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Music history comes alive. Forgotten favourites & undiscovered gems from the rock, soul & reggae archive and a few of the stories behind them. Your host is Simon Tesler, former publisher and editor of 1980s music, media and pop culture magazine BLITZ.
Hello, this is Simon Tesler with more great sounds from the Music Archive, and a few of the stories behind them.
The theme this week is WORDS & LETTERS. I have 12 great tracks with alphabetical associations for you from David Bowie, Thin Lizzy, The Christians, Elton John and more. But first: What are words worth? This is Tom Tom Club with Wordy Rappinghood
So that was Wordy Rappinghood by Tom Tom Club followed by Cameo with Word Up. Tom Tom Club was of course the side project formed in 1981 by husband and wife Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, respectively the drummer and bassist in Talking Heads, following the huge success of that band's Remain In Light album. Talking Heads were, as Ross from Friends might say, "on a break", with David Byrne and keyboard player Jerry Harrison both pursuing solo projects.
Weymouth and Frantz were hanging out in Nassau in the Bahamas where they'd bought a flat close to Compass Point Studios where the Heads had recorded their previous three albums. They were at a bit of a loose end so Chris Blackwell, owner of Compass Point, and also of the Island Records label, invited the duo into the studio to try their own side project. Do a song, he said, and if I like it I'll sign you for an album. We don't write songs, thought Weymouth and Frantz, but let's give it a try. So with Weymouth's sisters Lani and Laura, 23 year old studio engineer Steven Stanley and a line-up of session musician pals from Compass Point they went into the studio to come up with something. The music was easy enough but what about lyrics? "Words, words, words," thought Weymouth, "what am I going to say? what am I going to say? And anyway I can't sing..."
Frantz told her, don't worry about singing what about that new thing all those kids in New York are doing right now, rapping. And Weymouth's sisters reminded her of all the nonsense songs they used to sing as kids growing up in the South of France where her Dad, a US Navy admiral, was based for a while. Like Ram Sam Sam which is a kids' song from Morocco. And so Wordy Rappinghood was born. It was only the second rap song to be released on a major label, a couple of months after Blondie's Rapture, which was recorded at around the same time.
Rap, of course, was something that the funk group Cameo already knew about. They'd been going since the early 1970s, originally as a 14-member collective led by singer and bass player Larry Blackmon. Over the next decade or so they released a series of albums, and enjoyed modest success in the US, but members of the band kept dropping out until by the mid-Eighties, there were just three of them left. Blackmon with his hi-top haircut and codpiece was still the visual focus of the group and its leader, and the hits were getting bigger, like She's Strange and Single Life, but Word Up was their international breakthrough, a big hit all over the world.
The phrase has pretty much fallen out of use now, largely because of over-familiarity -- thank you Cameo! -- but as I'm sure you know back then it was common street parlance as a sign of approval or agreement or a bit later as a greeting, like What's Up.
OK, let's come back to the British Isles for our next two tracks. In a minute, a great little song from The Donkeys, a not too well-known "power pop" band from Wakefield in West Yorkshire. That's Four Letters. But first, another song about what words are or are not worth. Thin Lizzy with Don't Believe A Word.
I can't tell you too much about The Donkeys, who released five singles in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but front man and songwriter Neil Ferguson went on to become a significant figure in the local music scene in Bradford in West Yorkshire in the 80s and 90s, as a studio engineer and producer. Among other tracks, he can take credit for not only Chumbawamba's anarchic dance rock classic Tubthumping in late 90s but also - to his eternal shame - novelty hit Agadoo by Black Lace. Agadoo doo doo! Ugh-a-doodoo more like!
And before that, the magnificent Don't Believe A Word from Thin Lizzy's Johnny The Fox album, a typical example of Phil Lynott's great skill as a wordsmith par excellence. A man who always knew how to tell a story in a song, usually about what a lovable rogue he was. In fact it was written originally as a slow ballad, and it was Lynott's bandmates Brian Robertson and Brian Downey who suggested doing it as a rocker instead.
Two more songs about the meaning of words now. In a few minutes, One Word from Wrong Way Up, a comparatively little-known collaborative album by two giants of the industry, Brian Eno and John Cale. More about that later, but first one of the greatest tracks from Graham Parker's finest album Squeezing Out Sparks. This is Passion Is No Ordinary Word.
