Imagine being the person who had to manage Vince Clarke’s career in the early eighties – that flibbertigibbet with the haircut of a sulphur crested bird who also seemed as unpredictable and (obvious pun intended) flighty as a cockatoo himself. Consider how it must have felt to have had a meeting with him, relaxed and confident about his current level of success and ready to talk about “cracking the USA”, only for him to tell you that he feels something’s wrong again and he's ready to move on.
Having quit Depeche Mode after only one album, Clarke then promptly formed Yazoo with Alison Moyet, only to discover that, primarily for personal rather than musical differences, they didn’t enjoy working with each other. Moyet’s extraversion appeared to jar with Clarke’s quiet, considered and non-communicative working practices, and neither could seem to find a way of making the duo feel like a satisfactory working partnership. The second album “You And Me Both” – appropriately housed in a sleeve showing two dogs baring their teeth at each other – was therefore recorded with Clarke and Moyet largely handling their parts in the studio at separate times, choosing to have as little to do with each other as possible.
It’s worth speculating whether a more experienced individual than Daniel Miller at Mute Records would have seen the signs or been able to intervene earlier. While there are exceptions to the general rule (Haircut One Hundred?) major labels are usually quick to smell groups whose working relationships are on flimsy or moribund territory. Yazoo were formed very quickly, not long after Clarke left Depeche Mode, and seemingly without a chance to get to understand each other – combine that pressure with the sudden rush of hit singles and touring, and the end result feels almost inevitable. In fact, it seems astonishing we even got two albums out of them in such short order.
“Nobody’s Diary” was the only single to be plucked from “You And Me Both”, and unusually was solely penned by Moyet without any of Clarke’s involvement. Whether the intention was that the record would act as a calling card to anyone wanting to sign Moyet as a solo artist or not, her subsequent view of the record has become unfavourable. Noting that she wrote the song at the age of sixteen, she appears embarrassed by the lyrical contents, feeling that her emotional experience was inadequate to handle the romantic subject matter.
There’s an interesting parallel with Depeche Mode’s “See You” here, the first Martin Gore written track to be released as a single following Clarke’s departure. That too was regarded grimly by Gore as he became older due to its schoolboy lyricisms, but unlike “See You” this single does at least feel more specific in places – “My head was so full of things to say/ But as I open my lips all my words slip away” summons a frustration we’ve all felt as a relationship collapses (ironically enough) into poor communication, and is followed then by a piece of bad, scattershot communication itself – “And anyway!” she snaps, changing the subject. It’s a world apart from walks in the park and sitting on benches, and shows that whatever her doubts were, Moyet’s sixteen year old self could handle this stuff as well as anyone else in the charts that week.
Melodically, the song is beautiful, opening with twitchy, metallic synth sounds before gradually blooming into something considerably more detailed and not as desperate and immediate as much of Clarke’s work. This is no pop banger, instead progressing gradually and unveiling itself, confident that while what it has to offer may be subtle, the song is strong enough to hold the listener’s attention without resorting to repetitive slogans or persuasive drum machine loops. Just when you’re finally admiring it and enjoying its company, it slides back to the icy, minimal synth riff it opened with before slowly fading away.
Moyet’s vocals ensure the song’s impact is fully realised. More so than on previous Yazoo releases, she gives the impression of fully throwing herself into this one, to the degree that when I read about her misgivings I was shocked – I had assumed she was singing about a deeply personal situation, so invested does she sound in the lyrics.
Number one for one week from w/e 4th December 1982
By 1982, it was becoming unusual for artists to issue singles which weren’t tracks on their current or subsequent albums. The major labels in particular had begun to work to a very simple and successful model, which saw singles as potentially loss-making promotional devices for the albums. As well as forking out for expensive videos, they were even happy to bundle expensive free gifts with singles in chart-return shops; famously, there’s the case of Rod Stewart’s single “Baby Jane” potentially reaching the top spot in ‘83 thanks to the free Adidas t-shirt that accompanied it in the “right” stores.
