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Speaker 2Hello and welcome to another classic episode of the album. It's about a classic year. Now, Tim, before we do move on to this episode's year, you've just been filling me in on some feedback from our 1972 episodes. Now, apart from the usual, how dare you not love my band and how dare you disagree with me and how dare you have an opinion, we have actually made a couple of terrible schoolboy errors, haven't we? Awfully. And we have to own them. Yeah. I think we have to own them. We've got to own them.
Speaker 3I'm going to blame you for one and me for the other.
Speaker 2Well, the really embarrassing one is referring to the Stevie Wonder album Inner Visions as Inner Views. Now, Inner Views is the website of our very good friend, Anil Prasad.
Speaker 3I think that's what we were doing. I think we were actually trying to attract people to divert their attention to Anil Prasad's Inner Views. Yeah. Great site, great interviewer, great person.
Speaker 2Fantastic website. And if it gives. It's an excuse to plug his website. It's all been worth it. But that is a terrible, it's a terrible error, isn't it?
Speaker 3Inner Views was Inner Visions.
Speaker 2And the other schoolboy error that I made, Babacom Lee by Fairport Convention came out in 1970. Yeah, because you added it as a last minute. I know I did. I honestly believed it came out in 1972. I know what I did. I looked at the previous album, Angel Delight, and I saw 1971. Babacom Lee must have been 1972. I think you're fine, Mr. Wilson. It was November 1971. Terrible. Is that the sound of our readers? That is the sound of every
Speaker 3single viewer at the moment.
Speaker 2Terrible, terrible, terrible error. Anyway, we're going to own those errors.
Speaker 3I just went with you because I didn't know it that well, but I went with you.
Speaker 2Well, I'm sure we've made mistakes like that before, you know, in terms of something comes out at the end of one year, beginning of the next year, and it's a little bit of a grey area. Maybe it came out in America in 1972.
Speaker 3Didn't, I checked on Discogs.
Speaker 2Now, we're doing what we've done a couple of times before, Tim, is we've done 1972. We're going to move forward exactly. Correct me if I'm wrong. We've done that a couple of times, haven't we?
Speaker 3We've done it a couple of times, yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, we've sort of gone 10 years straight into the future. So we're going to 1982 to see what's changed between 1972 and 1982. Answer, a lot, OK? Now, you and me love the 80s, don't we? In fact, we were having a discussion just off mic there. We're saying, is the 80s the best era, the best era for music? And, of course, part of that is because that's when we grew up, isn't it? Yeah. But it's also, it's just such a great era for innovative pop, isn't it? I mean, that's the bottom line. I think it is.
Speaker 3You know, it was certainly a killer period for singles in the way that the 60s had been. And there were amazing, unfettered, creative albums. But I guess the thing is that some people did feel restricted and some people were almost crushed by the 80s because there was a greater pressure from record companies. And certainly the one aspect of the 80s I didn't like as much was that there was an emphasis on fashion and style over sound. And I think that's the thing. That's what a lot of people remember.
Speaker 2And they remember, you know, we talked about this on the 1985 episode. A lot of people remember Live Aid, you know. They remember that kind of, you know, that when music became worthy and a little bit superficial, a little bit dull in the wake of Live Aid. At least that's the way I look at it. But they forget all of this incredible. But it's interesting you mentioned that a lot of people became a little bit lost in the 80s. And I think those were the album artists that struggled a bit. This is an era for great innovative pop. Yeah. It's not an era for great. It's not an era for great innovative albums necessarily. Although there are some great albums, of course. But I think the emphasis definitely shifts, doesn't it, towards, you know, more of a pop sensibility as opposed to an album conceptual sensibility. And, of course, there are some artists that managed to fuse the two brilliantly. And we're going to talk about those. For me, I think what characterizes 1982, if I had to sort of put it in a nutshell, it's the post-punk generation achieving a sort of new level of sophistication in their music. And the older generation, embracing technology, finding new ways to make music with technology. And so let's actually move on to the first category we have, which is new sounds slash feel the production. And the first album I want to talk about here, and actually this is a bit of a spoiler because this is going to be my favorite album of the year because it's so extraordinary. Kate Bush's The Dreaming. I'm in awe of this album. I listened to it again on the way. As did I. What blows my mind about this album? She's still, what, like 22, 23 years old? 24. It's insane. She's so young. And yet the music has got that confidence, that assuredness. It's taking no prisoners, isn't it? I mean, people sort of talk about The Hounds of Love as her kind of creative high point. And I wouldn't disagree with that. I think that's where she kind of reaches that point, that perfect point between accessibility and experimentation. And The Dreaming is a much more difficult record, isn't it?
Speaker 3Yeah, and it's a real shock. You know, If Never Forever is a transition album. The first two albums are sort of singer-songwriter, sophisticated, very English singer-songwriter albums that have their roots in Laura Nero, Joni Mitchell, to an extent, as in unique singer with piano, writing some extraordinary songs. Never Forever is that transitional album where she's like, she's bringing in more textures, more influences. But Never Forever sounds like it's from a different decade altogether, even though it was only two years before this. The Dreaming is such a confident, fresh, bizarre new start.
