February 2022 – Richard Watt

27. Bad for Good, Jim Steinman, 1981

Posted on February 27, 2022 by Richard

There’s an explanation below of the order you should listen to this in…

It feels strange to be writing this only a couple of days after Meat Loaf died. This bizarre, overwrought, teenage fever dream of an album was originally – in some form or other – intended to be the follow-up to Bat out of Hell, but the project never quite got off the ground (and the reasons given for that are often contradictory and strange). Jim Steinman felt compelled to share these songs with the world nevertheless, and apparently decided to do it himself.

Steinman, who also died recently, had been the creative driving force behind Bat out of Hell. Those were his songs, his words, and his vision. Meat Loaf’s towering voice and Todd Rundgren’s ‘everything including the kitchen sink’ production created an album which was at once a cult classic and the sort of thing everyone felt the need to own, despite – or perhaps because of – it not sounding like anything else on earth.

I liked Bat, but not to the point of the obsession which seemed to grip some people; and not to anything like the same degree I loved this album.

Which is really weird, because in all respects, this is the inferior album – more than one track is just a pale imitation of the formula which had worked so well first time, and – well, let’s not beat around the bush – Steinman can’t really sing. Even the professional singer he brought in (and didn’t really credit) for three tracks doesn’t have anything like the volume, dynamics, range or sheer theatrical presence of Meat Loaf’s voice, and as a result, this album doesn’t really work.

Yet it had me in its thrall from the moment I first heard it, and even after all this time, seeing it for what it is, I can’t shake that sensation of being eighteen, full of hormones, spots and some kind of wild idea of what the world might have in store for me. I had no idea what Steinman was on about half the time, but he was so earnest, so vital, and so over-produced that it had to mean something, and it had to mean something to me.

It wasn’t an album written by a teenager about being a teenager (I’m coming to one of those); it was a fairly cynical marketing exercise by a middle-aged man who invoked Peter Pan as an excuse for his own refusal to grow up and get on with life. But, somehow, he hit that sweet spot; that exact point in my life when everything seemed to be in mad turmoil and needed someone to reassure me that all of this – whatever it was – was normal and everyone went through it.

There must have been a glowing review somewhere (Sounds, I’m looking at you again), because I went out and bought this not having heard any of it. I could just as easily have bought the first Meat Loaf album, and if I’d waited a few months, I could have bought the next one, Dead Ringer, which Steinman was also working on.

But this was the one I bought, and this was the one I got home to discover that it came with a free seven-inch single containing the two tracks which wouldn’t fit on the album. The label on the single explained that side one was the prologue, and that side two was the epilogue, so to hear it as intended, you had to change records over – and remember to change the speed when you did it.

Well, to be honest, if you really wanted to hear this as intended, you’d have to go back in time, resolve whatever the original issues were and have Meat Loaf record these songs – something which he pretty much did eventually anyway, but I digress.

At this point, before we listen to it, I’m going to complain about Spotify. Up at the top of the page, I’ve embedded what Spotify claim to be this album. And, to be fair, it mostly is. It really wouldn’t, I don’t think, have taken much effort to put the prologue, The Storm in first place, and Rock and Roll Dreams in last, and take the time to rename what they call Medley to its actual title, Left in the Dark.

The upshot is that, to hear this the way I first heard it, you have to pay attention and shuffle things round, and maybe that’s appropriate.

To kick things off, then, on went side one of the free single. The Storm is a fairly simple melody, well orchestrated (I don’t know who orchestrated it, but it’s well done) and played by a full orchestra – the New York Philharmonic, it turns out. It is a prologue rather than an overture – it sets the tone, bombastic, full of self-importance and completely over the top as the introduction to anything, never mind a rock and roll album.

Then it’s straight (well, after faffing about with the discs) into the title track. It begins exactly as you’d want it to start, full steam ahead, guitars riffing madly, and then….

And then Steinman starts to sing, and – well, they might at least have multi-tracked him. It’s not that he can’t sing at all – he hits all the notes, and he’s full of enthusiasm, even when some of the emoting is just beyond him – there are places where he needs find a growl or something just out of reach, and he gives it the good old college try, but, honestly, it’s only just this side of laughable.

And yet, the song itself is exactly right, and perfectly sums up what this album is, or should have been. Meat Loaf did eventually record it, but his voice was not quite what it would have been in 1980, and honestly, his version also sounds not quite right, despite having Brian May driving it along.

About six minutes in, you can really hear what Steinman was reaching for – the ‘Godspeed’ section so very nearly works; the production does everything it can, but it can’t quite cover for the reedy voice in the middle of it.

And yet, and yet. Perhaps that’s why it worked then, and why I’m sitting here singing along, word perfect. You couldn’t imagine being Meat Loaf, could you? You could no more hope to hit the notes he hit; make the sounds he made than you could flap your arms and fly to the moon. But you could push your weedy, untrained voice to sound the way this singer does. Maybe that’s why it worked.

Incidentally, my copy had a flaw, and skipped during the first chorus. It still sounds wrong to hear it play ‘correctly’.

Lost Boys and Golden Girls introduces us to Rory Dodd, who can actually sing. I don’t know how much I noticed it back then, but the difference through noise-cancelling headphones is startling. Just the first phrase has all sorts of nuance and subtlety; it’s so much better that it completely covers up the fact that this is a kind of sappy ballad about – well, this is where Peter Pan makes his influence felt. I guess (who am I kidding; I know) I related strongly to ‘We’ll never be as young as we are tonight’ and so on, but it’s pretty inconsequential, despite the neat harmonies at the end.

