Tag: Billy Mackenzie (Page 3 of 4)

It’s Better This Way: The ASSOCIATES Legacy

The timely release of ‘The Very Best of ASSOCIATES’ featuring their hits ‘Party Fears Two’, ‘Club Country’ and ’18 Carat Love Affair’ creates an opportunity for the work of Billy MacKenzie and Alan Rankine to be re-evaluated and re-discovered.

With a partnership covering a period of just three albums, this anthology is only a part of the story. It’s an artistic legacy that has influenced the likes of Claudia Brücken and Björk, along with HEAVEN 17, A-HA, and SIN COS TAN.

Thus, the new 2CD slipcased deluxe editions of the MacKenzie / Rankine era ASSOCIATES albums ‘The Affectionate Punch’, ‘Fourth Drawer Down’ and ‘Sulk’, supervised by bassist and silent partner Michael Dempsey, delve even further with a treasure trove of previously unreleased tracks, accompanied by 28 page booklets featuring extensive sleeve notes, unseen photos and rare memorabilia.

With Billy MacKenzie’s otherworldly four-and-a-half octave range on top of Alan Rankine’s intricate instrumentation, ASSOCIATES were a majestic and outlandish new pop take on Weimar cabaret in a newly emerging electronic world. But MacKenzie’s eccentricity could make him difficult to work with and led to the pair eventually parting ways in late 1982. MacKenzie continued sporadically with the ASSOCIATES name and as a solo artist, but always a troubled soul, he sadly took his own life in 1997 a year after the death of his mother.

Very much Bowie fans, ASSOCIATES opened their account with a not particularly good cover of ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ in 1979, released not long after the original. MacKenzie was very much into reinterpretation and despite this lacklustre debut, history has shown he could be highly adept at it.

On the second CD of extras, an unreleased take on Barry Ryan’s ‘Eloise’ explores heavier rock templates and points as to where ASSOCIATES could have headed instead of the kaleidoscopic sound they became known for. Poignantly, ‘The Very Best of ASSOCIATES’ includes a live cover of ‘Gloomy Sunday’, a suicide song composed by Hungarian pianist Rezső Seress in 1933 and said to have cursed every artist who has ever performed it.

ASSOCIATES’ first long player was the guitar dominated ‘The Affectionate Punch’ with its great ‘Low’ pitched title song opener on Fiction Records. But the duo were quickly dissatisfied with it, so they requested to end their deal and reworked a number of tracks for its subsequent 1982 re-release; this reissue campaign reinstates the original 1980 album.

Aspiring to expand their sound with a wider palette, the first musical signs of a fascination with European electronic music came with the funereal pulse of ‘White Car In Germany’. The swirling electronics were intended to sound as un-American as possible and accurately captured post-war tensions under the spectre of the atomic bomb. It was part of a singles deal with the Beggars Banquet subsidiary Situation2 which eventually formed ASSOCIATES’ second album ‘Fourth Drawer Down’ in 1981.

Also featuring the almost out-of-tune ‘The Associate’, the quirky instrumental showcased their sense of fun with MacKenzie’s distorted screaming making its presence felt. Meanwhile ‘Q Quarters’ and ‘Tell Me Easter’s On Friday’ were produced by a young Flood, later to work with DEPECHE MODE on ‘Violator’ and ‘Songs Of Faith & Devotion’. The resultant press exposure led to a deal with Beggars Banquet’s distributor WEA.

Throughout this period, Rankine and MacKenzine were almost holding themselves back, fighting against the poppier instincts that had come from their love of early ROXY MUSIC, SPARKS and Philadelphia soul. In the interim, they produced yet another cover ‘Kites’ for RSO Records, under the pseudonym of 39 LYON STREET with Christine Beverage on lead vocals. Originally recorded by SIMON DUPREE & THE BIG SOUND, it featured a more post-punk disco template and prepared for ASSOCIATES’ brief entry into the big league alongside fellow Scots SIMPLE MINDS in Spring 1982.

With its iconic jangle piano line, ‘Party Fears Two’ was the first time that many had heard the neo-operatics of Billy MacKenzie. Dealing with the perils of schizophrenia, it also kick started the brief imperial phase when ASSOCIATES subverted the UK charts with an outlandish approach that fitted in with the concurrent New Romantic movement. They felt a slight affinity with The Blitz Club crowd, but noting the scene’s vacuous nature, MacKenzie and Rankine opted to attack it in the magnificent ‘Club Country’.

Produced by Mike Hedges, the parent ‘Sulk’ album, featuring different versions of ‘Party Fears Two’ and ‘Club Country’, was a triumph. From the frantic instrumental ‘Arrogance Gave Him Up’ to the chromatic overtures of ‘Skipping’ to the evocative drama of ‘No’, the music had the basis for being more accessible, but was still challenging and inventive. Although MacKenzie’s more bonkers instincts couldn’t be masked on tracks like ‘Nude Spoons’ and ‘Bap De La Bap’, the brilliant ‘It’s Better This Way’ was art and pop in perfect unison.

Associates+BW

Photo by Sheila Rock

ASSOCIATES’ imperial phase closed in the summer of 1982 with ’18 Carat Love Affair’; it was their most commercial offering and described by MacKenzie as their “quasi-Neil Sedaka” song. While the narrative was subversive in the extreme, being about a gay affair that MacKenzie was trying to hide, Rankine was uncomfortable with its overt poppiness.

So unhappy was Rankine, that the song was instrumentalised to become the ‘Sulk’ album closer ‘nothinginsomethingparticular’. Whatever, ’18 Carat Love Affair’ possessed one of the greatest synthesizer riffs ever. Released as single, after it charted, it was eventually flipped for the B-side, a joyous art funk cover of disco-era Motown standard ‘Love Hangover’ which Rankine was more satisfied with.

Sales of ‘Sulk’ meant a demand for touring and a nine-piece live band featuring notable musicians such as Martha Ladly and Stephen Emmer was assembled by Rankine for a world tour. But in the cocaine frenzy that was now seriously affecting the partnership, MacKenzie pulled out of the tour, disillusioned by the expectations of success.

The duo reconvened in 1993, demoing six songs including ‘Stephen, You’re Really Something’, MacKenzie’s response to THE SMITHS ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’. But any label interest came with the pre-requisite of live shows; for MacKenzie, that was unacceptable and sadly that was that.

ASSOCIATES’ strength and weakness was their refusal to play the record industry game, but it led to both triumph and tragedy. In that respect, the most tearful moment in this series of deluxe reissues is the previously unissued instrumental of ‘Party Fears Two’ found on CD2 of ‘Sulk’… while the marvellous subtle layers of Rankine’s arrangement are now more revealed, what ultimately is missing is the voice of Billy MacKenzie 😢


Dedicated to the memory of Billy MacKenzie 1957-1997

With thanks to Stuart Kirkham at Hall Or Nothing Independent Publicity

‘The Very Best of ASSOCIATES’ is released by Union Square / BMG as a 2CD digipak set and download

The expanded deluxe edition reissues of ‘The Affectionate Punch’, ‘Fourth Drawer Down’ and ‘Sulk’ are released on 6th May 2016 in a variety of formats

A 500 edition green vinyl 7 inch version of ‘Party Fears Two’ backed with ‘Australia’ is available for RSD2016

https://www.facebook.com/theassociatesofficial/

http://www.billymackenzie.com/


Interview by Chi Ming Lai
9th April 2016

Electrified: A Short Conversation with BORIS BLANK

YELLO co-founder and instrumentalist BORIS BLANK is to release a boxed set of unreleased soundtrack material recorded between 1977-2014.