Speaker 2For me, it's an album, when I think of the album, I think of the drums and the voice. Yeah. And the way she uses those two things kind of define the record. I mean, there's some parts of this record where there's very little else going on. But there's this extraordinary, kind of drum treatment, drum sound, very roomy, very live. You can tell maybe she's been listening to things like what Peter Gabriel was doing on the third record, that very kind of roomy sound. But then the way she uses her voice on this record, I've never heard anything else quite like it, even in her own catalogue. She's playing all these different characters. There's a sense of theatricality about some of the songs. She's playing roles. One minute she's doing this, this kind of French concierge. The next minute she's playing an Aborigine. The next minute she's playing a burglar, you know, and there are all these little stories.
Speaker 3Well, she's playing a Vietnamese soldier in one of the pieces.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, it's just all these different characters she's playing. And the way she's layering her voice, she's treating her voice, mutating her voice. And in some places it's scary. I mean, that last track, 'Get Out My House' is terrifying. Yeah. I mean, I think of Scott Walker's 'The Drift' when he's doing the donkey sound. Yeah, yeah. Kate did it 25 years earlier. She's doing Eeyore, you know, on this. And it's terrifying, isn't it? The way, you know, but then you have these beautiful songs like 'All the Love' and 'Houdini' as well. It's just such a unique sound, and I'm not sure how much I originally I kind of was thinking of it in terms of it being the kind of other half of the equation in terms of Peter Gabriel's fourth record, which is kind of his sampling record, which we'll come on to. But actually, there's much less sampling on it than I thought. It is more about the drums and the treatment and about the voice.
Speaker 3There's much more psychodrama on this. There's much more play with dynamics. So even you take a track like 'There Goes a Tenor', which is quite playful. But where it becomes otherworldly, menacing is the chorus, which does that trick where the verse is quite jaunty, quite peculiar, and then it pulls down and becomes this woozy, beautiful, narcotic chorus.
Speaker 2And 'Suspended in Gafford' does exactly the same trick. You've got this kind of almost, you know, music. You've got a music hall waltz feel on the verses, and then this sublimely beautiful textured kind of middle eight or breakdown. And again, just this sound design on this record, these voices, whispering voices, screaming voices, voices in the distance. And I realised that a lot of the things I'd thought were other people are her, slowing her voice down, using her voice, you know, processing her voice, but not only processing, just the way she's using her voice, changing her voice, playing her voice.
Speaker 3these characters well i was a huge kate bush fan i mean i bought her work from the very very first single so i was kind of following her career as it happened and sat in your lap was a real breakthrough single and again i think with the b-side wasn't that the um cover of the donovan track lord of the reedy river as well which was exquisite yeah and this just blew me away i remember buying it on the day of release and it was you know as much as anything i've ever heard transporting me to different worlds different sensations different emotions and though i could see that she'd clearly been enamored of peter gabriel three and maybe even rupert heinz immunity i think i could i can hear aspects of that she takes these perhaps emotionally even further there's a kind of there's one other album it links with this year i think and that's the associate sulk in that both of them at times you are on the edge there's something quite unfettered unhinged yeah unhinged yeah right so where is the gabriel album utterly supremely brilliant album it's never quite as demented as sulk or the dreaming yeah you use the
Speaker 2word psychodrama and that's exactly what i mean i think attracts like leave it open and get out of my house they are psychotic yeah that sort of sense of of of drama is is palpable and again you know we have to remind ourselves this is i mean presumably she was 23 when she was making this yeah yeah um she's completely i mean i can't imagine what the record company said when she delivered this record you know it's the
Speaker 3following it was the first time that she'd recorded and produced herself as well so this was as i said you know the one word for it is unfettered i remember reading interviews with at the time and the one thing that always stuck in my mind was that when she wanted a particular voice i'm not quite sure what track it's on it might be the one about um houdini but she said she'd eaten whole bars of chocolate because she wanted a thickness in her throat so she couldn't quite reach the notes she wanted to and i thought that was interesting that kind of commitment to getting the sound you wanted because there's a lot of vocal processing but also there's a lot of amazing natural singing as you say where this again differs perhaps from gabriel three and four and heinz immunity and where it links with billy mckenzie is the ordinary things she does with her voice but also
Speaker 2there's very kate things about it like who else would have a chorister on one track yes and percy thrower doing bird impressions on another track isn't
Speaker 3rolf harris on it as well rolf
Speaker 2harris is on the track although his name did we do name's been taken out of the current reissue for me for me it must have been commercial disappointment at the time i seem to remember and i was really i was like you i was kind of reading an interview with kate you know what she was talking about she the classic kate understate i mean this thing about kate is the album is so pretentious in the best possible way but she is such an unpretentious person if you read an interview so she didn't interview at the time she said i've gone a bit mad on this record you know talk about understatement
Speaker 3well we met her once to remember i mean we met her and i've met her since then and the thing is that she was disarmingly ordinary in a way that i think she's in control of because i don't think she wants to necessarily reveal herself and i don't blame her for that she's an extraordinary talent and again like frank zapper like captain beefhart she's one of the few people in popular music that i might use the word genius about you know she's extraordinary yeah but as a person she's disarming because you almost feel embarrassed to be gushing and talking about the music and we have to remember the climate she was she was
