87. Half Man Half Biscuit - Dickie Davies Eyes (Probe Plus)

One week at number one on 26th October 1986

“Mention The Lord Of The Rings just once more/ and I’ll more than likely kill you” - there aren’t many better opening lines to songs than that. Even Neil Tennant had to highlight just how well Nigel Blackwell had nailed a common frustration with eighties life; the Tolkien obsession overhanging from the seventies into the squat and bedsit walls of the eighties student and doley generation.

This single once came up for discussion when I was in the pub with friends, and we all realised that when we first heard the song, each of us related the opening line to somebody we knew (although admittedly three of us were all thinking of the same individual). Every damn one of us knew someone who, however unrelated the conversation, would find some unlikely way of relating the situation back to Tolkien’s works. These days the opening line would probably have to be about Terry Pratchett or Doctor Who, but in the eighties and the early part of the following decade, Middle Earth still held a surprisingly firm grip.

Perhaps partly for those reasons, “Dickie Davies Eyes” is Half Man Half Biscuit’s strangest and bleakest early work; whereas their other material prior to this point had been a knowing, jokey three chord thrash through daytime television and the suburban shopping parade, DDE begins with opening instrumental lines that can’t decide if the song wants to be maudlin or jaunty. That marching drum beat seems to be designed to push bottoms off sofas towards a waltz with a partner, but the organ seems to be playing an anonymous fugue for somebody’s funeral. It doesn’t feel like much of a joke, and it continues in the same vein despite Nigel Blackwell’s lyrical interventions.

Besides Tolkien, it references football commentator Brian Moore, whose “head looks uncannily like London Planitarium” – a line which would eventually become the title of a football fanzine – the erotic Cadbury’s Flake adverts doing the rounds on television, and science fiction writer Michael Moorcock. Unlike their other tracks, it feels unfixed, drifting, the sharp observational eye replaced by an indecisive pre-REM sleep brain, picking up the frustrated or underwhelming memories of the day. Blackwell sings not with a rant or a cry, but a mumble, to himself rather than anyone else.

For a long time, I regarded this as one of the least satisfactory HMHB songs as a result. Blackwell’s lyrics are usually razor sharp – as a lyricist, his output is usually far funnier than most comedy poets, whose wit is often blunted by an apologetic tweeness and bounciness (performance poets are often slightly embarrassed about their craft and are desperate to try and make friends with the audience as quickly as possible). “Dickie Davies Eyes” is, by comparison, adrift on a coffee table raft in the middle of what passes for a frustrating friend’s living room, desperately grabbing at the detritus in the hope that something might provide a helpful anchor.

At some point in the last ten years, though, I’ve decided I actually like that. For one thing, the instrumentation on this is interesting and sometimes gets stuck in my head by itself – a queasy folky jaunt which sounds as if it might ordinarily be accompanying a tale of the sole survivor of an ancient shipwreck. Half Man Half Biscuit have been compared to folk music a few times in more recent decades, and you can hear the beginnings of that on this single. Punk rock it isn’t, except for the aspects which despair of hippy culture.

The promotional video also feels as if it ties in neatly with the surrounding C86 movement (whether that was Blackwell’s intention or not). The poet, musician and artist Edward Barton once said that the streets of the eighties seemed to be filled with discarded children’s toys from Boomer children who had grown up, their infant years left abandoned at the kerbside. Barton saw poetry and meaning in this and collected and appropriated them in various ways, as did less obviously “artistic” people like Stephen Pastel who could be found playing with battered Action Man toys at people’s parties. The video features endless examples of such childish behaviour, presented blankly and almost through a fog of boredom. If The Pastels seemed thrilled to be back out in the back garden playing with Stretch Armstrong again, Blackwell and his cohorts seemed to be pointing towards this discarded kinder-trash as the only thing that was freely available to him on a bored Tuesday (though the ride in the mechanised child’s toy in the shopping centre must have cost at least ten pence).

86. New Order - State Of The Nation (Factory)

Number one for four weeks from 27th September 1986

I don’t often delve into other people’s blogs or forum posts while researching for this site, purely because I don’t want to be unduly influenced by other people’s takes on these records. For “State Of The Nation”, though, I found myself sufficiently perplexed to want to scout around. It sometimes feels as if it’s the serviceable New Order single nobody has a strong opinion on one way or the other, their equivalent of “Lady Madonna” or “Heart” (cue the inevitable complaints from Beatles or Pet Shop Boys fans).

