The day the world turned paisley
The Dukes of Stratosphear |
As 1984 drew to a close, the boys decided to have a
bit of fun. Andy had toyed with the idea of a spoof psychedelic band for years
– the name “The Dukes of Stratosphear” was one of those rejected when The
Helium Kidz changed their name to XTC in 1976. Only when Dave became a member
could they really explore the possibilities. Dave was a natural born mimic with
the guitar. Any band, any guitarist, any style – he could pastiche them with
alarming accuracy.
Andy had been working with long-time producing
collaborator John Leckie, producing an album for Irish songstress Mary Margaret
O’Hara. However, Ms O’Hara (who Andy describes as “a couple of spoons short of
a cutlery set”) fired them before a note was recorded. Her reason . . . “the
vibes weren’t right”. Andy feels it was more due to the fact that O’Hara was a
devout Catholic, while Andy was a committed atheist and Leckie went one
further, being a follower of a controversial Indian
Guru who advocated free love!
|
So,
wth time on their hands, Andy squeezed five
grand out of Virgin and decamped to Chapel Lane studios in the delightfully
named Hampton Bishop, in Wiltshire. Dave’s brother Ian (known as Eewee) was
invited to play drums as he wasn’t famous and wouldn’t draw attention to the
band’s true identity. Then it was time for the pseudonyms.
Andy became Sir John Johns (from the DC Comics
character Jon Jonzz, the Martian man hunter); Colin was The Red Curtain (at
school he was nicknamed ‘Curtains’ because of the long hair he grew in front of
his face and both Andy and Dave see him as the most left wing member of the
group); Dave became Lord Cornelius Plum (lifted from an American book about
psychedelia) and Ian made the short hop to E.I.E.I. Owen. The Dukes of
Stratosphear were born!
The rules were simple – all tracks had to sound
something from the late 60’s with suitable psychedelic credentials.
Furthermore, nothing was allowed more than two takes. Six tracks were completed
in two weeks and Andy created a suitable piece of trippy cover artwork – 25
O’clock hit the world like a wet, surreal lettuce.
They were deluding themselves if they thought they
could release it and remain incognito – but release it they did, as a 1985
mini-album. To their amazement, it subsequently outsold both Mummer and the Big
Express and was a smash in the USA.
The first track, 25
O’clock is pure Electric Prunes, while Bike
Ride To The Moon is, as Sir John insists, “complete and utter Cambridge,”
in a thinly-veiled reference to the king of British psychedelia, the
wonderfully loony Syd Barrett.
A cross between Pink Floyd’s Bike and The Move’s I Can
Hear The Grass Grow, it’s “just daft,” according to Lord Plum. It’s also
pretty damn perfect as a piece of bubblegum psychedelia.
My Love
Explodes nods very firmly in the
direction of India and all things swami and mystic. But it’s the lyrical
content which gives the game away – it could only ever be about an orgasm (one
of Andy’s favourite things!), hence the vociferous complaint at the end. This
was a genuine listener’s tirade to a New York radio station which played “Go
Fuck Yourself With Your Atom Bomb” by The Fugs – the line is played in reverse
on the fade-out.
The Mole
From The Ministry is a story about
that most sixties of pastimes, paranoia – the cold war, spies and moles and
everything being controlled by nameless, faceless men in bowler hats. Ladle on
lashings of I Am The Walrus and A Day In The Life and hey presto, a
classic.
Andy: "The amount of bands that have
contacted John Leckie because of that record is amazing. Kula Shaker, the
Shamen, The Stone Roses, they all wanted him to produce them because of the
Dukes."
Summer’s cauldron
In 1986, six years after Black Sea – still seen then
as the defining moment in XTC’s history, Virgin forced the now confirmed
3-piece into an American studio for the first time, to work with Todd Rundgren
– regarded by many as the ultimate producer in the world at that time. Rundgren
had been responsible for, among many others, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell, and was regarded as the man to ‘tame’ the
opinionated and argumentative Partridge. Andy wasn’t eager, but the reactions
of Moulding and Gregory when Rundgren was pitched to them convinced him to give
it a go.
In his Utopia Studios
complex in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, Todd was boss –
"ludicrously bright chap, shockingly apt arranger," maintains Andy,
but from the band's point of view also arrogant, sarcastic and coldly
impervious to Andy's usual tactics for getting his own way.
Dave: "It was just
nasty and unnecessarily unpleasant. Todd got the measure of Andy's conceit,
shall we say, and played on it. He'd deliberately belittle him if he thought he
was getting too big for his boots. Andy rose to the bait every time."