Speaker 2operating in here yeah i mean today you know the world is dominated by female you know female artists and you know the world is dominated by female you know auteurs isn't it in fact pop music is almost completely dominated by female authors not then not then very few of the records on this list are by willfully you know a female artist in control of their own vision uh in fact we'll see how many of them there are probably not too many i'm sure anyway so i mean the dreaming for me is the preeminent master and i think the other thing about it is it's an album that just gained a lot of popularity in the world and i think the other thing about it is it's an album that just gained a lot of popularity in the is it's an album that just gains in stature
Speaker 3yeah well i think the thing is that even though she's playing with characters it's a tremendously emotional album and i remember being very moved by as you've said scared by get out of this house but there's also profoundly beautiful sense of loss there's a depth there that goes way beyond her years all the love yeah there's one is that the track with the telephone voices yeah it's got the chorus and the boy chorus and it is devastating actually you know i remember playing this because i was so enthusiastic and so in love with the album and one person walked out when he heard the voice he thought it was evil actually was overwhelmed by that track that track okay all
Speaker 2of all of the love i'll get out of my house all the love really wow it's a good job you didn't play him leave it open i'll get out of my house yeah yeah we could gush all day about the dream i'm sure we'll come back to it and reference it the more we talk about about this year the kind of partner in crime in in terms of of this year in terms of this album is peter gabriel's fourth record the fourth album just to be called peter gabriel i think it was called security in america wasn't it to differentiate it from from the first three there there is a sense of these two albums being two sides of the same coin the gabriel album is much more interested in the possibilities of sampling and we have to remind ourselves at this time sampling is still this very exotic thing that's not available to most people this is long before yeah yeah cheap commercial commercially available sample samplers became available the only samplers on the market i think were the sinclavia and the fairlight cmi which both would set you back the price of a house basically um peter gabriel had one and obviously the other thing we have to remind ourselves is that you had to almost make your own sounds yeah to put into the sampler um you couldn't just sort of get a bunch of a bunch of off-the-shelf samples so in fact i remember at the time there was a south bank show special wasn't there which kind of focused on the making of this record it was and him actually going out and blowing down drain pipes yes breaking glass and going to
Speaker 3sort of knackers yards in or whatever they are sort of reclaim yards in bath smashing things up recording it yeah but i think
Speaker 2what this album has in common with the dreaming except well firstly the emphasis on the drums and the voice i think that's something they have in common but it's the sense of drama the album begins doesn't it with that cross between the drums and the voice but it's the sense of drama the album begins doesn't it with that cross between the drums and the voice but it's the sense of drama the album begins doesn't it with that cross yeah creed occur if i can be pretentious um be pretentious very pretentious and then that massive fair lights and yeah rhythm of the heat still one of my favorite tracks of all time one of the most dramatic ways to open a record let's just say this isn't duran duran's rio okay um and that's again that sense of storytelling that sense of drama that goes through the record for me this is his this is his artistic peak and the other thing of course he has in common with the kate is that his commercial peak would come on the next record yeah well a lot of people thought this was
Speaker 3dark i mean this got terrible reviews at the time again this is one of the things people forget i did not remember because i was reading the music papers around times when i got into them in the early 80s and of course i adored this and it was so hypocritical because three did get grudgingly very good reviews from people like nick kent although i remember paul morley referring it to as as elton john with a sampler or something i think he was pretty dismissive of it but i thought they were both masterpieces and this in particular you know the opening one two of what was originally called you know rhythm of the heat was originally called young in africa because it's about cg young's experience in africa where he's actually taken over by the tribal rhythms and then of course you know sanya cinta and i think those are two of the most magnificent pieces he's ever and then i have retouched i mean it just goes on
Speaker 2doesn't it family in the fishing net yeah
Speaker 3the whole album and it it's brilliantly sequenced as well and um at the time he was seen as this kind of colonial colonialist um ripping off other cultures for his own middle-class purposes wow
Speaker 2we're so ahead of his time in that
Speaker 3sense but very very heavily criticized especially in places like the enemy but i obviously watched the south bank show special adored it you know it was that period because i was still a teenager and you're hanging on to every word and these people who are like oh people because gabriel would have been early 30s at the time and when you're a teenager this is an adult this is a proper adult who has a sense of the world and it was also a sense of new sonic possibilities you know i remember in my mind they were released at a very similar time the dreaming and four and it was just completely blowing out of the water everything i'd heard before you know because you were talking about the 80s being the best decade i still love those 70s albums whether it's the singer-songwriter the prog rock albums me too jazz out yeah of course we do and they still blow me away now yeah but this was what i imagined when somebody in 1974 first heard phaedra or 72 first heard close to the edge or 73 first heard dark side of the moon hearing that was dreaming and four when they came out there had been nothing like this before it was redefining creating it is creating a new
