I had yet to become educated in the
subject of musical theatre, but there were a few disco parties in which I could
let my hair down. I recall my first Rotaract event aimed at new members. I may
have been the only recruit in that particular drive but that did mean the
existing Rotaractors made a fuss of me. It must have worked because I ended up
staying for nine years and I’m honoured to count some of those present as my
oldest friends three decades later.
On that occasion, I remember dancing to the likes of Mai Tai’s ‘History’ and
Prince’s ‘1999’ although I probably sat out the slowies like Foreigner’s ‘I
Want to Know What Love Is’. Rotaract also reintroduced me to
cinema, beginning with the contemporary hit comedy ‘Beverley Hills Cop’.
Besides being won over by young Eddie Murphy’s incredibly energetic
performance, the film was also one of the first non-musicals I remember to
feature a pop soundtrack. Glenn Frey’s ‘The Heat Is On’ and The Pointer
Sisters’ ‘Neutron Dance’ did well in the UK charts, but most memorable of all
was Harold Faltermeyer’s synth instrumental ‘Axel F’.
Later in the year, I was to go with
friends to see ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’, iconic
mid-Eighties movies both, with music which captured the flavour of 1985. I
never saw ‘The Breakfast Club’. However, apart from making stars of the ‘Brat
Pack’ (Estevez, Ringwald, Sheedy et al), it belatedly brought Simple Minds to
the attention of the Yanks. ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ was probably my
favourite song of the year and won them a great spot at Live Aid. I
was already a fan, of course, but their music was beginning to acquire an epic
kind of sound, which didn’t always work for me. ‘Alive and Kicking’ seemed more
designed for the 12” single market. I actually bought it but regretted it soon
afterwards. ‘Don’t You’ feels a bit dated now, but back then it was a song
which always made me stop what I was doing and listen.
‘Miami Vice’ was the TV cop show if you were into pastel jackets, flash yachts,
sports cars and soft rock. Yes, I watched it. Some of the stories were quite
good, too. However, the soundtrack became almost as important to its popularity
as the super-cool stars Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. Jan Hammer went
to number five with his fast and furious theme tune in 1985. The sublime ‘Crockett’s
Theme’ took a further two years to be a big hit, though.
The programme lost its way a bit when
guest stars found their way on to the cast list. In one 1985 episode Phil
Collins played – guess what! – a cheeky London con man. But then our Phil was
everywhere that year; five Top 20 singles in the UK are testament to that. His
‘No Jacket Required’ album was the second biggest-seller and his ‘Easy Lover’
duet with Philip Bailey topped the singles chart for four weeks in the spring.
Then, of course, he appeared on Live Aid not once, but twice! Here he is with 'In the Air Tonight'. Many of us were wishing he’d get back with Genesis to save us from more sickly
songs aimed at the American MoR market.
I wasn’t too enamoured of Prince or
Bruce Springsteen either. Alost as ubiquitous as Mr Collins, neither hit the
spot for me. The whole ‘Purple Rain’ package left me grey, and ‘Let’s Go Crazy’
just made me mad. Bruce may be a living legend, but ‘Dancing in the Dark’ was
merely boring and ‘Born in the USA’ was just our denim-clad hero shouting on
and on. And on and on….. At least the flip side gave us something a bit more to
my taste: the softer, subtler ‘I’m On Fire’. I know Bruce engenders adoration
like few others but I just feel unable to identify with his tales of
blue-collar industrial Americana. There, I’ve said it.
There were great songs from all around
the world in ’85. Pop was definitely going global. It wasn’t just the Americans
saying ‘We Are the World’. A young Canadian rocker Bryan Adams finally made it
over here with the exciting ‘Run To You’.
Strangely, his next three releases – arguably amongst his most famous tracks –
failed to crack our Top 30. I only heard the exquisite anthem ‘Heaven’ on Radio
1’s US Chart show, while the immortal ‘Summer of 69’ passed me by for several
years thanks to its lowly chart peak of 42. Like Phil Collins, I consider his
early stuff far superior to his later, massive-selling soft-rock duets. Yuck!
Holland gave us the aforementioned Mai
Tai; Ireland, Feargal Sharkey’s solo number one ‘A Good Heart’; Germany, the
dynamic electro-pop ‘Duel’ by Propaganda,
and Italy, the rip-roaring summer Euro-dance hit ‘Tarzan Boy’ (a
real guilty pleasure if ever there was one).
Then there was Norway. A-Ha were
certainly way off my radar until about October 1985. Their single ‘Take on Me’
had flopped the previous year but once you’d seen the new video, life would
never be the same again. A stunning combination of pencil-sketch animation and
live action made the jaw drop.
It illustrated a four-minute fantasy romance, in which lead singer Morten
Harket pulled a girl into her comic book and into a scary race for her life.
