18. Blitz - Never Surrender (No Future)

One week at number one on 20th March 1982

Thanks to this blog, Gary Bushell has been on my mind a lot lately. While attempting the daily chores such as emptying the dishwasher, hanging out the laundry or walking the dog, my thoughts have often wandered and allowed his bearded visage to emerge in mind’s eye, stoical and almost impossible to read.

It’s not the first time in my life I’ve been bothered in this way. Back when I was in journalism college, my head tutor persuaded me to buy a different newspaper every day of the week – “it’s the only way you’ll learn to adapt your tone for different audiences”. So began the only period of my life where I bought The Sun and faithfully noted its contents, all in the hope that it would get me better grades (I appreciate that some readers may note the obvious irony here, or may share my Dad's concerns about failing to boycott the paper).

Bushell struck me as a strange figure even then, at the very height of his fame; a comedy and light entertainment nerd trapped in the body of a police constable, always one wink and guarded friendly gesture away from an outraged warning bark. Besides rants about immigration, leftie morons and “pillocks” at Channel 4 and the Beeb, he also held very specific and haunting obsessions on unlikely subjects such as the lack of variety shows on television and ageism in the entertainment industry. As I pored over his thoughts on the latter two matters, I realised how out of place they seemed. Most Sun readers probably couldn’t have given two figs about them – they were Bushell’s personal bugbears being given the maximum audience possible at the peak of his career. Whether I agreed with him or not, I had to conclude that he cared, which is more than can be said for many columnists who tend to seek out the most contentious viewpoints to generate "engagement".

Back in 1982 while he worked at Sounds magazine, “Oi!” was another uniquely Bushell-shaped obsession, seemingly born of a desire to make things happen rather than advance his career. While many music journalists have tried to build a name of themselves by creating distinct music scenes, Bushell’s pushing of the “Oi!” banner felt narrower than most. The central idea seemed to be to bring punk rock into the ownership of disaffected working class youth in unfashionable parts of Britain, putting it in direct opposition with most music journalists at that time, who seemed to want to further the aims of post-punk and art-punk bands.

You could argue that “Oi!” played out Bushell’s alternate reality fantasy, the answer to the question “What would have happened if Sham 69 had been the ultimate victors of the punk movement?” while the rest of the writers at IPC Towers were asking the same deluded question about The Fall, Wire or The Slits. Bushell’s argument does have fairness and legitimacy behind it, however; if punk was supposed to have been a tolerant home for all the outsiders, why were the struggling, unemployed youth in dull  towns and cities like Derby, Redcar, Redditch* and Margate often being left out of the media story? 

In answer to this question, the “Oi!” compilation series was born, which took the chemical ingredients of punk, exposed them to a bunsen burner, and boiled them down to their key essence, their remaining powder – anger and amateur three chord rock and roll. Somewhere along the way, the movement also attracted a fascistic element which many of the groups didn’t quite work hard enough to shake off, meaning that as soon as the subgenre is mentioned nowadays, one of the first things journalists feel inclined to do is address the issues it attracted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has left enough of a bad taste for the genre to be ignored by almost all the articles or documentaries covering punk rock since.

Suspicions about “Oi!” were big enough by 1982 that the playwright Trevor Griffiths staged (and televised) the production “Oi For England”. The plot revolved around an initially shadowy figure known as The Man offering promising punk bands who fit his own (fascistic) political ideas career-changing slots at a festival. It’s important to note that The Man was obviously supposed to be a representation of the powers-that-be, desperate to cause unemployed and directionless post-industrial youth to fight minorities rather than the system. Bushell’s later career as a well-paid right-wing tabloid hack did make the play seem astonishingly prophetic, though, meaning that when I finally got hold of a printed copy of the script in the early nineties, I assumed it was actually directly about him.

I could be forgiven for this presumption given what a go-to figure he was during the early eighties. Blitz were from New Mills (close to Derby) and initially saw what they thought was an ally in Bushell, sending him demo tapes in 1981 in the hope of getting exposure. Bushell, an avowed socialist at this point, was deeply impressed with their work and offered them a chance to sleep in his family home on a London council estate while attempting to establish their career, also giving them slots on his “Oi!” compilation series.

17. Depeche Mode - See You (Mute)

Four weeks at number one from 20th February 1982

Following Vince Clarke’s departure from Depeche Mode, a hard, callous cynicism set in among most quarters of the music press. Announcements that Martin Gore would pick up the songwriting duties were not received with the confidence Daniel Miller and the group had hoped for, and in some cases resulted in total derision.

