Twenty Albums That Changed My Life (Part 1)
Courtesy of psychochicken , here's an interesting meme: "Name 20 albums which have affected your life."
Well, clearly I could do with hundreds as opposed to 20, but as it is, this is going to take me a while. So I'll do it in two halves. I'll have to do the other 10 when I've got a few spare minutes sometime down the road!
So, with no further ado (and in roughly chronological order):
[01] Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds
If you discount the usual storybook for kids albums and the odd single, this was actually the first album I actually owned myself. It was bought for me a year or so after it was released, after I'd heard it at a friend's house and had been totally blown away. I was certainly musically aware at this point, and loved to spend weekends in front of the stereo rifling through my mum's record collection and sticking random stuff on (I got particularly fond of The Beatles' Help, and Abba's Greatest Hits Volume 2, both of which I played to near destruction) whilst busying myself with my Lego (another childhood passion, one that I've still not grown out of, truth be told). I was starting to get pocket money by this point, but was a bookworm so always spent all of my money on books - so buying music never really occurred to me. Buying new music was Something Adults Did, and I just enjoyed the results. Hearing War Of The Worlds changed all that, though - here was a hybrid of the best of the storybook albums I had enjoyed when really young and a mesmerising, film-like score to back it all up, and some beautiful songs into the bargain. I distinctly remember being given a shiny new double LP copy of the album at Easter and thinking that life just couldn't get any better. It was as if a whole new world had been opened to me, and for the first time I really found myself paying particular attention to the playing (the astonishing guitar playing particularly) and the lyrics. As I was still at primary school at this time, the story also inspired some spectacular nightmares now and again!
I still love it to this day - time was not eroded its magic, and everyone involved in the album turned in such incredible performances that even nearly 30 years later I can recite it word for word (note for note if you include my entertaining a capella renderings of the instrumental bits), even if I haven't heard it for months. It also holds the distinction of being the album I've owned the most times: whilst the original (extremely battered now) double LP edition is still in storage somewhere, I ended up buying it on tape (for convenience, once I had a walkman) and no less than three times on CD (the original CD release, the early 2000s remaster, and the recent SACD reissue).
[02] Meddle by Pink Floyd
My first Floyd album. It was a complete accident, actually: I had become aware of the Floyd in late 1979, courtesy of the Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2) single, and I had actually gone into the local record store early in 1980 to buy a copy of the song's parent album, The Wall (which would have been the first album I actually bought with my own money) but they didn't have any copies left except on cassette, and we didn't actually own a cassette player! I was so in love with Another Brick In The Wall that I refused to leave without some Floyd, and selected the album from the rack with the cover I liked best. I can't actually even remember what other Floyd they had, if indeed they had anything else at all, but Meddle was what I picked up and went home with. I liked the watery cover (having been entranced by the sea from a very early age, even if it took years for me to learn to swim!) - I didn't even realise until much later that there was an ear hidden in the sleeve art!
I got it home, and needless to say, it was a very different record indeed to what I was expecting after Another Brick In The Wall. My time listening to mum's Beatles albums and my gran's showtunes albums had prepared me well, though, and I wasn't actually fazed at all by the likes of Fearless, San Tropez and Seamus. It was the remaining three tracks that really captured my attention, though: fresh from the prog-tinged arrangements of War Of The Worlds, the epic Echoes completely stunned me - so much so that I used to drive my folks absolutely crazy by playing that side of the album over and over and over again. Echoes also inspired some cracking childhood nightmares because of that weird mid-section when Dave Gilmour creates those disquietening effects with his guitar that sound like "evil seagulls" (as I used to call that bit of the song). I was also well impressed by the cold, demonic driving force of One Of These Days; all the more impressive because it was followed by the beautiful, delicate A Pillow Of Winds (still a personal Floydy favourite). Meddle began a love affair with Floyd that was to lie dormant for a few more years, until high school arrived and with it a full-blown Floyd obsession which I shared with my friend Ian, and which has never gone away since. The Floyd were my favourite band back then, and they still are now.
[03] The Kick Inside by Kate Bush
Whilst Meddle was the first album I had bought, and War Of The Worlds was the first album I owned, the first record I had ever bought - a single - was by Kate Bush. It was her debut single, Wuthering Heights, and I still remember hearing it for the first time on Top Of The Pops. I always sat and watched Top Of The Pops with my mum - it was a ritual we both really enjoyed, even if most of it went over my head until I was a bit older. We both still remember Wuthering Heights as the first song I actually enjoyed so much that I sang along to it - something my mum probably still thinks was cute, though given my complete lack of vocal talent and the high pitch of the song, I suspect it was like listening to nails down a chalkboard every week for a month or two, as the single conquered the airwaves and the public's imagination.
Kate didn't rest on her laurels, though, and although her next couple of singles (The Man With The Child In His Eyes and Hammer Horror, which followed much later the same year) didn't quite recpature the same magic as Wuthering Heights did, I did still really enjoy them both, and so started a long-term love affair with "Crazy Katie" as we used to refer to her at the time. It was evident to me even then that Kate wasn't reading off the same hymn sheet as everyone else, and I loved the fact that she always sounded so different from one song to the next. So, fresh from my tussle with Meddle in early 1980, I turned my attention to "Crazy Katie" again and picked up a copy of her debut album, The Kick Inside. It didn't disappoint, because as with the singles, Kate changed persona with every song, all of them like a different short film with a completely different feel. The occasional erotically-charged lyric (I need a good lie down these days after hearing Feel It, or L'Amour Looks Something Like You!) went right over my head - I was 8 and still barely aware of girls at all except as an annoyance - but looking back I can only wonder if my mum heard/read those lyrics and wondered if this was what her little boy should be listening to!
I never stopped loving Kate Bush and her music - I'm still fascinated by how uncoventional her music is to this day, and know every song - even the B-sides! - by heart. Unfortunately Steen really dislikes her voice, so I tend to keep my Kate Bush listening for those times when cranking it up won't offend my beloved!
