MYTHS, MELODIES & METAPHYSICS: - Prefab Sprout

Foreword 

MYTHS, MELODIES & METAPHYSICS: 

PADDY McALOON’S PREFAB SPROUT 

One of our most celebrated and finest contemporary songwriters, Paddy McAloon is 

always full of surprises, being nothing short of an enigma. 

He'll be remembered for writing memorable songs with classical melodies, injecting wit, 

sublime emotional consciousness, a rich texture of musical variety and a more mature, 

universally resonant, insightful and compelling songwriting approach into today's brash 

pop era which he says is "only good at portraying images which don't stand up in the real 

world". 

His style is uncompromising, unashamed, elegant, enthusiastic, obsessive, intelligent, 

broadminded, modern and surprising. Always. 

As songwriter he is influenced by the classic themes to be found in films (evident 

celluloid reference: Steve McQueen, Heaven Can Wait), musicals (Sondheim, Styne, 

Rodgers), the great songwriters of yesterday (Porter, Bacharach & David), modern pop 

songwriters (Webb, McCartney, Wilson) and still finds space to quote Shakespeare (Timon 

of Athens in Radio Love, Romeo and Juliet's Capulets and Montagues in Enchanted and 

"Alas! Their love may be called appetite, no motion of the liver, but the palate"). 

McAloon is intrigued with the relationships between good and bad (spiritually), heroes 

and worshippers, perspectives and irony, differing cultures (of the mind) and even in his 

relationship with the press; with their summery of him. 

He is not the shy, retiring person some expect. When sat down, he comfortably chatters, 

his vocal pattern shifting constantly, almost singing with emphasis and zeal when 

discussing his passion with songwriting and melodies. Subjects battle in his head and 

force their way to the fore one by one, his speech sparking off at tangents with the vigour 

found in passion and commitment. He is at his most enthusiastic when he is writing with 

reference to the floating aesthetic found in subjects surrounding myths, dreams and 

legends. He is fascinated by the pre-conditioned thoughts and pictures we conjure up 

when thinking of famous people, places and unusual situations; of how they stand up in 

the cold light of day. 

McAloon's want has always been to write. Rather than tour and promote, he'd be alone 

in his small home studio writing and demoing songs for a whole host of projects. He says 

he is "burned" by every day he can't write. He prefers to lead a quiet life, far from the sex, 

drugs and rock 'n' roll circus of the south; he'd rather listen to Abba, Glen Campbell, 

Carole King or Laura Nyro than to the flavour of the month. 

His tastes are geared towards lasting things; in music he adores The Beatles and 

Broadway Musicals in favour of U2 or Suede. He aspires to greatness and succeeds, 

formulating valuable, relevant and ageless timepieces; songs that will become pop 

classics, rising as phoenixes from today's embers of pop music, his lyrics and melodies 

forging a finer symmetry with the passing of every album.

This book is a "Story Written Out Of Necessity"; an account of Paddy McAloon's Prefab 

Sprout; of their rise to success, McAloon's songwriting dissected, of their early days with 

Kitchenware Records and of the band's shifts in musical styles. 

It is not intended to set out or reveal McAloon's personal life. That would (in his words) 

"kill the mystery" completely. Hopefully it has been written along a parallel following this 

train of thought, from his days at school up to 1997. 

Humble Beginnings 

Paddy McAloon was born on Saturday 7th June 1957, and lived with his brothers and 

parents in the middle of a mining region in a small village called Consett, on the high 

grounds of County Durham, where the attitude of the people is very hard and where 

there's not much space given for things like poetry or artistic ambition. 

At the tender and impressionable age of eleven, young Patrick Joseph McAloon went to 

a nearby Catholic Seminary called Ushaw College in Durham. The College's Patron Saint 

is Saint Cuthbert, who left a lasting impression of his presence and Catholicism in the 

area. He was a missionary and for a time was a hermit on the Farne Isles. He died after 

being honoured as Bishop of Lindesfarne, itself a strong centre of cultural significance. 

Stories of miracles taking place at his tomb made him a leading figure of Christianity in 

the north. 

Paddy started school there in the year in which they first took in lay students, between 

1968 and 1975. So unlike a lot of children who attended, he didn't necessarily go with the 

intention of training to be a priest. They taught the normal secondary education 

curriculum. 

Liking the idea of staying away from home, he opted to board there, having fallen in 

love with the romantic 'tuck-box'-imagery of the Billy Bunter comic strips, long before it 

was considered that the age of eleven could be considered as too young to board. 

Paddy was relieved to find that the boys were not all pious and that they knew dirty 

jokes and played football. In fact Paddy proved to be so bad in the music class that he was 

always chucked out to read football books with those that couldn't sing. 

McAloon reflects on how some people view him today in comparison with his 

schooldays, "People imagine me to be sensitive, but I'm definitely not a fey character, I'm 

much cruder than that, I'm afraid. And no, no, I wasn't ever introverted. Quite the 

opposite. I was a loudmouth, a show-off, until I was at least sixteen. I remember actually 

sickening myself by talking too much." 

He admits that he had "quite a strange time" at school but it was one that he enjoyed, 

having learned to play the guitar under the helpful guidance of the many priests who 

could play and to write songs there. 

He felt the urge to create his own songs in the first year at school after struggling home 

from a much-disliked cross-country run. He stumbled into school and Glen Campbell's 

voice on a radio singing Jimmy Webb's lyric, "I need you more than want you and I want 

you for all time."

Musically, McAloon was growing up in a post-punk time where rebellion was being 

replaced by liberation and in shocking people. Bolan, Bowie, Gary Glitter and Glam Rock 

all help 'camp' eccentricities. Though he admired Bolan and Bowie back then, McAloon 

didn't so much want to copy their 'look' (although he admits to cutting out magazine 

pictures of Bolan and sticking them onto his guitar); he was more attracted by their overall 

sound, their ability to write their own songs and in their commitment to doing what they 

wanted to do. McAloon fell in love with Ride a White Swan, Get It On, Young Americans 

and Station to Station. 

He was a frail-framed child, suffering with bronchial problems and being forced to wear 

national health glasses due to poor eyesight. As a ‘mature’ student there, he held a 

'romantic' notion that he would maybe like to become a priest himself, but among other 

considerations decided that it is maybe one of the loneliest and hardest jobs and opted 

out. 

He always had the feeling of being misunderstood by all other than his parents. The fact 

that he was to go on to be a 'student' was intriguing to many in the village he lived in, as 

they were all from mining families and labour-dictated livelihoods. His father viewed the 

world from both sides of the fence, however, having had both manual and intellectual 

employment. As a result, he never pushed his sons into doing what he would prefer them 

to do, although he would always put his views forward with clarity. 

His father taught there for a spell and his Uncle studied there as a child, making it well 

known to the family. However, Paddy admits to being a slow student, taking seat in the 

middle of the class in the hope of avoiding questioning teachers. He liked English, and 

that was about it. Mathematics was a bad subject for Paddy. Although he quite enjoyed 

the lessons, he was never too good at it, which proved embarrassing as his father taught 

the subject at school. He was glad to get out of school for this reason. 

His parents suggested that after A-levels, he should look for greater things, taking the 

best of opportunities on offer to do something a bit more interesting. 

The chord that made him want to pick up a guitar was the suspended 4th at the start of 

Pinball Wizard. This led to playing "old folkie stuff – corny stuff" and then towards an 

attempt to emulate his pop idols of the time. McAloon says of his influences, "When I was 

a kid The Beatles and Marc Bolan had given me a great desire of forming a group. When I 

was thirteen years old I admired so much the incredibly cool attitude of Bolan. The Beatles 

affected me greatly but I never had any records by them on account of my parents being 

too old and me being too young to buy them." 

McAloon learned to play the guitar with just one chord, trying to mimic his heroes, but 

soon after developing a great desire to write his own songs because they did. He started 

with some bizarre influences, at one stage he found himself trying to sing like Marc Bolan. 

Both parents were musical, playing by ear and enjoying the old songwriters such as 

Cole Porter and George Gershwin. He himself picked up the guitar quickly, playing 

covers of old classics such as The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby and Bowie's All the Young 

Dudes, taking deep bows at the end of Wednesday night performances inside old people's 

homes and other Catholic coffee-time entertainment his mother had laid on and which he 

so readily provided. At the age of twelve, he started slipping in the odd McAloon 

composition, testing for reaction and developing his skills in songwriting.

But it didn't take long to take on board the opinion that his own songs meant much 

more to him, so much that he began to despise the compromise that he had forced upon 

him. So he retired to the jealous privacy of his bedroom penning songs, picturing himself 

as Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb and Paul McCartney rolled into one. The very thought 

that secret preservation would protect the 'strength' of his songs led to the self-satisfying 

refuge in being unknown. 

At the age of sixteen, in 1973, while he was still a few years from finishing school, he 

dreamed up the name "Prefab Sprout" as a name for his future band, which would play 

his songs. This name was to lie low for another four years before actually being used. Why 

Prefab Sprout? Well, Paddy was so enthused by names such as Grand Funk Railroad, 

Moby Grape and Grappled Institution going around at the time. It was, moreover, a name 

that couldn't give the listener a preconception of his songs in any way, thus forcing the 

newcomer into accepting his songs with an open mind. 

A year or so before school was out, he formed a band with four friends, 'Avalon', in the 

days when flares first made their appearance. They all lived in the area called Witton 

Gilbert, in the heartland of Durham County. He had begun to get impatient at being 

locked away unheard of and having his songs accompanied by just the guitar he'd been 

given by his mother that was to last him for the next twenty years. Avalon soon got 

together a collection of well known covers such as The Beatles' While My Guitar Gently 

Weeps, Led Zep's Rock and Roll and The Eagles' New Kid in Town. 

In between these covers, lead man Paddy McAloon played his own songs, such as 

Marsden Rock, about a coastal beauty spot in South Tyneside and Walk On, a song about 

"the consolation of pop music when you're young, doing exams, listening to pop music, 

and ending up in your own little world". 

The band found themselves playing pubs and clubs around the South Tyneside and 

Durham region. They took over local folk singer Pete Scott's Sunday night residency at the 

Bay Hotel in Cullercoats, near to Whitley Bay's famous seaside resort. For a measly 40p 

you could enjoy an evening of Avalon's entertainment. Mind you, if it wasn't busy, they 

may have let you in to buy drinks (and watch the band). Providing a typically MOR 

evening, the band had a few 'gangs' of fans, such as 'The Whitley Bay Girlies', who 

followed them around the pubs and built up reasonably well over the weeks. 

All the time brother Martin, fuelled by his admiration of his older brother's skills, stayed 

side of stage and longed for the day he could play in his own band, taking up bass guitar 

and receiving some helpful advice from his brother along the way. 

Another local venue, The Corner House, in Heaton, also played host to their talents, but 

was to be one of their last gigs, having split and separated due to the band taking to 

higher education or finding jobs. With advice from concerned parents, Paddy took the 

road to Newcastle Polytechnic to study "heavy on the English and microscopic on the 

History"" 

Paddy left the Seminary with the opinion that he had become "quite religious, but not in 

a conventional way. I don't go to mass every day. I'm as cynical as anyone about 

organized religion, but I believe in God". 

By this time, his father, who fell very ill when Paddy was seventeen, had retired from 

his relatively short-term employment as a teacher and opened up a small garage near to

the new family home in Witton Gilbert. Paddy and Martin thrashed out covers of songs of 

the day with school friend Michael Salmon on drums, playing plenty of Led Zep songs 

and other 'rockers' in the back of a garage across the road McAloon's father's. 

Realizing how much of Paddy's time was spent with his music and songwriting, his 

mother and father showed concern that it was difficult to 'expect' a career in music, but 

never dissuaded him from doing what he really wanted to. The thought of spending his 

whole life pumping petrol at his father's garage, reading books and writing songs seemed 

heaven for McAloon, not caring for whether or not he had a contract with a record 

company. His satisfaction at that moment in time came purely from being able to write 

songs. 

McAloon knew by this time that there was little serious competition around and that his 

songs were damn good. He wanted to be a writer first and foremost but realized that to 

learn his art he'd have to hear his songs with the accompaniment of a band. 

It was a period of change in Paddy's life, not only moving up into College, but 

musically. In 1977 Paddy was at Polytechnic "becoming increasingly more interested in 

figures such as Picasso and James Joyce" over the punk movement. 

With great zeal, he would read magazines, novels and anything else he could lay his 

hands on. He was passionately attracted to the ways of writing than for the story. He 

didn't like poetry on the basis that he doesn't 'trust' it. He resigned to the fact that 

although he'd like to write a novel, he would never have the concentration. I a book, one 

single fault can tear down the whole building. Whereas in a three-minute song, even if the 

lyrics are not interesting in themselves or if they don't necessarily make sense on their 

own, if the melody or the rhymes are good, those words can be meaningful. 

The influence of literature and his studies of English prompted a deeper line of thought 

in his lyric writing. In 1977 he wrote The Golden Calf, eleven years later to become a 

single for Prefab Sprout, but having many of its verses removed and through the deep 

meaning of the song getting lost in Paddy's maturity, with an adage, "If I didn't know 

better, I would swear I was someone else." 

He also wrote Bonny at this time and admits that he finds it hard to focus on exactly 

what he was trying to do then. He hadn't started to single-mindedly write songs and 

record them at the time and on reflection didn't know what he was being influenced by. 

Indeed, he used to sing, "Bonny's not coming home" and in the song's release on the 

eventual Steve McQueen album, he opted for "Bonny don't live at home." 

Around the same time, he was getting bored with what was getting played on radio and 

this prompted a few songs, Donna Summer (playing live he used to scream, "Yowzer, 

Yowzer, Yowzer!", Faron Young ("Four In The Morning") and Don't Sing. 

A few years into his studies, Paddy formed another band, playing guitar and harmonica 

alongside brother 'Mart' on bass, and Michael Salmon on drums. They played the odd 

cover but most of their repertoire consisted of Paddy's songs. 

Paddy and Martin grew up with the then-current rock bands of Marc Bolan's T-Rex, The 

Who and Free, but Paddy also acquired a keen appreciation of the easier listening lyrical 

delights found in the songs of Jimmy Webb, Burt Bacharach and Hal David. 

A raucous three-piece, the band proved very different to the old Avalon days of high 

school. So here they came, at last, Prefab Sprout, after four years of hibernation, THAT

name, reveling in the sense of mystery of such a weird name, and opting away from 

others McAloon had dreamed up like Chrysalis Cognosci, Dry Axe and The Village Bus. 

It was 1977. Paddy still has the contract they all signed to this day, 'officially' kicking off 

the band to 'fame and fortune'. He already had plans for their first album, too. That was if 

you could ignore the eleven versions of a song entitled Goodbye Lucille (version #1 

becoming a single entitled Johnny Johnny eight years later). The album was to include a 

pair of songs about sport. The opener was to be I Never Play Basketball Now and to close 

was the song And Chess is Beyond Me. However, the latter was later scrapped on the 

basis that it was reconsidered as 'crap' by McAloon - so it was replaced with the song Cue 

Fanfare, about how the drive that chess grandmasters like Bobby Fischer get from playing 

chess compares with McAloon's reactions to phrases like "hair of gold", "Sweet Mary" or 

"running to me" (taken from the song The Green Green Grass Of Home). 

Paddy wrote to many record companies and music publishers, sending demo tapes in 

the hope of drumming up some interest, but to no avail. He still has all the rejection letters 

to this day, including one from CBS, rejecting Faron Young. 

According to Paddy, they played Faron Young like a heavy metal number and Johnny 

Johnny like it was punk, screaming all the way through. The band even wore wellies on 

stage, according to an admirer, Wendy Smith. McAloon 

never did want to play live - admitting that he'd have to be dragged "screaming and 

kicking" to play gigs, but accepting the inevitability of having to if he was to get his songs 

heard, get the band recognised in looking for a recording deal and, moreover, a 

publishing contract for his songs. 

As a 'garage bad', they rehearsed until they felt confident enough to play live. They 

were soon playing pubs, clubs and colleges in the north east and did so for the next four 

years, playing Paddy's compositions such as Donna Summer, Walk On, Tin Can Pot, 

Spinning Belinda and Faron Young. 

At the turn of the decade when punk had peaked and Paddy McAloon had just 

managed to "scrape through" his degrees in English and History, he was contented in 

working at his father's garage, biding his time, reading books, strumming the guitar and 

writing songs, in between those damned customers. Unfortunately, the business folded 

and the boys spent a while on the dole. The only other job Paddy could envisage was that 

of a librarian in Durham. 

It was at a local festival that the band were playing at that Paddy met local musician 

David Brewis, guitarist in The Kane Gang, who said that the 'Gang' had watched them 

and thought they were great live. This chance meeting formed the beginning of a long 

friendship between McAloon and Brewis. 

Both bands played side by side at several gigs, even holding a residency at a local pub, 

taking turn to share the billing. Dave Brewis had bigger plans for both bands and 

suggested they both record a song each (this was at the time that The Kane Gang had 

written Brother Brother) and to put out a double A-sided single. The Kane Gang even 

offered to pay for it, but it never happened. They did agree, however, in forming their 

own record label, Candle Records, on which they would each have singles in their own 

right.

The 'Sprouts', as they were becoming known as, used the eight hundred pounds that 

Martin McAloon had earned (from working for two months as a night watchman on a 

building site) to go into a local recording studio on 25th February 1982. They recorded two 

songs, Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone), a song which acrostically spelled out 

LIMOGES, the place where Paddy's girlfriend had left to study at University, and Radio 

Love. 

More local gigging included some live backing vocal by Middlesbrough-born student 

Wendy Smith (a sometime fan of the band), who left school to join the band soon after. 

Paddy loved the contrast she provided with her soft voice against his then rougher, 

rowdier vocals. It suited the style of songwriting he had matured towards and by saving 

money from gigs, had 1,000 copies of Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone) b/w Radio 

Love struck, with the distinctive red label of Candle Records. That was in July 1982. 

At an 8-track studio within Durham University, on 17th September in the same year, 

they recorded two new songs The Devil Has All the Best Tunes and Walk On, it is said, 

"out of frustration". This time the line-up included Wendy Smith, now a fully-fledged 

Sprout on clarinet and backing vocals and guest appearance by her friend, student Feona 

Attwood, also on backing vocals. This time around, Paddy was taking up some keyboard 

as well as guitar, broadening their scope musically. 

Candle Records used the slogan "The Wax That Won't Get On Your Wick" and the 

Sprout's "Simply Ears Ahead" posters brought them to the attention of Keith Armstrong, 

the manager of Newcastle's HMV record store, who had also heard the band's new single 

played in his shop. 

Armstrong was not just a record store manager, though. He had more, much more to 

offer outside of just mainstream chart sales. 

Kitchenware 

A born and bred Geordie, Keith Armstrong, being a music lover and growing up with a 

yearning for involvement in Newcastle's bright and promising young music scene, took 

his first job in a HMV record store. Not one for standing still, he became their youngest 

ever store manager at their Derby branch. 

His appointment at Derby was after his completion of an EMI- sponsored marketing 

course, which gave him the hands-on experience of a record company rep and plugger 

and the shop floor knowledge of the 'seedier' aspects of the record industry. This was to 

stand him in good stead for future projects, but for now he had other ideas. Together with 

a friend, 

Paul Ludford, they put money together to hire the Casablanca Club on Haymarket, 

Newcastle and in August 1981, they opened up a new club, The Soul Kitchen, the purpose 

of which was to offer an exciting and innovative new venue for musicians and artistes to 

promote themselves and to interact, acting as a catalyst for developing talent in the area. 

