Course A002:  XTC - The band and the music

The big time beckons . . ?

1979’s Drums and Wires (right) is the album that should have sent XTC off into the pop stratosphere, filling stadiums and gracing the covers of every magazine in the world. No such luck. In Andy’s words: “Twang! Barry goes, Dave comes and the band is reborn. We revel in electric guitars, voodoo tom toms and the discovery of our songwriting muscle (which is becoming delightfully erect).” It kicks off with one of Moulding’s finest ever compositions, Making Plans For Nigel one of only three XTC singles which can be reasonably described as ‘hits’, and then bundles along with some of the most inspired and exciting guitar-led tunes ever to approach the ears. This was definitive eighties pop – only a year too early. The aforementioned hit, known to fans simply as Nigel, was nearly the one that ‘made’ XTC. A rant about a mollycoddled kid being cosseted into a life of servitude by his overbearing parents, its insistent drum beat and crunching guitars breathe life into an otherwise ordinary track. The name Nigel and the choice of British Steel (“he has his future in British Steel”) were coincidental.

British Steel, only slightly missing the point, were so annoyed that they found four Nigels within the ranks of their Sheffield Steelworks and paraded them to the press to show just how good their prospects were. Anyone who’s seen The Full Monty knows just how good the prospects of those Nigels turned out to be.

In later years Colin expressed mixed feelings about the song: “I'm jealous of the song really, and that it connected with people to such an extent, which in a way I've been unable to do since . . . there's tradesmen who call at the house to do jobs for you . . . and then the game begins. ‘Don't tell me, it's you, ain't it. I know your record... it's... it's...’. A bizarre game of ‘I'll name that tune, but wait for you to tell me what it is’ goes on while water is running through your ceiling. Shit what can I say. I'm immensely proud of it, but damn it.”

Life Begins at the Hop and Ten Feet Tall were also Moulding compositions – the first an homage to the midweek youth clubs at St Peter’s Church Hall in Swindon, where the young Colin and his mate Andrew Partridge were first exposed to live music – and girls. The latter was the band’s first US single release. Born out of Colin’s admiration for Nick Lowe’s Cruel To Be Kind it was so unlike the XTC sound at that time that serious consideration was given to it being released as a Moulding solo single.

It should be noted that, while Andy takes the lion’s share of the songwriting (an average XTC album will have a five to one ratio of Andy to Colin tracks), at this time it was Colin’s efforts which were finding more recognition as single releases – much to Andy’s chagrin.

However this didn’t stop two Partridge tracks – Reel By Reel and When You’re Near Me I Have Difficulty being released as singles. They bombed – of course – but became staples of the XTC live set for many years and are now highly regarded.

Long distance proposals

Though Nigel was a reasonable hit (number 17 in the UK) the band still saw themselves as needing to tour to earn. Hence four nervous flyers jetted off to the Far East – Andy reluctantly leaving behind his childhood sweetheart, the long-suffering Marianne. The tour was gruelling and Andy was miserable – early one morning he dragged the phone under his sheets and called her.

Trying not to wake Dave, he asked her to marry him when he returned from Japan. She agreed and, ever so gently, Andy placed the phone back on the table. “Congratulations,” mumbled Dave from the other bed and went back to sleep. While the rest of the band stayed in Japan as tourists after the tour ended, Andy fled back to Swindon and married Marianne.

The rest of 1979 was taken up by another massive tour of Britain and Europe – their star was in the ascendant, until someone noted that another US tour was coming up and they had no new product to sell. However, the tour was a success, Dave was now an accepted replacement for Barry (even with the die-hard fans) and, to celebrate, Andy and Colin write one of the best albums of their careers.

Bobbing along

Andy Partridge c1980

XTC's increasingly muscular live sound reached its peak on 1980’s Black Sea. Spawning a second hit Sergeant Rock, the album sounds confident and cocky, the sound of a band preparing to make it to the very top.  As ever, Black Sea failed to set the charts alight, but perhaps this is no real surprise, as some of the band's most awkward and difficult material can be found here. Apart from the usual array of instantly memorable tunes, XTC's fourth album touches upon darker territory than usual. Some of the tracks saw the cheery vibe of the first two albums kicked soundly in the knackers – a sign of the lyrical and musical maturity that was surfacing.

Great albums are often referred to by how well things kick-off – those endless debates about ‘great starts to an album.’ Well, here’s one for you. Black Sea’s first two tracks – Respectable Street and Generals and Majors, set the tone for a piece of work that will have you dancing, laughing, thinking and crying within 40 minutes.