In the liner notes for a later anthology of his best work - also called Passion Is No Ordinary Word - Graham Parker wrote "When I started, I fully believed I was going to change the consciousness of every individual on the planet earth. But only for approximately three albums. My task accomplished, I would mysteriously slide into self-imposed retreat, well-deserved oblivion, or perhaps a mental asylum. Any one of these futures seemed fairly interesting, even rosy, for they required very little actual work on my part. Those idyllic futures had completely evaporated by the time I wrote Passion Is No Ordinary Word, and obviously, a life of meditation and navel-contemplation in a castle on the banks of Loch Ness was just not on." Like many of the songs on this very fine album, it's intense and introspective, a cry of anger about the lack of real passion in a world of faked emotions.
In the case of One Word, there is no real meaning to the song. As with most of Eno's lyrics it's more a case of words selected for their sound or to conjure up random visual images rather than a story. However, there is certainly a story behind the record:
Eno and Cale had known each other for years by the time they got together in the studio for this album in 1990. They first worked together in the early 1970s, as the backing band for Cale's former Velvet Underground colleague Nico and they collaborated frequently over the following years. Eno produced several of Cale's solo albums; Cale worked on several of Eno's albums.
But this was their first joint collaboration, and over the course of the recording, friendship quickly turned into mutual loathing, though to be honest you can't really hear any evidence of it in the songs. The cover though has images of both men symbolically throwing daggers at one another.
They fought over many things, most notably Eno's desire to control every aspect of what was supposed to be a joint project, and Cale's supposed inability to remain focused on the task at hand. There's a quote attributed to Eno that says "John Cale is the only person I know of, who will simultaneously be playing the piano and reading the newspaper while talking to you." Cale's very diplomatic comment on the bust-up was simply that "We had some misunderstandings,". There's also a story in Cale's autobiography about Eno trying to stab him with a chopstick.
After they finished the album, rather than do any interviews, Eno issued a press release anticipating possible questions from journalists and his reply to them. One was: Do you plan to work with John Cale again? Eno's answer? "Not bloody likely".
Two songs about letters now. I'm sure you know who the singers are.
Prince of course with Alphabet Street, from the Lovesexy album, and then the Jackson 5 with ABC, featuring a 10 year old Michael Jackson on vocals. The rap on Alphabet Street is from dancer and backing vocalist Cat Glover, who was one of the most exciting focal points of his tours for the Sign O The Times and Lovesexy albums. However as so often in the Paisley Park empire, there was a shake-up of the band every few years, and after Lovesexy Prince got distracted by new projects - primarily writing the Batman soundtrack.
Cat Glover was on retainer but with no prospect of another Prince tour in the near future, she quit the entourage to move to London and record an album with British producer Tim Simenon, better known as Bomb The Bass. But though there was a single, Catwoman, the album was never released and Cat faded into relative obscurity until very sadly she died in 2024 at the age of just 60.
Let's slow the tempo now with two fine songs from British artists. First up, The Christians with their reworking of the melody from a famous traditional Irish folk song, Women Of Ireland: Words. And then, the one and only Elton Hercules John, for whom Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word.
Two fabulous songs to end the show this week. First up, Scritti Politti with The Word Girl from 1985, one of several wonderful songs from the Cupid & Psyche 85 album. Note the phrasing of the song's title. It's The Word *Girl* not The *Word* Girl. You might not guess from its smooth reggae-tinged groove, but as so often with songs by Scritti's main man Green Gartside, this is not just a simple pop song but a philosophical meditation on the use of language. Specifically, in this case, the over-use of the word "girl" in pop songs as a token image. Gartside noticed how often that word appeared in his own lyrics and decided to write a song about the word, not about a real girl. Heavy, right?
Well not as heavy as the story behind my final track this week, the glorious Word On A Wing from what is in my opinion, David Bowie's finest achievement, the album Station To Station.
The song was written at the height of Bowie's psychotic cocaine-induced paranoia in the mid-70s; the time for example when he lived only on milk, and kept his urine in bottles in the fridge so it wouldn't get stolen by witches who he believed were being sent by Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page to conjure up the antichrist. Yep. Look it up. Insane.
He said later that these were "the darkest days of my life" when he was regularly experiencing what he called "psychological terror". Word On A Wing was his call for spiritual help. "It was the first time I'd really seriously thought about Christ and God in any depth, and 'Word on a Wing' was a protection... The passion in the song was genuine... something I needed to produce from within myself to safeguard myself against some of the situations I felt were happening around me." Now *that* is heavy.
That's in a few minutes, but first, Scritti Politti and The Word Girl.