Music journalists are often quick to judge the commercial prospects of any group in the heat of the moment, and frankly, nobody could have blamed them for their negative tack in this instance. The only evidence either they or the general public had that Martin Gore could write songs lay in a somewhat middling instrumental on “Speak And Spell”, childishly entitled “Big Muff”, plus the middling vocal track "Tora! Tora! Tora!". It showed he could pen a passable melody, but if these were the only Gore compositions heard in public, you can hardly blame them for speculating what on earth the rest of them must have sounded like. Did another synth instro entitled “Enormous Dildo” exist elsewhere which was of a lesser quality? Did he have an entire concept album of instrumentals with crude sexual titles hidden away somewhere, and were Depeche Mode to become some kind of Kraftwerk influenced version of the Anti Nowhere League? 

“See You” was therefore something of a pleasant surprise and a puzzle from the offset. It had apparently been penned while Gore was still at secondary school, a sweet but melancholic ballad written before he had even experienced a romantic relationship. He has since referred to this single somewhat critically, remarking that it was an example of him writing outside his personal experience, whereas his later songs about love were all at least partially biographical. He gives the impression of being slightly ashamed that this single therefore emotionally manipulates the listener into believing its lyrics are the truth.

Where you sit on this topic depends on your feelings on pop music, and whether effective songwriting has to be “The Truth” (a very purist hippy/ punk idea of what the form has to be) or can just as easily be the lie that tells the truth. Do we expect every artist to have direct personal experience of the things they reflect? It seems limiting, unrealistic and a bit unreasonable to do so.

The focus of this single is seemingly first love, which had been a Tinpan Alley songwriting staple and a subject numerous other artists turned to. “First Love Never Dies”, tackled by The Walker Brothers and The Cascades among others, is one of the most direct and obvious examples - “And if you're thinking of me/ And you find that you still love me/ There's no use to go on living lies”, the song demands towards the end, perhaps more in hope than expectation.

Then there are many other examples – “Macarthur Park” is probably the most overwrought and ambitious, but the angle shifts and alters in tracks like “Disco 2000” by Pulp (more of a document of a pie-eyed puppy crush than love, admittedly) and the almost flippant, joky “Emily Kane” by Art Brut. Romantic nostalgia easily captures the imagination of listeners precisely because your first serious relationship or (worse) unrequited desire can prove to be the most powerful, confusing and potentially havoc-wreaking event you’ll experience. The statistics around first affairs are unforgiving, and they usually strike when we’re too emotionally immature to deal with them. No wonder songwriters can’t let go of the idea – there’s either a good commercial racket in penning a tune about the subject, or else an enormous emotional purging for the author, and sometimes both.

In the case of “See You”, it’s possible to hear the “deception” if you listen to it after any of the above songs I've mentioned. Whereas they are rich in the kind of close observational detail typical of intense life experiences, picking up on background details like old men playing checkers in the park or woodchip on the walls, “See You” is suspiciously broad. “I remember the days when we walked through the woods/ we’d sit on a bench for awhile”, states Gore vaguely. “I treasured the way we used to laugh and play”. So far, this could just as easily be a song about a dearly departed pet dog, so routine and flimsy are the outlines.

These initial missteps don’t end up mattering, though. A narrative of sorts begins to emerge which is only too believable. “I swear I won’t touch you,” he tells his imaginary ex towards the end, and “We’ll stay friendly like sister and brother/ though I think I still love you”. It’s not exactly poetry, but there is a tension tugging away at the song here which feels only too real. He’s making promises about his emotions he can’t keep, contradicting himself, and even throwing in trite philosophy into the song with the line “I think that you’ll find/ people are basically the same”; it’s certainly true that people need to be loved, but how they are loved, and by whom, are deeply complicated areas, and despite Gore’s teenage naivete here, as a listener you’re left with the impression that the singer (Dave Gahan) knows this. It’s not delivered forcefully or victoriously, it almost sounds as if he knows he’s in a weak bargaining position. If all we need is love, and we’re all essentially the same, then why meet up with someone from our past with baggage, after all? Why not choose a less complicated route?

The arrangements do a lot of the song’s work and are in places downright beautiful. The melancholic melody lines which emerge beneath “If the water’s still flowing we can go for a swim” are almost trying to sound victorious, bordering on a fanfare, but ultimately collapse into defeat. The endless tug-of-war at the heart of this song, portraying a man who doesn’t even really know what he actually wants, is unbelievably effective, and force the listener to imagine someone hanging around by the telephone wondering whether to invite themselves back into their ex’s life again, all the time knowing it’s futile and potentially damaging. Five years is a long time, and the times change – and the longer the communication gap, the longer the odds of closing it are, and the less likely it is the contact will be well received.

