New Live Album
A new House of Love live compliation will be released on the 2nd March 2009. House of Love Live at The BBC is the best of the band live, as recorded and broadcast by the BBC. Storming, previously unreleased versions of all of their chart hits, the tracklisting is:
Live At The BBC:
I Don’t Know Why I Love You
Road
The Beatles And The Stones
Se Dest
Never
Shine On
Preston 19/03/90:
Christine
32nd Floor
Hope
Girl With The Loneliest Eyes
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You Crush Me
Hannah
Cruel
Burn Down The World
Nothing To Me
Marquee 22/04/1991:
Feel
Yer Eyes
Norwich 21/04/1992:
You Don’t Understand
High In Your Face
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Available on Renascent Records:
The House Of Love
The German Album
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The House of Love Shine On Still
(A personal view by Jack Rabid, editor and publisher - The Big Takeover, New York, May 2007)
When histories of '80s British rock appear, too few remember it with precision. There's this standard, simplistic hoo-haw that computers, synthesizers, drum machines and dance beats took over, causing guitar rock to dry up and disappear. A recent such ..albeit eloquent) appeared in an insightful piece by Sean O'Hagan about The Smiths in The Guardian: "You need only remember that The Smiths arrived at a time in the early-to-mid '80s when punk's rupture had long been papered over, when the new synthesized pop of Boy George and Wham! ruled the charts, and, more importantly, when sample-based dance music first began crossing into the mainstream and rock music seemed to be fighting a desperate rearguard action."
Whereas I recall there wasn't actually any shortage of devastatingly good U.K. guitar bands, even in those pre-Smiths early Brit '80s. How lesser my life would have been without the pleasures afforded by Echo & the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Boy-era U2, 17 Seconds- and Faith-era Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Comsat Angels, the Sound, Chameleons, and more. Taking their cue from such previous greats as Velvet Underground, Pere Ubu, Television, 154 Wire, Skids, and especially Joy Division, these (often Northern) English bands put the atmospheric back into rock like none since the psychedelic '60s; ensured that post-punk rock wasn't going to be just angular, stripped down, and peppy pop; and blew the minds of discerning "trench coat" rock fans everywhere.
One such mind these groups affected was that of Guy Chadwick, who would found The House of Love in 1986 when that sound and style was waning. And no one in British rock would do more to bring such infinite textural mysticism back to life in 1987-1988, pre-Stone Roses, and pre-dreampop/shoegaze, than his classic group. For this, they were given initial credit by a fawning British press. But perhaps that's forgotten these days. Time to correct that—and nothing could accomplish that more than this prime collection of their earliest, most vital work.
To paraphrase your outgoing prime minister, "Think back… no really, think back" to 1987. There was still interesting guitar music coming out of the indie charts and John Peel's show, for those not distracted by the dull bleats of spineless synth-pop, or the pack of whiny white boys playing bad soul. In the middle decade, the Smiths' popularity did help launch a busy, fast and bouncy, melodic-jangly scene, dubbed C86—much of it released on talkative Scot Alan McGee's fledgling Creation label, a man central to our story. This scene culminated in the eventual chart emergence of The Wedding Present, and a much-changed Primal Scream. But yea, wherefore was thou atmospheric rock? Had it finally been stamped out, as posthumous postmortems maintained? The earlier practitioners had fled, and only the prized, cultish 4AD label and their flagship Cocteau Twins, a few better Goth bands, and scattered newcomers like a raspy new McGee discovery, The Jesus & Mary Chain (the Scottish band that most focused Chadwick's desire to make the music he eventually would, and led him to want to record for Creation), still seemed interested in the greater possibilities of billowing, processed guitars and a sense of art rock adventurism.
That is until the House of Love hit in 1987, with a succession of four incredible three-song singles you hear here nearly in their entirety—a-sides and b—taking the U.K. indie scene by total storm! Ah, to remember those heady days again while listening to this! How fitting that they were discovered by the sharp-eared, irrepressible McGee's Creation, the label Chadwick was dying to be on and was thus badgering with tapes and gig invitations! (Though in actual fact, it was McGee's then-wife, Yvonne, who insisted on incessantly playing the band's 'Shine On' in the office, to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude!)