Love and Death and an American Guitar remains as batshit crazy and oddly terrifying as it was when I first heard it. I had no idea what it was doing here, or that it was based on something which Steinman used to do on stage at Meat Loaf shows; maybe it worked better there. It’s, let’s be honest, a bit daft now, but if you’re eighteen and completely wrapped up in this, it’s profound in some way you can’t explain.

Stark Raving Love starts with that riff which Steinman repurposed for Bonnie Tyler, so it sounds a bit strange to hear it here. I’m not going to belabour the point about the vocals, but it’s fair to say that the backing singers do a lot of the heavy lifting here, especially in the mid section, which goes all 1950s on us for a bit.

I was, I think, just too young to have the same affection for those close-harmony doo-wop things which my musical heroes liked to refer back to; I was generally impatient for the music to go back to loud and modern-sounding. It all makes a bit more sense through the lens of nearly forty more years of music.

I’m just going to point out that the best part of this song is unquestionably the duelling guitar solos which take up the final third. It’s all insanely over the top, of course, but that’s exactly the point – you didn’t go to Jim Steinman music for three minute verse-chorus-verse pop songs. Having said that, the pop song he fashioned out of this for Bonnie Tyler really works, so maybe he should have tried that a little more often.

Side two starts with more of the same; layered guitar riffs, pounding piano and a not-quite good enough vocal. Again, you can clearly hear what he’s reaching for, but he never quite reaches it, and in some of the higher pitched parts, you can actually hear the producer’s hand subtly turning up the backing singers to mask the fact that he’s never going to be able to nail those top notes consistently.

It’s a ‘long hot summer’ bored and restless song, and while it works on that score, it perhaps doesn’t quite sweat the way it needs to. Only now do I hear how much work the outstanding Roy Bittan is doing on the piano (it’s quite the piano-driven album, in truth), and wonder if that needed to be given a bit more support, and allowed to lead the song.

I’m finding this a strange experience; thoroughly enjoying revisiting this and the warm bath of nostalgia I’m wallowing in, but I can’t help hearing all its flaws, which makes me a little sad.

Thankfully, Rory Dodd is back for Surf’s Up; if you’re going to evoke the Beach Boys, your singer’s really going to have to hit all the notes. It’s another slower, piano-led ballad, and while it’s a little too earnest and a little too clunky (“Surf’s up, and so am I”? Really?), it has an irresistible drive to it which brings you along and helps you hit the high notes. I think it even earns the twiddly, Italianate mandolin at the end.

Dance in my Pants is a blatant attempt to recreate or trade off the success of Paradise by the Dashboard Light from Bat. Karla Devito tears up the female part, and it’s all going along swimmingly until – look, even I’m bored of saying it now, but Steinman can’t carry this; it’s not even close, and verges on the cruel exposing his voice to this kind of scrutiny. In addition, the stakes of Paradise are missing; in the end, who cares which of them wins the argument, we know how it’s all going to turn out.

Oh, and I’m not sure which is worse – the cheesy synthesised metaphor for whatever it is the pair of them are up to, or Devito’s forced laugh. The whole thing resolves by about the halfway point, and then just rumbles on, hammering on the somewhat feeble point until even the singers sound bored of it. I think we’re supposed to want it to go on forever, but I’m done with it about four minutes in. Sadly, that’s about halfway.

Left in the Dark,however, may be the best song on here, and even the spoken word introduction works. I’ve heard several other versions of this over the years – Barbra Streisand did a version – but none of them match this. For all my scoffing, Steinman’s weedy, off-pitch voice is perfect for this. It’s quite possible that this is one of those rare songs which suffers for being sung by a professional singer; there’s a vulnerability to this performance which is hard to match if you’re going to hit all the notes perfectly.

Even if this had been the great lost Meat Loaf album (the working title was Renegade Angel), I think I can make the case for letting the author have this vocal. It does threaten to get a bit carried away towards the end; the NY Phil come storming back in and everything is turned up to eleven, but it’s precisely because the voice is so fragile and vulnerable that it works – I’ll even forgive the multiple endings and the way it drags on for another whole minute after it’s actually finished – the spoken outro is a little much, in truth.

The best known song from this collection is, of course, on the B side of the extra single – Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through is perhaps the clearest and most complete example of what all of this was meant to sound like – Rory Dodd isn’t Meat Loaf, but you can hear what it might have sounded like.

And, of course, you can hear Meat Loaf doing it on Bat out of Hell II; the moment had passed (and I’m not crazy about the nineties production), I think, but that version demonstrated, at least, that this was always a song – all these songs were – intended for that particular voice.

I’m not sure I’ve conveyed how much this album meant at a very specific point in my life; how I was able to overlook all its flaws and just wallow in its over-the-top excess and wild teenage angst. Maybe, more than anything else on this list, you had to be there.

Any other albums by this artist to consider?

Nope. This is it for Jim. There are several Meat Loaf albums, however, which are the product of his fevered imagination, and it’s worth digging into his production and songwriting credits to see, if nothing else, just how often he was able to mine one particular seam.

Compilations to consider?

Not really, but there’s a strange Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler compilation called Heaven and Hell which is intended as a kind of ‘Steinman’s Greatest Hits’, although there are a couple of non-Steinman songs on there.

Live albums?

