67. Depeche Mode - It's Called A Heart (Mute)

One week at number one on w/e 6th October 1985

From about 1983 until the end of the decade, it felt as if every Christmas came accompanied with a Big Present; the desirable item that someone in my family (not always my parents) decided to treat me to that year. One year I hit the jackpot and got a home computer, a treasured Commodore 64 which kept me company until the space bar literally fell off it. Other years I was given brilliant gifts whose value I didn’t always appreciate at first sight – as with 1985, when I unwrapped an unpromisingly small parcel and a dolby equipped Sony Walkman fell out.

“Wow, that’s nice!” I said, before quickly moving on.
“But it’s a Sony Walkman!” my brother said. “Aren’t you excited?” (luckily the present buyer was not in the room at this point).
“Yeah, like I said, it’s nice!”
“It’s more than nice, that’s a fantastic Walkman!” he continued to protest, almost offended by my mild enthusiasm. “I’d love one like that!”

My casual enthusiasm was due to the fact that I already had a radio/cassette player upstairs and couldn’t understand the difference. I soon came round. Also among my presents were two albums I’d wanted for months – Art Of Noise’s “Who’s Afraid Of…?” and Depeche Mode’s “Singles 81-85”. I pushed the button down on my new Walkman and pressed play, straight into “Dreaming Of Me”… and BANG. The pulse and throb of the drum machine hammered around my head in pristine, shiny audio. Every deep bass note and synthetic twitter, breath and pulse felt as if it was plugging right into my heartbeat, blocking out the rest of the world and creating a slick, digital soundtrack for my daydreams.

Both the tapes and the Walkman barely left my side for weeks afterwards, and I familiarised myself with Depeche Mode’s singles like a scholarly monk, sometimes eating breakfast and lunch in the kitchen while they played, deaf to the humdrum family world (this period of my life was excellent heavy advance research for this blog, you could say). “Singles 81-85” is structured chronologically, which with a lesser group could be a mistake and might involve frontloading their flops and fumbles first, causing the listener to lose interest after the fifteenth minute. As Depeche emerged surprisingly well-formed and carefully produced for an indie group, what you got instead was a band slowly morphing before your ears as they go through adolescence (literally and metaphorically) and decide who they really are.

When Vince Clarke leaves after “Just Can’t Get Enough”, there’s no jarring change, but a noticeable shift in priorities as the digital bops and squeaks get slowly replaced by more lingering ambient textures. Then industrial sampling emerges by the point of “Everything Counts”, then suddenly they become a harsher, noisier group in 1984 – in common with many others at the time – before landing on “Shake The Disease” and finding a way of making all their influences cohere with beautifully and admirably intricate production and songwriting.

That wasn’t all, though. “Shake The Disease” was only the first out of two non-studio album tracks on the compilation. The second one, and the final track overall, was this single, which slowly drifted into my ears doing a spitting, hissing and huffing synthetic impersonation of a groovy stream train; how very disco of them. Then the bass burps emerged, the rhythms twitched, the song sprang into life, Dave Gahan sang “There’s something beating here inside my body and it’s called a heart!” and I found myself thinking… oh. Is that it? Is this the finale, the curtain closer on the first act of your great career?

When put up against the last two years of the group’s work, which under these circumstances you’re given no choice but to consider, “It’s Called A Heart” is a perplexing backwards shift. It’s lyrically coy and unbelievably simple; there’s no questioning of God or pondering the complexities of human relationships here, it’s all about putting your trust in someone romantically, just like so many other pop songs before it. “Hearts can never be owned/ hearts only come on loan” sings Gahan, like a speak-your-Clintons-Valentines-Card machine. The group jitter and bug in the background, sprightly and peppy, and they do a good job of approximating the adrenalin rush of fresh romance, but there’s nothing truly impressive going on here. We’ve all been led to believe that pop music is never “just” pop music, but there will always be middling moments where it ends up being little more than a happy jingle to make the day go by faster. While a top-of-the-range Sony Walkman isn’t merely “nice”, sometimes that’s all the singles you play on it are – competently delivered slices of mild catchiness.