Together with friend "Funky" Phil Mitchell, a well-known and knowledgeable soul music 

DJ to the Newcastle area, Armstrong let dancers bring in their own records, provided

facilities for bands to have accompanying slide shows or films on a backdrop and 

whatever else they needed to show off their talents. 

But why The Soul Kitchen? - "Because all great music is soulful," they maintained. 

Once settled, they promoted themselves as "the men behind the men behind the music" 

with their roles as follows: 

� Keith Armstrong - "A 'Cult'ivator, a dreamer with his feet firmly on the ground. 

The ultimate enthusiast of everything/anything good. Hatches more ideas than a 

battery hen lays eggs." 

� Paul Ludford - "A sort of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Someone who thinks, cares 

and worries (sometimes too much). A schemer, if something's bad, he tells you, if he 

says it's good then it must be good." 

The first band to play was a band called The Fire Engines. The venue location changed 

with their needs and wants, but throughout its nomadic history, always had the punters 

coming in. During the club's existence, Armstrong had all of Postcard Records' artistes 

play at The Soul Kitchen, including Orange Juice, perhaps their most accomplished; he 

moulded a friendship with Alan Horne, Postcard's respected independent label maker. 

Other bands such as Josef K., The Jazzateers, A Certain Ratio, Blue Rondo and New 

Order starred at the club and Tyne Tees TV filmed bands playing live at the venue 

(Orange Juice, Hurrah! and The Fire Engines), the footage of which was to make their first 

shelve-able 'product', a video (Cat. No. SK1). 

One of the last shows on 26 August saw Prefab Sprout and The Daintees play live at the 

venue. 

The last two shows at The Soul Kitchen featured The Bluebells (supported by Hurrah!) 

and Aztec Camera (supported by The Daintees, who Armstrong first saw busking), before 

it closed its doors exactly one year to the date of opening them. Armstrong had set the free 

spirited precedent for their next project, a record label. He had learned much from the 

demise of Glasgow's Postcard Records - of Horne's attitude with his artistes and of his 

opinion that 'he was the label', but at the same time gaining more useful knowledge in the 

workings of the record industry. Armstrong wanted to be able to provide a vehicle to 

promote the best of the local talent he'd had the chance of working with, but never at the 

expense of holding back artistic development. Armstrong had Hurrah! and The Daintees 

pencilled in, following those last two gigs in August 1982. 

Let's bear in mind, Armstrong was still at this point employed full- time at HMV record 

store in Newcastle and here they are again, the 'manage a trois' (Armstrong, Ludford and 

Mitchell), this time launching a record label, Kitchenware Records, and searching for the 

spirit to be found in being 'Young, Gifted and Black.' 

From the base of The Soul Kitchen, Armstrong & Co. also formed the Soul Kitchen 

Management organization, working also with other artists such as Jenny Barrett, Pavlou 

Goldberg and Matthew 'Hyphen' Hobson. 

Barrett formed the Newcastle-based clothing company 'Kitsch-In-Wear' after Hurrah! 

needed T-shirts designing for a video they were doing, using ideas which would be easy 

for fashion followers to copy and was also a continuation of street fashion ideas that were 

going on at the time such as ripping sleeves off T-shirts and such like.

Goldberg and Hobson has known Armstrong for some time, designing logos and 

graphics for bands and events at The Soul Kitchen. Their aim was always to create a very 

large impact by keeping everything very simple and to use 

colour and composition to their maximum effect. Indeed, the Soul-Kitchen-Wear' team 

assisted a number of media, including others such as film and dance. Goldberg and 

Hobson, meanwhile, were hard at it designing record sleeves, such as the eventual Sprout 

debut album's gatefold offering. 

Armstrong was interviewed on The Tube in a feature on the new record label, saying, 

"Our aims as far as the future is concerned is to keep an open mind what we're doing, 

keep an open mind about who we work with and hopefully provide an antidote to the 

blandness that is currently purveying in the music scene." 

The Sun Shines Here was the first vinyl pressed and came from Hurrah!, three years 

previously known as The Green-Eyed Children and the 'big conscience' on the label. The 

Daintees followed up, later in 1982, with Roll On Summertime and were taken on board 

as 'the big fun' of the label. Incidentally, both songs were recorded at the same studio and 

on the same day. 

Armstrong & Co. set to work to find a music publishing contract in order to finance the 

label's short-term activities. 

They set up residence at 62 Clayton Street, a small office and sound-proofed room for 

rehearsals in a Newcastle city-centre back street and organized pressing, printing, 

distribution, advertising and everything else in getting products SK2 and SK3 out to their 

customers. 

The label adopted an attitude which mocked the image-led music industry, using 

selective sloganeering: 'are you scared to get happy?' and 'don't say if, say when', issuing a 

Kitchenware fanzine, It's a Wonderful Life, for people writing in to the label and offering 

available cassettes containing otherwise unavailable material, through their 'promotions' 

company, Dangerous Promotions Ltd. and advertising their goods as having 'Pure 

Ingredients For Constant Consumption.' The first Sprout offering was a four-track 

cassette, She Moves Like God in the Breeze. 

Early 1983 was a great moment for Kitchenware Records, when they received a 

publishing advance from CBS-related April Music, which helped in improving their 

Clayton Street headquarters and in starting up 'Phase 2' of their signings. 

Armstrong picked up on the Sprouts after hearing one of those, now very collectable, 

Candle Records 7" of Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone) in his store. After listening 

to some demos, amongst which included The Devil Has All the Best Tunes and Walk On, 

which they'd recorded in September of the previous year and were never intended for 

release, Armstrong proposed re-issuing Lions on Kitchenware and following up with The 

Devil. The band was signed up in March 1983. 

In April 1983, Kitchenware released 'Lions' to an awaiting public, having won over the 

music press and earned mentions on national television and radio. Kitchenware friend, 

journalist Emma Welles interviewed the band on the release of the single. They 

introduced themselves as 'Max' (Paddy), 'Morris' (Martin) and 'Sam' (Michael Salmon). 

Wendy Smith and friend Feona Attwood seemed more interested if Emma Welles had met 

Kate Bush or not. The band's explanation as to what Lions In My Own Garden (Exit

Someone) is about seemed straight forward: "Lions is a collection of instruments playing 

together and finishing at the same time." 

Kitchenware's second batch of releases came complete with the slogan 'The Label That 

Can't Be Labelled', boasting its diversifying collective of musicians and songwriters. 

The Kane Gang, meanwhile, were at the point of splitting, just after recording Brother 

Brother but Paddy put in a good word for them and Phil Mitchell was sold over on their 

soulful sound. So now Kitchenware had two new recruits: Prefab Sprout, 'the big 

songwriting talent' and The Kane Gang, 'the toughness' of the label. Before The Kane 

Gang had the opportunity to use the Candle Records label, Kitchenware were in there 

with the contract. 

The Sprout's debut on the Kitchenware label, distributed by Kitchenware, received 

extensive airplay by both Dave 'Kid' Jensen and John Peel, who dubbed them "Subversive 

MOR". The press said that 'Lions' was "melodic enough to capture a good audience but at 

the same time they retain sufficient individuality in their lyrical rhythm and content to 

make them satisfying" and "assured of its place as one of the records of the year" (reiterating 

Elvis Costello's remarks as made on Gary Crowley's Magic Box radio show, such 

praise worthy of securing the Sprouts a support slot with he and his Distractions in the 

three Christmas shows later that year). 

A bit of toying around with the media led to press reports that the Sprouts got their 

name from a misheard lyric in a Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood song from 1965, Jackson: 

"We got married in a fever hotter than a peppered sprout." 

It was around the time of the re-release of Lions, this time distributed through Rough 

Trade in July 1983 (this time with a white label and black print), that drummer Michael 

Salmon opts for a job in Top Man menswear store in Newcastle city centre, after ten years 

of music-making with the McAloon brothers. Apart from retailing menswear, he also 

wanted to concentrate on writing material for a new band of his, Swimmer Leon. His 

talents exceeded mere drumming. He was a good vocalist, songwriter and took up lead 

guitar in Swimmer Leon when they formed. 

It could be said that Salmon had thrown away a good future, a record deal and a 

worthwhile management team. What more could he want? The fact was that he wasn't 

happy to keep on playing the drums and let his other talents fester, unheard. He had to be 

true to himself, in 1988 acknowledging Prefab Sprout's success and not regretting leaving 

the band, but expressing his preference of hearing the Sprouts in the charts rather than 

Bros. Swimmer Leon released their debut single independently, after interest from Capitol 

and CBS, entitled The Shadow in Me. However, the breaks never came and Salmon 

pursued a career in teaching in the northeast. 

Salmon's dispatch from Prefab Sprout kicked of a yearlong search for a permanent 

drummer - and a year of MANY drummers! 

Other products on offer by the Sprouts in 1983 included an NME- advertised cassette, 

'SOULED OUT', a compilation of Sprout demos and songs from The Daintees, The Kane 

Gang and Hurrah! put together by Hurrah! and Kitchenware friend Simon McKay and 

including No Hallelujahs, Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone), The Devil Has All 

the Best Tunes and Walk On. They only sold twelve copies!

A typical demo back then would see a solo McAloon (sometimes accompanied by 

Wendy, playing acoustic guitar, on one track and in one take. Demos recorded that year 

included Cherry Tree, Bonny and Constant Blue, which was recorded at the Soul Cellar in 

January that year, one of a few short-term venues set up by Kitchenware, among others 

such as at Tiffanys nightclub, where they held the Packet of Cornflakes Disco. 

In October 1983, the NME offered their latest cassette compilation, Mad Mix II, which 

included Lions and also featured The Kane Gang and seeing Kitchenware reveling in, and 

promoting, the enthusiasm of the music press. 

Prefab Sprout had seen a few changes from their earlier raucous ranting through the 

effect that Wendy Smith's backing vocals had on their sound and of Paddy's reactions to 

that during recordings. A softer, more melodic sound was hoped by McAloon to develop 

into a richer, 'big production' sound, something that at this stage Kitchenware could not 

provide. But it suited him, and the A&R men, to sit back and monitor the reactions to their 

scheduled debut album. 

Paddy, years later, reflected upon their success in these earlier days. He thought that the 

band were newsworthy because they were good. This was not necessarily the case. They 

had been newsworthy, McAloon claimed, because they were 'new'. They were just taking 

Warhol's fifteen minutes. They had stayed newsworthy (and successful) because they 

were still good. 

A developing sound and new approaches to music and production were to keep Prefab 

Sprout at the forefront of Kitchenware's activities for years to come. 

At last, Armstrong & Co. were ready for their first album, so armed with a very modest 

budget of five thousand pounds, the Sprouts took off to Edinburgh's 24-track Palladium 

Studios to record Swoon, which was produced by Sprout friend Dave Brewis and featured 

his pal, session drummer Graham Lant, in Salmon's absence. Brewis, who turned out to be 

Paddy's private guitar consultant, also played guitar on the album, which they finished 

recording in August 1983. 

Swoon (Songs Written Out Of Necessity) was intentionally a compilation of songs 

which went against the grain of what the band were doing live. After so much gigging, 

their followers were to appreciate something different. The album recordings took another 

three months to mix down and finish. 

In October, Kitchenware/April Music released The Devil Has All the Best Tunes, 

apparently 'a song about songs themselves'. The fireworks on the sleeve (matching their 

promotional badges) were accompanied by the quote, "So lyrically simple, like Ave 

Maria." Paddy was only kidding. The press said that McAloon was attempting "to master 

a new alphabet in his obtuse, inventive approach to song structures and while his 

unorthodoxy is hardly the kind of thing that will guarantee him extensive airplay, it does 

make for one of the week's more interesting releases." Also, the Sprouts were said to be 

"singin' and strummin' a sin kissed charmer guaranteed to brighten up your grey day." 

Like Lions, the single was a Top 5 independent hit but didn't manage to get them their 

first Gallup success. 

Still awaiting the completion of Swoon, the band take to the road again with drummer 

Daniel James (also helping out part-time with the Kane Gang) to plug their latest single

offering. In November, a 12" EP including the four songs from the first two singles was 

released to send to DJ's and to sell at their gigs. 

Keith Armstrong took the Swoon tapes to London in November to the headquarters of 

CBS Records. There, he met with the key A&R man, Muff Winwood (brother of Steve 

Winwood), who immediately signed them up for an eight-album distribution deal, but 

leaving the band's management with Kitchenware. 

Kitchenware had made a revolutionary approach to managing musicians on an 

Independent record label but enjoying the benefits associated with major record 

companies and their powers of marketing and distribution. 

Distribution deals were also struck with The Cartel for Hurrah! and The Daintees but all 

deals were of a 'flexible' nature. Armstrong proudly boasted that their contracts with the 

bands and, equally, their contracts with the 'majors', are only as good as their 

relationships with them. The contracts only really survive as long as they are getting on 

together as a group and working well together. The contracts also allowed Kitchenware 

management of the bands, giving Armstrong & Co. the freedom to work in the way that 

they wish, with Kitchenware and their artists having total artistic license over 'product'. 

In celebration of the deal with CBS, Kitchenware found a showcase for the Sprouts, The 

Daintees and Hurrah! in the Capitol Radio-sponsored 'Big Brother Is Watching You' ICA 

rock week, taking up an exclusive evening of Kitchenware entertainment around the other 

participants in the week, such as Billy Bragg and an Irish band by the name of 

Microdisney, of whom Armstrong was an admirer and who's lead man, Cathal Coughlan, 

was in future years to be a serious investment for the Kitchenware management team. 

Playing out 1983, the Sprouts kicked off their New Way of Life tour. At the Christmas 

Costello support slots, the McAloon brothers were humbled by Elvis' presence; after the 

gig at Birmingham Odeon on 11 December, they left after popping in to say, "Goodbye, 

Mr. Costello, we'll see you at London at the next gig." A great compliment to Paddy 

McAloon, Costello suggested he may cover Cruel, a McAloon composition, during his 

1984 solo tour of America but sadly this never happened. 

Apart from receiving the full-blown support of the now-defunct music tabloid Sounds 

(in the form of Phil Sutcliffe) and national DJ Dave 'Kid' Jensen, reviews for Don't Sing on 

its release in January 1984 were dubious: 

"Obviously this is a metaphysical study of a failed love affair, or perhaps a speculative 

treatise on the nature of guilt. Either way its busy guitars and troubled melody remain 

unresolved. A bit like life itself, really" and "Adenoidal vocals, complex folky chord 

changes - so this is the new pop is it? Steely Dan for the Wough Twade generation." 

By McAloon's admission, although Swoon had some very strong songs he had written 

them at a time when he "couldn't give a toss about communicating with people. It's very 

intense and personal." 

However mixed (or confused) the views of the music press, it became their first (Gallup) 

chart single, reaching No. 64 and rolling out the carpet for the seemingly long-awaited 

album release. The 12" included extra track He'll Have To Go, a cover of the old Jim 

Reeves classic, covered before by Ry Cooder who, incidentally, it is teasingly suggested in 

the band's The Militia Have Arrived booklet by their journalist friend Emma Welles, 

intended recording the Sprout song The Yearning Loins. He didn't.

Newcastle adult comic VIZ held a spoof feature on Kitchenware Records, 

'Kitchenware's Cash Mountain! - Label Absolutely Loaded With Money.' "If only!", said 

Kitchenware. 

The band recorded a few demos in January: Glass Slipper, I Never Play Basketball Now, 

Talking Scarlet (version 2), Green Isaac and Couldn't Bear To Be Special. The highly 

complex Glass Slipper had two sets of lyrics running simultaneously and Talking Scarlet 

had a difference: "Certain themes keep recurring / Boundaries start a-blurring / How to 

shock a pretty friend / You try to impress her / But impress rhymes with undress / And 

when the first is on your mind / Then the other one isn't far behind." 

Newcomers to the Sprouts presented comparisons with Steely Dan and were met with 

Paddy exclaiming, "wait till you see us live." In the early days the handle was comparing 

Paddy to the "rolling-laconic- worldly-wise Junior Fagan", but years later the comparison 

was in their want to "hide away for years in a studio polishing off their new album". But 

for the moment, there was no hiding away to be done. Their New Way of Life tour took 

them to the end of February with support band The Daintees, finishing up in Dundee at 

the Dance Factory and despite having awful sound problems, earning the report: 

"Hallelujah was tuneful and light, the superb Don't Sing almost got near to the record and 

I loved it just as much in its rough state. Lions went right off the track but still worked. 

With an apology for 'not being too lively tonight' they left. I think they care. I think they 

could be very important. So the gulf between the record and the performance is massive, 

but somehow it didn't really matter. And that's the wonder of Prefab Sprout." 

Swoon, Kitchenware's and Prefab Sprout's debut album, was released in March and 

entered the National Top 20, prompting a call from the then-head of CBS, Maurice 

Oberstein, to Kitchenware headquarters saying, "Congratulations, you've entered the top 

20 and I didn't even know the album was out!" The Gallup success was no. 22 after a 

national music press advertising campaign by Kitchenware. 

The presentation was stylish - arty gatefold sleeve with lyrics, but the sound was 

simple, unluckily for them prompting several references to the piano on Swoon as 

sounding like Sparky's Magic Piano (old children's radio programme). However, the 

album attracted a large, primarily student following despite the jibes. 

One hard-hat journalist, Bill Black, who positively HATED the band's name, retorted on 

the band's behalf in opposition to some of the negative reviews the new album was 

getting: "Prefab Sprout have made the effort (i.e. This is just slightly short of brilliant) and 

now it's your turn. McAloon is literate, the arrangements are lusty rather than laboured 

and the female backing vocals are demure without being insipid." 

Swoon was also described as a collection of "calm, dexterous, remarkable songs 

counterpointing convention and temperament." 

Paddy was soon to make the acquaintance of Martin Stephenson (singer/songwriter of 

The Daintees), who claimed Paddy was storing away 300 songs and still worried about 

drying up. Paddy suggests that he was exaggerating, but admits to having 100 or maybe 

200. The run-out grooves on the album warns, 'Look Out Memphis, Tennessee!' (a hint of 

a future project to surface four years and two albums later). In 1984, McAloon's friendship 

with Martin extended to producing a Daintees song, I'm A Hypocrite (A Crocodile Cryer),

which was one of the songs on the NME compilation cassette Raging Spool, available 

through mail order through the paper. 

Coinciding with Swoon was the single Couldn't Bear To Be Special, somewhat 

confusing people when seeing a film made by Channel 4's The Tube which was played 

with the song The Devil Has All the Best Tunes in the same month. 

Unfortunately, the single sank into oblivion in the music tabloids and somehow missed 

the charts, while Swoon, meanwhile, took all the glory, in the charts at least. The B-side 

was Spinning Belinda, which was included in the 'Debut' magazine/album publication 

shortly after. 

As if a debut album wasn't enough to contend with, the band had to get hold of a 

permanent drummer. Since the recording of Swoon, a year previously, they had gone 

through several drummers - Daniel James, David Ruffy and Louis Connelly (among 

others) and even using a drum machine at some gigs. An advert was placed in a music 

paper: "Opportunity is knocking for you if you are a drummer. Prefab Sprout need a new 

one and are holding auditions next week. The drummer must be 'better than David Ruffy'. 

If you are, call Kitchenware." 

Drummer Neil Conti's previous experience had been in a gospel band, in the pop dance 

group Linx (Intuition) along with session work for many other artistes. He heard the 

Sprouts on radio whilst having a bath and hearing of the vacancy, drove up to Newcastle 

to audition, telling the band, "I'm the one for the job". They were sold on his attitude, 

taking priority for 'feeling' over technical ability. After a few weeks of rehearsing the new 

line-up played their first gig together at The Buttery in Dublin on 2’ April, at the start of 

their Swoon tour and also featuring guest Virginia Astley (ex-Ravishing Beauty) on piano. 

