40 years ago this month, Van Halen were the penultimate act at Monsters Of Rock, Castle Donington, part of what is generally considered the greatest ever bill at the illustrious rock festival.
And now some sizzling side-of-stage footage from Saturday 18 August 1984 has emerged (but sadly has been removed from YouTube as of March 2025…), shot by Ross Halfin, showing the first iteration of the band at their commercial peak (they would break up in acrimony shortly after, and this was their last ever British concert).
The sound is not brilliant and some fans have complained about the setlist and length of both the Van Halen brothers’ solos, but it’s instructive and exciting to see exactly what goes down backstage/onstage.
Lee Roth is a superb master of ceremonies, singing well, dancing his tail off and firing off some amusing bits of banter: ‘Don’t stick your tongue out at me unless you’re gonna use it… If you wanna throw something at me, I’m gonna come down there and f*ck your girlfriend!’ etc. etc.
Though the footage starts off with Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen sharing a laugh (in a recent Classic Rock piece about the gig, Halfin claims the former was ‘stoned’ throughout), tensions among the band were high and nobody present was very surprised when they went their separate ways shortly after.
But it’s quite a thrill to get such a close-up view of such a legendary gig. The tempos are brisk but everything has VH’s inimitable swing and swagger.
Bowie’s Tonight, the speedy followup to Let’s Dance released 40 years ago, was one of the most divisive albums of his career.
For some, it was over-produced pap. For others, it was a great little pop/rock album. In the September issue of Record Collector magazine, I reassess it, rounding up some of the usual and unusual 1980s suspects in the process.
Still, for many, 1984 remains the worst year of David’s career. In fact, during a period of great personal strain, it was one of his most intriguing, including collaborations with Pat Metheny, Tina Turner, John Schlesinger and Iggy Pop, the ‘Jazzin’ For Blue Jean’ short film with Julien Temple and his (at first) tentative foray into the Band Aid project.
Read all about DB’s 1984 in the new RC. Top breeders recommend it.
The Steely Dan bibliography is relatively small – ‘Quantum Criminals’, Donald Fagen’s fine ‘Eminent Hipsters’ memoir, Don Breithaupt’s excellent study of Aja and ‘Steely Dan FAQ’ loom large, plus of course the rather good Expanding Dan site on Substack.
But Jez Rowden’s ‘Steely Dan: Every Album, Every Song’ is a worthy addition, and completely different to those titles. Rowden was (he died tragically and unexpectedly in March) best known for his writing on the Progressive Aspect website and as such his take on the Dan is more rooted in rock and pop than jazz or swing, a highly personal track-by-track analysis from a fan’s – rather than a muso’s – perspective.
And yet he nails their essence better than many scribes, as per this excerpt from the book’s Foreword: ‘The songs sparkled and fizzed, but with their penchant for jazz, R’n’B, soul and doo-wop, the pop songs they wrote were always going to be different: pop songs played by a rock band underpinned with jazz. The Groove was always where it was at for them.’
As befitting many other titles in Sonicbond’s ‘on track’ book series, Rowden eschews musician interviews in favour of quite emotional, personal writing, and his analysis of Steely’s notoriously obtuse lyrics is sometimes revelatory, illuminating the meaning of many songs (without recourse to the wackier theories on the fascinating Fever Dreams site) this writer has heard thousands of times. His moving portrait of the two protagonists in ‘Charlie Freak’ is a case in point.
But if completism is your thing, Rowden also goes to great lengths to cover all of Becker and Fagen’s output, from the earliest Brill Building demos to the solo work and various compilations, outtakes and live albums that have emerged. ‘Steely Dan: Every Album, Every Song’ is highly recommended and a fine testament for a good writer and a nice guy.
Joe Meek isn’t often compared to Stock, Aitken and Waterman but here’s an associate of the former speaking after his untimely death: ‘He was being ganged up on by the establishment. Nobody with any power in the business liked him because he was independent and successful.’
The same could be said for Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman. The always-deeply-unfashionable songwriting/production/mixing/A&R team, who had over 100 UK Top 40 hits and sold over 40 million singles in the UK (35 million worldwide in 1987 alone), found their feet in the hi-NRG scene, then detoured into classy soul before emerging with a late-‘80s formula that combined both approaches and made superstars out of Kylie, Jason and Rick Astley.