If “It’s Called A Heart” feels like a surprisingly retrograde step, some hints were present in the interviews the group did to promote it at the time. Andy Fletcher and Martin Gore talked about the process in “One Two Testing” magazine in October 1985, and a sense of under-investment and uncertainty shines through. Each band member and producer Daniel Miller got a vote on what should be the next single from a demo tape Martin Gore provided them with.

66. The Woodentops - Well Well Well (Rough Trade)

Three weeks at number one from w/e 14th September 1985

In the Microdisney documentary “The Clock Comes Down The Stairs” – and indeed in some of the press interviews that surrounded its premiere – the group regularly mused on why they weren’t successful. The incendiary behaviour of their frontman Cathal Coughlan is frequently overlooked as an explanation in favour of other factors, such as the fact that The Smiths were dominating Rough Trade’s attention in the eighties.

I’m sure that this is largely true. Rough Trade were a small independent label often operating on creaky financial footing, and had to put the most money down on their leanest, speediest horse rather than gambling their lot on unknown quantities. The Smiths were certainly their prize filly, but what’s interesting is absolutely nobody in the documentary mentions The Woodentops, who were also rapidly catching up on the outside lane and were also stealing Rough Trade's attention.

The group, it seems, have largely been forgotten even by people who were actually in their vicinity at the time, but were distinct press favourites and earmarked as probable contenders even in the trade press. Rolo McGinty had previously unsuccessfully auditioned as the bass player for the Teardrop Explodes, and like that group, had a faint air of both the New Wave pop star and the magic mushroom guzzling hippy about him. His pixie-ish bopping made him a great English frontman in the Barrett/ Bolan tradition, while the group’s cocktail of influences made them a unique prospect.

McGinty’s rounded middle class English vowels met with frequently folky lead acoustic guitars, which mixed and matched with hyper post-punk tribal drums and squealing keyboards. The angular woodiness to their sound can’t have been unprecedented, but it felt simultaneously accessible and yet odd; the only real prior comparison I can think of is Unit 4+2 at the frantic and faintly psychedelic tail end of their career (give their final 45 “I Will” a spin to hear what I mean, but don’t ignore the better flipside). Even they never truly pushed the boat out this far, though.

McGinty made the approach sound very simple in a 1986 interview with “One Two Testing”, explaining “[There are] lots of different kinds of shapes but there's always this acoustic guitar and lots of backing vocals so it always has that kind of folkiness… The music of the drums, the bass, electric guitar and the keyboards is almost like a dream behind the acoustic guitar so the vocal and guitar are like Bob Dylan leaning against a tree, singing a song and the band is like a dream of the backing that's going on inside Bob Dylan's head when he's singing.

"He's not hearing this acoustic guitar, he's hearing this orchestra or something and he's singing with that. The acoustic guitar is just keeping his rhythm for him.”

They clearly weren’t approaching things from an orthodox direction, but the results could be astounding, and “Well Well Well” is marvellous. If you haven’t heard it in a long time, refreshing your memory is a valuable exercise – for one thing, it’s more intense than you remember, sounding polite and joyful but also faintly threatening. Rolo often sounds taunting while singing “Baby I know you like my way so wrap my soul and take it away” in the chorus, and the band pound, clatter and rattle like an old diesel train in danger of getting derailed behind him. It’s a steep downhill journey towards the buffers, or perhaps, in reality, towards a likely lady’s lap.

Usually when groups pick up acoustic guitars to enchant someone of the opposite sex, it’s done so with embarrassing displays of earnestness and passion rather than mischief, which is another way the group subvert expectations here. The fact that while doing so, they have a killer skiffling hook in the mix (Terry and Gerry would have undertaken unspeakable and possibly criminal dares to own this chorus) and know exactly when to stop is a sign that none of this is random, despite Rolo’s jazzy vagueness about their methods. It just feels eccentrically plotted, but unlike the off-kilter experiments of a lot of indie acts, it’s a scheme that Pops rather than jars.

