A journey back in time this one. Back to my youth, a time of mixed experience, lost opportunities and mistakes as well as much happiness. Just what youth is all about after all isn't it? Not just for me I suspect but also for the record and band I'm going to write about here.
So back to 1987, the year that I turned 22, still youthful I'd suggest, by more generous estimates. Not a particularly happy year among my own memories as I'd fallen ill during my second year at university with a rare and serious condition and I had to take a couple of years out of university.
I had much else to contend with, but I won't trouble you with all that here. I retreated to convalesence to the home of loving parents in Teddington. During the next couple of years, I caught up with reading for my degree but continued my obsessions with the weekly music papers and the London music scene, venturing out sometimes to see bands, usually at The Hammersmith Clarendon, the Indie Mecca of South West London at the time.
During one of these jaunts I saw The Weather Prophets who were the big hopes for those of a jingly jangly disposition for a couple of seasons in 1987. These hopes were slightly misplaced but at this point in time those who worshipped The Velvet Underground, The Byrds and Big Star, looked to Creation Records to supply them with their latest leather clad Rock Gods and while House of Love and then Ride were warming up in the wings to make this a genuinely viable possibility, we were left with Creation's main contenders at the time. Primal Scream and The Weather Prophets.
The Weather Prophets had emerged from the ashes of The Loft, early Creation contenders who had split in spectacular circumstances, (well if you think in Indie terms), onstage at The Hammersmith Palais during a Colourfield gig in 1985.
The roots of the severance were surely inarticulate, youthful male rage and ego. Regardless, in effect Pete Astor and Bill Morgan, the main songwriter and drummer of The Loft proceeded with undue haste to the formation of The Weather Prophets, primarily designed as a vehicle for Astor's songwriting, constructed on classic guitar beat poet lines
Astor was certainly a talented songwriter if arguably a rather conservative one. Other bands of a similar stripe were after all making inroads, at the time, artistically certainly but also commercially. The Smiths, R.E.M. The Triffids, Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, The Go-Betweens, Prefab Sprout and others were all indicating that being sensitive and literate were not necessarily handicaps to getting on. Astor and The Weather Prophets might be contenders.
After all, they'd just emerged from the studios clutching their shiny debut album Mayflower,
(released on WEA offshoot Elevation), twelve songs of lean, guitar driven suburban attitude, produced by Lenny Kaye of the venerated Patti Smith Group no less. 'Kaye plugged Astor into an heroic lineage of art, poetry and critically lauded rock'n'roll.'
They'd also been granted a cover, by the still respected NME magazine. Wherein NME scribe Len Brown made slightly vaunted claims as to their worth.At the time the two prize goals of bands of the Weather Prophet's stripe was the cover of the NME and an appearance on Top of The Pops. They had achieved the former, if they wanted the latter Mayflower would need to provide it.
It failed to do so, though there are several worthy contenders here. Most notably Almost Prayed the band's debut single and probably their finest song where in less than three minutes they uttlerly evoke the ghost of Television and images of decadent lonesome indie cool, standing by the river on the dockside in the midnght hour, quiff and shades resplendent, lighting a cigarette, all the while thinking profound method actor thoughts.It gets absolutely everything right and then is gone. Should have been a hit.
Perhaps they should have saved Almost Prayed 'til later, but there are other contenders. She Comes From The Rain, also a single and a thing of limpid, liquid beauty, which limped to # 62 in the UK Singles Charts despite the NME cover push.
At which point the Weather Prophets moment as genuine chart contenders was probably gone. But almost 35 years on I can still warm to much of Mayflower. There's little that leaps out at you and grabs you by the throat but that is not Astor's way. There are 12 well constructed and solidly played Indie guitar songs dreaming of being something more though never quite attaining it.
Also opener Why Does The Rain?, (Astor clearly had a thing about rain), which was The Loft's debut single back in the early Creation days and such a good song that Astor understandably felt the urge to give it another plug here.
But there was the rub. Why Does The Rain? was released as a single itself after She Comes From The Rain's failure but didn't stand a chance. Simply because it's not a patch on the glorious original which captures once and forever the pure glory of a sulky type in his late teens waiting for his morning train into the city and his dull admin job. Semi- poetic thoughts popping like clouds in his head and wondering most of all, when he is going to be recognised for the star he clearly is and taken away from all this mundane, everyday tedium.
Never Pete, and here's the reason. Because you weren't quite good enough. Or perhaps you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because you did write some good songs, and a few approaching greatness.
Essentially though Astor was 'A fair songwriter who had neither the powerful voice nor the force or personality to appeal to listeners in large numbers.'
Never mind. We're all a bit older, and we hope wiser too. Astor is now a senior music professor at the University of Westminster, a good way to divert frustrated youthful dreams of stardom into a worthwhile career path that pays the mortgage. He still makes great records and tours occasionally as he pushes onwards towards Sixty. I'm fairly well on my way to that milestone myself.
So now, if I look back to that night at The Clarendon a Google search has helped me rediscover a flyer for the gig. Bottom of the bill Pop Will Eat Itself, who went on to some chart success themselves, (they, unlike the Prophets made it onto both the cover of the NME and Top of the Pops, on several occasions).
Also on the bill were The Servants who did several decent songs, were fronted by a talented songwriter David Westlake and also boasted Luke Haines in their ranks. A man who went on to form The Auters Black Box Recorder, Baader Meinhof and more, and pen a particularly acidic portrait of Astor at the time which I'll repost here presently.
But more significantly than that, the other band on the bill that night, and the support I remember most, The Happy Mondays. I remember them because I had no idea who they were and because they seemed so out of place with the polite, groomed, middle class indie cool that was everywhere else that night. They were lairy, they seemd to be playing in five different bands, probably because they were on five different drugs. They made an impression. Their's after all, was the future.
Well Mayflower still sounds fine to me. A melodic, well crafted record that stands up all these years down the line. It's good, but certainly not great. Might as well leave the closing words to Astor himself..
'It didn't capture the vibe... It's that whole anal, antiseptic way of making records that's ruined millions of good albums. People not undersranding how to record a rock'n'roll band. That was a lost art for many years.'
Don't worry about it Pete. Perhaps you were right. It bombed at the time. Made # 67 in the Albums Chart in 1987. Sounds fine now. What after all, do chart positions really matter.
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