About This Time 40 Years Ago… It’s The Hits Of August-ish 1984!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet:

“Ain’t nobody gonna believe I’d do this,” Prince said.

“Ain’t nobody gonna believe I’d do this” was a weird thing 4 Prince 2 say…

{yes, I’m doing it, ain’t nobody gonna stop me… but I’m not going 2 do the “eye” thing, 4 that would be a step 2 far…}

… given that he’d spent his entire career doing things that nobody would believe he’d do.

Such as, let’s say, demand that his manager, whose contract was up 4 renewal, get him a Hollywood movie. And not just a bit part in a Hollywood movie either. Prince wanted a movie of his very own. A semi-autobiographical movie of his own. Prince was effectively demanding 2 star in his own biopic, at a time when most movie goers were only vaguely aware of his very existence.

4 prior 2 Purple Rain, Prince was little more than a B-list pop star, with a single big hit – “Little Red Corvette” 2 his credit. (“Little Red Corvette” is a 10)

Sure, Prince had half a decade’s worth of funk classics 2 his name, but most of those funk classics had not been huge chart hits. And sure, Prince had a whole lot of critical buzz. He’d already been on the cover of Rolling Stone once.

This would not have been the only time Prince had worn denim jeans, of course.

As part of that aforementioned pre-Purple Rain buzz, Prince’s 1980 album, Dirty Mind, was described by Robert Christgau with glowing prose such as, “Mick Jagger can just fold up his penis and go home.” Ain’t nobody gonna believe he was going to play every instrument on that album. Ain’t nobody gonna believe he would tour behind that album wearing nothing but woman’s underwear and a trench-coat.

Ain’t nobody gonna believe he would recite The Lord’s Prayer and chant…

“People call me rude,
I wish we all were nude,
I wish there was no black or white,
I wish there was no rules”

…on the lead single of his 1981 album, Controversy. But he did. Although sure, not necessarily on the single version.

Ain’t nobody gonna believe that Prince, upon finding that Minneapolis didn’t exactly have much of a funk scene 2 speak of – that Minneapolis was not, in fact, a funky town, despite Minneapolis-natives Lipps Inc having a hit with “Funky Town” – would set forth 2 create a whole bunch of funk bands, writing much of their material, simply 2 create a scene and give himself competition. He invented The Time featuring Morris Day. He invented Vanity 6. He wrote their hit “Nasty Girl” (it’s a 7)

So Prince had spent his entire career doing things ain’t nobody gonna believe he would do. So 2 which of the above was Prince referring?

The bass wasn’t the only thing that Prince was switching off. According to an interview with engineer Peggy McCreary, Prince originally built the entire track up in2 some sort of overproduced and overblown monstrosity.

Or, as Peggy put it “it just seemed like a wank, u’know… here we go, raging guitar, raging synths and everything.”

It was a good thing that he did.

Punching the bass out made “When Doves Cry” sound more fragile. Brittle. Vulnerable. These r good things. With nothing 2 fall back upon, Prince sounds as though he’s been left standing, alone in a world, that’s so cold. Punching the bass out makes “When Doves Cry” feel like a world as cold as a Minnesota winter.

Punching the bass out also gave Prince’s guitar room 2 breathe. And 2 really stand out! Prince’s guitar hero reputation has always been in a strange place. He’s a Santana-obsessed shredder in a field – Black-dance-pop basically – not exactly known 4 its guitar shredding. No matter how many solos his Royal Badness busts out, no matter how many times Eric Clapton has referred 2 him as the world’s greatest guitarist, some people are still surprised that he plays at all.

The Letters 2 The Editor the next month were filled with snarky sentiments such as: “I saw Madonna on TV the other day holding a guitar. Maybe give her the cover next.” I guess some people simply can’t handle the thought that one man can bust both gravity defying dance moves and play speed metal! Have these people never heard the intro 2 “When Doves Cry” before?

If Prince did consider himself in competition with Michael Jackson – and he always claimed that he did not – then Purple Rain was an entire album’s worth of evidence that he could be both Michael and Eddie Van Halen on “Beat It” all the way through.

So, the story goes: Prince was asked by Purple Rain”s director, Albert Magnoli, 2 write a song that dealt both with parents and with girls. Given that, in Purple Rain itself, “When Doves Cry” is merely used as background music 4 a scene in which Prince rides around on his motorcycle and sadly skips some stones, there was really no need 4 the soul-searching sonnet he ended up giving us. There was need 4 Prince 2 write such profound yet pervy poetry as:

But he gave it 2 us anyway.