Respectable Street is another Andy rant, this time against the hypocrisy of snobbish neighbours. Even then, Andy’s no-nonsense lyrics caused a fuss. This from the first verse:

Now they talk about abortion
In cosmopolitan proportions to their daughters
As they speak of contraception
And immaculate receptions on their portable
Sony entertainment centres.
Now she speaks about diseases
And which sex position pleases best her old man

Well, you can imagine what the BBC thought of that! For their live BBC set – and subsequent American single release “abortion” became “absorption”, “sex position” became “proposition” and “contraception” became “child prevention.” And Andy became very pissed off!

The follow-up single Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me) also crept into the charts, peaking at UK No. 16 and causes Andy concern to this day. At the time he wrote it as a tongue in cheek tribute to the All-American comic-book superhero. 

If I could only be tough like him,
Then I could win my own, small, battle of the sexes
Sgt. Rock is going to help me,
Make the girl mine, keep her stood in line

But not everyone saw it this way. Shortly after it’s release, Andy had this to say: “[It’s] just a simple admiration song. Sgt. Rock is a US comic character who commands a troop known as Easy Company. It’s about a brave, handsome, and successful superhero – as boys aspire to be – and not, as one empty-headed girl wrote in to complain to a music paper, ‘likely to cause violence to women’.”

Years later, Andy had changed his tune somewhat: “This song embarrasses the shit out of me. Of all the tunes that I've written, that made it to tape, this makes me cringe the worse. It's not the music, that's solid enough. All the instruments in the track mesh nicely enough, but the lyrical sentiment, oh dear. It was supposed to be ironic, you know, nerdy comic fan imagines two-dimensional hero can help him with his unsuccessful chat up technique. It did not work.”

Also found on Black Sea is one of the band’s favourites, No Language In Our Lungs, Andy’s ode to the fallibility of language, which perversely contains some of his best lyrics ever; and Towers of London which Andy wrote after seeing a documentary about how much of modern London we know today was built in Victorian times by Irish navvies, hundreds of whom died cutting the tunnels and building the bridges.

Black Sea (originally called “Terry and the Love Men” until drummer Chambers refused to wear a gold lurex Tuxedo on the cover) was reeled out in six weeks and wasn’t a happy time for Dave Gregory. He hadn’t yet adjusted his diabetes to XTC's exhaustive schedule and was also depressed as it had dawned on him that, like Chambers, his input would only ever be as a player as there was no room for his song writing abilities. It was 15 years before he could bring himself to listen to the album.

The others were also feeling the pressure – Colin was missing his family; Terry was thinking there must be something more to life than this; and Andy – well Andy was starting to hate the endless cycle and grind of album-tour-album – and resent the fact that they were still paupers.

The pressure’s on

Straight out of the studio after Black Sea, XTC hit the States again on another round of gigs – every night, the same gig, same songs and what might as well have been the same town, the same venue, the same audience and the same hotel. One cold, snowy day, somewhere in “Shitsville, Arizona,” Andy jumped out of the van to take a leak – and sank up to his hips in snow. The band huddled together for warmth as he trudged out into a field to relieve himself. It was actually December 1980 in upstate New York, but it could have been another planet, another Universe. 

Andy looked down to zip his trousers up and lost himself totally. Exhaustion piled in like a wrecking ball – he didn’t know who he was, where he was, when it was or why he was there. He stumbled back to the van, silently climbed back in, curled up into a ball and sobbed uncontrollably, while the rest of the band looked on horrified and powerless to help. 

They were playing the same gigs as bands like The Police, selling the same number of tickets and, if anything at that time, receiving more acclaim. Yet while The Police were flying around in private jets and staying in their own suites, XTC were still sharing motel rooms . . . and still earning £25 per week. 

Andy had let everything get to him, and when that happens, it affects his health – and the well-being and peace of mind of anyone within shouting distance of him. He was physically and emotionally drained and decided he wouldn’t tour after the next album. 

The rest of the band were aware that Andy was unhappy – hey, he was crying all over their guitar cases – but they thought it was a phase. They were enjoying the tour, the feeling of being on the road again. Terry especially saw touring as a non-stop party, as he said “I can see the world and drink it dry!”. Only on tour did Terry feel an equal member of the group. 

When the band took a two month break, while Andy and Colin wrote the next album, Andy realised the studio was his first – and only – love in the music world. When he wasn’t writing new songs, he was recording or producing with Joan Armatrading, Thomas Dolby, Riyuchi Sakamoto and The Residents, to name but a few. 

He’d also bought a new guitar – only this one was acoustic. (Generous to a fault, two years earlier Andy and Colin had appeared on Noel Edmond’s Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Asked to bring in something to swap, where most artists brought in a T-shirt, Colin gave away his Gold Disc for Nigel and Andy gave away his acoustic guitar – which recently sold for £1,000 at auction!) 

