Tragically, his half-brother Terry Burns took his own life in January, but then the summer was a very ‘up’ period – he was a wholehearted contributor to Live Aid, promoting the event widely and enjoying the company of his contemporaries and assorted young bucks alike.
He was also relishing getting out of his comfort zone courtesy of key roles in Jim Henson’s ‘Labyrinth’ and Julien Temple’s ‘Absolute Beginners’.
Then summer 1985 spawned one of his greatest singles, the theme song for the latter movie. Like ‘Dancing In The Street’, ‘Absolute Beginners’ was produced by David alongside Madness/Dexys/Costello collaborators Alan Winstanley and Clive Langer.
The backing tracks had been laid down at Abbey Road but the final vocal session took place at London’s West Side Studios (owned by Langer and Winstanley), Olaf Street, near Latimer Road tube station (and very close to Grenfell Tower), on 18th August 1985.
After nailing the song in just a few passes – as was his wont – Bowie found himself in the studio with a bit of time on his hands. Instead of making an early exit, he quickly wrote some rather overwrought lyrics vaguely in the style of Bruce Springsteen and then entertained Langer and Winstanley with a succession of vocal impersonations.
Engineer Mark Saunders thankfully captured these precious moments (in David Buckley’s essential book ‘Strange Fascination’, Winstanley mentions that he considered the tape lost) and has very kindly put them on YouTube for our delectation.
So enjoy Bowie’s irresistible takes on Springsteen, Marc Bolan, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Anthony Newley, Iggy Pop and Neil Young, complete with charming asides (‘That’s it – night-night!’). It’s a doorway to happier times. DB: miss him, miss him, miss him.
Duke Ellington famously said that there are only two types of music: good and ‘the other kind’. Hal Willner spent most of his professional life living that maxim.
The producer, curator and soundtrack composer, who died aged 64 on 7th April 2020, was way ahead of the game.
His never-boring albums were like cross-genre playlists, 30 years before Spotify. In his world, it was totally natural to pair Todd Rundgren with Thelonious Monk, Lou Reed with Kurt Weill, The Replacements with Walt Disney, Chuck D with Charles Mingus.
Inspired by his mentor Joel Dorn, Orson Welles’ radio productions and albums like A Love Supreme, Sketches Of Spain, The White Album, Satanic Majesties, Yusef Lateef’s Part Of The Search and Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Case Of The 3-Sided Stereo Dream, he became fascinated by telling stories with sound.
During the 1980s, Willner was somewhat of a ‘Zelig’ figure on the New York scene. In 1981, he became the long-time musical director of ‘Saturday Night Live’ (while driving a cab during the day) and put together tribute albums to Fellini’s favourite composer (Amacord Nino Rota) and Kurt Weill (Lost In The Stars), the latter beginning a long, fruitful association with Lou Reed.
Then there was That’s The Way I Feel Now (still missing from streaming services… I’m working on it…) from 1984, inspired by Willner’s trip to a Thelonious Monk tribute concert at Carnegie Hall, as he related to writer Howard Mandel: ‘The jazz people playing Monk’s music were making it boring. Monk’s music was never boring. When Oscar Peterson came on, that was it – he had even put Monk down.’
Hal fought back with a brilliant Monk tribute album featuring Was (Not Was), Donald Fagen, Dr John, Todd Rundgren, Elvin Jones, Joe Jackson, Bobby McFerrin and Carla Bley. (Fact fans: Elton John chose the below track as one of his ‘Desert Island Discs’ in 1986, singling out Kenny Kirkland’s superlative piano solo.)
1988’s Stay Awake repeated the trick, a positively psychedelic voyage through the music of Walt Disney’s movies and TV shows. The stand-outs were legion but included James Taylor, Branford Marsalis and The Roches’ ‘Second Star To The Right’, Sun Ra’s ‘Pink Elephants On Parade’, The Replacements’ ‘Cruella de Vil’, Harry Nilsson’s ‘Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah’ and Ringo’s ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’.
Willner was at it again with ‘Night Music’, the much-missed, short-lived TV show fronted by David Sanborn which brought esteemed musical guests in to jam with a crackerjack house band (usually Omar Hakim, Marcus Miller, Hiram Bullock and Don Alias).