Everyone from Sigue Sigue Sputnik to Donna Summer sought SAW’s hit-making fairy dust. But many ’80s pop fans hated them. You could argue that was more down to the procedural limitations of their later work – ie. refusal to use a real rhythm section – and formulaic productions than the songwriting (reportedly mostly by Stock, with the other two supplying lyric ideas and Waterman the final mix and marketing) which often adroitely mined Motown and Philly soul and featured some of the weirdest harmonic modulations this side of Nik Kershaw.
But have their best tracks stood the test of time? Here are eight SAW singles that are not routinely turned off by movingtheriver when they come on the radio:
8. Dead Or Alive: ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’
Waterman boasted about making difficult records early in the trio’s career and this is one of their weirdest. Apparently their trick was to remove most of the bass from the mix and boost the cowbells, handclaps and sequencers to ‘trigger’ the interactive light shows, especially at ‘gay’ venues. It’s also interesting how long they wait before unleashing the first chorus…
7. Princess: ‘Say I’m Your Number One’
South London soul singer Princess – born Desiree Heslop – was a member of Osibisa before going solo in 1985. This tasty single, with its bizarre but brilliant harmonic hike into the chorus, settled at #7 as well as going top 20 in the US R&B charts.
6. Brother Beyond: ‘The Harder I Try’
Weirdly, this fine Motown pastiche was the FIFTH single released from their second album, but still made #2 in the UK.
5. The Three Degrees: ‘The Heaven I Need’
Yes it’s somewhat of a rip-off of Mai Tai’s ‘History’ (or is it? Which came out first?!) but this was the Prince Charles-approved trio’s groovy comeback after a five-year hiatus. Not much of a success though: it limped to #42.
4. Sonia: ‘You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You’
Bear with me here. Under the house-by-numbers groove lurks a cool take on Philly soul, the verses reminiscent of both ‘Stop Look Listen’ and ‘Betcha By Golly Wow’. 18-year-old Scouser Sonia Evans was a complete unknown when she recorded this. Maybe people assumed it was Kylie. Interestingly it was SAW’s final #1 single in the UK, though they’d already had SEVEN during 1989!
3. Rick Astley: ‘Whenever You Need Somebody’
Just a brilliantly weird sequence of melodic hooks, and another strange key change going into the chorus. Astley’s vocal phrasing is a treat too.
2. Donna Summer: ‘Love’s About To Change My Heart’
Reportedly, this is SAW’s favourite of their singles and Summer’s beautiful vocal is surely a big reason why. It completely bombed in her homeland but made the UK top 20.
1. Brilliant: ‘Love Is War’
Killing Joke’s Youth and future KLF man Jimmy Cauty were involved with this great bit of post-Cupid & Psyche pop/soul, but it still stiffed in the UK.
Any other good SAW tracks? Deep cuts from Kylie albums? It’s unlikely but you never know (and no, ‘Roadblock’ is NOT a great single…).
Further reading: ‘Good Vibrations: The History Of Record Production’ by Mark Cunningham
Brit writer/director/auteur Mike Leigh is partly famous for his method of creating shooting scripts: he works with each actor in turn to develop a character, then formulates a story based on improvisations between the various characters.
But he wasn’t the only notable figure to work in that way. Les Blair, a Manchester college friend of his, was another. Blair devised and directed two superb Play For Todays for the BBC, ‘Blooming Youth’ (1973) and ‘Bet Your Life’ (1976), before embarking on a varied career including a few feature films.
But two of his most intriguing TV plays were made during the 1980s: ‘Honest, Decent & True’ (1986) and ‘News Hounds’ (1990). They make for fascinating viewing today, shining a light on two of the decade’s most lucrative and controversial industries: advertising and tabloid journalism.
Both star ‘Comic Strip’/’Young Ones’ comedy hero Adrian Edmondson, and he plays a blinder in both. In ‘Honest, Decent’ he’s a hapless, ethically-challenged ad man, in ‘News Hounds’ he’s a tabloid hack with the morals of a sewer rat. He brilliantly subverts his madcap image to play nuanced, troubling characters, and he’s clearly fond of these two films, focusing on them in some detail in his recent autobiography. It’s a shame he hasn’t been called on to play more serious roles in his career.
‘Honest, Decent’, which won a major award at the San Francisco Film Festival of 1986, also features a great cast including Arabella Weir, Gary Oldman and Richard E Grant in his first screen role and only credit before ‘Withnail’. Grant nicely embodies the kind of ‘liberated’, louche, humourless ad man you’d come across in the 1980s, into Asian architecture, yoga and new-age music, probably driving an Audi Quattro too.
