Mixtape: 21 Songs from 10 Years (1975-1985)

By Fiona McQuarrie

Mixtape is a journey through one of the most exciting eras of popular music. Each chapter covers a song released between 1975 and 1985, and features in-depth research, critical assessment, and the occasional dose of snark. Some of these 21 songs will be familiar, others not so familiar, but all of them have fascinating stories to tell. Mixtape is a great read for fans of music and popular culture, and for anyone who wants to revisit the sounds of that exhilarating decade.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Haven Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Oct 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781949515480

Book preview

Mixtape

21 Songs from 10 Years (1975-1985)

Fiona McQuarrie

Published 2022

NEW HAVEN PUBLISHING LTD

www.newhavenpublishingltd.com

[e-mail]

All Rights Reserved

The rights of Fiona McQuarrie, as the author of this work, have been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be re-printed or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now unknown or hereafter invented, including photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the Author and Publisher.

Cover Design@Pete Cunliffe

Copyright © 2022

All rights reserved © Fiona McQuarrie

ISBN: 978-1-949515-48-0

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction*

Chapter 2: I Can Do It (The Rubettes, 1975)*

Chapter 3: Love Is The Drug (Roxy Music, 1975)*

Chapter 4: Kid Charlemagne (Steely Dan, 1976)*

Chapter 5: Love Is Alive (Gary Wright, 1976)*

Chapter 6: Be Good To Yourself (Frankie Miller, 1977)*

Chapter 7: I Knew The Bride (Dave Edmunds, 1977)*

Chapter 8: Trans Europe Express (Kraftwerk, 1977)*

Chapter 9: Burning Down The House (Talking Heads, 1977*

Chapter 10: I Ain’t Living Long Like This (Rodney Crowell, 1978)*

Chapter 11: I Love The Nightlife (Disco ‘Round) (Alicia Bridges, 1978-79*

Chapter 12: Too Bad (Doug and the Slugs, 1980)*

Chapter 13: Romeo And Juliet (Dire Straits, 1980)*

Chapter 14: Johnny And Mary (Robert Palmer, 1980)*

Chapter 15: It Must Be Love (Madness, 1981)*

Chapter 16: Der Kommissar (Falco, 1981)*

Chapter 17: Come Back And Stay (Paul Young, 1983)*

Chapter 18: Owner Of A Lonely Heart (Yes, 1984)*

Chapter 19: One Night in Bangkok (Murray Head, 1984)*

Chapter 20: The Whole Of The Moon (The Waterboys, 1985)*

Chapter 21: Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody (David Lee Roth, 1985*

Chapter 22: Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush, 1985)*

Chapter 23: Acknowledgements*

About the Author

Chapter 1

* Introduction*

In 1975, the year when this book starts, my parents took me and my brother out of school for a month to visit the UK. I remember being astonished that a civilized country could function with such tiny cars and only four television channels. But more importantly, I was amazed at the number of UK bands that we Canadians didn’t know at all: Slade, Mud, the Goodies, the Wombles, and Kenny, among many others. While some of the artists we encountered eventually made it big in North America – little did we know that the Bay City Rollers’ tartan madness was about to sweep over our shores – many of them had long and productive careers in the UK and Europe but never became popular elsewhere.

That’s one of the defining features of the decade that this book covers - distinctive national or regional music scenes. Of course, during that time there were, as there always have been, musicians that were popular all around the world. But the era between 1975 and 1985 was before record companies and radio stations were taken over by faceless corporate conglomerates. It was before consultants and market researchers encouraged broadcast programmers to choose what was familiar rather than what was interesting. And it was before the Internet and bazillion-channel TV brought the same content to viewers and listeners around the globe. In the late '70s and the early '80s, different acts could still be popular in different places.

Another characteristic of these ten years was the wide variety of styles in popular music. There was harder rock, there was lighter rock, there was country, there was gospel, there was soul, there was punk, there was new wave, there was disco, there was R&B, there was rap, and there was pop. And they could often all be heard on the same radio station, or at the same dance, on or the same TV station. Sure, there were different groups of fans for different types of music, and there wasn’t always mutual tolerance or understanding; some groups of fans actively disliked other types of music and shunned people who listened to them. But you, as a listener or viewer waiting for something to come on, might encounter a new record or artist that you ended up enjoying.

The singer Pink says that record company executive L.A. Reid once told her, This music business is big enough for everybody to win at the same time. He said that in the early 2000s, but it was equally true between 1975 and 1985. When I was working as a music writer during that decade, a record company representative told me that the best thing that could happen for a record company was for any record to become a big hit, even if it wasn’t one of their own. A big hit got people into the stores to buy that record, and while they were there, they might hear or see something else that appealed to them and buy that too. It was a very competitive industry, but when someone did well, everyone did well. Now, when music buyers’ attention is fractured across so many different platforms and media, I’m not sure those mutual benefits still exist.

