82. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Singer (Mute)

Number one for one week on 26th July 1986

If anybody working for Columbia Records in 1968 thought Johnny Cash’s new track “The Folk Singer” had potential, they did little to invest in it. The big '68 hype where Cash was concerned was the release of his unprecedented “At Folsom Prison” live LP, where the man can be heard brewing up a storm while performing to a gaggle of assembled felons. The label were initially worried about the idea, fearing that it might cause Cash to lose some of his Christian audience, only for the album to become one of those near-perfect combinations of both quality and newsworthy novelty – something that almost marketed itself.

“Folsom Prison Blues” was released from the album as a single, and an ordinary studio recording of “The Folk Singer”, co-written with Charles E Daniels, was chosen to sit on the flip. It might then have rested there largely unnoticed, but Burl Ives was quick to spot its mournful charms, recording it for his album “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in the same year, staying broadly faithful to the concept. It’s a wordy yet – on the surface – fairly simple tale of a forgotten singer who finds himself suddenly ignored by a public who once wanted to crowd and pester him with their admiration. The singer’s inability to adapt to his new empty environment is broached early on (“I pass a million houses but there is no place where I belong/ All I knew to give you was song after song after song”) with typical Cash-esque hints at his outsider status. Whoever the 'singer' is, you're left pretty convinced that there's nothing else he can usefully do with his life. 

It’s not clear whether Cash was worried about his own future when he recorded it, but it’s not unfair to speculate that he might at least have been looking over his shoulder at those whose careers had been less successful, acknowledging that in the music business, longevity is often a fluke, not a given. Speculation online is rife about who he might have been thinking about, but the candidates are numerous; the tale of talented musicians, appreciated briefly when their talent peaked and happened to align with the public’s tastes, then rapidly forgotten, was not new even in 1968.

Above that, though, there are hints towards the growing invisibility of the older person in society, the slick young buck with his fresh ideas being reduced to a husk. As he wanders through streets he may have once been chauffeured through wearing his old fashioned clothes, he suddenly finds no eyes being drawn in his direction in either condemnation or admiration. His rebellion has become meaningless, and his only hope is that the children of the future reappraise his efforts – a problem that most creative people are left to desperately confront. 

The original arrangement is simple and nigh-on perfect, greeting the singer’s fate with subtle arrangements and gorgeous downwards guitar twangs, which might be why Burl Ives wasn’t tempted to tamper with it much. Glen Campbell, on the other hand, took the flipside and exposed it to peculiar degrees of sunshine in 1970 – his version is a sweet yet daring finger-picked, bitter-sweet melody, “the singer” still singing his heart out rather than moping and dragging his heels.

Nick Cave’s version in 1986 was somewhat unexpected, but takes the cautious Ives approach of “don’t fuck with a classic” rather than the more radical Campbell move. So similar is it, in fact, that the only major difference is that Cave throws in the f word towards the end, something even Cash would never have considered in ‘68. It makes “the singer” seem threatening, a Grim Reaper character pointing his finger at the comfortable and the ignorant, rather than a completely defeated outsider. Cave makes you think the singer will be back, if not due to reappraisal, then perhaps on the headline news for some act of public indecency. It shifts the tone of the work slightly, but not enough to make it feel like an overhaul.

“The Singer” was released at a time when Cave appeared to be repositioning himself as a performer. His earlier work with The Birthday Party was demented, raucous and deliberately niche – punk rock at its loudest and most unrelenting. Two minutes spent listening to a Birthday Party track could feel strangely exhausting, and in his public’s mind Cave was a ferocious performer and unpredictable loose cannon. Once that group ceased to be, the Bad Seeds were formed and his moves became more measured (though often no less ghoulish).

64b. The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary (Beggars Banquet)

 

Five more weeks at number one from w/e 10th August 1985

If there's one consistent pattern on this journey through the indie charts, it's that the summer period sees a reduction in new releases combined with a general sales slump. 