Elsewhere Leigh veteran/ex-wife Alison Steadman shows up in ‘News Hounds’ to brilliantly portray a celebrity interviewer, pitched somewhere between Nina Myskow and Lynn Barber. It’s another classic performance, and reportedly one of her favourite roles.
It’s nice to revisit these amusing, almost-forgotten movies on some hot-button topics of the ’80s (and ‘News Hounds’ is still extremely relevant courtesy of the Leveson Enquiry and its reverberations). As for Les Blair, apparently he’s still teaching at the London Film School, an alumnus of which is one M. Leigh…
Despite his reputation as a sonic groundbreaker and technological wiz, Peter Gabriel arguably hasn’t done anything much good on record since 1992, even as his live shows gain popularity.
1986’s So was of course the huge pop breakthrough, and that album has been the template for his subsequent, rather predictable solo career – he generally switches between atmospheric ballads a la ‘Mercy Street’ or ‘Don’t Give Up, ‘dark’, vaguely industrial rock tracks, and ‘funky’ one-chord grooves with poppy hooks and emotional lyrics, typified by ‘Sledgehammer’.
i/o is his first album of new material since 2002 and sadly it cannot reverse the trend, despite Gabriel’s always excellent, ageless vocals. It mostly meanders by in a fog of ugly snare drums, dry guitars and keyboards (some by Eno), digital treatments/loops pitched somewhere around 1998, and not much air at all. It seems the multi-layered triumphs of ‘Lead A Normal Life’ and ‘Family Snapshot’ are long gone.
Elsewhere Tony Levin’s bass and stick parts are prominent but they can’t produce anything as immediate and catchy as ‘Sledgehammer’. ‘Four Kinds Of Horses’ sums up the problem – a fairly uninteresting half-time groove underpins a fairly uninteresting vocal melody, while a rather irritating piano loop burbles away in the background. It never should have left the rehearsal room and many other (mostly overlong) tracks replicate that formula.
But Gabriel does deliver a pretty good, harmonically-rich ballad – ‘Playing For Time’ – which some other reviewers have very generously compared to Randy Newman’s best work. It’s this album’s ‘Washing Of The Water’.
In conclusion, the main problem with i/o is that it sounds exactly like you think it will. Maybe Gabriel is working with the wrong people, maybe the wrong software. Maybe he needs to get back to recording ‘as live’, embedded in a really good five-piece band. Paging Bob Ezrin, Larry Fast, Robert Fripp and/or Hugh Padgham…
(postscript: I’ve recently invested in the definitive 2007 CD remaster of Genesis’s Lamb Lies Down On Broadway – it sounds absolutely fantastic and I feel 18 again…)
‘When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes.’
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, 2016
The Spotify weirdness continues, as does movingtheriver’s ambivalence about the platform (its only real draw seems to be convenience, like everything else in the tech game. After all, music is only ‘content’, or at least that’s how it was recently described by MD Daniel Ek.)
As Ted Gioia has pointed out, Spotify’s current modus operandi seems to be: cut costs (staff redundancies), raise prices for customers, and play games (create AI music so the ‘human element’ can be ruled out and composers not paid.)
One’s reminded of that line in Robert Altman’s ‘The Player’, when Tim Robbins’ stressed movie exec, answering the charge that anyone could write a script simply based on the headlines in the morning papers, says something like: ‘Great – remove the screenwriter and we might really have something going here.’
If you ever get a job with one of the ‘big three’ music companies (Warner, Sony, Universal), you’ll probably have to undergo an ‘introduction to the music business’ course which emphasises the noble goal of collecting royalties for musicians and songwriters. But the more money at stake, the less this seems to happen. One’s reminded of Morris Levy’s stock riposte to disgruntled musicians and songwriters: ‘If you want royalties, go to Buckingham Palace’.
But then it’s important to remember labels like Blue Note, Virgin and Island, and people like Alfred Lion, Simon Draper and Chris Blackwell, who were always music fans first and foremost. Ditto almost everyone I’ve come across working in niche genres (jazz, classical etc.).
As for Spotify’s marketing pitch about discovering new music? I can’t think of any new music I’ve discovered via Spotify (but have discovered some good new podcasts). My discovery of new music comes from the old gatekeepers – magazines, radio programmes, music books, blogs, press releases. I probably use Spotify like a lot of other people – to ‘organise’ and compile mostly old music that I’ve previously owned or hired from the library etc. etc.
