106. Fields Of The Nephilim - Blue Water (Situation Two)

One week at number one on 14th November 1987

On a scorching summer day in the mid nineties, I was sat in the park with an ex-goth, swigging from a cheap bottle of wine, testily asking him about the old days. I was merely curious and didn’t intend this to be a form of psychological torture, but I watched his cheeks get steadily pinker in tone as he stammered his way through the ‘old lifestyle’. I began to feel unnecessarily like a BBC documentary filmmaker interviewing a departed member of a cult.

While we were talking about the music, I mentioned that of all the groups, I liked Fields of the Nephilim best. His face lit up, not with approval, but with sadistic glee. “Oh,” I could tell he was thinking, “you’re going to sit here listening to me embarrassing myself with my teenage vampire stories, then you’re going to openly declare that you enjoy the work of men from Stevenage in apocalyptic cowboy fancy dress? You’re getting both barrels now, laddie!”

And his rant began. Fields of the Nephilim weren’t a goth band, they were a joke. A tired, second-rate Sisters of Mercy tribute act in children’s fancy dress. A band for provincial goths, stunted goths who had never left their hometowns to visit a city, goths who had read far too much terrible pulp horror fiction, goths who were barely goths in fact – just weirdos with spaghetti western fixations. “Nobody,” he jabbed at me, “Nobody who was an Actual Goth ever liked Fields of the Nephilim!”

“Yeah well, they were my favourite goth band, so that figures,” I said, then changed the subject to something else, very very quickly.

I’ve thought about that weird moment a lot since, and have gone on to meet other goths with similar views (although others who also disagree; I saw a goth in a Nephilim T-shirt only last week). I can understand the vitriol. The Nephilim were, at root, somewhat silly. Andrew Eldritch and Robert Smith were arch and knowing, regularly falling back on plausible deniability, whereas The Nephilim built an entire backstory, a self-constructed myth which was too rich to ever be a joke. Their name referred to the angel-human hybrids of the same name in the Hebrew Bible, and they shot music videos which felt like five-minute apocalyptic horror b-movies – impressive looking (their director Richard Stanley later went on to make numerous feature films) but lower budget than a Garth Marenghi cast-off, featuring the band over-acting, as musicians will inevitably do.

They covered themselves in Mother’s Pride flour to achieve that dusty desert cowboy look, and were occasionally hauled to one side by customs officers keen to check it wasn’t cocaine. Oh, and they had a drummer called Nod. Apocalyptic desert cowboy groups should never have drummers with the name Nod. It’s always going to become a punchline, far more than the most ridiculous stage name ever would.

At the time – and even now – I thought that these discrepancies and incidents were far more Heavy Metal than Goth, and the Nephilim’s sound and lyrical content sometimes veered closer to Iron Maiden than The Mission or The Sisters; but that said, the dramatic Morricone inspired twangs that occasionally whined through their songs were coming from neither place; seldom have rock groups sounded so epic, so thrillingly, openly sixties Saturday afternoon picture-house.

If fate had taken a different course and he hadn’t shot his landlady and himself, Joe Meek would have locked Fields Of The Nephilim in his house in the eighties and demanded to produce them. Not only did they share similarities with two of his previous acts (The cowboy-dressed Outlaws and the undead Screaming Lord Sutch) thereby saving on costume costs, they also tapped into stories of psychic planes, and growled stories about radioactive contamination and unforgiving, howling deserts. There’s a fancy dress, boxed-in Englishness at play here – high-budget ideas, epic in scope, forged on low-budget trickery (the video for “Blue Water” cost a mere £1,500. Coincidentally, a freak hurricane interrupted proceedings, perhaps brought on by singer Carl McCoy pointing upwards and growling about the sky falling in, or maybe not).

The group also sometimes produced music which was truly great, and “Blue Water” is up there. The full twelve-inch version utterly sprawls, as drums clatter and cymbals expressively splash, and those guitar lines restlessly reach and descend and whine; even without a video, there’s a whole cinematic experience going on in your mind’s eye. Carl McCoy’s growling lyrics are almost secondary; the real appeal lies in the instrumentation behind, the sound of a group of frustrated soundtrack writers painting every corner with a new flash of detail. Brilliantly, the group’s visual direction also married perfectly with their sound – if you showed an uninitiated individual a photo of them, they would probably correctly guess their general direction, even though I don’t think there are many other rock-goth-Morricone groups out there.
“Blue Water” fails the Old Grey Whistle Test completely; it has astonishing hooks, but these occur not in the chorus (where you would expect them to be) but the various instrumental breaks, or the moments of ponderous drama in the verses – a guitar line here, a strange interlude there. It seems to be trying to communicate something devastating, or an event of seismic import, but never really quite tells us what. McCoy’s growls sound more feverish and delirious than anything (perhaps hinted at by the repeated line about perspiration in the chorus) and in the end, we’re left to make up our own minds about his vague prophecies. Often with rock music which almost over-reaches itself, this is the best position to be in. Better not to guild the lily with too much poetry.