It’s quite moving to see often-overlooked greats of American music (Van Dyke Parks, Pharoah Sanders, Elliott Sharp, Sonny Rollins, Slim Gaillard) getting their due and sharing the stage with the likes of Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, Mark Knopfler, Richard Thompson and John Cale. So Willner did a superb job, but if only Jools Holland’s invitation to co-host had got lost in the mail…
In the 1990s, Hal worked on Robert Altman’s movie masterpieces ‘Short Cuts’ and ‘Kansas City’, and then came possibly this writer’s favourite album of the decade, Weird Nightmare: Meditations On Mingus, a sprawling, kaleidoscopic audio journey through the jazz great’s work featuring Robbie Robertson, Bill Frisell, Keith Richards, Julius Hemphill, Henry Rollins, Vernon Reid and Elvis Costello. The Kinks’ Ray Davies also directed a superb documentary about the making of the album:
Willner also helmed Marianne Faithfull’s well-received 1987 comeback album Strange Weather. More recently, he curated many special ‘theme’ concerts, including a memorable gig at the Royal Festival Hall in 2012 dedicated to the Freedom Riders of the civil rights movement, featuring Antony Hegarty, Nona Hendryx, Tim Robbins and Eric Mingus. Hal was also instrumental in bringing Reed’s ‘Berlin’ multimedia show to the stage for the first time.
Farewell to a real one-off. Music needs a lot more like him.
Lou’s gallows humour has been giving me a lift recently, a tonic for these troubled times. There’s just something very apt about his cast of characters ‘that just squeak by’, with no hope of salvation.
His marriage of rock’n’roll music with the language of Burroughs, Ginsberg, Chandler and Tennessee Williams also seems totally timeless, and it’s barely believable that we’re approaching seven years since his death.
The predictable critical narrative is that Reed had a dodgy 1980s, not releasing a decent album until New York. But I’d throw in ’82’s The Blue Mask and ’84’s New Sensations too; by my reckoning, his only dog of the decade is 1986’s Mistrial. He also seemed to develop, slowly leaving behind the drugs/booze and moving towards higher climes by ’89.
Here’s a selection of the good stuff, often featuring such quality players as Robert Quine, Fernando Sanders, Fred Maher and L Shankar. He put a lot out there, addressing jealousy, addiction, violence, ecological issues. A cliché though it may be, it’s hard to imagine anyone ‘getting away’ with some of this these days.
Check out the playlist here and lyrics below. Keep calm and listen to Lou…
‘The Power Of Positive Drinking’ (1980)
Some like wine and some like hops But what I really love is my scotch It’s the power, the power of positive drinking
Some people ruin their drinks with ice And then they ask you for advice They tell you, I’ve never told anyone else before
They say, candy is dandy but liquor makes quipsters And I don’t like mixers, sippers or sob sisters You know, you have to be real careful where you sit down in a bar these days
And then some people drink to unleash their libidos And other people drink to prop up their egos It’s my burden, man People say I have the kind of face you can trust
Some people say alcohol makes you less lucid And I think that’s true if you’re kind of stupid I’m not the kind that gets himself burned twice
And some say liquor kills the cells in your head And for that matter so does getting out of bed When I exit, I’ll go out gracefully, shot in my hand
The pow-pow-pow-pow-power of positive drinking
‘Average Guy’ (1982)
I ain’t no Christian or no born-again saint I ain’t no cowboy or a Marxist DA I ain’t no criminal or Reverend Cripple from the right I am just your average guy, trying to do what’s right
I’m just your average guy, an average guy I’m average looking and I’m average inside
I’m an average lover and I live in an average place You wouldn’t know me if you met me face to face
I worry about money and taxes and such I worry that my liver’s big and it hurts to the touch I worry about my health and bowels And the crimewaves in the street
I’m really just your average guy Trying to stand on his own two feet Average looks, average taste, average height, average waist Average in everything I do My temperature is 98.2
‘Turn To Me’ (1984)
If you gave up major vices You’re between a hard place and a wall And your car breaks down in traffic on the street
Remember, I’m the one who loves you You can always give me a call Turn to me, turn to me, turn to me
If you father is freebasing and your mother turning tricks That’s still no reason that you should have a rip Remember, I’m the one who loves you You can always give me a call Turn to me, turn to me, turn to me
