August 1986
CONTENTS
ROCK ’N’ ROLL NEWS
In this month’s exclusive non-tour news, let it be known that David Bowie has no intention of doing any 1986 shows, preferring instead to be seen on the big screen. In addition to his appearance in Absolute Beginners, Bowie has a role in Labyrinth, a George Lucas/Jim Henson film that should be playing as you read this.
DIRT WORK BEHIND THE SCENES
Chris Welch
“We spent five months in Paris making the Stones’ new album, and it doesn’t usually take that long. We messed around for weeks because Mick was still buggering around with his solo album instead of working with us. He would fly back to London in the middle of it, which I might add is a thing that nobody else has ever done, because when it’s been Stones work, everybody drops solo projects.
Creem Profiles
CHRISTINA AMPHLETT
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy”)
THE CALL: This Headline Contains No Puns
John Mendelssohn
Such is your affection for the one song of the Call’s that everyone’s heard—the one that struck you as a wondrous marriage of the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, and Larry (“Boney Maronie”) Williams— that you go to see them on a week night at a grotty little nightclub in a Northern California town so small that four of the City Council’s six members are barnyard animals.
LETTERS
I can usually hang with the strange, sarcastic approach your magazine takes, but in the May ’86 issue, man, this Jeff Morgan and his mega-bogus review of the totally jammin’ new Dokken LPwell, he can just blaze! Being a journalist myself, I can vibe to the style of the review, the two dudes find the box of Dokken LPs down here in Florida.
RECORDS
Michael Davis
Yes, but is it a rock? When rock artists go more than three years between albums, I tend to write ’em off as Missing: Inaction, but there are always exceptions. Some musicians need to lead semi-normal lives for awhile in order to write their strongest material.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
Their knack for the basic song and small interest in guitar-hero costume drama always made them hard rock that deserved the name, not to mention an Amercian band. Still, with almost a decade of bad records collective and solo behind them, there was no reason to expect a thing from this touching reunion.
45 REVELATIONS
KEN BARNES
Finally! “Rain On The Scarecrow” is a single. I try to avoid mentioning LP tracks, to preserve the ideological purity of one of the country’s last surviving singles columns, but four months ago I felt impelled to dub this John Cougar Mellencamp cut the best non-single of 1985.
ROCK • A • RAMA
Richard Riegel
If you think Motley Crue are “outrageous,” you should’ve see the New York Dolls make their national TV debut on Midnight Special in 1974. What’s more, it now seems evident in retrospect that, unlike the Crue, the Dolls were probably one of the 10 greatest real rock ’n’ roll bands in the history of the world.
THE TIME IS RIPE!
John Mendelssohn
I have the feeling that the time is ripe for some alert young group to bring back the look of the British Invasion. I have the feeling that if the tuneful, presentable Outfield, for instance, wore Cuban-heeled boots with dagger toes and matching suits comprising drainpipe trousers and velvet-collared coats instead of the putatively modish contemporary duds they do, they’d be the hottest thing in all of power pop as you read this.
Features
BILLY IDOL: NICE DAY FOR A NEW ALBUM
Kris Needs
LONDON: It’s three in the morning and a rampant telephone slices the night silence.
A PRIVATE HOUR WITH JOHN LYDON’S PUBLIC IMAGE
Toby Goldstein
A shame you can’t hear the belches with which John—but you can also call him Johnny Rotten—Lydon punctuates his conversation. Great air pockets of gusto they are, courtesy of lunch hour with St. Pauli Girl, and sent flying into the room with vigor.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
FAB T-BIRDS: Tuff Enuff, Were They Actual Meat
Karen Schlosberg
The Fabulous Thunderbirds have been something of a musical anomaly; their current well-deserved success, after four albums and roughly 12 years of playing steel-packed, blues-drenched rock ’n’ roll, seems to be one of those things that has no singular explanation.
Julian’s Treatment
Sylvie Simmons
There’s several people I wouldn’t want to be, and one of them’s Julian Lennon. John Charles Julian Lennon, born in Liverpool, ’63, between the astronomical signs of “Please Please Me” and “From Me To You,” son of Beatle and The One Who Wasn’t Yoko.
