21. Yazoo - Only You (Mute)

One week at number one on 22nd May 1982

In the eyes of the music critics, Vince Clarke was always going to be the winner for leaving Depeche Mode. It probably wasn’t intended as a cynical political move, but it worked in his favour – as a brand (rather than a band) they were cute, young, teeny and unashamedly pop, and arguably disposable too. Their name even translated (arguably) as "Hurried Fashion", as if to accidentally hint at a certain lack of long term plan.

By departing with some vague excuses about not enjoying the trappings of being in a group, his stance could be read as personal, disapproving of their style or direction, or artistic depending on what you wanted to believe. It was certainly an admirably bold step; few band members have quit right after their first major hit single and gone on to further success.

While hindsight proves that his move wasn’t a dumb one, it would be wrong to assume he always felt secure about his decision. Shortly after leaving and before more concrete arrangements had been made, he wondered whether he could make a living as a songwriter, and he initially offered “Only You” to the band he had just left. There’s a beautiful alternate timeline opening up here which allows us to go wild imagining what Depeche Mode would have made of this song (I’m slightly surprised somebody hasn’t tried to do this with AI technology already). I’m straining and failing to hear it; there’s something about “Only You” which doesn’t sound like it should be sung by Dave Gahan, and the arrangement is also gentle and simplistic rather than featuring the broad atmospheric sweeps the band would quickly utilise. 

The group turned Clarke down, perhaps inevitably feeling that buying second-hand songs off the band member who had just walked away would not be an act of confidence and could potentially seal their fate. Had they accepted, it would also have deprived Clarke of his first major hit as a non-member of the band; sometimes it’s for the best that paths remain unexplored.

What he did instead was quickly hook up creatively with a local woman, the ex-Screamin’ Ab Dabs member Alison Moyet. Moyet was from a very different school of thought to Clarke and his ex-Depeche friends, having a background in punk and R&B groups and a powerful, expressive voice which couldn’t have been less akin to the sulky mid-range Gahan inhabited. There was a wildness and directness to her approach which opened up all manner of fresh possibilities for Clarke as a songwriter, not least the chance to act against the critical cliché that all synth groups were in some way “cold and emotionally detached”.

In this respect, “Only You” is a slightly strange opening effort in that it doesn’t make the most of her abilities. There’s a daintiness to it that doesn’t give her much to play with – from the intro onwards, the precise, pinging, staccato synth lines remind me of an electronic version of the sounds seeping from a wind-up musical box. It’s pretty and memorable but lyrically and melodically simplistic. The intro provides a solid foundation and the track never moves very far away, stuck in its own delicate and very unspecific mourning for a failed love affair (rather like “See You”, this is romance presented as a series of sketchy outline Mills and Boon details, filled with touched hands behind closed doors and women sulkily looking out of windows).

It was a huge number two hit, which makes its later fate seem inexplicable. It’s possible I’m listening to the wrong radio stations or hanging around the wrong shopping centres, but its status seems to have slipped over the years and I can’t remember the last time I heard it. Listening to it again for the first time in forever, I’m struck by how much of a passing novelty it may have seemed in 1982; Moyet may not be given many chances to stretch herself, but her voice is a lot more naturally expressive and technically proficient than many of her straining New Romantic rivals. She manages to bring warmth to some slightly flimsy lyrics and a sense of genuine emotional investment – Phil Oakey, Dave Gahan, and even Marc Almond at this point couldn’t have sold the song as well. In tandem with her, the gentle jewellery box synth backing adds a sentimental touch which can either seem irksome or moving depending on your emotional state when you press play.

20. Pigbag - Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag (Y Records)

Number one for five weeks from 17 April 1982

Any keen student of the indie chart in the eighties will know that there were records which seemed to hang around forever, yo-yoing around the bottom end of the listings as if they didn’t have homes to go to. Two factors seemed to particularly trigger this phenomenon – hit singles being purchased by stragglers or new fans long after the song’s peak, and long-term dancefloor hits. Sometimes, particularly in the case of a future 1983 leviathan (which I can’t even believe I’m bothering to be secretive about) the two factors combined to an astonishingly potent degree.