[04] Real To Reel by Marillion
Ah, the album responsible for kick-starting that pesky Marillion obsession! By 1984, I was becoming a lot more active in seeking out new music, so much so that I was a regular listener to Alan 'Fluff' Freeman's Saturday Rock Show on Radio 1, which I used to listen to when everyone was in bed, my little transistor radio first under my pillow, then with my headphones on when I got a cheap pair one Christmas. I remember tuning in one weekend and being absolutely fascinated by a live recording from the recently released Real To Reel. It had a swirling Arabian-style intro and a thundering drum part which was like nothing else I'd heard before. The vocalist also caught my ear: his part-falsetto, part-barked vocal wasn't like the typical rock fare I'd heard at all. The lyrics were really complex and wordy, but full of imagery, and they captured my imagination straight away. This was before I had a tape deck and could record the show, so the only way I would get to hear that magical song again was to go out and buy the album. I was so impressed that I actually got out of bed at nearly 2 in the morning to write down the band's name - Marillion - so I could take it to the record store the following Monday and ask about them.
Monday arrived, and I was soon leaving the store with an LP picture disc (the first picture disc I ever bought!) of the band's new live album, Real To Reel. Upon getting it home I discovered two things: that the magical song in question was called Assassing, and that I had finally discovered a band that my mum really did not care for at all. She didn't care for the aggressive tone of the songs and decided - like many at the time, it has to be said - that the band fell into the category of 'Heavy Metal', something which carried a real stigma at the time: this was shortly after the controversies in America, the formation of the PMRC etc, which had made the news over here. Real To Reel was relegated to being played rather more occasionally than I cared for, though the little inter-familial controversy garnered me some "cool points" at school: probably the only time anything related to Marillion was in any way cool!
As most of the people reading this will know, my fondness for Marillion didn't end there: they're probably still right up there with Pink Floyd and The Church as my 'holy trinity', and my zeal for the band eventually led to me writing for (and then working for!) the band's UK-based fan club from 1999-2005. I've met more like-minded friends via a shared love of Marillion's music than I have through anything else I've done in my life, and have visited several other countries to see them. Other bands may mean more or equally as much to me purely in terms of their music, but in terms of changing my life, Marillion were, are, and likely always will be numero uno.
[05] Invisible Touch by Genesis
It was the hot summer of 1987 when I was properly introduced to the wonders of Genesis. I'd heard the odd bit of Genesis - typically Follow You, Follow Me, Misunderstanding and/or Turn it On Again - now and again either on the radio or on Top of The Pops, but although I remember quite liking some of it, nothing really grabbed me to the point where I wanted to go away and listen to a whole lot more of it. I had been dimly aware that they'd released a new album the previous year, and had heard a couple of singles from it which fell into roughly the same category as the earlier stuff: nice, but nothing extraordinary. However, all this changed when, thanks to 'Fluff' Freeman's Saturday Rock Show once again, I heard the full (i.e. unedited) version of Tonight, Tonight, Tonight one weekend on the radio. I was absolutely gobsmacked at how much more powerful and atmospheric the song was, and it piqued my interest. Happily for me, this coincided with Radio 1 broadcasting the last night of the band's extensive world tour from Wembley Stadium. My friend Ian and I both plotted to tape the performance: he at his home, and I at my mate Alan's where I was already supposed to be spending the weekend in question. Unhappily I didn't have much joy: Alan's tape deck was malfunctioning, and after a couple of false starts, we gave it up as a bad job and just listened to the show, cranked as high as we could get away with. From the first couple of minutes of the opener, Mama, I remember thinking, "Wow, this is just incredible... I really hope Ian has managed to tape it!"
Happily, Ian had accomplished what I could not, and by the middle of the following week, I had a copy of the show, which I listened to obsessively - and pretty much exclusively - for a month or more. Ian was blown away as well - so much so that he went out and bought a tape of the band's latest offering, Invisible Touch, which we must have spent days listening to, over and over again. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight was not the only highlight: there was also the behemoth Domino, as well as a lyrical instrumental in the form of The Brazilian, punchy pop/rock hybrids like Land of Confusion and Invisible Touch, and pretty balladry like Throwing It All Away and In Too Deep - although admittedly we thought they were distinctly second-rate compared with the rest of the album at the time. It's only with the benefit of hindsight that I can appreciate just how great Throwing It All Away is, lyrically and vocally in particular.
Consequently, although within weeks of that show, Ian and I had pretty much the whole Genesis back catalogue between us (there were a few weekends of busy tape dubbing whilst we completed our respective collections, let me tell you), Invisible Touch has always been a sentimental favourite and the entry point into a variety of other acts from the lighter end of the prog spectrum. It also reminded me that there's nothing wrong with a good pop song, if it's well-written and well-performed.
[06] Cities In Concert by Jean Michel Jarre
Jarre was another join Ian/Dave discovery. It must have been around the same time as the Genesis incident, possibly even slightly before, because it happened in 1987 as well. Ian's older brother Andrew was away at university at the time, and when he popped home to visit, he invariably brought cassettes home for his little brother to listen to. I have to hand it to Andrew - if it wasn't for him, it might have been a lot longer before Ian and I got into all sorts of stuff: Hawkwind for one, Gong for another, the early Floyd stuff (none of which I'd heard a note of until Ian produced a bootleg tape of Relics, which absolutely blew us away and re-kickstarted that Floyd obsession I'd begun to develop a few years earlier)... and Jean Michel Jarre.
Our first exposure to Jarre was his as-then newly released live album, Cities In Concert. Andrew had scribbled the tracklisting down rather hurriedly, and because we were unfamiliar with Jarre's music, we assumed the epic piece that opened side one of the tape - the track that made us both fall hard for Jarre's material - was Oxygene Part 5. What we didn't realise was that the brief intro music used was an excerpt from Oxygene 5 and what we thought was that song was actually Ethnicolor, from Jarre's under-appreciated gem, Zoolook. I remember hearing that live take of Ethnicolorfor the first time as though it were yesterday - even years of regular play has not dimmed its magic one iota. I still get chills when I hear the opening bars of it even now. It changed the way I looked at music; it broke all the rules. Here was classical music, experimental electronic music and rock/funk all jammed up together to produce something entirely unique. Neither of us were exactly acolytes in terms of the music we listened to and obsessed about: in fact I would say we were pretty well-versed for our age (15/16 at this time) about the various genres music fell into and in terms of the distinctly non-commercial type of stuff we were listening to. But this was something entirely new. We listened through the whole of Cities In Concert, which was a string of highlights in itself, but we kept returning to that opening track - we couldn't get it out of our heads.