The various Meat Loaf live albums feature some of these songs; Live Around the World might be your best bet.

Anything else? A couple of things to think about – Meat Loaf’s autobiography and the related film In and out of Hell, tell Steinman’s story from someone else’s perspective, and therefore don’t really have any reference to Bad for Good, but are nevertheless worth your time if you want to have some insight into just how music like this got made and got to be so successful.

26. Ace of Spades, Motorhead, 1980

Posted on February 20, 2022 by Richard

You know the drill by now: first 12 tracks only

So, this album is going to have to do a lot of work. It is essentially going to stand in for close to three years’ worth of albums I bought when I first moved to Edinburgh, most of which sounded – at least in part – something like this. I picked this one for several reasons: it is, in truth, a classic; my copy was on coloured vinyl, and it allows me to wax lyrical about those couple of years of concert-going.

I’ll cover the content of the album in a bit – I haven’t listened to it all the way through for a great many years, so while I know roughly what it sounds like, it will be another rediscovery.

My copy of Ace of Spades proudly proclaimed itself to be a ‘Limited Edition – Gold Vinyl’. I’m sure it was meant to be gold. In fact, I always assumed that the colour they were aiming for was the colour of the sand dune from the cover image. Whatever it was meant to be, it was actually a kind of muddy yellow, not far off the colour of Caramac chocolate, but a little less appealing. Coloured vinyl was widely considered to be inferior in quality to the usual black, but I never found it to be so. Unless you’re talking about picture discs, which were surely never intended to be played, as they always had an aggravating level of background hiss, which even my battered ears could detect.

I was never a collector of albums in the sense of being someone who avidly sought out the special editions, the coloured or specially shaped releases; I wasn’t particularly exercised about making sure I got this or that version of an album, but I was the kind of person who went out and bought new records within a couple of days of the release date, so there was always a good chance I’d pick up something unusual – round about this time, I bought an early copy of Gillan’s Glory Road album, which came with a whole other album attached, and is probably worth something now.

But, yes, I sold them all.

Incidentally, I always peeled the ‘special edition’ labels off anything with extraneous stickers. I have probably made some actual collectors come over all faint. Sorry, but I always wanted to see the cover exactly the way the designer had intended. Even when (and I’m inevitably thinking of at least a couple of other Gillan albums here) the intent of the designer could be summed up as ‘will that do?’.

Anyway, my ‘gold’ copy of Ace of Spades had been acquired in time for me to be ready to go and see Motorhead play live, and that’s really why I wanted to look at this album.

I moved to Edinburgh in October 1980. One of the first things I noticed was that there were a lot more bands who came and played there than in Aberdeen. I’ve looked back through the listings for that first year, and there were so many bands and artists I could have gone to see, but, as I’ve already explained, I was in something of a narrow rut of music appreciation at the time, so I generally only went to see the ones who would prevent me from hearing properly for a day or two afterwards.

One of the reasons I saw so many bands around this time was that most gigs were held in the Odeon cinema on Clerk Street, roughly a ten minute walk from where I was living – indeed, I would walk past it every morning on the way in to campus, and every evening on the way home. That meant that I would often see the advance notice of who was coming before it was even a press release in the weekly music press. In turn, that meant that I usually had front and centre tickets, since in order to buy one, all I had to do was go in and queue at the box office.

I’m sure there’s a whole book to be written on why and how the concert tours of the seventies and eighties were mainly hosted in poorly converted cinemas. One night, the Odeon would be showing ‘Gregory’s Girl’; the next, Girlschool would be supporting Motorhead. I’m sure it was profitable, but I wonder how well it actually worked from a practical point of view for the performers. Were these cinemas always intended to be what we would nowadays call ‘multi-use’, with enough stage area and facilities out of sight of the general public, or were they cramped and unsuitable, but capable of holding hundreds or thousands of people? I know which one my money’s on.

For the first year or so, bands played the Odeon, but it was gradually supplanted as the music venue of choice by the larger (and further away from my point of view) Playhouse. More fans meant everyone made more money, I’m sure, but I no longer had my early bird easy access to the first tickets, and I was never again quite as close to the front. Which, on reflection, may have saved my hearing.

My memory insists I saw Motorhead three times, but I can only be certain of two of those. The first was for the tour accompanying this album, which featured noise at a level I’d never experienced before, and the famous ‘Bomber’ lighting rig, which duly made an appearance during the appropriate song, and was, to be fair, pretty damn impressive for 1980.

However, it’s the second time I saw them which I remember more clearly. It was at the Playhouse in March of 1982, promoting an album whose title I just had to go and look up (Iron Fist, apparently). All I knew going in was that the ‘Bomber’ rig had been retired, and replaced with something even more impressive. Somehow, I managed to avoid finding out what, and was therefore subject to the intended level of total surprise when the curtain opened to an almighty din, and absolutely nothing on the stage.

I don’t mean no musicians; I mean nothing at all. The stage was completely empty; all you could see was the brick wall at the back. But Motorhead were hammering out something (I’m going to guess the title track of the new album) somewhere.

Slowly, and to a crowd reaction unlike any I’ve ever been part of before or since for a rock concert, the band, the instruments, the whole backline, lighting rig and – well, everything, descended from above. It was jaw-dropping to witness unprepared, and remains pretty much my favourite concert memory from all those years. It was even worth the later life hearing issues.

Naturally, Lemmy and co didn’t even acknowledge that it had happened.

