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.

35. The Imposter (aka Elvis Costello) - Pills And Soap (Imp)

Three weeks at number from w/e 18th June 1983

Not really much of an “imposter”, more an interloper to the indie charts. While “Pills and Soap” was presented in some quarters as a pseudonymous “mystery single”, in reality Elvis Costello did virtually nothing to dupe the public with this, not even bothering to disguise his extremely distinctive voice. By the time it emerged in the UK National Top 40, he even appeared on Top of the Pops, where John Peel and “Kid” Jenkins both sarcastically pretended not to know his true identity (Peel: “It’s not Shakey, is it?”)




There were some very dull reasons underlying this quarter-hearted deception. In 1983, Elvis Costello’s record label F-Beat were undergoing a change in their worldwide distribution arrangements, moving from Warner Brothers to RCA. The protracted legal discussions had delayed the release of his next album “Punch The Clock”, and rather than also delay the release of the first single “Pills and Soap” longer than necessary, Costello opted to release it under a pseudonym on F-Beat’s “indie” subsidiary Imp Records.

There are two possible reasons why he took this path – firstly, there’s a strong chance that he may have been impatient while bureaucratic issues were being discussed in the background, feeing that if he didn’t get something fresh out soon, momentum may be lost. There was also the small matter of the imminent General Election in the UK, which caused the subjects touched upon during this single to potentially feel more relevant, pressing and explosive.

“Pills and Soap” could, to a half-listening person, be referring to animal cruelty with the references to Noah’s ark and melting animals “down for pills and soap”. This was the explanation Costello gave to the BBC when they nervously asked him what the song was about. Closer inspection reveals this to be nonsense, though. Firstly, the chorus refers to “children and animals, two by two”, then points its finger towards the aristocracy and perhaps even the royal family: “The king is in the counting house, some folk have all the luck/ And all we get is pictures of Lord and Lady Muck/ They come from lovely people with a hardline in hypocrisy/ There are ashtrays of emotion for the fag ends of the aristocracy”. There are other sharp, bitter tasting lines on offer besides, such as “You think your country needs you but you know it never will”, which totally give the game away.

If “Shipbuilding” was a sympathetic gaze at a community (and country) in crisis, “Pills and Soap” is unfocused invective – an unfixed list of the malaise that Costello feels the UK fell under in the early eighties; decadence, distraction, blind patriotism, the establishment worshipping view of the tabloid press. The animals and children being melted down are the expendable lower classes; though of course, the fact Costello is a vegetarian isn’t a complete coincidence here.

Musically speaking, it’s absurdly simple, with a drum machine generating simple, clicking beatnik Daddio rhythms which combine with Steve Naive’s thundering, Hammer Horror piano lines. It’s an extraordinarily daring first single to lift from an album, offering the polar opposite of so much eighties pop – while that was often elaborate and multi-faceted, “Pills And Soap” is threadbare and puts the emphasis and weight of the record’s worth on its lyrics.

How you feel about it really depends upon how receptive you are to such earnest singer-songwriter minimalism, and also crucially when you first heard this. In 1983, there’s little doubt that Costello’s observations were controversial and insightful. Britain was under the early spell of Thatcherism and the behaviour of the press and the Government in power was quite radical – earlier Conservative governments obviously held aspirations to defeat Trade Unions, but few had swung the axe with as much enthusiasm and as little regard for communities as Auntie Maggie.