One week at number one on 1st August 1987
It sometimes feels as if people were mourning the death of the hippy dream within five minutes of the whole thing starting. I’m exaggerating for effect, obviously, but the nostalgia and regret seem to start fairly sharply. Thunderclap Newman’s 1969 number one “Something In The Air” drips with desperation – the line “We have got to get it together” sounding more panicked than optimistic, urging somebody somewhere not to just do something, but attempt it in an organised, unified way.
More bizarrely still, the obscure track “Imagine”*, recorded by Elton John, Rodger Hodgson (of eventual Supertramp fame) and friends in the same year seems to be fondly looking back at an era which had only just passed. “You'll find that the flowers won't wait/ they will disintegrate” warns Hodgson; and by 1969 they had, broadly speaking. Both songs feel as if they’re taking place at a wake, or at least on the last bank holiday of August when a faint chill can be felt on the breeze.
The seventies weren’t without occasional dabbles back into the land of corduroy toadstools – Hawkwind’s entire damn career and Rainbow Cottage’s freak 1976 hit “Seagull” are indicative of that – but the children did indeed grow up, and the British kids who took their place post-1976 were often angry, marginalised and aggrieved rather than peace loving. There’s a frequently unspoken and unreferenced commonality between the underground hippies and the seventies punks, but the Year Zero effects of punk rock rendered the frilliest and softest edges of psychedelic pop redundant; there would be no more pollen on 45 for awhile (excepting The Damned's occasional dabbles).
Attitudes softened again in the eighties with a bunch of “Paisley Underground” types emerging in 1982, but few were bold enough to try to earnestly shove Flower Power front and centre of anything they did. References were made, but mainly in a very knowing, nudging fashion. This meant that by the time All About Eve’s “Flowers In Our Hair” emerged in 1987, music critics inevitably balked at the ludicrous balls on it; here was a single, after all, which seemed to be weeping a lament for the loss of a potentially transformative era, right down to the promo video which saw the heavy-handed imagery of a coffin daubed with the words “Hippy – RIP” being set ablaze. These people, concluded the journalists, were either very brave or very stupid.
Or possibly neither. Despite their goth following, All About Eve were one of the few acts of this era to have a genuinely romantic and unironic view of the recent pre-punk past. Psychedelia didn’t play a prominent role in their musical thinking, but the early to mid seventies did. Miles Hunt of The Wonder Stuff scoffed that the group were like Fleetwood Mac**, but his barbs aside, they also clearly had Fairport Convention in their record collections too (or at the very least lead singer Julianne Regan certainly did). The group could rock out, but there was a floaty, measured, almost gentile aspect to everything they did – the airy softness and wondrous expression of Regan’s voice dictating the backdrop and ensuring the group were never going to be anchored to thundering basslines and reverb-heavy rhythms. You just can’t mix those kinds of flavours together.
Moreover, Regan wasn’t shy about passionately embracing topics of conversation the mainstream press almost certainly regarded as passé – she happily spilled forth about paganism and spells at a point in time where even Julian Cope could get a bit cautious around the subject. It was never exactly clear whether she simply didn’t give a shit whether she was being fashionable or was too carried away with her own trip to notice. Her interviews at this time were fascinatingly but almost innocently out of time, enthusiastic must-reads for anyone who didn’t want to wade through even more rock decadence and punk inspired nihilism.
Perhaps it would have been more surprising if such a group hadn’t released a single about the death of the hippy dream, then. Despite this, “Flowers In Our Hair” is, it has to be said, somewhat heavy handed, but with sentiments utterly in keeping with the kind of last gasps we heard in 1969. “We earn the flowers in our hair my friend/ So take my hand/ ‘One day’ is always too far away” Regan sings, with a bit of a regretful trill towards the instrumental break. The track also concludes with perhaps the key point a lot of journalists missed, unable to see the cynicism for the paisley patterns: “We only dare to say 'please love me'/ At the seventh glass of wine”. Aha. So it’s as much about buttoned-up English repression and how that ties in with disappointment and sourness and unrealised emotional aspirations. It also explains an earlier line “Do you ever think we’ll make it/ something more than a uniform?”