Whether it was a conscious effort or not, the new batch of songs were greatly influenced by this new acoustic guitar – songs that would be difficult to recreate live, but lent themselves to a new sound. Colin’s new fretless bass helped and almost overnight XTC went ‘pastoral’.

Settling down

English Settlement promotional poster; the image is taken from the album's inner sleeve

English Settlement was completed in early 1982 and was a marketing man’s nightmare – a double album. The fifteen songs rambled on for up to 6-1/2 minutes and covered every area of the band’s interests – and many never before heard. It was a beautiful, if whimsical album and sounds as fresh and thrilling today as it did on the first listen.  Firmly entrenched in the comfort of studio veterans, XTC were beginning to experiment more and more, and the dazzling array of styles and moods across the tracks of this album remain definitive proof of the band's skill and imagination.

 A number of songs mark XTC’s increasing maturity, including Ball and Chain (yet another Colin ‘almost hit’), a plea to the planners in his home town, whose ‘slum clearance’ in the 70s had ripped the heart out of Swindon and opened it up to over-development. The music is as jarring and violent as the action it was protesting at. 

Andy wrote No Thugs In Our House after watching the news about a particularly nasty National Front demonstration in London. His morality tale about a vacuous thug named Graham was a mini thr'penny opera, where Graham finally gets away with a racist attack because daddy is a judge.

All of A Sudden (It’s Too Late) was Andy’s ode to the dangers of not acting on your instincts – especially where love is concerned, while Yacht Dance was a beautiful piece of whimsy showcasing Dave’s astonishing acoustic guitar skills. Snowman closed the album – another Andy song about his mistreatment at the hands of women – and contains arguably one of the best lines ever penned in popular music: 

People will always be tempted to wipe their feet
On anything with 'welcome' written on it

However, the real drama of English Settlement came three tracks in – and a song that nearly destroyed Andy. Senses Working Overtime was the last of the genuine hit singles and was one of Andy’s early attempts at expressing the wonderment of being alive – with its Chaucerian plainsong verses, jangling guitars and a hook line counterpointed by cawing crows – it worked. Brilliantly. 

The mediaeval sounding folk tale was an unlikely hit – becoming the bands’ only ever top tenner in the UK. And with a hit single, you are duty bound to do one thing – there was no way they could avoid touring. 

Tour bore

Now ask anyone and they’ll tell you, Andy makes a great tortured genius. He hates to offend or dominate, but he does it effortlessly and naturally. He’s loyal and generous, but frighteningly strong-willed and intelligent. Only the easy-going natures of Colin and Dave stopped XTC dissolving into bloody fisticuffs years ago. Had Andy not gripped the reins so tightly, XTC's story would have been of a lesser band, but a happier one.

So it was with touring – Andy dreaded touring English Settlement, but his sense of loyalty to the band told him it had to be done. Inside he was tearing himself apart – and midway through the tour he simply went to pieces. 

He found himself ringing reception at each hotel to find out what town he was in – despite the fact that each town was just the same as the last. He was trying out vegetarianism – and so living on peanuts from the bar and the odd cheese sandwich – his health started to dip again. In Italy, he was getting crippling stomach pains before each gig – the doctors said he had an ulcer. 

By the time he reached Paris, Andy was in a permanent daze. Everything was happening around him like he was in a dream. The second night in Paris, Andy ran on stage, launched into the intro of Respectable Street, and promptly had a massive panic attack, running off stage and fleeing the building. The gig was cancelled – much to the consternation of the record company, who were filming it for a TV broadcast. 

Andy was found, curled up in a ball by the stage door, and taken to hospital. The next day he sneaked out of hospital, sidled on to a flight out of Paris and went home. Amazingly, back in England he convinced himself it was mere stage fright and that he could handle it – and agreed to go and tour America! 

He got through the first gig in San Diego, almost doubled up with stomach pains again, and the band drove up to Los Angeles for the next night’s gig. They were supposed to meet at the local diner and then go on to the gig. Andy lay on his hotel bed shaking like a leaf. He finally got up and walked the 100 yards to the diner – it took him over an hour! He walked in, white as a sheet and said “I can’t do this gig boys.” 

Dave and Colin were torn – as concerned as they were for Andy, they had just sunk thousands of pounds into the tour (money they didn’t actually have – tours run on credit, you pay back your debts with the tour revenues). Chambers was furious, he could see his career as a gigging drummer going down the tubes. Tour manager Ian Reid was pragmatic, saying “we’d better get you to hospital. If the promoters don’t think you’re really ill, they’ll break both your legs.” 

Part 3