When your teeth are ground down to the bone And there’s nothing between your legs And some friend died of something that you can’t pronounce
Remember, I’m the one who loves you You can always give me a call Turn to me, turn to me, turn to me
You can’t pay your rent Your boss is an idiot Your apartment has no heat Your wife says maybe it’s time to have a child
Remember, I’m the one who loves you You can always give me a call Turn to me, turn to me, turn to me
When it’s all too much You turn the TV set on and light a cigarette Then a public service announcement comes creeping on You see a lung corroding or a fatal heart attack Turn to me, turn to me, turn to me
‘Doin’ The Things We Want To’ (1984)
The other night we went to see Sam’s play Doin’ the things that we want to It was very physical, it held you to the stage Doin’ the things that he want to The guy’s a cowboy from some rodeo Doin’ the things that we want to The girl had once loved him, but now she want to go Doin’ the things that we want to The man was bullish, the woman was a tease Doin’ the things that we want to They fought with their words, their bodies and their deeds Doin’ the things that we want to When they finished fighting, they excited the stage Doin’ the things that we want to I was firmly struck by the way they had behaved Doin’ the things that we want to … It reminds me of the movies Marty made about New York Doin’ the things that we want to Those frank and brutal movies that are so brilliant Doin’ the things that we want to ‘Fool For Love’ meet ‘The Raging Bull’ Doin’ the things that we want to They’re very inspirational, I love the things they do Doin’ the things that we want to There’s not much you hear on the radio today Doin’ the things that we want to But you still can see a movie or a play Doin’ the things that we want to Here’s to Travis Bickle and here’s to Johnny Boy Doin’ the things that we want to Growing up in the mean streets of New York Doin’ the things that we want to I wrote this song ’cause I’d like to shake your hand Doin’ the things that we want to In a way you guys are the best friends I ever had Doin’ the things that we want to
‘The Last Great American Whale’ (1989)
They say he didn’t have an enemy His was a greatness to behold He was the last surviving progeny The last one on this side of the world
He measured half a mile from tip to tail Silver and black with powerful fins They say he could split a mountain in two That’s how we got the Grand Canyon
Some say they saw him at the Great Lakes Some say they saw him off the coast of Florida My mother said she saw him in Chinatown But you can’t always trust your mother
Off the Carolinas the sun shines brightly in the day The lighthouse glows ghostly there at night The chief of a local tribe had killed a racist mayor’s son And he’d been on death row since 1958
The mayor’s kid was a rowdy pig Spit on Indians and lots worse The old chief buried a hatchet in his head Life compared to death for him seemed worse
The tribal brothers gathered in the lighthouse to sing And tried to conjure up a storm or rain The harbour parted and the great whale sprang full up And caused a huge tidal wave The wave crushed the jail and freed the chief The tribe let out a roar
The whites were drowned The browns and reds set free But sadly one thing more Some local yokel member of the NRA Kept a bazooka in his living room And thinking he had the chief in his sights Blew the whale’s brains out with a lead harpoon
Well Americans don’t care for much of anything Land and water the least And animal life is low on the totem pole With human life not worth much more than infected yeast Americans don’t care too much for beauty They’ll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream They’ll watch dead rats wash up on the beach And complain if they can’t swim
They say things are done for the majority Don’t believe half of what you see And none of what you hear It’s a lot like what my painter friend Donald said to me: ‘Stick a fork in their ass and turn ’em over, they’re done’
There were a lot of good quiffs around in the ’80s. The rockabilly and psychobilly revivals certainly wouldn’t have been the same without them, but one of the best was sported by Jonathan Perkins, lead singer/songwriter of Miss World.
Though Miss World’s self-titled debut album came out in early ’90s, it seems very much informed by the music of the 1980s. It was released on David A Stewart’s Anxious Records, featured cameos from Pretenders drummer Martin Chambers and was very much under the influence of Iggy Pop’s Blah-Blah-Blah, INXS and Nick Cave, as well as Lou Reed, The Doors and Berlin-era Bowie.