After its debut in 1981, “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag” crawled up and down the indie chart, disappearing after pressing runs dried up then reemerging, beginning the process afresh, then evaporating into thin air. Its popularity appeared [citation needed!] to be largely driven by club play and word of mouth in its earliest days. It wasn’t generally heard on daytime radio and as a small boy I don’t recall hearing it at all until 1982, although my older teenage brothers already seemed familiar with it by the time it first emerged in the grown up charts.

The track feels taken for granted nowadays, and in some circles – certainly those of particular football fans – it’s become a party favourite, a carnival cracker, something to dig out when a goal is scored, a promotion is guaranteed, or just deployed at the right time when everyone is in the correct mood. I’ve seen the effect “Papa” has on audiences, and it’s immediately recognised and understood, having a galvanising effect and crossing most cultural divides.

In one respect, this is explicable enough. The central aspect of the record is a stupendous fanfare backed with the kind of funky rhythm section that everyone finds irresistible. The horns and the clappy backbeat beckon you towards the floor even if you’re one of life’s most apologetic wallflowers. It's the part everyone can whistle when asked, the aspect that pulls everyone towards the centre of the floor. 

19. Anti-Nowhere League - I Hate People (WXYZ)

Three weeks at number one from 27th March 1982

“This just ain't the sort of music to lend itself to sensitive in-depth philosophical probings.” Gary Bushell, Sounds.
“It's so extreme, it's impossible to take offence. Take the League seriously and the joke's on you, mate.” Carol Clerk, Melody Maker.

You sense that music critics had a hard time being asked to pore over Anti Nowhere League’s work and were almost defensive about it. After all, their job is to write reviews which contain at least a few hundred words of imaginative and helpful observations for the modern music consumer. In the case of The League, though, you only needed to hear their first single and its B-side to get a fair impression of what the rest of their work was likely to be about – thunderous chords and an elephant footed rhythm section combined with cuss words and ridiculously extreme lyrical positions.

So it goes with “I Hate People”. A basic descending chord pattern introduces the song and sticks to it like a barnacle, used as the central hook for the bellowed chorus: “I hate people/ I hate the human race/ I hate people/ I hate your ugly face/ I hate people/ I hate your fucking mess/ I hate people/ They hate me”. It goes on to become what could be the soundtrack to a teenage workplace underling’s bad day, set to another misunderstanding in the post room or pathetic practical joke on the production line: “My mother thinks I am a jerk/ Because I hate my bleeding work/ Be like daddy he's sincere/ And don't be true because you're queer”.

Not for the first time since starting this blog, I’m reminded immediately of the Not The Nine O’Clock News song “Gob On You”, which satirised the arse end of British punk rock. “Gob on you/ cause you're far too old/ Gob on you cause your hands are cold/ Gob on you, you're a stupid old straight/ Gob gob gob gob hate hate hate hate” spat Mel Smith and Rowan Atkinson. Nobody could fault the team for attention to detail, but in retrospect you’ve got to wonder if they were missing the point – namely, that as music journalists had already freely noted, groups like The League hadn’t really entered the game for serious results to begin with. As punk’s initial light faded, it sometimes felt as if it had split into two factions; the hardcore anarchists who had serious grievances and misgivings and found punk to be a viable outlet for them, and those who just thrived on cartoonish chaos. By trying to parody British punk in the early eighties, comedians inevitably ended up landing slap bang inside the territory of those who weren’t taking themselves terribly seriously to begin with.

“I Hate People” would therefore be a bloody tough record to write about were it not for a strange and slightly worrying "creative decision" the band took in 2006. The release of Anti Nowhere League’s odds and sods compilation album “Pig Iron” saw the inclusion of a previously unreleased track entitled “The Day The World Turned Gay” which their previous label Captain Oi got cold feet about:

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.