I tapped up another friend, Greg, whose folks had a couple of Jarre albums - one of which was Oxygene (which we still assumed that first track came from). I asked Greg to dub me off tape copies of the albums, which turned out to be Oxygene, Magnetic Fields and Rendez-vous. Of course, he negected to write down the track listings, and the copies themselves were rather piecemeal (Greg, fabulously intelligent and famously unable to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes - I loved him like a brother - had clearly not had his mind on the job, as tracks stopped and started at random, had occasional breaks in them, or were in the wrong order as he recorded side 2 before side 1, etc)... but it was enough to tell me and Ian that the track we loved wasn't on any of the albums. We did, however, recognise the intro music from the live album when we listened back to Oxygene, and the mystery was solved. A week later, I had a tape copy of Zoolook, which Ian subsequently copied. I'm not sure about Ian, but I think I'd be right in saying that to this day, Zoolook remains a favourite with us both, and the opening track, Ethnicolor, in particular.
I don't remember us being quite so obsessive about any other artist, with the exception of Floyd, as Ian and I were about Jarre. We had his entire catalogue together in no time, and shortly after beginning my career as an itinerant gig-goer, we both went to see Jarre's enormous show at London Docklands the following year. For myself, I've seen the mad French genius several times since, even travelling to France for a day in 1990 to see the record-breaking outdoor show Jarre performed at La Defense in Paris, which remains one of the most astonishing shows I've ever seen. Musically it was fabulous, and visually nothing I've seen since can quite compare - even Floyd's extraordinary shows in 1994 struggle to compete against Jarre's enormous and extravagant outdoor spectacular.
I'll always have a massive soft-spot for Cities In Concert, which - although nowhere near my favourite Jarre album - introduced me to Jarre, and electronic music, so memorably. It also led to my first trip overseas (the aforementioned French excursion) and a number of other incidents that I'll always remember fondly. From the opening chatter of the news crews, to the tolling of Lyon's bells and the Pope wishing everyone a "Bon nuit!", Cities In Concert is a great snapshot of Jarre at his most fearlessly inventive, not to mention his commercial peak - you should give it a try, if you haven't already.
[07] Powerslave by Iron Maiden
Or, the album that finally got me into metal. I had always loved the dark imagery and equally dark subject matter of metal, but too much of it seemed formulaic, in that typically 80s sense that much of what we were later to call metal was just beered-up brainless hard rock - alright as a bit of fun, but hardly deserving of repeated plays. There was also the vague sense that fare like Motley Crue and Def Leppard et al just seemed to be music for boozed-up jocks - I was always a thoughtful, quiet bloke, even back then, and it all seemed pointless and aimed at an audience that was nothing like me.
I had a metal-obsessed friend at school, though, in the shape of Nick, who went to great lengths to explain to me what he saw in metal and specifically in his favourite bands of the genre, of which Maiden were one. I was actually a little surprised to see that none of the bands I had envisaged as typical metal were in his collection, which fell very much into the darker, more thoughtful side of the genre, with bands like Maiden, Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth. I had actually given Maiden a try earlier that year when Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son had come out, but at that stage I still didn't get it. Indeed, try as Nick might, the best he got from me was a noncommital shrug and a "Yeah, I guess it's not as one-dimensional as I thought."
This was until I saw a documentary on the TV one week. It was about the metal scene and the controversy it had stirred up in the US, the formation of the PMRC and various people's thoughts on metal as a genre. I was captivated by the whole thing, really, and it definitely lit a fire under me to check metal out more seriously - but what really got my attention was the footage of Iron Maiden performing Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, taken from the Live After Death video/DVD. Here was metal approached like progressive rock, with actual light and shade and a narrative that never mentioned groupies once.
I asked Nick about the track - I wasn't even sure of the title, so I just quoted some of the lyrics to him, and he told me what it was and where it could be found... So after school one day that week, I nipped into the local record store (Complete Discery, you are sorely missed) and picked up a cassette of Powerslave, which I listened to several times that evening. It was a revelation: it has the dark subject matter that intrigued me, some great playing (the instrumental breakdown in the title track in particular still leaves me gaping in awe even today), and some tremendously inventive arrangements. It sparked a love affair with Maiden which persists to this day, and was the album that introduced me properly to metal as a genre - in fact for a few years whilst I was at Technical College, I think it would have been accurate to describe me as an outright metalhead, albeit one that liked to listen to Clannad to chill out. There are quite literally hundreds of CDs and gigs I wouldn't have seen/heard, where it not for Powerslave and that TV documentary. Not to mention all the long evenings spent poring over metal album sleeves and endlessly copying music over at Nick's attic hideout!
[08] All About Eve by All About Eve
One Saturday morning in 1987, I was aimlessly watching TV whilst poring over some dull homework when I heard a song that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a song called In The Clouds by All About Eve, and it was so instantly memorable and so joyous that it stuck in my brain like a dart in a dartboard. The following Monday I went straight to the record store and bought the single, which was played to near destruction.
It wasn't long before another single appeared, in the shape of Wild Hearted Woman - and that was it, I was totally sold: especially after buying the single and enjoying the B-sides every bit as much as the actual single itself. At this point, the band's self-titled debut album appeared, and - my beloved Floyd aside - I had a new favourite band.
All About Eve is still such a beautiful record. It's got it all. It had jump-up-and-down rock with big riffs and memorable lyrics, it had gentle pastoral whimsy, it had slightly unsettling, slightly gothic tracks like Never Promise (Anyone Forever) and In The Meadow... and the icing on the cake were the gorgeous vocals of vocalist Julianne Regan, a regular siren with a voice that could melt the stoniest of hearts. There wasn't a single second of the album that was less than perfect to my mind - and I still think that. The sole cover on the album remains possibly the finest cover version I've ever heard, an effortlessly beautiful reading of the traditional folk song She Moved Through The Fair which raises the neck hair with ease even now.