Indie labels couldn’t afford to play those kinds of games, and besides the financial constraints, Indie artists often had ideas of their own, asking to put out stand-alone singles which didn’t appear on any of their studio albums. There were a number of motivations for this – perhaps they were sitting on something which didn’t fit thematically with their current LP, but felt too good to be left cooling on the shelf. Maybe they wanted to experiment with a new direction, or had enough similar ideas for an EP but not a whole album. Possibly they felt that making fans pay for the same songs twice was just a rip off. Or sometimes… and this is harsh, but hear me out… perhaps it dawned on them that the track just wasn’t good enough to put on their next 33rpm platter.
“The Other Side Of Love” is an example of one of these orphaned singles. As the first piece of fresh Yazoo material to emerge since the release of their debut album “Upstairs at Erics”, it should have created much more of a buzz than it did, but the end result was a number 13 national chart placing, their only single to fail to reach the top three in the UK. When the group reformed in 2008 for some live shows, Alison Moyet was asked why it had no place in their set list. She described it as “A bit wank. It’s my least favourite track”.
In truth, “The Other Side Of Love” isn’t terrible but it’s certainly the pair’s weakest single. Built on a backbeat of cheapo electro-bongos and Binatone bleeps and trills, and fleshed out with a repetitive, “Just Can’t Get Enough” styled riff, it feels as if Clarke was reaching backwards for inspiration rather than looking forwards. Moyet does her best to insert some passion into her delivery, but for the first time it sounds mismatched – the song needs lightness of touch to succeed as a piece of bright synthpop, and instead gets a treatment that’s almost too loaded for it to bear.
At the risk of sounding like a Disc and Music Echo critic from 1965, the main thing the track has in its favour is an upbeat, catchy charm that slowly becomes more appealing after the first few listens. Speaking purely from personal experience, though, “The Other Side Of Love” is the only Yazoo single whose melody you can’t recall if it’s been a few years since your last listen. It sticks to an extent, and the central riffs are naggingly insistent, but it never burns itself into your brain, forever remaining one of those forgotten singles whose contents are doomed to be on the tip of your tongue until you press “Play” on Spotify.
Yazoo returned to number one for one week on 2nd October 1982
Depeche Mode returned to the top for one week on 9th October 1982
In the absence of any other major competition in the independent chart at this point, Mute's two prime artists simply swapped their positions in the opening week of October, before swapping back again the week after. As tempting as it might be to froth enthusiastically about each single all over again, it probably makes more sense to take a look at what was entering the charts lower down.
New Entries in Week One
22. Attak - Murder In The Subway (No Future)
There are two ways to capture the fear of malevolent crime on the underground - one is to create a story arc around it, as The Jam did on "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight". The other is to gruffly and savagely terrify the listener with a dense, bass heavy punk racket.
"MURRRDER..... on the subway!" they roughly growl over an almost jolly rhythmic march, and to give Attak credit here, this is Second Wave Punk with a very slight dash of post-punk about it. The guitars may twist and snarl, but that rhythm section has obviously been listening to a few Factory Records releases in its time, probably behind the guitarist's back. No wonder everyone sounds so pissed off.
25. Various - Back On The Streets (EP) (Secret)
Yet another Gary Bushell approved Oi release, this one offering penny-pinched punks five bands for the price of one - Venom, East End Badoes, The Strike, Skin Disease and Angela Rippon's Bum all take up space here, and if you've been following this blog for a few months now, you'll know what to expect.
Of the above, the inventively named Angela Rippon's Bum actually bothered to shoot a video of sorts, and far from being the Splodgenessabounds indebted piece of larkery I expected, it's pretty straight-ahead Oi thrash delivered by a bunch of disaffected herberts. The group wouldn't release another record until 2000, when the presumably long awaited "Nice Arse Shame About The Face" was launched into the world.