In personal terms, in was a disaster, relations
between producer and band (in particular, Andy, surprise surprise) breaking
down almost immediately. One day during recording even the mild-mannered Colin
stormed out of the studio in disgust at their bickering – he returned two days later,
but to this day he’s never withdrawn the resignation note he handed to Andy
before starting to play again.
| However, in professional terms, Rundgren wrought the
best out of all three and the resulting Skylarking (right) is still regarded by
many as XTC’s seminal work – a thinly-disguised concept album that has held
together like no XTC album before or since.
With hindsight, even Andy could see how well it
worked: “Todd Rundgren squeezed the XTC clay into its most
complete/connected/cyclical record ever. Not an easy album to make for various
ego reasons but time has humbled me into admitting that Todd conjured up some
of the most magical production and arranging conceivable. A summer's day cooked
into one cake.”
Although another quote from around recording time
shows what they were up against from Virgin: “When we delivered Skylarking, they told us it didn't
have any singles on it and we should go a write something in the style of ZZ
Top.”
Anyway, a concept album? Well, back up a second –
where the rock Gods of this world make their concept albums grandiose
statements about blind pinball players, growing up a traumatised child in the
war or even the six wives of Henry VIII (thanks, Rick Wakeman), XTC’s concept
album was about . . . well, a summer’s day! To his credit, it was Rundgren who
saw the possibilities of this concept inherent within the batch of songs Andy
& Colin sent ahead – compiling a running order before the band even arrived
at the studio (much to Andy’s annoyance, of course!).
|
Partidge, Skylarking about |
Skylarking is a beautiful and coherent body of work
which bears countless repeated listenings and which rarely fails to twang the
heartstrings. Immaculately produced by Rundgren, this is summer in a bottle,
with its birds, breezes, insects and meetings in warm twighlit evenings for a
kiss and cuddle. At times it sounds almost as if XTC were conforming to their
own stereotype – the quirky, eccentric Englishmen strumming acoustics by the
village green – but in truth this was an album that they simply had to make. If
you only ever buy one XTC album in your life, make it this one.
Skylarking also broke XTC in America – in a way
no-one could have expected. One day in 1985, Partridge had seen a book entitled
“Dear God”, a cloying, sickly-sweet book of letters supposedly written to God
by children. He was appalled at what he saw as a sick exploitation of children,
especially as he had recently concluded there was no God.
He had the idea of a song about a child’s letter to
God, questioning God’s very existence, which he entitled Dear God.
However, after finishing the song, he was unhappy with the result – he felt the
subject was simply too big to fit into a four-minute pop song and decided not
to put it on the album. However, with Rundgren’s help and encouragement, it was
released as the B-side to the first single release Grass.
American DJs discovered it and within days the record
was attracting heavy airplay – but of Dear God and not Grass. The song
attracted rave reviews and death threats simultaneously – America gets highly
passionate about its religion! The Bible Belt was incensed, the colleges adored
it. The album was recalled in America and re-pressed with Dear God included.
Despite Andy’s efforts to the contrary, Dear God made XTC a cult sensation in
America.
Andy: "Mail started
to arrive and it was half 'you've voiced what I've been thinking for years' and
half 'you're going to roast in Hell'. A Florida radio station even received a
bomb-threat and a disaffected student held up a high-school secretary at
knife-point in New York State, demanding that Dear God be played over the
school public address system!”
Dear God helped Skylarking
sell a quarter of a million copies, and XTC entered 1987 having found a whole
new audience of American college kids.
Skylarking contains a slew of absolute classics,
beginning with the opening tracks Summer’s Cauldron and the single Grass.
A testament to the genius of Rundgren, nobody but he saw how well these two
songs could segue into each other, especially as the former was written by
Partridge and the latter by Moulding. But meld they do, Andy kicking things off
with a rush of insects, birds and lyrics which invoke temperatures in the 90s
and the need for a cooling drink. It’s a lazy day in the sun, too hot to move –
and shows a level of lyrical maturity that was beginning to set Andy apart from
his peers. When Colin kicks in with Grass, dedicated to Coate Water in Swindon
– for years a place for young lovers to get drunk and fool around – the cycle
of the opening tracks is complete.
That’s Really Super Supergirl is one of Andy’s songs about the flip side of being
dumped, replete with myriad superhero references and a peach of a Dave Gregory
guitar solo, while Earn Enough For Us is the great lost Beatles song. A
memory of the days when Andy had ‘a real job’ mixing paint at Tunley’s Paint
Shop for a pittance, while watching the rain come through the holes in his
ceiling. Dave let rip with his Harrison guitar style and the song should have
been a single – it wasn’t, thanks Virgin.