Would she survive? Would she get back to the real world? Would she end up with
Morten? The story kept us guessing right to the final frame... well, what do
you think?! Actually, for all the repeated viewings, for all the technological
advances in video production, ‘Take On Me’ still stirs emotions in me. It’s
just one of the greatest synth pop records.
It just failed to top the chart here,
but made number one in an incredible 36 countries. Early the next year, ‘The
Sun Always Shines On TV’ did go all the way in the UK, and both ‘Train of
Thought’ and the ballad ‘Hunting High and Low’ also pierced our top five. I
even bought a copy of the album, signed by the trio at an event at HMV in
Oxford Street. It was surprisingly good! What I liked about A-Ha, and Harket in
particular, was that they were Anglophiles. Morten often supported local
charity runs in Wickford, Essex, and he’s still going strong. I don’t know
whether he still possesses that extraordinary vocal range. The chorus of ‘Take
On Me’, from lower register winding up to such a shrill falsetto, was
impossible to replicate. Believe me, I tried!
For all their Scandinavian heritage,
A-Ha weren’t quite the new Abba. The super-Swedes had long been retired, but in
1985, their genius writers, Bjorn and Benny, returned to the spotlight in a
different format. Aided by experienced lyricist Tim Rice, they managed to
construct a musical around – of all things - a Cold War chess rivalry. Yet
their golden touch hadn’t deserted them. The show’s big ballad, ‘I Know Him So Well’,
sung by Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson, was the year’s second biggest-seller,
and ‘One Night in Bangkok’ also did well for Murray Head. I enjoyed seeing
‘Chess’ in the West End in 1986, when Paige and Head were still in the cast,
but it ran for only three years. At least ‘Mamma Mia’ did rather better in the
twenty-first century.
The Paige/Dickson duet wasn’t the top
love song of the year, though. They were trumped by Jennifer Rush’s
million-selling ‘The Power of Love’, a song I have always hated. In contrast, I
loved Phyllis Nelson’s smoochfest ‘Move Closer’.
Sadly I never got to slow dance with anybody to this one-hit wonder (sigh!),
but its romantic lyrics left little to the imagination.
Many women would have liked to move
closer to Bryan Ferry. He had become known as the Face of the Eighties, and
with songs like ‘Slave to Love’, his voice and smart fashion sense, he was
often on the magazine front pages. Personally I found his smooth persona too
cloying – and that was before his right-wing politics placed him beyond the
pale.
There were other, more charming Brits
in the charts. I really enjoyed Kirsty McColl’s upbeat version of Billy Bragg’s
‘A New England’ and
Marillion’s power ballad ‘Kayleigh’.
Singer Fish was often on TOTP that year, even brandishing lyric cards for the
follow-up ‘Lavender’ when he had a bad throat. Huh? We all knew he was going to
mime anyway.
Eurythmics released their masterpiece
‘There Must be an Angel’ in
the summer. It was, and still sounds so lush, a near-perfect parcel of Annie
Lennox’s diamond-studded voice, Dave Stewart’s multi-layered synth production
and even a harmonica solo by Stevie Wonder. The Cure were at their poppiest
with ‘In Between Days’ and Go West briefly promised to be the next Big Thing on
the back of ‘We Close Our Eyes’ but I was becoming more fascinated by the
growing cult of The Smiths.
In February, they appeared on TOTP
performing ‘How Soon is Now?’ Its disturbingly deep repetitive tremolo guitar hook and Morrissey’s
melancholic opening words:
“I
am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir, of nothing in particular”
I am the son and heir, of nothing in particular”
were like nothing I’d heard before.
The track trundles on a bit too long – probably why it peaked at a mere 24 –
but, alongside ‘The Boy With a Thorn in His Side’, it motivated me to buying
their compilation of singles, B sides and Radio 1 session tracks, ‘Hatful of
Hollow’. Poor Morrissey. He has divided the nation’s critics more than just
about anyone else. I am firmly in the ‘pro’ camp. Yes, he always sounds so
morose, miserable, mad even. But the UK music world would be so much poorer
without his contribution of lyrics and insightful quotes. Johnny Marr’s
melodies are, of course, also crucial to The Smiths’ success, but the
Mozmeister from Davyhulme takes some beating when it comes to my, and many
others’ musical influences.
1985 was also a huge year for two
other British bands. Tears For Fears were back with a grander sound, which
helped them break America. Roland Orzabal’s rich angst-ridden vocals were to
the fore on ‘Shout' and
‘Head Over Heels’ while Curt Smith sang on the number two hit ‘Everybody Wants
to Rule the World’ backed by a catchy shuffle beat and some memorable guitar
riffs. I liked them all.