I uncovered nothing much at all during my scouting mission, apart from a few forum posts asking “Why does everybody hate ‘State of the Nation’?” during which nobody replied with anything negative at all, only expressing the view that they quite liked it. No-one seemed particularly compelled to jump in and scream that it was a blight on New Order’s catalogue, which made sense to me (I wasn’t previously aware that it was supposed to be).

Then I went over to my Last.fm profile to see how often I’d played it, and was a little bit surprised to see that it was my tenth most listened to New Order track – amazing since I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d bothered (if anyone cares, it’s marginally ahead of “True Faith”, “Perfect Kiss” and “Regret”, all singles I could have sworn I’ve spent more time with). Obviously the views of a few Internet randoms and my own listening habits are not a precise scientific study, but it does feel as if “State” – New Order’s seventh indie number one – has been strangely neglected, rarely (if ever) played by the group live since its year of release and allowed to drift into the background.

This is peculiar. Musically speaking, “State Of The Nation” is an enticing, though admittedly never quite exciting, mix of sweet and sour. The keyboard lines are filled with exotic pan flute noises while the guitars are distorted and scraping, sounding like a hailstorm falling on abandoned sheet metal. Rhythms twitch beneath all this, jitterbugging almost threateningly, and throughout the full six-and-a-half minutes on the twelve inch, they manage to stretch what seem like quite limited ideas out into interesting new shapes and destinations; say what you want about New Order but they were unbelievably bloody good at writing epic pop songs. Whereas most groups start to dawdle and repeat themselves after the third minute, they’re still bursting with fresh ideas in double that time.

The single seems to pick up the most criticism for its lyrics, and deservedly so. Sumner here feels as if he's delivering guide vocals camouflaged as social commentary; a dirty trick to play on the neurotic mid-eighties public. “My brother said that he was dead/ I saw his face and shook my head” he sings, almost disappointed rather than upset by the fact that his sibling was either literally or metaphorically deceased. “The state of the nation/ that’s holding our salvation” he informs us, before telling us it’s also “causing deprivation” (I always swear he sneaks “death inflation” in there somewhere as well, but that’s possibly just a long-standing misheard lyric of mine).

85. Depeche Mode - A Question Of Time (Mute)

One week at number one on 20th September 1986

By the time this reached the pinnacle of the indie charts, it had been over nine months since Depeche Mode had last been there. Their singles had once been considered shoe-ins for the top spot, their position a coronation rather than a competition, but things had changed since 1985 – the independent charts were now bustling with new life (no pun intended) from increasingly challenging forces.

Great news for lovers of music in 1986, who were feasting on all manner of new and exciting talent. Bad news for Depeche Mode fans, including me – I would have loved more of a chance to talk about “Black Celebration” on here, one of my favourite albums of all-time. While it's often been described as a left-hand turn following “It’s Called A Heart”, in reality there were hints all along. Depeche didn’t suddenly overhaul their sound so much as gradually grow out of their origins.

Despite this, “Black Celebration” can be heard as everything finally falling into place beautifully; it's filled with accomplished and stirring symphonic pop, delicate baroque synth lullabies and thundering disgust at modern life. Stuffed with obvious singles, however, it wasn’t. “Stripped” depended upon its expansive, gradually swelling arrangements rather than obvious golden hooks, and the closest thing to a traditional single, “A Question Of Lust”, was essentially mid-sixties Walker Brothers balladry with synthetic knobs on – a strange retro futuristic step which seemed to ultimately tickle neither the public nor their fans.

“A Question Of Time” was the last throw of the dice, and was also atypical of most Depeche Mode singles prior to this point. The central hook is a sampled guitar line (or at least, a guitar sound sampled and replayed through a synthesiser) which is almost rockist in its aspirations – a lick to punch your fist in the air to. The rhythm beneath it too is an ugly, churning sound, like an overloaded truck rattling along a dirt track. It’s not necessarily a novel step. It is, however, unexpected for this band, who usually preferred to pulse rather than grind.

Over the top of this, Gahan delivers Gore’s uncharacteristically rambling lyrics, which feel like an unvarnished rant about the sexual manipulation of young women. “I’ve got to get to you first” he declares, which sounds ominous (what for? He can’t lock her away, but any other potential readings of this lyric are unflattering to say the least) before clarifying later on “You’re only fifteen/ and you look good/ I’ll take you under my wing/ somebody should/ they’ve persuasive ways/ and you’ll believe what they say”. The song builds up to the pinnacle of its angst with the staccato delivery of the lines “It won’t be long until you do/ exactly what they want you to”, after which it gives up, feeling as if it can stretch itself no further, lets a snare beat introduce a second of silence, before starting all over again.