Speaker 2musical language isn't it those two records together completely i mean you you mentioned you know rhythm the heat the first track or i mentioned it too you know that moment towards the end of the track where it shifts and all those african drug is one of the most dramatic moments powerfully dramatic theatrical moments i have ever heard in pop sorry to if i'm using hyperbole here but it just for me is one of the most dramatic moments
Speaker 3in the history well i think like you know i've seen gabriel live many many times yes he's always brilliant but yeah what's interesting is he plays something of three or four and you realize the arrangements they are so precise they're so precise they're so precise they're so precise they're so precise they're so precise they're so precise they're so precise they're so precise they're so paired down perfect so with that there's nothing much happening there's the sample is rhythm and then it explodes the use of dynamics that music and bico is still phenomenal as a live experience and although i think he's made work of extraordinary quality since for sure i'm not sure he's ever bettered the revolutionary impact or the sense of sound design as in three and four
Speaker 2well and i think there is a sense of song design as in three and four well and i think there is a sense here that he's on the cusp of he's he's taking advantage of the fact that new technology is available to him in a way that it would never perhaps never be true again you know sampling as i say is a very new thing and it's only available to a very small elite yeah of people that can afford it this is all going to change three or four years down the line akai launched their their cheap samplers and everyone suddenly got sampling but there is a sense that this is before this is before people understand what you can do with samplers yeah and he's he's in a sense grasping in the dark here's this new technology well what can we do with it i don't know doing
Speaker 3remarkable things both musical and non-musical yeah and the other thing i was going to say that's interesting about this and the kate bush to a degree is that they're not only extraordinary detours for popular music there's very little of the dna so you listen to the dreaming you listen to security or four and you listen to what bush is doing in 78 what gabriel was doing in 78 there's virtually none of the dna in that they have not only reinvented pop music they've reinvented themselves the only thing that remains with gabriel is that he's still got that beautiful brilliant music and he's still got that beautiful brilliant music and he's still got that brilliant voice that you can recognize from the lamb or trespass but the musical vocabulary it shares zero with lamb lies down gabriel one and two well there's a i mean
Speaker 2on side two there's a couple of the ballads maybe wallflower you could say well that's kind of to an extent you can draw a line between here comes the flood and well i mean to me it's way you know well i should say that here comes the flood it's a brilliant song what am i talking about but i mean is there a sense that this album is very front-loaded the first two tracks for me are the first two tracks are probably one of the greatest one twos yeah in the history of pop music i mean there are
Speaker 3extraordinary pieces yeah you know family in the fishing that you know what haunted the monkey is a great pop song yeah lay your
Speaker 2hands on me there's a couple of great pop
Speaker 3songs i mean let's say push comes to shove and i know we disagree on this i'm going slightly for three over four i think they're both extraordinary they're both favorite albums for me kiss of life is the one that is the let oh i love it this album i love kiss um but what was interesting is somebody on facebook um notified me of tony bank's reaction to these albums which i didn't know because genesis of course were reinventing themselves but genesis during this time even on abacab even on invisible touch even on duke and we can't dance i can still trace the dna on tracks like domino or tonight tonight tonight with foxtrot there's still something of the chordal vocabulary the rhythmic vocabulary of genesis 86 so which is why invisible touch might be a 1986 pop album but actually it's still genesis whereas gabriel i think has completely you know reinvented himself but banks thought that four was brilliant but not as good as three but primarily because he thought it was a tremendously gloomy album and one of the criticisms in the enemy reviews at that time beyond the colonialism and the rip-offs of other cultures was that it was an extraordinary extraordinarily dark melancholy one-toned album which i don't agree with at all but banks also saw this you know if you look at his comments on it so yeah only peter could get away with this it's incredibly dark incredibly gloomy incredibly but why
Speaker 2is three three no self-control intruder bico yeah family snapshot aren't these incredibly
Speaker 3dark tracks i don't see it not one of
Speaker 2us yeah yeah i you know i think that's always that's well not always but that's definitely
Speaker 3maybe there's something other people are hearing
Speaker 2that we're not maybe let's talk about you mentioned earlier tim rupert hein there is a sense that this is the the the third less known yeah part of this trilogy of albums in a way also fascinated with with technology also perhaps fascinated with the way the voice and drums can be used in the context of of pop music embracing the future embracing the possibilities of technology now rupert hein was a producer predominantly a producer and he was a producer that became um an artist in his own right with these we particularly love these three albums he made in the early 80s which are immunity waving not drowning in the wildest wish to fly and this is the middle of of that sort of trilogy of records there is a line you can draw between the dreaming peter go before and this album isn't
Speaker 3there they're fellow travelers and it's one of the only things you can say because there weren't many you know these albums were revolutionary but very very few people made anything similar at the time or since rupert hein was a producer and he was a producer is the exception that those three albums fit perfectly with gabriel three and four kate bush the dreaming and hounds of love um the second album is slightly less claustrophobic because immunity it depends on my again these the trilogy is so good and so similarly good in a way that any one of them could be my favorite on any given day i forget
Speaker 2which tracks are on which has this got the outsider on it
Speaker 3this album yeah i love um 11 faces yeah brilliant yeah this one is opening out more so i suppose the way in which i see it is that immunity is much more claustrophobic than any of the others this one opens out more there's a lot more marimba see that kind of no self-control gabriel feel there's maybe when i re-listen to them slightly more of a classic rock quality in some of rupa heinz work than there is in kate bush and peter gabriel it's by degrees i don't hear any classic