64b. The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary (Beggars Banquet)

 

Five more weeks at number one from w/e 10th August 1985

If there's one consistent pattern on this journey through the indie charts, it's that the summer period sees a reduction in new releases combined with a general sales slump. 

On an interesting week, this will allow relatively minor groups (such as The Men They Couldn't Hang or March Violets) to claim the top slot. On less fascinating occasions, it just means that a dominant single can reclaim the crown again for a longer period, and by jingo, that's exactly what The Cult do on this occasion, gluing themselves to number one for a further five weeks.

As always, we'll pass the time by looking at what was stirring lower down the charts.

Week One

8. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Tupelo (Mute)

Peak position: 2

Frontrunners to kick The Cult off the top spot, Nick Cave and his bad blokes nonetheless failed to do the necessary with "Tupelo". In its own strange way, the single has perhaps been just as enduring as "She Sells Sanctuary", its stomping, stropping, thumping and snarling core defining what the average casual music listener probably thinks the Bad Seeds are all about - a kind of agitated, gibbering modern blues. 

"Tupelo" is one of those unusual records which sounds as if it could have been recorded and released in any decade before or since. The fact it's loosely based on a John Lee Hooker track gives it a certain amount of that timelessness, but the dirt, grime and agitation stretches far beyond those basic roots. 

12. Terry and Gerry - Banking on Simon (In Tape)

Peak position: 4

1985 seemed to be riddled with indie performers whose visibility was largely limited to that single year, and here are our favourite skiffling twosome back again with another whipsmart ditty. "Banking On Simon" is like "Making Plans For Nigel" if it had emerged on Pye Nixa in 1956 rather than on Virgin in 1979, and you can probably already imagine how it goes - it almost feels as if the duo are grinning and winking at you through the stereo speakers. 

While they were indisputably bloody good at this sort of thing, you can easily understand how they became a novelty flash rather than a long-term smoulder; in the absence of any kind of surrounding skiffle revival, they were strange outliers, a retro peculiarity for the anti-fashion kids and an easy and unusual topic for the music press to write about that summer. 

15. APB - Summer Love (Big River)

Peak position: 15

APB got funkier as time went on, and "Summer Love" is their most commercial single yet, mixing fat distorted guitars with superb grooves, orchestral hits and vocals which are oddly celebratory for a post-punk record. Had it been released a year or two earlier, this probably would have been an actual proper hit, but no matter - it still caught enough ears in 1985 to make a vague dent in the public consciousness.

20. Icicle Works - Seven Horses (Beggars Banquet)

Peak position: 15

28. Minor Threat - Salad Days (Discord)

Peak position: 15

Week Two

16. The Janitors - Chicken Stew (In Tape)

Peak position: 10

We're nearly three quarters of the way through the year at this point, and the C86 beacon is starting to flash with greater intensity. Primal Scream and The Pastels have already covered off the twee jangly end of the spectrum, and while The Janitors here may never have found space on that "seminal" (TM) cassette compilation, their approach here echoes the wigged out treble-heavy earfuck of the more experimental end. 

Guitars bend and squeal, the Casio click track shuffles, and "Chicken Stew" sounds cheap and might even be nasty, but only in the rock and roll sense of the word. Whatever blues Nick Cave is going through on "Tupelo", The Janitors are arguably also kinda feeling here, but on a Fostex Four Track with a drum machine. Proper indie, in other words, as opposed to Depeche Mode bankrolled indie - if such things matter to you. 

23. Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Rotting in the Fart Sack (Metal Knob)

Peak position: 8

26. The Bomb Party - New Messiah (Abstract)

Peak position: 26

 

Week Three

12. The Triffids - You Don't Miss Your Water (Til Your Well Runs Dry) (Hot)

Peak position: 7

By 1985, Australians were beginning to take up more and more space in the music press as the groundswell of talent from the country made itself internationally known. That Triffids seem to have subsequently have become a footnote isn't really indicative of the fuss they stirred up at the time, and "You Don't Miss Your Water" showcased a band with almost head-spinning confidence. While a number of UK post-punk bands occasionally nervously licked the outer edges of country rock, this single sees the group confidently plunge the depths, and they return to the surface with reluctance, as if they always belonged deep down there.