In my mind’s eye, Martin Gore is frothing mad and circling his study while writing these lyrics. They have moments of furious focus, but then also points where he circles around his own ideas frustratedly. “Sometimes I don’t blame them”, he shrugs at one point, then concludes “I know my kind/ what goes on in our minds”, which asks any male listener to assume that Gore thinks his mind (because it definitely is men being addressed here) works the same way as theirs – a common assumption among kinky men with bags of testosterone to spare. Guilt and shame drip off this record.

There are a number of interpretations you can put upon the lyrics here, and Gore has never been easily drawn on what inspired them. It feels plainly obvious that the drive behind their concern is the sexual manipulation of pretty teenage girls, though. There are whole chunks of the lyrics which sound paternal, with Gore acting as the doting, concerned father who knows his daughter’s period of innocence is likely drawing to a close. There are also possibly accidental parallels with tabloid imagery (The Sun ran a celebratory countdown to Emma Watson’s sixteenth birthday, a perverse idea which always reminded me of this song – a clock counting down before tabloid journalists decided they could afford to treat a young actress in a more titillating way). Of course, we also can’t ignore the possibility that Gore was writing about a young Depeche Mode fan he found attractive but knew he shouldn’t, and that she is the catalyst for the song’s concern. It would explain a lot, but if that’s the case, he’s perhaps wisely never said so.

The imagery of the fifteen year old’s childhood being destroyed by adult desires was revisited again on their next album “Music For The Masses”, with “Little 15” flipping the gender roles so instead of a girl, it’s a teenage boy being ushered around and used as a plaything by a woman. “Such a thing would never happen!” I hear you cry. Oh yes it bloody did, and presumably still does. Two bored housewives both embarked on liaisons with fifteen year old schoolboys on the very suburban cul-de-sac I grew up on, for the very reasons largely outlined in the song (“You help her forget the world outside”). The matter was largely hushed up but the community gossip did what it always does, and it was naturally the talk of the neighbours for many years after. Either Gore heard about this matter, which I deeply doubt, or it’s more common than we suppose (to note - I don't have all the details about these liaisons, so I've no idea if they truly crossed the line into abuse, but something strange was clearly afoot). 

83b The Mission - Garden Of Delight/ 84b The Smiths - Panic

Garden of Delight returns to number one for one week on 16th August 1986

Panic returns to number one for two weeks on 23rd August 1986

Garden of Delight rebounds to number one again for one week on 6th September 1986

Panic returns again for a further week on 13th September 1986

Have you absorbed all those chart facts above? Good. Rebound number ones were never unusual in the NME Indie Chart, but the dogfight between Morrissey and Hussey (speaking in sales terms, rather than literally) which occurred throughout the dying summer months of 1986 led to a confusing ping-ponging at the top rather than letting in any fresh blood.

It’s probably not worth saying much more about this beyond the fact that it might seem surprising that at this point, The Mission were such a big deal that they could compete easily with one of The Smiths biggest and most well known singles. They were managing to capture the imagination of a broader cross-section of the public than Hussey’s old band The Sisters of Mercy, and certainly other long-standing goth acts besides. 

Other than gesturing towards that fact, let’s take a peek lower down the charts.


Week One


21. Mighty Mighty - Is There Anyone Out There (Girlie)

Peak position: 11

“The summer brings out the best in girls and the worst in me” hollers singer Hugh McGuinness early on in this 45, before singing about suntanned legs being among his favourite things. The song is essentially a twee ditty about the typical loneliness of your average anorak wearing dork in 1986 rather than a perv-out, and its trilling, twanging melodies underline the innocence of the whole thing. Honest.

22. The Toy Dolls - Geordie's Gone To Jail (Volume)

Peak position: 15

This is an unexpected about-turn. The Toy Dolls' vocalist Olga generally bubbled and squeaked his way through their songs, but on this single the whole group let rip not only with something approaching a snarl from Olga, but also a roaring anthemic second wave punk chorus. 