Regan’s voice and easy, floaty charisma enabled her to get away with these ideas in a way very few other vocalists at the time could have pulled off. She’s too confident and powerful in her delivery to be child-like (which would have rendered this record an horrendous, twee mess – imagine it sung in a lisping, prim voice to get what I mean) but has enough natural charm and gentleness to also make the ideas seem almost palatable, even slap-bang in the middle of a Thatcherite decade where you were supposed to be either greedy or angry (or possibly both). She appeared to have inherited the independent spirit and waywardness of punk in terms of attitude, but the record collection of a mid seventies university graduate.
Unfortunately, none of this necessarily means that “Flowers In Our Hair” is one of All About Eve’s best singles. It lacks the beauty or power of some of their later releases, and on occasion feels a little too anchored to its own core ideas to truly set sail. The group were at their best when they either wrote choruses which glided from your speakers, or immersed themselves in a specific mood rather than an over-riding moral or social message. This single has a point to make, but its almost too heavy for them to carry for even a few short minutes; I’ve half a suspicion it was meant to be carefree and breezy, an evocation to de-saddle life’s load, learn from the best bits of the hippy era and become a well-rounded adult, but it comes too close to sounding like a protest song (possibly due to the lack of force or momentum in the chorus). No wonder journalists were confused.
Its trajectory is also one of the oddest we’ll witness on this blog. A new contract with Phonogram meant that the major label picked up the distribution after a few weeks, giving it a bizarre 7-2-1 chart run – meaning its single week at number one was also its final week on the indie charts. It peaked earlier on the Chart Show indie chart, having an arguably more eccentric 1-1-2-2 run, then evaporated from view; out of our hair before the summer was even properly over. How oddly appropriate.
* If you've got a spare few minutes, the actual A-side to "Imagine" ("Mr. Boyd") sounds like Hodgson, Elton and co inventing Morning Glory era Oasis several decades ahead of their moment. Or at least like a time traveller's parody of Oasis. Just wait for the guitar solo.
** Of probable interest to no-one, but this off-hand dismissal by Miles Hunt led Julianne Regan to flippantly retaliate that The Wonder Stuff sounded “a bit like early Pink Floyd” in an interview. As a fan of the Stuffies, that caused me to investigate and go out and buy the “Relics” compilation for £1.99 on the Music For Pleasure label, and I subsequently became a Syd Barrett obsessive. I don’t agree that the group’s output at this time bore relation to Pink Floyd in any era whatsoever, but I’ll always be grateful for that one quick, off-the-cuff comment she made.
New Entries Elsewhere In The Charts
11. The Bambi Slam - Happy Birthday (Yet Another) (Product Inc.)
Peak position: 2
A strangely simple bass guitar driven groove meeting spartan rhythms and cooing female backing vocals, with an agitated telling-off at the forefront: “You could have sent a card/ Or even called me up/ but it seems to me that/ you just plain forgot”.
Well, we’ve all been there. What most of us have never done as a result is set such misgivings to a track which sounds faintly like “Give Peace A Chance” meeting a Duane Eddy riff, although the absurdity of this approach does actually work. I bought this single myself, you know.
14. Danielle Dax - Big Hollow Man (Awesome)
Peak position: 10
By 1987, Danielle Dax was being touted as a probable future star. She looked astounding, had sufficient charisma and self-expression that music videos could feature little more than her face glowering and tormenting the viewer and be watchable, and was also starting to write songs which were almost commercial.
“Big Hollow Man” may centre its lyrical focus on the folly of organised religion, but it swaggers rather than lectures, beginning with a funky guitar riff which then collides into thumping drums and a forceful melody. It’s part glam, part new wave, and ever so slightly threatening but worthy of constant repeated listening.
Exposure on “The Chart Show” led to greater sales and improved public visibility for Dax, who as the late eighties progressed would almost, but not quite, manage to climb above ground.
Peak position: 10
By 1987, Danielle Dax was being touted as a probable future star. She looked astounding, had sufficient charisma and self-expression that music videos could feature little more than her face glowering and tormenting the viewer and be watchable, and was also starting to write songs which were almost commercial.