Uniquely, Chadwick was no green, wide-eyed frontman when he became the latest music media plaything. For one thing, he was older, 27 when the band's first single appeared, having already enjoyed a previous major deal with RCA fronting a "dreadful" group called The Kingdoms, with whom he released a single, 'Heartland' (no relation to the Sound's hot 1980 song of that name) and as a solo artist. After that contract concluded, Chadwick took a year and a half off in his mid-20s to find himself. While considering his next move, he got a proper job as a driver. And unlike other new pop princes, he'd had more life experience. His dad was an army officer, so he'd been born in Germany and spent a half-dozen years in the Far East in Singapore and Malaya, Malaysia. So Chadwick was more philosophical and articulate than the younger, brasher breed, which made him eminently quotable for hungry scribes captivated with his new group. That helped.
He also had a deeper musical background for what he was doing. Returning to England from abroad, Chadwick had attended school in the Midlands before eventually settling in London. School hadn't inspired him, but rock had. As he would eventually, memorably sing for his group's second Top 40 hit, "The Beatles and Stones made it good to be alone." So perhaps it wasn't surprising he would ultimately end up favouring such heirs as the Only Ones (the House of Love would unsuccessfully dangle an opening reunion slot to Peter Perrett's old, defunct band in 1989), Talking Heads, and several of the above-referenced, a clue for where he would take his later band. "I used to be a big U2 fan when they started. I thought they were great!" he told me when I interviewed him for my own Big Takeover in February 1990. "I even saw them once in a very small club in England. I used to like The Cure, Joy Division. Quite liked Echo & the Bunnymen, Birthday Party, and Teardrop Explodes, but not a great fan. I think some Television stuff is good, too. I think 'Marquee Moon' is a classic guitar track." (Contemporary critics, slightly off base, repeatedly compared the early House of Love to the Velvets and the Doors. So, as a sort of mind-fuck, the group added smashing covers of both to their sets!)
All of these influences and more would be put to great use when the House of Love songs began germinating in Chadwick's head, long before the group started. Hard as it is to believe, the incredible compositions found here were penned long before there was a band to play them—and their cascading guitar sounds were already conceived, as well. "I've always been a writer stroke composer," explains Chadwick. "I've always written a whole song with a clear idea of how it's going to sound, not just a track on an acoustic. I suppose House of Love was the first time I actually got it right. And I always played guitar, but I didn't really start experimenting with sounds 'til 1985, specifically with effects. I found a sound that really, really seemed to work for me. And I didn't think, 'God, nobody's using this sound.' It just seemed to work with the sound of my voice."
That year 1985 was clearly the catalyst, while he was ostensibly out of the music business. "I reached a point where I just thought what I did and what I wrote about just didn't make sense on a contemporary level. So I just got really frustrated. But then I started writing again, songs that became very popular for us, like 'Christine,' 'Shine On,' and 'Destroy the Heart,' a lot of tracks; I wrote them all in 1985! At the end of the year, I'd written 10 songs that I thought were really good, and I didn't know why I was writing them and demoing them. Try again, I guess, have one last go at it—get a group together that's serious."
That he finally did, recruiting the four other members heard here via an ad in the Melody Maker: the crucial second guitarist Terry Bickers, dubbed a "guitar god" by the press; New Zealand bassist Christian Groothuizen; drummer Pete Evans, a friend; and in these early days, Andrea Heukamp on backing vocals and yet more guitar. All were equals and foils for Chadwick in realizing his ambitions. The House of Love was born, named after the book A Spy In the House Of Love by Anais Nin.
