16. Theatre Of Hate - Do You Believe In The West World? (Burning Rome)

 

Number one for one week on 30 January 1982

The idea that the cold war exercised a clammy grip on the imagination of eighties pop is a dominant cliche. There’s plenty of evidence to back it up, obviously. Duran Duran clumsily used the frequently mocked “you’re about as easy as a nuclear war” line, and Ultravox penned one of the eeriest pop ballads ever, “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes”, and directed a child-melting video to go with it. Bigger and louder than either of those were Frankie Goes To Hollywood who spent nine weeks at number one with a record partially consisting of the actor Patrick Allen issuing post-nuclear bomb public information on top of agitated, urgent rhythms.

All those tracks emerged in 1983 or 1984, either around or not long after the point Ronald Reagan called the USSR an “evil empire” and the cold war entered its deepest freeze. Prior to that, while the threat was apparent, its shadow was perhaps more apparent in the atmosphere of some of the odder, more unsettled records to attract public excitement and attention; in that respect, it feels appropriate that “O Superman” was a huge seller in 1981 in a way I doubt it would have been five years earlier or later. Was it actually directly about nuclear war, though? Possibly not.

Records which actually directly referenced nuclear war, even in the indie chart, were relatively thin on the ground prior to that point, with tracks like UB40’s “The Earth Dies Screaming” being the exceptions that proved the rule. In general, most of the punk underground were more interested in issuing rattlingly irritated singles about the futility of war in general. The Exploited were particularly exercised by such matters, with lead singer Wattie’s previous career as a soldier serving in Northern Ireland feeding into his obsession with the futility of armed conflict.

“Do You Believe in the West World” was a bit of an exception, and emerged packaged in a provocative sleeve, signposting the actual meaning of the lyrics for anyone who wasn’t listening closely enough. Kirk Brandon uses a Western film backdrop as the canvas to scrawl his message on, offering us not very subtle hints such as “That was before the circus with the bear arrived/ oh the bear it roared as the gun was fired/ then the cowboy turned the gun on himself as he sang/ ‘no-one’s alive’”.

“Westworld” is actually a cunning and surprisingly rewarding single which seems to crush a wide range of influences into one song, from the obvious (actual Western films) to the more current. The track opens with a post-punk thunder of bottom-heavy tribal drumming, before allowing an almost funky rhythm guitar to slip in, as if to remind us that in the event of armageddon, Orange Juice and Edwyn Collins would be evaporated as well as Brandon’s more anguished music. 

As the track progresses and inevitably lets in some Morricone inspired twang, it also eventually permits a raging sax solo as well, making this sound like a condensed representation of rock and roll in the nuclear age. Whereas Theatre of Hate’s previous indie number one “Nero” was a static atmosphere piece with feet of clay, “Westworld” unfolds gracefully, managing more in its five minutes than most post-punk groups of the period bothered with.