FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Prefab Sprout - From Langley Park to Memphis
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EVEN though I featured Prefab Sprout…
in Vinyl Corner this time last year (when I included 1985’s Steve McQueen), I think it is about time I highlight them once more. Today, I am focusing on the follow-up of Steve McQueen, From Langley Park to Memphis. I would urge people to buy From Langley Park to Memphis on vinyl. The third studio album from the Durham band, it is one where they became more commercial. Although some critics felt that the songs on From Langley Park to Memphis are not as deep and consistent as on their previous album or their debut, Swoon, I feel it is a magnificent album. Before moving on, here is some background regarding From Langley Park to Memphis:
“From Langley Park to Memphis is the third studio album by English pop band Prefab Sprout. It was released by Kitchenware Records on 14 March 1988. It peaked at number 5 on the UK Albums Chart, the highest position for any studio album released by the band. Recorded in Newcastle, London and Los Angeles, it has a more polished and commercial sound than their earlier releases, and features several guest stars including Stevie Wonder and Pete Townshend. The album's simpler songs, big productions and straight-forward cover photo reflect frontman Paddy McAloon's wish for it to be a more universal work than their more cerebral earlier albums”.
Many people know the album because of the two hits songs, The King of Rock 'n' Roll and Cars and Girls. Before wrapping things up, I want to bring in a couple of reviews that show what a great record From Langley Park to Memphis is. In 2014, Sound on Sound spoke with Prefab Sprout’s songwriter and leader, Paddy McAloon (alongside Paddy McAloon, Prefab Sprout consisted Neil Conti, Martin McAloon and Wendy Smith; today, they are more of a Paddy McAloon solo venture) about the catalogue of the band. There are some interesting points regarding From Langley Park to Memphis:
“Whatever the circumstances of its creation, From Langley Park To Memphis was Prefab Sprout’s most polished offering and their best–selling record, reaching number five in the UK album chart, not least due to the naggingly catchy and knowingly daft Top Ten hit ‘The King Of Rock & Roll’. There were many memorable moments for McAloon during the album’s making, not least hiring an orchestra for ‘Hey Manhattan!’; the parts were committed to tape at CTS Studios in Wembley, a favourite of John Barry’s when recording the scores for the James Bond films. Elsewhere, Prefab Sprout’s growing mainstream status was spotlit by the appearances on the record of Pete Townshend, who played acoustic guitar on ‘Hey Manhattan!’, and Stevie Wonder, who contributed his trademark melodious harmonica to ‘Nightingales’.
Both of these cameo performances came about simply because Prefab Sprout happened to be using the same studios as the legendary musicians. McAloon remembers being ill with flu and absent from the sessions on the day he encouraged his bassist brother Martin to ask the Who guitarist to play on ‘Hey Manhattan!’. “Our Martin said he walked past this room and Pete Townshend had this Ovation acoustic and he was shaking it over his head violently,” he says. “Martin thought, ‘God he even does it in private!’ But then it turned out he’d lost his plectrum inside it, like a mere mortal, and he was trying to shake it out. So he did the part as a favour and it’s just a straightforward, but beautiful, rhythm guitar with strange chords going on.”
There was a tenser atmosphere, however, in Westside Studios on the day Wonder arrived to make his contribution to ‘Nightingales’. “The young engineer on the session, Richard Moakes, looked at me just before he did it and said, ‘Oh God I’m a bit worried I won’t know how to get his sound’. I said, ‘Well, look, we’ll just see what happens’. And of course you put the microphone on him and you turn the fader up and he sounds like Stevie Wonder. You don’t do anything.”
It was an enlightening moment for McAloon. “For a long time, you have this chimera of a notion that someone can get you a great sound,” he says. “But it starts with you, y’know. I thought, OK, you’ve seen how that works with someone like Stevie Wonder — he has his skills and you put a microphone in front of him and you will capture him. Unless you’re doing something really silly, you’ll get it and it will be identifiable. So I thought, OK, when you play a guitar, don’t blame an engineer if you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ve heard people tell stories about Jeff Beck, that he can pick up any bent, out–of–shape guitar and he will make it sound like Jeff Beck, ‘cause he knows what he’s doing”.
I love the mix of styles that stand alongside one another on the album. McAloon draws inspiration a lot from America through From Langley Park to Memphis - he felt that the country was full of myths and extremes. Of the album's ten tracks, Thomas Dolby produced The King of Rock 'n' Roll, I Remember That, Knock on Wood and The Venus of the Soup Kitchen. I love Dolby’s production sound. He was sole producer (apart from one track) on Steve McQueen; he co-produced Swoon with David Brewis. The fact there are several producers on From Langley Park to Memphis (Thomas Dolby, Jon Kelly, Paddy McAloon, Andy Richards) makes it a little muddled. In spite of a few critics being a little mixed regarding From Langley Park to Memphis – some felt From Langley Park to Memphis was inferior to Steve McQueen and a little pale -, I think it is an album that is definitely worth exploring further and getting on vinyl. In their assessment, this is what Pitchfork stated:
“After Swoon and the critical acclaim that followed Steve McQueen, the band recorded and shelved a quieter follow-up (Protest Songs, eventually released in 1989) before setting off to make something that capitalized on their newfound momentum. At the time of its release, the cinematic From Langley Park to Memphis was largely overshadowed by its first two tracks: the semi-novelty hit “The King of Rock and Roll” (which arrived with a fittingly absurd music video) and the Springsteen-referencing “Cars and Girls.” As a one-two punch, they rightfully stand among Prefab Sprout’s most recognizable songs, and the rest of the record is just as catchy and complex.