And, having finally secured McGee's interest and Creation's backing, what better way to begin a career than with the 'Shine On' single? Mind you, the label was a much smaller concern then than the imprint that would one day launch Oasis. So House of Love's first release was a mere 2000-3000 copies 12" single, with that moody, beguiling 'Shine On', backed with two other worthies, the shimmery 'Love' and the stabbing-guitars of 'Flow'. In many respects, this initial version of 'Shine On' remains the ultimate expression of the group's mysterious yet accessible appeal, with Chadwick's deadpan delivery supported by ethereal guitars, sensuous verses, and an undulating, repeated chorus refrain. Chadwick himself recognized this: Three years later for major label Fontana (with McGee now managing the group), the House of Love would re-record the song with more crystalline production for their only Top 20 single. Chadwick explained, "It never really happened as an independent single. I never wanted to release it as our first record in the first place. That was Alan McGee. He insisted it should be first. I always wanted to save it until there was some momentum in the group. I always knew it could potentially do well in the world market. But it's a pop song, not a radical statement. It was always going to get us more fans. Ultimately, I wanted the band to appeal to as many people as possible."
Yet, the indisputable charm of this rougher version remains, and it racked up a deserved "Single of the Week" in the NME from Danny Kelly. Not bad for an unknown band's first release. Clearly, McGee (and his wife!) knew a classic when he (she) heard it.
And, given Chadwick's well of finished songs, the band had plenty to chose from for their next three incredible singles (and still more terrific b-sides) before leaving Creation, also heard here. December 1987 brought the more up-tempo, feverish 'Real Animal' 12", backed with the teasing 'Plastic' and perhaps the most mannered early House of Love song, 'Nothing to Me'. The next April, down to a quartet with the departure of a tour-weary Heukamp (returned to Germany, though she would later briefly rejoin), they nevertheless managed the strangely eerie, nervous shimmer of 'Christine' (left off this collection since it was also included on their first proper LP later that year), which became their first indie chart 1, backed by 'Loneliness is a Gun' and (on the 12") the Heukamp-vocalized 'The Hill' (AKA 'On the Hill'). Finally, following the release of that proper first LP, in August 1988 came perhaps their most-covered song of this period, 'Destroy the Heart', backed with the quietly pretty 'Blind' (a sweet love song for Chadwick's missus, band photographer Suzi Gibbons) and (again on the 12" only) 'Mr. Jo'. This rousing, roaring opus not only ended up 1 single of the year for 1988 in Peel's Festive 50, an impressive honor, but landed the group the cover of both NME and Melody Maker in the same week!
Simultaneously, the first three of these three-song 12" singles were combined together with two unreleased songs, 'The Hedonist' and 'Welt' (intended as b-sides for a 'Safe' single that went unissued), again without 'Christine', into an early self-titled album only for the German market, released on Rough Trade/Creation there. Yet, with the band's domestic popularity soaring, it's not hard to figure that the German release was widely imported back to England. So the savviest fans got the goods early. And with its iconic picture sleeve of all five members' heads, it soon became a sought after collector's item as an alternate first LP of sorts. Moreover, it's the precursor to this expanded reissue, fully available in Britain now to correct such a historical wrong!
The increasing success of these four classic singles, plus the press's insistence they were going to be huge, and that equally impressive first proper English LP in June of 1988—also self-titled but with only two members on the cover (a college radio favorite in America, even, when licensed by indie label Relativity)—brought with it an inevitable major label bidding war, won by Fontana. But Chadwick would come to label this decision to leave Creation "a dreadful mistake" when he became wracked by the band's premature 1993 demise. For with the step up to the big boys' loftier expectations and control, immediately came headaches and disasters, starting with the difficult sessions in four different studios with four name-producers to perfect a follow-up album—great as the next self-titled LP (with a butterfly on the cover) turned out to be in 1990. Ouch. In turn came the crushing loss of a totally disillusioned, (nervous) breaking down Bickers while on tour. This took the form of a predictable fistfight in a gas station, then a bitter kiss-off/dump-off by the roadies at lonely Bristol Temple Meads rail station, from which he had to make his own way back to Paddington and out of the band. Double ouch. And finally, and just as wounding, came the equally inevitable backlash by much of the previously supportive press and more purist fans they'd been shielded from while on Creation. Game, set, ouch.