To be honest, I sometimes wondered if I’d imagined it (how, for example, did they adapt it to work at every other venue on the circuit? The Playhouse was a huge properly kitted out theatre; did the de Montfort Hall in Leicester have the ability to lift Britain’s noisiest band into the rafters before the show? I would genuinely love to know). There is, to my great relief, a video of the whole thing, although it is not entirely clear what’s going on, since it’s mainly shot from the perspective of the band, but once you know that they’re being lowered from above, it makes sense. And I didn’t imagine it; it really happened.

Once I left Edinburgh in 1984, I moved to places where bands didn’t really come and play, and my avid gig-going days were over. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, though.

Meanwhile, the gold coloured disc still awaits my judgement. There’s nothing more to say about the title track, really – it’s by far Motorhead’s best-known song, and has a life of its own outside the context of this album. It’s been covered in any number of strange and unlikely ways, and it pretty much sums up Motorhead for anyone who has never heard anything else they ever did. It was, of course, famously played in an episode ot The Young Ones, which – I think – gave it and the band an air of cool which none of their peers ever had, even in retrospect.

In case there’s any doubt, this is the classic Motorhead lineup and sound – three men intent on making rock music as quickly and loudly as they could. There are no extended epics on here; everything is under four minutes, and fits a straightforward pattern – for example, Love me Like a Reptile features intense drumming – unlike most bands, the drums pretty much provided the entire rhythm section – neat and tidy guitar playing, punctuated by a short, efficient solo, and Lemmy.

Lemmy gets a paragraph all of his own. Whatever you thought of him (and I think I was more ambivalent about him than many, who seemed to see him as some kind of loveable rogue), he brought a unique sound to everything he did. It’s a coin toss whether he’s more famous for his slightly strangulated vocals, produced by tilting his head back and singing up at the dangling microphone, or for his bass playing. He treated the bass as a lower pitched rhythm guitar, often – almost always, in fact – providing the main riff and the structure of the song, with the result that Motorhead were never going to be mistaken for anyone else.

It occurs to me that Shoot you in the Back – a slightly slower-paced variation on the Motorhead theme – suggests that this is a concept album. I imagine I knew that at the time; it’s loosely themed around the Wild West (whatever that means), but it sounds like a Motorhead album; there were no concessions to the sound design or anything intended to make it sound like this was recorded in South Dakota or Arizona or something.

Live to Win does much the same thing as the previous tracks – it is impressive how much mileage was wrung out of this same basic template. It’s not that these songs sound alike; they are all distinctly different, but there’s not much to say about any individual lyric or any particular solo.

I knew this would be tough to review – I’m enjoying the general feel of it, and I can clearly see why I loved it at the time, but all I’m coming up with to say is “this is another Motorhead song”.

I do remember We are the Road Crew, though – it’s a straightforward tale of life on the road, but it reels off its cliches with genuine enthusiasm and a memorable riff. The version on Spotify seems to be the radio edit, though – the original was a tiny bit more sweary than this..

Fire, Fire threatens to be more of the same, but the instrumental break jolts it out of the routine, and I’m tapping my toes to it by the end.

There’s a song called Jaibait. Sigh. Moving on…

During Dance, two things occur to me. First, it’s possible to have a well regarded, classic album with a song with lyrics as trite as this, and second, I have just discovered that I used to work close to where it was recorded. Not sure what to make of that.

I’m struggling, can you tell?

The beginning of Bite the Bullet is one of those times when a flubbed start to a take got left on the final album. That’s about the only interesting thing I can think of to say about it. Well, it’s also short.

The Chase is Better Than the Catch is another one I remember quite clearly. Slower and more deliberate, it is a lot closer to the whole ‘New Wave’ of metal which was going around at the time. Lemmy famously objected to being pigeonholed, claiming that Motorhead were just a rock and roll band, but I went to the gigs; they had pretty much exactly the same audience as all those other bands who made their living sounding like this song did.

Well, with different vocals, to be fair.

And we round things off with The Hammer, which is at least ambiguous – is it about drugs, or an actual serial killer, or something else equally unpleasant? It finishes the whole thing off in definitive Motorhead style, the riff and tempo are call backs to the first track, and serve to remind us why we came here in the first place.

You know, with some of the albums I’ve revisited, I’ve found what it was which enthused me at the time, but the spark just isn’t there with this. It’s not a bad album, but I think a little Motorhead goes a long way now, and I have a feeling that even then there were other albums of theirs I preferred.

Hard to imagine, but I don’t really have an opinion about Motorhead any more. They did give me the most memorable opening to a stage show I ever saw though, so that’s something.

Any other albums by this artist to consider?

I’d like to say yes, but that would mean going back and listening to them all again, and I’m a little tired of mining this seam right now. I think I had copies of both Bomber and Overkill once upon a time, though, so if you liked this, try those.

Compilations to consider?

Never owned one, but No Remorse seems to cover this period comprehensively. For later stuff, you’d have to ask someone who was there.

Live albums?

Ah, I know the answer to this one: No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith is the recording of the live show from the Ace of Spades show, and proves what I think I knew all along – Motorhead were a live band first and foremost. I’ve listened to it in preparation for this, and if I had to own a Motorhead album, it would be this one. I still remember the genuine thrill of seeing it at number one in the album charts.

Anything else? The only thing I’d like to point you to is the Classic Albums episode about Ace of Spades. I imagine it’s not to hard to find online, and probably gives a much fairer assessment of the whole thing than I’ve been able to do.