KATRINA AND THE WAVES: SONGS FOR THE COMMON MAN (AND WOMAN)
Roy Trakin
If it’s Tuesday, this must be... Universal City. You’ll have to forgive this peripatetic foursome if they’re a little disoriented. Plucked from the middle of an Australian tour, Katrina & The Waves have been flown into an uncharacteristically gray California for a full slate of activities.
PSYCHEDELIC CONFESSIONS AND THE CHURCH
Bill Holdship
It’s a fairly typical backstage scene. A small group of people, almost none of whom know each other (or seem to care to), have worked their way back here to meet the Church. There are less people than there probably will be later for headliners Echo & The Bunnymen (who should be going onstage any moment)— and the faces look alternately bored, indifferent, nervous, excited and/or important.
CENTERSTAGE
Cynthia Rose
Red Wedge is the self-described “broad Left arts alliance” of pop stars and young people whose specific goal is a Labour Party victory in the U.K.’s next General Election. Formed in late ’85 to implement slogans such as The World of Arts—For a World of Difference, the Wedge boasts a suprising range of supporters, including Sade, Paul Weller, Bragg, Jerry Dammers, Lloyd Cole, Bananarama, Ray Davies, Heaven 17, Junior Giscombe, Jimmy Somerville, Helen Terry and Dave Stewart—plus groups like Everything But The Girl and Working Week.
CREEMEDIA
Edouard Dauphin
When you’ve spent your adolescent years, as The Dauph has, in places like Berlin, Casablanca and Tijuana, it can be odd relating to a fictional diary of a boy undergoing puberty in a nondescript town in present-day Thatcher-land. Still, this book, brash and British to the core, hooked this world-weary scribbler from its opening entry and didn’t let up until its protagonist, Adrian Mole, had crossed over from a bumbling youth of 13-and3/4 to a still bumbling youth of 16-and-1/6.
PRIME TIME
Richard C. Walls
DON KNOTTS IS GOD, BUT...You can’t go home again and why bother—your memory will always be richer than the reality anyway. These two lumps of parlor philosophy were inspired by the umpteenth TV attempt to go home; that’s right, yet another ill-advised reunion show, an effort to recapture the simple glories of some alleged Golden Age.
MEDIA COOL
Bill Holdship, J. Kordosh, Michael Lipton, Richard Riegel and Richard C. Walls
Here’s a passively bad book that, while purporting McCartney was Lennon’s musical equal (at least), does little to evoke that spirit, or, in fact, much sympathy for its subject. Salewicz’s main theme—that the early death of Paul’s mother was pretty much his sole motivation—is harped on frequently...and the dope didn’t even manage to include a picture of the mysterious mom.
CREEM SHOWCASE
Dan Hedges
“I feel like a road sausage,” Allan Holdsworth says wearily, somewhere in Ohio. He’s got this new album out on Enigma records called Atavachron. He’s been on tour for what seems like the far side of forever. Lousy food. Bad motels. Too much driving.
Video Video
WISH YOU WERE THERE
Billy Altman
Let’s face it—given the choice, most of us would rather be somewhere else, not where we are.
CLIPS
Martin Dio and Dave DiMartino
I’m not sure if this is commercially available, but I’m certain parts of it are. Most notably the live clips by SWA, Saccharine Trust, the Meat Puppets, Minute-men and Husker Du. All are from SST’s The Tour videocassette, which should be available by the time you read this.
NEWBEATS
Rhonda Markowitz
It’s hard to figure what to expect from a band named the Raunch Hands. So when they take the stage at New York’s Irving Plaza and launch into a mournful country-rock ditty called “Spit It On The Floor” (“Well, she kissed me all over/And she kissed me up and down/Well how was I to know that what she kissed/Would soon be on the ground?/...Well I used to love fine women/But I can’t love them no more/Since she bit it off/And she spit it on the floor”), it’s safe to say that more than a few jaws likewise hit the tiles.
Backstage
Backstage
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down