Luton-born Conti (raised in Leighton Buzzard but now in Kentish Town, N.W. London) 

describes the Sprouts as a cross between Steely Dan and The Beatles. He soon settled in 

and also helped The Daintees on several projects, both in recording and in TV work. He is 

without doubt, the most tuned-in Sprout in terms of experience in the music industry. 

A typical set on the Swoon tour is: Couldn't Bear to be Special, Ghost Town Blues, 

Technique, Hallelujah, Spinning Belinda, Don't Sing, Cruel, Lions In My Own Garden 

(Exit Someone), Walk On, Diana, Couldn't Bear to be Special (yes, they did play it twice in 

the same set), I Never Play Basketball Now, Green Isaac, The Devil Has All the Best 

Tunes, Cherry Tree. 

June 1984 saw the band leave to Europe to continue the tour. 

Fellow CBS signings, Glasgow outfit Sunset Gun's Louise and Deirdre Rutkowski 

recorded a song with the Sprouts, guesting as backing vocalists on Horsin' Around, which 

was scheduled for release in July 1984. Instead, it was decided to concentrate on the 

touring and in any case, other plans were afoot for their next project. 

Sondheim and Salinger 

McAloon's skills as a songwriter were becoming consolidated. Musically, he aimed 

towards an overall seductive, sensuous sound and, although giving references to Michael 

Jackson and Chic, he would never want to imitate them

or hold them up as ideals. As a contrast, his admiration of works written for musicals 

became an important influence in his writing, becoming particularly affected by Stephen 

Sondheim, after being introduced to musicals through his parents' record collection. 

Sondheim was the most influential writer and composer of the 70's and 80's. His skills 

surpassed earlier writers (notably Rodgers and Hammerstein, a friend of the family and 

with whom Sondheim studied after writing his first musical at the age of fifteen) by 

producing musicals in which songs were skillfully crafted using styles found in operatic 

works. 

Sondheim created what critics have termed 'concept musicals'. Sondheim knew his own 

mind. After starting a career in television scriptwriting and working as a crossword 

compiler for the New York magazine (where he exercised his lateral thinking), he had his 

first major break when Leonard Bernstein asked him to write lyrics for West Side Story. 

The success of the musical created a demand for Sondheim's lyrics by other composers 

such as Jule Styne and Richard Rodgers, who successfully partnered Hart and 

Hammerstein. Sondheim, however, was adamant. He wanted to compose his own musical 

scores, creating the facility for writing his own lyrics. As Sondheim writes in 'Putting It 

Together': "A vision's just a vision if it's only in your head - if no one gets to hear it, it's as 

good as dead . It has to come to life!" 

His scores were compared to Mahler and Schubert. He was more at home with the full 

package and where he did sometimes reluctantly partner composers, there were a few 

relative disappointments. Critics said his songs were difficult to take out of context. 

Sondheim said of his own works: "I like writing songs that take place in dramatic 

situations within the proscenium arch. I'm not particularly interested in art songs or pop 

songs that stand up on their own." 

McAloon claims a dislike of most music he listens to, preferring to love he idea of 'great 

music', loving the 'idea' on its own; 'the genesis', more than its realization. 

He admires the fact that Sondheim became a great success as a songwriter and at the 

same time having nothing to do with rock music. He admired his ability to say something 

that could touch a lot of people and say it in an interesting way: "All the beautiful sounds 

of the world in a single word: Maria. And suddenly that name will never be the same to 

me: Maria. Say it loud and there's music playing, say it soft and it's almost like praying." 

He could put a set of precise emotions in a song lasting a certain number of minutes. If 

he had an odd-shaped sentiment, he'd construct an odd-shaped melody to accommodate 

it. There was never any sense of it being a happy accident. 

There's only a limited number of cliches you can use in writing for the theatre and 

McAloon considers Sondheim a contemporary as he deals with a variety of subjects in a 

realistic way. This can be seen in the diverse range of subjects in his works, with 

productions such as West Side Story, Company, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd. 

McAloon realized that it was possible to make popular music that could reach more 

people without having to resort to a load of phrases or clichés in the same way Sondheim 

did in the theatre, where only a limited number of clichés can be used anyway. McAloon 

claims he can get rid of clichés and tries to get people back in touch with what made them 

like music in the first place - something that isn't worn and weary.

Sondheim's ability to express complex subjects, dealing with several emotions at once 

appealed to McAloon as a writer and, coupled with his unwillingness to accept and follow 

what was considered as 'standard methods' of song construction, McAloon admired the 

way that Sondheim enforced that a writer should never be forced into saying something 

he doesn't want to say purely be the shape of a rhythm. 

Musicals attracted artists of ability, but the Broadway and Hollywood superstars who 

made them memorable were going and that was a problem with aspiring writers such as 

McAloon, who yearned an identifying platform for intelligent, adventurous lyrics, for he, 

too, was to defend a confused, shallow-thinking press. Sondheim, in a television 

interview, defended Company, a musical about marriage relationships, as being highly 

moral and pro-marriage despite the quirkiness of the characters involved. 

McAloon had pushed out the boat into the music world, making statements along the 

lines of there being no serious competition in songwriting these days, and being met by a 

questioning music press. He had actually claimed that he was "probably the greatest 

writer on the planet." This apart, he had a strong wish to emulate the real 'greats' in 

songwriting - Sondheim, Bacharach (another American) and, closer to home, McCartney, 

having been a fan of the Beatles in his schooldays. 

Artistically and Commercially, Bacharach was one of the most successful composers of 

the modern era. In his partnerships with Hal David and later with Carole Bayer Sager, 

whom he married, he wrote more contemporary standards than any writer since 

Gershwin or Porter. Songs to his credit include Magic Moments, Anyone Who Had a 

Heart, Walk On By, Say a Little Prayer, Close to You, Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head 

and I'll Never Fall in Love Again. 

Burt Bacharach's work covered being a pianist, singing, songwriting, arranging and 

producing. His work in the mid-50's covered pop, rock, soul compositions and music for 

many Broadway shows such as What's New Pussycat? and Alfie, a favourite of 

McAloon's; Bacharach's diverse activities boosting McAloon's appreciation of his works. 

In some ways, McAloon would be more 'comfortable' with being compared to 

Bacharach as opposed to Sondheim, as he admits to having a sweet tooth for wanting to 

recreate Bacharach's well-structured melodies and intelligent lyrics, maintaining that it's 

also possible to be less 'obscure' than people seem to view the Sprouts. McAloon's 

ambition is to write music that has some sort of strength to it but will always be 

commercially accessible. 

McAloon admits to coming to musicals quite late: "I was interested in them probably 

because I'd felt that I'd exhausted the thrill of a lot of rock music, that I'd heard most of the 

good things that were going to be done. If you like Bob Dylan you've heard most 

singer/songwriters. If you like Led Zeppelin as a band, you've heard most metal bands, to 

my mind the derivative. 

"I was looking for novelty, I was looking for things that maybe the style was different in 

the way you watch a black and white film. You go to the pictures, you watch the 

television and you allow the people who made black and white movies a certain 

allowance because of the era they come from.

You're charmed by that and you get into it. You don't have the same expectations you'd 

have of a Martin Scorcese film or a Francis Ford Coppola film and you treat them 

differently. 

"I look at musicals like that, I'll look at them and see what they can do and see how 

different we are now, although you're allowed to write songs about anything, and people 

do, dressing it up in a way that is appealing to a large audience. That kind of gift is gone. 

"So whereas in the past it was more formal the way they wrote songs, maybe more 

stricter and more Tin Pan Alley they had to work much harder to put any themes or ideas 

they had into those little boxes. There was something to be benefitted from that. 

"Some of the things that I write abandon the conventional pop song format. 

I wouldn't say I've completely gone off at a divergence from that way of doing things, 

but I suppose there's no denying that what I do is more specialised in the sense that I will 

take an unusual notion as the starting point in the same way that a scriptwriter will, like 

you'll go and see a movie that's about something that's unusual. I don't know who made 

'Melvin and Howard' the film about Howard Hughes taking a walk through the desert 

and being picked up by someone then leaving that poor person all his money in his will. 

That would be unusual for a song but perfectly OK for a movie. 

I now approach it like that, it's OK for a song as well, so I write songs that have specific 

wild notions. 

"I just hate sounding like someone who's got some sort of axe to grind. I don't like many 

modern songs for a million different reasons. I don't think that people write particularly 

interesting melodies and I think that the subject matter is really limited. I think that part of 

it is to do with education, to do with if you don't want to learn about anything, or if you're 

interested in learning things that you're going to grasp in ten minutes, then you're not 

going to stay with the song that takes a few listens to get through. We've been spoiled by 

everything. I just think we've been spoiled." 

Apart from McAloon's other (earlier) influences such as David Bowie, Marc Bolan and 

The Beatles, he became an admirer of the works of Jimmy Webb and Brian Wilson for 

their approach to developing their sounds, extending the circumferences of Country & 

Western and Pop respectively. 

McAloon admires the thought of Country & Western songs for their 'economy'. 

Although Webb was bringing his own style of C&W into the pop charts, he had the same 

virtues as some of the old C&W writers. He even seemed to be influenced by some of the 

old folk songs that are handed down. 

McAloon appreciated his ability to say in very few words something that can be very 

moving: "She's called me again and I've taken all my old forgotten hopes out of the closet 

to put them on. I have found my crumbling crown lying where I tossed it - I thought that I 

had lost it." 

McAloon was increasingly trying to improve on the overall sound of his recordings, 

partly through working on the accompanying music to his songs, in his dreams to succeed 

as Sondheim as biographers have paid tribute: 

"Sondheim makes music play at least an equal part and more whenever he can" and 

"Sondheim's music is always surprising, elegant and uncompromising."

One week during August 1984, Prefab Sprout recorded When Love Breaks Down, their 

intended next single. It was produced by Phil Thornalley, ex-bass player with The Cure, 

lead vocalist with Johnny Hates Jazz, mixing engineer with Paul McCartney and boasting 

a broad experience, having worked with others such as The Thompson Twins, The 

Psychedelic Furs, XTC and Duran Duran. 

Thornalley was a contact Keith Armstrong had picked up during his friendship with 

Postcard's Alan Horne, who had been working with Orange Juice's Edwyn Collins. 

When Love Breaks Down was the nearest Paddy had got to a song actually "pouring 

out" of him. He says that a sense of panic made him write it: "I'd always thought that 

everything I wrote was commercial, maybe off-centre, but poppy. Then we did Swoon 

and found out for the first time what people thought, and I started to look on what I did 

more coldly. I realized that Swoon was all private music, full of personal reference. I 

panicked and thought: 'I've got to write something simple'. So I wrote it in one sitting, 

from top to bottom, which is unusual for me." 

It's a simple lyric, driven by two lines: "The lies we tell - they only serve to fool 

ourselves" and "You join the wrecks who lose their hearts for easy sex." 

Kitchenware wanted a major chart success for the Sprouts and so called on Thornalley's 

broad experience. The session in the studio didn't go without incident, however. Martin 

and Neil did a take together and Thornalley thought it was great. Martin wasn't happy 

with the bass and wanted to try again. An argument ensued and Martin walked out. Neil 

Conti agreed that he, too, had made a few minor errors, but thought it more 'natural' to 

leave them in. The Sprouts weren't the first to have come across the unwavering attitude 

of Thornalley, however. In January 1982, Thornalley, taken from the post of RKA 

Engineer, was selected to produce The Cure's album Pornography. Robert Smith had 

problems ranging from timekeeping to the sound of his guitar. 

Thornalley had taken part in forging a (albeit short-term) new sound for the band. 

Prefab Sprout had proved things with Swoon and now it was time to develop on their 

sound. Thornalley used multi-tracking wizardry with samples of Wendy's wispy vocals to 

great effect. 

CBS were greatly enthusiastic with the recording, especially as they could not pick off 

any serious chartable prospects from Swoon. 

The band had also recorded Diana, which was produced by Hal Remington (as was The 

Devil), which was chosen as the B-side for the single for its release in October, which 

reached number 81 before being consumed into the pre-Christmas chart fodder. 

Back in January, Paddy had heard Thomas Dolby on Radio One's Round Table, 

reviewing their first post-Swoon single Don't Sing. Everyone slated the song except for 

Dolby, who was very constructive with his comments and saying that it had given him 

some good ideas, describing the band as "a massive explosion of talent". Paddy admired 

the bizarre image that Dolby had in the UK and the fact that in the US he was considered 

as a serious songwriter. 

Dolby's management contacted CBS explaining that Dolby was interested in possibly 

working with the band. McAloon and Keith Armstrong liked the idea of having Thomas 

come up to Newcastle to see Paddy at home to listen to some material, so it was arranged. 

McAloon prepared a batch of songs in a local studio after a binge of equipment buying,

with the same basic arrangements as the finished result. Half of the songs were much 

older than those on Swoon and the other half were relatively new. 

On meeting McAloon at his parent's house, an old rectory in Consett, Dolby was 

affected by its "musty, Gothic mood" and with Paddy's confidence, his simple charm and 

most of all, his songs, as he performed them and others in their rawest form, selfaccompanied 

by guitar. He said "there was a very special atmosphere about them and the 

place." 

Dolby was sold on McAloon's songs and McAloon on his excitement and, of course, on 

his track record. 

Born in London in October 1958, Dolby travelled around the world as a child until 1973 

with his archaeologist father, attending boarding schools and singing in various church 

choirs along the way. In 1970 he started to teach himself guitar and piano and performed 

his own songs at school concerts in between running a film club. 

Between 1975 and 197’ he played as a street musician in the Paris Metro, graduating to 

be a restaurant and jazz pianist. 

In 1979/1980 Dolby began experimenting with synthesizers, tapes and home recording, 

playing keyboards with Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club. He wrote the hit New Toy 

for Lene Lovich and toured with her band. 

Shortly after the successful independent release of his debut solo single in April 1981, 

Urges/Leipzig, he was signed up by EMI, London. The first half of 1982 took Thomas to 

America to play keyboards on the multi-platinum albums Foreigner 4 and Def Leppard's 

Pyromania. He also contributed to Joan Armitrading's Walk Under Ladders in that year. 

In autumn 1982 his debut album The Golden Age of Wireless was released worldwide 

on his own Venice In Peril label, distributed by EMI and undertook his own one-man 

show tour, described by the NME as "A bizarre hybrid of computer-generated music, 

video, slide and film projections; perhaps closer to fringe theatre or performance art than 

rock'n'roll." 

In January 1983 Dolby wrote and produced Magic's Wand for the New York rap duo 

Whodini, played keyboards on Malcolm McClaren's Duck Rock, funkmaster George 

Clinton's Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends album and the Ryuichi Sakamoto E Field 

Work. That spring he directed the video and a 1 hour BBC2 feature Live Wireless, to 

promote his single She Blinded Me With Science and his latest album, spending the rest of 

the year working on his next album The Flat Earth, which, in February 1984, was widely 

acclaimed on all continents. 

Between March and August, he made his first World tour to promote the new album, at 

the end of which he had to catch the bus to Durham County for an audience with Paddy 

McAloon of Prefab Sprout. 

Between Dolby and McAloon, they chose over a dozen songs to work with for the next 

album. After demoing the songs, Paddy went out on the same night, having "a vision that 

just came into my head that the LP had to be called 

Steve McQueen, which would immediately make anyone who heard it think they'd 

either made a mistake or whatever." Also involved with the album are guitarist Kevin 

Armstrong, (ex-Soft Boys who also backed Dolby in gigs late 1982), friend of Neil Conti 

and who, along with Michael Graves (keys) were to play live with the Sprouts in

forthcoming gigs with the band. Autumn 1984 saw recording commence for Steve 

McQueen, Kitchenware's third album. 

A video is made to promote When Love Breaks Down, being remixed by Thomas Dolby 

for the new album only, the original version of which is intended will be a hit single the 

second time round in the following year. CBS issue 

a 'Preview' promo compilation on vinyl including the song, in search of further airplay 

on radio. 

The only other Sprout-like offering of 1984 was The Daintees' I'm A Hypocrite (A 

Crocodile Cryer), which was included in NME's cassette compilation 'Raging Spool', 

produced by Paddy McAloon. 1985 was to prove a very busy and a very successful year 

for the Sprouts, following the first cuts of Steve McQueen in January at London's Trident 

Recording Studios. 

In March, CBS gave When Love Breaks Down a second shot, this time with the B-side 

The Yearning Loins and slightly different packaging. The single was offered in a few 

double-packs, the first offering a free 7" of The Devil, the second a free 7" of 'Lions', in true 

Kitchenware style. This time, they had the video to promote the single and the band had 

finished their studio work so they were free to 'run the press'. Disappointingly, the single 

only reached number 88, to the amazement, and disappointment, of CBS A& R man Muff 

Winwood. 

At the same time, Polygram Video, in association with Kitchenware Records released a 

Kitchenware compilation video (SK-ONE) which included When Love Breaks Down but 

no other Sprout visuals. They preferred to slant emphasis on the chart success of The Kane 

Gang and 'late developers' The Daintees and The Linkmen on the collection, entitled A 

One Way Ticket To Palookasville. 

Neil Conti and Kevin Armstrong go into the studio with David Bowie and Mick Jagger 

to record their cover of Dancing in the Streets. Meanwhile, Wendy Smith, beginning to set 

trends in fashion, is pictured by the local Evening Chronicle parading down the catwalk! 

Steve McQueen was released in June 1985 and reached number 21 in the album charts, 

residing in the top 100 for a healthy 35 weeks, eventually earning platinum status. 

The music press threw open its arms and embraced the album, hailing it "without a 

shadow of a doubt the finest album you will ever hear" (Record Mirror), a collection of 

"some of the most beautiful and rewarding songs ever laid down in the name of pop" 

(NME) and "the finest, most harmonious run of tunes since, oh, Dylan arranged his ration 

of chords for Blood On The Tracks" (Sounds). 

In America, EPIC were planning on the album's release (the advance cassette 

introduced PREFAB SPROUTS), saying that the band's name suggested a blend of the hitech 

and the organic, a fair characterization of the album Two Wheels Good. 

Despite both Martin and Wendy offering to change their names by deed poll to Steve 

McQueen and dropping the suggestion of naming the album after one of the band's loyal 

followers, Jo Grimes of Liverpool, they changed it to 

Two Wheels Good in America and Canada, after the McQueen estate (his daughter) 

objected. But why Two Wheels Good? In Orwell's Animal Farm the phrase "four legs good 

and two legs bad" was used, so Paddy had the idea of the motorbike (two wheels good) 

on the front of the album sleeve and using a car (four wheels bad) on the reverse. They

dropped the car but used the bike from the Steve McQueen film The Great Escape (which 

was the title of a promotional cassette, including seven tracks from the album and an 

interview with Paddy by Emma Welles to promote the album). East Orange provided the 

clever 'motorcycle emptiness' artwork around a fabulous hand painted black and white 

photograph. 

The sleeve 'image' was one suggesting a sort of awkward non-conformist rather than 

rebel image; one that worked well, with Steve McQueen's floating theme of antipiousness, 

'phoniness' and worthiness. 

Prefab Sprout's new offering was greatly influenced by Dolby's approach to production. 

Paddy's meeting him was meeting his lighthouse. As McAloon says, "Anybody that likes 

Steve McQueen, the credit has to go with Thomas. 