“When Doves Cry” also educates us that, when doves cry, they do not, as u might suppose, make a plaintive coo-ing sound, but a descending dinky staccato line in the key of A Minor.

The script for Purple Rain was based on notes Prince had been scribbling down in his notepad.

Consequently, Prince may have been responsible for such dialogue as “u have 2 purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka.”

That scene, I feel I need 2 emphasize, was filmed on the outskirts of Minneapolis… IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER!! Apollonia got hyperthermia! They sent 4 an ambulance!! Prince had 2 hold her in his arms 2 keep her warm, whispering “please don’t die, please don’t die, Apollonia.”

And after all that, u know what, it really wasn’t Lake Minnetonka! It wasn’t even a lake! It was the Minnesota River.

Prince may also have been responsible 4 this painful “Who’s On First?” rip off

Some of “Purple Rain” was based on those notes, but u will be relieved to know that Prince’s father, although something of a recluse – he’d spent the previous ten years all by himself, playing the piano all day, avoiding women because they were a distraction – was nowhere near as messed up as the movie makes him appear. “My dad wouldn’t have nothing to do with guns.” Prince swore to a Rolling Stone interviewer “He never swore, still doesn’t, and never drinks.”

One of Prince’s father’s actual compositions – the one The Kid’s father plays in Purple Rain, shortly before he shoots himself – ended up as a guitar solo at the end of “Computer Blue.” Maybe Prince was like his father.

And ain’t nobody gonna believe – even after “Little Red Corvette” – that Prince would record what is basically a rock album.

The reason “Purple Rain” rocks so much was Bob Seger and his old time rock’n’roll. Prince and Bob’s tours seemed 2 b constantly bumping into each other as they both made their way across the Mid-West. Bob Seger was getting bigger crowds, a fact which frustrated Prince, mystified as he was that Bob was so popular.

So Prince wrote a rock ballad.

Not just any rock ballad either, but quite possibly the ultimate rock ballad of all time. Not 2 shabby 4 someone who had never really written a rock ballad b4. Prince had written several slow and sultry sex-suites, but nothing 2 inspire an ocean of lighters a glow. With “Purple Rain” however, Prince had written the kind of rock ballad that MidWestern white people might like.

So it was a good sign when one particular MidWestern white person – Prince’s bodyguard Big Chick* – rushed in2 the label’s office one day shouting “U gotta hear the song the boss wrote last night. Isn’t this song so good? Willie Nelson’s gonna cover it!”

And thus Prince was able 2 connect 2 crowds of extremely 80s-looking people of every race. They knew what Prince was singing about up there. And they raised their hands.

Also the bar owner towards the end, nodding his head in approval, thinking “The Kid’s finally got it.” Tears. Literal tears.

Lisa and Wendy basically “wrote” quite a few “Prince” songs – it was they who wrote the melody 2 “Raspberry Beret” – but I’m pretty sure “Purple Rain” was pure-Prince.

• “Purple Rain” is a 10.
• “When Doves Cry” is a 10.
• “Let’s Go Crazy” is a 10.

Everything else on Purple Rain is a 9. Except perhaps “Take Me With U.” That’s an 8. Or maybe I’m being unfair 2 “Take Me With U.” It can’t b easy 2 b the second-best Prince motorcycling montage song on Purple Rain.

*2 give u an idea of just how big Prince was during the Purple Rain period, his bodyguard, Big Chick, also became famous. Famous enough that he was impersonated in an SNL skit. Prince was played by Billy Crystal. Probably not the casting choice I would have made, but here’s that. Prince is said 2 have found it hilarious.

Speaking of curious casting choices, there’s a rumour going around that Warner Brothers didn’t want Prince 2 star in Purple Rain. They wanted John Travolta!

Now u run that video in your mind.

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Meanwhile, in Beard Land:

ZZ Top didn’t always have beards.

Things were a little bit hairier around 1975, but then again, it was 1975. On the spectrum of hairy bands – in a rock world dominated by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and still living in the shadows of Creedence Clearwater Revival – ZZ Top were not especially hairy.

Ironically, ZZ Top included, as one of its members, a drummer by the name of Frank Beard. Ironic, because Frank Beard was the only member not to be sporting a beard.

The whole ZZ Top = “that beard band” look came into being because Frank Beard had to go into rehab, and the other two guys went off to do their own thing. By which I don’t mean pursue solo careers or anything like that. I mean practically disappear off the face of the Earth, and just generally let themselves go.