It was also the song which saw Colin’s epic
storm-out, informing Andy how he could best use his rectum as a guitar case. It
says much for the partnership that this was the first time this had happened –
and the last.
The triptych of Ballet
For A Rainy Day, One Thousand Umbrellas and Season Cycle, which occurs in the middle of the record, is Andy at
his best. Beautifully written melodies, full of hooks and catchy lyrics about
love, loss and the inevitable march of time. It’s really wonderful stuff.
Then comes Another Satellite. Whether Andy
liked it or not, Erica Wexler had become part of his life since they had fallen
for each other in the early eighties. Whenever he was in America, “there was
wacky Wex, like a rash,” says Dave. She also had a habit of writing long, pleading
letters to Andy, gumming up the atmosphere between him and Marianne.
Dear God's UK single release cover art |
While he tried to pass her off as the nutty fan, he
knew deep down the attraction was mutual. He was also determined to stay loyal
to his marriage, and his new daughter Holly, whom he doted on. Confused and
frustrated, he wrote Another Satellite in a clumsy attempt to warn Erica off.
It’s a beautiful song which he hates, because it hurt Erica deeply.
My
heart is taken it's not lost in space
And I don't want to see your mooney mooney face
I say why on earth do you revolve around me
Aren't you aware of the gravity
Don't need another satellite
I'm happy standing on my feet of clay
I have no wish to swim your milky milky way
I say why on earth do you send your letters 'round here
Only to gum up the atmosphere
Don't need another satellite
This is followed by the infamous and
America-splitting Dear God (left). Now it’s fair to say that religion is a
highly personal issue. Figure this one out for yourself. |
Skylarking finishes with two Colin Moulding tracks –
firstly, the dark and disturbing Dying
in which Colin recalls his childhood fear of going the same way as his old and
lonely grandfather.
It
frightens me when you come to mind
The day you dropped in the shopping line
And my heart beats faster when I think of all the signs
When they carried you out your mouth was open wide
The cat went astray and the dog did pine for days and days
And we felt so guilty when we played you up
When you were ill, so ill
What
sticks in my mind is the sweet jar
On the sideboard. And your multicoloured tea cosy
What
sticks in my mind is the dew-drop hanging off your nose
Shrivelled up and blue
And
I'm getting older, too
But I don't want to die like you
Don't want to die like you
This was followed by the haunting Sacrificial
Bonfire. A pagan-sounding riff and a story straight out of an Iron Age
ritual, again it was Rundgren who lifted this from the good to the great, with
the strings pulling the riff into Vivaldi territory in the second verse and
adding a level of menace only hinted at in the original.
The Dukes – again, already!
Skylarking took a lot out of the band and a relaxant
was needed, so along came the Dukes again. This time, 1987’s Psonic Psunspot was a full-on album. Recorded at Sawmills Studio in Cornwall – accessible
only by boat! – and with genuine record company interest, this wasn’t as much
fun as 25 O’Clock. But it was still fun!
The Dukes had the inspired idea of linking the songs
through an Alice In Wonderland type tale and tried all the harder to make their
pastiches true to the bands they were taking off. In this it was a spectacular
success.
Vanishing Girl, the opening track penned by The Red Curtain (Colin – remember?), was
undoubtedly Hollies in origin and became a minor hit on American west coast
radio, while Collideascope is arguably the Dukes’ finest moment. For a
day, Sir John Johns was
Sir John Johns-Lennon and penned a brutal, ugly tribute to the art house films
of the sixties, capturing the raw Lennon guitar and even-rawer Lennon voice.
It’s strange, surreal and simply brilliant, featuring liberal quotes from the
Dukes’ favourite TV programme ‘Nearest and Dearest’ including Jimmy Jewel’s
immortal “Bloody Nora!”.
While maybe not the strongest song in the canon Pale And Precious is the great lost
Beach Boys song – a gentle, almost timid opening which segues into an upbeat
stomper, Pale And Precious was the song that fell off the end of Pet Sounds.
Psonic Psunspot was the expected minor hit and was
soon released along with 25 O’Clock as a compilation CD Chips From The
Chocolate Fireball. However, critical acclaim for a spoof side project was
not enough and a two year break – their first for many a year, saw them return
in 1988 with the Dukes’ influence still strong.
Part 5