Dire Straits had been around for
several years. Some singles I’d liked (‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Sultans of
Swing’) while others left me cold or just neutral (‘Private Investigations’,
‘Twisting by the Pool’) In 1985, I became exposed to some of their album
material thanks to my friend Phil Polley. The band’s early albums and ‘Alchemy
Live’ were often on his car cassette player during Rotaract days out. I even
bought the latter myself but probably never played it more than twice. That’s
the trouble with live albums. The quality is never as good as on the original
recordings and unless you actually saw the act in concert, hearing it on a tape
or record player just doesn’t strike an emotional chord.
The new medium of compact disc was
only just beginning to gain a foothold in the market. Its rapid expansion in
1985-86 probably owed more to Dire Straits than anyone else, and their Brothers
in Arms album in particular. Like millions of others, I was powerless to
prevent myself from buying the 12” LP, with its sky blue cover framing Mark
Knopfler’s vintage silver guitar. Actually, I didn’t like most of the tracks, a
strange brew of rock’n’roll, jazz, country and pop. However, their big ’85 hit
‘Money For Nothing’ was
unavoidable throughout the summer, but in a good way! Sting’s falsetto ‘I want my MTV’ intro, Knopfler’s fuzzy
guitar and the groundbreaking video, complete with state-of-the-art
computer-generated animation, proved irresistible.
The irony of a top rock band raking it
in with a song about a working man’s envy of a rock band’s easy lifestyle
wasn’t wasted on anyone, and probably not the group themselves. MTV loved it, too,
of course, and it was more successful in the US than here. How would they
follow Brother in Arms? They couldn’t. They didn’t even try. But it wasn’t a
bad way to bow out of the album market. My favourite Dire Straits number was,
and remains, the artfully atmospheric anti-war title track which for some
ludicrous reason progressed no higher than 16.
The horrors of war were also
highlighted on one of the most extraordinary hits of that or any other decade.
You could describe Paul Hardcastle’s ‘19' as
a dance single, and you’d be right. But it was so much more. The vocals were
simply American news clips strung together, the video a montage of Vietnam
images, the music a mishmash of synthesizer hooks, but somehow the various
elements came together in a powerful package. It also spawned a divertingly
amusing comedy parody ‘N-n-n-Nineteen Not Out’ in which a 21 year-old
impressionist Rory Bremner detailed England’s cricketing woes as The
Commentators, including John Arlott:-
“It’s a long, slow, lazy delivery.
But it's the best I can do…”
Classic!
1985 probably launched the term
‘Stadium Band’. It was intended to hurt, a derogatory term aimed at the likes
of Simple Minds, Genesis, Queen et al. Yet it was a cheap jibe. After all,
these bands, once the darlings of rock critics, were just as good as they ever
were, it’s just that they had grown so popular that they needed to book the
biggest venues to give their expanding fanbases more chance to see them
perform. Hardly their fault.
And there were no stadium concerts
bigger than the multi-venue Live Aid on 13th July 1985. After so
much preparation, it finally came to fruition on a hot day in both Wembley and
Philadelphia. The mega-gig has been
widely slated for its focus on white acts (Stevie Wonder and Jacko refused to
be involved) and, quite frankly, a lot of craggy, creaking old rockers like Led
Zep, Dylan, Beach Boys, The Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. However, I was
totally exhilarated by the whole extravaganza.
I recall travelling to Romford that
morning to collect some car insurance documents on behalf of Dad. I was
desperate to return home before the midday start. Armed with a Daily Mirror
‘special’, complete with running order and likely song choices (mostly wrong,
as things transpired) I was mightily relieved that the trains behaved and I
could set up my cassette ready for recording likely highlights from Radio 1’s
broadcast and watching the whole show on BBC1 TV. If Mum or Dad had favoured
anything on another channel, they didn’t dare let on. This was one day when I
seized control of the remote.
I did contrive to miss a chunk in the
afternoon, and I lacked the stamina to stay up beyond about 1am for the final
hours of the American leg. Nevertheless, I gorged myself on the ‘global
jukebox’, from Richard Skinner’s immortal introduction and Status Quo’s opening
rendition of ‘Rocking All Over the World’ to the McCartney-led London finale.
Stevie Wonder did have a point about the lack of black artists. Indeed, the
Philly gig was a mediocre affair, enlivened only by Madonna, and Phil Collins’
second performance of the day, thanks to the wonder of Concorde. There is a
degree of irony in that in an event designed to raise money to fight poverty, I
highlighted boring, balding Phil flying on a supersonic toy for millionaires,
and the Material Girl, who would become a symbol of Eighties consumerism!
