfly

Chrysalis MALC5

Madam Butterfly was the lead single from a typically ambitious album from Malcolm McLaren, Fans. An attempt to fuse opera with modern R&B, it divided the critics. The most balanced of the contemporary reviews came from (rather surprisingly) Sounds, which said that “after a few tingling seconds of uncertainty it becomes clear that this marriage – although arranged by one of the shadiest characters around – was made in Heaven (just off the Old Kent Road, that is)”, and while it was “obviously sacrilege to the opera buff” it was “purely edifying and emotional to those of us who can’t score with Radio 4.”

Of the actual content, the Sounds review gave the best short summary: “The album itself contains a mere six cuts and side one stands head and shoulders above the flip. Kicking off with Madam Butterfly it’s a story you already know, quickly followed by the title cut and finally the foxy bitch Carmen.With Angie B taking the role of the uncontrollable animal, it’s incredible stuff. Side two tells a different story. Boys Chorus shows Mac relating his childhood, spitting out a punky nursery rhyme that nicely sets the tone for the relaxing Lauretta. Finally, Death of Butterfly reveals the return to Japan of the dodgy Lt Pinkerton, a bounder all round.” As indicated, the operas that McLaren chose to include were mainly from Puccini (‘Turandot’, ‘Madama Butterfly’, ‘Gianni Schicchi’), with Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ completing the set. Melody Maker said that it was “a fact that, taken out of context, the purest form of opera singing is the most haunting sound on earth. McLaren knows it and the real genius of his creation here is his decision to use real opera singers performing real opera with utter faithfulness. What he later sticks around it in the way of aggressive rhythms, sharp soul singing (an impressive contribution from Angie B) and his own semi-hysterical rap narration, is another matter entirely. The decorations give the music a whole different perspective, but the basic root remains incontrovertibly genuine and credible. And that root provides a lethal and ultimately triumphant thread through the album.”

The idea of musical fusion – and of pop opera – was not a new one of course. Record Mirror pointed out that McLaren’s “work is all ideas – and nothing could be flashier,” going on to say that “while [he] may steal these ideas from the past, from other cultures, or straight out of his own dustbin, his reverence is never less than playful.” New Musical Express was not as charitable. “Tackie Mackie makes novelty records,” they said. “He can’t sing, he can’t write, he is at most a pedestrian musical arranger and even his status as the fastest gabber in the west has been gunned down by the infinitely wiser, wittier and more scurrilous ZTT operation.” Melody Maker disagreed to an extent, arguing that “cynical, flamboyant and opportunist as he is, McLaren is still a character of rare flair and vision and he’s brilliantly exploited the dramatic potential of opera in a black urban street-sounding setting”. Record Mirror continued along that line: “He meets electric, hillbilly, afro, and yes, opera – with his own schoolboy grin and then sets about making some very good music. It’s hybrid, bastard stuff of course, but it’s full of the wicked turns and naughty tricks that can make pop so wonderful.”

New Musical Express was more cynical, refusing to look at the album as anything other than a vanity project. “He refuses any role so conventional as artist or artisan and suggests himself instead as a catty catalyst hoping to claw the Covent Garden face of opera with New York rap. But Covent Garden is not so easily scandalized and only the most impressionable of disco dancers will be haunted by the ghostly arias … phased in and out of the dialogue from a rapping Mackie and his all-singin’ foil Angie B. For, as with everything Mackie touches, Fans is shoddily done.” As if in answer to this criticism, the Melody Maker concludes: “This is not the revolutionary blend of cultures Malcolm would have us believe it is … but you can dance to it and it is hugely entertaining. Who could ask for anything more?” Sounds declared it “a classic, of course.” But the last word must go to the grumpy old NME: “Fans leaves only one question unanswered: though Puccini and Bizet are the plundered corpses here, how come the record reeks of Gilbert and Sullivan?”

NEW SINGLES on sale from Aug. 20
1982
DEAD OR ALIVE (Pete Burns) The Stranger (Black Eyes BE2)
Gary NUMAN White Boys and Heroes (Beggars Banquet BEG81)
SIMPLE MINDS (Jim Kerr) Glittering Prize (Virgin VS511)
1984
DEPECHE MODE Master And Servant (Mute 7BONG6)
HEAVEN 17 Sunset Now (Virgin VS708)
Malcolm McLAREN Madam Butterfly (Virgin MALC5)
ROMAN HOLLIDAY (Steve Lambert) Fire Me Up (Jive JIVE59)

Released today in 1985: Life In One Day

WEA HOW8

Dream Into Action (WEA WX15, 15 March 1985) was the second Howard Jones album. (Third if you count the collection of extended mixes, The 12” Album.) Smash Hits gave it 7 out of 10: “Howard certainly covers a lot of ground here. With barely a pause he shoots between the synthpop of Automaton and the piano balladry of No One Is To Blame; the annoying rumba of Life In One Day and the slightly pompous Hunger For The Flesh. And he still finds space for the usual considered and sincere lyrics, most notable on Assault and Battery (which echoes Morrissey’s Meat Is Murder stance). But overall Howard seems in such as hurry here to cover all his options that he never really shines. The best moment comes when he allows himself to be a bit more indulgent on the Japan-like melancholy of Elegy.”

Elegy did work well, and one suspects that Jones would have liked to have a recorded a whole album of similar-sounding songs, being thoughtful singer-songwriter he was. But I beg to differ with the Smash Hits reviewer: the best moments on the album are undoubtedly the singles. Jones didn’t put a foot wrong with his singles: an unbroken run of nine Top 20 hits in the UK was testament to that. The anthemic Things Can Only Get Better was the perfect opening number; Look Mama had another one of Jones’s trademark sing-along choruses; No One Is To Blame – already a strong offering – was re-recorded in a superior version for its release as a single; Afrodiziak were put to good use providing backing vocals on Life In One Day. But there was one single missing – in the UK, at least.

Like To Get To Know You Well had been a standalone single here in the summer of 1984, and the extended version of the song had subsequently been included on the The 12” Album album (WEA WX14, 30 November 1984). It was therefore left off Dream Into Action, where that album’s 12 tracks included the expendable Speciality (which sounded like a demo, the chorus of which had been refashioned into Things Can Only Get Better) and Why Look For The Key. In the US, where the album was released on the Monday following the UK edition’s appearance, both these songs were removed from the track listing and replaced by Like To Get To Know You Well and its B-side, the white-boy rap Bounce Right Back. With some small amendments to the running order of the remaining tracks, the American version was the superior edition of the album.

NEW SINGLES on sale from Jun. 17
1983
HEAVEN 17 Come Live With Me (Virgin VS607)
1985
DEAD OR ALIVE (Pete Burns) In Too Deep (Epic A6360)
Howard JONES Life In One Day (WEA HOW8)
TOYAH Soul Passing Through Soul (Portrait A6359)