It must have felt like looking in the mirror. And so, after not shaving for two years as they bummed around the world – or whatever it is that they had been doing, nobody seems to know – they seem to have decided never to shave ever again.

Just in case giant doormat beards were not an adequately distinguishable trademark, ZZ-Top finally hit the big time in 1984 – reaching Princesque and Springsteenian levels of MTV fame as they did so – by also adding to their branding kit, a car.

Even then, with the beards and the Ford Hot Rod, ZZ Top weren’t quite the biggest little band in Texas until they released “Legs” as a single, and introduced the world to such couplets as

“She’s got hair, down to her fanny
She’s kinda jet set, try undo her panties”

It’s the utter braindead stupidity of those lines that makes them art.

The videos from Eliminator all followed much the same plotline.

There’s a hunky jock, who, despite very clearly being a hunky jock, appears to exist at the very bottom of the socio-economic food-chain, being constantly pushed around whilst working in a variety of service industry roles.

You will notice that these occupations share something in common: they involve cars. So along comes the 1933 Ford Hot Rod, filled with glamorous woman in various skimpy 80s outfits, at least some of whom are Playboy Playmates.

Quite what the exact relationship between ZZ Top and the Playboy Playmates is, is never made entirely clear.

It’s kind of like Highway To Heaven if Michael Landon was a stripper.

So, in each of these videos, ZZ-Top appear out of thin air, point their fingers around a bit to look cool, disappear back into thin air, appear again, point their fingers a few more times, before tossing to the hunky service worker the patented ZZ-keys to The Eliminator.

They never actually speak, but the hunky service worker seems to understand that not only have ZZ-Top granted him access to the 1933 Ford Hot Rod, but also to the Playboy Playmates.

The video for “Legs” is a variation on the theme. There’s still a hunky service worker, but he’s not the main character. The main character is an introverted leggy-blonde, who’s also constantly being pushed around. She works at a shoe store – raising the question, should the song have been called “Feet”? – where her main role appears to be to fetch lunch from the fast food joint across the road, where she is thoroughly harassed by both the staff and their customers. And the bikie gang outside.

ZZ Top and the Playboy Playmates suddenly emerge, and they give her a very 80s makeover. Leggy-blonde suddenly transforms from a bookish introvert to a self-confident take-no-nonsense woman and everyone in the video suddenly starts treating her with, not respect exactly, but something closer to awe?

Many people found the whole thing sexist, and I guess you can understand why. But really, it was simply ZZ-Top’s Guide To Building Your Self-Esteem. Such self-improvement guides were very hot in the 80s. I might even go further, and suggest that, in its own, very ZZ Top way, the video for “Legs” is a parable about female empowerment. Or at least the power one gains from getting a makeover and looking hot. Which is not exactly the kind of message you would expect from a song with lyrics such as:

“She holding leg
Wonder how to feel them
Would you get behind them
If you could only find them?”

I’m not even sure what they are getting at there.

But regardless of whether you are a gas station attendant, a valet, or working as a gofer in fashion retail, ZZ Top offer you a message of hope: that maybe one day a bunch of hobos will magically materialize, with a posse of Playboy Playmates in tow, and all your doubts and insecurities will melt away.

You see, if you believe in ZZ Top: you are really believing in yourself.

• “Gimme All Your Lovin’” is a 7.
• “Sharp Dressed Man” is a 9.
• “Legs” is a 7.

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Meanwhile, in Punk Rockers Have Feelings, Too Land:

Punk rock was dead. Paul Weller – possibly – claimed that it was like punk rock never happened.

So, Billy Idol appears to have decided, why not take the one thing the average punter on the street knew about punk – that punk rockers sported mohawks and put safety pins through their noses – and turn it into a Halloween costume.

It turned out quite well for him. Or, according to a scene in Buffy, Billy Idol stole his look from Spike.

Billy Idol had, by this point, been kind of famous for more than half a decade. Punks with safety pins through their noses knew of him in 1978 because he was part of The Sex Pistols’ posse.

Finally, he became famous amongst people who watched a lot of cable television, when he released a seemingly unstoppable series of classic singles -“Dancing With Myself”, “Hot In The City”, “White Wedding”, “Rebel Yell” – all the while perfecting an image based on spiky bleach-blonde hair, a snarl, and the constant pumping of a fist in fingerless leather gloves, dancing through apocalyptic landscapes, whilst zombies climb the walls.

