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Narrow Channel, Wide Atlantic:
The Associates, early Simple Minds and Young Marble Giants, 1980-1982
An article by Robin Carmody
When I refer to a specifically Celtic quality in some of my favourite music
ever recorded, I'm not referring to either of the two key stereotypical tendencies,
best exemplified in number one singles that came within a few weeks of each
other in October 1988 - U2's "Desire" and Enya's "Orinoco Flow".
The big, windy, pompous, pseudo-spiritual stadium rock meme, and the wispy
ethereal child-of-nature thing ... neither ever did anything for me.
Worse, the Q-favoured view of "Celticness" in music favours the
"American connection", brought to its lowest point when The Chieftains
started worming their way into the Billboard album charts, doubtless with
support from those "Irish" Americans who funded the IRA so loyally
for so long (and inspired Bono into a rare burst of common sense - the "where's
the glory in taking a man out in front of his family and shooting him? Fuck
the revolution!" rant in the "Rattle and Hum" movie).
I
have been born and brought up entirely in England, but I have Anglo-Irish
percentage, predominately Celtic bloodlines on both sides of my family, and
a certain unease with aspects of the Anglo-Saxon culture on which my country
was built. I come at the "Celtic connection" from the opposite angle,
and sense an ongoing cycle of unease among Celts with the tying of this country
into a "special relationship" with the USA, and the full-scale appropriation
of its culture and values. It can be found right now in the Republic of Ireland,
which has embraced the euro enthusiastically as the British government hums
and hars, but in the UK it seemed to come to a head in 1980, a general low
point of self confidence and optimism for the future among all the British
peoples.
Jim Callaghan's Labour government had published a white paper on devolution
which concluded that "the status quo (ie government entirely from Westminster)
is not an option". After intense debate, not least among the 11 MPs of
the Scottish National Party (they have never had as many before or since)
who were a valuable ally to the minority Labour government of the day, the
Scottish and Welsh people went to the polls on 1st March 1979. A majority
of those Scots who cast their vote supported devolution, but a clause imposed
by anti-devolution Labour MPs dictated that at least 40% of the *electorate*
had to vote Yes for a Scottish assembly to be granted - a majority of those
who actually voted would not be enough. Since the percentage of the *total*
Scottish electorate voting Yes was only 32.85%, the constitutional status
quo remained unaltered.
The SNP subsequently threw down their dummy and committed political suicide.
They put down a motion of no confidence in the government, which was swiftly
superceded by a similar motion placed by the Tories, who knew the SNP would
be bound to support them on the matter. If they couldn't have devolution,
the Scottish people would have chosen a Labour government over a Tory one
any day of the week, but the SNP were now effectively trying their hardest
to give their "own" people precisely the sort of government they
didn't want. Jim Callaghan summed it up in the debate on 28th March 1979 when
he observed that "it's the first time in recorded history turkeys have
been known to vote for an early Christmas". Despite the private opposition
of some SNP MPs, the vote of no confidence was carried by one vote thanks
to unanimous SNP support. Five weeks later, the Thatcher government was duly
returned, the SNP lost 9 out of its 11 seats, and for the next 18 years Scotland
was ruled by a distant government well to the right of most of the Scottish
electorate - a government which never had a clear majority north of Hadrian's
Wall. Its treatment of the Scots as "guinea pigs" on whom it could
try out the poll tax (officially known as the Community Charge) in the late
80s was merely the most famous incarnation of its attitude.
As
for Wales, the referendum there on 1st March 1979 revealed a four-to-one vote
against devolution - while a Scottish assembly was strongly supported in the
central belt as well as in the rural areas, the English-speaking southern
and north-eastern parts of Wales, where most of the Welsh lived, simply did
not seem to see a Welsh assembly as a key aim in the way that people from
Plaid Cymru's Welsh speaking rural heartlands did. Plaid did at least support
the government in the vote of no confidence, but they lost Carmarthen to Labour
anyway at the election. The Welsh, like the Scots, would develop a great antipathy
to the distant rule of the overwhelmingly Anglocentric, and often unpalatably
Atlanticist, Tory administration. When this resentment finally showed its
full force 18 years later, the Tories lost all their Scottish and Welsh seats
in one night.