“Big Hollow Man” may centre its lyrical focus on the folly of organised religion, but it swaggers rather than lectures, beginning with a funky guitar riff which then collides into thumping drums and a forceful melody. It’s part glam, part new wave, and ever so slightly threatening but worthy of constant repeated listening.
Exposure on “The Chart Show” led to greater sales and improved public visibility for Dax, who as the late eighties progressed would almost, but not quite, manage to climb above ground.
19. The Smithereens - Strangers When We Meet (Enigma)
Peak position: 19
An old-school, milkshake-and-diner flavoured rock and roll 45 for The Smithereens, only instead of it being about tragic lovestruck teenagers, its about a married family man having an affair getting dumped by his mistress, reasonably and politely. “Take care, okay?” she says, while the rest of the group coo and ahh in the background. “You’ve still got your wife”.
It’s interesting to hear a song about an adult affair which is neither bitter, politicised nor torn up with guilt, and just stands as a poppy yet rueful ditty about mixed emotions. There are no second chances, scissored suits, shattered records or drowned bodies here, and it’s just the sound of a woman quite reasonably walking away while a band vocalise around a Wurlitzer jukebox. A strangely difficult one to get your teeth stuck into as a result. Who knew rock music could be so adult and reasonable? Who would even have thought that people could be?
22. The James Taylor Quartet - Mission Impossible (Re-Elect The President)
Peak position: 9
23. Gonzalez - Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet (Dance on Wax)
Peak position: 23
There must have been a reason why this 1979 disco single suddenly got reissued by the Pitsea based Wax Records, but if so, few clues have been left behind since. Perhaps it remained in demand as a club sound in certain quarters, and DJs were still scouting for fresh copies to play while punters also wanted to hear the track at home.
You know what it sounds like, of course – it’s a huge great Snoopy jig across the dancefloor, a celebration of love and music which is so ecstatic and string-laden you have to wonder if you’ve ever felt this way yourself, before remembering that it’s impossible to be this gleeful without stimulants, even in the first waves of a new love affair.
Unlike Northern Soul, Disco could dispense with doubt and unease, and just throw itself headlong into a happy ending it didn’t even know was necessarily going to happen. If only we could bottle the soaring confidence and merriment of “I Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet”, perhaps all our problems would be solved.
25. The Creepers – Brute (Red Rhino)
Peak position: 25
Marc Riley is back, and he and his band seem to think they’re the Beastie Boys with a beatbox and a stylophone. This was obviously meant to be a joke - the line "He's got an Irish uncle who plays the fiddle" clearly isn't aiming for po-faced credibility - but time hasn't been kind and it now sounds like an awful mess, making The Dave Howard Singers and Pop Will Eat Itself seem like LL Cool J.
26. Big Zap! – Psychedelic Shack (TIM)
Peak position: 13
28. Laibach - Opus Dei (Life is Life) (Mute)
Peak position: 6
Laibach kept mining the satirical idea that rock anthems can also be authoritarian or fascistic sentiments, and Opus’s “Life is Life” is particularly effective in this respect, its core, simplistic ideas sounding particularly dodgy in this context. When it’s growled menacingly, “we all give the power/ We all give the best/ Every minute of an hour/ Don't think about the rest” sounds too dystopian and scary even for our current times, though Elon Musk would probably regard it a fine slogan to frame on the dormitory walls of Twitter HQ.
Opus were disgusted by this cover’s “bad energy”, but in a recent Guardian interview Laibach pulled no punches. “Mediocrity in language is a powerful weapon – it strips words of resistance and makes them infinitely adaptable… These songs were never truly about any meaningful meaning – popular culture rarely understands itself – and when we reinterpret these songs, we simply help them discover their deeper, often unintended, potential… Songs are not innocent; beneath every sweet song lies a hidden command. Our version only amplifies what was already present: the spirit of order, discipline and collective will.”
So don’t blame them, blame Opus.
For the complete charts, please go to the UKMix Forums
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