My Musical History Part 11

The South Atlantic

From April onwards, the year, and indeed the rest of the decade as it turned out, could only be viewed through the prism of the Falklands War. Now obviously, at the time, we had no idea what the long term effects would be. We only knew that the task force had to be sent. I say ‘we’ because in Kent in 1982, and indeed throughout most of the country, there was not much in the way of vocal opposition. At school, or indeed anywhere else, such ‘disloyalty’ was completely anathema, but of course there were all shades of opinion in the country. It was just that anyone against the war learned very quickly to be quiet. Looked at from a distance of nearly 40 years the events seem to be easily traceable and fairly predictable. That wasn’t how it appeared at the time. First of all, it wasn’t clear if there was going to be a war. Nowadays, people consider that Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party were always going to send a task force. In fact, that was very far from certain at the time. Sending your entire Navy 8,000 miles to fight a conventional analogue based war was a massive undertaking. Any communication from the combatants to the commanders was difficult and could be useful to the enemy, while the reporters were heavily censored in a way that would be impossible now. It was that completely justifiable censorship that led to the most famous report of the War. The marvellous Brian Hanrahan was able to tell worried families whose pilots were based on Hermes that everything was OK without giving away secret information using the following masterful turn of phrase:

I’m not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid, but I counted them all out, and I counted them all back.

As in any war, there were times when the whole conflict appeared to be in the balance. When the Sir Tristram and the Sir Galahad were attacked in Bluff Cove and 56 servicemen were killed later in the war, it still looked as though the Argentinians might gain the upper hand, but the advance by the land forces on Port Stanley, the Falkland Islands capital led to the surrender of the Argentine forces. 255 British servicemen were killed, along with 649 Argentinians. In the immediate aftermath there was celebration and relief, but also a sense of the grievous loss of so many young men. War is never simple to analyse even with hindsight. All I can say is that at the time there was little triumphalism. What I saw was pride mixed with sorrow as people of my age reflected on the first real conflict of their lifetime, and hoped it would be the last in the days when the spectre of nuclear war still haunted our imagination and our entertainment.

Bucks Fizz to Meatloaf

1982 started off with Don’t You Want Me by the Human League at Number 1. It was replaced by Bucks Fizz with their second chart topper ‘The Land of Make Believe’ which, on the face of it, was a cute little nursery rhyme song and definitely not a song to improve their chances of being taken seriously. However, the tune itself is just so strong that the lyrics almost become lost in it. It has various allegorical references that apparently criticise Thatcherism (!) but listened to again after all this time it is the music that leaves the lasting impression. It ended up being Bucks Fizz’s biggest selling song and contemporaries OMD and Bob Geldof were both really impressed with the quality woven into the record.

As Bucks Fizz got to Number 1 another record was released that opened up another genre to me, in the same way Adam and the Ants had the previous year. The genre was Heavy Rock, and the track was Dead Ringer for Love by Meatloaf. When I first heard it I was completely blown away by it and within three months I had bought the Dead Ringer album and then the classic Bat Out of Hell album and my conversion was complete. A couple of months later Run to the Hills by Iron Maiden continued the process as my musical tastes became still more diverse.

One of the groups who had hung around on the edge of my musical consciousness for a year or so were Depeche Mode but none of their early singles really made me stop in my tracks. Then, along came the frankly gorgeous See You. The story of a boy wanting to reconnect with a former girlfriend just captivated me from the first time I heard it and sent me straight down to the record shop on Saturday morning to add it to my collection. I know that Depeche Mode’s huge successes lay in the later 80s, but to me See You will always be my favourite single of theirs.

Chas and Dave to Yazoo

Strange as it may seem, one of my favourite ballads of the 80s came from the masters of Rockney and music hall standards. Despite being best known for Rabbit and Margate at the time, Chas and Dave could turn their hand to pretty much any kind of music and they had a huge hit with Ain’t No Pleasing You, written and sung by Chas Hodges. It had been two years since the musical arrangement came to Hodges and he was inspired to write the words when he heard an argument between his cousin and his cousin’s wife which ended up with a more profane version of the final lyric! Just before the track was released Hodges added a string arrangement of 8 violins and 2 cellos which turned out to be the magic ingredient. The quality of the words and the music, together with Hodges’ rougher delivery which gave it an earthy authenticity, made it a romantic favourite and gave the duo their biggest hit, reaching Number 2 in the charts behind Bucks Fizz who snatched their third chart topper from under Chas and Dave’s noses with My Camera Never Lies.

In April Status Quo released their final track with original drummer John Coghlan, appropriately called Dear John. It was the start of their chart renaissance as hit followed hit for the next couple of years. In many ways it is Quo as everyone remembers them with the crunching guitars, pounding beat and the singing of both Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt, whose superb rock voices gave it extra depth. It is still perhaps my favourite Quo song and it sent me diving into their back catalogue which introduced me to more classics from their prog days onwards.