Together with partner Dieter Meier as YELLO, the Swiss duo’s tongue-in-cheek avant pop attained a worldwide cult following with songs such as ‘I Love You’, ‘Lost Again’, ‘Vicious Games’, ‘The Race’ and ‘The Rhythm Divine’ featuring Dame Shirley Bassey.

Their music notably appeared in films such as John Hughes’ ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ and Michael J Fox’s ‘Secret of My Success’.

‘Electrified’ is a solo collection of soundtrack work from Blank; this limited edition boxed set will contain 3 hours of unreleased music. Over the years, he wrote a large number of soundtrack ideas that were never publicly released.

Originally launched as a Kickstarter project, the 58 musical sketches range from the race friendly uptempo title track ‘Electrified’ that was commissioned for Volkwagen, to the more abstract, spacey vibes of ‘The Time Tunnel’. The reggaefied synth strings of ‘The Last Mile’ give a stylised diversion to the rhythm while ‘Future Past’ buzzes and whirs over a thumping four-to-the-floor beat. The unsettling beautiful ‘One Minute To Go’ could have been in a John Carpenter movie while the sombre, tribal jazz of ‘Cult Of Mirrors’ is in another world.

BORIS BLANK ElectrifiedThese tracks make up the main 45 track part of the release covering 1984-2014. But there is a bonus cassette / download of material that was originally recorded between 1977-83 onto Revox A77 2-track or compact cassette. The electro scratch flavoured ‘Aqua Marine’ begins this ‘Rote Fabrik’ archive section and will not disappoint YELLO fans. There’s also the surreal drama of ‘Echo Gang’ and ambience of ‘Violetta’ while the percussive ‘Young Dr Kirk’ brings in some detuned harmonics into the equation. The boxed set also contains a 36-page booklet of Boris Blank’s personal photographs, biography and comments.

BORIS BLANK kindly spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about ‘Electrified’, his career with YELLO and working with the late BILLY MACKENZIE

How did you manage to have so much unreleased material in the vaults for this ‘Electrified’ boxset?

I have a great similarity with squirrels. They bury their nuts and dig them out when needed. But sometimes they forget about them. In the last 35 years, I’ve written about 200 tracks that were never used. Ian Tregoning, the man who brought YELLO to the UK, was on a visit 2 years ago and we started listening to the vaults. One hard-drive alone contained 26 songs that are now on ‘Electrified’. That was the decision to launch a boxset on this scale.

BORIS BLANK_image‘Electrified’ was made possible by the Kickstarter platform. Is crowdfunding the future for an artist in your position?

I think, there are two important points for crowd-funding:

1. A set of this complexity would never be published by a record company, because it would be too expensive. I also have complete control of content and packaging.

2. You have an immediate feedback from your fans, so you can see very quickly whether the project is concluded or not. This saves energy.

It must have been fascinating to listen back to the recordings, but also be reminded how the electronic instrumentation was developing through the years?

Amazingly, they sound very good. Some of them almost timeless. Working with modern technology is much more convenient though, it stops you making final decisions.

What were your favourite synths?

The ARP Odyssey was my first love. One of the few analog synths I still have. Herbie Hancock used it on the ‘Sextant’ album and it changed my life. I saved up and bought one.

Did the variety of recording media that would have been used present any issues in terms of the final sound quality of the product? For instance, was there any good material that had deteriorated which had to be left out?

In the early days I recorded directly onto cassette, sometimes bouncing tracks and playing new parts at the same time. The synths were also pretty noisy so there were several ‘technical challenges’ on the ‘Rote Fabrik (1977-83)’ material. Luckily, no material was dropped because of deterioration.

Was any of this ‘Electrified’ material ever considered for YELLO?

For 35 years now, I make music for YELLO like a painter who paints dozens of pictures for an exhibition. In the end, however, it takes only 12 or 14 tracks for a YELLO album so the rest of the images remain in the workshop. These are the songs. These are now ‘Electrified’.

What are particularly your favourite tracks on ‘Electrified’?

Mmm, it’s like asking a father to pick his favorite child. My current favourites are ‘The Time Tunnel’ and ‘Electrified’. I recommend the videos, they’re amazing.

With this box set, and Dieter Meier performing solo concerts, what is the state of play at the moment with YELLO?

2014 is the year of the side-chain. 2015 starts in a few months and YELLO will return to the main street. The new album is nearly ready.

The late Billy MacKenzie was a regular collaborator of YELLO, what was he like to work with and what was your favourite work you did with him?

The songs ‘Capri Calling’ and ‘Because You Love’ still get under my skin. Working with Billy was always a pleasure. He worked fast and sang with his whole heart and soul, he gave everything. You could see it was very emotional for him. And for me.

What would you say were your proudest career moments with YELLO?

Proud is a funny word but yes, I am proud that YELLO still exists in 2014. In 1977, I never would have believed it.


ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to BORIS BLANK

Special thanks to Lee Puddlefoot and Josh Cooper at 9PR

‘Electrified’ is released by Blank Media as a vinyl / CD / cassette boxset on 15th September 2014. A limited edition 20 track promo CD is also available.

http://borisblankelectrified.com

http://yello.com

https://www.facebook.com/yello.ch


Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
5th September 2014

Untouchable: A Short Conversation with GLENN GREGORY

This month sees the launch of a new project created by Dutch film composer Stephen Emmer, a one-time member of MINNY POPS, whose previous collaborators have included Billy Mackenzie and Lou Reed on his solo albums ‘Vogue Estate’ (1982) and ‘Recitement’ (2008) respectively.

He also worked with Claudia Brücken on the ACT album ‘Laughter, Tears & Rage’.

Titled ‘International Blue’, the album is a concept that pays homage to the art of the pop crooner, but with a twist. So imagine a combination of Burt Bacharach, Scott Walker, Nick Cave and David Bowie.

Produced by Tony Visconti whose work with David Bowie and Marc Bolan had gone down in legend, the orchestral collection connects with the Synth Britannia world via the casting of HEAVEN 17’s Glenn Gregory and ULTRAVOX’s Midge Ure among its line-up of guest vocalists.

The first single ‘Untouchable’ featuring Glenn Gregory is a poignant ballad of loss and heartbreak; it has also been written as a tribute to the late Billy Mackenzie of ASSOCIATES, a mutual friend of both Emmer and Gregory. Recorded at the world famous Abbey Road Studios, the song is swathed in multilayered textures and smooth reverb to provide a perfect setting for celebration as well as remembrance.

Glenn Gregory kindly took time out from recording the new HEAVEN 17 album to chat about his three contributions to the album, Billy Mackenzie and why pop, not rock, rules…

How did the collaboration with Stephen come about?

It was a Facebook thing funnily enough! I got a message from Stephen who had this connected past from working with Billy Mackenzie and Claudia Brücken. He suggested working together and sent me a link to two spoken word albums. They had really interesting people on like Lou Reed and I thought “I love the sound of this, it’s really lush and interesting”.

We got on very well on the telephone and spoke for two hours. We knew a lot of the same people so I was surprised we’d never met before. He sent me a track and recording went very well, I was pleased with the vocal. Shortly after that he sent me another one which then became ‘A Break In The Weather’ and that was even better as we had got a bit of rapport by then as we’d talked about the art of the crooner, Scott Walker and how beautiful those type of songs are. There was no consideration for making it suitable for radio, it was “it goes where it goes” and that freedom was really nice. It got me into a different way of thinking.