15b. Anti-Nowhere League - "Streets Of London" (WXYZ)

Two weeks at number one from 6th February 1982

This is where things get awkward. As Theatre of Hate dipped down to number two – possibly, I suspect, due to pressing plant or distribution issues – the Anti-Nowhere League managed to climb back up to the top of the charts again for another fortnight.

Rather than spending another 1,000 words or so pontificating on the significance of both the group and the song itself, let’s just take a look at what was occurring further down the charts, shall we?

In the first week of the League boomeranging back up to the top, Mari Wilson enters at 22 with “Beat The Beat”. Wilson’s distinctive beehive hairdo and retro-leaning girl pop stood out quite significantly in 1982, and as the year progressed her positions in the official charts grew ever more impressive. “Beat The Beat” would have to make do with a final placing of number 59 in the national charts and number 12 in the NME indie listings, but interest was blooming and she wouldn’t be held back forever.




Just beneath her at number 23 lay Zeitgeist with an urgent sounding post-punk cover of The Temptations “Ball Of Confusion”. It just about works, although the group’s unvarnished shoutiness and unpolished reading sometimes holds the track back rather than taking it to new and exciting places. Issued on the “Jamming” fanzine’s record label – remember that enormous independent publishing phenomenon, everyone? - it failed to climb higher up the chart.




A genuine curiosity is at number 28 in the form of Cheaters’ cover of “Spirit in the Sky”, way before anyone else got their mitts on it and revived it to greater success (whether that’s Doctor and the Medics or those Kumars). It takes the original and adds a punkish vocal rasp and a glam friendly punch and thud – which to be fair, the original was never a million miles away from to begin with.




In week two, UB40’s “I Won’t Close My Eyes” debuts at number 8 before eventually peaking at number 3. Acting as the lead single from their “UB44” album, “Close My Eyes” saw the group struggling to connect with the public and only reaching number 32 in the national charts – a thrilling prospect for the Theatre of Hates of this world, but terrible news for a group who only a couple of years prior to this were guaranteed top ten hits. The relative failure of their work at this point prompted a rethink, and their revenge on the hit parade would be swift.

16. Theatre Of Hate - Do You Believe In The West World? (Burning Rome)

 

Number one for one week on 30 January 1982

The idea that the cold war exercised a clammy grip on the imagination of eighties pop is a dominant cliche. There’s plenty of evidence to back it up, obviously. Duran Duran clumsily used the frequently mocked “you’re about as easy as a nuclear war” line, and Ultravox penned one of the eeriest pop ballads ever, “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes”, and directed a child-melting video to go with it. Bigger and louder than either of those were Frankie Goes To Hollywood who spent nine weeks at number one with a record partially consisting of the actor Patrick Allen issuing post-nuclear bomb public information on top of agitated, urgent rhythms.

All those tracks emerged in 1983 or 1984, either around or not long after the point Ronald Reagan called the USSR an “evil empire” and the cold war entered its deepest freeze. Prior to that, while the threat was apparent, its shadow was perhaps more apparent in the atmosphere of some of the odder, more unsettled records to attract public excitement and attention; in that respect, it feels appropriate that “O Superman” was a huge seller in 1981 in a way I doubt it would have been five years earlier or later. Was it actually directly about nuclear war, though? Possibly not.

Records which actually directly referenced nuclear war, even in the indie chart, were relatively thin on the ground prior to that point, with tracks like UB40’s “The Earth Dies Screaming” being the exceptions that proved the rule. In general, most of the punk underground were more interested in issuing rattlingly irritated singles about the futility of war in general. The Exploited were particularly exercised by such matters, with lead singer Wattie’s previous career as a soldier serving in Northern Ireland feeding into his obsession with the futility of armed conflict.

“Do You Believe in the West World” was a bit of an exception, and emerged packaged in a provocative sleeve, signposting the actual meaning of the lyrics for anyone who wasn’t listening closely enough. Kirk Brandon uses a Western film backdrop as the canvas to scrawl his message on, offering us not very subtle hints such as “That was before the circus with the bear arrived/ oh the bear it roared as the gun was fired/ then the cowboy turned the gun on himself as he sang/ ‘no-one’s alive’”.

“Westworld” is actually a cunning and surprisingly rewarding single which seems to crush a wide range of influences into one song, from the obvious (actual Western films) to the more current. The track opens with a post-punk thunder of bottom-heavy tribal drumming, before allowing an almost funky rhythm guitar to slip in, as if to remind us that in the event of armageddon, Orange Juice and Edwyn Collins would be evaporated as well as Brandon’s more anguished music. 