This book looks at 21 songs released between 1975 and 1985. Some of these songs were chart-toppers, but a song didn’t have to be a hit to be included. There’s also no conscious attempt on my part to have a balance of musical styles, although these 21 songs come from many different genres. But other than trying to have at least one song from each of those ten years, my basic reason for including a song was that I wanted to find out more about it. There are some songs from this era that I absolutely adored and still do, but when I started digging into their background, there just wasn’t that much there - so a couple of planned chapters got started and then abandoned. Writing about a song in depth also means spending a lot of time with it, so each of the 21 songs also had to be a song that I liked enough to listen to it over and over again.

There were a few other guidelines for including a song. Usually, the song had to have been covered by other artists. There are a few songs in here that don’t meet that criterion - they had other interesting qualities that made them worth discussing in depth. But that guideline is why, for example, there are no punk or rap songs in this book. Both of those genres produced some phenomenally good music, but it was comparatively rare for songs in those genres to be covered. I also avoided songs by hugely popular artists who already have a lot written about them. The three most revered acts at my high school in 1976, the year I graduated, were Led Zeppelin, Queen, and the Village People. None of those artists’ songs are here. Unless the ghost of Freddie Mercury materializes in my office and volunteers to sit for an interview, I don’t have anything to add to what’s already been said about those bands.

As will be apparent in a few of the chapters, some of these songs have personal resonance for me. That’s not why the songs were chosen, but it would be dishonest for me to write about them without acknowledging that reality. One of the most incredible things about music is that hearing a song you first experienced at a particular time or place can instantly evoke what you were feeling at that moment. However, this book is not an autobiography that uses songs to frame a personal narrative. The decade that this book covers is the decade when I finished high school, when I started working full-time, and when I first had a serious romantic relationship. Some of the songs in the book were the soundtrack to some of those events for me, but those songs have other qualities that made them worth writing about.

This book also covers the decade when I first started working as a music writer. There are some songs in here that I would probably feel very differently about if I had discovered them as a fan rather than as a journalist. Listening to a song for work doesn’t necessarily make you hear a song differently than listening to it for fun, but if I hadn’t been assigned to write about some of these songs, or about the artist that made them, I might not have ever crossed paths with them. But for the most part, I have tried to stay out of the way of the songs, and let them speak for themselves.

The songs in this book have ended up in here for different reasons - but what they have in common is that they all have a story. Their stories are not just the stories in their lyrics, but also the stories of the songs’ journeys through the world. As the book came together, it was interesting to see that many of these songs represented a turning point or a transition in the artist’s career. They may have been their creators’ only famous song; they may have been a great song that turned out to be the artist’s last great song; or they may have been the first of the artist’s many great songs. Each of these songs also represents something about the era between 1975 and 1985, in how the song became popular, or what it talked about, or how audiences reacted to it. All of the songs are distinctive, but they also all share important and interesting qualities.

Finally, the title. Mixtapes were a great technological advance that emerged during the ‘70s and ‘80s. Cassettes and home taping decks gave us the freedom to record the songs we liked - or that we hoped someone else would like – and to play our homemade tapes on our stereos, on our Walkmans, or in our cars. A lot of us developed terrific hand-eye coordination by learning to push the record button on the tape deck at the exact moment the needle dropped on the vinyl disc or the song started on the radio. The record industry warned us that home taping was going to kill recorded music; au contraire, it made most of us go to the record store even more often, to buy albums and singles so we could put them on our mixtapes.

The playlist of a mixtape would look a lot like the assortment of songs in this book. So think of this book as the equivalent of a cassette mixtape, or its 21st century counterpart, the streaming playlist. Turning the page is like hitting play and starting the music, so….please turn the page, and enjoy this Mixtape.

Chapter 2

* I Can Do It (The Rubettes, 1975)*

Glam rock was one of the best things about the ‘70s. The world was seriously a much better place when bands dressed in big-collared shirts, platform shoes and shiny trousers danced across stages and TV screens. By 1974, when the Rubettes arrived on the scene, glam’s shimmery spangles were starting to get a bit threadbare, and listeners were perhaps starting to crave music that was slightly more substantial. But the fabulously dynamic ‘I Can Do It’, one of the Rubettes’ last Top 10 singles, shows how that particular band were capable of greatness even within the limitations of the glam genre. The post-glam phase of their career gave them a chance to stretch out artistically and was full of excellent songs that sadly got overlooked. They are still performing today, but for a rather complicated set of reasons, more than one live act is doing business under the Rubettes name.

The Rubettes were the creation of songwriters Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington. Bickerton and Waddington both grew up in Liverpool, and first worked together in 1962 in ex-Beatles drummer Pete Best’s first headlining venture, the Pete Best Four (also known as the Pete Best Combo). Bickerton was the bassist and Waddington was the guitarist and lead vocalist. The Four toured extensively, including a residency in Hamburg and a lengthy visit to the US, but broke up in 1966 after returning to the UK. The group made several studio recordings during its time in the US, including several Waddington compositions that were later released as singles and as tracks on Best’s 1967 album Best of the Beatles. None were hits, but Waddington has said that seeing how American producers worked in the studio showed him a different way to do things.