Then he sent me this third track ‘Untouchable’… I immediately fell in love with it, it was lush and emotive. I started thinking about the people that both me and Stephen had known, and Billy Mackenzie came up.

‘Untouchable’ pays tribute to Billy and starts with the lyric: “The cup is smashed…” – what was in your mind?

Stephen loved HEAVEN 17’s version of ‘Party Fears Two’ and I started writing these lyrics that were becoming about Billy. That line is obviously a throwback to “I’ll smash another cup…” and it’s carrying on from ‘Party Fears Two’ really. I found it very emotional in the studio and when I was singing it, I actually shed a tear and wondering how he got to that stage where he could commit suicide. I know why as he was upset and depressed after his mother had died, but I was trying to be inside his train of thought really. Billy changed a lot through his career and as a person. But his beauty and his talent, it’s untouchable.

I sang it and really liked the lead vocal but then I started playing with different notes, melodies and harmonies. Then I got really big and pushing my range… I was almost fainting doing the vocal! I thought it was fantastic and sent it to Stephen, he was blown away. We had another two hour phone call at the end of that day to decompress. He thought it was wonderful and understood why I liked it so much. I’m really happy we got it together.

What’s your favourite personal memory of Billy Mackenzie?

You know he was completely into Whippets and bred them? ASSOCIATES lived in a hotel round the corner from me and the whippets had their own room! It’s crazy!

So my favourite memory was when we were mixing ‘The Secret Life Of Arabia’ for the BEF album – Billy came in and went “one of my daughters has had a puppy, do you want one?”, I went “NO! I DON’T BLOODY WANT ONE!”. This went on and on and I said “NO!”, so he eventually he went “oh, no worries”.

But that night, we were going to a screening of ‘The Comic Strip Presents’ at The Scala Cinema in Kings Cross. We were stood in the bar chatting with Rik Mayall and Robbie Coltrane when Billy arrived in a big overcoat and his black beret. We said hello and he went “Alright… by the way Glenn, I brought you a present” and took out from under his coat, this tiny whippet puppy… I was like “BILLY!!! F*CK OFF!” but I thought “I’m never gonna get out of this one!”

So the dog stayed with us all night and wandered around the cinema, p*ssing and sh*tting everywhere! But I fell in love with it and I am now on my fourth Whippet. I’m as much in love with them as he was. In fact, the Whippet I’ve got now is called Billy… we got him about two months after Billy had died. But of course, I then had to phone Billie Godfrey, HEAVEN 17’s backing singer to tell her “I’m calling my dog Billy, but not after you, I hope you don’t mind” *laughs*

You’re no stranger to working with an orchestra having done so on ‘The Luxury Gap’, ‘How Men Are’ and more recently, on the ‘Night Of The Proms’ shows in Germany… what are the main challenges for you working within an orchestral format compared with electronics?

I don’t really think there are many. When you do it live, I guess you’ve got to be more flexible in that the orchestra is more in control than you are. When you have a band and you make mistakes or change things, the band can catch up with what you are doing. But you can’t really do that with an orchestra. When we did the ‘Night Of The Proms’ things in Germany, it was amazing but quickly, you realise you are not in control at all, you’ve got to do what they do at their tempo, you’re being conducted as it were. But in a recording environment, there’s no real difference at all apart from the lush beauty that it brings…but that’s not saying electronics doesn’t have a lush beauty as well.

One of the other songs you’ve done with Stephen is called ‘A Break In The Weather’ which has a sort of ‘Wild Is The Wind’ meets Bond Theme quality about it. What was the inspiration behind this?

I was thinking of Scott Walker and Burt Bacharach, interesting songs like that and that style of writing. I was trying to find a connection, I had a melody and everything but then I took the dog for a walk in the park. It was cold and the sky opened up and I thought “we need a break in the weather”. So I got inspired to write about a relationship that needs some space when there’s been a break up and there’s the hope of getting back together.

You recorded ‘It Was A Very Good Year’ for BEF ‘Dark’ which follows similar territory. Has there always been a Scott Walker wanting to fire escape in the sky? *laughs*

I’ve always been a really big fan of crooners, my mum had an enormous collection of Anthony Newley singles and was really into Dean Martin. I remember I was listening to them even when I was starting to get into KRAFTWERK and NEU!

So it’s always been there. The way I sing anyway, people always used to say I sounded a bit like a crooner, that baritone type thing. I like pop and Dusty Springfield… even Cilla Black. They’re just good songs, it’s good to have that sensibility. It’s pop, not rock. I was never into The Stones, I don’t really get them. I’d much rather listen to Scott Walker or Anthony Newley.

What was it like working with Tony Visconti?

That was amazing, what a nice guy. We were at Abbey Road together and he told me some great stories.

How was the Koko concert with HEAVEN 17 doing that early HUMAN LEAGUE material for you?

We really enjoyed that Virgin40 gig. I completely loved it. It was a challenge doing those songs to make them sound as much like the original ones but then, it is different because I’m singing them and not Phil. Mine and Phil’s voices are pretty similar in a lot of ways so they did kind of fit. You know I love those songs. Every time I see Phil, I plead with him to do those first two HUMAN LEAGUE albums, just even if it’s once!

Did you hear about the HEAVEN 17 fan who complained to Koko’s manager about you doing HUMAN LEAGUE songs?

Yes I did! What can I say? He did come to see HEAVEN 17 so I can understand him being a bit p*ssed off. But there’s a total history line there all the way through even to the extent that there was a possibility that If I’d had not gone to London, I would have been the singer with THE HUMAN LEAGUE originally.

So there really is a complete line of history through the whole thing and most HEAVEN 17 fans know that; there’s a shared love of those two bands so I think most people enjoyed it.

Is there a HUMAN LEAGUE song from that era that you haven’t performed yet but would like to give a go?

I think ‘Dreams Of Leaving’ would be right there on the list. In fact, Martyn Ware and I talked about that in the studio a few weeks ago so you never know! We toyed with ‘I Don’t Depend On You’ for the BEF weekender at The Roundhouse but I don’t know why we didn’t do it. That came on my iPod the other day on shuffle and it sounded great. I was actually there when they recorded that one. They always used to stay at my house when they came to London… house??? That sounds very grand! They actually used to stay in my basement flat and sleep on the floor! *laughs*

And how is recording of the new HEAVEN 17 album coming along?

At the moment, it’s fairly loose… I’m doing that deliberately, the drum tracks are very basic and I’d say as guide, the tracks are more like the electronic side of ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ than ‘The Luxury Gap’ or ‘How Men Are’. Whether it will when we’ve finished, I don’t know. It’s feeling more ‘Travelogue’ era HUMAN LEAGUE / initial ‘Penthouse & Pavement’. It’s going to get pulled both ways so it could be a bit funky as well like early PRINCE.

We usually only do three or four days together and then do the rest on our own because you need time to focus on what you’re doing. Otherwise you take turns at being sat behind the other and going “DO THIS! DO THAT!” *laughs*


ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Glenn Gregory

Special thanks to Sacha Taylor-Cox at Impressive PR

‘Untouchable’ by Stephen Emmer & Glenn Gregory is released on 7th April 2014 and available via the usual digital outlets

Stephen Emmer’s album ‘International Blue’ featuring further songs by Glenn Gregory plus Midge Ure and Liam McKahey is due out later in 2014

http://www.stephenemmer.com/

http://www.heaven17.com/


Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
7th April 2014, updated 4th May 2014

A Beginner’s Guide To BILLY MACKENZIE

Photo by Richard Haughton

When ASSOCIATES appeared on ‘Top Of The Pops’ in March 1982 with ‘Party Fears Two’, it was the first time that many had experienced the kaleidoscopic vocal of Billy Mackenzie.