Speaker 2rock in kate bush at all i would agree with you in terms of you can hear it it's still in peter gabriel's music kate bush is dreaming i hear no rock at all yeah that's what i'm saying is the difference oh okay oh i see
Speaker 3okay yeah he will go off into quite you know phil palmer oh it's traditional rock solos yeah in a way that gabriel and bush wouldn't yeah but the technology seems similar the use of sounds because again they're all listening to steve reich perhaps as well around this time aren't they minimalist classical music um and the use of sound world music and world music yeah yeah of course the afro rhythms yeah um and waving not drowning it's great it slightly opens up the sound there's not really much you can say except it's a fellow traveler with bush and gabriel and it's really strong and also steven w taylor who's the co-producer has got to get a lot of credit
Speaker 2as well i mean rupert heinz in in some ways is your classic album years artist isn't it because i think we're talking about him in the same breath as we're talking about yeah albums that probably most people out there already know the dreaming peter gabriel's fourth record i'm guessing a lot of people out there probably don't know waving not drowning and i don't think we're saying it's quite in the same league as peter gabriel or kate bush are we but it's not far off no it's not far off and if you love those records you probably will love you'll find something
Speaker 3to be yeah interested in i
Speaker 2mean i i don't know i do i do love love those rupert heinz records um not quite in the in the same way that i love the gabriel and the bush records but they're not far off and
Speaker 3he's got a very distinctive voice somewhere between sort of bowie and hamill in a in certain respects i think yeah the other thing about heinz is that obviously these albums to a certain extent do exist under the radar although i think they were quite popular in scandinavia from what i can gather he did a few tv appearances there but of course he became an absolute massive 80s producer with the likes of tina turner stevie nicks howard jones howard jones of course he produced two rush albums yeah saga because saga were enormous in germany and canada and he produced their mid-80s albums as well unless we
Speaker 2forget rupert produced one of our previous quintessential album years out sunset wading by john he
Speaker 3did indeed and he produced wise after
Speaker 2the event anthony phillips there you go lovely little album so definitely if if you are a fan of the dreaming and peter gabriel for that era of those artists you should definitely check out rupert heinz i think we're saying that aren't we yeah and as we're
Speaker 3saying that you know feel the production i think it's that these albums every single sound seems
Speaker 2crafted they seem very studio bound records i mean obviously kate kate bush wasn't touring at this time i can't imagine i mean she didn't play anything from the dreaming at her hammersmith shows well 10 years ago now did she um it would be difficult to imagine trying to so many voice overdubs for a star isn't yeah you'd have to you'd have to clone kate about 20 times
Speaker 3gabriel does resurrect yes he does and rhythm and as i've said yeah basically i'll be watching the show and it's brilliant and it always goes up 10 levels when something like san jacinto rhythm of the heat or bico is introduced it's the
Speaker 2drama isn't it yeah it's that sense of drama that those tracks have they're not maybe the best songs in the sense you couldn't sit down at a piano and say listen to this what a great song rhythm of the heat bico i
Speaker 3think really is three chords it's one of the simplest things that gabriel's i think it's one chord isn't it i think he's a three interview maybe it's just kind of
Speaker 2exaggerated i thought it was just a drone and a beat yeah anyway maybe so but yes i mean that's it but then live it's that sense of drama isn't it yeah another album that is very much a producer led record a classic record of the era abc's lexicon of love one of an early trevor horn masterpiece shall we say now this is like we kind of started off by talking about the talking about how post-punk seems to be mutating into something much more sophisticated we're going to talk about roxy music's avalon later on which in a way is kind of a signifier of all this that's going on here because roxy have gone from being very arch very art school very dadaist to being this incredible kind of sophisticated lounge everything brian but you always imagine brian very wanted to be in a way yeah yeah um i've got a great analogy for them okay go on then well you too feel the production maybe we can talk about abc and and the avalon record the same because for me they're kind of they are similar abc four years before were an industrial band from sheffield yeah making music more akin to cabaret voltaire or clock dva and suddenly they're making this incredibly lush romantic orchestrated sophisticated pop record yeah but they've done that within the space of four years whereas roxy took them 10 years to get to that point and the production it is a producer's record isn't it it's trevor flexing but people forget you know i think later on trevor became known as someone that very much involved with technology and sampling this is still very organic this is real musicians playing in a studio i know because i've i've had the pleasure to remix the album um real drummer real strings real orchestrations there's some synths on it yeah but it's essentially uh you know very much the sound of a a band but transformed into something impossibly exotic for a bunch of what who were previously making industrial music yeah
Speaker 3well you can't hear that at all you cannot hear that at all and the thing is as well it's almost like it because it is a quintessentially a his album yet it harks back to another era the imagery the strings there's almost that kind of sinatra yeah sure yeah um and he's got a great voice and they pull it off with panache i think panache is the word for this album great songs great arrangements and almost again this return to this kind of glamorous entertainment of almost pre-rock pre-psychedelic music and they pull it Fry has got the voice. And clearly, if you ever read him in interviews, well, he had the conceptual chops. I mean, that was the thing that basically he produced a great pop album. But when you read the interviews, you were almost getting a communist manifesto, you know.
