Ah, the euphoria that greeted the first three tracks on this
CD… “great opening”, “cracking triumvirate”, “[setting] the bar high for the
rest of the CD”, said the gathered cognoscenti.
But anyone who knows anything about my dubiously higgledy
piggledy taste in music will know that such glory cannot last. To thine own
self be true, Rol.
Track 4: Van Halen - Why Can't This Be Love?
I have a particular fondness for American rock of the 80s
because I grew up without anyone cool to tell me differently. The only muso I
knew as a teenager tried his best to get me into The Smiths (who I rejected at
the time because their singer was “a miserable bastard”) and New Order, of whom
much has been written previously. But he also liked Queen, so I’m sure some of
you would have had him tarred and feathered if he’d been in your
class.
I never really hung out with any discerning Peel or NME
acolytes, so there was nobody to tell me that it wasn’t dope, drip or rizz to
adore the work of Billy Joel, Hall & Oates or even the hair metal crew. It
was only when I joined the blogosphere that I truly became aware of the
tribalistic prejudices that damned me forever after. But as we all know, first
loves never die when it comes to pop music, the songs of our youth never grow
old… which brings us to Van Halen.
The Man In The Street (UK version) will doubtless only be
able to name one Van Halen song – the MTV juggernaut that Roddy Frame
triumphantly turned into a suicide ballad. The band may as well be a one hit wonder
in Britain – unlike the US, where they were semi-regular visitors to the Top 40
between 1978 and 1995. Yet Why Can't This Be Love? is their second biggest
hit, and it was a Top Ten smash on both sides of the Atlantic. It also marked a big change
for the band – David Lee Roth had gone off to become a solo star and do more
cocaine, only to be replaced by Sammy Hagar, originally from 70s band Montrose,
and also a successful solo artist in the early 80s. I think you have to be a
true rock aficionado to spot the difference. People in the know seem to class
Sammy as the better singer, but Diamond Dave is often considered the better
front man. There’s an argument that the difference is immaterial because neither
gets their name on the tin – this was always Eddie Van Halen’s band anyway.
Eddie died of cancer in 2020 and everyone agreed there could be no Van Halen without him. Although there have since been some disturbing rumours that his brother Alex, the band’s long-term drummer, has considered using AI “to duplicate the style of” Eddie’s guitar work… and also looked into the possibility of hiring Robert Plant as vocalist future Van Halen records. Don’t do it, Alex!
Track 5: Madness - Michael Caine
I won’t bore you again with the story about how I never
liked Madness in Junior School because all the tough kids used to go around
singing Baggy Trousers like it was a badge of honour… but at some point I must
have decided the band were all right, and maybe it was this song that tipped me
over.
Michael Caine is very different from the chirpy,
knees up singalongs that had kept Madness firmly fixed in the Top Ten for
almost five years when this was released in early ’84… and ironically, it marked
their departure from that section of the charts until well into the 90s. It
doesn’t even have Suggs on vocals – it was written and performed by top trumpet
dude Chas Smash, and it tackles the thorny subject of IRA informants, using
Michael Caine’s vocal samples as a subtle reminder of spy films like The
Ipcress File. Caine initially refused to blow the bloody doors off on this
track, until his daughter talked him into taking part. Makes me wonder how
different the song would have sounded without his contributions.
Apparently Neil Tennant gave the single a good review in
Smash Hits while Tony Parsons wrote in the NME, “They never sounded less like
Madness and they never sounded so good.” Maybe that’s why this proved to be the
song that thawed my Madness iceberg? Or maybe my arrival in High School had
distanced me enough from the Junior School tough guys to listen without
prejudice.
For many years, I thought Michael Caine also made frequent
vocal contributions to another big hit of the 80s… but I later learned that
those samples were James Fox instead. I’m sure you can guess the song.
Track 6: Love Unlimited - Walkin' In The Rain
Barry White’s first hit record, from the glorious year of
1972, when all was right with the world. Barry wrote and produced this, and
appears towards the end... with the very definition of a phoned-in performance.
Walkin' In The Rain has all the right ingredients to make it a classic soul song - Supremesy chorus, a slowed down talky bit like the Shangri Las, moody sfx, the hint of sex, and flourishes of orchestral glory. Plus added Barry White... what's not to love?
Track 7: The Lightning Seeds - Ready Or Not
What a great singles band The Lightning Seeds were, eh? I sang their praises last year after seeing Ian Broudie & co. play at
the local village hall. Following on from that, I tried listening to
a couple of their old albums again… and I have to be honest, it seemed to these
aging ears that there was a good bit of filler on them. But the singles….? Wow. They were the tipper-most, topper-most.