It’s not clear who the Geordie is the group are referring to, except that he's going to jail even though he didn’t kill anyone – he’s also never taken any drugs “only penicilin when he’s got a headache”. The old novelty lightness of touch remains throughout this single, but I did find myself filling up with doubt and started hunting around to find out if there was actually a serious back-story here; it’s about as sincere sounding as The Toy Dolls get, even if that sincerity is only just on the right side of Tenpole Tudor. 

24. Poly Styrene - Gods & Goddesses EP (Awesome)

Peak position: 24

Poly Styrene of X Ray Spex emerging on the Awesome label (which was largely reserved for Danielle Dax products) might seem surprising but the whole thing not only does sound a bit like Dax, but also gels with Poly’s style unbelievably well. Lead track “Trick Of The Witch” is a giddy brew of heavy rock riffs, psychedelia, bubbling electronic pulses and Poly’s wide-eyed vocals. While her post X Ray Spex records are undeniably patchy, it’s hard not to have admiration for her ability to move forwards away from the constraints of punk rock; while some of the people from that scene continued to thrash away in 1986, Styrene dared to push forwards.

27. Demented Are Go - Holy Hack Jack (ID)


Peak position: 23


Week Two


17. Pop Will Eat Itself - The Poppies Say GRRrrr! (Desperate)

Peak position: 14

The Poppies second release is an oddly subdued recording, with lots of sweet, spritely melodies and only slightly distorted guitars in the mix. At this point, they were clearly trying to stay close to the C86 pack and hadn’t forged a clear identity of their own, and to that end it’s not a particularly impressive listen, whizzing unmemorably through your stereo speakers like the last demo your work colleague’s little teenage brother sent you. You can only nod encouragingly at the progress – they did become a much more brittle and modern group in very short order.

21. Yeah Jazz - This Is Not Love (Upright)

Peak position: 20

Kitchen sink indie drama from this market town (Uttoxeter) mob from Staffordshire, singing of unwanted teenage pregnancies and forced relationships in a manner which could have been either cloying or overly heavy-handed, but manages to strike the balance beautifully. Yeah Jazz use diverse instrumentation to colour the drama and tumultuous emotions in the lyrics, sounding impressively like early precursors to Belle and Sebastian in the process. The first genuinely surprising track I’ve heard for an age while researching this blog.

84. The Smiths - Panic (Rough Trade)

One week at number one on 9th August 1986

Oh God, do we really have to do this? ("Never begin blog entries expressing reluctance, it just puts readers off" – the ed in my head). At its time of release, “Panic” was one of the most-discussed and debated Smiths songs by fans, foes and journalists alike, and the reverberations from its release are still felt as writers continue to highlight this as the point where “Morrissey started to go wrong”. 

It’s a den of bears I don’t particularly want to walk into, especially as I doubt I’ll manage to sneak back out past Papa Bear with any kind of shiny prize. The cave is now damp and barren, with just a few cobwebs in the corner and the rotten bones of the last person to try and make sense of it all. Still, it slid into the number one indie spot with comfortable ease, so discuss it we must. Those are the rules (even if they are my own rules and nobody else's) and as much as I'm tempted to just post "Oh, fill in the blanks yourselves, why don't you" in giant 78pt Semplicità font, I hate the idea of cheating myself. So here we are. 

Lyrically speaking, “Panic” was supposed to be poking the mainstream establishment and setting up The Smiths as the slayers of mediocrity. Both Morrissey and Marr insisted that the point of inspiration for the record was Steve Wright on Radio One launching into Wham’s “I’m Your Man” immediately after news of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster broke. Listeners had potentially just been given information about a serious incident which may have a profound effect on their health – at the time the crisis occurred, nobody truly knew what the outcomes would be – but were then invited to party on down to an upbeat hit. Pop was being used, you could argue, as a diversionary tactic to keep national spirits up while lethal radioactivity drifted across the ocean (it’s interesting to contrast this with the way Radio One responded to Princess Diana’s death years later, but I digress).

The group’s response was immediate disgust, and the lyrics were apparently inspired by the situation*, although as numerous other people have pointed out, they actually focus their agitation on club DJs rather than radio ones. “Burn down the disco,” Morrissey states. “Hang the blessed DJ!/ because the music they constantly play/ it says nothing to me about my life”. Radio One doesn’t get a mention; rather, Morrissey seems to be jabbing his finger at the discotheques of the mid-eighties where people gathered at the weekends to get blitzed and forget their worries. How irredeemably shallow of them.