McAloon was now penning his own version of standards (“Nightingales”), reverb-coated alt-rock anthems (“The Golden Calf”), and dramatic singalongs that could find a second life on Broadway (“Hey Manhattan”). His writing favored narrators in sad, autumnal stages: “All my lazy teenage boasts are now high precision ghosts/And they’re coming ‘round the tracks to haunt me,” go the opening lyrics to “The King of Rock and Roll,” imagining the life of an older touring musician, every night singing the same meaningless words that he wrote decades ago. And yet the music sounds colorful and hopeful and alive—everything seems to sparkle, right down to the glossy band photo on the album cover.
With that photo, lovingly filtered here to look slightly more artful, the band signaled that they were pivoting away from their underground beginnings. Released at a time when American indie bands like R.E.M. and the Replacements were beginning to make bids for larger audiences, McAloon was making a similar leap, even if he still preferred staying out of the spotlight. While his songs were newly poised for radio and MTV, he remained wary of fame, setting on a reclusive path that would span the rest of his career. “This isn’t meant to sound snobbish,” he told Melody Maker at the time, “but I’ve never felt a part of any community… I don’t go out and look for like-minded people and I’ve never found anyone on the planet who fits the bill.” From Langley Park remains the band’s closest brush to stardom, but McAloon kept finding new ways to push himself”.
I will end things in a second. Before I do, there is a great review from Sproutology that almost defends an album that did not pick up the same raft of great reviews as other albums in their catalogue:
“The thing is that the words are every bit as deft and clever as, say, Swoon. But they swim over you in the most delicious music, as glassy surfaced and glossy as the cover art, designed to distance you from anything grungy. This is Paddy celebrating the purest pop, but with an elegance of expression that makes you catch your breath from the instant you pierce the surface and understand what he is doing.
Let me try to explain in another way. I scan Twitter for snippets most days. One aspect of that is the recurrent theme of supposed music fans posting about Prefab Sprout as a novelty band based on only having heard “King of Rock N Roll”. And thereby neatly demonstrating they know nothing about music. Most Sprout fans dismiss it as an aberration “Sad, so sad, to be known for something that so misrepresents what you are!” Even McCartney called it “your dingaling”.
But no, “King of Roll N Roll” is a great song. It was written, quickly, at a period where Paddy has explicitly stated he wanted to get away from the “clever clever student bedsit” image. He went on record (as a joke) as saying that Prefab Sprout would never write songs called “King of Rock N Roll” or “Rebel Land”. While in fact he had written both. And they’re essentially both the same subject: songs about the broken promises youth hands to you in middle age. Rebel Land: “I saw her young face on that picture/ She really had the horniest eyes/ Now they are blunted/ Blunted with living/ Living with compromise”. King of Rock ‘N’ Roll: “When she looks at me and laughs/ I remind her of the facts/ I’m the king of rock ‘n’ roll/ completely”.
Same him. Same her. Same eyes laughing at him. A mixture of pity and contempt.
And the music and chorus is as jaunty as a pre-teen dance craze, but the sentiments are in a minor key. All you remember – all the tweeters remember – is the cheesy synths. The façade masks the depth of feeling. I mean, what novelty hit starts with a vision as sweeping as “All my lazy teenage boasts/ are now high precision ghosts”? The whole song, Abba reference included, drips regret: “I am not what I was. I was never who you thought I was. This is not what I wanted to be. I am some old hippy playing music I can’t even dance to.”
That’s what “Cars and Girls” is about too, if you forget Brucie and listen to the words: “What we once thought was important, really isn’t. Everything gets complicated, the vividness diminishes, the colours fade.”. And if the point hadn’t quite got through by that point, “I Remember That” just says it out loud, unvarnished: “Cos that’s all we can have, yes it’s all we can trust. It’s a hell of a ride, but a journey to dust.” I’d be willing to bet most people just let these songs wash over them. It’s the glassy surface. It doesn’t let you in unless you scratch it.
I don’t think it’s an accident that the production duties are shared. Paddy has suggested he thinks “Steve McQueen” became Dolby’s album, however great the songs were, he’d moved past them himself. But he’d watched and learned and wanted to do a little of the next one himself, to remove himself from the shadow of the master, to not let it become some else’s piece. Who knows? But anyway”Enchanted” is for me like one of those apprentice made model locomotives you sometimes find in engineering museums: elaborately and joyously wrought, an expression of the delight of mastering a new skill. Try and fathom the baseline if you can (the bass note, deliciously, is sampled from the bass intro to “Wichita Lineman”. The key change in the middle of “Here’s something to dwell upon/Now we’re living next we’re gone/If you’ve loved please pass it on”. That theme again, and a gloss finish to rival Scritti Politti. Ain’t no Purple Rain quite like it. The past passing into the future, the changes that brings.
Side One ends with “Nightingales”. When I first had the album, that was the song that made me go back and play the side again, endlessly. Because at that point I’d discovered how great my parents’ record collection was, and I was listening to a lot of standards. “Nightingales” sounds like a standard. When sung by a really great singer, it essentially is a great standard. What I would say now is that the last verse “we are cartoon cats” sits ill with the rest of it. It sounds like it was an afterthought, and Paddy dropped the verse in some performances later. But anyway, the song is a somewhat optimistic close to the side. What keeps us busy day to day distracts us from our true nature, we are what we love, what is true to us, whatever happens, and we must never forget that, we must remind each other of it: “Tell me: ‘Do something true, true of you and me…'”. Thinking of it simply as a sweet song that evokes a standard masks the poignancy of the sentiment. Living is our song”.
I really love From Langley Park to Memphis, as it is an album I grew up listening to. The King of Rock 'n' Roll was the first song from Prefab Sprout I heard. I was instantly hooked. In Paddy McAloon – as I have said in features before – they have one of the greatest songwriters ever. If you have not got a copy of From Langley Park to Memphis already, go and get a copy and…
GIVE it a spin.