Speaker 2But it is a perfect storm, isn't it? Because, like you say, they came in with these great songs. Yeah. Which presumably they'd been working on for a few years before that. And I think they tried them out with different producers. In fact, I think there's an early version of Tears Are Not Enough produced by someone else. And then they come in with these great songs. They've got Trevor Horn, who is just poised to take over the pop world in terms of his sound, his aesthetic, his production is going to change the sound of pop music. And again, I don't mean that to sound like a hyperbole. I think it is largely true. And again, you've got the way that post-punk is mutating into something much more romantic. And unthinkable. And the new romantic scene.
Speaker 3Unthinkable. You cannot connect this to industrial. You cannot connect it to punk in any way. And I think that's kind of extraordinary that, you know, people transcended. Their roots. Is
Speaker 2there an amount of also Thatcherism in here? Without wanting to go too political here, the era of Thatcherism has begun. It's like, you know, everything should be about trying to get rich, trying to help yourself to get rich, to be glamorous, to be sophisticated, to be hanging out in the pool, by the pool in Beverly Hills, drinking your cocktails. Avalon, a lexicon of love. I mean, to a sense, in a sense, Ferry's had that for a while, hasn't he? You just look at the front cover. Is it another time, another place where he's got the tux and he's standing by the pool? This is like five, six years before that, isn't it? There's a sense that these records have that kind of aspirational quality to them, which for me, I do associate with Thatcherism. And maybe that's one of the good things that came out of Thatcherism.
Speaker 3Harry Enfield's loads of money, but with more class.
Speaker 2Yeah. But there is the aspirational sense, isn't there, that we've got the sophistication, we've got the money, we're going to flaunt it.
Speaker 3Yeah. Yeah, completely. Although I think you're right. I think Ferry was always aspirational. You can hear it. My analogy for Rock's music. So they were an extraordinary band. As we said before, you know, the first album that we reviewed, you know, this is an interesting thing, isn't it? Because their first album was in the last podcast. Their last album is in this podcast.
Speaker 2It's their last album, right?
Speaker 3Yeah. Yeah. Last studio album. So that's the 10 years. And once more, it's really difficult, although Ferry's still an extraordinary voice. It's difficult to see that much of a connection. You listen to that first album, as we said, something like whatever. Let's say there's eight pieces, but there's potentially 16 musical directions they could have gone into as a result of it. And I think it's like a raw soup. You've got your carrots, you've got your parsnips, you've got your turnips, and they're all existing in this raw soup. Avalon, it's the chef's delicacy blended soup. So it's all of those things. Okay. But they're blended. They're blended into a mush that tastes beautiful, but you can't tell the distinct ingredients. Whereas I think on the first album, you can see they're coming from psychedelia, rock and roll, underground, soul. You can hear it all. Right. You can't hear anything. Avalon is this perfect blended soup mush of sound.
Speaker 2It is like an immaculately sculpted.
Speaker 3It's a Michelin starred blended soup.
Speaker 2I mean, it's, it's immaculately produced, isn't it? I think Bob Claremountain was the engineer. I'm guessing self produced. Is it self produced? Anyway, I haven't done my research on this, but it just sounds beautiful. Rhett Davis is always involved with that. Could well be, but Bob Claremountain's fingerprints are all over this. And I think he's recently remixed into Atmos as well. It sounds immaculate, even though there's not a lot going on. It's very painterly, very sparse, but it just sounds beautiful. The space, the reverbs are all immaculate. And it's almost like the videos. It's the, it's the audio equivalent of the videos. If you look at the videos, the, the clothing, although Brian, for me, in your videos, it always looks like he's on the verge of having a stroke. He's in the middle of a stroke. He's got this weird kind of look about it, but, but again, it is that kind of aspiration, which is a very early eighties thing. That kind of aspiration. It's ethereal. It's immaculate. It's poised. It's coffee table. It's the perfect album to put on the back of your cocktail party. And it still sounds great. It still sounds great. Although perhaps has it got the substance
Speaker 3to, I think it has. I mean, the one thing about this is I say, whereas you can hear all the ingredients in the early Roxy, maybe the problem with this is beautiful album and a personal favorite is that really ferry comes across as the dominant figure. In effect, it's ferry's distinctiveness that is lording over the whole album and it becomes the blueprint for what he does. You know, boys and girls. So we fail to mention in, I 25 is another great album, but it's Avalon 2.0.