Although they were my favourite band at the time - and they're still one of my great favourites now, several years after they essentially ceased to be - I had no idea they'd have such an enormous impact on my life. All About Eve were the first band I went to see in concert, firstly at a local gig with a friend, then before 1987 was out, I'd have seen them again in London and Birmingham - I'd never even been to the latter before. I went on to see All About Eve well over 100 times before they called it a day in 2004. I count later records like Touched By Jesus and Ultraviolet among my desert island discs. Julianne is still my favourite female vocalist. I made a lot of very good friends via my love of the band. And if all that wasn't enough, I even ended up co-creating and editing their official fan magazine, Ink & Second Sight, for four glorious years. Despite the occasional tumultuous line-up changes, I remember those times with nothing but total pleasure - they were some of the happiest days of my life.
[09] Magical Ring by Clannad
The album that made me realise folk music was more than just "hey nonny nonny" in a Blackadder-stylee. Even though I never remember seeing any of the TV show Harry's Game, I do clearly remember the fuss made about the show's theme music (called, logically enough, Theme From Harry's Game). I can clearly recall hearing it for the first time and being completely bowled over by how evocative and atmospheric it was, even though I couldn't really make out any words. The massed, blended harmony vocals made it feel almost like choir music, but there was a definite vibe to it that made me think of wide open spaces, not church music. I was fascinated, but as I wasn't aware that Clannad was responsible, I just put it down as really nice title music and didn't dwell on it any further.
Until, that is, one year - it must have been around 1988 or 1989 - when I was on holiday in Cornwall with my folks. We went to Land's End, which - a bit of a tourist trap though it was - always impressed me. Something about those cliffs, with the sea far below... and we always used to stay virtually the whole day, so the sun was often setting when we set out back to Penzance (invariably where we stayed when we went down to Cornwall). It was beautiful, even if it was thronged with people. Anyway, I remember digging through the CDs and tapes in the gift shop (since I was well and truly music-obsessed by this point and went through my pocket money and meagre savings like a cat through butter) and picking up a tape that had a very pretty photo of a stone circle on the front. Idly I flipped it over, only for the words Theme From Harry's Game to catch my eye...
Well, you can guess what happened next. And as I lay in bed that night, listening to the album on my Walkman, it was quickly evident to me that there was a lot more to Clannad than this magical TV theme tune which had lingered in my memory for years. Songs like Tower Hill, Passing Time, Ta Me Mo Shui (further evidence that whilst I couldn't understand a word of Gaelic, it nevertheless made for some stunningly beautiful songs) and the haunting Newgrange became instant favourites, and to this day I still closely identify Clannad with Cornwall, and always take a bunch of Clannad with me if I'm heading in that direction.
[10] Gold Afternoon Fix by The Church
It was late 1990, and I had just started going to Worcester Technical College, where I had enrolled on a BTEC Computer Studies course. I enjoyed my new-found freedom: we were free to come and go as we chose when we weren't in lessons, so needless to say most of us tended to gravitate towards certain places. I could invariably be found in Worcester's finest record store, Magpie Records. Magpie was a veritable cornucopia of independant label releases and non-mainstream stuff: I remember buying vast quantities of Rush, Hawkwind, Gong and Camel there. And it was Magpie that was to enable me to get into The Church.
A few months earlier, I had been listening to the radio late into the morning as I often did. I was a borderline obsessive radio listener at the time. Every night, after everyone had gone to sleep, I used to plug my headphones into my hi-fi and run the cable back to my bed, where I used to listen to late-night radio until I passed out. One night, I was half-listening to a radio show in the wee small hours when a song came on that wasn't quite like anything I'd ever heard before. It had a New Wave-y stomp to it, but a gorgeous lilting guitar line that stuck in my mind like freshly-chewed gum, and truly off-the-wall lyrics that, somehow, made perfect sense to me in my woozy state of head. About halfway through, I realised I was listening to something that I would have to track down. "And that was The Church, from their most recent album, called Metropolis", said the DJ. Oh my...
So I was straight off to Magpie Records the next day, where I was indeed lucky enough to find a copy of Metropolis - I say lucky, because this was October, and the single had come out months beforehand. Magpie Records was like that, though - you dug around long enough, you were pretty guaranteed to find something amazing for your ears to appreciate. I took it home. Metropolis was as good as I remembered it, effortlessly seizing my brain and shaking it like a pair of maracas. Monday Morning and Much Too Much were on the CD as well, and lo, they were both great too, albeit in totally different ways. Hey, a band who could do different things and do them all well?
I was hooked. The next day, I dug around in Magpie's racks until I happened across the motherlode: a copy of Gold Afternoon Fix. I bought it without even thinking about it, and - o fickle youth - I actually left at lunchtime and caught an early train home so I'd have longer to listen to it properly. Perhaps it was because it was the first Church album I'd heard, but I soaked it up like a sponge, and I've always loved it ever since. Sure, there are flaws: Richard Ploog's drums being largely replaced by machinery or being pieced together bar-by-bar does strip some of the songs of the amount of energy and 'flow' that I heard later on some of their other work. Yes, the production wasn't quite as good as it could have been, though it wasn't at all an embarrassment.
Beyond those quibbles, I couldn't (and still can't) hear a thing wrong with it. There's not a single track I couldn't listen to right now and not think is great. If pushed, I'd say Laughing and City are my least favourite two tracks, but even they're fine songs, at least to me. That first time through, I was absolutely transfixed. Pretty much all the other songs are favourites to this day, but I have particular soft spots for Pharoah (what an intro!), Metropolis (for obvious reasons), Terra Nova Cain (the point where I started to really appreciate Steve Kilbey's way with words), Russian Autumn Heart, Essence, Transient, and possibly best of all, Disappointment, which was anything but. The second that track started, I felt sure I was going to dislike it because of the percussion track - it just felt like they were trying to do something I didn't they could pull off, but they certainly made me rethink that pretty sharpish.
Within a week, I'd picked up Heyday and Starfish (in that order), and I never looked back. Over time, The Church have become second only to Pink Floyd in my affections, really: I regularly put them on a par with Marillion. Incredibly, their work only seems to have improved, and they're still one of the best live acts I've ever seen - they rarely tour the UK, but when they do, wild horses can't drag me away. A side benefit of getting into The Church was the wealth of side and solo projects the band's members have undertaken, all of which are also fantastic - they make Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree fame look decidedly unprolific. So it's been very expensive, but in terms of making an impact on me, very few bands have come close to The Church and their special brand of off-kilter, truly inventive and unique rock music.