Then there’s the staff redundancy issue, as above. Anyone who follows Spotify on LinkedIn will see them posting all kinds of strange techie jobs. You can be sure that almost none are focused on music. Very occasionally you notice a half-decent functionality upgrade (most recently, finally you can move a track up or down a playlist without too much faff, but there are still a myriad of problems – this video highlights them very well) but it’s probably safe to assume they are mainly seeking newer and better ways to snoop on their users.
So the Spotify conundrum continues. When will I finally give up my Premium subscription? When it goes up to £12.99 a month? When a whole load of catalogue starts to go ‘missing’? Watch this space.
‘No crap beats’ – if that wasn’t on Keith Leblanc’s business card, it should have been.
The man could just sit down at any kit – or program any drum machine – and make it sound rich and swinging, whether he was playing with Tackhead, Seal, Tina Turner, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Bomb The Bass, ABC, Sugarhill Gang, Annie Lennox, Mark Stewart or Little Axe.
LeBlanc – who died in April – has to go down as a true beat innovator, embracing and developing drum technology and particularly developing a human/machine interface which always grooved beautifully and didn’t distract from the music. Along with other key ’80s/’90s drummers Dennis Chambers, Jonathan Moffett, Ricky Wellman and Lenny White, he also had a killer right foot.
He grew up in Bristol, Connecticut, and was inspired to pick up the drum sticks after seeing The Beatles on TV. He was later influenced by what he called ‘pop’ music – James Brown, Cameo, Muscle Shoals, Gap Band, Parliament/Funkadelic – and became the house drummer for Sugar Hill Records in late 1979 and co-founder of grounbreaking funk/industrial/dub/rock outfit Tackhead alongside Skip McDonald, Doug Wimbish and Adrian Sherwood.
LeBlanc also recorded many solo albums, the best of which is probably Time Traveller, and played excellent live jazz/rock with Nikki Yeoh, Jonas Hellborg and Mano Ventura.
It’s sad to think one will never hear that amazing LeBlanc/Wimbish bass and drums hook-up. Anyone who saw Mark Stewart, Little Axe or Tackhead live will remember how the first few minutes of every gig was usually just the two of them playing together. That lasted right through to the 2021 On-U Records anniversary shindig, though a masked Keith looked very frail.
movingtheriver had the pleasure of interviewing LeBlanc in 2010 for Jazz FM, and revisiting my notebook I found lots of interesting quotes I didn’t use in my original article:
On Sugarhill Records/co-owner Sylvia Robinson:
Sylvia was looking for Skip and Doug but they initially said no because they’d had a bad experience before. I was new to the band but I heard the words ‘recording studio’ and ‘money’ and bugged them until they said yes. The first Sugarhill Gang album was recorded in the Robinsons’ studio (H&L in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, down the road from Rudy Van Gelder’s famous studio) which was falling to bits! We’d cut a track on the Friday, drive home to Connecticut and hear it on the radio on the Monday. The whole industry was shaken up when rap started. It took them four years to catch up. But if the Robinsons had done 25% of the right thing, Sugar Hill Records would still be going. They screwed up. It was hard to watch the artists get ripped off and then watch those people flaunt money in front of them. We tried not to write anything because we knew how they were.
On playing live in the studio:
The first rap drummer was a white guy! Back then, playing live in the studio was normal. The arranger Jiggs Chase would get with the rappers, do an arrangement based on what they wanted to use and then give us charts. And then we’d add things. The musical ethic was really good at that time. You had to get it right or there’d be someone else in there recording the next day.
On hip-hop and drum machines:
After ‘Planet Rock’, anyone could make a rap record in their bedroom. When drum machines came out, I saw my job opportunities flying out of the window. They opened the door for everybody to do it. Then it dawned on me what I could program one of those better than any engineer. I did ‘No Sell Out’ just to see what I could do with drum machines.
On George Clinton/P-Funk:
I was offered the gig with Parliament – I asked Bernie Worrell if I should do it and he said, ‘Only if you want to chase the money all night!’
On his imitators:
The Red Hot Chili Peppers ripped us off, especially in the beat department. The drummer was checkin’ me hard!
On Prince:
Prince sabotaged my drum machine at First Avenue in Minneapolis. I was playing along and then the machine stopped and I heard this voice hissing through the monitor: ‘What’s the matter, can’t you keep time?’!
Sir Vivian Richards batting for West Indies in 1984
movingtheriver’s love of cricket was sparked during Botham’s Ashes in 1981, and then thrived during New Zealand’s visit to British shores in 1983.
But it was the summer 1984 England v West Indies series that really sealed the deal, boosted by a trip to Lord’s for the third one-day international which took place 40 years ago today. There was so much demand for tickets that my dad and I were put on the hallowed turf near the old Mount Stand, about five feet from the boundary rope (visible in the clip below).
