Three weeks at number one from w/e 14th September 1985
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.
By 1986 people would be talking about The Woodentops as if they were big news. Even Smash Hits featured them in an article about groups to watch. The problem with carrying the Next Big Thing mantle is that anything less than commanding top ten success gets written off as failure, and the group’s eventual tally of two albums charting in the lower reaches of the national Top 50 (the critically respected 1986 album “Giant” reached number 35, whereas 1987’s “Wooden Foot Cops On The Highway’ reached number 48) made music journalists seem like false prophets. In the grand scheme of things, though, it’s amazing that a group who were so unbelievably un-eighties and unorthodox got as far as they did, and a testament to the power of their tunes. “Well Well Well” is arguably the best of them (though I may change my mind on that one as we slowly revisit their other work).
New Entries Elsewhere In The Charts
Week One
15. Fuzztones - She's Wicked (ABC)
Peak position: 3
Debut entry for The Fuzztones, a rare example of a group whose name accurately and confidently described their sound (though they would perhaps be usurped in this respect by We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It shortly). They obviously couldn’t afford marketing consultants to plot such things, but their entrance couldn’t be bettered here.
The group seemed to live in that weird post-psychedelic, pre-prog sixties zone where bluesy tunes met demonic organs, but topped that off with a clear punkish Damned influence. “She’s Wicked” is a near perfect introduction to their world.
16. Yeah Yeah Noh – Another Side To Mrs. Quill (In Tape)
Peak position: 11
The Yeah/Nohs begin to sound a bit more sophisticated and psychedelic here, recording on a budget of tuppence but weaving sinister guitar squeals, autumnal brass and fragile jangles into their broken little horror story.
Every kid’s dumb playground story about the witchy woman in the “ivy-covered house at the end of the street with the broken side window” is given a home in this single.
18. Alien Sex Fiend - I’m Doing Time In A Maximum Security Twilight Home (Anagram)
Peak position: 7
Goth always had a strong element of campy daffiness in the eighties, being as much about cheap hammer horror flicks, gory cliches and sexy vampires as it was about cribbing Ian Curtis’s most interesting ideas, and some groups leaned more to one side than the other.
Alien Sex Fiend always sounded as if they’d barely even heard “Unknown Pleasures” and instead wanted to wave their willies around at Halloween parties on the wrong side of midnight. “I’m Doing Time” grinds enough to sound up there with the nastiest industrial acts, but dooms itself from being taken seriously with the ridiculous title and the sense the group are more into pantomime theatrics than anything else.
20. Meat Whiplash - Don't Slip Up (Creation)
Peak position: 5
Neil Taylor of the NME praised this record, but asked the obvious question while talking about the group’s Mary Chain inspired sound: “What comes first, the original creators of the sound, or the autumn chicklets that follow? There are two ways of looking at this single… it’s either brilliant or it’s just another Creation single. The bandwagon rolls on, but will the band?”
The answer was no. Meat Whiplash were from East Kilbride, just like JAMC, but would morph into a new form not long after this single was released, making them a strange blip in the Creation Records story. “Don’t Slip Up” is, to my ears, a passable ripoff of the Mary Chain but doesn’t really make a convincing case why that was necessary to begin with; it’s like a Mister Pickwick approximation of the Reid brothers sound when – as the Woodentops prove at number one – brand new sounds and new adventures were always going to be more enticing.
26. Lost Cherrees - Unwanted Children (Mortarhate)
Peak position: 26
27. The Pogues - Dirty Old Town (Stiff)
Peak position: 8
The NME’s liberal 1985 indie chart rules allow The Pogues in again with their take on this folk classic. We were singing this one off the overhead projector at school at around the same time McGowan and co released it, and this caused much confusion in my heart about what it actually was – a school tune favoured by Mr Blyth, my teacher who used to be a vicar and would otherwise try to crowbar God into everything, or something a bit more radical?
I looked over the assembly hall at Sam, the scruffy kid in my year known to some as Smelly Sammy, who was a mean marbles player and usually had half of that morning’s breakfast glued to his school shirt. He sang this one with delight and gusto, swaying from side to side like it was some rare treat. He got it immediately. So, it seems, did McGowan. I still struggle with it a bit, though. Sometimes music is just tainted by who first gives you permission to appreciate it, and a thousand music critics and a brilliant band just can’t save the day.
Week Two
17. Erasure - Who Needs Love Like That (Mute)
Peak position: 9
After the muted (no pun intended) reception to his previous single, Vince Clarke returned with Erasure, his first fully-fledged project since Yazoo.
“Who Needs Love Like That” was expected by esteemed teen organs such as Smash Hits and Number One to be a proper hit, but in the end had to make do with an understated national Top 75 position. It would later be reissued to greater success, but for the time being Erasure were a classic case of a talented group being launched at the wrong time. People were barely interested in Depeche Mode’s continued adventures in pop at this point, and Clarke’s old fashioned techno-bounce felt as if it had no place in 1985.
In fairness, the song also isn’t something most people would name as stone-cold Erasure classic, and nor was their debut LP “Wonderland” much to get excited about. Andy Bell’s charisma sells this single far more than Clarke’s understated songwriting – this is a hook-driven pop record, but the hook itself feels too plain and blunted to be a surefire commercial prospect.
18. Hüsker Dü - Makes No Sense At All (SST)
Peak position: 2
Aka the Husker classic everyone knows. Vince Clarke should maybe have taken some lessons from Bob Mould in writing immediate hooks at this point; the group sound like a frustrated bunch of pop tunesmiths stuck in a junkyard college rock band. Rarely have such angsty, scuzzed up sounds felt as if they might also have been the chirpy theme tune to a sixties sit-com in another dimension; this is glorious life-affirming stuff which also manages to sound furious too.