Speaker 2Yeah, there is a sense that Phil Manzanera, Andy Makai, they're still there, they're still present, but they feel like they've just been relegated a little bit to the, the role of session. Yeah. And I don't mean that to denigrate them at all and both amazing musicians, but I think you're right. There is a sense that Brian is getting his own way and that he's pushing himself a bit like Japan did, you know, that you had these incredible musicians, but it. It was always David Sylvain on the cover, always thrust to the forefront. And I think there's a little bit of that going on here, isn't it?
Speaker 3And I think that, you know, when ferry did boys and girls, it was almost like, I can do this by myself. And I often wonder as well, because Gilmore plays a really strong role on boys and girls. And I kind of wonder, it's like, I know that Manzanera had an interest in Gilmore's work and early Floyd's had Andy Makai, whether it was almost like this, I can get him to do what you did.
Speaker 2A bit like when Roger Waters left. Got Eric Clapton. Okay. Now I'm going to get Eric Clapton. Now I'm going to get Jeff Beck. Yeah. I don't need David Gilmore. Exactly that. I thought, you know, it wasn't the same kind of one upmanship. But it's never quite the same, is it? There's always something intangible at a chemistry of a band. Although I got to say, I
Speaker 3think boys and girls almost pulls it off. It's almost as good as Avalon. Whereas, you know, for me, pros and cons, great album though is it doesn't for me compete with the final cut or the wall.
Speaker 2There is another album I'm going to throw into the Peter Gabriel for the Dreaming, Rupert Hine. So then the Venn diagram, Laurie Anderson's Big Science. Now, it's it's obviously a much more understated, intimate, sparse sounding record. It's a smaller sounding record, but there's something similar going in the sense that this is an album that is telling stories. Yeah, it's it's got very theatrical. I mean, Laurie Anderson famously started off really much more of a performance artist than a musician. And Big Science, her record from this year is essentially her studio interpretations of some of the more, shall we say, substantial song orientated material from the United States of America, Sing Song Cycle. And famously, of course, Oh Superman, the strangest top five, top two hit single, I think ever. I don't think anyone could challenge that. That is the strangest song ever to get to number two.
Speaker 3I think, yeah, for number two, I mean, Ghost got top five.
Speaker 2Well, Ghost Town as well. Well, by the specials, but I think Oh Superman's got to trump them all, right?
Speaker 3It's extraordinary. It's
Speaker 2just the most bizarre thing to have ever got to number two in the charts.
Speaker 3And you can see that, you know, she was blown by Einstein on the Beach. I think that was one of her formative influences. Yeah, and Robert Ashley and people like that. Yeah, Robert Ashley. And you can see how that's impacted. And she does. She takes avant-garde to the top of the charts.
Speaker 2Which is amazing. Yeah. What a trick to pull. And we talk about, you know, some bands being on Radiohead being a Trojan horse for bringing the avant-garde. To the mainstream. Laurie Anderson, what she's doing in 1982 with Oh Superman.
Speaker 3It's great. I mean, I love this album. You know, Big Science. And you're right. It fits in with those albums. But I don't think it's quite as polished in terms of the reverbs. No, it's not. The amount of sound. No, that's what I mean.
Speaker 2It's a smaller, it's a more intimate, smaller sound.
Speaker 3Do you know what it reminds me of? Yeah. To an extent, it reminds me of North Star by Philip Glass. You know, where it's got a particular soundscape. That she explores throughout the album. And I love that soundscape. So, you know, no complaints.