Yazoo were the brainchild of Vince Clark who had recently left Depeche Mode. His ability to write a synth based song was already well known, but he found some of his greatest success by teaming up with arguably the greatest female voice of the 80s in Alison Moyet. Her majestic, powerful, emotional delivery gave extra power to the song and sent the group into the charts with their first release Only You. It was only kept off of Number 1 by the odd combination of Nicole, whose Eurovision song contest winner A Little Peace, held Only You at Number 2 to be followed by Madness with their only chart topper House of Fun. Yazoo only stayed together for two albums, but in that time produced more quality tracks than many groups with 10 albums to their names. Both Clark and Moyet were destined to go on to bigger things, but their chemistry made Yazoo a seminal synthpop group that influenced many others in the years that followed.

A Summer of Big Tunes

There were some blockbusters between July and September 1982. In the space of 11 weeks, three songs that are still instantly recognisable four decades later hit the Number 1 spot. Fame by Irene Cara, from the film of the same name spent 3 weeks at the top before giving way to the iconic Come on Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners who were themselves replaced by the theme from Rocky III, Eye of the Tiger by Survivor. It really epitomised the start of two to three years of music where the top spot seemed to be dominated by songs that stood the test of time. I liked all three when they first came out, but it was Kevin Rowland’s song about his teenage girlfriend that became the tune of the summer and one of the most recognisable records of the whole decade. From the Irish style opening with the fiddles of the Emerald Express, not a note is wasted as it becomes an assault on your senses, especially when you listen to it at a disco where the tune makes it impossible to stay sitting down. I stopped dancing years ago, but I reckon it would still get me up on my feet even now! Kevin Rowland never sounded better, even on Geno, and it still sends the hair on the back of my neck standing up and sends shivers of anticipation and recognition right through me.

The other songs that I remember most clearly from that summer were both huge hits – or so I thought. The Boystown Gang were an American group whose only major hit was a Hi NRG version of the Andy Williams hit Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. It is a sublime remake that disproves the old adage that the original is always the best version of any song. It is definitely on a par with the original because it manages to update it seamlessly and becomes a classic in its own right. Now that track definitely was a huge hit, getting to Number 4 in the charts, and only missing out from going higher due to two of the monster hits mentioned above and What by Soft Cell, who followed up their two earlier Top 3 hits in 1982, Torch and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye with their final big hit.

The song that I thought was a big hit and actually wasn’t, was the sublime Hurry Home by Wavelength, one of the great one hit wonder songs of the decade that peaked at Number 17! I have spent all these years believing that it was Top 5 probably because it deserved to be. If you have never listened to it, do yourself a favour and pop on to my YouTube list    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYNHCBtlxb8-rLS9ny5FgtWCTXYtRq9MH

The rest of the year

1982 didn’t let up with the quality, although Renee and Renato getting the Christmas Number 1 with Save Your Love was a quite unforgivable lapse of taste on the part of the record buying public! It was about as bad as St Winifred’s School Choir two years earlier and Mr Blobby in the 90s and only slightly better than any Christmas Number 1 referencing sausage rolls!

Other than that, consider the Top 10 hits from September, All of my Heart by ABC, a group that I hadn’t really rated until then and The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the record that introduced me to hip hop and rap. It is a song that has a social conscience mixed with huge amounts of anger at the way that young kids in the ghettos are trapped there by a system that doesn’t want to see them better themselves. A powerful, uncompromising and brilliant track that had an authentic story to tell using the authentic sound of the area they came from. It was a song that was rated the Number 1 record of the year by NME, best hip hop song in the Rolling Stone Top 500 and one whose reputation has not been diminished by time. In 2002, the US National Recording Registry made it one of the first 50 culturally significant songs to be preserved for posterity. It is quite simply brilliant.

October saw the first UK hit for soft rock legends Chicago in the 1980s was the classic ballad Hard to Say I’m Sorry. It also saw the first appearance of Culture Club on Top of the Pops with their massive debut hit, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me. My Dad, no doubt in common with every other Dad in the country, took one look at the screen as Boy George appeared in his finery and said, ‘What the hell is THAT?’!! As soon as I saw that reaction I knew that Boy George and Culture Club were something special! Synth pop continued to produce quality with the marvellously offbeat Living on the Ceiling by Blancmange which sounded unlike anything else around at the time with its style both musically and vocally. Finally, in December, Modern Romance started moving up the charts with a song that would give my mixtapes from that period their title with their irresistible party song Best Years of our Lives.

Next Time

1983 lays claim to being one of the best years of Number One records ever!