21. Felt - Primitive Painters (Cherry Red)
Peak position: 4
Aka the one that got to number one in the official MRIB indie charts, and I wish had also done so here. “Primitive Painters” is not only Felt’s masterwork, it’s also one of the finest singles of the eighties, starting with the lost, fragile radar pings of Maurice Deebank’s guitar looking for life, and gradually building into a strange, pretty Regency town blues; the song is all stained glass windows, whitewashed walls and faded grandeur.
“I wish my life could be as strange as a conspiracy” is possibly one the finest opening lines to any song, and Lawrence’s moping vocals intertwine with Liz Fraser out-performing the “guest vocals” role. She trills and wails, revealing his true angst, while he poker faces his way through it. He’s a disappointment to himself and everyone else, but that’s fine, he kids us. Life’s just like that for most of us. “You... should... see... my... trail of disgrace!” splutters Fraser loudly, finding his true inner voice.
Meanwhile, Deebank out-performs even Johnny Marr’s best fretboard meanderings, constantly reaching and exploring, making this six minute single feel as if it’s still got more to say by the time the end is in sight. Forget “Summer Smash”. The fact this didn’t get inside the Top 40 is the true indignity of Lawrence’s career.
It now has a beautiful new video you can see below, weaved together from old Super 8 footage compiled by Lawrence’s sometime girlfriend, sometime stalker Vikki B. In it, a concord roars over London and reminds you what a mess of concrete, majesty and dereliction the capital was in the eighties, and what a perfect song this is to accompany that.
Peak position: 4
Aka the one that got to number one in the official MRIB indie charts, and I wish had also done so here. “Primitive Painters” is not only Felt’s masterwork, it’s also one of the finest singles of the eighties, starting with the lost, fragile radar pings of Maurice Deebank’s guitar looking for life, and gradually building into a strange, pretty Regency town blues; the song is all stained glass windows, whitewashed walls and faded grandeur.
“I wish my life could be as strange as a conspiracy” is possibly one the finest opening lines to any song, and Lawrence’s moping vocals intertwine with Liz Fraser out-performing the “guest vocals” role. She trills and wails, revealing his true angst, while he poker faces his way through it. He’s a disappointment to himself and everyone else, but that’s fine, he kids us. Life’s just like that for most of us. “You... should... see... my... trail of disgrace!” splutters Fraser loudly, finding his true inner voice.
Meanwhile, Deebank out-performs even Johnny Marr’s best fretboard meanderings, constantly reaching and exploring, making this six minute single feel as if it’s still got more to say by the time the end is in sight. Forget “Summer Smash”. The fact this didn’t get inside the Top 40 is the true indignity of Lawrence’s career.
It now has a beautiful new video you can see below, weaved together from old Super 8 footage compiled by Lawrence’s sometime girlfriend, sometime stalker Vikki B. In it, a concord roars over London and reminds you what a mess of concrete, majesty and dereliction the capital was in the eighties, and what a perfect song this is to accompany that.
26. Blyth Power - Chevy Chase (All The Madmen)
Peak position: 15
27. Jeffrey Lee Pierce - Love and Desperation (Statik)
Peak position: 27
30. The Sting-Rays – Don't Break Down (Big Beat)
Peak position: 30
Week Three
9. Balaam and The Angel - Day And Night (Chapter 22)
Peak position: 3
Popular rock hooks combine with chiming bells, swaying rhythms and celebratory vocals here, and it’s unbelievably cheery for a bunch of probable goths – almost ecstatic in fact.
17. Toy Dolls - James Bond lives down our street (Volume)
Peak position: 16
Nine months on from their festive chart success, and it’s back to business on the fringes for the Dolls, who never recovered their commercial footing. “James Bond” is (obviously) bloody silly, frantic, squeaky, childish, camp and easily the dumbest thing I’ve played this month, sounding like early Television Personalities professionally recorded then played back at 78rpm. “He gets a helicopter to work” Olga sings, as if he never quite got over his childhood fantasies.
There’s a part of me that wishes I could enjoy all this whackiness a bit more than I do. I get the disturbing feeling that the happiest people in the world live at Toy Dolls gigs, and if I could see the appeal, I might never have a glum day again.
23. King Kurt - Road To Rack And Ruin (Stiff)
Peak position: 20
28. Chumbawamba - Revolution! EP (Agitprop)
Peak position: 9
Crass’s general departure from the music world clearly left an anarcho-punk gap, and it’s one Chumbawamba would fill for decades to come. Their approach initially was little different from Crass’s, mixing and matching styles and sounds that had no place in the same track, throwing disjointed rhythms, discords and furious lyrics around.
The “Revolution!” EP crudely included excerpts from John Lennon’s “Imagine”, picking up the idea of illegal sampling way before the KLF.
Peak position: 20
28. Chumbawamba - Revolution! EP (Agitprop)
Peak position: 9
Crass’s general departure from the music world clearly left an anarcho-punk gap, and it’s one Chumbawamba would fill for decades to come. Their approach initially was little different from Crass’s, mixing and matching styles and sounds that had no place in the same track, throwing disjointed rhythms, discords and furious lyrics around.
The “Revolution!” EP crudely included excerpts from John Lennon’s “Imagine”, picking up the idea of illegal sampling way before the KLF.
30. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Spinning Round (Red Rhino)
Peak position: 11
For the full charts, go to the UKMix Forums
Number One In The Official Charts
David Bowie & Mick Jagger: "Dancing In The Street" (EMI America)
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