In retrospect, without the benefit of
my rose-tinted specs, it’s evident that much of the Wembley pageant was blandly
banal. Status Quo were there only because ‘Rockin’ All Over the World’ was such an obvious way to start such a global event. The Boomtown Rats were
predictably lame, Adam Ant’s single song was a mystery to everybody and the
likes of The Style Council, Spandau Ballet and, sadly, Nik Kershaw proved they
were totally unsuited to an occasion of this magnitude.
For others, though it was their
opportunity to shine in the summer sunshine and the spotlight of an
unprecedented worldwide audience. Sting’s dazzling white ensemble stood out and
David Bowie’s stagecraft was effortless. He also earned extra Brownie points
for sacrificing one song to allow the screening (in the UK at least) of another
heartbreaking film of starving African children, to the soundtrack of The Cars’
‘Drive’. This short segment, along with Geldof’s exhortation: “Give us your focking money!”
nevertheless proved to be the most lucrative in terms of donations.
However, the acts who emerged as
stadium superstars were U2 and Queen. The former only performed two tracks,
including ‘Sunday, Bloody Sunday’ (which I’d never heard) and a seemingly endless ‘Bad’, featuring an
extravagantly-mulleted Bono slow-dancing with a girl from the audience who he’d
observed suffering in the crush.
Queen’s set an hour later, between Dire
Straits and Bowie, was to go down in rock folklore. This was Freddie Mercury’s
stage, strutting up and down, brandishing the mic stand in ever-more risqué
poses. And then there was his imperious voice, belting out the biggest hits.
For all that, I’d say the band were at their rockiest best for ‘Hammer to Fall’.
How could anything follow Live Aid? I
know it was mostly middle-class music by the middle-aged for the middle-aged but
nevertheless I wasn’t buying the ‘Death of rock’n’roll’ epithet – and still aren’t.
It was more a case of how would the record-buying public react? Other charity
mega-gigs have followed and on each occasion it’s undeniably a win-win
situation. Participants boost their sales and the organisers raise millions for
the nominated charities.
Before the days of instant downloads,
the charts weren’t so sensitive. If you were blown away by Neil Young or Hall
and Oates, and headed straight for Woolworth’s, there was no guarantee there
would be a copy of ‘Helpless’ or ‘Maneater’ on the racks. In terms of the UK
charts, it took several weeks before the re-release of ‘Drive’ zoomed up to the
top five again. Similarly it was not until September when the bawdily bumptious
cover of ‘Dancing in the Street’ by Bowie and Mick Jagger, shown during Live
Aid as a video, reached number one. David looked a bit distracted but fortunately Mick
seemed to inject some energy into it all.
That August, we went on holiday to
Ibiza. Not for us the bright lights and hedonistic haunts of San Antonio; we
were based in the more family-friendly resort of Portinatx. One evening, we
ventured to a fish restaurant overlooking the picturesque bay. Music played
from a speaker and I recognised music I’d heard on a TV show a few months
earlier. Was it by Talk Talk? I liked it enough to follow it up on our return
home, identifying the track I’d heard as ‘It’s My Life’. I
ended up buying the album, which served as my favourite for months to follow.
The single had bombed but did at least enjoy a more successful revival in the
Nineties.
‘Life’s What You Make It’ made the top
20 early the next year, and I made it two Talk Talk purchases with the ‘Colour
of Spring’ album. It, too, contained some really good pop tunes and longer-form
ballads. Two years later, I didn’t wait for singles releases before shelling
out my £6.99 (or whatever) on the follow-up, Spirit of Eden. Just as well, as
I’d have been waiting a long time! It proved to be a dreaded ‘experimental’
record. Critically acclaimed, perhaps, but to me one long yawnathon.
Nevertheless, I have fond memories of Mark Hollis’ band and their mid-Eighties
New Wave pop, sparked by a random listen on a quiet corner of the Balearics.
While away in the Med, Madonna was
sweeping all before her in the UK. She’d already made a substantial impression
on the singles charts, but ‘Into the Groove' was her first number one, dominating August. A cracking dance number driven by
a booming bass synth line, this was a record which practically defined what a
1985 pop song should sound like. That month, Ms Ciccone also occupied the
number two position with the re-released ‘Holiday’. Another ideal track for the heady
days of summer.
Yet these were just two of eight (yes,
EIGHT) singles which peppered the top five in 1985, mostly culled from her
Nile Rodgers-produced Like a Virgin album. The slowie ‘Crazy For You’ had
peaked at two in the spring but wasn’t on the LP. ‘Material Girl’, ‘Angel’,
‘Gambler’, ‘Dress You Up’, the list went on and on. Madonna was sassy, sexy,
outspoken and highly marketable. Buoyed further by her Live Aid
performance, she was undoubtedly the star of ’85, and of course this was
just the start. The Age of Madonna was upon us!
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