27. The Enemy - "Punk's Alive" (Fallout)
Another 45 protesting that punk still existed, only adding to the sense that the movement was not waving, but drowning. There's little to distinguish The Enemy from their many Oi and Second Wave Punk peers here, with only the weird breakdown halfway through the track showing any sign of inventiveness. If I'd first heard this single during the beginning of my expedition with this blog I might have been more charitable, but getting through some of these groups is really starting to feel like a slog now. However much journalists at the various IPC music magazines were being paid to cover this stuff, it wasn't nearly enough.
30. Wasted Youth - Reach Out (Bridgehouse)
East London post-punks Wasted Youth, on the other hand, took their societal frustrations in a different direction; most of their fellow travellers tended to back away from direct commentary, but "Reach Out" is a sympathetic nod to skint youths everywhere, begging "It's not that easy and it's getting harder/ Reach out and touch somebody today".
It's minimal and frosty, but as the singer Ken Scott states knowingly as the song fades, looking over his shoulder, it's an "ordinary song about ordinary people", and it challenged people to stick by their communities rather than gnashing and wailing or filling the lyrics up with ambiguous poetry - a novel approach at that time.
Sadly, Wasted Youth would split up before the end of 1982.
Week Two
14. Special Duties - Bullshit Crass (Rondolet)
In which the conflict between Crass and other more heads-down-and-shout second wave punk bands spills over into the indie chart. "Fight Crass not punk!" the group urge their listeners. "Crass were first to say punk is dead/ now they're rightly labelled as being red/ Commune Hippies, that's what they are/ they've got no money, ha ha ha".
“We’ve been running round in circles all year/ doing this and that and getting nowhere...”
Both 1982 and 1983 saw music critics thunderously dismiss two major synthpop bands for their latest albums, which were seen as confused and pretentious departures from the expected path. The first, in 1982, was Depeche Mode’s second album “A Broken Frame”, which was seen as indulgent, flimsy, pretentious and incoherent – flashes of bright pop surrounded by rainy adolescent sulks, an uneven listening experience from a band clearly on the wane.
Then in 1983, OMD released “Dazzle Ships”, which in turn was seen as indulgent, flimsy, pretentious and incoherent – flashes of bright pop surrounded by pseudo avant-garde nonsense. Another uneven listening experience from a band, etc. etc. etc.
“Dazzle Ships” has since been throroughly reassessed and reissued on multiple occasions, and is now regarded not as evidence of a band out of time and ideas, but a daring and coherent piece of work (something very few people said in its day). A masterpiece, in fact. The sleeve art, featuring flashes of colour and darkness akin to the camouflage World War I navy ships adopted, mirrored the work within and created the same sense of dislocation and uncertainty; one minute bright and visible, the next slipping into a deliberately jarring Cold War statement.
“A Broken Frame” received an award and praise for its Brian Griffin directed cover art, a photograph of a peasant woman ploughing fields under a gloomy sky with a scythe, while the rear of the sleeve showed sunshine breaking through on the right hand side. Its contents, on the other hand, remain ignored. The band themselves seem to see the album as an embarrassing learning experience from a difficult period, their fans seldom talk about it online, and if it comes up for discussion in Classic Rock retrospectives, critics still find time to have a chuckle at its expense.
So allow me to step forward and make a deeply contentious claim – “A Broken Frame” is one of my favourite albums of all time. It really doesn’t deserve to be ignored. Where you hear inconsistency and incoherence, I hear a record with deliberate, stark contrasts, the sunshine breaking through the dark clouds for occasional respite before being forced undercover again. Where you hear a confused group, I hear a band who knew that pop and post-punk were not mutually exclusive; that in the end, whether The Buzzcocks, Donna Summer or The Shangri-las were singing about the tight knots romantic relationships tie us in, they were still trying to communicate the same idea (the journey from soda pops to snakebite and black is really only a mere few years - nothing in adult terms).