He made that album. He knows exactly about colour and the moment It was very much 

a co-effort." 

The feel of McAloon's timeless melodies with Dolby's sensitive interpretation in 

production offered Steve McQueen as the perfect picture of 1985. 

Dolby had a very dominant personality and Paddy was thrilled to be working with 

someone he admired, yet someone he should perhaps not be working with, at least in the 

eyes of the 'conventional' music world. Dolby's approach was not as a producer but as a 

keyboard player and very soon proved that he was not only great with equipment ("knob 

twiddling", as the unoriginal press put it) but had a good 'ear' for music and composition. 

McAloon 

argued against criticism of Dolby's approach to production, insisting Dolby was, 

"actually bringing back some of the dynamism we were losing." Dolby had the ability to 

grasp Paddy's concepts and ideas and to construct the arrangements from the bare bones 

of Paddy's demos. 

The unseen glory in Swoon left Paddy seeking solace in his vision that one day they'd 

be selling "loads of records on our own terms and blow the criticism away." Of course, 

he'd like a string of number ones but not at the expense of his songwriting principles. 

Where Swoon proved that a budget album could be a successful independent album 

and that it could be recorded and produced away from the obligatory SOUTH (as was 

their want), Steve McQueen allowed Paddy to go for the 'richer sound' he was looking for 

and to present people with a collection of memorable songs, at the same time attracting a 

more accessible, wider audience, but unfortunately missing out on the Dire Straits era of 

the compact disc. 

They teased the music press with Moving the River: "You surely are a truly gifted kid, 

but you're only as good as the last great thing you did" and broke it to their listeners with 

Goodbye Lucille #1: "There is a time for tears / You won't make it any better /You might 

well make it worse / I advise you to forget her". 

Steve McQueen had become a giant overnight, nestling among many 'best of the month, 

year and decade' charts in the UK and Europe. In America, Spin magazine put the album 

in their top 30 of All Time. It was on numerous occasions that people praised it as "a 

soundtrack for life itself", one friend admitting he was in love with Steve McQueen more 

than his girlfriend, Julie.

CBS produced a promotional booklet 'Probably the greatest writer on the planet', a 

collection of press reviews of the albums and a tribute to the outstanding songwriting 

talents of Paddy McAloon. 

During a week in July, the band did a seven night warm-up tour with support band, 

label mates Hurrah! (aka RAH on some posters), billed as The Great Escape Tour. Upon 

the band's return to Newcastle, Paddy noticed that the Kane Gang was enjoying major 

chart success, much to Paddy's frustration. 

The Kane Gang hadn't gigged for ages and that's all Prefab Sprout seemed to have done 

for the last two years - hammering it out to promote the band and their records. Paddy 

vowed that he'd never tour again and it was this, coupled with his desire to spend more 

time writing new songs, that was to bring about a reinforcement of McAloon's views 

towards touring. The attraction of the 'band thing', and all the easy things that go with it 

were running very thin with him. 

On July 13, Neil Conti played on stage with Kevin Armstrong (guitarist on tour with the 

Sprouts and guesting on Steve McQueen tracks Hallelujah and Desire As) and Thomas 

Dolby as part of David Bowie's backing band at Live Aid. After the gig, Martin McAloon 

and Neil Conti did some as yet uncovered work with Bowie, setting off many out-ofproportion 

rumours amid the music press along the lines of "Paddy McAloon has been 

kicked out of Prefab Sprout!" 

In July, Faron Young was released, with Silhouettes as B-side (complete with lead vocal 

by Wendy Smith) and despite surprisingly mixed press reviews, reached number 74 in the 

charts and becoming one of their best 'live' numbers at their concerts. 

On 25 July, Thomas Dolby joined The Sprouts on stage at London's Dominion Theatre 

for an encore, dressed as a priest to sing When The Angels. 

Deciding to step up the pace, Kitchenware concentrate on promoting Prefab Sprout, 

dropping The Linkmen from their line-up and hungering for further success in the Steve 

McQueen quarter and laying on a television promotion itinerary for the next single, 

Appetite (accompanied by their touring keyboardist Michael Graves in the video) in 

August. They played live on The Big Tube and were featured on Bliss, both Channel 4 

productions, and did a session for John Peel and Graham Bannerman on Radio One, 

comprising of the songs Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone), Rebel Land and a 

brand new Paddy composition Cars and Girls. 

Appetite reached number 92 in the charts. The 12" B-side featured Heaven Can Wait (an 

instrumental version of the song When The Angels), the title of a Warren Beatty movie, 

who Paddy admires, even just on the basis that he says he'll never do interviews and then 

goes ahead and does the lot. 

Appetite had peaked Steve McQueen's activity curve and it was now time to rehearse 

for the major tour to promote the album further and to celebrate the removal of Paddy's 

'songwriter' beard, an activity which was to enjoy as much publicity in the tabloids as the 

album itself. 

During McAloon's years studying English and History at Newcastle Polytechnic, he 

gained a passion for literature. One book in particular affected him through sheer 

personal irony. He struck an affinity with the character Holden Caulfield, in J.D. Salinger's 

The Catcher in the Rye.

McAloon was fascinated by Caulfield's feelings, aspirations and the ultra-awareness of 

his surroundings. He will maintain that by the time you have settled down as an adult, 

you will probably have read The Catcher in the Rye and have accepted it as a teenager'seye-view 

of the world, but if you have a sense of truth, quality and passion, then a piece of 

what was Holden Caulfield remains inside you for the better. 

'Catcher' is an impressive book, written in dialogue fashion, with a colloquial American 

youthfulness, similarly prevalent in Bernstein/Sondheim's West Side Story. It was in many 

American schools included as reading to represent one of the country's mid-20th Century 

literary successes. One American critic called it a "crusade against phoniness". 

Sixteen year old Caulfield was driven to near-despair by the hypocrisy of the adult 

world. In some US states the message was so interpreted that the book was banned as it 

was considered "dangerously subversive for receptive young minds." 

Caulfield's life as a sixteen year old was summed up in three days in the novel. 

McAloon found many things about Caulfield's life which he could relate to. Caulfield was 

educated at a boarding school, Pencey Prep, at which he described his efforts in English 

And History, both McAloon' s Polytechnic subjects. Similarly, Caulfield was an avid 

reader of a wide range of material, but not really interested in History, in fact, he "flunked 

it". Caulfield comments, "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done 

reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could 

call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." 

McAloon took that statement one step further; he was beginning to put together a 

collection of writings, some of which were to feature in Prefab Sprout's first two albums 

and to take direct references to The Catcher accordingly. 

In McAloon's song Desire As, he adapts the phrase "strictly for the birds" to "throw it to 

the birds". In Horsin' Around and Blueberry Pies, McAloon plays again on the colloquial 

slang of Caulfield. 

Horsin' Around was Caulfield's favourite pass-time, but only in the right place, at the 

right time and with the right people. As McAloon puts it, "Horsin' around's a serious 

business, last thing you want somebody to witness." 

"Blueberry Pies", on the other hand, were Caulfield's worst habits, "I'm the most terrific 

liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, 

even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. I'm 

terrible." McAloon was to carry this attitude forward in his innumerable taunts with the 

media, with 'Blueberry Pies' littering many an interview, insisting that if he must conform 

to the niceties of what is 'expected', then at least he'll have a laugh in the process. 

McAloon hated 'phoniness' just like Caulfield. 

'The Catcher' builds up to a crescendo of awareness of all the 'phoney' things that adults 

grow to accept as 'the way of life': Why do we clap at the wrong things why do people 

change their opinions or outlooks if they were perfectly adequate beforehand and why do 

people take on careers for the wrong reasons? As Caulfield's teacher states to the dismay 

of Caulfield and to the realization of McAloon, "Life is a game that one plays according to 

the rules." 

Furthermore, in reaction to Caulfield's being sickened by human behaviour, another exteacher 

suggested, "you're by no means alone on that score, you'll be exited and

stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually 

as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn 

from them - if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will 

learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. 

It's history. It's poetry." 

Caulfield hated cliques - the way that Catholics stick together, intellects stick together 

and the guys that play bridge stick together and even the way the guys that "belong to the 

goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together." McAloon sought to avoid the phonies 

and to steer clear of their cliques. He toyed with the press, suggesting such things as "you 

won't find Prefab Sprout releasing a song called The King of Rock 'n' Roll", and insisted 

upon remaining detached from the 'center' of the music scene in London, opting to remain 

in the more familiar surroundings of County 

Durham. He wasn't interested in the lure of overnight successes, at least not at the 

expense of letting his values 'go to the birds'. Money, in McAloon's mind is OK if it helps 

to "go towards the pension fund and whatever" but always ends up making you, 

according to Catcher, "as blue as hell". 

The song Bonny could well be a story about the death of Caulfield's younger brother, 

Allie, whose baseball glove Caulfield carried around with him everywhere. McAloon's 

lyric, "I'm lost in heaven and I'm lost to earth" could relate to Caulfield's feelings after 

Allie's funeral: "All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and 

then go some place nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's 

only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but 

I couldn't stand it anyway." 

McAloon and Caulfield agree on speeches and flowers being mere 'peripherals'. 

Caulfield exclaims, "Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody" and McAloon 

writes, "Words don't hold you, broken soldiers" and "save your speeches." 

In Couldn't Bear To Be Special, McAloon originally penned the line, "it joins a list of 

things I'll miss like cheap cigars and pretty girls I'll never kiss." He played around with it 

and adapted a few teases from The Catcher, changing it to, "like fencing foils and pretty 

girls I'll never kiss." In The Catcher, Caulfield had left the fencing team's equipment on the 

subway and as a junior at college, wasn't permitted to bring girls to college football 

games. For those uninitiated, The Catcher told a story of an intelligent, maturing young 

man, Holden Caulfield, and must not get the impression that the novel promotes violence. 

On the contrary, Caulfield was too "yellow" to kill the phonies. 

The only connection between Caulfield and John Lennon's murderer, Mark David 

Chapman, was symbolic. Caulfield was keen to act as a saviour for children and erased all 

the obscene graffiti on the school walls. He wanted to be The Catcher in the Rye. 

Chapman's act was to murder Lennon, who he interpreted as having become 'phoney', 

after having stood up for so much in public and at the same time was living it up in a 

hypocritical lavish lifestyle. 

Chapman saw himself as The Catcher in the Rye for his generation. Would it be too 

much to suspect McAloon's intentions touch on this generalization?

From Tiffanys to Acapulco Rolf's 

The extensive Two Wheels Good UK tour was planned for October and November 1985 

with Hurrah! as support again. 

The band thought it would be a good idea to record a budget album as a limited edition, 

for sale at the gigs, so in September they went into Shieldfield's Lynx Studio in Newcastle 

to do so. By early October the first grooves were being cut at CBS' Mastering studio in 

London. 

The album was recorded and produced by the band and it was mixed by Richard Digby 

Smith, a staff engineer with Island Records since 1970, whose apprenticeship was served 

under such notable producers as Arif Mardin, Phil Spector, Muff Winwood and Chris 

Blackwell. The tracks recorded for Protest Songs were Till The Cows Come Home, The 

World Awake, There'll Be No Stampede on the Pearly Gates, Horse Chimes, Dublin, 

Wicked Things, Talking Scarlet, Diana and Tiffanys. The project gave Paddy the 

opportunity to discover spontaneity in recording, and with a bunch of songs which he 

claimed were some of his best. 

Leaflets were distributed at all the venues advertising the release of Protest Songs, the 

new album, on 2nd December for one week only. A third release of When Love Breaks 

Down in different packaging and with a major radio push in October eventually caught 

the attention of the major stations, and reached a welcome number 25 in the charts and 

earning them spots on Top Of The Pops and Wogan. 

The B-side of one of the 12" on offer of When Love Breaks Down featured the as yet 

unreleased (full) version of Real Life (Just Around The Corner), an edit of which was 

included in NME's Drastic Plastic E in September. Another 'freebie' in 1985 was the 

Newcastle Breweries giveaway cassette featuring 'The Original Kitchenware Collection', a 

collection of Kitchenware bands' early offerings, including the Sprout songs Lions In My 

Own Garden (Exit Someone) and Walk On. 

An appearance on Channel 4's The Tube saw an alternative video screened for When 

Love Breaks Down, filmed specially by Channel 4. Meanwhile, the tour continued (despite 

Wendy having tonsil troubles) and on 16th November the BBC recorded their gig at 

Reading University for the In Concert series of broadcasts on Radio One. A typical set list 

on the tour is: Moving the 

River, Cars and Girls, Green Isaac, Bonny, Faron Young, Hallelujah, Lions in My Own 

Garden (Exit Someone), Appetite, Dublin, Wicked Things, Johnny Johnny, Don't Sing, 

Tiffanys, When Love Breaks Down, When the Angels, Cruel, He'll Have To Go, Faron 

Young (again), Horsin' Around, Ghost Town Blues. 

The tour programmes included a discography, showing the release of Protest Songs, 

which by Christmas had been delayed release until January 12, 1986 and a limit of 25,000 

pressings agreed on. It never happened. The album was shelved due to the (eventual) 

success of When Love Breaks Down. CBS suggested that people may get confused with 

'conflicting' material on Steve McQueen and with having two albums out in the shops at 

the same time. The Sprouts and Kitchenware agreed and, as legend has it, a box of white 

labels went missing from the CBS vaults and found the album bootlegged across Europe, 

with every serious collector having at least a taped copy by the release of their next album.

The band appeared live on BBC2's Whistle Test in December, pushing their new year's 

release in January of Johnny Johnny (a radio-friendly title for Goodbye Lucille #1) and 

playing live in the studio. The single made it to number 64 and the bike-shaped picture 

disc also on offer was comparable in appearance with a similar disc, an interview disc of 

Bruce Springsteen's - a hint at their next project, maybe. 

On January 11, 1986 Radio One broadcast their In Concert live recording. 

After a short rest over Christmas, the band prepared for a major European tour and also 

some gigs in Japan. They played two singular gigs before packing their bags. They played 

one night of the 'Red Wedge Tour', which had Wendy Smith singing an unusual solo 

vocal for one song. Paddy decided to go after being talked into it by admirer, Jerry 

Dammers, according to Paddy, "against my better judgement", playing an acoustic session 

at the Newcastle City Hall venue. 

The Red Wedge tour featured others such as The Smiths and The Tom Robinson Band. 

The Sprouts followed up with a one night 'farewell' gig at the Hammersmith Odeon in 

London in February 1986. 

Late 1986 saw Paddy sitting comfortably in his bedroom commencing work on writing 

his next album and also a suite of songs entitled 'Total Snow' or 'A Symphony of 

Snowflakes', a modern day Christmas concept album along the lines of Phil Spector's 

Christmas Album but up-to-date in its content, as McAloon described it, "a kind of 

agnostic Christmas album." 

From snowflakes to cornflakes, Kellogg’s offer a cassette compilation with the 'Start' 

breakfast cereal, 'The Start Chart Collection', including When Love Breaks Down and 

Marc Harris of Birmingham bravely attempts to organize a Sprout convention, which 

despite the appearance of DJ Dave 'Kid' Jensen and big-time Sprout fan Jo Grimes, only a 

dozen or so punters turned out for the evening. 

In the meantime, Conti was moving on to working on the soundtrack to Absolute 

Beginners and sessioning with David Bowie on his 'Glass Spider' tour. 

It took eighteen months to write, record and mix down Prefab Sprout's fourth 

(including Protest Songs) album. To their loyal and patient fans it was three years to wait, 

but that included travel, touring and interviews following Steve McQueen's 

overwhelming success. 

The direction of the next album, From Langley Park To Memphis, was a result of 

McAloon's desire to write a set of more mature, universally-resonant songs. Songs that 

McAloon wrote not worrying whether or not the record sells, insisting he would "forget 

all that and just make the kind of single you'd like to hear rather than worrying about 

whether people play your records or not" : "If we sing are we Nightingales, shine are we 

stars". 

The plans for production were unusual. The band was used to working with one 

producer at a time on an album. This time they worked with three but got a bit more 

involved themselves, particularly Paddy, after self-producing Protest Songs a few years 

previous. 

Thomas Dolby only agreed to work on four songs as he was going through a time of illfeeling. 

He doesn't see himself as a producer as he prefers to play on and "colour in" 

songs. He's the compatible perfectionist companion that McAloon needs. McAloon soon

found that out when he found that taking in a few other producers isn't that easy when 

you're a perfectionist yourself. 

Muff Winwood at CBS gave Paddy the confidence to take on board a bit more himself, 

so when the time came he felt that was a safe enough bet, given enough studio hours. 

Dolby had been busy since his work on Steve McQueen and had expanded his musical 

diversity. 

In January 1985, Dolby performed with Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder on the 

Grammies live TV Special and going on to the studio to co-produce Joni Mitchell's Dog 

Eat Dog album for Geffen Records. He spent the rest of 1985 and 1986 working on the 

musical scores for Richard Brooks' Fever Pitch (under the supervision of Quincy Jones), 

the George Lucas-produced Howard the Duck (including the pop video) and Ken 

Russell's Gothic. 

In 1987, he moved to take up permanent residence in Los Angeles, California to 

concentrate on making his third album, being disappointed at the comparative failure of 

Howard the Duck, which had enjoyed the full 'hype' trip but never pulled it off as big as 

expected. 

He brought the Sprouts over with some part-recorded material from the Fulham record 

studio to finish off the four tracks he said he'd produce. 

This move to America brought about a few chance celebrity guests in Pete Townshend 

and Stevie Wonder. After Dolby had finished his work on Langley, he was back in the 

studio to produce Belinda Carlisle's album Heaven on Earth. 

His next move was to form a backing band in America, The Lost Toy People, and to 

play a sell-out North American tour, promoting his new album Aliens Ate My Buick. On 

his return, he married Kathleen Beller of Dynasty fame back 'home' at the Snape Maltings, 

Suffolk, England. He'd met her during his score work for the US TV show The Bronx Zoo 

back in 1986 and in which she starred. 

The Sprouts first went into the studio with Andy Richards to record the song Hey 

Manhattan!, which was to be the first song completed for the album. Richards was not 

necessarily known as a producer either. He had worked extensively with Frankie Goes To 

Hollywood as an engineer and keyboard player. 

Then along came Jon Kelly, who had previously produced The Damned, Deacon Blue, 

The Bible and Kate Bush, but known extensively as an expert engineer (Paul McCartney 

and Michael Jackson), whose attitude is to look objectively at the problems that bands can 

become blind to when recording. The tracks he was involved with were Cars And Girls 

(to be the next single), Enchanted, Nightingales and Nancy (Let Your Hair Down For Me). 

Both Richards and Kelly were dubbed co-producers with Paddy McAloon and Paddy 

appeared disguised as A. Rolf for producing the song The Golden Calf, "the cheapest track 

on the album", which apparently took only fifteen minutes to record. 

Through McAloon's increasing involvement in the production of his material and 

through the openings made in America, he was able to realize some of his dreams. Where 

Swoon and Protest Songs were albums on a shoestring budget and Steve McQueen had 

echoed the style of production and overall sound of Dolby's The Flat Earth album, 

McAloon was now in a position to steer his superb combination of laments, perfect pop,

flowing melodies and fun, intelligent observations clearly into the direction of a grand 

production of orchestral heights. 

The Langley recordings that Dolby had to work on in America were only half finished 

in Fulham and Newcastle. During their completion, time was taken for some of the Protest 

Songs (Dublin and Pearly Gates) to be remixed by Michael H. Brauer at Utopia Studios in 

New York. Some changes had also been made to some of the other tracks by the band not 

long after their original versions had been submitted in 1985. CBS suggested that Protest 

Songs may bridge the gap for fans between Langley and their next album, especially as 

they had no plans to tour with Langley. 