65. Men They Couldn't Hang - Ironmasters (Demon)

One week at number one on w/e 3rd August 1985

Even if folk music had an unequivocal - if increasingly marginal - place in British music during the first half of the eighties, a whiff of mothballs was beginning to envelope many of the artists. If we want to indulge in simple generalisations for just a second, folk artists in the sixties often felt outspoken and rebellious, and their early seventies brethren felt scholarly and wise. By 1980, however, folk’s mainstream presence felt fusty, synonymous with Foster and Allen wearing glitzy showbiz jackets on Pebble Mill at One.

As a kid, I had no notion of the fact that there were many facets to folk music. All I knew and understood were the brief examples that fell under my nose – “Daytrip To Bangor”, “A Bunch Of Thyme”, “Streets of London”. Admittedly the latter should have given me a few clues to help me understand that folk could address common social issues with a sense of outrage, but it was hard to read too much into something that was regularly put on the overhead projector during school assemblies. It whiffed too much of school plimsolls and the baked beans being cooked down the hall in preparation for the next school dinner. 

One day, my parents left “Folk On Two” on the radio – they would often lose patience with the show and angrily put a cassette on instead – and the presenter suddenly exclaimed with some enthusiasm that they were going to play the new one by The Men They Couldn’t Hang. “They’re a new group of folk performers, very big with critics in the music press right now, and personally I think it’s marvellous that they’re introducing so many young people to the form”.

The group’s cover of Eric Bogle’s “The Green Fields Of France” seeped out of the radio’s speakers, and to my untutored ears at the time, I couldn’t hear much difference between their style and some of the other tracks played on the show. I understood that they were meant to be rougher, punkier and scrappier, but “Green Fields” wasn’t the MTCH track you needed to hear if you wanted to understand how raucous they could be. Their second single “Ironmasters” did the job better.

Opening gently but forebodingly on the lines “This is an old story that’s rarely ever told/ of the raping of the country, of the valley” the group slowly up the speed and the ferocity before ranting and raving about William Crawshay, a 19th Century iron merchant. Born to a wealthy father ‘affectionately’ known as “The Tyrant”, who was also one of Britain’s few 18th Century millionaires, William was an even more troublesome man. In May 1831 many who worked for him took to the streets of Merthyr Tydfil in protest at the lowering of their wages and the levels of unemployment. Upwards of 10,000 workers from Merthyr and the surrounding area marched under a red flag (believed to be the first time it was used a symbol of socialism or communism) eventually commandeering military explosives. British troops were eventually called up by the Government and the rebellion was dispersed, control of the town wrested back again by force on 7th June.

Crawshay was deeply unmoved by this spectacle, showing little sympathy for his workers or remorse for the explosive situation his industry had created. He seemingly resolved to continue as usual; history makes much more noise about the insurrectionists who were punished and hung than any moment of doubt Crawshay might have had.

“Ironmasters” takes this moment and loads it into a cannon, The Men They Couldn’t Hang opening fire and seething their way through a complex historical event in just over four minutes, throwing in the hypocrisy of the church as subtext (“Give generously!”) as well as the obvious war cry of the rest of the single. It’s a rattling, bashing, remorseless high tempo howl of defiance, close to fellow folk modernisers The Pogues in execution, but having a much more pronounced purpose and agitation.

It’s fairly obvious why a song like this might have seemed apt for 1985. The Thatcher Government’s push back against the mining unions appeared to have brought us full circle, making “Ironmasters” and the ghosts of 1831 feel far closer to the current day mood than ever. If the initial purpose of folk music was to spread present day news, “Ironmasters” proves that the stories of old also told us more about the present than we may have given them credit for. The mobs under the red flag in 1831 must have truly thought they had wrestled control back from the millionaires and the Government and were running their own free state. The miners of the mid-eighties were less ambitious, wanting only a fair wage. As time moves on, and expectations sink, so our demands become ever more modest and limp, and yet still are pushed back by the “powers-that-be” with ease. Even The Men They Couldn’t Hang had to change the final line of this song – originally “Oh that iron bastard, she still gets her way” in reference to Thatcher – to ensure radio play.

