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Uncut , Dec. '05
Great Albums That Have Fallen Of The Critical Radar
IN LATE 1983. an elegant and understated LP slipped quietly onto the racks. Produced by Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, it began with a lush arrangement of swelling horns, while its opening lyrics could have been a manifesto for then-nascent yuppiedom: “Get it, I want it, potentially mine”. If Elvis Costello had released this album, it might just feature in the lower reaches of those lists of all-time greats; but it was called North Of A Miracle and was made by Nick Heyward , a man known principally for tucking his jumper into his trousers.
Few musicians at the time were taken less seriously than Heyward. Although his band, Haircut 100, and their Monkees-meet-Chic groove-pop, was genuinely refreshing when it broke in 1981 (Danny Baker gave their debut album, Pelican West. a rave review in NME on its release in February 1982). a year later there were credibility issues. After enjoying four Top 10 singles. a Top 10 album and some US success, the end, critically and commercially, appeared to be nigh. Tour dates were cancelled and a proposed second album, provisionally entitled A Blue Hat For A Blue Day was scrapped as Heyward announced he was going solo. He felt that, as his group became successful they’d ignored the music and become too concerned with image. Suddenly. the perma-grinning kid in the yellow cagoule had stopped smiling.
So how to make the transition work? One early idea was to have XTC as his backing band. “I met Andy Partridge and Cohn Moulding in AIR Studios and they asked if they could be my band for this record.” says Heyward. talking to Uncut in July 2005.” I was taken aback. I thought. ‘You’re fabulous and. well, I’m not. They’d just stopped touring at that time. I didn’t take them seriously.”
The leap he was to make was huge and brave. Like Scott Walker and Alex Chilton before him. Heyward was gambling guaranteed short-term teen adulation for possible long-term credibility “In the eyes of the country. I’d ‘done remarkably well’, but it was out of alignment with how l felt,” he explains. ‘I wasn’t happy at all. I was trapped in self-pity, melancholy and self-absorption.”
While searching for a suitable producer. Heyward suffered a breakdown. “I should have been light-hearted, embracing the fundamental ‘new romanticism’ of it all. but I was into wearing corduroy jackets. Hush Puppies and ties. trying to keep sane. I wasn’t sleeping. either — I thought if I fell asleep. I’d die. I was that dark. It was the grip of fear”
The record company doctor prescribed anti-depressants:”He started me smoking.” Heyward laughs. “He came with great credentials. I went in thinking. ‘How excellent, this is David Sylvian’s doctor.’ First thing he said was. ‘Fag?’ and offered me one. I was about to say that I didn’t smoke, but then I thought. ‘Why not?’ Next minute I was smoking and talking to a psychiatrist, thinking this is obviously what you do. I’d come from south London - if you were a bit weird, you got beaten up.”
Despite his personal problems. Heyward set out to make an album. Against Arista’s wishes, he sought out Geoff Emerick. who’d just produced Costello’s Imperial Bedroom. “I think for about two weeks I thought I was Elvis Costello.” Heyward admits.” I was convinced. I was even shortsighted like him. I tried to change my star sign by deed poll.”
Heyward also surrounded himself with the best session players. However, ever self-critical, he doesn’t feel he assumed control sufficiently. “These guys were looking to me. They’d been doing it for years and somebody had been put into the top job that didn’t really know what he was doing. It was like someone giving you a fantastic bonsai tree and you’re not watering it.” Sessions took place at London’s AIR studios, using, at times,the equipment left in down time by Paul McCartney who was then recording Pipes Of Peace. As well as the Costello influence (made all the more explicit by Steve Nieve guesting on opener “When It Started To Begin”) there is much on the record that recalls The Beatles — the ‘Penny Lane” trumpets on ‘Two Make It True”, the Maccaesque melodicism of “On A Sunday”. Fabness abounded: “I got to meet to Paul and Ringo” he says. “Linda McCartney brought her dog in. I thought this was what happened all the time.”
With occasionally jarring instrumentation (the jazz intro and outro to “The Kick Of Love”, the extensive use of strings), the album creates its own microclimate: permanently autumn. At least half the tracks refer to the cold, or wind, or rain. “On A Sunday” is an oddly poignant paean to leisure time, while “The Day It Rained Forever” and ”CIub Boy At Sea’ are suffused with an unbearable melancholy sixth-sense.
North Of A Miracles artwork features a profile of our hero looking upwards and outwards at the world with a quizzical expression. Meanwhile the names of ex-members of Brand X, Fairport Convention and Third Ear Band abound on the inner sleeve. This was his bid to be regard as a Serious Artist, a sort of New Pop Nick Drake , all minor chords, baroque orchestration and tortured confessionals. Heyward felt unsure about his new direction: “It was a bit like a ship that didn't really have a captain.” he says now. It looked really well put-together, but it didn't know its destination”
Although the album made the UK Top l0 and included several hits (first single “Whistle Down The Wind , “A Blue Hat For A Blue Day’ a typically jaunty “Take That Situation” and‘When It Started To Begin”) Arista decide Heyward's future lay in more conventional settings: within a year he was singing straight upbeat pop like ”Love All Day”. And yet North Of A Miracle endures, echoes of it reverberate though the work of Eric Matthews, The Flaming Lips and the Engineers. Although Heyward today feels later collections From Monday 7 Sunday (1994) or Tangled (1995) are stronger , North Of A Miracle holds a special resonance.
“It’s a very grown-up, studious record,” he reflects. “Geoff was like a teacher at Oxford. I thought it was time to get me a nice bicycle and corduroy jacket and study. That’s how l took mandolins and string quartets and oboes into the charts. It wasn’t in sync with the time. In 1983, it was all Duran and Spandau — it wasn’t really mandolins, was it?”
TOM BYFORD
Label
Arista
Produced by
Geoff Ernerick and Nick Heyward
Released
1983
Musicians
Nick Heyward (vocals, guitar),
Pino Palladino (bass),
Danny Schogger(piano, organ, accordion),
Dave Mattacks (drums),
Chris White (sax),
Stuart Brooks (trumpet,flugelhorn),
Pete Beachill (trombone),
Morris Pert (percussion),
Tony Maronie (percussion, bongos),
Tim Renwick (guitar, mandolin),
Steve Nieve (piano, organ),
Bill Le Sage (piano),
Ian Laws (guitar),
Andrew Powell (string arrangements),
Paul Buckmaster (string arrangements)
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 15-8730838
North of a Miracle
Nick Heyward
Track Listings
1. When It Started To Begin
2. Blue Hat For A Blue Day
3. Two Make It True
4. On A Sunday
5. Club Boy At Sea
6. Whistle Down The Wind
7. Take That Situation
8. Kick Of Love
9. Day It Rained Forever
10. Atlantic Monday
( bonus tracks)
11. Whistle Down The Wind 12" mix
12. Take That Situation 12" mix
13. Cafe Canada
14. Love At The Door
15. Don't Get Me Wrong
16. Stolen Tears
17. Laura