Speaker 2There's. very little on most of the tracks i think that's the difference is where she you almost feel with kate she's throwing in like 100 overdubs yeah drum over mostly drums and vocal to be fair on her record with laurie's record you feel like just two or three very painterly approach to two or three things is enough to make it work um and there is a sense that she's just bringing her live show into the her one one man or one woman show into the studio and as you say it's got that
Speaker 3storytelling quality as well i mean you know definitely as a contender for um you know perhaps a lyrical um triumph of the year yeah
Speaker 2amazing amazing lyrics funny yeah yeah i think that again is you don't laugh at peter gabriel four and you don't laugh at the dreaming you're kind of terrified by them you actually laugh out loud so yeah well
Speaker 3i've seen laurie anderson live many many times i think it's one of the things that people don't get is that she's actually got brilliant comic timing so you know you can be carried away with something because she's got this hypnotic voice and you're carried away and then she will make that joke yeah
Speaker 2it's yeah i love it and
Speaker 3she drops it just at the right time yeah she's
Speaker 2the seinfeld of of pop it's incredibly dry and delivered incredibly deadpan but it's funny i mean the whole oh superman thing with the uh unfortunately the one thing about superman i think a reason a lot of people bought it's because they thought it was a funny novelty record you know yes drive your friends crazy by a superman but at the same time probably a lot of people bought it and and you know it was a gateway hopefully it was a gateway to to this whole world uh of laurie anderson and performance art there's a couple of other entries we've got in the field of production category fun boy three's first album i wasn't so familiar with i mean i remember the singles the you know the the singles they did with banana armor around the same time if i think they're on the right they start the record don't they uh one of the songs starts the record anyway um i listened to this record and do you know what i thought i thought my god this is doing what tom waits did next the following year with swordfish trombones yeah it's all the kind of junkyard percussion thing isn't it and approaching drums in a very interesting well like i say the junkyard thing which tom waits completely embraced on on i wonder if he listened to this record while he was making swordfish trombones
Speaker 3it's it's a great album because it was such a huge hit people forget how inventive and how unusual it is as an album you're right it's quite extraordinary quite creative deserves to be put into this category with gabriel bush rupert hein laurie anderson very clever and i suppose the other similarity is it's rhythm and voice heavy very much yes yeah and yes you're right it's got this kind of clattering junkyard quality that tom yates tom yates tom yates oh oh my god do you know tom yates schoolboy
Speaker 2era number one okay tom waits right explores later tom york tom york yeah it's a combination
Speaker 3of tom york and tom what you don't remember tom york
Speaker 2swordfish trombones yeah i
Speaker 3remember that album great album okay bones or whatever it's called
Speaker 2yeah but anyway yeah abacom lee 1986 came out in 1982 i think it's 86 yeah the last record we want to talk about in this field of production now i wasn't sure whether to put this in this category simple minds new gold dream there is a sense that in a way this is just a continuation of what simple minds have been doing for a long time in fact i listened to new gold dream on the record and it wasn't as different as i thought it was from say sons of fascination and empires and dance the two previous records there is a strong sense of continuity except whereas sons of fascination and empires and dance sound like they were made for a sweaty nightclub in berlin new gold dream sounds like it's made for stadiums and i can't quite put my finger on why except there's something in the production that suddenly opens up and becomes much more grand and epic and in a sense this for me this is the beginning of the sound of stadium rock in in new gold dream in the more so than sparkling the
Speaker 3rain you know because
Speaker 2sparkling the rain definitely takes it to the next level and i think it's a very important piece of music the next level and and then once upon a time even more so but there's the beginning of that stadium force simple minds in this record songs like promised you a miracle glittering prize again there's a little element of thatcherism going here and i don't know if i'm reading too much into it here that aspirational aspect that i'm no longer content to be making music for a nightclub in wigan yeah i want to make music for a stadium i want to bring people you know what i mean
Speaker 3relating it to a couple of albums that you've already put in this category it shares something with avalon and lexicon of love in that it's got a lushness the one thing for me that the early albums don't have is that diaphanous lushness which this album yes has and you're right that it's kind of on a grander scale is it peter collins is the producer of this i'm not sure i can't remember who produced it actually yeah it has a lushness that i kind of tie in with avalon which again you could argue that aspirational quality and with abc with the strings there's something about this album which sounds richer more expansive um and there are a couple of great pop hits as well yeah i think
Speaker 2that it's i think it's the vocal and keyboard department so the keyboards are become there's more lush pads there's more chordal harmonic movement there's less of the quirky kind of analog synth stuff more of this kind of lush pads and the vocals definitely sound like they they've got um jim curse definitely reaching more for hooks um there's less of that kind of you know european fascination with europe and these kind of obscure uh references that he has on albums like sons and fascination and empires and dance that sound very teutonic almost a craftwork thing here it's becoming a little bit more american dare i say well
Speaker 3also you know derek forbes is a major part of the early albums that really propulsive base but it's still here and i think that's slightly more buried isn't it no actually
Speaker 2that was the surprise and i was listening to it on the way here i'm like actually you know what the rhythm section is still doing what they've always done okay the bass and the drums it's the lushness over the top and it's the pop hooks that are suddenly coming in and suddenly making you feel more aspirational and interesting i think derek forbes was let go after this album or is he
Speaker 3yeah is it i might be on because i think waterford
Speaker 2or maybe the drummers let go and mel gainer comes in on the next week anyway that rhythm force is still very much present and that's what surprised me i hadn't yeah
Speaker 3because in my mind the rhythm section is almost buried under this washer keyboard it's not
Speaker 2actually and i surprised myself listening to on tracks like colors flying the catherine wheel it's you know it could be if you took off the sense and the vocal it could be still something from sons and fascination still got that kind of teutonic you know crap almost krautrock drive to him
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