Perhaps more importantly, where you hear a band trying and failing to be different, I hear them succeeding. There are moments on “A Broken Frame” they wouldn’t touch upon again – the frostbitten Siberian reggae of “Satellite”, for example, is a real anomaly (but no worse for it) – but also moments which set the stage for their future direction. The squally, epic “Sun And The Rainfall” is a rarely bettered track from the early stage of their career, offering hope and reason amidst a gloomy minor key. “My Secret Garden” is hushed and delirious, constantly teasing and threatening to rise its head above the fog before diving back down again. The much-mocked “A Photograph Of You” emerges bright, simple but heartbroken on side two, only for the sound of wind to blow immediately over it to introduce the minimal, marching childhood fascist Psycho Drama of “Shouldn’t Have Done That”. If the group didn’t understand how the handle the changeable mood they were trying to evoke here, the producer Daniel Miller surely did (as an aside, I should also say that even at the time I thought "Shouldn't Have Done That" sounded uncannily close to a late sixties Beatles studio experiment in places).
The first two singles from “A Broken Frame” doubtless wrongfooted the public and critics. “See You” and “Meaning Of Love” showed some artistic development, but were essentially playing safe, trying to operate within spitting distance of Vince Clarke’s original ideas on “Speak And Spell”; two straightforward feedbag fillers, steadying the horses and ensuring nobody was hoofed up the arse all the way home to Basildon.
“Leave In Silence”, on the other hand, is the last single from the album and the one that really seems to define its spirit best. It begins with an approximation of mournful monk chanting (at this point not the cliché it has since become), an apologetic, descending bong of a chime, and synthesisers which glint despondently. This is pop picked up, slit apart, and turned into an inverse image of itself. Elements which should be celebratory and joyous are used instead to signal dismay, impatience and defeat in a minor key. Chimes collapse. Speedy synth-wizard instrumental breaks meander and tumble and reach no conclusion. Spiritual chants are used to signal defeat, not mystery or joy. Melodic conclusions are hinted at then abandoned. Glasses smash. It’s like a track from “Speak & Spell” in negative, swapping bright lights for shady resignation.
It’s also bloody wonderful and fascinatingly inventive. Prior to its release I had already decided I liked Depeche Mode, but it was the first single I found genuinely exciting. The group claim they had the option of picking a more obvious track from the album to release as the final single, but deliberately went with “Leave In Silence” to show another side to their work. Not everyone was impressed – Paul Weller was moved to comment “I’ve heard more melody coming out of Kenny Wheeler’s arsehole”, probably missing the point (as critics also did) that the band were keen to use the single as a springboard to a different career in Vince Clarke’s absence, not produce a song the milkman could whistle. When “Leave In Silence” arrives on the “Singles 81-85” compilation, whose tracks are presented in chronological order, it feels like the key transition point despite being from the second album – the moment where they truly find their own voices and stop worrying about their ex-bandmate.
In common with many other tracks on “A Broken Frame”, it has clumsy lyrical flaws, the “spreading like a cancer” line tactlessly pre-empting Turbo B out of Snap (though at least they have the sense not to rhyme it with dancer). It was also given an ultra-New Romantic arty promo video directed by Julien Temple where the band stand beside a Generation Game conveyer belt of random items which they smash with hammers. This seemed like an interesting clip by 1982 standards, but the world of music videos has evolved significantly since and it now looks like it's trying far too hard to be clever. These are minor setbacks, though, and shouldn’t distract from the fact that this is a wonderfully unusual pop record.
The risk also paid off, to an extent. While “Leave In Silence” only reached number 18 in the charts, their lowest charting single since their debut “Dreaming Of Me”, it was successful enough to make the group realise that they could get away with testing their existing audience and potentially attract new listeners into the bargain. The Clarke-led Depeche Mode of old were now a dead concept, and the fact this change occurred so swiftly in the space of a mere year is shocking by modern standards.