Langley brought with it some pleasant surprises. The band was recording the song Hey 

Manhattan! in Pete Townshend's studio, during which time they found that through his 

daughter, he was fond of their work on Steve McQueen. Paddy fell ill and the band 

needed to finish a guitar piece in time so Paddy asked Wendy to see Townshend, who 

happened to be in the studio building at the time, to ask him if he'd 'fill in'. Paddy showed 

Wendy the chord structures. Dear Un-Rock 'n' Roll Wendy obliges and asks U-know- 

Who, who exclaims, "Oh, no. I haven't played the guitar in years." 

She offers to show him the chords and, impressed by her sweet innocence, offers to 

'help them out'. 

Paddy's desire to create the perfect sound on Hey Manhattan! almost had Isaac Hayes 

arranging the strings, an event called off on the eleventh hour by his management due to 

problems with timetables. 

Jon Kelly had been recording Nightingales with the band in Fulham and after trying 

several harmonica players to play the melody line, it wasn't sounding quite how Paddy 

wanted. They even tried horns and several attempts with synths but they never worked 

either. Although the melody was simple, it was proving to be a tricky one to play on a 

harmonica and to get it sounding smooth and fluent. Keith Armstrong suggested that as 

Stevie Wonder was touring in England, why not ask him? Keith knew Stevie's UK 

representative, Keith Harris, manager for Junior and Paul Johnson, and sent him a tape on 

the chance that Stevie Wonder may listen to it and agree to coming into the studio, which 

is what eventually happened. He came into the studio after the Wembley gig and offered 

his services. 

Paddy, a big admirer of Stevie's The Secret Life of Plants, was flattered and impressed 

with his physical presence, his perfectionism and his attitude to work. He works 

miraculously long hours and makes do with cat-naps. He precedes his huge entourage, 

who follows him around everywhere and has to suffer his unpredictable movements. 

Being a perfectionist, Stevie Wonder didn't mind re-taking due to one or two hiccups 

during recording. McAloon, meantime, was being thrown into absolute paranoia in the 

process. 

This collaboration saw the band visit Stevie's studio, 'Wonderland', in Los Angeles 

when they moved over to work with Dolby. Here they recorded the song I Remember 

That with Andrae Crouch and his disciples, the 20-strong choir who backed Michael 

Jackson on Man in the Mirror. This was to be the nearest Paddy had been to giving up his 

lead vocal in order to take a back seat in the proceedings. That's why he wanted Dolby to 

produce the track.

During the recording of the song, Paddy found himself requesting that they make it 

sound more 'black'. He wanted the song to suggest hope not only through fond memories, 

but throw down a backdrop and compare the message of hope through the sound of a 

gospel choir. Those sessions left a burning impression upon Paddy, making the song one 

of his most memorable, if not favourite songs. 

There were suggestions along the lines that a 'mega-production' would be like 'selling 

out'. McAloon defended against all the 'name-dropping' accusations made by many in 

their review of the album: "We are authentic. What's wrong with having fabulous 

production and arrangements? The current mood seems to be that if you stand on your 

own with an acoustic guitar then you're somehow purer and more worthy. It passes for 

clever when really it's just boring and stupid." 

Up until releasing From Langley Park To Memphis McAloon had only visited the USA 

twice, amounting to no more than six weeks on American soil. He claims never to have 

written about any places in America which he has actually visited in advance. 

The song Hey Manhattan! is about ambitions and optimism - being young and 

ambitious. It is difficult to focus on place names in north east England and write in terms 

of ambition. Langley Park fitted in, in so far as it 'lyrically' fitted in when using it as a 

comparison to Memphis. Back home, Langley Park was just a local village where Paddy's 

barber held residence. 

If Memphis, Los Angeles or New York were used, we would accept them more readily 

as they hint at some kind of glamour - the kind of glamour portrayed in the American 

'image' brought to us via Hollywood and Network TV. These places, Paddy claims, lend 

themselves to talking about dreams, hinting at some kind of glamour that might not 

necessarily be there. 

The realism, of course, in Manhattan is in the darker sides of the city, such as the 

'Manhattan Moles', hundreds of down-and-outs coming from a failed society, residing 

under the raised freeways and surviving on the soup kitchens for survival, insecure and 

alone. 

Hey Manhattan! refers to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the sudden feeling 

by citizens that they'd lost their sense of self-worth, self-respect and dignity. The 

Constitution was founded on liberty after all, guaranteeing the individual's right to "life, 

liberty and the pursuit of happiness". The Bill of Rights was supposed to stand as the 

'protector' of the liberties of the individual. 

Something went wrong along the way when, in this Democratic Society, the likes of 

Martin Luther King preached non-violence and, along with Kennedy suggested that the 

boundaries of race and riches could be ultimately removed. They were both murdered for 

pursuing legislation for civil rights which should have been consistent with the Bill of 

Rights. 

The American Dream was becoming less of an achievable goal and was fast becoming 

an ongoing fantasy. Its notions became too advanced for many to comprehend and its 

solutions were too simplistic for others to realize. 

Citizens were still declared 'free' despite the pressures to submit themselves to the 

righteousness requested by the Bible.

Politics and religion soon joined Hollywood and TV as branches of show business. As 

suggested by Peter Ustinov in his novel The Old Man and Mr. Smith, people became 

satisfied in using religion as "a means of consolation which turns into a weakness, a refuge 

from the battlefield of life, a reason for laying down the burden of responsibility." The 

American dream no longer existed. It became what it is, literally: a dream. 

McAloon wanted to use the idea of this festering fantasy in various comparisons on the 

album. In Cars and Girls he writes, "Brucie dreams life's a highway - may he never wake 

up". He doesn't dissuade 'dreamers', on the contrary. He toys with Springsteen's language 

of cars, girls and the highway as metaphors for life. In reality, back on the industrial 

grounds of the north east, he sees us getting car sick and shatters the dream into fact. 

In The King of Rock 'n' Roll the ageing veteran clad in outdated flares and sequins is in 

fact just a "high precision ghost". Images and dreams are embraced in compromise. In the 

video for the song, a copy of a poolside scene from Elvis' film Blue Hawaii was used - 

ironic really, as Elvis started singing spiritual/gospel songs and commercially was 

pressured by 'Colonel' Tom Parker to produce more of the new 'rock 'n' roll' music which 

was far more 'marketable.' 

The Langley album plays on ideas, views and dreams rather than featuring specific 

subjects or issues. McAloon relates to the whole concept: 

"I remember this story about Paul Simon, about he and Art Garfunkel back in the sixties 

when their first record, The Sound of Silence, got into the top 10 for the first time. They 

heard a DJ on the radio say, 'Boy, I bet those boys are having a great time wherever they 

are.' And Paul Simon says that at the time they were in a car in Brooklyn, or somewhere, 

in a street and they didn't know where to go to have a good time - I think they were 

having a cigarette or something. I think that there is a bit of truth in that you always 

imagine that other people are having a glamorous time. 

That's why I referred to "Langley Park to Memphis" in the song The Venus of the Soup 

Kitchen. Memphis always sounds so exiting to someone in Langley Park and it simply 

isn't true. That's how people are everywhere." 

As a taster to the album, Cars and Girls was released in February 198’ setting a whole 

new image for the band - bright, stylish and more commercially accessible. The TV people 

loved the video, which was directed by Andy Morahan (George Michael, Aretha 

Franklyn) and despite proving to be a 'dead cert' radio tune, only reached No. 44 in the 

Gallup singles chart. 

Much was Paddy quizzed, "Is it a dig at Bruce Springsteen?" But why should he do 

that? No, it was a play on the rock 'n' roll imagery conjoured up in Springsteen's kind of 

language, which is made up of almost romantic metaphors when he relates to the 

highway. It would be a double-standard, McAloon claims, to use what he does and then 

criticize Springsteen. 

CBS decided against sending out copies of the single to the music papers in favour of a 

bigger attack at the radio networks (there was a DJ 7" issued with two mixes of the track) 

and also promoting the single/album via a long haul of interviews and video broadcasting 

on TV. The cover art on the single sleeve was spectacular - a denim jeans-clad matchstick 

in 'axeman' guitar pose with its head aflame (with ideas and zeal). The model was the 

creation of Gerry Judah (Greenpeace anti-fur campaign). The model was a rip-off of a

Spitting Image puppet of Michael Jackson shown during the release of his single Pretty 

Young Thing in early 1984, and was not, according to McAloon during an interview, 

meant as an image relating to Springsteen's passion and commitment. The matchstick 

man was soon named 'Rollmo!', after McAloon had a dream about Michael Jackson. 

In between Thriller and Bad, McAloon had become, as is often the case with him, 

belatedly hooked on Jackson's first albums Off the Wall and Thriller. 

He became a big fan and was desperate to know the title of his next album. In a dream 

(he works a lot from dreams and instincts), McAloon was played several songs by Jackson 

from his forthcoming album, entitled "The Flimsy World of Film". As they were talking, 

someone came to Michael and made a few suggestions for one of the songs they were 

recording and he said, "I think we need a little Rollmo!" and gestured with his hands. 

McAloon asked what it meant and Jackson said, "It's from our early days - it's that 

addition of that extra little bit of magic. Whether it's a piece of music that you're doing or 

whether it's to business deals, the final touch was Rollmo!" It was Keith Armstrong's 

suggestion to use the name on the sleeve work of the single and album and McAloon 

further decided to adopt it as the name for his home studio too. 

Meanwhile, Epic in the US released an aptly-named CD sampler, Blink and It's a Hit, 

which included Cars and Girls. 

In March, From Langley Park To Memphis was released to wide acclaim: 

Record Mirror: "Listen to the crap spewed out on every Walkman from Langley Park to 

Memphis, and you'll realise that the pop world needs Paddy McAloon and Prefab Sprout 

much more than they need it." 

Melody Maker: "Hangs my guts from the lampshade every time! Beautiful, just 

beautiful!" "Musically, it exhibits McAloon's ability to construct weightless epics, 

ascending building blocks of pop noise that don't thud at you or clot up, but waft through 

you ghostlike, signifiers drained of their 'content' " 

Q Magazine: "One of the most interesting and original bands in Britain - Their best 

album yet." 

Time Out: "The difference between PREFAB SPROUT and a lot of things you've heard is 

that PADDY McALOON can write songs." 

The album reached No.5 in Britain, going gold in a few weeks, and as with Steve 

McQueen, picked up a wider audience appeal not just due to a fantastic collection of 

innovative songs, though that is the band's greatest asset, but in their commitment to 

always go with the best as far as they can - everything from the record to the cover of the 

sleeve. 

McAloon is quick to defend at comments like, "God, they've really gone the hard sell 

with the bright colours and airbrush etc.", maintaining that the record company, if 

anyone, wanted them to tone down the image: "It's confident, it's bright, it's colourful, it's 

beautifully composed." The album cover photography was by the top photographer Nick 

Knight who had provided material for the top 'glossies' such as I-D Magazine and who 

had had the rare honour of being asked by one of the French national newspapers to do a 

portrait of Brigitte Bardot for them. 

The only music press who bothered commenting on Cars and Girls seemed too intent 

on making issue that McAloon had shaved off his beard again or was wearing an

"Armenian Santa Clause outfit" in the Cars and Girls video. McAloon reflects, "We 

thought we were going dead classy and dead cool. So it just goes to show you can be too 

clever and you can think yourself out of the game." 

The band was becoming a lot more aware of their appearance. "In the past we'd all wear 

the clothes we'd like to wear," says Wendy Smith. "In the boys' case that tended to be 

leather jackets and in my case it was girlie dresses, which was a mistake. When you're the 

only girl in the band and you're not playing an instrument, you don't want to stick out 

like a sore thumb." 

McAloon was at a stage in his relationship with CBS where he was becoming more 

compromising with regard to maintaining an image for the period of a record, but 

comments, "It's just that if you're away for a while you tend to go through a lot of changes 

and you don't think anything of it. I thought nothing of this whole beard business or my 

long hair - I had very long hair simply because I was only writing and my hair grew - but 

as soon as the record is out and you're among other artistes it looks like you're playing a 

game. Personally I don't want to be pinned down. That's quite true, I feel we'd be dead if 

you got your Prefab Sprout record and knew exactly what you were going to get all the 

way along the line, I would be disappointed. I try and keep all aspects of it fresh." 

An equally-as-bright video of the next single, The King of Rock 'n' Roll made for wider 

and more commercial appeal, now drawing in the under-16 age group with its catchy 

"Hot Dog, Jumping Frog, Albuquerque" chorus and accompanying frog waiter and 

dancing hot dogs beside the King of 

Rock 'n' Roll's swimming pool. The single made for their biggest selling single to date, 

reaching No. 7 in Britain and top 10 status all over Europe. This both pleased and 

concerned McAloon. 

On the one hand, the song was never meant to be a serious one. He dreamed up the 

idea while travelling on a bus and it was written in a matter of minutes, as a 'laugh'. He 

was almost too embarrassed for people to hear it originally, yet he toyed with the idea of 

sending it to David Bowie just for the cheek of it. Paul McCartney commented that 

McAloon had found his My Ding-A-Ling like Chuck Berry, suggesting that the public and 

the press would in future immediately mentally hook onto the song's chorus when they 

heard the band's name mentioned. 

On the other hand, McAloon receives no consolation from the fact that so many people 

say, "You're an albums band." Singles mean so much to him just through being a fan 

because that's how he, like so many others, got into records. After all, he does want to sell 

as many records as he can at the end of the day. 

The single was welcomed as Single of the Week by Sounds and earned a muchbegrudged 

admission by an NME reviewer that they actually liked the band, despite 

Wendy's voice on the record suggesting it sounded a "bit like she has a pencil stuck up her 

bum." 

The Elvis-tinted slogan "50,000,000 fans can't be wrong" was used in CBS's campaign for 

the single and limited boxed trivia games were given with initial copies of the singles, 

heralding a start to a run of promotional gifts mainly designed to drum up the attention of 

the music business more than the public themselves, followed by the Hey Manhattan! 

snow-dome, featured in Music Week in July, plugging the release of the follow-up single.

Paddy and Wendy aptly visited California for a live session/interview on KCRW Radio to 

promote the album. 

The press said of Hey Manhattan! "McAloon brings his Sondheim flirtations to the fore 

with an overbearingly opulent fans' eye view of the Big Apple." Once again, they were 

receiving only half of the song, half of the issue. The video would help see off the dogs 

though, wouldn't it? Not quite. Besides a few screwed up pieces of paper blowing in the 

wind and a superimposed picture of a bullet hole in JFK's presidential car, there's no 

graphic portrayal of the 'down side' of Manhattan. Maybe the video could have been 

stronger in it's message where the song is more subtle? People may have understood it 

better, earning it a higher chart position that No. 72. But, as Matt Snow wrote of the 

album, "This is not gut-level rock music as Elvis would have understood it, but we're all 

older and wiser to life's ambiguities. From Langley Park To Memphis soundtracks this 

maturity and, in so doing, finds a new kind of freshness." 

This 'freshness' is what has kept Neil Conti with the band for so long. He is a 

workaholic. Music lasts day and night for him, everything else just happens around him 

incidentally. His influences are diverse, his two main 'musical gurus' he claims taught him 

the most were members of Linx, JJBell (who taught him about playing 'simply') and Clive 

Chapman (bass player, who taught him how to get 'steady'). 

Whereas some band drummers grow up fantasizing about their kit and the speed they 

can thrash stuff out, having wet dreams about one day owning their own 6ft. gong, 

Conti's early days held a fascination for expanding himself as a drummer in favour of 

expanding the kit, "There's something which really appeals to me about sounding good on 

a really small kit. 

There's something neat and economical about it. I'm fascinated by drummers like Andy 

Newmark and Steve Jordan who sound great on a small kit." 

Conti, in his earlier days, had positions with jazz/rock bands, a reggae band and a 

gospel band before becoming more recognized for his skills, eventually earning a name in 

the music scene as an excellent session drummer due to his versatility and the desire to 

play with the 'feel' of the music. Session drumming became a welcome field to Conti. He is 

happy to drop things at a moment's notice and rush into a recording studio or short-term 

rehearsals for a tour. 

In October 1988, Neil embarked on a tour playing with Level 42, who was supporting 

Tina Turner. Earlier on in the year (April), Neil played sessions for Sandy Shaw's album 

and would enjoy being up until 4am in the morning to finish a track. One criticism of Neil 

which Paddy offers is, "Probably because Neil's the best musician of the band, he likes to 

do things a bit quicker and he sometimes is a bit frustrated if I'm struggling over 

something because he likes mistakes and everything to be left in – he likes that - he just 

thinks it's a 'beautiful thing'." 

What keeps Conti patient during Prefab Sprout's lengthy slumbers is his varied session 

work - an area where he was soon to expand upon. While Conti was rehearsing to tour 

with Level 42, Cars and Girls was enjoying plenty of radio play, prompting CBS to reissue 

the single in September but low sales denied a re-entry into the singles chart. CBS revised 

their strategy and decided to plan the release of some older material.

In November, they released another single from the album, Nightingales, offering 

newer fans the opportunity to find on 12", gatefold 7" and CD formats tracks such as Lions 

In My Own Garden (Exit Someone) and The Devil Has All the Best Tunes (not available 

on any album to date) and demos of songs in their 'rawer' state, including the unreleased 

Bearpark. The single failed to chart but was a welcome addition for fans and collectors, 

marking another stepping stone towards eventual release of the 'lost' album Protest Songs. 

CBS had decided to string out a few more singles and release the album when Langley 

had significantly faded from the charts in the following year. It would be some sort of 

compensation for fans who had to wait the three years between the last two albums. 

The next single, the oldest song on the album, The Golden Calf, had an accompanying 

video which was filmed at Fulham Studios on Farm Lane and took in invited fans who 

attended an album signing stint at HMV in London to play frantic club-goer extras in the 

legendary 'Acapulco Rolfs' nightclub. 

The video was shot on 17 March 1988’ and the single eventually released in February 

1989, reaching No. 82, being hailed as "a corking rock-out from our fab Sprouts" and "a bit 

of a stromer" in the music tabloids. 

During all the many European interviews, McAloon was queried about Protest Songs 

and about its release. He said, "We should never release it, it could only disappoint 

people." In June 1989, mid-way through the recording sessions of the next album, CBS 

decided to put it out but there was to be no personal appearances or interviews with 

McAloon or Kitchenware – just the usual press advertisements. 

The album reached No. 1’ and was received by the music press for what it essentially 

was - a 'filler' album: "Protest Songs fills two gaps nicely. As such, it'll do fine, thank you!" 

(Record Mirror) and "a mixed bag and one suspects that it's by way of being a sort of Bside 

to Steve McQueen". 

Others said of Protest Songs: 

� Guardian: "Genuine emotion, sex and passion" 

� NME: "… confirms the Sprouts as a band and Paddy as a writer… 

incredible" 

� Smash Hits: "These individual and often heart-stoppingly beautiful songs 

will have you captivated" 

� 20/20: "Every bit as accomplished as Steve McQueen and as wryly slick as 

From Langley Park to Memphis." 

Many fans had, incidentally, obtained copies of the 'Protest Demos', bootleg cassette 

copies from 1985 white labels, acetates and advance cassettes given out (or stolen) before 

the album was withdrawn from production. 