So we moved into 1980 with the Tory government aligning Britain firmly with
the US in the "battle" against Communist Eastern Europe, all the
more so when the Reagan administration came in at the end of the year. Nuclear
war was an ever-present threat. The agenda of the government was roundly English,
especially in the sense of its general hostility to mainland Europe - worse
than that, it seemed to embody an England more and more unsure of its place
in the world, and growing increasingly in hock to the power of the USA. No
wonder then that Scottish and Welsh bands of the early 80s created pop music
further removed from American influence than many think pop music can ever
be, and certainly further away from American hegemony than any English bands
I've ever heard. Of the British folk-rock bands who might lazily spring to
mind, it was the Incredible String Band who went furthest away from the standard
song structures and instrumentations of standard-issue rock music, and naturally
they were Scots who settled in West Wales to such an extent that this writer
once thought they *were* Welsh (probably because I first heard of them in
the mid-90s cited as an influence on Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, of whom more later).
They knew what they doing; they were delicate souls who didn't want to bind
themselves up with the generally - even then - insensitively Atlanticist English.
But that is a whimsical diversion to more innocently optimistic times.
Back to the freezing dread of the early 80s, when "White Car In Germany"
was the song that established the intentions of Billy MacKenzie and Alan Rankine,
whose collective name of The Associates hinted at what they were - more a
collective worldview than a group. In common with the soon-come early work
of the Cocteau Twins (who clearly deserve an article of their own), it gazed
out at an endlessly fascinating Europe, a place that could surprise and confound
expectations at every turn, and a place where one could transcend the stultifying
conventions of standard social behaviour. MacKenzie's deliberate emphasis
on the umlaut in the pronounciation of "Dusseldorf", as opposed
to the standard Anglicisation, is the key factor outlining the Associates'
ethos - a worldview that you instinctively felt English bands would have been
wary of, suspicious that it was maybe too apolitical, or just too removed
from pop/rock as they knew it.
Topped-and-tailed by dynamic, sunburst instrumentals in the style of that
master of programme music Zack Laurence ("Arrogance Gave Him Up"
and "nothinginsomethingparticular"), their 1982 Top 10 album "Sulk"
sounds like almost nothing else ever recorded, principally because almost
nobody else has ever had that sheer guile to fly from dusty desert to European
torch song while always avoiding pop/rock's stultifying Anglo-American conventions
(another Scot who has managed the trick is, of course, Momus, who was beginning
his career around this time, but he too deserves his own full analysis - his
great unacknowledged masterpiece is 1993's "Timelord", a wonderful
white European soul album).
"No" is what it suggests, pure *refusal* of everything that had
gone before and everything that the Pop Singer is expected to be, but it's
surpassed instantly by "Bap De La Bap", a desperate piece of middle
European emotional hysteria barely even trying to control itself, as empires
crumble and constitutions fall while grown men never sleep (the mad, unwieldy,
untameable sounds going on in the background are such that they merge with
the sound of the dial-up connection if you play it while going online - try
it and see).
MacKenzie
and Rankine's cover of "Gloomy Sunday" makes explicit their link
to the chanson tradition, but they probably peaked with "Nude Spoons",
a montage of lyrical images of a panic-stricken, permanently uncertain existence
that veer from the intriguingly historicist and sub-antiquarian, almost folky
("I found a coin and washed away the silt / I found a shiny coin / A
coin whose head was slightly to the tilt / Who'd leave it there in guilt /
silt") to the genuinely disturbing (the stanza beginning "I'm glad
I had this vital heart attack", which naturally makes much of the similiarity,
when sung at high speed, between the words "vital" and "fatal").
It sounds as though it's never going to end, at least not until mortality
panic kills it in its tracks (how tragically forboding of MacKenzie's life
it would prove to be), and I couldn't say where it's coming from, but it certainly
isn't Anglo-America. It fades in a rash of electrified piano, and implodes
over the centre of Europe.