After the end of their time with Best, Bickerton and Waddington struck out on their own as a songwriting and production team. Throughout the late 1960s, they built their name through working with artists such as Toby Twist, Dana Gillespie, Tom Jones, Granny’s Intentions, and the Flirtations. Bickerton also became a record label executive, first at Deram and then at Polydor, which gave him and Waddington experience with pretty much every aspect of the music business. However, while their songwriting resumé was more than respectable, none of their collaborations had resulted in a major hit. They then undertook a different strategy for success: not only writing and producing a song, but also creating the group that would record it.

The catalyst for forming the Rubettes was ‘Sugar Baby Love’, a number that Bickerton and Waddington had written for a 1950s-themed stage musical they were putting together. Waddington had tried to shop the show to producers in London’s West End, but was told over and over that no one was interested in a musical set in the 1950s. (Ironically, a few years later Grease was playing to sold-out theatres in London and in New York.) Then Bickerton brought Waddington up to Newcastle to see a band that they both agreed were fantastic - the '50s revivalist band Showaddywaddy – and at some point a demo of ‘Sugar Baby Love’ was recorded and presented to that group; however, they rejected the song. The song was also reportedly offered to Carl Wayne, the former lead vocalist of the Move who was embarking on a solo career, and he turned it down as well. Bickerton and Waddington then set about creating a band with some of the studio musicians that had played on the ‘Sugar Baby Love’ demo.

John Richardson, the drummer on the demo, helped to assemble the new group. Richardson and guitarist Alan Williams had played together in other bands, and had already released several singles as the vocal duo Baskin & Copperfield, scoring an appearance on the BBC’s Top of the Pops TV show with ‘I Never See The Sun’. Richardson was also an in-demand session musician, having played on hits such as Carl Douglas’ ‘Kung Fu Fighting’. Guitarist Tony Thorpe had played in the backing band for British rock’n’roll pioneer Wee Willie Harris, and, along with Richardson and Williams, was one of the anonymous members of the Mike Morton Congregation, a studio group that produced cut-price albums of cover versions of current hits. Paul Da Vinci, who contributed the astounding falsetto vocals to ‘Sugar Baby Love’, regularly sang on songwriting demos by Tony Macaulay, as well as on commercial jingles. The other recruits were keyboard players Bill Hurd and Pete Arnesen, and bassist Mick Clarke.

The name of the new band was chosen by Waddington as an indirect acknowledgement that ‘Sugar Baby Love’ was inspired by the 1957 doo-wop classic ‘Little Darlin’’ by the Diamonds. One of Waddington’s friends owned a red Mini car that she had nicknamed Ruby, and that moniker inspired Rubettes. Thorpe says the band called themselves the Rubbits, because that was how Rubettes sounded when pronounced by German speakers.

However, Da Vinci quit the group before ‘Sugar Baby Love’ was released, supposedly due to having other contractual commitments. He claims now that he performed all the vocals on the song, and that he and Richardson were the only two Rubettes who actually played on the finished recording. Williams took over as lead singer, but Da Vinci’s absence presented a challenge, as his falsetto was so high that it was difficult for any other vocalist to duplicate. Nevertheless, ‘Sugar Baby Love’ was released as a single at the start of 1974, only to spend several weeks mired in the lower parts of the UK charts, much to the frustration of its writers. Even the record’s exceptional production, inspired by Waddington’s no throwaway stuff ethos that he had learned in American recording studios, wasn’t enough to move it up the charts. Then an entirely unexpected event sent ‘Sugar Baby Love’ soaring.

In April 1974, the eccentric band Sparks, led by American brothers Ron and Russell Mael, were scheduled to perform ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us’ on Top of the Pops. The BBC and the UK Musicians’ Union had an agreement that artists appearing on Top of the Pops could mime to a recording of their song, but the recording had to be made specifically for the show. When Sparks arrived at the BBC’s recording studio to tape their song, a Top of the Pops producer heard Russell Mael’s American accent, and, assuming that as Americans the Maels could not belong to the Musicians’ Union in the UK, cancelled Sparks’ appearance. The Top of the Pops staff then had to quickly fill a suddenly vacant slot on the show’s schedule. They put in calls to three different bands, and the first to respond were the Rubettes’ managers, who got their clients booked onto the show.

In his autobiography, Thorpe recalls that the secretaries at Polydor were sent out to buy the clothes we’d decided on but not yet bought: a set of matching white suits with Rubettes embroidered on the back of the jackets, complemented by white flat cloth caps. Thankfully, in attempting to create a band image around an already-recorded song, the Rubettes had already developed some on-stage choreography, inspired by the synchronized swinging guitars of Cliff Richard and the Shadows. The Rubettes’ showy Top of the Pops performance made ‘Sugar Baby Love’ an instant hit. It rose to Number One in the UK and stayed there for three weeks, and also became the band’s only hit single in the US.

According to Richardson, after the single topped the charts Bickerton took the Rubettes out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and announced that for the future success of us all he and Waddington would write all of the band’s music, including album tracks and the B-sides of singles. The band members, each of whom were songwriters themselves as well as experienced musicians, were dumbstruck by this proposal, until Richardson spoke up and proposed that the band members write half the album tracks and all of the B-sides. Bickerton eventually agreed, "knowing that he and Tony needed us