Well, clearly I could do with hundreds as opposed to 20, but as it is, this is going to take me a while. So I'll do it in two halves. I'll have to do the other 10 when I've got a few spare minutes sometime down the road!
So, with no further ado (and in roughly chronological order):
[01] Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds
If you discount the usual storybook for kids albums and the odd single, this was actually the first album I actually owned myself. It was bought for me a year or so after it was released, after I'd heard it at a friend's house and had been totally blown away. I was certainly musically aware at this point, and loved to spend weekends in front of the stereo rifling through my mum's record collection and sticking random stuff on (I got particularly fond of The Beatles' Help, and Abba's Greatest Hits Volume 2, both of which I played to near destruction) whilst busying myself with my Lego (another childhood passion, one that I've still not grown out of, truth be told). I was starting to get pocket money by this point, but was a bookworm so always spent all of my money on books - so buying music never really occurred to me. Buying new music was Something Adults Did, and I just enjoyed the results. Hearing War Of The Worlds changed all that, though - here was a hybrid of the best of the storybook albums I had enjoyed when really young and a mesmerising, film-like score to back it all up, and some beautiful songs into the bargain. I distinctly remember being given a shiny new double LP copy of the album at Easter and thinking that life just couldn't get any better. It was as if a whole new world had been opened to me, and for the first time I really found myself paying particular attention to the playing (the astonishing guitar playing particularly) and the lyrics. As I was still at primary school at this time, the story also inspired some spectacular nightmares now and again!
I still love it to this day - time was not eroded its magic, and everyone involved in the album turned in such incredible performances that even nearly 30 years later I can recite it word for word (note for note if you include my entertaining a capella renderings of the instrumental bits), even if I haven't heard it for months. It also holds the distinction of being the album I've owned the most times: whilst the original (extremely battered now) double LP edition is still in storage somewhere, I ended up buying it on tape (for convenience, once I had a walkman) and no less than three times on CD (the original CD release, the early 2000s remaster, and the recent SACD reissue).
[02] Meddle by Pink Floyd
My first Floyd album. It was a complete accident, actually: I had become aware of the Floyd in late 1979, courtesy of the Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2) single, and I had actually gone into the local record store early in 1980 to buy a copy of the song's parent album, The Wall (which would have been the first album I actually bought with my own money) but they didn't have any copies left except on cassette, and we didn't actually own a cassette player! I was so in love with Another Brick In The Wall that I refused to leave without some Floyd, and selected the album from the rack with the cover I liked best. I can't actually even remember what other Floyd they had, if indeed they had anything else at all, but Meddle was what I picked up and went home with. I liked the watery cover (having been entranced by the sea from a very early age, even if it took years for me to learn to swim!) - I didn't even realise until much later that there was an ear hidden in the sleeve art!
I got it home, and needless to say, it was a very different record indeed to what I was expecting after Another Brick In The Wall. My time listening to mum's Beatles albums and my gran's showtunes albums had prepared me well, though, and I wasn't actually fazed at all by the likes of Fearless, San Tropez and Seamus. It was the remaining three tracks that really captured my attention, though: fresh from the prog-tinged arrangements of War Of The Worlds, the epic Echoes completely stunned me - so much so that I used to drive my folks absolutely crazy by playing that side of the album over and over and over again. Echoes also inspired some cracking childhood nightmares because of that weird mid-section when Dave Gilmour creates those disquietening effects with his guitar that sound like "evil seagulls" (as I used to call that bit of the song). I was also well impressed by the cold, demonic driving force of One Of These Days; all the more impressive because it was followed by the beautiful, delicate A Pillow Of Winds (still a personal Floydy favourite). Meddle began a love affair with Floyd that was to lie dormant for a few more years, until high school arrived and with it a full-blown Floyd obsession which I shared with my friend Ian, and which has never gone away since. The Floyd were my favourite band back then, and they still are now.
[03] The Kick Inside by Kate Bush
Whilst Meddle was the first album I had bought, and War Of The Worlds was the first album I owned, the first record I had ever bought - a single - was by Kate Bush. It was her debut single, Wuthering Heights, and I still remember hearing it for the first time on Top Of The Pops. I always sat and watched Top Of The Pops with my mum - it was a ritual we both really enjoyed, even if most of it went over my head until I was a bit older. We both still remember Wuthering Heights as the first song I actually enjoyed so much that I sang along to it - something my mum probably still thinks was cute, though given my complete lack of vocal talent and the high pitch of the song, I suspect it was like listening to nails down a chalkboard every week for a month or two, as the single conquered the airwaves and the public's imagination.
Kate didn't rest on her laurels, though, and although her next couple of singles (The Man With The Child In His Eyes and Hammer Horror, which followed much later the same year) didn't quite recpature the same magic as Wuthering Heights did, I did still really enjoy them both, and so started a long-term love affair with "Crazy Katie" as we used to refer to her at the time. It was evident to me even then that Kate wasn't reading off the same hymn sheet as everyone else, and I loved the fact that she always sounded so different from one song to the next. So, fresh from my tussle with Meddle in early 1980, I turned my attention to "Crazy Katie" again and picked up a copy of her debut album, The Kick Inside. It didn't disappoint, because as with the singles, Kate changed persona with every song, all of them like a different short film with a completely different feel. The occasional erotically-charged lyric (I need a good lie down these days after hearing Feel It, or L'Amour Looks Something Like You!) went right over my head - I was 8 and still barely aware of girls at all except as an annoyance - but looking back I can only wonder if my mum heard/read those lyrics and wondered if this was what her little boy should be listening to!
I never stopped loving Kate Bush and her music - I'm still fascinated by how uncoventional her music is to this day, and know every song - even the B-sides! - by heart. Unfortunately Steen really dislikes her voice, so I tend to keep my Kate Bush listening for those times when cranking it up won't offend my beloved!
