Bucketfull Of Brains
Spring, 1981 (Issue 3)
The End Of An Era -- Soft Boys R.I.P.
by Nigel Cross
Just when it seemed as if things were finally going right for them for the first time in three years, The Soft Boys have gone and called it a day. As regular readers know, they have never been able to put a foot wrong as far as I am concerned, though they've often made me question their raison d'etre: I've constantly thought that they never really knew what they wanted to be -- the new Pink Floyd, or, The Byrds, maybe? They were so frequently caught, stretched between two stools -- either throwbacks to the first psychedelic age, or pioneers of a whole new school of music (which now encompasses such talents as The Cure, The Psychedelic Furs, Echo And The Bunnymen, and The Comsat Angels). I suspect that their only real peers were Television -- Robyn Hitchcock using certain mid-1980 styles in the same way as Television did. It's not difficult to spot Hitchock's influences, as he has adopted certain ideas from his musical heroes in much the same way as Tom Verlaine used certain guitar styles (i.e. those of Barry Melton, Richard Thompson, John Cippolina, and the 1966 four-piece Byrds). Take Underwater Moonlight -- last year's best album in our biased and jaundiced opinion! A song like "Queen Of Eyes" owes so much to The Beatles' mid-period sound. God, the chorus-line "Here I am again, it's no surprise" is a direct lift from "Penny Lane"'s, "Here beneath the blue suburban skies". No big deal perhaps, but you get the drift of my meaning. Similarly, the grunting warthog rhythms of "Old Pervert" conjure up the Magic Band, whilst "Insanely Jealous", with its pumping monotone basses and squealing violins, evokes John Cale and The Velvet Underground. At recent Soft Boys gigs, the audience called out for the old hippie anthem "White Rabbit" -- and this again is no surprise. If you ever witnessed the live treatment of the "Underwater Moonlight" song, with its long atonal guitar introduction, you'd have sworn it was 1966 and you were in the Matrix in San Francisco, copping a load of the Great Society. Yet The Soft Boys were not merely retreading music of long ago: in the final analysis, I'd say they were offering an alternative to all the confusing modernists and futurist image-mongering which characterises the current Rock 'n' Roll world. Songs like "I Wanna Destroy You" proved that the band could come on with all the anger and intensity of the early Sex Pistols, whilst its lyrics showed Hitchcock unafraid of tackling contemporary issues -- in this case, the diabolical way in which the government-controlled media brainwashes every last one of us. As The Soft Boys' final single, it should have hit home in a big way.
I expect you might be wanting to know why they decided to break up. I surmise that Hitchcock -- who hired and fired personnel in much the same was as Jim McGuinn had done in The Byrds -- was just plain tired of the responsibility of keeping the group together. He recently confided that it felt like a stale marriage. And in that respect, one can only admire his wanting a fresh start. I think, too, that most audiences never fully appreciated what The Soft Boys were about. Hitchcock suggested to me that they had a potentially huge over-25-year-old auience, but that most of this auideince -- unaware of the current Rock climatre and never-present at live dates -- were quite happy to just go and buy their Marley and Dylan albums. Added to this must be the depressing reaction the group often received from audiences outside of favourite Soft haunts like the Hope And Anchor and The Moonlight Club. Last September, I accompanied them to the Leeds Futurama Festival: they deliverd a more-than-adequate set, but made little impact on the auidence. As I stood backstage later in the evening watching Hazel O'Connor's Megahype, I couldn't but muse on the way audiences are so pre-conditioned. Hazel O'Connor's picture stuck all over the country's press ensured that Megahype went down a storm whilst The Soft Boys, with no such media might, faced another 200-mile drive home. It seemed that their success on the New York and Boston club circuit the previous week was pretty much their only glimmer of hope as we whizzed back down the motorway.... It looked like their future lay very much in America.