On an interesting week, this will allow relatively minor groups (such as The Men They Couldn't Hang or March Violets) to claim the top slot. On less fascinating occasions, it just means that a dominant single can reclaim the crown again for a longer period, and by jingo, that's exactly what The Cult do on this occasion, gluing themselves to number one for a further five weeks.

As always, we'll pass the time by looking at what was stirring lower down the charts.

Week One

8. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Tupelo (Mute)

Peak position: 2

Frontrunners to kick The Cult off the top spot, Nick Cave and his bad blokes nonetheless failed to do the necessary with "Tupelo". In its own strange way, the single has perhaps been just as enduring as "She Sells Sanctuary", its stomping, stropping, thumping and snarling core defining what the average casual music listener probably thinks the Bad Seeds are all about - a kind of agitated, gibbering modern blues. 

"Tupelo" is one of those unusual records which sounds as if it could have been recorded and released in any decade before or since. The fact it's loosely based on a John Lee Hooker track gives it a certain amount of that timelessness, but the dirt, grime and agitation stretches far beyond those basic roots. 

12. Terry and Gerry - Banking on Simon (In Tape)

Peak position: 4

1985 seemed to be riddled with indie performers whose visibility was largely limited to that single year, and here are our favourite skiffling twosome back again with another whipsmart ditty. "Banking On Simon" is like "Making Plans For Nigel" if it had emerged on Pye Nixa in 1956 rather than on Virgin in 1979, and you can probably already imagine how it goes - it almost feels as if the duo are grinning and winking at you through the stereo speakers. 

While they were indisputably bloody good at this sort of thing, you can easily understand how they became a novelty flash rather than a long-term smoulder; in the absence of any kind of surrounding skiffle revival, they were strange outliers, a retro peculiarity for the anti-fashion kids and an easy and unusual topic for the music press to write about that summer. 

15. APB - Summer Love (Big River)

Peak position: 15

APB got funkier as time went on, and "Summer Love" is their most commercial single yet, mixing fat distorted guitars with superb grooves, orchestral hits and vocals which are oddly celebratory for a post-punk record. Had it been released a year or two earlier, this probably would have been an actual proper hit, but no matter - it still caught enough ears in 1985 to make a vague dent in the public consciousness.

20. Icicle Works - Seven Horses (Beggars Banquet)

Peak position: 15

28. Minor Threat - Salad Days (Discord)

Peak position: 15

Week Two

16. The Janitors - Chicken Stew (In Tape)

Peak position: 10

We're nearly three quarters of the way through the year at this point, and the C86 beacon is starting to flash with greater intensity. Primal Scream and The Pastels have already covered off the twee jangly end of the spectrum, and while The Janitors here may never have found space on that "seminal" (TM) cassette compilation, their approach here echoes the wigged out treble-heavy earfuck of the more experimental end. 

Guitars bend and squeal, the Casio click track shuffles, and "Chicken Stew" sounds cheap and might even be nasty, but only in the rock and roll sense of the word. Whatever blues Nick Cave is going through on "Tupelo", The Janitors are arguably also kinda feeling here, but on a Fostex Four Track with a drum machine. Proper indie, in other words, as opposed to Depeche Mode bankrolled indie - if such things matter to you. 

23. Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Rotting in the Fart Sack (Metal Knob)

Peak position: 8

26. The Bomb Party - New Messiah (Abstract)

Peak position: 26

 

Week Three

12. The Triffids - You Don't Miss Your Water (Til Your Well Runs Dry) (Hot)

Peak position: 7

By 1985, Australians were beginning to take up more and more space in the music press as the groundswell of talent from the country made itself internationally known. That Triffids seem to have subsequently have become a footnote isn't really indicative of the fuss they stirred up at the time, and "You Don't Miss Your Water" showcased a band with almost head-spinning confidence. While a number of UK post-punk bands occasionally nervously licked the outer edges of country rock, this single sees the group confidently plunge the depths, and they return to the surface with reluctance, as if they always belonged deep down there.

50. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - In The Ghetto (Mute)

 

One week at number on w/e 4th August 1984

In its original incarnation, the Mac Davis penned “In The Ghetto” was an enormous comeback hit for Elvis Presley – a number one in seemingly every major market around the world, re-establishing Presley’s validity and edge just as his star was in danger of waning.

Above and beyond all of that, though, it’s a genuine curiosity in songwriting terms. Over the years, Davis was strangely humble and unforthcoming about its roots and origins, referring to his childhood spent being friends with a “black boy” who lived in a rougher part of Chicago. “I couldn't figure out why they had to live where they lived, and we got to live where we lived,” Davis explained in the newspaper The Tennesean. “We didn't have a lot of money, but we didn't have broken bottles every six inches.”

It’s from this boyhood scenario that the story of “In The Ghetto” is supposed to stem, but it’s surprising that so little has been made – either by the press or the man himself – about Davis’ period spent working as a probation officer. “In The Ghetto” is sociological theory given an outlet in song-form, the cycle of urban misery described with every spin of the original record; let the needle hit the end, then lift it and return it to the run-in grooves, and you physically repeat the circle of neglect and life of crime every child in the same area goes through, and as the vinyl becomes worn and the music becomes distorted and uglier, so seeps through the steady decay. It’s a heavy load for a 1969 pop single to bear, but it manages.

Presley’s original recording is a strangely spacey and grand recording – widescreen and dramatic with its reverberating backing vocals, calmly plucked guitar lines and arrangements almost sounding as if they’re lifted from a Western soundtrack. “Paint Your Wagon” was a huge musical Western folly at this time, and there are echos of “Wanderin’ Star” about the gently shuffling wideness and melancholy of its sound. All of this is more likely to give the impression of a criminal cast out of society and forced to make his own way across a lonely prairie than it is the compressed and unforgiving environment of “the ghetto”. It’s a fine record, but it feels as if there could be other interpretations of it.

Enter Nick Cave. While Cave may currently have turned himself into the grandfather of modern alternative rock and a wise agony uncle for the broadsheet press, in 1984 he was an unpredictable ex-member of the manic and ramshackle Birthday Party, a fragile unit who sounded as if they might splinter to pieces before half their singles even finished. Neither that group nor Cave himself presented themselves as keen students of classic rock, instead coming across as nihilistic punks prone to screaming fits about all matters dark and gothic.

The fact that Cave chose a Presley cover to launch his solo career was therefore baffling at the time. A rock and roll revival was making itself felt through the psychobilly scene circa 1983/4, but “In The Ghetto” wasn’t the track to pick if you wanted to gain credibility from that crowd – it stems from the “establishment” era of Elvis, the point in his career where he was safely ensconced in his Graceland mansion and was no longer even a shadow of a rebel.

You can only conclude that Cave covered the song because he loved it, and instead of replicating it precisely or trying to scuzz it up, he instead boxes it into a minimal, slightly threatening space. At no point does it go wild, but the arrangement feels tighter, the slide guitar ominous, the drumming militaristic. Cave’s vocals, too, are not so relaxed, delivering the lines urgently, emphasising syllables unpredictably (you can hear this particularly in lines like “THEN one night in DES-peration, the young man BREAKS AWAY”). If Presley’s take on “In The Ghetto” is a cinematic sweep, Cave’s is a Play For Today version, alive and unflashy but still telling the same story. It swaps elegance for urgency.

It doesn’t usurp the original in terms of quality, but nor does it totally upend it. This isn’t Sid Vicious singing “My Way”, which I suspect some buyers and critics believed is how it would turn out – and it legitimised the song for a new generation. The tragedy is that “In The Ghetto” has never really aged, and a probation officer’s ideas about poverty, criminality and the cycle of deprivation and violence in 1969 was equally applicable in 1984 and indeed remains so today.