Whilst also hiring the services of Steve Stevens, one of the coolest guitarists of the 80s. Just listen to Steve turn his guitar into a machine gun on “Rebel Yell” (it’s a 10)

Naturally however it was the ballad that became the big chart hit. Although calling “Eyes Without A Face” a ballad doesn’t seem quite right, even if most of it is extremely slow.

Billy Idol appears to be something of a “song-title first” kind of song writer. “Rebel Yell” was the name of a bourbon that he noticed The Rolling Stones liked to drink. Billy liked the name, and thus a rock classic was born.

Sad to say, “Eyes Without A Face” is not about a murderous plastic surgeon collecting his victim’s faces to graft onto his daughter. Missed opportunity. Instead, it’s about Billy Idol “descending into madness” because his relationship had gone wrong. It was his fault really. Billy Idol was a rock star. And when Billy was on tour he did what rock stars do, that being of course, having sex with groupies. How was Billy to tell his girlfriend that she’s still his favourite groupie?

It’s not immediately obvious which of the lyrics are necessarily about Billy “descending into madness.” Maybe it’s just the vibe of the song.

If “Eyes Without A Face” continued as it began – a murmuring bassline line, a slow-motion synth, the occasional snapping of a hand-clapping snare – it would have more than enough. Plenty of 80s classics have been based on far less. But then, halfway through, a great big riff breaks out and Billy begins to “rap”.

You may not have thought of the endless bridge in the middle of “Eyes Without A Face” as a “rap” before, but that’s what Billy thought he was doing. More than just rapping, Billy was freestyling! It was in-the-moment word association! This explains why most of the lyrics – the ones about hanging out by the state line and turning water into wine for example – are utter gibberish.

And Billy was rapping because, in his words, “rap was everywhere in New York at the time.” He was right. Rap was everywhere. Particularly where punk rockers were popping up.

Compared to John, Billy’s flow is practically at Rakim-like levels. But it was 1984. Rap was still new. People were still trying to figure out what it was supposed to sound like.

However, I’m pretty sure everyone agreed that it didn’t sound like “Eyes Without A Face.”

“Eyes Without A Face” is an 8.

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Meanwhile, in Gay Anthem Land:

Boy George was beefing with Bronski Beat.

Then again, Boy George was beefing with virtually the entire gay community. Boy George was constantly being turned away from gay clubs, being told that he – with his braids and his ribbons and his hats and his frocks and his way too liberal use of rouge – was an embarrassment. They were also annoyed with him because he had not come out yet. Not properly anyway.

Or when asked if he was bisexual reply “oh I never have to buy sex.” Boy George had a coy and witty remark for every possible variation of the “are you gay?” question. He’d had a lot of practice.

An argument could be made of course that Boy George didn’t need to come out. I mean, come on!! Still, it was a sticking point. Apparently his Grammy acceptance speech – “thank you America, you got taste, style, and you know a good drag queen when you see one” – didn’t quite cut it.

Unlike Boy George, Bronski Beat’s lead singer, Jimmy Sommerville, was out. And proud. This was not something that could be taken for granted in the mid-80s pop scene.

The mid-80s pop scene – the mid-80s British pop scene in particular – might seem like a Golden Era of Queer Pop, but virtually every gay icon of the period was living in the closet at the time. Boy George was too busy playing coy. Marc Almond from Soft Cell wouldn’t come out until 1987, by which time most pop fans had forgotten who he was. George Michael – of whom more next time we visit 1984 – wouldn’t come out for about another decade.

But Jimmy Sommerville put a pink triangle on the cover of “Smalltown Boy.”*  More importantly, he wrote “Smalltown Boy.”

“Smalltown Boy” was the heartbreaking story of leaving in the morning with everything you own in a little… black case. Alone on a platform, the wind and the rain on a sad and looooooonely faaaaaace.

Jimmy had been that boy, alone on a platform… except, in his case, he was not alone. Jimmy had a friend. They ran away together, from Glasgow – not wanting to sound pedantic here, but Glasgow is Scotland’s second largest city and with a population of over 700,000 in 1980 is most definitely not a small town – to London on Jimmy’s 18th birthday.

Jimmy would spend the next five years clubbing, squatting, getting occasional shifts as a sex worker on Piccadilly Circus, and helping out with a documentary called Framed Youth: The Revenge Of The Teenage Perverts, “a film made by Young Lesbians and Gays.” Jimi worked as an “editor.” He also provided a tune called “Screaming” to the soundtrack. And in one scene, talked about his family back in Glasgow.