As for “A Broken Frame”, there are occasional signs that at least some people are getting wise to its strengths. In 2015 the Greek synthpop duo Marsheaux released their own modernised version of the entire album, which in common with most tribute exercises contains surprising and fantastic interpretations as well as tricks which don’t quite cohere. It’s clear that the pair are handling it with love and admiration, though, seeing its bold shifts and changes in tone as strengths rather than weaknesses. It’s a small step, but hopefully further respect will follow from other quarters.
Away From The Number One Spot
New Entries In Week One
14. Fad Gadget – “Life On The Line” (Mute)
Frank Tovey entering the charts in the week Depeche Mode take the top spot is a neat piece of symmetry – the group acted as his support act for their early London shows, which brought them to the attention of Mute label boss Daniel Miller.
The band namedropped Fad Gadget often and tried to ensure he got some column inches, but despite his use of synths, Tovey was operating in a different sphere; taut, harsh and occasionally disturbing. “Ricky’s Hand”, essentially a parody of a seventies Public Information Film set to buzzing synths, is darker and more comedic than Mode ever got, as well as probably being one of the first examples a PIF being dismantled and reappropriated artistically.
“Life On The Line” is more compromising, shifting closer to pop, but still doesn’t push the mercury very far up the thermometer. While other groups were showing that synths could be used to communicate other ideas besides alienation and futurism, Fad Gadget were having absolutely bloody none of that, and while the song offers the listener some bait, Tovey’s delivery never moves an inch beyond cold and uncommitted, like the Drimble Wedge of futurism.
It eventually peaked, perhaps appropriately, at number 13.
When we bumped into Yazoo’s last single “Only You”, there was a sense the new duo were just settling into their working relationship. For whatever its strengths and commerciality, “Only You” was a track Vince Clarke had lying around before Yazoo came into being, and had initially considered hawking around to other groups. At the point of writing it, his working relationship with Alison Moyet hadn’t really been instigated, so what the public were left to buy was Moyet interpreting a track which at one point could just as easily have been handed to Depeche Mode.
“Don’t Go” is the first example of a Yazoo single where the fork in the road, the divergence between Mode and Clarke, is obvious. If Clarke’s earliest work with Depeche Mode fizzes and bops, “Don’t Go” bops and slams. The drum machine is approximating an R&B/gospel rhythm, the central synth riff – in all other respects close enough to something Clarke might have tried circa “Just Can’t Get Enough” – has more dancefloor friendly shades to it, not least the aspects where the familar high-end squeakiness is replaced by digital bubbling or low, bassy grumbles.
It’s actually less ambitious melodically than a lot of Depeche Mode’s earliest work. “New Life” was busy and surprisingly ambitious, always introducing new twists, while “Don’t Go” finds its groove by the twentieth second and sticks rigidily to it, only offering slight variations.
Unlike “New Life”, though, Clarke has a singer who can be ambitious on his behalf. While Dave Gahan is a strong vocalist, his performances from 1981 right through to the present day have tended to stick doggedly to a mournful mid-range. You could argue that it forced Depeche Mode to become more dramatic, more symphonic around him; his vocals have generally acted as the central anchor, requiring the splashes of colour to occur elsewhere in the songs. Moyet, on the other hand, veers from threatening low growls here right up to desperate shrieks. She supplies the dramatic flourishes while Clarke is free, for the first time, to let the central hooks hit a steady dancefloor friendly groove without worrying too much about frilly embellishments.
With it, the pair also managed to take early eighties synth pop to slightly different places from their peers. If you were being charitable, you could argue that it was fresh and new, and that it signalled that Clarke knew synths were about more than just aloofness and futurism, but in truth they weren’t the first to realise this. Giorgio Moroder picked up the new technology and discovered that it could represent sex, desire, vulnerability and danceability in the previous decade. All Clarke and Moyet were really doing was picking up the baton and understanding that they didn’t need permission to take electronics into these areas. Their approach here, a kind of gospel tinged New Romanticism, did however slowly nose away at the boundaries of what was possible, impressing critics without frightening either the school disco dancefloor or Clarke’s earliest fans.