[04] Real To Reel by Marillion
Ah, the album responsible for kick-starting that pesky Marillion obsession! By 1984, I was becoming a lot more active in seeking out new music, so much so that I was a regular listener to Alan 'Fluff' Freeman's Saturday Rock Show on Radio 1, which I used to listen to when everyone was in bed, my little transistor radio first under my pillow, then with my headphones on when I got a cheap pair one Christmas. I remember tuning in one weekend and being absolutely fascinated by a live recording from the recently released Real To Reel. It had a swirling Arabian-style intro and a thundering drum part which was like nothing else I'd heard before. The vocalist also caught my ear: his part-falsetto, part-barked vocal wasn't like the typical rock fare I'd heard at all. The lyrics were really complex and wordy, but full of imagery, and they captured my imagination straight away. This was before I had a tape deck and could record the show, so the only way I would get to hear that magical song again was to go out and buy the album. I was so impressed that I actually got out of bed at nearly 2 in the morning to write down the band's name - Marillion - so I could take it to the record store the following Monday and ask about them.
Monday arrived, and I was soon leaving the store with an LP picture disc (the first picture disc I ever bought!) of the band's new live album, Real To Reel. Upon getting it home I discovered two things: that the magical song in question was called Assassing, and that I had finally discovered a band that my mum really did not care for at all. She didn't care for the aggressive tone of the songs and decided - like many at the time, it has to be said - that the band fell into the category of 'Heavy Metal', something which carried a real stigma at the time: this was shortly after the controversies in America, the formation of the PMRC etc, which had made the news over here. Real To Reel was relegated to being played rather more occasionally than I cared for, though the little inter-familial controversy garnered me some "cool points" at school: probably the only time anything related to Marillion was in any way cool!
As most of the people reading this will know, my fondness for Marillion didn't end there: they're probably still right up there with Pink Floyd and The Church as my 'holy trinity', and my zeal for the band eventually led to me writing for (and then working for!) the band's UK-based fan club from 1999-2005. I've met more like-minded friends via a shared love of Marillion's music than I have through anything else I've done in my life, and have visited several other countries to see them. Other bands may mean more or equally as much to me purely in terms of their music, but in terms of changing my life, Marillion were, are, and likely always will be numero uno.
[05] Invisible Touch by Genesis
It was the hot summer of 1987 when I was properly introduced to the wonders of Genesis. I'd heard the odd bit of Genesis - typically Follow You, Follow Me, Misunderstanding and/or Turn it On Again - now and again either on the radio or on Top of The Pops, but although I remember quite liking some of it, nothing really grabbed me to the point where I wanted to go away and listen to a whole lot more of it. I had been dimly aware that they'd released a new album the previous year, and had heard a couple of singles from it which fell into roughly the same category as the earlier stuff: nice, but nothing extraordinary. However, all this changed when, thanks to 'Fluff' Freeman's Saturday Rock Show once again, I heard the full (i.e. unedited) version of Tonight, Tonight, Tonight one weekend on the radio. I was absolutely gobsmacked at how much more powerful and atmospheric the song was, and it piqued my interest. Happily for me, this coincided with Radio 1 broadcasting the last night of the band's extensive world tour from Wembley Stadium. My friend Ian and I both plotted to tape the performance: he at his home, and I at my mate Alan's where I was already supposed to be spending the weekend in question. Unhappily I didn't have much joy: Alan's tape deck was malfunctioning, and after a couple of false starts, we gave it up as a bad job and just listened to the show, cranked as high as we could get away with. From the first couple of minutes of the opener, Mama, I remember thinking, "Wow, this is just incredible... I really hope Ian has managed to tape it!"
Happily, Ian had accomplished what I could not, and by the middle of the following week, I had a copy of the show, which I listened to obsessively - and pretty much exclusively - for a month or more. Ian was blown away as well - so much so that he went out and bought a tape of the band's latest offering, Invisible Touch, which we must have spent days listening to, over and over again. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight was not the only highlight: there was also the behemoth Domino, as well as a lyrical instrumental in the form of The Brazilian, punchy pop/rock hybrids like Land of Confusion and Invisible Touch, and pretty balladry like Throwing It All Away and In Too Deep - although admittedly we thought they were distinctly second-rate compared with the rest of the album at the time. It's only with the benefit of hindsight that I can appreciate just how great Throwing It All Away is, lyrically and vocally in particular.
Consequently, although within weeks of that show, Ian and I had pretty much the whole Genesis back catalogue between us (there were a few weekends of busy tape dubbing whilst we completed our respective collections, let me tell you), Invisible Touch has always been a sentimental favourite and the entry point into a variety of other acts from the lighter end of the prog spectrum. It also reminded me that there's nothing wrong with a good pop song, if it's well-written and well-performed.
[06] Cities In Concert by Jean Michel Jarre
Jarre was another join Ian/Dave discovery. It must have been around the same time as the Genesis incident, possibly even slightly before, because it happened in 1987 as well. Ian's older brother Andrew was away at university at the time, and when he popped home to visit, he invariably brought cassettes home for his little brother to listen to. I have to hand it to Andrew - if it wasn't for him, it might have been a lot longer before Ian and I got into all sorts of stuff: Hawkwind for one, Gong for another, the early Floyd stuff (none of which I'd heard a note of until Ian produced a bootleg tape of Relics, which absolutely blew us away and re-kickstarted that Floyd obsession I'd begun to develop a few years earlier)... and Jean Michel Jarre.
Our first exposure to Jarre was his as-then newly released live album, Cities In Concert. Andrew had scribbled the tracklisting down rather hurriedly, and because we were unfamiliar with Jarre's music, we assumed the epic piece that opened side one of the tape - the track that made us both fall hard for Jarre's material - was Oxygene Part 5. What we didn't realise was that the brief intro music used was an excerpt from Oxygene 5 and what we thought was that song was actually Ethnicolor, from Jarre's under-appreciated gem, Zoolook. I remember hearing that live take of Ethnicolorfor the first time as though it were yesterday - even years of regular play has not dimmed its magic one iota. I still get chills when I hear the opening bars of it even now. It changed the way I looked at music; it broke all the rules. Here was classical music, experimental electronic music and rock/funk all jammed up together to produce something entirely unique. Neither of us were exactly acolytes in terms of the music we listened to and obsessed about: in fact I would say we were pretty well-versed for our age (15/16 at this time) about the various genres music fell into and in terms of the distinctly non-commercial type of stuff we were listening to. But this was something entirely new. We listened through the whole of Cities In Concert, which was a string of highlights in itself, but we kept returning to that opening track - we couldn't get it out of our heads.