We sat on the grass surrounded by noisy, friendly West Indies fans, in those golden days when drums, conch shells, whistles and whatever else were all permitted in the ground. So 4 June 1984 remains one of the most exciting days of live cricket I’ve ever seen, and we were also treated to a superlative display by arguably the greatest team of all time (no, I don’t mean England…) including a famous run-out by Roger Harper and a match-winning innings by Viv Richards.
China Crisis in 2024 with Gary Daly (vocals) and Eddie Lundon (guitar), centre
It’s an interesting era for acts like China Crisis who were never massive but had significant singles success in the 1980s (five UK top 40 hits).
Though releasing only two albums of new music since 1994, they continue to tour successfully, playing both under their own steam and occasionally as part of big ‘80s-themed package dates such as Let’s Rock.
Now essentially a duo of Gary Daly on vocals and Eddie Lundon on guitars, plus Eric Animan on saxes and Jack Hymers on keyboards/programming, they remain a great live draw mainly due to Daly’s stage presence, pitch-perfect vocals and hilarious between-song anecdotes, plus the obviously excellent songcraft.
As Daly pointed out, China Crisis remain a singular, immediately identifiable band, completely different to other early ‘80s Liverpool acts (though they actually originate from nearby Kirkby) like Echo & the Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes and Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
They specialise in willowy, intriguing melodies, haunting synths, clever rhythm guitars, obtuse lyrics and slinky grooves, and, of course, Steely Dan’s Walter Becker produced their best two albums, Flaunt The Imperfectionand Diary Of A Hollow Horse.
Their sold-out visit to the venerable, reliable old Half Moon in Putney saw them plugging a new collection of re-imagined old favourites. It was movingtheriver’s first visit to the great venue for at least ten years, though I have fond memories of gigging there regularly in the early 1990s.
Coming onstage to a synth overture featuring some of their most popular themes, CC started with low-key, atmospheric ‘The Soul Awakening’ (with its neat nod to ABC’s ‘SOS’) and ‘Here Comes A Raincloud’, before Daly exploded into life demanding that the house lights be turned on, deadpanning: ‘If I’m gonna play these small f*ckin’ venues, I want to see you all.’
After more amusing greetings, including unprintable tilts at Bono and random asides – ‘Don’t get me started on Phil Oakey’ – he previewed the superb ‘It’s Never Too Late’, originally recorded in 1983 but for some reason relegated to B-side status, by rightly pointing out that it should have been a massive hit single and also claiming that it ‘f*ckin’ is too late or we wouldn’t be playing venues like this’, and there were airings of lovely early torch songs ‘Temptation’s Big Blue Eyes’ and ‘Red Sails’.
Daly paid tribute to Becker – ‘he changed our lives and our music’ – with a killer double from Flaunt, ‘Strength Of Character’ and ‘Bigger The Punch I’m Feeling’. Daly claimed the latter was somewhat inspired by ‘The Love Boat’ TV theme and also that it was a vague tribute to one of the most popular bands in UK singles history: ‘Shut your f*ckin’ eyes and think Hot Chocolate’.
‘African And White’, with intricate new guitar voicings from Lundon, finally revealed the meaning behind the baffling chorus – ‘Life is a fever in Israel’ – another one for the misheard lyrics file. The big hits arrived with mass audience participation and general affection for this most likable of bands – ‘Arizona Sky’, ‘Best Kept Secret’, ‘Black Man Ray’, ‘King In A Catholic Style’ and ‘Christian’, Daly claiming the latter’s UK #12 chart position would have been much improved by a bagpipe solo.
He ended a hugely enjoyable gig with an impassioned speech paying tribute to the UK’s smaller, grassroots venues such as the Half Moon, and an attack on Tory attitudes to the arts and the North in general: ‘Levelling up, my f*cking arse’. China Crisis continue to tour the UK during the rest of 2024 – don’t miss.
40 years ago this month, Van Halen were the penultimate act at Monsters Of Rock, Castle Donington, part of what is generally considered the greatest ever bill at the illustrious rock festival.
Joe Meek isn’t often compared to Stock, Aitken and Waterman but here’s an associate of the former speaking after his untimely death: ‘He was being ganged up on by the establishment. Nobody with any power in the business liked him because he was independent and successful.’
‘No crap beats’ – if that wasn’t on Keith Leblanc’s business card, it should have been.
movingtheriver.com 