There were to be some definite differences, the main one being that the track Life of 

Surprises had been added to the album. Although the sleeve notes state that the song 

Dublin had been remixed, other tracks such as Pearly Gates (which had it's original title 

shortened) and The World Awake were remixed also during the mixing down of From 

Langley Park To Memphis in America. 

Why 'Protest Songs'? McAloon explains: "The theme of these protest songs are not as 

overtly political as whirly, nuclear power-type issues but I'd say that it probably coincides 

more with daily existence as we know it than most things we do. I think that one of the

est songs, if I can say that, is 'Til The Cows Come Home which is about Newcastle, is 

about the condescension you can get in coming from a provincial place and a few of the 

numbers of that kind and the fact the production is so sparse helps that feeling of being a 

very down-to-earth record. They're not protest songs as Bob Dylan or Billy Bragg would 

recognize them but somewhere in that field." 

McAloon could not write 'finger-pointing' songs, maintaining that Bob Dylan stopped 

writing such songs when he realized people were beginning to hide behind the cause. 

Protest Songs is a collection of songs which talk about what our British society has failed 

in providing and about how shifting generations and the media interpret our acceptance 

of these problems, asking, "Does it take you back to the kind of world hindsight calls the 

good old days?" 

'Til the Cows Come Home talks of unemployment and is said by Keith Armstrong to be 

the best song ever written about the North East, how everything about you can offer a 

suitable backdrop: "cold as the beeches you comb", "You call that laughing? Wearing your 

death's head grin" and "aren't you a skinny kid… even the fishes are thin". Diana was an 

offering from the country's press, with china blue saucers, tasting of apple strudel and 

wearing sweet petticoats - you could eat her! They did, at least for McAloon, "stop the 

savagery". The album version was a much slower one to that on the "When Love Breaks 

Down" B-side years earlier, now rather ironic and, therefore, as fresh today as it was when 

it was written. 

Dublin tells of the divide in Ireland, of its beauty: "to build a city on such picturesque 

grounds, that takes some sort of flair" and it's violence: "you stay that side we'll stay here. 

It's far harder to keep it up." 

These are stories from his mother, "heady cocktail glories", "myths in less exalted 

forms". The album itself is an album of strong songs, not a 'produced' album and most 

definitely not a 'career' album, McAloon claims. 

In Autumn of 1989, CBS released a compilation video, including the songs Cars and 

Girls, Hey Manhattan!, When Love Breaks Down, Appetite, The King of Rock 'n' Roll and 

The Golden Calf. The video, entitled From Langley Park To Hollywood, was followed a 

few months later, into 1990, by a reissue of the band's debut 12", a compilation of all songs 

found on the first two singles and not available on any album to date. 

End of the Road I'm Travelling 

Touring and interviews are the hardest parts of being an active figure in the music scene 

to McAloon, mainly because you are immediately expected to do as others: write, record, 

interview, tour, TV work, radio sessions, music press work, videos, photo sessions - the 

whole thing, when all he wants to do is write songs and make records. He doesn't want 

the compromise involved in corny teenager magazine interviews or to be bound down by 

endless rehearsals and tours. 

But McAloon, despite a four year gap between tours and interviews to his next album, 

(as the run-out grooves on Langley offer "The Comeback's Underway"), he seeks 

consolation in the lyrics of Sondheim, in the song Putting It Together:

"What's a little cocktail conversation If it gets the funds for your foundation Ev'ry time I 

start to feel defensive I remember vinyl is expensive. A little bit of hype can be effective 

Long as you can keep it in perspective Even when you get some recognition Ev'rything 

you do you still audition." 

McAloon claims, "A public conquered in advance can make me self-analyse and become 

introverted. I'm not happy being 'part of the scene' if I'm conscious of it. Paris 1986 was a 

'natural time' - I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. It has nothing 

to do with the public." 

The band stopped rehearsing after the Euro/Japanese tours as the endless bout of 

rehearsals and touring were threatening to 'degrade' the songs. 

Paddy maintains he is not a performer as such. He admits to having big problems with 

concentration on stage; forgetting the lyrics to Cars and Girls on stage in front of 

thousands of fans and finding he was talking to himself: "I was terribly scared. It was like 

losing my self control." 

McAloon had also become critical of touring just to promote one's latest product. The 

Kane Gang, after all, had an overnight US/UK success in their early singles without 

stepping on stage. He was becoming more concerned that very little reward in selfsatisfaction 

had been forthcoming from the band's marathon touring schedule. Also, in 

late 1985 the band had received quite a few bad reviews of their live gigs. 

After the long stretch of interviews for Langley, McAloon had become bored with the 

same questions and in having to talk about himself. It led him deeper into his 'terrific liar' 

mode of interview techniques - 'Blueberry Pies' that we've all fell for at one time or 

another. His mother pleaded with him as he left home to another interview, "Don't be too 

controversial." 

He withdrew from outside influences in order to fight off his weaknesses, forcing 

himself into lengthy, secluded bouts of songwriting in order to experience contentment 

within himself. 

Similarly, this 'seclusion' is found in his admiration of music. He'll listen to the radio a 

lot and deliberately hold back seeing his favourite artists live, maintaining he can enjoy 

music more by keeping up the 'mystery' of the artist: "I understand that fascination with 

myth and mystique. In fact it's becoming more apparent in my songwriting. As a kid I 

bought Station To Station and thought 'I wonder what Bowie's doing this minute?' and 

sometimes I'll think to myself 'I wonder what Warren Beatty's up to right now?'" 

Of his self-proclaimed 'lonely' hours in songwriting McAloon says, "I've been writing 

for a thousand years, which is why I hate all that stuff about the 'nance' bit, the 

introversion, because I went through all that when I was twelve, doing stuff that no one 

will will ever get to know about, touch wood. 

"When I started, I looked at Marc Bolan's lyrics, all these words strung together in a 

humorous, ironic way and I tried to copy that, but all I achieved was a sort of irony 

without the irony. So I soon had a change of direction." 

McAloon summarises: "It's a matter of priorities, a matter of how you see yourself. I 

realise that I'm one of the few people who makes records who does see a division between 

the two things of getting out there (and touring) and actually making records. It may 

come from the fact that as a kid, I never even cared what anyone looked like. When I

heard a record, I had no curiosity to find out how they actually looked and I get a great 

personal pleasure from building an imaginative world around a certain record." 

He admits that although he doesn't really want to play live, he can enjoy it. It's just that 

to do it every night on the road, he would resent the travelling. It's not just particular to 

McAloon, therefore it shouldn't be thought that when he is up on stage he's doing it 

against his will. 

In 1988, McAloon supported his absence from the stage in several radio interviews: "If 

you're on a good streak, as I think I am, of writing, I think it's really criminal to go and 

spend two months or something spending six or eight hours in the back of a van or a 

coach not being able to do much other than to (say) read or listen to other music so I think 

I'll leave the touring until we've got a more substantial backlog of material. 

"I live to write. If I can't write, I get anxious and I can't relax. I feel it justifies me being 

on earth. It's a neurosis, everything I do goes into my writing. Aside from that I really 

believe I'm boring." 

His concern is also for the longevity of the band and of his songwriting. The band could 

release an album every year and do all the touring to promote them, but McAloon claims, 

"you only have so many great ideas" and when you've used the best it becomes 

increasingly difficult to find the next one good enough to face the hatchets of the music 

critics: "You're only as good as the last great thing you did." In Moving The River, 

McAloon told the music press to beware: "Watch me, hawkeye, understand the force of 

will, the sleight of hand", challenging them at their own game. 

As a band, Martin would like to have toured with Langley and Wendy "not so 

bothered", in McAloon's words. Paddy receives all the commitment required in keeping 

the band together but insists that, for all of the band members, they can all do things 

alongside Prefab Sprout. He could, for example, write for specifically for singers (which, 

given the chance, he'd do more often for singers he admires, such as Barbra Streisand, 

Robert Palmer or Frank Sinatra). 

Langley proved that there were no limitations for the band - an orchestra or choir could 

always be drafted in if needed and that didn't mean taking out the 'band' element of 

Prefab Sprout. The band had come a long way since the relatively 'primitive' sound of 

Swoon. 

Martin was in the early stages of fatherhood with a young son dangling on his knee, 

and using the excuse of having to undertake extensive home decorating chores, managed 

to keep away from most of the European promotion trips to plug the Langley album. 

Wendy, Paddy said, was one day going to release a solo single (penned by him) and her 

interests in fashion moved her on towards an appearance in the fashion glossy magazine 

Tatler as a result. Neil Conti, on the other hand, had plenty on his plate in the Summer of 

1981 setting up the 'Backstage Club', a Thursday night showcase for singer/songwriters in 

London, located at the 'Borderline' in Goslett Yard, off the Charing Cross Road. His club 

partner, Sarah, undertook the main organization while Neil acted as whipper-up/MC, 

playing the drums alongside other session musicians/backing vocalists, such as Nick 

Beggs (Kajagoogoo and Ellis, Beggs & Howard) and Zetiah Messiah, an in-demand 

session vocalist who has toured with Julia Fordham, Climie Fisher and Paul Weller.

At the club, artists submit their demo tape and the sessionists learn their pieces the day 

before the showcase appearances, sometimes spending all day and night in Neil's flat 

doing so. All musicians involved must have that skillful balance of technical ability and 

improvisation. To this end, Conti excels. 

Dolby, "very much part of the team", as McAloon says, had released his first solo single 

for four years, Airhead, which reached No. 53 in the UK charts, and was about to get his 

debut acting role as Stanley the mad mortician in the horror-comedy-musical film 

Rockula, starring alongside Bo Diddley and Toni Basil. 

He produced two tracks for Ofra Haza on her album Desert Wind and in late 1989, 

whilst having committed fully to the production of Prefab Sprout's fifth studio album, 

released his third single from the album Aliens Ate My Buick, My Brain Is Like a Sieve, 

the CD of which included a song called Ravivar Fiore. This song was co-credited to Paddy 

McAloon, after Dolby had 'borrowed' a piece of music from the Sprout song Blueberry 

Pies. 

Paddy McAloon had become a good friend of Dolby and admired the variety in his 

work, now moving on to acting as well as composing musical scores for films. That was a 

field McAloon had also become increasingly interested in. Indeed, it had prompted 

another project. He had written eleven songs for what he imagined was an animated 

adventure film, written with the idea of the songs going with pictures. 

The eleven songs in question, which McAloon started to write in autumn 1986, are a 

series of stories told in song for a film entitled Zorro the Fox, in which the animated lead 

character, "a heroic and distant Douglas Fairbanks figure who rides a singing horse", set in 

1880/90 but with music that is "incredibly modern", quite close to Langley's more 

orchestral and colourful style. Zorro is a 'pure' escapism, according to McAloon, from the 

things that he usually writes, all about human qualities. 

The character Zorro is not very in touch with what's happening most of the time but it 

doesn't change the fact that he has a life that's exciting, away from everyone and 

everything else. 

Subsequently, it is rumoured that Spielberg bought the rights to the cartoon character 

outright, leaving McAloon wishing to send off demos in 1993, if he ever got round to it. 

McAloon has never been keen on having a massive visual presence, so he would like 

maybe to work on a soundtrack or a collection of songs that would help tell a story in 

order to let people know he was still out there, providing at least some sort of presence. 

Zorro the Fox could provide this, a sort of 'safe haven' between theatre and pop music. 

McAloon has strong thoughts about mega-stardom in the music world: 

"A lot of Springsteen's reputation lies in his identification with 'the working man', and 

there's a worthiness attached to any songwriter who can write a song about 'the working 

man'. 

"Bruce Springsteen got more plaudits and more credit for his act of identification with 

the hard times of the working man than anything else in pop music. Because of my 

perverse nature I'm immediately suspicious of that. 

"Phenomena bother me, but why is it that Jackson doesn’t bother me and he does? 

Jackson's much more of a neurotic and less worthy, but I like to think about these guys,

about the myths they create, whether they intend to or not. It brings a bit of colour to your 

own life. 

"I wish there was someone mega-massive who was more peculiar, that there was a 

sense of that neurosis in their music. And that they'd be number one in the charts; not that 

they're neurotic and number 7,000 in the indie charts - that doesn't bother me. 

"I could claim that my songs were clearly political on an elemental level; since they deal 

with people's neuroses and dreams." 

But for now, he was locked away in 'Rollmo', his small home studio, a modest room 

simply decorated with posters of two of his big heroes, Michael Jackson and Meryl Streep: 

"I'm scared she'll plan when I'm asleep and act it out like Meryl Streep" (from McAloon's 

song Snowy Rents a Dog). 

This time round McAloon wanted something 'big': "I wanted to go for something that 

would maybe last, rather than go for the obvious two to three singles and the big ballad… 

I wanted to do something as if Trevor Horn was doing a Walt Disney soundtrack - 

wandering, extravagant melodies, rather than the pop thing of hooks." 

The concept of the next album had already been hatched during the recording of songs 

for Langley. Two songs, Jesse James Symphony and Jesse James Bolero, came about when 

he was trying to kick-start his writing again, when he toyed with the idea of writing 

something for someone like Presley or Streisand. McAloon decided to write something 

that would appeal to Elvis' own self-image: "He liked to identify with mythic things; you 

can see that in his American Trilogy. So I wrote something that dealt with him in those 

mythic proportions: the image of the outlaw, and all the sentimentality that allows the 

singer." 

So McAloon had not finished with the American myths touched on Langley; the album 

title itself, reminiscent of the Presley album From Vegas To Memphis, in which Elvis went 

right back from the glittering showbiz megastar status back to the innocent roots of his 

genius. Now, McAloon had Elvis on course for the 'BIG ONE' - 'The Comeback'. 

As far back as 1984, McAloon had designs on writing a modern American Trilogy when 

he recorded the song Real Life (Just Around the Corner), dealing with the gospel issue of 

death and rebirth: "Never say your days are numbered / Every one's a bright surprise / 

Some take refuge in their numbers / Some big day will tan their hides." Elvis sings, "So 

hush little baby, don't you cry / you know your Daddy's bound to die / when all my trials, 

Lord / will soon be over." The melody written for Real Life is a gentle play on that of the 

Trilogy, the full length version including a haunting synthesizer playing the strains of 

'Glory, Glory Hallelujah' in the instrumental break. 

The new songs, Jesse James Symphony and Jesse James Bolero, completed the 'new' 

Trilogy. They have Elvis comparing his life with that of Jesse James', a sort of kindred 

spirit, wondering how the course of his life had been shaped. The two songs are linked by 

an American flavour, schmaltzy cabaret and sounds of the Wild West. Elvis is a sort of 

'Howard Hughes', as McAloon explains, "Realising that maybe this novelty music he's 

making, Rock 'n' Roll, which made him a lot of money, wasn't close to his heart". McAloon 

suggests, "Don't Goodbyes deserve some Bach, not barbershop?"

Another song, on a linking theme, Meet the New Mozart, was about Mozart, "coming 

back as Neil Tennant and making a pile of money this time." It never made the album, 

however. 

One of the things McAloon considered as being behind a lot of the songs he was writing 

for the album was the expression "If I had my time again; I would like to do that again", 

maintaining, "wherever you're from, whoever you are, people spend a lot of their lives 

thinking, 'I wish I had another shot at that - I'd do it differently.' There's a whole section of 

the record where I thought I'd dramatise the idea by writing about Elvis Presley, alive and 

a recluse on the top floor of the Las Vegas Hilton, lying in a darkened room saying that 

he'd made a mistake in a lot of things that he'd done in his life and if he had his chance 

again he would do things differently." 

Jordan: The Comeback, the song, is Elvis' monologue in the desert, reflecting on his life 

and how he's waiting for the right song before he 'comes back'. He pleads with the media, 

"All those books you wrote about me, there wasn't much love in them, boys" and in Elvis' 

funeral in Moondog, "they chopped a billion trees to print up eulogies", a sort of onlooker's 

commentary. And here, too, on the moon, "a flag will fly, for Mom and apple pie" 

- another reference to the American 'myth'. These four songs completed what was to 

become known as the 'Elvis Suite', doing what McAloon's intention was with 'groups' of 

songs: "There are sections of the record where I wanted to pursue something over two or 

three songs rather than get it over and done with in one song", yet he intended to let each 

song stand on its own meanings and merits. 

The album was going to be a distillation of McAloon's dreams, tackling spiritual issues 

across the board - not only the Elvis/Gospel theme but on others like death and its 

religious aspects, God and the Devil and towards subjects along the lines of what people 

'think' about situations, their dreams and of the 'feel' of things, as McAloon testifies, "It's 

the most ambitious record we've ever done. The breadth of the material I think makes it 

our most commercial to date because there are out-and-out pop songs there as well as the 

'darker' things we like to talk about." 

Dolby suggested they called the album "Death and Elvis" - the two things in life you 

can't avoid. Feeling honour-bound to fans not wanting the Elvis theme to be too 

overbearing, McAloon wrote some songs about death and the devil, which don't belong to 

any particular time, thus creating what he'd love to see - an LP that will seem timeless. 

Another suite he came up with was the 'Death and Heaven' suite - songs concerning 

themselves with regret, growing old or the desire for some peace. In true McAloon 'offcentre' 

style, he introduces the Devil himself pleading, "Mercy on me, please say that I'm 

forgiven" and God singing, "Sing me no deep hymn of devotion; sing it to one of the 

broken and, brother, you're singing to me." 

It's a minefield of Catholic references coming from all angles, a reflection of McAloon's 

"very confused" views on religion. 

Thirdly, there was a bunch of songs where McAloon wanted to play around with the 

idea of a medley: "I'm a big fan of Abbey Road and I like the second side of the album, 

where you get snatches of things where you think, 'Oh, I wish it could be that bit longer', 

so we put together about fifteen minutes of music from All the World Loves Lovers to The 

Wedding March on this record which are intended to work like that. Having done that, I

wanted to look at a group of contrasting songs which are more 'band-based' like One of 

the Broken and Scarlet Nights, generally covering Gospel themes in a modern way." 

The album starts with another suite of "fairly straight forward pop songs, general songs 

with no great theme", such as Wild Horses, Looking For Atlantis and Machine Gun Ibiza, 

a character not unlike 'Rollmo!' – the epitome of 'cool'. For their more 'simple' approaches, 

these songs were more likely to be released as singles from the album. 

Unlike on Langley, Dolby had agreed to give his 100 % undiluted attention to Jordan: 

The Comeback, with freelance engineer/producer Paul Gomersall as engineer working 

with the production of the album between June 1981 and early 1990. Gomersall had 

worked predominantly as an engineer since 1987 for such notables as George Michael, 

Phil Collins, Aztec Camera, Eric Clapton and Kate Bush. 

Jordan: The Comeback was recorded in England at the Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey, the 

Farmyard Studio in Amersham and at the CBS Studios in London, but mixed in a small 

Los Angeles spot when Kathleen Beller got homesick after six months of studio work, 

offering her and Dolby's home to the band and crew until the album was finished. 

It cost in the region of $500,000 to make, mainly because there were so many tracks - 

nineteen in total. CBS showed concern, not only in that it was taking twice as long in 

expensive studio time, but as A&R man Muff Winwood suggested, the album could prove 

too long for the public's 'attention span'. McAloon considered that possibility but insisted 

that it had to be done - this was the BIG ONE! : "It was a bit of a battle, because there's the 

idea these days that if you don't make a record that twelve year-olds can dance to, then 

you're a bit of an asshole for not knowing how the business works. He writes in Paris 

Smith: "Any music worth its salt is good for dancing / But I try to be the Fred Astaire of 

words". 