“Me Mom’s great” Jimmy tells us, whilst attempting, and failing, to put a saxophone together “I mean, me mom’s brilliant. But I say you got to talk to her. I mean, she’s really emotional… * incomprehensible * just what happens, and then, I mean she said to me that she still loves me and I’m still her son. I was comforting you know what I mean, it was brilliant.” Indeed, when Bronski Beat played in Glasgow, Jimmy’s mom leapt on stage to give her son a great big hug. Jimmy’s mom was no problem.

“I don’t really know nothin’ about me Dad. I never really talked to me Dad. I never really communicate with him. Before, y’know, I mean, * incomprehensible * I used to give him such a hard time, never used to speak to him. Never had a chat with me Dad. The way I used to dress, I’m sure it must’ve upset him. I’d be quite interested to find out what his reaction would be. Y’know. If he doesn’t like it, tough.”

A few years later, when “Smalltown Boy” was heading up the charts and Jimmy was appearing on TV all the time, his father’s reaction would be to not tell any of his friends, because he was worried that Jimmy would be dressed up like Boy George. Or have hair like Boy George.

Jimmy Somerville was not dressed up like Boy George. Jimmy’s hair was not like Boy George. Jimmy barely had any hair at all.

But still, this was Jimmy’s father’s biggest fear; that his son would dress like Boy George. See what Jimmy was up against? It was stereotypes like this that he wanted to fight.

Which is why, when Paul Morley and Trevor Horn came a-courting, inviting Bronski Beat to either be Frankie Goes To Hollywood, or be the NEW Frankie Goes To Hollywood – I’m a little unclear of the timeline here – Bronski Beat told them that they weren’t interested. An understandable stance, since instead of wearing “RELAX” t-shirts, Paul Morley wanted Bronski Beat to wear t-shirts that read “POOF”.

Bronski Beat weren’t interested in courting Frankie-style controversy.

They wanted you to know that they were just like you. Their message, according to Larry, speaking in Smash Hits: “what we are dealing with is how the big mad world is treating people like us.”

They didn’t think that Boy George was being especially helpful.

So if anyone was going to confront Boy George about all of this, it was Jimmy Sommerville. For Jimmy Sommerville had, in his own words, “the biggest f*cking mouth.” Boy George was apparently “terrified” by Jimmy’s “big f*cking mouth.” The BBC needed to put Bronski Beat’s dressing room halfway across the building when they were on Top Of The Pops simply so the other pop stars – particularly, it seems, Boy George – didn’t have to come face-to-face with Jimmy’s “big f*cking mouth”, telling them just what he thought.

Mostly however Jimmy used that “biggest f*cking mouth” to record disco-protest songs. Such as “Why?”, the follow-up single, in which the opening lyric rails against people who had “contempt in your eyes when I turn to kiss his lips”, whilst the chorus – “you and me together, fighting for our love” – was not regarding any difficulties they may have been having with their relationship. It was, once again, about the fight for acceptance. The fight for equality. (“Why?” is a 7)

Meanwhile the video was full of both religious and socialist imagery, socialism being another one of Jimmy Somerville’s favourite hobbies. Which is why he found himself supporting the Miner’s Strike.

By the end of the year, Bronski Beat would be playing a benefit gig in support of striking coal miners, and against the Thatcher Government, a benefit gig organised by Lesbians and Gays Support Miners. In return – and as a way of saying thank you – 140,000 coal miners made the trip down to London to march in the 1985 Gay and Lesbian Pride Rally. You may have seen the movie about all of this. It’s quite a touching movie, although I found it quite odd, given the climate crisis that we are currently facing, to find myself feeling sympathy for the coal industry.

Any band can do a benefit gig of course. But few bands – other than the likes of Midnight Oil – have their political convictions inform pretty much every aspect of their album rollout. I mean, Bronski Beat titled their album The Age Of Consent. Inside they included a handy guide of what the age of consent – for homosexual sex – was in each European nation. This too, had its roots in Framed Youth, which included a scene in which such a list was read out of a book.

But Bronski Beat’s depiction of the loneliness of gay boys from small towns most decidedly was. Seriously: “the answers you seek will never be found at home” may be the truest lyric anybody has ever written. Even Morrisey could never have come up with that. At least partially because Manchester is also not a small town.

“Smalltown Boy” is a 10.

*Since we’re talking about the cover artwork to “Smalltown Boy:” let’s talk about the red-and-white drum. And the connection of that red-and-white-drum to Bronski Beat’s name. Bronski was the name of a character in “The Tin Drum”, first a classic German novel, then a classic German film.

And perhaps what he wanted his voice to do in relation to the mainstream’s perception of the gay community.

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