Journalists were quick to notice this and accuse Morrissey of racism, pointing out that his issue seemed to be with black music rather than daytime radio playlists. The group, and particularly Marr, were initially quick to challenge these allegations, pointing out that New Order, for instance, had no black members, but Morrissey helped matters little with other comments he made in interviews at this time. During a Melody Maker piece (which can be found online in full here, and is definitely worth a read) he opined:

“I don't think there's any time any more to be subtle about anything, you have to get straight to the point. Obviously to get on Top Of The Pops these days, one has to be, by law, black. I think something political has occurred among [television producer] Michael Hurll and his friends and there has been a hefty pushing of all these black artists and all this discofied nonsense into the Top 40. I think, as a result, that very aware younger groups that speak for now are being gagged.”

Morrissey had a tendency to grandstand and make inflammatory comments for effect, but this was a particularly dumb statement which defies many soft reinterpretations. For one thing, Top of the Pops was by its very nature a chart show, and favoured appearances by whoever was moving up the charts in any given week. On some weeks that may have caused more black artists to appear, but the programme invariably tended to feature the latest cute success stories with big money behind them; key exceptions like Prince and Michael Jackson aside, those tended not to be black (and let’s not get on to the topic of MTV, who had a serious allergy to any black artists at this time, whether they had hit singles or otherwise). What Morrissey seemed to be indulging here was the standard right-wing political trope of “seeing” blackness everywhere and drawing up imaginary race ratios in a disapproving fashion, interpreting any decrease in inequality as a threat to "his culture". When Reform UK politicians do the same thing today, Nigel Farage gets called upon to fire them.

If we want to be kind – although personally I don’t see why we should be – we can frame his comments in the light of some long-forgotten mid-80s culture wars, which did indeed see lots of fey young kids into guitar-based music feeling that the music they enjoyed was not being given a fair airing. I will concede that this is true, but it had little to do with them not being black. In the case of groups on minor indie labels, the low production values of their work instantly led to issues. There’s a parallel universe somewhere where Steve Wright thought Bogshed’s “Morning Sir” was hilarious – problematically though, its weak production values would have felt jarring and made it seem incompatible with the rest of his polished playlist that day, so even imagining something as simple as that is a huge reach. The eighties were about advancing technology and spit and polish, and indie was very often a reaction (intentional or otherwise) against that perfectly airbrushed world; incorporating its sound and ethics into daytime playlists would have caused endless stylistic issues. C86 operated under financial constraints Britpop seldom had to worry about. 

Away from the world of lo-fi kids with weird or big ideas, other storms were also brewing, particularly Stateside, which saw DJs and musicians producing increasingly groundbreaking and fascinating work; it’s always struck me as interesting that “Panic” was released the same year as Farley “Jackmaster” Funk’s “Love Can’t Turn Around”, the first single which truly made House music sound like a commercial, rather than purely clubland, force. One song is a series of would-be revolutionary slogans set to a retrograde glam rock beat, the other simply is sonically revolutionary, the eighties equivalent to “I Feel Love”.

In the middle of the eighties it was hard not to get the impression that rock music was possibly a dying force creatively and commercially, and that led to desperate statements from others too. “Keep Music Live” stickers began to appear more frequently on guitar cases. Music television featured members of supposedly radical bands bleating in interviews like weary war generals about the lack of passion and humanity to be found in samplers and drum machines. “Real” musicians got angry. Somewhere in Melbourne, the writer and satirist John Safran wore a Def Jam baseball cap on the tram, and a metaller removed it from his head, ripped it, and threw it to the ground, believing that anyone who approved of rap or hip-hop being mixed with metal was perverse and lucky not to be given a beating. These were strange, insecure times which provoked some frankly silly reactions which barely make sense today - apart from the nakedly racist ones, obviously, which remain a cultural issue. 

“Panic” was one of the more extreme examples. Lyrically, it’s not even consistent with Morrissey’s own beliefs – he seemed to have plenty of time for Northern Soul and Motown, both of which tended to produce not especially politicised works (obvious exceptions aside) – and nor is it consistent with human nature which requires art and entertainment which is joyous, frivolous and communal as well as study-bound and introspective. We cannot get all our emotional nourishment from Leonard Cohen records alone. Morrissey surely knew this, but despite this, the track can be heard as their ‘war effort’, The Smiths attempt to take sides to tell the world that they were above mere pop music.