McAloon broadened on their attitude, "People told me to cut the album down; that 

people would look at it and chose something with less music. And maybe those people 

are right. Maybe the world has turned so completely to shit that's what happens today. 

But I don't think so. 

"I nearly gave myself a heart attack making the record. But when we finished it, I was 

thrilled to bits because we'd done it. This is the 'biggie'. And I thought if I never get to 

make a record again. at least this is something I can be proud of. I love it - it's a selfish 

pleasure that removes you from what other people have to say." 

Rehearsals started straight away after setting the running order of the completed tracks. 

It was obvious to anybody that the band, after their five year break from gigs, were not 

going to tour as a four-piece and attempt to recreate the lush arrangements and orchestral 

backdrops of Langley and Jordan songs. Conti called up Jess Bailey on keyboards for 

rehearsals, after agreeing to play back in autumn 1989, leaving ex-keyboardist Michael 

Graves supporting Five Star on a European tour. He'd done session work before, playing 

live with Alison Moyet in 1986, and became a great admirer of McAloon's work: "He's the 

genius behind the band. He's one of a rare breed - a songwriter who's also a poet. Not 

only are his songs beautiful, but the lyrics are really stunning." 

Local guitarist Paul Harvey was drafted in to play lead guitar and Karlos Edwards 

brought in to provide percussion and 'the voice of God'. Edwards had previously 

recorded and toured with Danny Wilson. They set about rehearsing around thirty songs,

anging from Cruel to We Let the Stars Go, formulating a running order towards the end 

of their rehearsals. The support band for the tour was The Trash Can Sinatras, having 

cancelled their tour of Universities and promoting their debut album Cake on Go! Discs. 

The debut single from the album, Looking For Atlantis, was released in July 1990, 

complete with cameo appearance of Thomas Dolby in the video. The single hit No. 51 in 

the single charts and was launched by Music Week, which featured the unusual 'Aqua 

Pack' scuba-diving set to promote the release. The single proved a rowdy introduction to 

the album, prompting extensive radio airplay and laying down a solid foundation for its 

release, coinciding with the interview 'thing' and massive music press coverage, receiving 

the loftiest of recommendations along the way. 

Q Magazine said of the album, "given a few plays, the overall depth of the work 

becomes apparent. Jordan takes far more risks than From Langley and pulls them off with 

a swagger, indicating the scale of understanding between McAloon and Dolby. The 

former supplies solid, reliable pop song, the latter embellishes them with layers of 

unusual instrumentation, moulding them into orchestral adventures of epic proportions." 

But that understanding between McAloon and Dolby goes deeper, according to Dolby, 

"Paddy's in touch with the aspect that's been largely missing from pop music in the last 

ten or fifteen years. It's that part that doesn't have to do with moving product and selling 

your image, the part that has to do with real risk and adventure." 

The album reached No. 7 in the UK album chart and was cropping up in endless 'album 

of the month' and 'year' charts. The music papers were unequivocal: 

� Sunday People: "19 melodies that get better with every listening." 

� Sounds: "Paddy McAloon is like a Shakespeare in a world of cheap novels." 

� Melody Maker: "No one is setting their sights as far and wide as Prefab 

Sprout: the 20th Century is theirs and their 11 track album already ranks with 

history's best." 

Still fresh from his 'Howard Hughes' jaunt with Elvis in Jordan, McAloon, an admirer of 

Warren Beatty, had aspirations to write music for a film based on the legendary character. 

He wrote a small note, "Dear Mr. Beatty, I am a songwriter," and intended handing it to 

Beatty at a seminar to be held on the South Bank. Beatty had been saying for some time 

that he'd really like to make a biopic about the billionaire recluse Howard Hughes. 

All did not go to plan, however. McAloon had toyed with the 'outrageous' idea of flying 

to New York to see his new film Dick Tracy (complete with score by lifetime hero 

Sondheim) and then flying back immediately after. He didn't, and was subsequently 

pleased so, as after he'd watched the film in Newcastle, he'd been very disappointed with 

it, claiming that it took great liberties with the original comic strip character. Instead, 

when McAloon met Beatty at the Guardian film lecture held at the National Film Theatre, 

he stood up and claimed that the film had been a simple cash-getter to fund his next 

project and a stunt to create hype for his flagging film career. 

Paddy put it to him that, as Beatty admitted so in the making of the film Hamburgers, it 

was released for financial reasons more than for 'art's sake'. Beatty reserved comment. 

There were cheers in the audience. 

A few low-key appearances were pencilled in as pre-tour warm-ups for September 

1990. The gigs, at Bootle Community Centre, Liverpool (raising money for a community

centre to build a recording studio) and at Newcastle Polytechnic (with other Kitchenware 

bands as part of an anti-poll tax demonstration) were cancelled, mainly due to a decision 

made by the Kitchenware management more than a decision that the appearances could 

have been conceived as pure self-promotion. 

The start of the UK tour coincided with the release of the second single from the album, 

We Let the Stars Go, which only reached number 50 despite numerous sell-out concerts. 

On 30 November, EPIC in America issued a press release stating that the band would be 

playing at showcase clubs, commencing on 21 January 1991 in New York and visiting 

Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, 

Minneapolis, San Fransisco and Los Angeles. 

It wasn't long after that the tour was 'put on ice' due to "Hostilities in the Gulf". A 

newspaper headline was put on the bulletin board at Kitchenware's office in Newcastle, 

"JORDAN ACTS TO EASE GULF TENSIONS", referring to the 'conflict', suggesting also 

the seriousness with which the people around McAloon view the music he makes; not, as 

one of the tabloids teased, making the pretentious suggestion of predicting the crisis, as, 

they suggest, Matt Johnson could have conceivably done. 

On Christmas Eve, they released their final offering from Jordan, an EP entitled Jordan: 

The EP, a cross-section of songs from the album, the focal point of which was Carnival 

2000, with accompanying video, shot at Gerry Cottles Circus in Weybridge. When Paddy 

wrote the song, he was thinking about Irving Berlin, who wrote White Christmas, and 

wondered if he could write something that would be played on anniversaries in the 

future. The EP reached a respectable 35 in the singles charts and was supported by a 

television appearance by the whole band on Going Live on 5 January. 

The UK tour visited fourteen cities during October 1990 and halfway around their 

itinerary the album dropped and rose in the charts, earning Silver Disc status for sales and 

a nomination for the best album of 1990 by the BPI along with Elton John, Lisa Stansfield 

and George Michael (the eventual winner with Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1). Despite 

an extremely nervous Paddy McAloon, the tour was a great success, earning excellent 

reviews from the press as a stark contrast to the last ones given in 1985, prompting 

McAloon's lengthy stage absence: 

� NME: "A hugely enjoyable night of charming songs from a charming man." 

� Manchester Evening News: "McAloon is the King of Rock and Roll to a 

growing army of followers, and he showed them why last night." 

� Melody Maker: "Prefab Sprout have, after all this time, taken to the stage 

and reveled in it." 

After the additional London Hammersmith gig on 23 October, CBS threw a private 

party for the band, crew and friends at the trendy cafe The Filling Station, a few miles 

away in Goldhawk Road. The Director of CBS presented the band with gold discs, having 

sold more than 40,000 copies of the album during the last two weeks of the tour, 

commenting that Paddy McAloon had become the Howard Hughes of the music world 

but had grown more akin to performing live. 

After a few days break, Paddy was in the air on his way to promote the album and the 

European tour with visits to France, Spain and Italy until mid-November, which saw the

and flying round Europe with the tour, ending up in Belfast and Dublin, where promises 

were made to The Late Show of a live appearance, once again, after Christmas. 

A Metaphysical Missionary 

Although deciding against going into the priesthood like others at the seminary he 

attended, McAloon found an interest in the Catholic Church and its ways. It was a useful 

thing being at the seminary, however, as most of the trendy young breed of priests could 

play guitar, so he was never short of help in learning new chords. 

As a youngster, McAloon found the ground rules laid out by the Catholic Church 

foreboding during his puberty, becoming interested in the fairer sex, "Cruel is the Gospel 

that sets us all free, then takes you away from me". As he matured through college, his 

views of the church became altered. 

He questioned that some people looked upon religion, amongst other 'vocations', for the 

wrong reasons. He comments, "I always try to write songs that do not proseletise or say 

that there is a God and therefore if you don't accept this then you're not going to enjoy this 

record or take any pleasure from it. I always think that if you're going to write about 

religious subjects, you've go to leave it wide open for people who maybe don't believe 

anything at all; I couldn't listen to a record that was telling me that God existed and you 

were damned if you didn't believe it." 

McAloon hates the idea of organized religion, sexism in the church, intolerance and oldfashioned 

beliefs. 

Peter Ustinov, in his novel, The Old Man and Mr. Smith, wrote, "Nothing is constant. 

Everything changes all the time. Humans age. So do ideas. So does faith. All things are 

eroded by life." Ustinov maintains that religion is an extension of life itself on a higher but 

not necessarily better plain: 

"Symbolism reared its muddled head, and we were off into the era of the smothering of 

primal truths in the opaque sauce of mumbo jumbo. The simple melody was subjected to 

a glut of orchestrations. The concept of Heaven has had to adapt to every new moral 

perception, every whiff of theological fashion." 

This reflects McAloon's views on the acceptance of the schools of thought in religion. 

Maybe religion aught not be 'taught' but offered as an experience; religion is a personal 

thing, where real faith can only come from a personal desire to receive God. To this end, 

evangelism with the 'hard sell' element is abhorred by McAloon. He prefers the approach 

of Gospel music in carrying forward the message to receive God freely (spiritually) and 

not to fear as a sinner the fire and brimstone of the Devil himself. In gospel music, God is 

thanked through the physical proof of his goodness, the voice. In the words of the Rev. 

Cecil Franklyn, "There is a unique advantage of preaching the gospel using the vehicle of 

song. Songs have the advantage of being packaged and wrapped in universal appeal. 

Songs are not limited by natural or human boundaries. Gospel through song is not 

hindered by local states or national boundaries or by racial, economical, political or 

religious preferences. Songs are clothed with the ability or capacity to successfully and

confidently meet the challenge of the great commission: 'Go ye into all the world and 

preach my gospel unto every creature'." 

The Sprouts' second single, The Devil Has All the Best Tunes, refers to a quote made by 

hymn writer Charles Wesley in 1740, brother of John Wesley (who founded the Methodist 

'movement' 200 years ago). At the time they were recruiting for the church and found that 

the songs which were being sung by the masses had much merrier tunes than those used 

in hymns at the time, being of a rather somber note. So in order to appeal to the masses he 

took the opinion, "Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?" 

In Don't Sing there is a similar reference to religion in song. This time McAloon refers to 

religious persecution. Don't Sing was based on Graham Greene's novel, The Power and 

the Glory. Greene's writings on politics and religion deal with the subject of moral values 

and of how freely we accept evil and death on a daily basis. Similarly, McAloon accepts 

death as a medium against which life can be recognised: "Beauty isn't beauty till it's 

dying." 

Newsweek said of Greene: "One of the major writers of his time… His themes are the 

battle between good and evil, corruption and betrayal and the agonies of guilt." 

Greene was a journalist both for The Times and the Spectator. At 22 years of age he was 

received into the Catholic Church after a suicidally unbearable childhood in boarding 

schools. He visited Mexico in 193’ to report on the religious persecution there during 

prohibition. This prompted two novels, The Power and the Glory and The Lawless Roads. 

He wrote of a world in which loyalties are uncertain and everything is at risk. After 

playing Russian roulette at the age of 19, he was convinced that "life contained an infinite 

number of possibilities." McAloon was taken by the realism of faith in times of despair in 

The Power and the Glory. The last priest, on the run from certain execution had even been 

guilty of despair: "Five years ago he had given way to despair – the unforgivable sin - and 

he was going back now to the scene of his despair with a curious lightening of his heart. 

For he had got over despair too. He was a bad priest, he knew it. They had a word for his 

kind - a whisky priest, but every failure dropped out of sight and mind: somewhere they 

accumulated in secret - the rubble of his failures." The whisky priest had naturally become 

wary of all he met on his travels, as McAloon puts it, "In every face see Judas." 

In McAloon's song The Sound of Crying, he quizzes God's willingness to accept 

tragedies across the globe, relying too much upon man's half-hearted desire for peace and 

world unity: "Sometimes I think that God is working to a plan. Then other times I swear 

that he is improvising - discordant and remote." 

McAloon describes the fear of death and of what lies beyond life in Pearly Gates: 

"Naked and afraid, cowering we crawl on all fours. There'll be no stampede on the Pearly 

Gates." However in Doo Wop in Harlem he confirms his belief in our "reunion in the air": 

"If there ain't a heaven that holds you tonight, they never sang doo-wop in Harlem." 

In religion and in other vocations, McAloon admits to being a bit of a back-seat driver. 

He admits to being lazy and as being someone who always looks at what people have 

done (for charity, say) and applauding them for doing it, "You do have to be careful 

especially if you've put things on record - I'm always wary of pop groups' involvement, 

no matter how good the cause is, because you can mix your motives. Yes, you can make

some money for other people but you also stand to get a lot of record sales and you've got 

to watch your motives very carefully, so I'm cynical about other groups." 

Other examples of this hatred of piousness are quoted in The Power and the Glory. One 

village that the priest reached had in it a woman who wanted to take communion just to 

be able to tell her friends and family that she was probably going to be one of the last to 

receive it. As McAloon puts it, if a doctor is working as a doctor solely for the money, then 

his morals are wrong. As Elizabeth Gaskell said of Florence Nightingale, "She has no 

friend - she wants none. She stands perfectly alone, halfway between God and his 

creatures." 

Other connotations towards these beliefs are found in The Venus of the Soup Kitchen, 

sang with the backing of gospel singers, and in One of the Broken, where he insists that 

God would much rather receive our prayers through our devotion and allegiance to one 

another, saying, "Come get up off your knees." 

McAloon, confirming his hatred of piousness, keeps his interview schedules to a 

minimum and would rather his songs become more famous for their quality than himself 

as a person, proclaiming, "I Couldn't Bear To Be Special", accentuating the message with 

the word, "Right!" McAloon wishes that people could have a better understanding about 

moral issues, where we are in a world which concentrates teaching our children science 

and technology rather than teaching wisdom. 

In between Langley Park and Jordan: The Comeback McAloon's father died after a long 

illness. This served to focus McAloon's efforts towards the project already conceived 

during the recording of Langley. 

McAloon has unwittingly left a litter of biblical references throughout his works, but 

made a point on Jordan dedicating one of the four 'suites' on the album to God and death. 

He likes to write equally with the point of view of a 'believer' and also of an 'onlooker' in 

terms of religious subjects. He redefines what is found in faith and destiny. McAloon uses 

the River Jordan as the scene for being received by God throughout the album, the river 

itself the location of many a religious confrontation, good and bad. Once again, McAloon's 

use of suggestive lyrics creates a mood and an aesthetic for his subject. The music in the 

Jordan 'religion' suite took on board gospel and hymn styles, for which Neil Conti was a 

natural agent, having played drums previously for a gospel choir. 

Whatever McAloon's views on religion, he suggests that his beliefs are modern, up-todate 

and accessible. His songs offer compassion and equality and the religious sit among 

the non-religious comfortably. 

The spirit of gospel music appealed to McAloon as optimistic, offering 'good news', the 

'gospel truth', the promise of a better life hereafter, refusing to grieve over the inevitable - 

death. Gospel music began as an extension of the old 'spirituals' and in the 1920's grew 

greatly in popularity through the Baptist Church. The gospel styles then passed into the 

Methodist Churches of Chicago, where they experimented in blending gospel and white 

country folk music, eventually dissolving its harsher forms of southern preachers into 

popular music. 

McAloon admired in Elvis Presley his obvious delight in gospel music over the early 

rock 'n' roll music. Presley was born in East Tupelo, Mississippi and went to high school 

in Memphis. He was brought into gospel music during periodic visits to a black Baptist

Church, where he began singing, seeing it as a means of escaping problems, a way of 

release: "the preachers would cut up all over the place, jumping on the piano". In Presley's 

early rock 'n' roll days, he started to introduce some personal favourite gospel songs into 

his repertoire and adopted the characteristic hip and leg movements picked up during his 

absorption of the hysteria in these church meetings, earning him his title, 'Elvis The 

Pelvis', hailing from the frantic sense of urgency brought on from the extrovert joyousness 

in gospel music, which offered fulfillment and happiness in this life in preparation for the 

next. 

However, he was seen as a 'rebellious' threat to peace and the church, prompting 

prayers from some local preachers for his salvation. A live TV broadcast on Ed Sullivan's 

show Toast Of The Town in 1957 saw Elvis sing a strategically selected song by 'Colonel' 

Tom Parker, Peace In The Valley. 

Elvis became more aware that he really wanted to keep in touch with gospel music. 

In an all-night session on October 30-31, 1960, he recorded 13 gospel songs with The 

Jordanaires, including two old traditional 'spirituals', Joshua Fit the Battle and Swing 

Down Sweet Chariot, which he arranged effortlessly using the gospel inspired rhythms 

and vocal styles he was being so influenced by. His earliest records bear testimony to his 

affinity for black blues and gospel. As Charles Gillett put it in The Sound of the City: 

"Elvis was creating, a personal version of this style, singing high and clear, breathless 

and impatient, varying his rhythmic emphasis with a confidence and inventiveness that 

were exceptional from a white singer. The sound suggested a young white man 

celebrating freedom, ready to do anything, go anywhere…" 

There aren't many interviews of Elvis which really tell you anything interesting about 

the man himself. Most recordings or press text reveal unexciting things like past 

girlfriends, favourite poem or how many cars he bought. Lacking any worthwhile 

material, the press began to abuse their freedom and Presley backed off. 

In December 1968, he broke a long silence in media relations when he made his last 

statements to the press on NBC's 'Comeback Special'. McAloon relates to him in Jordan: 

The Comeback as, "the southern boy who's sort of not intellectual about what he does but 

would say something like: 'All the books about me, there wasn't much love in them, boys', 

where he could capture Elvis responding to his critics and then giving him the hope of a 

GOSPEL Comeback: "End of the road I'm travelling, I will see Jordan beckoning". 

The fantastic film Elvis on Tour (1972), showing Elvis in an aging and overweight state 

(at the time of crisis in his marriage with Priscilla Beaulieu), painted a picture which the 

media grabbed and worked on. In Jordan: The Comeback, Elvis retorts: "they couldn't film 

the spirit from the waist on down" (i.e. the REAL Elvis), happy in the knowledge that 

there will be "Jordan, waiting for me there." 

The 'Comeback' programme came out when Elvis was thirty-four years old. It showed 

him as a more mature performer and in a way signified the end of the road of his 

'rebellious' youth. McAloon himself said of touring: "You'd have to be sublimely stupid or 

a real gunslinger to want to tour." He writes about the young, rebellious Presley, the 

imagery that the press forced upon the public, using the name of outlaw Jesse James as a 

way of portraying him as a "wayward son". In the songs Jesse James Symphony and Jesse

James Bolero, Elvis starts off as a baby dangling on his mother's knee and ends up a 

monster, not half as glorious as he thinks he is, who gets shot in the back. 

Moondog is an account of Elvis' funeral. McAloon thinks back and refuses to go along 

with the orthodox view that he was great when he was younger and then it all went 

wrong: "I actually grew to like American Trilogy, I Just Can't Help Believing. I like 

Always on My Mind. I even like Pork Salad Annie and some of the Vegas things." In 

Moondog, Presley ("The once and future King") is dead and looking down from the Moon, 

"beyond the Colonel's arms", waiting for his next life, his spiritual life; either that, or 

actually making his comeback gig on the moon itself, a dream already held by Thomas 

Dolby. 