With the passion of an otherworldly Orbison crossed with David Bowie and Russell Mael, Mackenzie’s outlandish operatics with a four-and-a-half octave range made him a stand out character during the post-punk era, especially with his love of whippets.

With influences like early ROXY MUSIC, SPARKS, Philadelphia soul and jazz, he sounded like Mario Lanza on amphetamines with a modern majestic take on Weimar cabaret. But as his ASSOCIATES founding partner Alan Rankine experienced, Mackenzie’s personality quirks could make it difficult for him to channel his obvious talent.

With his notorious eccentricity and mercurial temperament, this inevitably led to the pair parting ways in late 1982 after just three albums. It could be argued that if Mackenzie had been prepared to play the pop game, could ASSOCIATES have been as big as A-HA?

Martyn Ware, who worked with Mackenzie on both BEF and post-Rankine ASSOCIATES recordings, said in 2011: “Everybody knows he was bonkers and had a particular take on things but musically, we fitted together very well. He lacked a little in terms of understanding the production process and how sound fitted together but what he lacked in that respect, he made up for in his arrangement ideas”.

Photo by Sheila Rock

Always a troubled soul, Mackenzie sadly took his own life in 1997 less than a year after the death of his mother. But his legacy has lived on as a key musical influence on Nordic acts such as BJÖRK and SIN COS TAN while songs such as ‘Club Country’ and ‘Party Fears Two’ have remained in the public consciousness, courtesy of covers by ONETWO and HEAVEN 17 respectively. Also, an upcoming single ‘Untouchable’ by Glenn Gregory and Stephen Emmer has been conceived as a tribute to him.

Scattered across more than ten full length albums, various collaborations and one-off recordings, what songs deserve to be on an imaginary compilation as an introduction to Mackenzie’s work?

Here are 18 songs which ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK have chosen to gather the sporadic genius of Billy Mackenzie. They are in the majority his most accessible recordings and also include a significant number of covers; but there are no apologies for that. The aim is to prompt further investigation into his vast catalogue by being simultaneously populist and elitist 😉


ASSOCIATES White Car In Germany (1981)

ASSOCIATES debuted with a fairly guitar dominated album ‘The Affectionate Punch’ on Fiction Records. But the first signs of a fascination towards the Neu! musik aus Deutschland came with the funereal pulse of ‘White Car In Germany’. The swirling electronics, cold atmosphere and treated percussion were intended to sound as un-American as possible. The lyric “Aberdeen’s an old place – Düsseldorf’s a cold place – Cold as spies can be” accurately captured post-war tensions under the spectre of the bomb.

Available on the ASSOCIATES album ‘Fourth Drawer Down’ via BMG


ASSOCIATES Party Fears Two (1982)

With its iconic honky tonk piano line and sophisticated arrangement, ‘Party Fears Two’ was a magnificent song about dealing with the perils of schizophrenia, made all the more resonant by Mackenzie’s operatic prowess . It also kick started a brief period when ASSOCIATES subverted the UK charts with an avant pop approach that fitted in with the Synth Britannia template of the times. A Top10 hit and emotive to the nth degree, the original single version is still the best and total perfection.

Available on the ASSOCIATES album ‘Singles’ via WEA Records


BEF The Secret Life Of Arabia (1982)

A highlight from the ‘Heroes’ album, Mackenzie’s version of ‘The Secret Life Of Arabia’ with BEF was even more eccentric and histrionic than Bowie’s original which now seemed straightforward in comparison. Featuring Britfunk exponents Jo Dworniak of I LEVEL and Neville ‘Breeze’ McKreith of LIGHT OF THE WORLD syncopating to Martyn Ware’s thunderous Linn Drum program and Roland VP-330 textures, it was one of two Mackenzie voiced tracks that formed the original ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Vol1’ opus.

Available on the BEF album ‘1981-2011’ via Virgin Records


BEF It’s Over (1982)

This eccentric cover of the Roy Orbision evergreen ‘It’s Over’ closed ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Vol1’ and featured among its guitarists Hank Marvin and John Foxx whose studio The Garden was the venue for the recording. Operatic extremes with a pop heart, Mackenzie was on top form as Martyn Ware’s beloved Linn Drum led an orchestral arrangement by John Barker that gave him plenty of room to indulge in his big theatrics without overplaying the emotion and despair.

Available on the BEF album ‘1981-2011’ via Virgin Records


ASSOCIATES Club Country (1982)

ASSOCIATES felt a slight affinity with the New Romantic movement but following a night out in The Blitz Club, Mackenzie and Rankine opted to note their perceptions of the scene’s vacuous nature via a musical outlet. ‘Club Country’ threw in vicious synthesizer lines, manic rhythm guitar and crashing treated drums. Mike Hedges’ layer-upon-layer production was key to the song’s impact. Kind of reflecting CHIC’s experiences at Studio 54, ‘Club Country’ was Synth Britannia’s very own ‘Le Freak’.

Available on the ASSOCIATES album ‘Singles’ via WEA


ASSOCIATES Gloomy Sunday (1982)

From ASSOCIATES’ debut single ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ onwards, Mackenzie was very much into reinterpretation and he was highly adept at it too. Poignantly, ‘Gloomy Sunday’ was a suicide song composed by Hungarian pianist Rezső Seress in 1933. With English lyrics by Sam M. Lewis, it was made famous by Billie Holiday in 1941. Brought up to date with some synthesized seasoning and a hypnotic bass backbone from Michael Dempsey, its genius lay in retaining the original’s impending doom.

Available on the ASSOCIATES album ‘Sulk’ via BMG


ASSOCIATES 18 Carat Love Affair (1982)

Described by Mackenzie as a “quasi-Neil Sedaka song”, ’18 Carat Love Affair’ was a fine example of ASSOCIATES’ supreme avant pop. Martha Ladly’s girlie shrill went hand-in-hand with the incessant synth riff in this tale about a gay affair that Mackenzie was trying to hide. But Rankine was uncomfortable with its overt poppiness, so it was instrumentalised as ‘nothinginsomethingparticular’ to end the original version of the ‘Sulk’ album. It ended up on the US version of ‘Sulk’ with a revised tracklisting.

Please note, the rare 1988 CD of ‘Sulk’ based on the US Edition is the only way that the original single version can be obtained digitally as the version on the ‘Popera’ collection, the remastered V2 edition of ‘Sulk’ and the later ‘Singles’ compilation is an inferior mix with half the synths and backing vocals missing!

Available on the ASSOCIATES album ‘Sulk (US Edition)’ via WEA Records


ASSOCIATES Those First Impressions (1984)

Continuing where BEF had left off but with more obvious use of synths, Martyn Ware produced this single for Mackenzie’s solo return as ASSOCIATES. It had the classic ASSOCIATES sound despite the absence of Alan Rankine who had left in late 1982 following Mackenzie’s refusal to tour the ‘Sulk’ album. But although it was a good song, some of the magic was missing. It could have been why ‘Those First Impressions’ narrowly failed to crack the UK Top40.