I bought the first album after seeing their mightily impressive set supporting Shakespear’s Sister at the Hammersmith Odeon in summer 1992. An internet search of Perkins reveals very little, except that he was born in Swindon, was possibly an early member of XTC and probably later turned up in mid-’80s nearlymen Silver Spurs.
But whatever his pedigree, Perkins certainly seems to have a great record collection. Miss World opener ‘The First Female Serial Killer’ has a super-cool vocal delivery (is it about Aileen Wuornos?) while ‘Nine Steps To Nowhere’ sounds like Michael Hutchence fronting The Doors. ‘Watch That Man’ marries Iggy Pop’s ‘Isolation’ with Bowie’s ‘New Career In A New Town’ to superb effect.
‘Dead Flowers’ comes on a bit like Jim Morrison singing with The Clash, and then there are great, weirdo murder ballads ‘Highway Of Dead Roads’, ‘Thief Inside’ and ‘British Pharmaceuticals’. Lou Reed couldn’t have done a better job at covering ‘What A Wonderful World’. ‘Love Is The Whole Of The Law’ might be the best of the lot, the only co-write with Dave Stewart.
Perkins also has a great ear for a strong first line: ‘You make me act like a locust‘ (‘Nine Steps To Nowhere’), ‘I’m wasting away/The voices in my head have come out to play‘ (‘Highway Of Dead Roads’) and the Withnailesque ‘I was feeling very beautiful/Having taken pharmaceuticals‘. And – good news for us – the songs either seem to be about sex, drugs, death or religion, sometimes all of them.
Legendary recording engineer Phill Brown (Spirit Of Eden, Solid Air etc) gets a gorgeously uncluttered sound and then there’s the none-more-David-Lynchian cover image.
Not much has been heard from the band since this excellent debut, though some weird footage emerged a few years ago of a comeback gig with Perkins sporting a natty turban. And they seem to have some more recent tracks on streaming platforms. But they never quite caught on after this strong start, more’s the pity.
The 1980s produced some fine lyricists. You couldn’t move for decent wordsmithery. But interesting lyrics came from the damndest places.
What was that Trevor Horn maxim? A good pop song should be like a good story, such that the listener is always asking: what’s going to happen next?
And, like a good story, pretty much every good song starts with an intriguing opening line or two. As the proverbial cigar-munching music-biz mogul might say: ‘You gotta grab ’em from the first bar, kid…’ So here are some great opening lines from 1980s songs, lines that hopefully satisfy Horn’s requirements.
Everything But The Girl: ‘Each And Every One’
‘If you ever feel the time/ To drop me a loving line/ Maybe you should just think twice/ I don’t wait around on your advice’
Associates: ‘Club Country’
‘The fault is/I can find no fault in you’
Wet Wet Wet: ‘Wishing I Was Lucky’
‘I was living in a land of make believe/ When my best friend wrote and told me that there may be a job in the city’
Lou Reed: ‘How Do You Speak To An Angel’
‘A son who is cursed with a harridan mother or a weak simpering father at best/ Is raised to play out the timeless classical motives of filial love and incest’
Steely Dan: ‘Babylon Sisters’
‘Drive west on Sunset to the sea/ Turn that jungle music down/ Just until we’re out of town’
Associates: ‘Party Fears Two’
‘I’ll have a shower then call my brother up/ Within the hour I’ll smash another cup’
Joni Mitchell: ‘Chinese Cafe’
‘Caught in the middle/ Carol, we’re middle-class/
We’re middle-aged/ We were wild in the old days/ Birth of rock’n’roll days’
The Smiths: ‘Reel Around The Fountain’
‘It’s time the tale were told/ Of how you took a child and you made him old’
Thomas Dolby: ‘Screen Kiss’
‘Miller Time in the bar where all the English meet/ She used to drink in the hills/ Only now she drinks in the valleys’
Love And Money: ‘Hallejulah Man’
‘On the blind side and down the back ways/ The roots of sadness crawl/ When you can’t get what you need/ You feel like taking a torch to it all’
Joy Division: ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’
‘When routine bites hard and ambitions are low/ And resentment rides high but emotions won’t grow’
The Teardrop Explodes: ‘Reward’
‘Bless my cotton socks/I’m in the news’