I tapped up another friend, Greg, whose folks had a couple of Jarre albums - one of which was Oxygene (which we still assumed that first track came from). I asked Greg to dub me off tape copies of the albums, which turned out to be Oxygene, Magnetic Fields and Rendez-vous. Of course, he negected to write down the track listings, and the copies themselves were rather piecemeal (Greg, fabulously intelligent and famously unable to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes - I loved him like a brother - had clearly not had his mind on the job, as tracks stopped and started at random, had occasional breaks in them, or were in the wrong order as he recorded side 2 before side 1, etc)... but it was enough to tell me and Ian that the track we loved wasn't on any of the albums. We did, however, recognise the intro music from the live album when we listened back to Oxygene, and the mystery was solved. A week later, I had a tape copy of Zoolook, which Ian subsequently copied. I'm not sure about Ian, but I think I'd be right in saying that to this day, Zoolook remains a favourite with us both, and the opening track, Ethnicolor, in particular.
I don't remember us being quite so obsessive about any other artist, with the exception of Floyd, as Ian and I were about Jarre. We had his entire catalogue together in no time, and shortly after beginning my career as an itinerant gig-goer, we both went to see Jarre's enormous show at London Docklands the following year. For myself, I've seen the mad French genius several times since, even travelling to France for a day in 1990 to see the record-breaking outdoor show Jarre performed at La Defense in Paris, which remains one of the most astonishing shows I've ever seen. Musically it was fabulous, and visually nothing I've seen since can quite compare - even Floyd's extraordinary shows in 1994 struggle to compete against Jarre's enormous and extravagant outdoor spectacular.
I'll always have a massive soft-spot for Cities In Concert, which - although nowhere near my favourite Jarre album - introduced me to Jarre, and electronic music, so memorably. It also led to my first trip overseas (the aforementioned French excursion) and a number of other incidents that I'll always remember fondly. From the opening chatter of the news crews, to the tolling of Lyon's bells and the Pope wishing everyone a "Bon nuit!", Cities In Concert is a great snapshot of Jarre at his most fearlessly inventive, not to mention his commercial peak - you should give it a try, if you haven't already.
[07] Powerslave by Iron Maiden
Or, the album that finally got me into metal. I had always loved the dark imagery and equally dark subject matter of metal, but too much of it seemed formulaic, in that typically 80s sense that much of what we were later to call metal was just beered-up brainless hard rock - alright as a bit of fun, but hardly deserving of repeated plays. There was also the vague sense that fare like Motley Crue and Def Leppard et al just seemed to be music for boozed-up jocks - I was always a thoughtful, quiet bloke, even back then, and it all seemed pointless and aimed at an audience that was nothing like me.
I had a metal-obsessed friend at school, though, in the shape of Nick, who went to great lengths to explain to me what he saw in metal and specifically in his favourite bands of the genre, of which Maiden were one. I was actually a little surprised to see that none of the bands I had envisaged as typical metal were in his collection, which fell very much into the darker, more thoughtful side of the genre, with bands like Maiden, Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth. I had actually given Maiden a try earlier that year when Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son had come out, but at that stage I still didn't get it. Indeed, try as Nick might, the best he got from me was a noncommital shrug and a "Yeah, I guess it's not as one-dimensional as I thought."
This was until I saw a documentary on the TV one week. It was about the metal scene and the controversy it had stirred up in the US, the formation of the PMRC and various people's thoughts on metal as a genre. I was captivated by the whole thing, really, and it definitely lit a fire under me to check metal out more seriously - but what really got my attention was the footage of Iron Maiden performing Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, taken from the Live After Death video/DVD. Here was metal approached like progressive rock, with actual light and shade and a narrative that never mentioned groupies once.
I asked Nick about the track - I wasn't even sure of the title, so I just quoted some of the lyrics to him, and he told me what it was and where it could be found... So after school one day that week, I nipped into the local record store (Complete Discery, you are sorely missed) and picked up a cassette of Powerslave, which I listened to several times that evening. It was a revelation: it has the dark subject matter that intrigued me, some great playing (the instrumental breakdown in the title track in particular still leaves me gaping in awe even today), and some tremendously inventive arrangements. It sparked a love affair with Maiden which persists to this day, and was the album that introduced me properly to metal as a genre - in fact for a few years whilst I was at Technical College, I think it would have been accurate to describe me as an outright metalhead, albeit one that liked to listen to Clannad to chill out. There are quite literally hundreds of CDs and gigs I wouldn't have seen/heard, where it not for Powerslave and that TV documentary. Not to mention all the long evenings spent poring over metal album sleeves and endlessly copying music over at Nick's attic hideout!
[08] All About Eve by All About Eve
One Saturday morning in 1987, I was aimlessly watching TV whilst poring over some dull homework when I heard a song that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a song called In The Clouds by All About Eve, and it was so instantly memorable and so joyous that it stuck in my brain like a dart in a dartboard. The following Monday I went straight to the record store and bought the single, which was played to near destruction.
It wasn't long before another single appeared, in the shape of Wild Hearted Woman - and that was it, I was totally sold: especially after buying the single and enjoying the B-sides every bit as much as the actual single itself. At this point, the band's self-titled debut album appeared, and - my beloved Floyd aside - I had a new favourite band.
All About Eve is still such a beautiful record. It's got it all. It had jump-up-and-down rock with big riffs and memorable lyrics, it had gentle pastoral whimsy, it had slightly unsettling, slightly gothic tracks like Never Promise (Anyone Forever) and In The Meadow... and the icing on the cake were the gorgeous vocals of vocalist Julianne Regan, a regular siren with a voice that could melt the stoniest of hearts. There wasn't a single second of the album that was less than perfect to my mind - and I still think that. The sole cover on the album remains possibly the finest cover version I've ever heard, an effortlessly beautiful reading of the traditional folk song She Moved Through The Fair which raises the neck hair with ease even now.