Mind you, it says here that there was no visible loss in the quality of the House of Love's recordings for Fontana, even with the much larger recording budgets. Nor was there any drop in their overall popularity, as still more fantastic singles like 1989 41 'I Don't Why I Love You', the revitalized 1990 20 'Shine On', 1990 36 'The Beatles and the Stones', 1991 58 'Girl With the Loneliest Eyes', and 1992 67 'Crush Me' demonstrated. (Ditto Fontana-era rerecordings of two other tracks here, 'The Hedonist' and 'Blind', also excellent) But they never quite achieved the stardom they once seemed so destined for, while it simultaneously, maddeningly became difficult to overcome the erroneous idea that the group were some kind of overnight successes that had blown their moment—which clearly ticked Chadwick off at the time. "That really, really irritated me" he averred as early as February 1990. "The way people just assumed we were so lucky and that we suddenly happened. But that wasn't the case at all. We'd been sort of playing horrible dives up and down the country for seven people for a year. And then we stopped touring. This just does no good at all. It just makes you miserable, depressed, and broke." Maybe you hear a lot of that stubborn desire of what they overcame in these original, early masters.
Fortunately for us, they persevered from such wretchedness, and prospered at least for those seven short years that they burned so brightly, 1986-1993—especially on these early singles. And it's fortunate for the greater British public and guitar rock fans everywhere, as well. Here's one thing the '80s histories should get straight, and get right: It is nigh impossible to consider the Stone Roses' 1989 explosion, or the synchronized dreampop/shoegaze outbreak (better respected nowadays!) that followed almost immediately upon House of Love's heels in London, without these Creation recordings—every bit as much as, say, My Bloody Valentine's. For instance, Catherine Wheel covered House of Love's first LP song 'Salome' and seemed thrilled to support their favorites on a 1992 tour of the U.S. that also included an early Ocean Colour Scene. Meanwhile, one of the members of Lush showed a unique admiration for the band by briefly dating Bickers. And one heard distinct echoes of Chadwick and Bickers' carefully considered, echoey and dreamy guitars in Ride, Pale Saints, Chapterhouse, Moose, Slowdive, and even Swervedriver as well. It was the layered and textural guitars, guitars, guitars they got from House of Love; and that incredibly cool, melodic mystique and inscrutability.
Likewise, the Stone Roses may never have progressed much past 'So Young' and 'Sally Cinnamon' without these two years of Creation-era House of Love. Listen here to 'The Hedonist' and 'Shine On' and consider the hushed aspects of The Stone Roses moodiest verses like 'Made of Stone' and especially 'Waterfall' and 'Shoot You Down'. This was something even Chadwick himself recognized at the time. In that same chat in 1990, he observed, wisely, and reverberating 17 years later, "Whatever anyone says, especially some of the people who have slagged me off, the House of Love have actually done a lot for English rock music. We're not saviors or anything, but we've actually helped create, with a few other bands, a sort of climate. Like new groups like The Sundays; I don't think the Sundays would have happened if we weren't around. They don't sound like us or anything. It's just they're a guitar band and as atmospheric band. And I think to an extent the Stone Roses. People accepted them initially because they'd already been climatized to that approach. We sort of helped precedent it in some way."
He was right then, and exactly two decades after these recordings, his old band seems all the more important for it. And thankfully, there was a little newer taste of it, first when Chadwick finally overcame his grief and clinical depression to release a delightful solo LP in 1998, Lazy, Soft and Slow; and more recently, when the House of Love shockingly reunited, with Bickers and Chadwick burying old hatchets, and once again backed by Evans (but without entrenched professional architect Groothuizen), releasing the enjoyable Days Run Away in 2005. And at who's to doubt Chadwick has more to offer, yet?
But of course, you don't need to know any of that or agree with any of that to enjoy this disc. You also needn't consider all the great bands that influenced them or that they subsequently influenced or made possible. Nor need you ponder their place in the pantheons. The songs, and the sounds, ultimately speak for themselves, from one of the truly greatest and bravest U.K. rock bands of their time, caught here in their earliest and most unpolished greatness. It's impossible to listen to them now, as one did then, without a feeling of small awe.
Long may these recordings "shine on". The House of Love made it good to be alone, and still do.
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