Tom Waits: ‘Swordfishtrombones’
‘Well, he came home from the war with a party in his head/ And a modified Brougham DeVille and a pair of legs that opened up like butterfly wings’
Prefab Sprout: ‘Moving The River’
‘You surely are a truly gifted kid/ But you’re only as good as the last great thing you did’
Lloyd Cole & The Commotions: ‘Brand New Friend’
‘Walking in the pouring rain/ Walking with Jesus and Jane/ Jane was in a turtleneck/ I was much happier then’
Siouxsie & The Banshees: ‘Cascade’
‘Oh the air was shining/ Shining like a wedding ring’
Bob Dylan: ‘Jokerman’
‘Standing on the waters casting your bread/ While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing/ Distant ships sailing into the mist/ You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowing’
Robert Palmer: ‘Johnny And Mary’
‘Johnny’s always running around trying to find certainty/ He needs all the world to confirm that he ain’t lonely’
Prefab Sprout: Talking Scarlet
‘You hide under the eiderdown/ All you can’t sweep underneath the carpet’
The Human League: ‘Don’t You Want Me’
‘I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar/When I met you’
Talking Heads: ‘Crosseyed And Painless’
‘Lost my shape/ Trying to act casual/ Can’t stop/ Might end up in the hospital’
Scritti Politti: ‘A Little Knowledge’
‘Now I know to love you/Is not to know you’
The Smiths: ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’
‘Sweetness, I was only joking/ When I said I’d like to smash every tooth in your head’
Whatever happened to the psychologically-complex, ‘difficult’ male solo artist? In the ’70s and ’80s, you couldn’t move for them – Peter Gabriel, Peter Hammill, Lou Reed, David Bowie, John Cale et al.
Reed and Cale particularly seemed to dwell in the murky corners of the male psyche, chronicling alcoholism, jealousy, sexual deviance, anger, loneliness, death. The latter’s Music For A New Society, released 35 years ago this month, was a case in point. An interesting companion piece to Reed’s own 1982 The Blue Mask, it sometimes seems too personal for public consumption. Cale was clearly in a pretty bad emotional state during recording.
The album’s certainly not for everyone – a lot of it’s not for me – but a few tracks still sound like modern classics. Recorded at New York’s Skyline Studios, it features a novel production style; Cale apparently tracked most of the songs with a full band (including Chris Spedding on guitar), then strategically stripped back the instrumentation, ‘playing’ the faders a bit like a dub producer. The result is a sparse, claustrophobic listen.
‘Thoughtless Kind’ and the superb ‘I Keep A Close Watch’ benefit greatly from this approach. The latter of course featured a very ornate production on Cale’s album Helen Of Troy, but this time sticks to grand piano, Hammond organ, fake harpsichord, snare drum, bagpipes and a few found sounds.
On ‘If You Were Still Around’ (featuring lyrics by Sam Shepard), ‘Damn Life’ and various other tracks, Cale sounds almost beyond help. But the standout for me is the poignant ‘Taking Your Life In Your Hands’. Online theories abound as to the song’s subject matter, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s about a school massacre and the sacrifices made by the teachers and ‘gentlemen in blue’ who saved lives. The last chorus, when Cale’s assembly-hall piano kicks in, is heartbreaking. A dark masterpiece by a sometimes superb chronicler of human nature’s murkier aspects.
1985 was a mixed year for DB. 
Duke Ellington famously said that there are only two types of music: good and ‘the other kind’. Hal Willner spent most of his professional life living that maxim. 
Lou’s gallows humour has been giving me a lift recently, a tonic for these troubled times. There’s just something very apt about his cast of characters ‘that just squeak by’, with no hope of salvation. 
The 1980s produced some fine lyricists. You couldn’t move for decent wordsmithery. But interesting lyrics came from the damndest places. 
Whatever happened to the psychologically-complex, ‘difficult’ male solo artist? In the ’70s and ’80s, you couldn’t move for them – Peter Gabriel, Peter Hammill, Lou Reed, David Bowie, John Cale et al.