FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Prefab Sprout – Steve McQueen
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TIM Burgess is hosting…
daily album listening parties, which brings together members of various bands who tweet about their albums as the listeners absorb the music in real-time. It is a great idea, and there have been some great albums included already – and there are brilliant ones to come. On Wednesday (1st April), Wendy James of Prefab Sprout discussed the band’s 1985 sophomore album, Steve McQueen. I wonder whether Paddy McAloon (the band’s songwriter and lead) and the producer Thomas Dolby was asked to contribute. I know McAloon has health issues, so it might not have been possible for him to get involved. Swoon was the debut from County Durham’s Prefab Sprout and, whilst a great album, Steve McQueen was a huge step forward. Released by Kitchenware, Steve McQueen was released in the Two Wheels Good – due to a conflict with the Steve McQueen estate. You are hooked before you even get to the music itself. The cover features the band posing on a Triumph motorcycle; a reference to Steve McQueen’s The Great Escape. When he appeared on BBC Radio 1 before the album began life, Thomas Dolby talked about his love of the song, Don’t Speak from Swoon. Paddy McAloon contacted Dolby, and the two met at McAloon’s home. McAloon, a prolific writer, had amassed up to fifty songs; Dolby selected his favourite and asked McAloon to demo them. In this Sound on Sound feature from 2015, McAloon discussed the recording of Steve McQueen:
“Others didn’t agree, of course, as proven by the fact that Swoon was picked up by CBS Records and, upon its release, attracted gushing reviews. For its successor, the major label hooked Prefab Sprout up with Thomas Dolby, the synth–pop solo artist who was then branching out into production. As well as overseeing the band’s second album, Steve McQueen, released in 1985, Dolby effectively became the fifth member of the group, augmenting their sound with creamy digital keyboard washes. “I’d read in a magazine somewhere that he was working with Michael Jackson, and I thought, ‘That’s good enough for me,’ Paddy laughs. “I don’t know whether that was actually true he’d met Michael Jackson. Tom had loved Swoon, but he thought he could be helpful in terms of unpicking the sort of tangled knots of amateur arrangements.”
The songs for Steve McQueen were worked up in rehearsals with Dolby at Nomis Studios in West London in the autumn of 1984, before the sessions moved to Marcus Studios and the mixing was done at Farmyard Studios in Buckinghamshire. “It’s taken me decades to try to absorb what it was that Thomas did,” Paddy admits. “I mean, he had a great ear for individual sounds, he wasn’t swayed so much by the things of the day. He had a Fairlight and a PPG Wave and he would use them sparingly, and he had no time for the Yamaha DX7 and the things that everyone else rushed out and bought. He was into synthesis really. He didn’t make a big thing of it it was just what he did, in addition to having a good sense of structure.”
The album yielded a major hit in the shape of ‘When Love Breaks Down’, but the much in–demand Dolby couldn’t commit himself fully to the third Prefab Sprout album, having decided to work with Star Wars director George Lucas on the soundtrack for his 1986 cinematic flop Howard The Duck. At the same time, McAloon and Dolby failed to see eye–to–eye when it came to the demo of the band’s next obvious hit, the clever Bruce Springsteen–lampooning pop of ‘Cars And Girls’. “He said, ‘You could get anybody to do that,’” Paddy recalls. “And I’m not sure what he meant by that. ‘Cause I thought, Well, yeah, you could get lots of people to do any of them, but that’s not the point.”
In addition, McAloon had hatched what he now calls a “slightly bonkers” plot to make the album with a different producer for each song — an idea that was quickly torpedoed due to the massive expense it would have involved. Nevertheless, the resulting From Langley Park To Memphis was still a hugely ambitious affair, its credits listing no fewer than 19 engineers. The sessions were divided between London and Los Angeles, with four of its tracks produced by Dolby and the remainder produced by McAloon himself, sometimes in cahoots with Jon Kelly (Kate Bush, Deacon Blue).
Surely then McAloon must have at this stage felt far more confident as a producer in his own right? “No, I didn’t,” he confesses. “I feel as if I was there under false pretences. It could have been done an awful lot quicker. I’ve got to say I wasn’t a record producer and it would take me a long time to understand really what goes on there. That’s my take on it. I’m not being self–deprecating. I just think the truth is, we got through something, that’s all”.
In my opinion, some of Prefab Sprout’s very best work is on Steve McQueen. Although they had commercial success with From Langley Park to Memphis – the follow up – and songs like Cars and Girls, and The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, McAloon songwriting, together with Dolby’s production, is a dream.
In terms of themes, McAloon was focused on heartache, regret and infidelity. Faron Young, Appetite, When Love Breaks Down, and Desire As are gorgeous songs; it is not a surprise that Steve McQueen received huge acclaim and the sophistication of the record means that it still sounds so relevant and stunning today. There are great articles like this, which gives detail and insight into a truly phenomenal album. If you can grab a copy on vinyl, I suggest you do. It sounds remarkable nearly thirty-five years after its release – Steve McQueen was released in June 1985. In their review, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“Smart, sophisticated and timelessly stylish, Two Wheels Good (titled Steve McQueen throughout the rest of the world) is a minor classic, a shimmering jazz-pop masterpiece sparked by Paddy McAloon's witty and inventive songwriting. McAloon is a wickedly cavalier composer, his songs exploring human weaknesses like regret ("Bonny"), lust ("Appetite") and infidelity ("Horsin' Around") with cynical insight and sarcastic flair; he's also remarkably adaptable, easily switching gears from the faux-country of "Faron" to the stately pop grace of "Moving the River." At times, perhaps, his pretensions get the better of him (as on "Desire As"), while at other times his lyrics are perhaps too trenchant for their own good; at those moments, however, what keeps Two Wheels Good afloat is Thomas Dolby's lush production, which makes even the loftiest and most biting moments as easily palatable as the airiest adult-contemporary confection”.
I do wonder whether there will be any more Prefab Sprout albums in the future. Crimson/Red arrived in 2013 but, to be honest, it was closer to a Paddy McAloon album. Regardless, we can look back at this magnificent period where there was nobody like Prefab Sprout – there still isn’t! When Pitchfork reviewed the Deluxe Version of Steve McQueen in 2007, they made some keen observations:
“One thing the new versions do highlight is the astonishing maturity of the songs. Coincidentally, almost all of Dolby choices dated from 1979, when Paddy was 22. Yet they sound all the more appropriate sung by a man of 50. "Life's not complete, 'til your heart's missed a beat," he sighed on "Goodbye Lucille #1", but now when he sings "and you'll never get it back," his voice breaks with the wisdom of another two decades.
Ironically, considering the producer's name, it's a record in so many ways about infidelity. Or let's say about the consequences of romanticism. Take that cover: Paddy, looking like a dreamy young D.H. Lawrence, astride the kind of Triumph that would have carried the record's namesake to freedom. But the whole album rails against easy escapism: "Appetite", sung from the perspective of a girl left to bring up the baby of some young firebrand; "Desire As" seeing no escape from a lifetime of new flames; the rueful regrets of "Bonny".
I am looking back at older albums because, as there are fewer new ones coming out, I am naturally drifting and recalling some of my absolute favourites. Ahead of its thirty-fifth birthday, spin Prefab Sprout’s marvellous Steve McQueen and luxuriate in...
IN THIS PHOTO: Wendy Smith and Paddy McAloon in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Putland
A sublime album.