Available on the ASSOCIATES double album ‘Perhaps / The Glamour Chase’ via WEA


ASSOCIATES Kites (1984 – released 2003)

Originally a surreal psychedelic number by SIMON DUPREE & THE BIG SOUND, this was first recorded by ASSOCIATES in 1981 under the pseudonym of 39 LYON STREET with Christine Beverage on lead vocals. Mackenzie recorded a new version with himself on lead vocals in a more frantic arrangement for a BBC Radio 1 session in 1984 as part of a getting back on the horse process for ‘Perhaps’. These recordings  captured an interesting interregnum in Mackenzie’s career.

Available on the ASSOCIATES album ‘The Radio One Sessions Vol. 2 1984 – 1985’ via Strange Fruit Records; 39 LYON STREET version available on the ASSOCIATES album ‘Singles’ via WEA


ASSOCIATES Waiting For The Love Boat (1984)

Mackenzie obviously loved THE HUMAN LEAGUE so as well as working with Martyn Ware, he roped in ‘Dare’ producer Martin Rushent to handle duties on a couple of the tracks from ‘Perhaps’. ‘Waiting For The Loveboat’ was the last song Mackenzie and Rankine actually wrote in their first phase together but it was solely credited to Mackenzie as part of their eventual divorce deal when they split in late 1982. ‘Waiting For The Love Boat’, though more glossy in sound, could have easily come off ‘Sulk’.

Available on the ASSOCIATES album ‘Singles’ via WEA


ASSOCIATES Breakfast (1985)

‘Perhaps’ was a comparative disappointment as an ASSOCIATES album after the wondrousness of ‘Sulk’, with many of the tracks suffering from being too long and too smooth. But one song which stood out was the epic string laden drama of ‘Breakfast’ produced by Martin Rushent. It is possibly Mackenzie’s greatest single moment, the melancholic piano motif setting the scene for an entire film noir in five minutes with its widescreen dramatics and mournful tension.

Available on the ASSOCIATES double album ‘Perhaps / The Glamour Chase’ via WEA


YELLO featuring BILLY MACKENZIE The Rhythm Divine – Version Two (1987)

Written in collaboration with YELLO, this immense brooding ballad became a European hit for the Swiss duo featuring the vocals of Dame Shirley Bassey. ‘The Rhythm Divine’ had originally been written as part of an ambitious project about Marilyn Monroe under the working title of ‘Norma Jean’. Mackenzie’s own vocalled version had been released as a 12” single in its own right, while it was also due to be included on ‘The Glamour Chase’ album which WEA then refused to release for being uncommercial.

Available on the ASSOCIATES double album ‘Perhaps / The Glamour Chase’ via WEA


ASSOCIATES Fire To Ice (1990)

If there was a computer programme to produce a composite ASSOCIATES hit single, then it probably would have come with up ‘Fire To Ice’. With Mackenzie now free from all the hassles at WEA and finding a new home in Circa Records, ‘Fire To Ice’ acquitted itself well as a potential hit single following ‘The Glamour Chase’ debacle. But despite the fresh approach to a classic sound, ‘Fire To Ice’ failed to capture mass sales recognition needed to re-establish Mackenzie to a wider audience.

Available on the ASSOCIATES album ‘Wild & Lonely’ via Circa Records


YELLO Capri Calling (1991)

A smooth, sunset romance in collaboration with old friends YELLO, the title said it all. ‘Capri Calling’ was a most beautiful set piece that captured a gentle Mediterranean spirit. From YELLO’s ‘Baby’ album, a fair number of Mackenzie best songs post-Rankine were with Boris Blank and Dieter Meier. So it was a shame he never did a full album with the duo. The soaring ‘Baby’ title track which Mackenzie also did with YELLO did not appear on the album, but later featured on his first solo long player ‘Outernational’.

Available on the YELLO album ‘Baby’ via Mercury Records


APOLLO 440 Pain In Any Language (1997)

Widely known to be the last song Mackenzie recorded, ‘Pain In Any Language’ was a sombre collaboration with APOLLO 440 which sounded fittingly like a lost ASSOCIATES track. This was an air of ethereal Cold War chic with synthetic cimbalom and windy sweeps for that epic Eastern European feel that Marc Almond often liked to strive for. Fittingly, APOLLO 440 played at the 2007 tribute gig at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire alongside BEF and ONETWO.

Available on the APOLLO 440 album Electro Glide In Blue via Epic Records and the BILLY MACKENZIE album ‘Auchtermatic’ via One Little Indian


HAIG / MACKENZIE Transobsession (1999)

Posthumously released, this midtempo dance number was from a joint album Mackenzie had been working on with Paul Haig, another under rated Scottish talent. Lyrics such as “calling all nations, station to station” harked back to Mackenzie’s love of Bowie while the rhythmical groove proved that his voice still had relevance in a modern club orientated world. Also from these sessions was a recording of EURYTHMICS’ ‘Here Comes The Rain Again’ which surfaced on the 2004 electro collection ‘Auchtermatic’.

Available on the HAIG / MACKENZIE album ‘Memory Palace’ via Rhythm Of Life


BILLY MACKENZIE Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth (2001)

Part of the ‘Wild Is The Wind’ covers EP issued by Rhythm Of Life, this heartfelt version of ‘Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth’ was certainly superior to Martin Gore’s version on ‘Counterfeit’ and close to equalling the fabulous SPARKS original. Stripped down to piano and strings with Mackenzie’s haunted falsetto at the centre, this was a fine reinterpretation. The posthumous ‘Transmission Impossible’ selection issued in 2004 ensured that more people could hear it.

Available on the BILLY MACKENZIE album ‘Transmission Impossible’ via One Little Indian


BILLY MACKENZIE Boltimoore – Original JiiHoo Bootmix (2011)

The vocal from Mackenzie’s stark cover of Randy Newman’s ‘Baltimore’ from the ‘Wild Is The Wind’ EP was flown into a hypnotic bootleg dance track by ace producer Jori Hulkkonen, best known for his work with John Foxx and as part of SIN COS TAN. With deliberate incorrect spelling of our hero’s name to mask its illegal nature, this was a haunting ghostly return from the heavens to the dancefloor. Mackenzie would have loved it and had he been alive today, he would have almost certainly been working with Hulkkonen.

Available on the 12 inch vinyl release ‘Boltimoore’ b/w ’Ghouls’ via Kojak Giant Sounds


In memory of BILLY MACKENZIE 1957 – 1997

http://www.billymackenzie.com/

https://www.facebook.com/theassociatesofficial/

http://whippetatthewheel.blogspot.co.uk/


Text by Chi Ming Lai
24th March 2014, updated 16th June 2019

MARTYN WARE Gets Dark…

Electrical Foundations

Back in late 1980 with creative and personal tensions running high in the original HUMAN LEAGUE, manager Bob Last engineered a split between its founder members.

Phil Oakey and Adrian Wright kept the name and later had commercial success with ‘Dare’.

Meanwhile as part of the severance terms, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were given a 1% royalty on ‘Dare’.

This provided the opportunity to form a production company along the lines of THE CHIC ORGANISATION to best exploit their talents with a variety of projects. Virgin Records signed them as BRITISH ELECTRIC FOUNDATION with an option to deliver SIX albums a year!! In 1981, the albums scheduled were BEF ‘Music For Stowaways’, HEAVEN 17 ‘Penthouse & Pavement’, HOT GOSSIP ‘Geisha Boys & Temple Girls’, ‘The Golden Hour Of The Future’ and BEF ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Vol1’.