It marked a breakthrough of sorts for the group, spending one mere week at the very bottom of the national Top 75. A lot resulted from that humble progress, though, and they moved into the lower reaches of the Top 40 a few times in the years that followed, always achieving the kind of first week peaks typical of bands who would never be more than cults. Nor did they ever smooth or simplify their sound; the vocal growling and the busy instrumentation remained key features, as did the seemingly unshifting belief that hooks could be buried like hidden jewels in any unexpected corner of a song.

By 1991, it was all over following the departure of frontman Carl McCoy – but for now, the group had a fine future ahead of them as arguably the most oddball goths of all. When Record Mirror gave one of their albums a brief review during this period, the score was 10 out of 10, but the focus of the write-up appeared to reduce the group and their music to a strange Vic Reeves inspired joke. Accept the contradictions.

New Entries Elsewhere In The Charts

8. Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares For Me (Charly)

Peak position: 3

Not a new entry as such, as this reissue first entered the indie charts back in 1985. Its journey afterwards is one we’ve since become accustomed to, though; it was first beloved by the kind of record collectors and Real Music Lovers who wanted something cool and classy for their stereos at home. By the middle of the eighties, it had already become one of Charly’s most successful 45rpm reissues, consistently selling to both the thirty-something semi-affluent audience with taste, and the slightly skinter Nick Hornbies of this world.

Advertising agencies are wise to such records, and in 1987 it was picked up by Chanel No 5 for a promotional campaign, and the commercial floodgates opened as Radio Two listeners also suddenly flocked to the shops to get a piece of Simone (who hadn’t had a charting single in the UK since the sixties). An Aardman produced claymation video was made for it, a la “Reet Petite”, only involving lovestruck cats rather than a morphing soul singer. After that, probably even small children bought the record.

It became a national top ten hit, but every time I saw Nina Simone performing it in the years that followed, with audiences whooping and clapping away behind her, I couldn’t help but spot a burst of impatience behind her eyes; a reluctance to be a performing seal again. Her career as a performer is deeply respected among aficionados, but there was a sense that a perfume advert turned her into another Ralph McTell figure, with this song acting as her “Streets of London”, when – even more than McTell – her catalogue was richer and broader than that.

It must have also pained her that due to selling the rights to all her records some years before, she never saw a penny of the royalties generated from this track’s re-release. 

17. Onslaught - Let There Be Rock EP ​(Under One Flag)

Peak position: 17

More hardcore punk inspired Thrash Metal, this time being pasted over an AC/DC track. Onslaught were among the prime UK Thrashers, but sadly that didn’t mean a hell of a lot in terms of broader reach. Even after they signed to the London label, their records tended to mainly sell to their select but loyal fanbase. “Let There Be Rock” is fast, furious and oddly simplistic at its core.

22. The Triffids – The Peel Sessions (Strange Fruit)

Peak position: 22


24. This Poison! – Poised Over The Pause Button (Reception)

Peak position: 10


The Wedding Present’s proteges return with perhaps their most appreciated number, a rough and ready burst of frustration, drunkenness, joy and regret. Guitar lines sprint and tumble while basslines grumble, and then just as you’re ready for another ride around the chorus, the thing halts. With low production standards but unbelievably high energy, this is probably one of the finer lo-fi C86 singles.

28. Happy Mondays - 24 Hour Party People (Factory)

Peak position: 16

Now considered something of a classic in the band's catalogue, and loaning itself to the title of the film of the same name, "24 Hour Party People" pushed the Mondays outside of their usual audience in 1987 by appearing on "The Chart Show". Still though, its bow-legged, jagged funk rhythms and Ryder's stream-of-consciousness lyrics felt slightly like a hangover from the post-punk era at the time. It's easy to point at the track in retrospect and consider it the dawn of a brave new indie dance era, but back then nobody seriously thought Shaun Ryder was a future tabloid pop star. If anything, the Mondays were more commonly regarded as being a second division version of The Fall, producing content unlikely to be heard outside of John Peel’s show.

Still, "24 Hour Party People" is a confident and staggering single, and showed the group moving beyond their likably ramshackle beginnings towards records with much more mainstream structures. Ryder later claimed that the only reason the group didn't deal with strong choruses early in their career is "we didn't know how to write them". It certainly shows they'd moved on a long way from that point, if his claims are true. "Party People" is so laden with hooks it's hard to know where to point, though crucially none of them seem like chartbound sounds - certainly not by 1987's standards. The track has far too many sharp points and angles to easily slide into the Top 40, and only a slight sanding down of the group's sound and a gradual easing of intolerance to alternative ideas in the mainstream would begin to generate results.

30. The Big X Crewe - Beverly Hills Cops (Uptown)

Peak position: 30


For the full charts, please go to the UK Mix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

T'Pau - "China In Your Hand" (Siren)