25. Remain in Light, Talking Heads, 1980

Posted on February 13, 2022 by Richard

As I’m sure you’ve figured out, only the first eight tracks are on the original album

Given how much I’m making of my immersion into the noisy world of heavy metal, you’d be forgiven for wondering what this is doing here. As, indeed, was I when I realised that it had been released during my first week at university. It is, therefore, another of those albums which has bled through from the future, but not – it turns out – from as far into the future as I originally thought.

It’s an example of what I meant when I said I was much exercised by chart music during those first couple of years in Edinburgh. I may not have been buying it, but the radio was on from early morning to the end of the day, and I was listening to all manner of things in those hours. I do vividly remember being astounded by Once in a Lifetime, which came out as a single early in 1981, and working hard to figure out the words. It sat in my brain for months with its nagging rhythms and the clear sense that while I wasn’t sure what David Byrne was singing about, it was perfectly possible that neither was he.

Remain in Light appeared in the Airyhall library collection that following summer, when I was back in Aberdeen and driving a van for the summer. There’s another album on this list which captures that time more clearly for me, but this was one of the first times I’d lifted my head from the relentless riffing of my usual record collection for about eighteen months, and it reminded me that there was a whole other world of music out there which I’d read about, even heard, but never properly listened to.

But there’s a lot packed in to the expression ‘properly listened to’ there. My faithful red plastic record payer was still my primary method of hearing new music, and I don’t remember ever changing the needle on it, or figuring out how to listen to it through headphones, or anything which might have improved the listening experience, and exposed me to the music the way the artist had intended.

While at home over the summer, though, I did have access to the family record player – I think we called them ‘music centres’ still, but there might have been some other technical term which I’ve lost track of now. The one in my parents’ living room by the summer of 1981 had proper stereo speakers and, crucially, a built in cassette tape deck, which meant that my library finds could be carefully copied over to cassettes in a way which not only preserved a lot more of the sound, but entirely eliminated the background noises off I was used to hearing on the cobbled-together tapes I’d made up to now.

It was almost as good as having an original copy, and a large number of library borrowings found their way on to blank tapes over the next couple of summers. When I eventually came to dispose of my tape collection, prior to moving to Canada (they genuinely were too heavy and bulky to move, and many of them were in terrible condition), I found all manner of things I’d completely forgotten about, including my original copy of this album, which I had long since replaced with a CD copy.

I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to remember what was on the other side of the cassette – my standard process was to buy bulk C90 tapes (which were surely manufactured for the sole purpose of allowing people to record entire albums on one side) from Boots, and borrow two albums from the library with the intention of making a perfect pair, since once played, the downside of the humble compact cassette was that you pretty much had to play the other side, or spend several minutes fast forwarding through it.

And you try to tell kids today that; they won’t believe you….

So, given that I played Remain in Light often enough to etch it permanently into my brain, what was the other album I thought would set it off perfectly? After much head-scratching, I’m left still unsure. There are a number of candidates – albums I only ever owned on copied cassette, but the dates don’t work for pretty much any of them – I know that Remain in Light entered my life in the summer of 1981, because I can pinpoint a couple of specific memories around that time, and I remember clearly how much it stood out form the other stuff I was buying. A couple of years later, and it would have been much less remarkable.

Maybe I put an Iron Maiden album on the other side, or something. I genuinely don’t remember, which distresses me a little.

I do, however, remember being enthralled and startled by the sounds on this album. I don’t know if I was particularly aware of what the influences and background to all of this was; I do remember being hypnotised by it; humming and singing along in a semi-trance to songs I barely understood.

We’ll eventually get to the band which dominated my musical tastes in these years – it does feel strange to me to have got this far without mentioning Rush – but I have room for one story, which perhaps underlines why I loved this album as much as I did at a time when I wasn’t listening to anything else remotely like it.

I first saw Rush perform at the deeply unlovely and unsuitable Ingliston (The Royal Highland Exhibition Hall, to give it it’s full title) in the November of 1981, and while there is much which is memorable about that night, one of the things which stuck out for me was that, right in the middle of the carefully curated pre-show mixtape which was doing its best to distract us from the fact that this place was cold, draughty, uncomfortable and all on the level, meaning we’d be barely able to see the band; alongside songs by Jethro Tull and Supertramp was Once in a Lifetime; it even got a reference in the programme (“same as it ever was”).

If my heroes approved of this album, then I must have known what I was doing when I picked it up in the library – it was definitely the beginning of my journey back into the mainstream of music.

But not too mainstream, to be fair.

The music on Remain in Light is complex and shifting, not obviously destined for the pop charts, and that must have appealed to me then, as it does now. I was – or had been – studying and reading all kinds of more or less experimental literature, and I was exposed to disconcerting and thought-provoking art (because I felt that being a student in a big city obligated me to go and see whatever exhibitions were in town; I saw a lot of fascinating stuff over those four years) – this album fitted right into all of that. The cover and inner sleeve are works of art, and so, I think now, is the music.

Born Under Punches doesn’t ease us in gently; there’s a relentless rhythmic device, with all kinds of strange, unidentifiable sounds floating and darting across the canvas. It’s not about anything you can easily put your finger on, and sounds like nothing I’d ever heard before. I’m sure I didn’t succumb easily to the charms of this album, and I’m pretty certain I would have had to work at it despite the clear and fluid melodies. I think it says something about me, even in the grip of power chords and tortured guitar solos that there was room in my life for this, and all that followed from it.