Of those, only the first three came out that year. ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Vol1’ wasn’t released until 1982 as it proved to be a mammoth task to organise all the logistics for the various guest vocalists while ‘The Golden Hour Of The Future’ album (which consisted of early demos of THE HUMAN LEAGUE ) fell into a dispute with Phil Oakey and wasn’t released until 2002. Eventually HEAVEN 17 took over as the main focus for BEF.

‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Vol1’, a hi-tech covers album featuring guest vocalists and directed by Martyn Ware was a critical, if not a commercial success. From it, ‘Ball Of Confusion’ is now acknowledged as Tina Turner’s modern day recorded comeback and led to Ware producing her big hit ‘Let’s Stay Together’ in 1983. Other vocalists included Sandie Shaw, Paul Jones and Bernie Nolan.

Meanwhile, on ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’ sung by Paula Yates, backing vocals were provided by The Nancy Boys who were actually HEAVEN 17 plus Bob Geldof and Midge Ure… the latter’s tones can be heard distinctly on the “Strike-Strike!” part!

The album was recorded in John Foxx’s Garden Studios and Foxx played acoustic guitar on Billy Mackenzie’s unique take of ‘It’s Over’. Thus ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Vol1’ remains the only album project to feature ULTRAVOX’s first two vocalists, albeit it rather obliquely!

1991 saw the release of ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Vol2’ which had much more of a mainstream soul vibe; Tina Turner and Billy Mackenzie returned while other notable vocalists included Chaka Khan, Billy Preston, Green Gartside and Terence Trent D’Arby whose massive selling 1987 debut ‘Introducing The Hardline…’ was produced by Ware.

Other production work followed for Ware including ERASURE who played host to HEAVEN 17’s comeback when they supported the duo in 1997.

The concept of the new BEF album ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Volume 3 – Dark’ is dark interpretations of perceivably upbeat songs using chilling, stark electronics and eerie soundtrack arrangements. This third volume has been long awaited. First announced back in 2007, parts of it were premiered at a special weekend showcase at The Roundhouse in 2011. Recording has now been completed and the compendium features among others, Boy George, Sandie Shaw, Kim Wilde, Green Gartside, Andy Bell, Sarah Jane Morris, Polly Scattergood and of course, Glenn Gregory.

As well as the album’s release, a pair of BEF live shows have been announced. The BEF Band will comprise Martyn Ware, Berenice Scott, Billie Godfrey, Kelly Barnes and Asa Bennett while the special guest vocalists announced include Andy Bell, Sandie Shaw, Kim Wilde, Glenn Gregory, Green Gartside, Shingai Shoniwa, Kate Jackson (London only), Sarah Jane Morris (London only) and David J Roch (Sheffield only). Martyn Ware kindly spoke about his new sixteen track opus and the upcoming live shows…

How was the BEF weekend for you looking back? And you’re doing it again?

Photo by Virginia Turbett

I didn’t want it to be just a one-off but it’s too expensive to tour so I managed to persuade the promoters and Mark Jones from Wall Of Sound to do two dates. It’s less of a risk for them and it’s less expense for us. This time, we’ve put a bit more structure and thought into it.

There’s less artists involved so there will be more kind of depth to it, if you know what I mean? It’s going to be a good two hours long this show!

What was your highlight of the Roundhouse BEF gig?

That’s a tough one. It’s was great having Boy George on the bill, I just love him. Sandie Shaw is a legend, Billie Godfrey was just fantastic, Glenn’s always great… where do you stop?

Was there a moment where your heart missed a beat but you pulled through? Like with vocal cues etc?

Well, yeah, for Midge Ure particularly… he’d not really had a chance to rehearse. Some of them were quite hard… but we can deal with a certain amount of flexibility! I know all the songs anyway so I could jump in! I was relying on them rehearsing at home because we didn’t have time or the money to have the full scale rehearsal with everybody there, it was just too ridiculously expensive to put everyone up overnight.

It was great to get the 3CD BEF ‘1981-2011’ boxed set out to commemorate the occasion, but can I ask what happened with regards that strange three minute edit of ‘Decline Of The West’ as it would appear many fans were disappointed about that?

It was an error and it was too late to do anything about it… it was to do with the fact that I attended the selection of all the versions and the wrong version got annotated… my fault! I put my hands up!

As an event, you did really well to only have one singer not show up…

Yeah, considering they were all doing it for free, it was bloody amazing frankly! The only reason Elly Jackson from LA ROUX didn’t turn up was she had a voice problem at the time; she did apologise profusely. But she’s in the middle of doing her new album so won’t be at these shows. Unfortunately, George can’t do it for the same reason. But there are a couple of surprise guests that we have in mind….

The one that stood out for me at the BEF gig was ‘Every Time I See You I Go Wild’ sung by Kim Wilde…

Yeah, it’s an amazing thing! They’ve just been doing a video for it and I am looking forward to this… Kim in a shiny back catsuit! It’s not fair, they won’t show me any photos! They’re keeping it as a surprise! But I’ve heard reports from people who were there…

You mentioned at the show that it’s just Roland System 100. It’s like early HUMAN LEAGUE, what inspired the arrangement?

That was actually not my arrangement… it’s a friend of mine Brian Duffy from The Modified Toy Orchestra. Around the time I started ‘Dark’, he’d sent me an email saying he’d bought a System 100. So I said “maybe you’d like to do an arrangement for a particular song?” We decided on ‘Every Time I See You I Go Wild’ before we knew Kim was going to be doing it. I thought he’d do something quite basic but he sent me the song back with about 80 tracks on monophonic System 100, pretty much all played by hand apart from the rhythm! I was just blown away of course, it’s beautiful. I’ve obviously enhanced it here and there but it’s his arrangement. Kim’s vocal matches it perfectly.

Did you dig out much vintage gear for the ‘Dark’ sessions? How do you find using the virtual software versions of the classic synths?

I didn’t have the option to use virtual synths on ‘Vol1’ obviously, but a lot of it is about time and economics. This album has been a labour of love, nobody has paid me any money to do it, it’s cost me money to do it. Everyone who has participated, apart from the backing vocalists who were paid, has contributed their time.

The first BEF album had a budget so consequently, I had time to experiment, mess around with all the synthesizers, hire stuff. With ‘Dark’, it was a matter of doing it as quickly as we could with as little cost and effort as possible. So you’ve got to be pragmatic. To get the thing done, we had to use a lot of virtual synths, not that I have a problem with that… the Arturia ones are very good. I used a lot of Jupiter 8 and Moog Modular virtual stuff, they’re the two workhorses really for what I did. When you think about it, how much of ‘Vol1’ was electronic? There wasn’t a huge amount, a lot of it was real instruments so in a way, it’s more electronic now than it was in the first place.

Have you tweaked any of the arrangements or sounds of the songs as a result of the Roundhouse gig?

No, not really. I think they all worked pretty well. Having done a lot of live work now as opposed to back then, we have a lot more experience of what works anyway and that gets fed into the lens through which arrangements are created.

Have you any particular favourites?

I like ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ very much and that arrangement was with the help of another friend Marvin Ayres who’s a composer in his own right; he’s like a one-man orchestra so there’s a lot of real strings on that.

I’m also very fond of ‘Picture This’ which again Marvin helped me with and I’m very proud of ‘Smalltown Boy’ as a piece of work, I think it’s a thing of beauty.