Scarlet Nights is a departure from the more spiritual accents covered here, being a song 

about death and merely wishing you could have your time over again. 

In the McAloon composition One of the Broken, he has God provide the narration. Not 

satisfied with this, he pens songs written for the Devil to sing. Michael is about the Devil 

thinking how he missed out on a great career opportunity when he was kicked out of 

Heaven, asking Michael the Archangel (who, in Catholic theology sits at God's right hand) 

if he can put in a good word to come back. Likewise, in Mercy, the Devil begs forgiveness 

in a way, musically, that will be received better by the man upstairs. 

During the Gulf War, McAloon was writing songs which dealt with subjects such as 

despair and world disorder, offering hope and faith where the great world powers' 

political and military controls couldn't. He wrote a collection of songs about the healing 

powers that music has, entitled Let's Change the World With Music. Just after the Gulf 

War ended he wrote The Sound of Crying, a pursuance to answers of questions raised by 

the helpless. 

His songwriting was becoming more focussed and, he claims, "despite what I've said 

before, I'm probably even less bothered than ever about commercial and artistic 

constraints. If I like the idea, I'll follow it through, no matter how strange it is. I don't want 

to turn into a boring, confessional singer-songwriter. I'm still attracted to the bizarre. It's 

just a question of being crafty, so I can keep the record company happy." 

1991 was a year of triumph in many ways for McAloon. Being hailed as one of the most 

celebrated conventional songwriters of this age, he was invited into two documentaries on 

songwriting which were broadcast on Radio One. 

The Sprouts' first hit single was being covered by The Zombies on their album New 

World, with a shortened title, Love Breaks Down - a fairly faithful version to the original. 

In July, Kitchenware Records received a telephone call from Ireland's RTE, inviting 

Paddy to sing one of his songs on a show, An Eye To The Music. They had plans of Paddy 

singing with their thirty-piece orchestra. Phil Mitchell at Kitchenware asked them who 

else was involved and Jimmy Webb's name was mentioned. When Mitchell called back, he 

asked if Jimmy Webb would do a duet with Paddy, a long-time admirer of Webb's works. 

RTE checked and said "Yes". They agreed to sing the Webb composition The 

Highwayman, originally a hit in 1974, and a song about reincarnation. McAloon tripped 

to Ireland with brother Martin and managed to spend some time with Webb offstage, who 

offered some great rock 'n' roll stories to McAloon's excitement.

McAloon loved Webb's compositions, such as By the Time I Get To Phoenix, Galveston, 

McArthur Park and Wichita Lineman, written before he was 23 years old and making him 

a millionaire at that age. McAloon admired the fact that his songs were known and 

hummed by everybody at sometime in their lives, but as a singer, he was never really 

popular, in fact, in McAloon's words, "he sacrificed his talent in his desperation to be hip. 

Unbelievable and tragic." In the opening lines of Doo Wop in Harlem, McAloon almost 

rephrases a verse in Webb's The Magic Garden: "There is a garden, something like the 

shadow of a butterfly and lies beyond the gates of dark and light." 

It's very likely that McAloon sees 'religion' in Webb's works, such as Highwayman and 

The Magic Garden, which is 'pure yet not pushy'. There is a link of religion in many of 

McAloon's peers. Webb, himself, was the son of an Oklahoman Baptist minister, whose 

first employment was as a contract composer for Motown. 

Marvin Gaye, too, a son of a minister, played the organ in his father's church. Gaye, 

after a troubled military service stint, became attached to street-corner doo-wop gangs 

and ended up drumming and singing for Motown. 

Shortly after the great success of I Heard It Through the Grapevine he went into 

obscurity after a singing partner, Tammi Terrell, collapsed in his arms suffering a brain 

tumor and dying a few months later. He returned with a collection of very religious songs 

and a more lavish, sophisticated orchestral score, shades of which can be picked up in 

Langley after McAloon fell in love with the album What's Going On and which, to the 

amazement of Motown, bore three million-selling singles. 

Presley's songs appealed to McAloon also, fuelling his interest in artists/writers creating 

work through the inspiration of Religion rather than preaching religion through song. 

McAloon was breaking the rules in modern pop songwriting: "When I was 20, who was 

ruling the airwaves? Paul Weller, Donna Summer and Dan Hartman's Instant Replay. The 

point about whatever, is that you did something different. You didn't try to conform to 

the same old cliches. The premise should not be 'I want to be original'. It should be 'I want 

to do something good'. Isaac Hayes' version of By the Time I Get To Phoenix has a ten 

minute talk intro'. There's something about it that absolutely transcends…just keeps me 

speechless. That's the sort of value I appreciate, be honest with yourself. It's not such a hip 

name to drop now, Jimmy Webb - from kitsch to greatness - that's what I want, it moves 

the hell out of me." 

In McAloon's mind, many writers can be accused of 'toning down' the message in a 

song by not being totally honest with themselves, sometimes because the songwriter may 

concern himself too much of how people will portray him from its contents. Martin 

Stephenson, friend, label mate and fellow songwriter, dedicated his song In the Heal of 

the Night to McAloon, emphasising the importance of their belief: 

We were taught to hide, we were taught to cry 

All the things that the real men despise 

In the douse of the light when the cold wind blowed 

In the heal of the night there was song unsung. 

It is true, however, that McAloon, as a beginner to songwriting in his teens, was aware 

of the outlook of his neighbours in Witton Gilbert, who firstly were witnessing a rare 

movement to Polytechnic of a local lad (which was a big thing to the small mining

community back in the 1970's) and secondly, his choice of intended profession as a 

songwriter was a difficult concept to grab for them. 

It's a hard thing to remain 'proper' about such matters in the commercial world of rock 

music, but this is where Kitchenware's role as a management team has helped McAloon in 

his pursuit of perfection and success. 

In the case of Brian Wilson, for whom McAloon holds great appreciation, he was almost 

executed as an artist by Capitol Records who forced The Beach Boys into a three to four 

albums per year contract, which led to Wilson having a nervous breakdown. This was a 

turning point in Wilson's life and a time when drugs became a large part of it. 

Pet Sounds was being hailed as one of the best pop/rock albums ever, alongside The 

Beatles' Revolver. Brian Wilson, described once as "a cross between George Gershwin and 

Phil Spector", became paranoid and began to work more and more alone. In the studio, he 

was becoming a perfectionist, experimenting with seemingly endless variations of 

instrumentation and often ending up with half an hour's material to be edited down to a 

three or four minute recording. 

Wilson had consciously decided to be true to himself and his needs and the record 

company had to accept it. 

McAloon avoids the use of rock cliches and denounces the rock myths: "Rock music's 

about sex or about self, and it's not very good at expressing any other viewpoint other 

than me, me, me. You've got to create clichés, haven't you? Imagine being able to do that, 

to do something that is regarded as the perfect capsule of an idea, the form that you've put 

in, the general tone. The one that people keep coming back to! Like Brian Wilson, where 

somehow the corniest, most 11-year-old boy created a sound, a 'feel', that says something 

much more than any particular lyric. It's 'time' that does that. You can't get immediately 

significant in the course of things; at the end you have to let your work stand on its own 

merit." 

Many get McAloon's outlook and temperament confused. All he is doing is preaching a 

new, confident gospel - not one of standard rock myths. Critics should ask themselves 

'Would anyone else today have as much success at preaching such a new gospel?' 

McAloon could be considered as a sort of 'Metaphysical Missionary'. 

He has learned over the years not to take much notice of tags such as 'Catholic' or 

'Bedsit' and to concentrate on earning success, where he can, by his own rules: "In the real 

world of pop music, it's really a parochial thing and I do like the big abstractions of 

working in the pop world where it's money and brash image that counts. Rather than say 

we're nothing to do with that, I'd rather embrace it and bring something good through it." 

McAloon recognises the expectations of the record industry with respect to songwriters. 

Unlike the days of the big musicals, the job of a songwriter can't be a faceless desk job. A 

songwriter should be singing their songs, dancing and making videos. This, according to 

his beliefs, is a major factor of songwriting today. 

Although he's got plenty of work to keep Prefab Sprout busy, McAloon is in love with 

the idea of working with other artists, having written songs with singers in mind such as 

Doing a Garbo for Madonna and for other artists such as Frank Sinatra, The Righteous 

Brothers and Darryl Hall: "When you write something it's like a test. If it's good for you, 

then it might be good for someone else. You can never really try and write from another

person's point of view. You can choose the style in which you're writing, you can have a 

certain choice there. The best way of looking at it is if you write something that's of 

universal interest, something that touches on a subject that is important to many people, 

and if you do it in a way that isn't so original that they don't know what you're on about, 

then you're going to get cover versions." 

The song Nancy, for example, written around an idea for a video, was written, along 

with a few other songs on Langley, with certain singers in mind. 

McAloon's main aim in songwriting is simple. He wants to give his listeners something 

that he hopes, for whatever reason, they will remember. Whether it's a melody or a lyric 

that they identify with, he wants to make his songs as vivid to people as possible: "There's 

no way that I like them to sound 'down at heel', songs that are worthy because they are 

'under-produced'. There's an awful lot of that about as well, where a song isn't allowed to 

put smart clothes on, if you can look at it that way. I see rebellion in music in someone 

deliberately following a personal vision, whether it's fashionable or not, I think there's 

something braver about that." 

He could never bring himself to 'sell out' by making hit records at the expense of quality 

- be it lyrically or musically: "Even at my most frivolous, I couldn't write a song about 

nothing." He likes to write good songs. When he was young he wanted to be famous and 

discovered that he could write good songs so it's not surprising that he's "burnt by every 

day that I don't do it." 

McAloon has a sweet tooth for melodies, taking admiration from the likes of Irving 

Berlin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers and conjouring up classical melodies of his own, 

referencing the lyrics of Lorenz Hart's My Funny Valentine, he says, "I think to deliver 

your heartaches with panache is really quite moving. To be honest, I think that people like 

me who aspire to that know that we're talking about not the top ten percent of 

songwriters in the world, but the top two or three per cent. That league is always out of 

reach to everyone else. But once you set your sights on it, and see it as a kind of beacon, 

you can't be satisfied with either your own output, or this week's Pearl Jam record." 

During the constant questioning of intentions and themes in Jordan, McAloon 

undertook to write a batch of songs in frustration where he thought there should be 

nothing in the way of misunderstanding the lyrics. His feelings were, "If I'm supposed to 

be good, surely I can write something that doesn't need explanation." One such song of 

this period (autumn 1991) was If You Don't Love Me. 

1991 was very much a time of writing for McAloon, and pondering over his huge backcatalog 

of unpublished material. 

Neil Conti, out of the recording studio and off the tour stage, went on to attempt to kick 

off his Backstage Club again. It was hoped to have been reopened around June 1991, while 

working with former CBS Paris Marketing Director Luc Vergier on launching a record 

label Backstage, capturing some of the club's artists on record. Neil stated, "I started the 

club to help new talent and this is just an extension of that." 

The material to be put out on the Backstage label were meant to be live performances at 

the club but it was also intended that studio material would also be put out on Offstage, 

its sister label.

Neil is committed to pushing new acts during the time that he is not working with 

Prefab Sprout and says, "We can get away from the problem of acts having to be able to 

sell thousands of records to ensure a record deal. I just want to provide a way of getting 

these artists heard." A self-publication deal had been set up with Rondor Music but the 

distribution deal required to support the labels was elusive. 

Wendy Smith, meantime, through Kitchenware, had plans for some session vocals with 

a Japanese indie band, The Blood of a Poet, whose album, released in 1992, included a few 

songs guesting Wendy on backing vocals. Ancient plans for Wendy to release a solo single 

over here never saw the light of day but the rumours that she would be working with 

Ryuichi Sakamoto (hailing from the Dolby and Bowie links with him, presumably) had 

been 'put to bed'. 

Towards the end of 1993, between helping with backing vocals on the next album, 

Wendy was taking an interest in different vocal techniques, attending 'singing 

workshops', experimenting with Bulgarian, Tibetan and Mongolian vocal techniques. She 

was also working on an ecological music project called Ocean World, attached to the 

World Wildlife Fund. 

Dolby, after Jordan, had learned to fly and obtained his pilot's license and in mid-1990 

started to work on his next album, Astronauts and Heretics. During his work on the 

album he took time out to play keyboards and act out the role of the teacher in Roger 

Water's The Wall at the Berlin concert to celebrate the launch of the World War Memorial 

Fund for Disaster Relief. He also worked with Eddi Reader in 1991 on some songs and 

wrote three songs for the animated movie Fern Gully which was released in 1992, swiftly 

followed by more soundtrack work for the new Spielberg-produced animated movie 

We're Back. 

After all the legal wrangles with his departure from EMI, Dolby released his new album 

in June 1992 to wide acclaim. 

The next lot of studio work for Prefab Sprout was booked in for January 1992 with The 

Producers' production management company. The band had already worked with one of 

its staff, Paul Gomersall, who was the engineer for Jordan. This time, they were pencilled 

in to work alongside George Di Angelis (producer) and Pete Schwier (producer, engineer 

and mixer). The intention was to record three or four songs "towards a new album." 

Schwier and Di Angelis co-produced one song, Girl I'm Here, before Di Angelis left The 

Producers and recording came to a stop. Schwier trained as an engineer at RAK Studios, 

where he worked with various artistes including Hot Chocolate, Kim Wilde, Andrew 

Lloyd Webber's Cats, The Jam, Rod Stewart and The Pet Shop Boys among dozens of 

other famous recording artistes. 

While Neil Conti was appearing on Jean Louis Murat's album Le Manteau de Pluie in 

France, Radio One's Breakfast Show, on 14 June, 1992, hosted the premiere broadcast of 

the Sprouts' new single, The Sound of Crying. The single was a great success, climbing 

higher than their first hit single, When Love Breaks Down, this time to No. 23 and earning 

such reviews as "in typically marvelous paradoxical Sprout style, manages to include icecool 

phraseology like 'the music of the spheres' while still being catchy enough to be this 

week's third most-played single on Radio One" and "all those great lines mean you're 

drawn in by intelligence - if you believe, you'll be comforted."

In July, the second single, If You Don't Love Me, was released with the compilation 

album, hailing ten years of recordings made by the band, entitled The Best of Prefab 

Sprout - A Life Of Surprises. 

The single, reaching No. 33, and like The Sound of Crying, produced by Steve Lipson, 

who worked with Paul Gomersall alongside Trevor Horn in the Frankie and Propaganda 

hey-days of ZTT in the mid-80's. The production was faithful to that of Dolby's style but 

very commercially biased. 

The Sound of Crying could have nestled comfortably among the pop songs on Jordan, 

while If You Don't Love Me has definite echoes of The Ice Maiden in it. 

Lipson's work on A Life of Surprises also included a slight remix on the track All The 

World Loves Lovers and together with his work on Simple Minds' Glittering Prizes 1981- 

92 compilation, earned him a nomination in the Best British Producer category for the Brit 

Awards 1993. Paul Harvey, who toured with the band in 1990, joined them on guitar on If 

You Don't Love Me, which was a top ten hit in the U.S. Billboard Dance Chart with The 

Future Sound of London's remixes. In addition to the "String Driven Thing" and "No 

Strings Attatched" remixes, available in the UK double-CD package (with which the Sony 

empire were attempting to rid the 12" format), the Future Sound of London's remix 

engineer Yage crafted two further versions, "The Deep Field Mix" and "The Stateside Mix". 

Five versions of one song - not bad for a band headed by someone who despises the idea 

of "dicking around with the elements." A Life of Surprises indeed. 

Sony gave the Best of-album everything they could. All major record stores seemed to 

have full window displays, especially Our Price who made it their No.1 album for a few 

weeks soon after its release. For a change, the schedules were kept to, unlike through the 

old CBS distribution they'd been putting up with. The absence of the 12" format was 

frowned upon by real fans but with the help of good marketing by Sony and with 

interviews and features in almost every newspaper, music paper and radio station, the 

album was a hit and host to an unprecedented welcoming: 

� Q Magazine: "A Life of Surprises: not quite, just an almost great, pretty 

damn near indespensable album." 

� VOX: "A matchless career and a cool retrospective." 

� News of The World: "… proves Paddy McAloon is one of the wittiest 

songwriters of the last decade." 

� Select: "A collection of The Sprouts' epic mini-dramas… Ten years of 

defiantly unrockist paradox pop." 

The album reached No. 3 in the Gallup chart and videos for the two new songs (both 

shown on The Chart Show) were given cameo appearances in their 2-part TVAM 

interview feature and the From The Bridge TV feature. Jenny Agutter was called in to do 

some voice-over for the compilation's TV advertisement, following her contribution to the 

song Wild Horses in 1990. 

All the World Loves Lovers was the third single to come off the album but to little chart 

success, introducing a compilation video during its release in September. The video sold 

well, including the video for We Let The Stars Go, which hardly got a peep on TV as "The 

Chart Show hated it", according to Kitchenware.

The song Life of Surprises was actually written in 1985 (a "very personal thing" of 

Paddy McAloon's) and was actually a demo for the album Langley but not finding its way 

to vinyl until Protest Songs' release in 1989, besides an excursion via the Nightingales 12" 

'Demos' EP, which featured the unedited pre-Langley period version. The song appeared 

out of the blue in December 1992 as a single in its own right. On Protest Songs' release, 

Dave Lee Travis maintained it should have been a single and it eventually was, charting 

at No. 24 to end a fairly consistent run of relative chart successes. 

In March 1993, an unexpected half-hearted release of I Remember That was issued on 

CD single only. It immediately paled into insignificance, as if it were never there, leaving 

a feeling of déjà-vu among fans suffering the long wait for the band's next album. An 

ironic song title indeed. 

McAloon's work up to summer 1993 saw McAloon complete his next batch of demos - 

top secret and full of mystery, having left people guessing after his press interviews 

during the promotion of The Best of. Among many outstanding projects already 

mentioned, there was still an album about cities and of McAloon's fascination of how a 

mood or atmosphere is expected/portrayed by the name of a city or place as seen in songs 

such as Dublin, Manhattan, Bearpark and Memphis, and an album about Michael Jackson 

entitled Behind the Veil, including songs such as Only the Boogie Music Won't Let You 

Down, Unicorn In Trouble, Danger and Me and Mr. Lightning Boots; an album of songs 

written in just six weeks (is that quick enough?). Only the Boogie Music Won't Let You 

Down was a lengthy song with each verse describing a difficulty in Jackson's life but with 

a supportive chorus, repeating the song title. He recently lost his faith in the song as over 

the passage of time the chorus line seems to have become more and more 'corny'. 

Also, in 1992, McAloon completed a twelve-song biographical opus based on the life of 

Francis Albert, the skinny black/white billionaire from Indiana. Diverse topics for diverse 

talent. 

But tipped as the next album to be released… a collection of romantic, modern love 

songs with an undecided title… McAloon is split between the titles Billy Midnight and 

Knights In Armour. The collection is described by him as "Elvis-free, death-free, in the 

way that Jordan wasn't - quite classic. Unashamedly ravishing." 

Kitchenware promised a "quite revolutionary" release in spring 1994. But what are we to 

expect? He's dropped hints and he's a "terrific liar": 

"I'm like a mole. I do everything on the sly. And then I sort of present all the tapes to 

people. And you've got to be more sly the older you get. If you want to get better you've 

got to turn the flame right down and just be absolutely passionate about what you do."

MYTHS, MELODIES & METAPHYSICS: - Prefab Sprout

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?