I wonder now about the context of all of this – Crosseyed and Painless features a spoken word segment which draws on early hiphop, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been aware of any of that at the time; so what did I make of it? It didn’t cause the scales to fall from my eyes or anything, but I like to think that it opened me up to a world of music I’d previously paid little or no attention to. It’s certainly true that I moved into other parts of the record shop after this; even into entire shops I’d previously waled by because they didn’t specialise in what I thought I liked.

The Great Curve is, perhaps, the key to all of this. It’s driven by a completely irresistible rhythm, and under all the fluid bass and treated guitar work – the first time I’d been made aware of Adrian Belew – I can hear rock and roll rhythms as well – I think it is the key track in figuring out how this all hangs together. The fact that the rhythms, some of the sounds, and even part of the lyric are inspired by African music passed me by a little at the time. What I heard was “new” music – it was something we took for granted at the time; that music would appear which didn’t sound remotely like anything we’d heard before, and we’d just absorb it and move on to the next thing.

Side two opens with the song I already knew and loved – the start of side two is the right and proper place for the best-known song, I think – and it anchored me a little into the album, because in context, it made perfect sense. Once in a Lifetime was an extraordinary song to hear coming out of your cheap transistor radio in the middle of the day; it was a hit single without compromising what it was about, and how it fitted into the album. I can’t imagine it getting anywhere these days, but 1981 was a strange old place, and almost anything could sell enough copies to get on the radio, even this slice of middle-aged paranoia set to a beat which never settles down.

I’m struck by how both the lyric sheet and the back cover list the tracks out of sequence; I can’t tell you if that was the same on my original copy, because I only had it in my hands for a week or so before it went back to the library. Either way, it takes a minute for me to identify the next track as Houses in Motion with its curious treated wind instruments – it’s only the liner notes which reassure me that these aren’t sound effects, but actual horns and trumpets made to sound like – well, made to sound like the kind of instrument which would turn up on Remain in Light.

I love the spoken word element of Seen and not Seen; it makes me think of some of the ‘weird fiction’ I’d been reading; it’s a deeply unsettling musing on having the ability to change one’s appearance by force of will, over the backing track which enjoys not having to fit itself around the patterns of verse and chorus, and just runs free, wherever it wants to go.

Listening Wind is the most obviously African of all these songs, and I surely can’t have been oblivious to that at the time. I recently read Dave Eggers’ What is the What, which is a mostly true story of the Lost Boys of Sudan, and this song is now indelibly linked in my mind to that tale of survival in a world which is barely comprehensible to the protagonist; I feel like the wind which blows through this song is the same one which blows through the long march and the refugee camps. The song is written as much more of a off-kilter slightly futuristic picture, but the events of that story were in the future when this was written, and it resonates strongly with me. I’m always delighted to find new connections in music I know well, and this has changed my perspective on a song I thought I knew well.

The final track is The Overload which I recognised instantly as being much more like the kind of music which came through the walls in my halls of residence from my neighbours than any of the bouncy funk-styled sounds of the rest of the album. It feels now like a deliberate attempt to tap in to that sound, but there’s more than enough of the disjointed and curious instrumentation which features throughout the rest of Remain in Light that it’s more likely just another direction the band wanted to take these same musical ideas. I don’t hear Joy Division in it, as some seem to; I hear Talking Heads slowing everything down to see what else they can make out of this sound.

I fear I haven’t done the album justice; it was, and remains, a particular favourite which reminds me strongly of a time when I was wrestling with my musical tastes – there are a few more albums like this coming up; albums which turned my head and set me on a different path.

I don’t mean that there are other albums exactly like this one coming up; I don’t think there’s another album even slightly like this one anywhere; it stands alone as a piece of experimentation which became staggeringly successful and popular despite its attempts to hold the listener at arm’s length. I loved it because of that, and I have owned several copies over the years, including the vinyl re-release I just listened to as I tried to review it.

It’s as familiar to me as any of the others on this list – more familiar than most – yet it defies description still, constantly slipping through my fingers, just out of reach. It’s magnificent, partly because of that, and partly because it neither apologises for what it is or tries to explain itself; it’s as much a work of art as it is a record album, and there’s no way I wasn’t going to put it on this list.

Any other albums by this artist to consider?

Many of them; none, in my opinion, as completely realised as this. You couldn’t define or pigeonhole Talking Heads, even when they were having hits and selling millions of records; only by listening to the albums (in order, I think) can you get a sense of what they were all about. I’d try them all – each is distinctly different from the last, and each has much to recommend it.

Compilations to consider?

I had a copy of Sand in the Vaseline at one time, which is a fascinating compilation of rarities and all the hits. Later compilations seem to want to focus on the hits; but hit singles are much less than half of the Talking Heads experience.

Live albums?

Well, of course. The Name of this Band is Talking Heads is terrific, but somewhat overshadowed by the majesty of Stop Making Sense, which crackles and fizzes with life on the album version, but is an almost transcendent experience in the film, which is what you should seek out. One of, if not the greatest concert movies ever made.

Anything else?

I did the movie up there, so let me point you to the written works of David Byrne, including How Music Works, which reads exactly the way you’d expect a book about music by David Byrne to read, and manages to squeeze a lot of autobiography into the musings on the nature of music and whatever else crosses David’s mind when he thinks about music.