In different ways, I’m very pleased with it all… I’m not just saying that. It’s an album even if I had not been associated with, I’d go out and buy… and there aren’t many albums I’d buy nowadays *laughs*

There appears to be quite a few covers of ‘Smalltown Boy’ doing the rounds with acts like LITTLE BOOTS, EMILIE SIMON and DIVINE KNIGHTS having a go. What’s your view on what sometimes appears to be cyclical interest in particular songs?

It’s weird isn’t it? It’s really interesting. In this particular instance, a lot of it is to do with the re-examination of good material from that period. Whereas when music first started to reference the 80s, a lot of the general public were regarding it as a kind of novelty, and not really discerning between the good and the bad stuff.

Now that people have dug a bit deeper, they’re starting top appreciate the early 80s were probably the last golden age of interesting popular music I think, not just cos we were involved but generally, there was an amazing proliferation of talent and new ideas. So it’s just that people are looking back at that period now and cherry picking… there’s a lot more compilations that have credible stuff from that period now as well. People are going “YEAH! I’ve forgotten about that one and it was really good wasn’t it!” plus you’ve got a brand new audience for all this stuff.

So it’s worth cherry picking the best stuff that is probably simple enough to replicate in a different manner. I mean, it’s difficult to cover something like ‘Temptation’ for instance because it’s very much “how do you cover it?”… it’s got massive production values, big orchestra etc so if you do a simple version of that, it’s not going to be as good… probably. Whereas things like ‘Smalltown Boy’ were pretty stripped back in the first place really.

The two songs which are the highlights for me and have the most unusual singer / arrangement combinations are Sarah Jane Morris on ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’ and David J Roch on ‘Same Love’…

That’s interesting, you’re the first person to have said those two. I had to fight long and hard to even get ‘Don’t Wanna Know’ as part of the main album. At first, Mark Jones wasn’t as keen on it as I was and maybe wanted it as a bonus track.

And I’m going “no, hold on a second…this is a fantastic vocal”; she does it live with just a guitar so she was very familiar with the song and I love that song, it’s beautiful. And then I thought “how can we put this into dark electronics?” It’s almost like a darker version of YAZOO or even like PRINCE to a certain extent, there’s kind of a slow, elegant funkiness about it which I like. She’s got quite a deep mezzo soprano, she’s an amazing person.

David J Roch, he’s got a great voice that lad… to be honest, I sprung the arrangement on him. Again, it was his suggestion to do ‘Same Love’ as he does it live with just a guitar. I thought it was interesting to do a song from a soul artist like Bill Withers, but in a different framework. I started off with doing this ambient filmic thing which is what the first half of the song and then I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to do the second half as a Giorgio Moroder medium tempo disco number… and it worked! God bless him, he got right into it in the end which is how I got him to do all the backing vocals and everything. But he’d never done or considered doing a disco number in his life. He’s a really talented guy.

Last time we spoke, I joked to you about getting Scott Walker to do this album…

He was too hard to get, I can’t imagine him jumping at it!

But Glenn Gregory’s performance hints at him on ‘It Was a Very Good Year’?

Yeah, there is a bit of that… I gave Glenn the backing track and he did it alone in his own studio so I wasn’t in the room with him. We usually are but it’s just how it worked out.

He did it like a pilot vocal and I loved it so much that I told him “we don’t need to re-do this”.

Sometimes, the first things that you think of are the best… I thought “should I put so BVs around it? No! Should I change the arrangement? Not really!”. I just added a FUGEES breakbeat pattern on the end which I think works. Yeah, I’m very pleased with it, it came out better than I expected… ‘It Was a Very Good Year’ itself is brilliant, but you could easily make a terrible version of it. It wouldn’t be Glenn’s fault, it would be my fault. I think we cracked it and I’m looking forward to hearing him do it live.

The late inclusion of ‘Party Fears Two’… that came from the HEAVEN 17 ‘Naked As Advertised’ 2008 reworkings compilation?

You’re familiar with it and a lot of our fans are too but the broader public aren’t, so I thought it deserved a wider outing. I thought it would fit with the mood of the album as well.

Well, the other thing is that it’s a nice way of having Billy Mackenzie on the album as he was on the first two BEF albums, but of course he’s no longer with us…

That’s exactly another thing… it was almost like a tacit tribute to Billy and it was obviously done as a tribute to Billy anyway; it thematic fits on every level really.

And breaking news… Andy Bell wants to do ‘Party Fears Two’ live and I think his voice will match that beautifully for this show.

You can let people know that… I’ll tell Glenn, don’t worry! *laughs*

The funny thing about your version of ‘Party Fears Two’, when I first heard it… I didn’t like it! It took me about four years to like it!

You’re joking?

I don’t know if it’s because it’s such an iconic song but I absolutely love it now…

Our version is like a totally different song isn’t it? What it does do is reveal the beauty of the original melody and lyric, that’s really the premise for the whole album.

How did you find Max Pokrovsky for ‘The Day Before You Came’?

Max is bonkers! He is a famous pop/post-punk star in the Russian Federation. He’s in the rock band NOGU SVELO! but his real passion is Western European electronic pop music! So he’s an enormous fan of ERASURE and he approached me a couple of years ago to produce some material for him because his dream is to move to London and to become famous in the electropop field!

But the problem is of course, a) he’s always going to sound unusual shall we say, because although his English is getting better, he sounds very Russian indeed and b) we’re not at the peak of success and sales for electronic popular music at the moment, certainly not stuff sung by mad Russian dudes! *laughs*

Not withstanding that, he’s a really good writer and arranger so I did couple of tracks with him, he’s worked with a couple of other British producers and sooner or later, his album’s going to come out. And I thought to give him a bit of a leg up to expose him to the general public, it would be nice to put him on this album. I asked him which track he liked to do and he said the ABBA track.

I think it’s a nice piece of work. Again, he did most of the arrangement of ‘The Day Before You Came’… this isn’t true for all the tracks but it just happens to be the ones you’ve mentioned. I wanted to make this like a collective experiment and a way of distributing the work so I didn’t spend a year working on something that I was not going to get the money back for.

There’s something for everyone on this album isn’t there?

What I like is the eclecticism of the album. I have always preferred albums that have a wide range of sonic styles because I believe people are bright enough to connect the dots. I don’t believe in one single style throughout an album, I think it’s a bit boring frankly.

It’s not just a patchwork quilt of disparate ideas, there is a theme behind it all and the unifying thing is my assessment of what is good about the arrangements. For instance, I’ve not used every element of people’s contributions so I’m kind of like the sub-editor, even when other people have done the basic stuff.

Another one I like is ‘The Look Of Love’ by Polly Scattergood…

Yeah, Polly was probably second person after Billie Godfrey to agree to do the album.

I contacted Daniel Miller at Mute Records to see if any of his artists would be interested in this artistic concept and he said “I think Polly would be perfect for this”… and indeed she was!

I’m a little bit upset that she’s not going to be doing the live shows because her management have decided that she’s got a new album coming out and they don’t want any distractions… I think that’s ridiculous personally but there you go, that’s life! How’s this going to harm her in any shape or form? I failed to understand! But that’s what they think, and that’s fine!

I’m just grateful she’s done the album. And it’s a lovely version of ‘The Look Of Love’. It’s funny, I sent the album to a friend of mine, Adrian Durham who’s a big H17/BEF fan and works for Talksport. He played it to his girlfriend and got into an argument with her about this track as they didn’t have a list of the artists. She was convinced it was BJORK and actually, I can hear that…

…I thought Polly sounded a bit like Alison Goldfrapp as well!