"Skipping" is the calm after the storm, a frozen moment of emotional
fulfilment which is as close as the album comes to happiness or settlement
- its references to "Belgian walls" and a "breathless Beauxillous
griffin" once again make it clear where MacKenzie and Rankine were looking,
straight to the administrative heart of that European institution over whose
connection with Britain the governing party of 1982 would ultimately tear
itself apart. "It's Better This Way" was wisely developed out of
a virtually straight pop-rock early demo called "The Room We Sat In Before",
which would have seemed like an unhealthy, thoroughly inappropriate dose of
Americana in this context had it remained in its original form. In the revised
version, it's an impressive litany of emotional experiences, without a moment's
ill-placed exploitation of the listener's feelings. It is all the more necessary
to remember that, when this was recorded, the US charts were full of Christopher
Cross, Kenny Rogers, country bands like Alabama and the Oak Ridge Boys, and
(shudder) Bertie Higgins' absolute nadir of schlock "Key Largo".
A couple of years later, of course, all that would change with the second
British invasion of Culture Club, Wham! and Duran, but the mood of conformist
consumerism that movement imposed on the British pop scene would destroy the
Associates' chance of a commercial second wind in 1984/85.
"Sulk" builds up to the singles "Party Fears Two" and
"Club Country", but both are arguably better in their shortened
7-inch versions, where the emotional hysteria is captured better, distilled
more instantly, with less space for stray emotions to fall to the floor in
between. Of course they're both brilliant, and the "we're always sickening"
line in the latter song exposes MacKenzie's dark heart - he was never afraid
to describe himself in the bleakest and truest terms, but the music never
actually makes you feel depressed; there is far too much *going on* for you
to even think of wrist-slashing.
MacKenzie and Rankine's image began crumbling in the wake of "Sulk"
when they released an admittedly excellent cover of Diana Ross's "Love
Hangover" (the lyrics to which are significantly not included on the
current CD reissue of "Sulk", as if they were actually ashamed of
themselves for having recorded it). Their internationalist ambitions might,
oddly enough, have reached a peak beyond Europe, on the other side of the
world - the B-side "Australia", the completion of the journey, and
something of an emotional pinnacle (catch Billy's cracked-esctatic "I
whispered out loud / Remember the postcard" and treasure it for life).
"The artwork's appealing in Australia" ... well, maybe, but MacKenzie
was never going to find contentment there, or anywhere. There was only one
way from here - down. The moment passed, and never again would either MacKenzie
or Rankine enjoy significant commercial success. For a long time, both would
labour in obscurity, and in MacKenzie's case it ended up worse than that.
The
first and best incarnation of Simple Minds deserve a much longer appraisal
than I have time or space for here - Alistair Fitchett had a good go on http://www.tangents.co.uk
a couple of years ago. But it's worth recalling that their first single for
Virgin in 1981 was "The American", a fizzing, dynamic announcement
of intent which unashamedly castigates the naivety, cultural imperialism and
ignorance of the rest of the world held by so many in the US - precisely the
sort of dickhead mentality they would bow down to in their later stadium-rock
incarnation. Obviously their breakthrough hit single of spring 1982, "Promised
You A Miracle", is wonderful, the repeated yearnings of "anything
is possible ..." sounding more than ever like a desperate desire to be
set free from the demands of governments, wars, social structures, almost
like an urban realist version of the Incredible String Band's spirit. The
phrase "Promises, promises ..." in the chorus echoes the title of
a British Transport Film made at around the same time, one of the last things
BTF ever did before they were broken up, and probably the last great Butskellite
consensual statement, as that worldview crumbled around them.
Naturally, though, my favourite Minds single is the last single released by
the "real" SM (their next was the horribly pompous "Waterfront"
and it rapidly got worse, though I still have a perverse soft spot for the
piano intro to "Alive and Kicking", a rare burst of their former
sonic beauty). "Someone Somewhere (In Summertime)", which struggled
to Number 36 in late 1982, is the sort of Big Music I can love for itself,
a song as vast as an endless landscape, and all the better for it. Included
on the 12-inch was "King Is White And In The Crowd", a slow-building
(initially almost silent) song of menace and haunted voyagers which, once
again, works to a totally European aesthetic. Maybe such brilliance could
never have lasted, but we could have hoped for better than we got after 1983.