And one more, splendid, thing: the Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo released her version of Remain in Light in 2018, taking the music back to its African roots, and providing a fresh and surprising insight into what makes this album work. Highly recommended if you’re already a fan of the original; it’s joyful and thoughtful at once.

24. Wheels of Steel, Saxon, 1980

Posted on February 6, 2022 by Richard

Just the first nine tracks…

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, something strange happened to my musical taste in early 1980. It can be partly explained by the things I talked about back then: being away from home for the first time, finding it hard to latch on to a social group and finding comfort in crowds and music I didn’t have to think about too much, but that’s not the whole story.

I was definitely also strongly influenced by the music press. I dare say that, had I been a trendy NME reader, this post would have been about Joy Division or Gang of Four or something, but I wasn’t; as already admitted to, my music paper of choice was Sounds, and something happened to them in 1979 which eventually pushed me in this direction (not, thankfully, in the other direction they were going at the time, that of the Oi! subgenre, which I have to say left me cold at the time and still does.)

Throughout 1979, I’d been reading about, but not listening to, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Just a passing fad, I might have assumed, but I was – alongside all the other 1979 stuff – listening to the likes of Thin Lizzy and UFO (q.v.), and something definitely shifted in my brain.

I liked the idea of an offshoot of heavy metal, which had seemed a tired old genre, which harnessed some of the raw energy of punk and seemed to be about something more than trying to make Black Sabbath riffs and tropes sound new. I wasn’t, I don’t think, especially in the market for the NWOBHM at the time; too busy having my head turned by The Specials and the new Clash album. But something happened.

I’d been reading about these bands (it was my policy to read every article, interview and review in Sounds every week, regardless of my interest in the subject) for weeks, if not months, when I heard that a Saxon single had scraped into the UK top 20, and then heard it played on the radio. It was at once not what I had been expecting, and exactly what I’d been expecting. I thought this DIY genre of music would be a little rough and ready; not all polished chrome and steel, but I also recognised that the giant sound and distorted power chords were exactly what I’d imagined them to sound like.

There was something primal, something visceral about the Saxon sound, and I decided I’d like to hear more. I went out and bought the album, then discovered (in quick succession, I suspect), that they were coming to Aberdeen and that this would be my chance to actually see live music in the flesh.

You’ll perhaps have noticed that none of these memories have yet revolved around seeing a band or artist perform live. Part of the reason for that is that few bands made it all the way up north; another is that I still hadn’t got round to figuring out a reliable source of disposable income (I did, eventually, find a couple of jobs that summer), so adding the cost of a concert ticket to the price of an album was just out of my range.

It had to happen some time, though, and Saxon were it.

I’d left school, although I don’t remember if I was working that week or not. If I was, I don’t imagine I was able to hear much the following morning. Seeing Saxon live was a fully immersive experience – I can tell you pretty much which row I was in, who I was with, how little of the time I spent in my seat, and make a decent stab at which songs they played, but my overall memory of the experience is just how deafeningly loud it was. I don’t think I’d expected crystal clarity and to be able to pick out subtle nuances, but equally, I wasn’t expecting – I don’t think – to be bludgeoned by a noise so primal I could feel it as much as I could hear it. For the first time, I properly understood why so many rock singers pitched their singing voces so high – it was the only way to cut through the wall of noise and be heard. I also experienced live rock drumming for the first time, which in turn explained why everything else was so loud.

I had an absolute blast, to the point where I pretty much only went to metal gigs for the next two years, at some cost to my social standing and overall coolness.

For it must be admitted that I’d managed to pick a genre of music which had fallen off the bottom of the ‘hip’ scale. Whatever I enjoyed about it (and there was a lot to enjoy, at least at the time) had to be balanced against the fact that way before the likes of Metallica made this stuff mainstream and acceptable, I was listening to music which made my peers point and laugh. I have no idea if I was deliberately curating the ‘outsider’ effect, but I certainly wasn’t joining in with the discussions about cutting-edge music any more.

I did, eventually, discover all the music which my neighbours in Pollock Halls of Residence were raving about, but it was a little late by then. Until I woke up again, I was stuck in this world of long hair, denim, leather, spandex and high-pitched voices. I did enjoy most of it, to be fair, but I missed a lot, too.

And I’m not being entirely fair to myself – I was as deeply immersed in the world of chart music at the time, which was as varied and innovative as my chosen genre seemed formulaic and predictable. I just wasn’t buying those records, going to those gigs or putting those posters on my wall.

I did buy Wheels of Steel, though, and it set the tone for my album collection for a couple of years. I’m going to spare you almost all of that, though, as I know I’d struggle to tell you anything much about the majority of those records, which I bought, listened to a few times until I’d seen the band live, then sent to the back of the pile while I got on with the next one – I definitely pursued a policy of quantity over quality in those first couple of years in Edinburgh, and looking at what’s on my shelves now, I reckon that I’m interested today in less than 10% of what I owned back then – I did eventually, it seems, acquire a quality filter.

This album, sadly, isn’t one of them. I probably last listened to it in about 1983, and while I loved it at the time – and particularly loved the fact that it was released on a French disco label – I can recall only two of the songs on here, while the rest merge into a kind of sea of molten loudness. Let’s see if it can remind me what it was that took hold of me so strongly in early 1980.