Anyway, they're gone-but-not-forgotten. Though their passing will probably not even cause the faintest of ripples in the Rock press, their memory will live on long-and-strong in the hearts of all their fans. Thanks to Armageddon, there has been a rash of Soft Boys material over the last years, and there's the promise of more Soft Boys-related product to come. Apart from the Underwater Moonlight album which, admittedly, could have done with much fatter production, there's a single -- "I Wanna Destroy You" b/w "Old Pervert (Disco)" -- and of course the Near The Soft Boys EP (which is worth having for the B-side alone, which boasts a very faithful cover of Syd Barrett's "Vegetable Man" and the harrowing "Strange" -- a song which John Cale ought to record for a future albums, as it would suit him down to the ground (real "Gift"-type material)). There's also an endearing Heavy Pop EP from Kimberley Rew, Stomping All Over The World, the title track of which is something akin to Wreckless Eric fronting Big Star (if you can imagine that)! Hopefully, Kimberley will finally make good with his previous band, The Waves. He showed himself to be a capable leader and songwriter, whilst his guitar playing in The Soft Boys was a perfect foil for Hitchcock. He's such an agressive (yet creative) guitarist; his playing an amalgam of early Jeff Beck, Tom Verlaine, and Neil Young. His most immediate plan is to record another EP Kimberley Rew & The dBs, and he's going into the studio with Peter Holsapple at the production helm -- should be a most interesting combination.
By the time you read this, you'll most likely have heard Robyn Hitchocck's solo album, tentatively called Zinc Pear, [Ed. note -- it later appeared as Groovy Decay on Albion.] which is due on Armageddon at the end of March. There's a single -- "The Man Who Invented Himself" b/w "Dancing On God's Thumb" -- preceding this, and could well be nestling in that Beeb Fab 40 before you can say, "Tulips from Amsterdam". Coming in a nice Hitchcock-designed colour bag, the A-side -- with plodding McCartneyesque piano and Gary Barnacle sax -- is the kind of tune which Tony Blackburn or Mike Read might whistle in their sleep (while it could probably fit into any one of Jimmy Savilla's Sunday lunchtime programmes). Remember The Hollies? Remember the Easybeats? Remember Dantelion's Chariot? Remember Syd Barrett? Remember Robyn Hitchcock? Well, your mother should know. This song also opens the album, and really isn't too indicative of what's to come. On most of the tracks, Robyn plays the majority of the instruments -- though Morris Windsor or Psychedelic Fur Vince Ely provide all the drum parts. Kimberley and Matthew are also involved, as is the renegade Knox on guitar. The nearest you get to The Soft Boys is "Do Policemen Sing?", which is the final Soft Boys lineup minus-Morris-plus-Vince. Longtime fans may recall the band playing this onstage in late-1979; it's the meaner, more twisted side of The Soft Boys -- the guitars spit and grind whilst Robyn, alternating between Sol Feldthouse-type deep bass vocals and weird falsetto whine, delivers his finest set of lyrics to-date. Willie Whitelaw stretch your ears on this: "And are policemen gay?/Depends on what you mean/They are not you nor queer/But they all dig The Queen". There's a great stacatto fade-out chorus of "Our law and order's never going to break down", before the backing guitars momentarily fade in again. The LP has a breadth and variety not hinted at by previous Soft Boys releases. If you're looking for Psychedelia, then try "Acid Bird", a pulsating drums-swash with Raga guitars and nantric basses. Whew, this one will scupper you for sure. There's a throwaway satirical Country Folk song, "Give Me A Spanner, Ralph", an acoustic reworking of an early Hitchcock song once scheduled as a Soft Boys single for Radar Records. I'd like to see Telephone Bill & The Smooth Operators do this one. If you wanna get down and boogie, then knock yourself stupid to "I Watch The Cars" (but look out for the furious wah-wah guitar solo from Knox halfway through, because it'll catch you off balance otherwise). The range of material could make or break this LP. Nowadays, with audiences fragmenting in all directions, it's all-too-likely to end up pleasing nobody, which would be a tragedy, as the maestro has an ample bag of goodies here for your delectation. If nothing else, this album is a fine tribute to the late John Lennon: it abounds with little vocal steals from the guvernor! There again, that's just a quarter of the story...you'll have to get the album to find out the rest.
p.s. Robyn and Matthew are currently looking for a drummer and violinist/keyboardist/saxophonist, and may be ready in time to play the Hope And Anchor here in London in early-April.
Yowza, yowza, here come Robyn Hitchcock And The Hair Styles....
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