We got very close to getting Alison on the album but for some reason she decided not to do it. It’s sad because I’m a big fan of GOLDFRAPP. But we’ve got a great line-up of people, I can’t complain at all. I am totally in their debt because none of them had to do it. I’ve got a track record for doing things right so they know I wouldn’t let anything go out there that was rubbish. And whatever you think of them because not everything is going to be to everyone’s tastes, I’ve put a lot of effort into making them sound good. They are very musical and hopefully, creative and interesting. That’s why I managed to get so many people to do it because there’s no money involved.

Were there any vocalists that you can tell me about that you might have wanted for ‘Dark’ but couldn’t get for various reasons like Siouxsie Sioux, Claudia Brücken, Elly Jackson or Midge Ure?

I asked Siouxsie and she said no… we got somewhere down the line but it just never happened.

I asked Midge but I can’t be spending my life chasing people and it was just one of those things where he didn’t really come back to me and didn’t sound terribly keen. But when he realised that the deadline had passed, he was like… I don’t think he intended not to do it. He was doing other things. With Claudia, it just never occurred to me… sometimes, you can’t see the wood from the trees.

And somebody else I thought of today who I worked with is the past is Marc Almond! That would have been great as I love his voice but I dunno, it’s just weird isn’t it?

Of course, Claudia’s just done her own covers album, so has ELO’s Jeff Lynne. The art of reinterpretation does seem to be something artists do now…

It keeps the pot stirring doesn’t it? To be honest, we live in a world where people seem to be more interested in cover versions than doing original material. I hate to say it but it’s true though!

Are there any songs that didn’t make it onto ‘Dark’ that you’re hanging onto as bonuses or just didn’t work?

Yes, there are a few but not that I’ve recorded vocals for. There’s ‘The Night’ originally by Frankie Valli…

Yes, SOFT CELL released that in 2002 so maybe you can get Marc Almond to do it? *laughs*

Yeah! That’ll be me ripping them off! *laughs*

I like this version of ‘Good Times’ that I did, it’s quite odd and I asked Martin Fry to sing on but he didn’t like it so I went off it a bit! I started doing a version of ‘Nipple To The Bottle’ but that never got finished. I started versions of ‘Night & Day’ and ‘Some Velvet Morning’ too. There are lots of others including ‘Just One Look’ which was for Elly Jacskon and never happened.

What are your fondest memories about recording ‘Dark’?

We had to go into Strongroom Studios to record Shingai Shoniwa, Boy George and Sandie Shaw so that was quite a session, with them all turning up one after another in one day.

We did all the backing vocals on the same day as well so that was very special. But the rest of it was just me, a computer and lots of phone calls!

What are your hopes and fears for the album?

My fears are no-one will hear it but my hopes are that some of the tracks will get used for synchronisations because I think tracks like ‘The Look Of Love’ and ‘Picture This’, I can see them on some teen angst movie. The album is full of characters so it might just fit the bill for certain types of films. So we’re trying to get somebody to service this to the appropriate people in Hollywood, HBO and places like that. And I hope the album does spectacularly well but I’m not expecting that because simply, there’s not the budget to promote it.

What’s the business model for someone like yourself now?

It’s difficult, there isn’t a model that makes money. But I can’t let that stop me from being creative so I have to take a view on it and pay for my exceptionally expensive lifestyle by doing other things.

How has the lavish ‘House Of Illustrious’ boxed set you’ve done with Vince Clarke been received?

It’s done well, I don’t think it’s sold out yet but it’s not far off so that’s pretty good. I’m very proud of it. It’s a collectable so all sorts of people are buying it. If you do them in a limited enough format, they become a collector’s item that will appreciate in value over the years.

A lot of care has been taken into packaging it as an artistic artefact…

People appreciate this stuff… also, just going back to ‘Dark’, the packaging is just spectacular, absolutely beautiful. It’s one of the best things Malcolm Garrett has done for us ever. It looks great!

As well as touring with HEAVEN 17, you’ve been doing these one-off appearances like at Only After Dark and the John Shuttleworth cancer charity gig. Do you use a flexible slimmed down line-up for these?

Sometimes we have to because we simply can’t afford to have the big band and it’s not appropriate for a lot of things. If you look at ERASURE for instance, it’s four people on stage and the rest is backing track… that to be honest looks like the future of what we’re going to have to do, now we’re out of the reproducing the album sound, as it were. The festival shows tend to be more people on stage just to make it look right but in terms of smaller club shows, yeah it will be a slimmed down version. Whatever happens, it will be fine because we do things like ‘Rewind’ which we’re doing this year with a slimmed down set-up because for a lot of those shows, they don’t have time to do the changeover. And a lot of those things, they have a house band… we would still prefer not to have that because it makes it sound like Karaoke as far as we’re concerned. So we end up using backing tracks.

Is there likely to be new HEAVEN 17 material?

We are intending to do that; we’ve had an idea that we want to approach. It’s still in the birthing stage but I think we want to make it very electronic and stripped down, more so than even the BEF album… we always start off with this intention but it always ends up epic!! But I think we want to do something more in the vein of early HUMAN LEAGUE arrangements like ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin Feelin’ rather than ‘Temptation’. And focussing on the way we’ve been performing, as the two of us are almost the act now… I’ve been getting braver and braver and coming a little bit more to the front, the banter thing and all that! So potentially, it could be more evenly balanced vocally than it has been in the past.

How do HEAVEN 17 manage to straddle the nostalgia circuit yet remain credible at the same time when other bands get labelled as retro acts?

We’re quite open about it I think… I’ve had this discussion with agencies who want to employ us and when we were with William Morris who are a big agency and have massive electronic acts.

At first they were saying “you can’t do this 80s thing, it’ll kill your credibility” and I said “Look, if you do it with the right intention, there’s nothing wrong so long as you’re selective”… you can’t accept everything that comes along.

Although we’ve done it in the past, we’re not going to do ‘Here & Now’ now we’ve established ourselves from doing the ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ shows at the credible end of that thing… everything is informed by that attitude. I don’t see a problem with ‘Rewind’ for instance but you’d have to pay us a lot of money to do things like ‘Here & Now’ because they seem to have gone onto the cheesier end of the market, although we wouldn’t rule it out because we need to pay the bills, it’s as simple as that.

But even within something like that, the tracks that we do, they’re credible. We still do ‘Fascist Groove Thang’ even in short sets. Although we don’t do it anymore, I remember doing a Butlins show because the money was really good and we started it with ‘Fascist Groove Thang’… you just look at these families and they’d be going “WHAT?” *laughs*

There are some artists from that period who we’ve been on the same bill as us who will literally just do a couple of their hits and then they’ll do other people’s songs as part of their main set and it’s only 20 minutes long. It’s like “REALLY?”; these are artists who have put out several albums at least back in their heyday yet they don’t have the bravery to do that stuff! That subtle difference is the distinction between what we do where we have four or five albums of credible material to pick from and shall we say, pop acts who have less longevity and depth from that period.


ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Martyn Ware

Special thanks to Rosie Johnstone at Impressive PR

‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Volume 3 – Dark’ is released by Wall Of Sound on 27th May 2013 as a single CD, deluxe 2CD with bonus instrumental disc and download

To hear samples from the album and details on how to pre-order, please visit: www.britishelectricfoundation.com

www.facebook.com/BritishElectricFoundation/

www.heaven17.com/bef/


Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
10th May 2013

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