As the track progresses and inevitably lets in some Morricone inspired twang, it also eventually permits a raging sax solo as well, making this sound like a condensed representation of rock and roll in the nuclear age. Whereas Theatre of Hate’s previous indie number one “Nero” was a static atmosphere piece with feet of clay, “Westworld” unfolds gracefully, managing more in its five minutes than most post-punk groups of the period bothered with.

15. Anti Nowhere League - Streets of London (WXYZ)

 

Three weeks at number one from 9^th January 1982

There’s a sketch in the series “Big Train” which portrays Ralph McTell struggling to engage with an audience who only want to hear his hit “Streets of London”. Whenever he begins to play anything else, everyone gasps in astonishment at his audacity, and begins heckling furiously until he is forced to concede and play the song again. And again.  

It does a brilliant job of sending up the plight of talented songwriters who are mainly known for their one huge success – for make no mistake, McTell was (and is) damn good. He’s the closest Britain ever came to producing a Gordon Lightfoot styled folk singer, and at his very best his work intertwines beautiful storytelling with intricate finger-picked guitar lines. The actual B-side of “Streets Of London”, “Summer Lightning”, could have acted as a point of entry to anyone wanting to journey further into his catalogue, and the album that was plucked from (“Easy”) contains other material like “Maginot Waltz” whose unexpected lyrical conclusion acts as a stab to the heart. 

His slightly undeserved "one hit wonder" status very nearly didn’t happen for him at all – he didn’t regard “Streets of London” as a contender for either of his first two albums when he first penned it in the sixties, deeming the subject matter too depressing. The producer Gus Dudgeon persuaded him otherwise and got him to record it in simple acoustic form for his second album “Spiral Staircase”, issued on the independent Transatlantic Records in 1969. 

From there on, “Streets of London” began to slowly grow in popularity, becoming a track that other folk performers sang in pubs and clubs. A ripple effect was created in the process, elongating its life far beyond the usual lifespan of a track from an (at best) cultish folk album. 

Thanks to its burgeoning reputation, McTell finally released it as a single in a swollen, more intricately produced form on the Warner Brothers subsidiary Reprise in 1974, and it climbed to number two in the national charts early the following year. That version is disliked by some purists for its wintery choral embellishments which could be argued to treacle up the song and over-embellish the point; the unvarnished 1969 recording is the one most folkies would point you towards.

I have to be honest, the production – whether raw and authentic or luxurious and icy - has never been the central issue for me. As much as I love McTell’s voice and the sumptuous melodies, and even some of the observational aspects of the verses, the chorus is a slightly unnecessary slap in the face. We’re expected to believe that because homelessness and human suffering exists, all other emotional reactions to personal tragedies, depression or emptiness are null and void. “How can you tell me you’re lonely?” pleads McTell. “Very easily actually, Ralph”, the listener could be forgiven for replying. “My Mum died last month and my partner is being an unsympathetic arse. And no, I don’t think your idea of a tramp pointing session in Central London is going to make me feel better, thanks all the same.” 

The central philosophy to “Streets of London” is rather too abrupt and facile, the musical equivalent of your irritating work colleague sneering “First world problems” when you tell them your car didn’t start that morning, or perhaps even Bono’s Band Aid cry of “Tonight thank God its them instead of you” stretched to an entire song. Unlike McTell’s best work, it’s an unsurprising and simplistic narrative, and that’s probably why it did so well commercially. The mass market generally only tends to have time for folk music when it tilts heavily towards sentimentality. Bert Jansch, who performed on the 1974 version of the track, stated that unlike McTell's other work it had “no mystery”, which feels like a fair assessment. 

The public adored the song's simple, sharp message, though, and the track simply wouldn't fade from view, eventually becoming bashed about by so many honking buskers and amateur performers that it felt inescapable. Victoria Wood took aim at its ubiquity in the eighties, featuring it in a sketch about care homes, where every single example of live residential entertainment involved terrible musicians singing the song in an inappropriately cheery fashion. 

By the time enough wannabe Dylans got their plectrums around it, McTell’s gentle baritone had been replaced in the public’s consciousness with a street poet rasp – so by 1982, your average British provincial High Street might have featured two things; a busker straining his way through “Streets of London” outside WH Smith, harmonica strapped around his neck, while 100 yards further down, a group of young mohicaned town punks sat throwing crisps at each other outside a branch of Presto. That halfway point, within earshot of both the wannabe beatnik and the teenage Sid Vicious wannabes, is where the Anti Nowhere League come in (finally).