“Don’t Go” is one of those rare examples of two stylistically very different individuals realising the qualities they have in tandem, and working them through with maximum effectiveness. It peaked at number 3 in the national charts.
In the eyes of the music critics, Vince Clarke was always going to be the winner for leaving Depeche Mode. It probably wasn’t intended as a cynical political move, but it worked in his favour – as a brand (rather than a band) they were cute, young, teeny and unashamedly pop, and arguably disposable too. Their name even translated (arguably) as "Hurried Fashion", as if to accidentally hint at a certain lack of long term plan.
By departing with some vague excuses about not enjoying the trappings of being in a group, his stance could be read as personal, disapproving of their style or direction, or artistic depending on what you wanted to believe. It was certainly an admirably bold step; few band members have quit right after their first major hit single and gone on to further success.
While hindsight proves that his move wasn’t a dumb one, it would be wrong to assume he always felt secure about his decision. Shortly after leaving and before more concrete arrangements had been made, he wondered whether he could make a living as a songwriter, and he initially offered “Only You” to the band he had just left. There’s a beautiful alternate timeline opening up here which allows us to go wild imagining what Depeche Mode would have made of this song (I’m slightly surprised somebody hasn’t tried to do this with AI technology already). I’m straining and failing to hear it; there’s something about “Only You” which doesn’t sound like it should be sung by Dave Gahan, and the arrangement is also gentle and simplistic rather than featuring the broad atmospheric sweeps the band would quickly utilise.
The group turned Clarke down, perhaps inevitably feeling that buying second-hand songs off the band member who had just walked away would not be an act of confidence and could potentially seal their fate. Had they accepted, it would also have deprived Clarke of his first major hit as a non-member of the band; sometimes it’s for the best that paths remain unexplored.
What he did instead was quickly hook up creatively with a local woman, the ex-Screamin’ Ab Dabs member Alison Moyet. Moyet was from a very different school of thought to Clarke and his ex-Depeche friends, having a background in punk and R&B groups and a powerful, expressive voice which couldn’t have been less akin to the sulky mid-range Gahan inhabited. There was a wildness and directness to her approach which opened up all manner of fresh possibilities for Clarke as a songwriter, not least the chance to act against the critical cliché that all synth groups were in some way “cold and emotionally detached”.
In this respect, “Only You” is a slightly strange opening effort in that it doesn’t make the most of her abilities. There’s a daintiness to it that doesn’t give her much to play with – from the intro onwards, the precise, pinging, staccato synth lines remind me of an electronic version of the sounds seeping from a wind-up musical box. It’s pretty and memorable but lyrically and melodically simplistic. The intro provides a solid foundation and the track never moves very far away, stuck in its own delicate and very unspecific mourning for a failed love affair (rather like “See You”, this is romance presented as a series of sketchy outline Mills and Boon details, filled with touched hands behind closed doors and women sulkily looking out of windows).
It was a huge number two hit, which makes its later fate seem inexplicable. It’s possible I’m listening to the wrong radio stations or hanging around the wrong shopping centres, but its status seems to have slipped over the years and I can’t remember the last time I heard it. Listening to it again for the first time in forever, I’m struck by how much of a passing novelty it may have seemed in 1982; Moyet may not be given many chances to stretch herself, but her voice is a lot more naturally expressive and technically proficient than many of her straining New Romantic rivals. She manages to bring warmth to some slightly flimsy lyrics and a sense of genuine emotional investment – Phil Oakey, Dave Gahan, and even Marc Almond at this point couldn’t have sold the song as well. In tandem with her, the gentle jewellery box synth backing adds a sentimental touch which can either seem irksome or moving depending on your emotional state when you press play.