By choosing their subjects carefully and styling their music to mirror the fury of the day, The Men They Couldn’t Hang did indeed make folk music relevant to younger audiences – although I’m not sure the insurrection of “Ironmasters” would have been something Radio Two would have been keen to broadcast at the time.

64. The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary (Beggars Banquet)

Five weeks at number one from w/e 29th June 1985

There’s an elephant in the room we really need to address before talking about this single; namely the small problem of Beggars Banquet not really being an indie label, and its products having no real place in the indie charts. While Beggars were certainly an indie when they began in the late seventies, they rapidly inked a marketing and distribution deal with Warner Brothers who, whatever the size of Beggars own offices or staff-force, made them no more or less independent than Sire, Atlantic or Elektra.

The official MRIB indie charts recognised this state of affairs and barred them from entry. The NME, Melody Maker and Record Mirror indie charts all seemed to be in a state of confusion over it, though, letting Beggars in at some point in the mid-eighties before booting them out again a year or two later. So far as I can tell, this wasn’t a hot topic among the readers of those magazines, who probably didn’t care about these trifles; such discussions were fit only for industry types in the pages of Music Week. It must have been galling if you were in with a shot of getting an indie number one during The Cult's reign at the top, though – so commiserations to Doctor and the Medics who suffered that blow during this single’s initial stay there.

In other respects too, “She Sells Sanctuary” feels like something more than a modest little independent release. Every time we’ve met The Cult on our travels through these charts, there have been subtle shifts and progressions, sometimes interrupted by a fanbase-pleasing 45 before they increased their levels of stomp and bluesy strum a little further. “Sanctuary” is the sound of borders not just being fully breached, but the group sprinting across them screaming about their arrival. Held in place by one of the better rock riffs of the eighties - a mutant cross between Big Country’s bagpiping guitar and a classic Keith Richards refrain - Astbury sounds as if he’s screaming for sanctuary while running from one rock genre to the other.

While I doubt the group were being overly cynical in the construction of this one, it is fascinating just how many styles and tropes it wraps into one neat bundle. The incoherent post-punk vocalisations are intact – of all The Cult’s singles, it’s interesting that their biggest hit so far should be the most incomprehensible – but while there’s a Kirk Brandon-esque wail in the mix, there are also moments where Astbury’s voice finds the clench teethed scream of basic metal.

Elsewhere, Duffy’s hoedown hook is consistently interrupted at the tail end by the brief strums of a folky acoustic guitar, so regular, simple and predictable that almost feels like a sample. I’m a sucker for this bit, actually; I love the way it keeps interrupting the busy nature of the rest of the song with its polite, understated tick of approval, as if its visiting from another song entirely. Then there’s that instrumental break, mellow and toying with psychedelia, shoving the central riff underwater and filling it with the whine and buzz of sitar strings.

The end result is that “She Sells Sanctuary” sounded like everything that was going on in alternative rock in 1985 happening at once. At the time, I couldn’t help but be very conscious of its existence; it felt as if it spent most of the summer school holidays slowly crawling around the Top 40, never quite reaching the top ten but refusing to leave. At certain hours on Radio One, its riff needled away on the airwaves, sounding so familiar that it begged doubts as to whether somebody had written it many years before [post-script: It does admittedly sound somewhat like the intro to "Cats In The Cradle"]

Years later, when I became old enough to be let into alternative rock clubs, it still hadn’t gone away. It remained the barnstormer the DJ would utilise at the key moment everyone had consumed enough Snakebite and Black, only to watch the dancefloor seethe with the disordered movements of a hundred grebos, crusties and goths (and some of the metallers too). Some tracks spoke only to small segments of the audience and created vacuums in the corners of the dancefloor, but “She Sells Sanctuary” – like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Firestarter” after it – seemingly spoke to everyone.