Ah, the great wave of Literate Pop & Roll bands of the early to mid-Eighties. I saw them all. R.E.M., The Triffids, The Go-Betweens, Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, the mighty Prefab Sprout. All in fact save The Smiths and Aztec Camera. But otherwise I ticked off the whole list of must sees. The essential, sensitive bands of my generation. I had the right records. I also had the right book collection. And I put my face in the right, angled pose every time my photo was being taken. As if I was the bassist of Echo & the Bunnymen posing on one of their album covers.
Hang on. The mighty Prefab Sprout? Did they ever have the might to blow the skin off their ice puddings? Are you for real? Surely this bunch have a good claim to be he wettest bunch of lettuce leaves to ever tarnish the boards of Rock & Roll. You must have been a student and a rather lily livered one at that. Well, yes I was. Guilty on both charges..And I saw Prefab Sprout play the LCR at UEA, (the Unversity of East Anglia, Norwich), during my first year at university, one of the best years of my life, in 1986.
It has to be said, they were not a fiercesome or particularly memorable live proposition, though I do remember something about the night I saw them. Wendy Smith their keyboardist and leader Paddy McAloon's onstage foil and muse of sorts, wrapping herself around a microphone stand as if a stiff breeze would blow her over and she needed it to hold herself up. Martin McAloon, Paddy's brother and the band's bassist, looking like the least likely candidate in the school playground to ever make it onto a stage and have people paying good money to see him play. Paddy himself, hardly the most imposing and memorable frontman you'd ever see. Hey, I saw Lux Interior of The Cramps doing his thing in the same venue during the same year. One band was the epitome of Rock & Roll as it was originally intended to be and one, erm wasn't. It was rather like being invited to a dinner party and being obliged to listen to the host's anecdotes and thoughts on life all evening.
This I think describes the experience of seeing The Sprout live in their prime. It wasn't really their natural element. They were really made for the record player and a quiet night in, listening to their winsome, crafted lyrics and impeccable melodies. Marvelling at their sensitivity and equisite taste. I remember Paul Burnand, an existential type from Leeds, railing at the bus stop after the gig about the gross insensitivity of the 'townies' at the concert who had had the bold temerity to chat throughout the band's performance rather than maintain an awestruck pose of solemn wonder throughout the set like most of us students had. Sorry Paul, but Prefab Sprout live positively invited such a response.
As a recording band they consciously went against the grain, though there were clear references points with the contemporaries I listed at the start of this. But their influences were instantly and importantly different from any of these bands. Bacharach & David, Cole Porter and Gershwin as opposed to Lennon & McCartner, Jagger & Richard and Reed & Cale, (though McAloon did occasionally nod to the importance of The Beatles to him in interviews).As Barney Hoskyns said of him early on, 'Paddy McAloon is doing more inside your average three minutes than the rest of the pack manages in whole albums.' There you have it. What you feel about this statement will probably indicate whether you are naturally disposed towards Prefab Sprout or not.
I wasn't completely sold myself during my first terms at university but went along with the enthusiasm of the guys in my corridor during the year. The four of us, Rod, Ben, James and myself, used to listen to Steve McQueen on a regular basis in Rod's room. He was the one with the record player. Rod was still recovering from the pain of the end of his first important relationship. He'd given the girl in question his treasured Bruce Springsteen albums and she'd later taken up with a bloke who looked like Paddy whichI think added to the poignancy and pain of listening to the record for him.
I think at the time I really liked opening tracks Faron Young and Bonnie, and found most of the rest of the record slightly anaemic. Since then Steve McQueen has seeped slowly into me and it's the album I go to when I'm in a certain mood. It has to be said that to truly appreciate the record you need to have had had your heart well and truly broken and be of a certain romantic mindset and I hadn't and wasn't at that point. The dubious joys of the first and the gradual maturation of my appreciation of the sentiments on the record lay a few years down the line. Now, it actually makes me think of the girlfriend who I started to go out with at the end of my first year and who was to be the first to truly break my heart a few years later even though I'm fairly sure we never actually listened to Steve McQueen rogether.
Anyhow, it's a good record to listen to in your mid-fifties. That's for sure. To think about what you've learned. 'Life's not complete 'til your heart's missed a beat...and you'll never make it up. Or turn back the clock.' Home truths that you can't absorb at twenty or indeed at twenty five when you're actually going through these emotions most vividly. Ideas that only really sink in many miles down the road.
I probably took a slightly shallower take on things back then. I veered closer to Lloyd Cole & the Commotion's Rattlesnakes at the time to Prefab's McQueen, because I was prone to believe that one failed relationship was not likely to be the end of the world. That your heart would heal almost immediately and you could just move on to the next great romance. Naive was the best description of me then. Rattlesnakes is just as good a record as Steve McQueen I'd say but it self-consciously adopts a much shallower approach. McQueen may seem like ennui on the surface but actually takes on a deeper line of enquiry than Lloyd did. You can never be sure when this process of heartbreak will entirely end. It may actually never do so entirely.
McAloon' was not alone in those days in trying to describe the nature of a broken heart. Plenty of others were at it. Martin Fry, Green Gartside, Roddy Frame, Elvis Costello. They all produced major or minor masterpieces, but not of them would describe how things could ache quite as well as Paddy did here.
This is all the Prefab I ever need though they did plenty of other great stuff before and afterwards. But this does something none of their other records do for me. This takes me unerringly back to Fifer's Lane Student Accomodation Halls in Norwich, (was it N Block? Can't remember) and Rod's room listening to this record with him, Ben and James in late Autumn 1985. As you get older you need records that do that for you. Or at least I do.
The record resonates for me so much every time it play it now. It's clever but it cares. It's full of the most wonderful lines when you can recall the moments in your life when you've hurt most, if that's an experience you care for. Miraculously it's never too clever, a trap the band fell into before and later. I think Steve McQueen gets it just and remarkably right. I'd say it's quite essential.
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