And what of Wales? It was hardly high in the musical consciousness at the
uneasy dawn of the 80s, though in the 90s it would, not surprisingly, develop
a stronger anti-Atlanticist musical vein than England, from the Labour heartlands
of the valleys (Nicky Wire as Last Great Traditional Socialist - the lyrics
to "Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier" are pure Robert Blatchford
via Richard Hoggart) to the rural parts whose character changed dramatically
when the hippies came (I vividly remember how Gorky's Zygotic Mynci put the
wind up mid-90s NME hacks, who simply couldn't take the idea that, even amid
the Oasis Epoch, there was a new generation of bands who did *not* follow
the 1977-as-year zero mentality).
But back in 1980, it was Cardiff's Young Marble Giants - a band with such
contempt both for rock'n'roll myth and legend and for the overt egalitaniarism
of punk that they would sarcastically play Chuck Berry riffs and sneer "Anyone
can do that" as though that was a bad thing - who made another one of
those rare albums that sounds like absolutely nothing else ever recorded,
the wonderful "Colossal Youth". It has too many highpoints to mention
- the whole album sources from everywhere (Jamaican dub, French poise, delicately
quiet and subtle basslines, the twirling fairground animations of "The
Taxi", "This Way" and "Wind in the Rigging") *except*
Anglo-America. A favourite of mine is the instrumental "Posed by Models",
a distilled 70s dream picking up the *precise* guitar sound of Paddy Kingsland's
"Fourth Dimension" album, and there aren't many who've done that
(as it happens, the YMGs' "Testcard" EP was, as the title suggests,
inspired directly by incidental and programme music used at the time).
Alison Statton's disarmingly clear voice almost sounded on the verge of cracking
altogether, as though she almost sounded *too* childlike and direct not to
have the darkest secrets underneath - a colossal youth indeed. "The Man
Amplifier" is possibly the best example of this - its beauty is the kind
that you know, from the first line, has many hidden elements underneath. "Include
Me Out" is as sly as the fastest fox, and "Salad Days" is a
wistful double-edged recollection of times past (the chord sequence vaguely
recalls Adam Faith's "Poor Me", a glancing nod to the *real* innocent
age if ever pop had one), but "Wurlitzer Jukebox" is the moment
of transgression (just listen as the emotional truth fades in at the end -
it is a glorious slow-burner).
Even a twangy guitar instrumental like "Clicktalk" actually sounds
nothing like Duane Eddy or whoever - even if the instrumentation is similar,
the backing tracks and the general ethos come from a different world ... a
world where the English Channel barely exists, and where nobody ever tries
to narrow the Atlantic.
Of
course we all know what happened next. Simple Minds recorded a ready-made
US number one hit featured in the Brat Pack movie "The Breakfast Club"
(the epitome of the Americana they'd implicitly called to remove from Scotland),
and joined U2, Big Country, Deacon Blue and the unspeakable Runrig in the
game of big, pompous, windy Celtic rock. Billy MacKenzie tried time after
time to make a comeback, and ultimately the frustration of his repeated failures
caused him to take his life. I don't really know what happened to the Young
Marble Giants, and maybe I don't particularly want to know, but I do remember
vaguely that Alison later recorded a song called "Turn The Aerials Away
From England", relating *presumably* to the preference of non-Welsh-speaking
people in south Wales for Channel 4 over S4C, and I rather like the idea of
that.
If the spirit of the anti-Atlanticist Celts of 1980-82 has come through anywhere
since, it was alive in the devolution of the late 90s and beyond, and it never
died in the parallel universe where All That Stuff We Know from the 80s never
really caught on - the public would have been too suspicious of Thatcher's
beloved ultra-capitalism to really go for it - and Billy MacKenzie and Alison
Statton were the brightest stars in the universe, number one worldwide with
their magical, percolating, machinic, human, anti-rock pop. "Don't You
(Forget About Me)"? Oh, Howard Jones would probably have recorded that.
And we'd have ignored his wishes.
RPC 23rd October 2002
[Robin Carmody is part of a community]
livingstonemusic.net/community/articles 2003
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