Although they were my favourite band at the time - and they're still one of my great favourites now, several years after they essentially ceased to be - I had no idea they'd have such an enormous impact on my life. All About Eve were the first band I went to see in concert, firstly at a local gig with a friend, then before 1987 was out, I'd have seen them again in London and Birmingham - I'd never even been to the latter before. I went on to see All About Eve well over 100 times before they called it a day in 2004. I count later records like Touched By Jesus and Ultraviolet among my desert island discs. Julianne is still my favourite female vocalist. I made a lot of very good friends via my love of the band. And if all that wasn't enough, I even ended up co-creating and editing their official fan magazine, Ink & Second Sight, for four glorious years. Despite the occasional tumultuous line-up changes, I remember those times with nothing but total pleasure - they were some of the happiest days of my life.
[09] Magical Ring by Clannad
The album that made me realise folk music was more than just "hey nonny nonny" in a Blackadder-stylee. Even though I never remember seeing any of the TV show Harry's Game, I do clearly remember the fuss made about the show's theme music (called, logically enough, Theme From Harry's Game). I can clearly recall hearing it for the first time and being completely bowled over by how evocative and atmospheric it was, even though I couldn't really make out any words. The massed, blended harmony vocals made it feel almost like choir music, but there was a definite vibe to it that made me think of wide open spaces, not church music. I was fascinated, but as I wasn't aware that Clannad was responsible, I just put it down as really nice title music and didn't dwell on it any further.
Until, that is, one year - it must have been around 1988 or 1989 - when I was on holiday in Cornwall with my folks. We went to Land's End, which - a bit of a tourist trap though it was - always impressed me. Something about those cliffs, with the sea far below... and we always used to stay virtually the whole day, so the sun was often setting when we set out back to Penzance (invariably where we stayed when we went down to Cornwall). It was beautiful, even if it was thronged with people. Anyway, I remember digging through the CDs and tapes in the gift shop (since I was well and truly music-obsessed by this point and went through my pocket money and meagre savings like a cat through butter) and picking up a tape that had a very pretty photo of a stone circle on the front. Idly I flipped it over, only for the words Theme From Harry's Game to catch my eye...
Well, you can guess what happened next. And as I lay in bed that night, listening to the album on my Walkman, it was quickly evident to me that there was a lot more to Clannad than this magical TV theme tune which had lingered in my memory for years. Songs like Tower Hill, Passing Time, Ta Me Mo Shui (further evidence that whilst I couldn't understand a word of Gaelic, it nevertheless made for some stunningly beautiful songs) and the haunting Newgrange became instant favourites, and to this day I still closely identify Clannad with Cornwall, and always take a bunch of Clannad with me if I'm heading in that direction.
[10] Gold Afternoon Fix by The Church
It was late 1990, and I had just started going to Worcester Technical College, where I had enrolled on a BTEC Computer Studies course. I enjoyed my new-found freedom: we were free to come and go as we chose when we weren't in lessons, so needless to say most of us tended to gravitate towards certain places. I could invariably be found in Worcester's finest record store, Magpie Records. Magpie was a veritable cornucopia of independant label releases and non-mainstream stuff: I remember buying vast quantities of Rush, Hawkwind, Gong and Camel there. And it was Magpie that was to enable me to get into The Church.
A few months earlier, I had been listening to the radio late into the morning as I often did. I was a borderline obsessive radio listener at the time. Every night, after everyone had gone to sleep, I used to plug my headphones into my hi-fi and run the cable back to my bed, where I used to listen to late-night radio until I passed out. One night, I was half-listening to a radio show in the wee small hours when a song came on that wasn't quite like anything I'd ever heard before. It had a New Wave-y stomp to it, but a gorgeous lilting guitar line that stuck in my mind like freshly-chewed gum, and truly off-the-wall lyrics that, somehow, made perfect sense to me in my woozy state of head. About halfway through, I realised I was listening to something that I would have to track down. "And that was The Church, from their most recent album, called Metropolis", said the DJ. Oh my...
So I was straight off to Magpie Records the next day, where I was indeed lucky enough to find a copy of Metropolis - I say lucky, because this was October, and the single had come out months beforehand. Magpie Records was like that, though - you dug around long enough, you were pretty guaranteed to find something amazing for your ears to appreciate. I took it home. Metropolis was as good as I remembered it, effortlessly seizing my brain and shaking it like a pair of maracas. Monday Morning and Much Too Much were on the CD as well, and lo, they were both great too, albeit in totally different ways. Hey, a band who could do different things and do them all well?
I was hooked. The next day, I dug around in Magpie's racks until I happened across the motherlode: a copy of Gold Afternoon Fix. I bought it without even thinking about it, and - o fickle youth - I actually left at lunchtime and caught an early train home so I'd have longer to listen to it properly. Perhaps it was because it was the first Church album I'd heard, but I soaked it up like a sponge, and I've always loved it ever since. Sure, there are flaws: Richard Ploog's drums being largely replaced by machinery or being pieced together bar-by-bar does strip some of the songs of the amount of energy and 'flow' that I heard later on some of their other work. Yes, the production wasn't quite as good as it could have been, though it wasn't at all an embarrassment.
Beyond those quibbles, I couldn't (and still can't) hear a thing wrong with it. There's not a single track I couldn't listen to right now and not think is great. If pushed, I'd say Laughing and City are my least favourite two tracks, but even they're fine songs, at least to me. That first time through, I was absolutely transfixed. Pretty much all the other songs are favourites to this day, but I have particular soft spots for Pharoah (what an intro!), Metropolis (for obvious reasons), Terra Nova Cain (the point where I started to really appreciate Steve Kilbey's way with words), Russian Autumn Heart, Essence, Transient, and possibly best of all, Disappointment, which was anything but. The second that track started, I felt sure I was going to dislike it because of the percussion track - it just felt like they were trying to do something I didn't they could pull off, but they certainly made me rethink that pretty sharpish.
Within a week, I'd picked up Heyday and Starfish (in that order), and I never looked back. Over time, The Church have become second only to Pink Floyd in my affections, really: I regularly put them on a par with Marillion. Incredibly, their work only seems to have improved, and they're still one of the best live acts I've ever seen - they rarely tour the UK, but when they do, wild horses can't drag me away. A side benefit of getting into The Church was the wealth of side and solo projects the band's members have undertaken, all of which are also fantastic - they make Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree fame look decidedly unprolific. So it's been very expensive, but in terms of making an impact on me, very few bands have come close to The Church and their special brand of off-kilter, truly inventive and unique rock music.