The kind of clubs I preferred to frequent in the Eighties, ('indie' ones I suppose before the term 'indie' really existed), stuck to a pretty fixed playlist. Unimpeachable cool, The Stooges, Velvets, New York Dolls, Suicide. Sixties Girl Bands and Motown, specifically The Ronettes, The Shangri-Las, Needle in a Haystack, My Boyfriend's Back. And Nancy Sinatra. Always Nancy Sinatra. With or without Lee Hazlewood.
There was something about the Nancy & Lee records that really took on a life and mystique of their own in this decade. I can't really imagine they had anything like the same credibility when they came out and they must have just about disappeared altogether during the Seventies. However, the Eighties, the Independent labels, Morrissey and Creation Records reclaimed them. Original albums I recall didn't come cheap..Hazlewood in particular built a credibility he's never lost since.
This process continued into the Nineties. Primal Scream covered Some Velvet Morning with Kate Moss. What's Where the Wild Roses Grow by Nick Cave & Kylie but a dark update of Nancy & Lee? It was that darkness, the kitsch, the instrumentation, the taste of the West, the slightly twisted and odd sexual edge, the vague menace of Hazlewood, implicit, but not really spelt out in the originals that made them attractive and ripe for recasting.
During the following decade Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, took all this to its logical conclusion. Their albums, (there've been three so far), are very much moulded on the original's template. Beauty and the beast. But the beast has turned murderous. I heard this for the first time yesterday, from the 2006 album, The Ballad of the Broken Seas, which is a pretty perfect distillation and update of all the Nancy& Lee ingredients. This song in particular. The vinyl price of the album itself is exorbitant again, indicating how its stock has risen in the eight years since it first came out. It starts at £50. But I want it. I may need to wait until its re-release.
'Where have you been, my darling
Where have you been, my friend
Where have you been, my darling
Where have you been, my friend
A crow flew past my window sill
Stole me away from you until
You change your heart or change your will
You're untrue darling
Where have you been, my darling
Where have you been, my friend
Where have you been, my darling
Where have you been, my friend
And all the while that you would burn
Your tongue was working overtime
Love foregone and life's so good
You're untrue darling
In my words I cherry picked
Something fought and died today
With all our words I care not say
I need you darling
I've been chasing up loftier mountains
Be it against my will
You keep telling me "don't get no higher"
But I'll be higher still
Where have you been, my darling
Where have you been, my friend .'
Where have you been, my friend
Where have you been, my darling
Where have you been, my friend
A crow flew past my window sill
Stole me away from you until
You change your heart or change your will
You're untrue darling
Where have you been, my darling
Where have you been, my friend
Where have you been, my darling
Where have you been, my friend
And all the while that you would burn
Your tongue was working overtime
Love foregone and life's so good
You're untrue darling
In my words I cherry picked
Something fought and died today
With all our words I care not say
I need you darling
I've been chasing up loftier mountains
Be it against my will
You keep telling me "don't get no higher"
But I'll be higher still
Where have you been, my darling
Where have you been, my friend .'
Mark Lanegan
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