Opener Motorcycle Man immediately unearths a long-buried memory of the live experience – it definitely started with the inevitable sound effect of a motorbike being driven at high speed across the stage before everything explodes into high-speed light and sound. It’s making me tired just listening to this; I have no idea how you starred a show with this and built from there. Otherwise, it’s a regulation metal song – verse, chorus, verse, solo, chorus, other solo, chorus to fade. The only thing which causes me to raise an eyebrow today is the middle eight’s brief dalliance with minor chords before leaping back into the second solo.

Two guitarists, two solos, as I recall.

Stand up and be Counted settles into a groove early, and gives me the first opportunity to appreciate the stentorian vocals of Biff Byford – among all the vocalists of this particular genre, he always stood out for his ability to be heard over pretty much any racket going on behind him. His was (and still is, for all I know) a distinctive, pure bellow of a voice; perfectly suited to this kind of music.

The first song I remember clearly is 747 (Strangers in the Night), which still stands out for its melody and story, as well as what I seem to recall became a Saxon trademark of launching straight into a memorable guitar line instead of just pulverising you with the riff. It certainly makes this song stand out; it is a much stronger piece of songwriting than what’s gone before. Again, some sound effects illuminate the whole thing, and I find myself singing along in parts.

Well, approximating singing along; there’s no way my voice can do that.

The title track and first single; the song which alerted me to this whole thing and which was responsible for so much over the next two years, turns out to be nearly six minutes long, which I definitely hadn’t remembered. It’s definitely a little too long to be in the company of a riff which doesn’t extend itself beyond the first three chords we hear, but it’s also quite hypnotic; I can see what attracted my attention in the first place, although I don’t imagine that the full length version made it on to the single – can’t see Radio 1 playing their way through that lengthy coda, for example, and I’m certain you couldn’t say ‘bullshit’ on the radio back then.

It’s a song about a car; it’s only remarkable to me because of what it led to, really.

It’s also followed by another song about a car – Freeway Mad – which begins withsome spectacular drumming, only to slip into a somewhat predictable retread of Deep Purple’s Highway Star. There are police sirens, though – American sounding sirens, which liven up the midsection a little before it subsides into a distorted guitar solo then takes its leave. Won’t stay long in the memory, that one.

See the Light Shining follows much the same pattern – rapid riffing, pulverising drums, and a vocal line designed for that moment in the set when the lights get turned on the audience and everyone yells back at the band. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; I’m sure the first time I saw it, I was up on my feet screaming with the rest of them. I do enjoy the voice here, though, and the mid-point breakdown; this was an accomplished set of musicians, and – as I’d noticed on the singles – well-produced to show off what they could do.

It’s just a little much, forty minutes of this unbroken. And I’m not even thirty minutes into it yet.

Street Fighting Gang starts with another of those rapid-fire riffs. Weirdly, while I’m listening to this, I’m imagining a slowed down, acoustic version. I don’t know if something like that exists, but I’d quite like to hear it. Oh, paired guitar solos, very much in the style of Wishbone Ash.

I know I loved it for a while, but I don’t miss it. It’s well-executed and probably miles better than so many of its peers, but – as I ‘ve no doubt you can tell – I’m working hard here.

OK, so Suzie Hold On sounds a little different; it’s the first time we’ve heard any bass work, and I can definitely hear the influence of Chinn and Chapman – writers of so many 1970s glam rock hits – in this; I can actually picture this as a single for Sweet; just tone the guitars down a touch, and you’d be there. I didn’t remember it, but I wonder if it’s actually the best track on here?

It’s also – if this is to be believed – the only track from the album they didn’t play live that night at the Capitol in Aberdeen. It is a little out of step with the rest of it, so I’m not that surprised, but I’ve enjoyed it more than anything else outside the two songs I remembered.

I wonder if anyone can guess how album-closer Machine Gun sounds? If you guessed rapid-fire riffing and thunderous drumming, well done. I really don’t have anything more to say about it; it doesn’t do anything you wouldn’t expect it to, and rumbles along for nearly five and a half minutes in exactly the way you’d expect, including some wailing guitar solos in the middle. Oh, and it ends with a giant explosion, because of course it does.

I’ve tried to listen to this with fresh ears; to try to find what excited me so much all those years ago, but I’m only finding faint echoes. I know that standing in front of Saxon while they played all this at you at mind-melting volume was a formative and unforgettable experience, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with these nine tracks in the way they’re written or played; I can hear the adrenaline thundering through all of it, and appreciate the craft of it all, especially in the voice, but I’m afraid it was of its time. I loved it when I was 18; not so much forty years on.

Also, my ears hurt now.

Any other albums by this artist to consider?

If you like this, I dare say you’ll like the other two I owned – Strong Arm of the Law and Denim and Leather. They definitely found a formula which developed on the sounds on Wheels of Steel, and I dare say I’d find more to like and enjoy in those two. If you didn’t enjoy any of this, I’m not sure they ever strayed far from this pattern, even when covering Christopher Cross’ Ride Like the Wind.

Compilations to consider?

There’s one called A Collection of Metal, which I imagine contains everything you might need.

Live albums?

The last Saxon album I owned was the live album The Eagle Has Landed; they were a tremendous live experience, and I’m pretty sure I’m on there somewhere (there are about three or four live albums I’m in the audience of from around that time – I think this was one of them).

Anything else?

Well, you could go and make yourself a pot of Yorkshire tea – Saxon were famously renowned for their tea consumption….

Also, there’s apparently a film called Heavy Metal Thunder – the Movie. I kind of want to see what that’s all about.