Forget moons in June, walks along the beach and holding hands in the back row of the cinema, there’s nothing quite so likely to make for a memorable number one hit than some meaningful lyrics about urban decay, deindustrialisation, unemployment and violence in inner cities.
OK, perhaps it’s not going to be the golden staircase to the top every time – but in the case of Ghost Town by The Specials, released in June 1981, the combination was commercial enough to give it three weeks at number one and 10 weeks in total in the top 40 of the UK singles chart.
The fact that it was a hit at the same time as riots were occurring in British cities didn’t do sales any harm either.
Behind the headlines internal tensions within the Coventry band were also coming to a head when the single was being recorded, resulting in it being the last one recorded by the original seven members before splitting up.
That didn’t stop the song being hailed as a major piece of popular social commentary and all three of the major UK music magazines of the time awarded Ghost Town the accolade of Single of the Year for 1981.
But things were coming to head. The tour for the group’s More Specials album in autumn 1980 had been a fraught experience. Already tired from a long touring schedule and with several band members at odds with keyboardist and band leader Jerry Dammers over his decision to incorporate “muzak” keyboard sounds on the album, several of the gigs descended into audience violence.
As they travelled around the UK the band witnessed sights that summed up the depressed mood of a country gripped by recession. In 2002 Dammers told The Guardian: “You travelled from town to town and what was happening was terrible. In Liverpool, all the shops were shuttered up, everything was closing down. We could actually see it by touring around. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. In Glasgow, there were these little old ladies on the streets selling all their household goods, their cups and saucers. It was unbelievable. It was clear that something was very, very wrong.”
In an interview in 2011, Dammers explained how witnessing this event inspired his composition: “The overall sense I wanted to convey was impending doom. Certain members of the band resented the song and wanted the simple chords they were used to playing on the first album. It’s hard to explain how powerful it sounded. We had almost been written off and then Ghost Town came out of the blue.”
The song’s sparse lyrics address urban decay, unemployment and violence in inner cities. It doesn’t beat about the bush but approaches its subject matter in a much more melancholic manner than its punk predecessors could or would have done:
“This town, is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place, is coming like a ghost town
Bands won’t play no more
Too much fighting on the dance floor.”

Then it briefly takes on a brighter more uptempo approach for a nostalgic nod to the recent past:
“Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?
We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown.”

Then back to reality:
“This town, is coming like a ghost town
Why must the youth fight against themselves?
Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place, is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can’t go on no more
The people getting angry

This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town.”
Jo-Ann Greene of Allmusic notes that the lyrics: “only brush on the causes for this apocalyptic vision – the closed down clubs, the numerous fights on the dancefloor, the spiraling unemployment, the anger building to explosive levels. But so embedded were these in the British psyche, that Dammers needed only a minimum of words to paint his picture.”
The club referred to in the song was the Locarno a regular haunt of Specials members Neville Staple and Lynval Golding and which is also named as the club in Friday Night Saturday Morning, one of the songs on the B-side. The building which housed the club is now Coventry Central Library.
In March 1981, Jerry Dammers heard the reggae song At the Club by actor/singer Victor Romero Evans. Fascinated by its sound, Dammers telephoned the song’s co-writer and producer John Collins who travelled from London to meet The Specials at their midlands rehearsal studio and agreed to produce their new single.
After becoming overwhelmed with the multitude of choices available in the 24-track studio used during the recording of More Specials, Dammers had decided that he wanted to return a more basic set-up, and after a recommendation from bass player Horace Panter, the band chose the small 8-track studio in the house owned by John Rivers in Woodbine Street in Royal Leamington Spa.
The studio consisted of a recording space in the cellar and a control room in the living room which was too small to accommodate all the band members, so rather than their normal recording method of playing all together, Collins recorded each member playing one at a time and built up the songs track by track.
The three songs for the single were recorded over ten days in April 1981 in two separate sessions at Woodbine Street. Tensions were high during the recording with little communication between the band members
Member Horace Panter remembered: “Everybody was stood in different parts of this room with their equipment, no one talking. Jerry stormed out a couple of times virtually in tears and I went after him. It was hell to be around.”
Dammers said: “People weren’t cooperating. Ghost Town wasn’t a free-for-all jam session. Every little bit was worked out and composed, all the different parts, I’d been working on it for at least a year, trying out every conceivable chord. I can remember walking out of a rehearsal in total despair because Neville Staple would not try the ideas. You know the brass bit is kind of jazzy, it has a dischord? I remember Lynval rushing into the control room while they were doing it going, ‘No, no, no, it sounds wrong! Wrong! Wrong!’”
Collins wanted the song to sound more like a Sly and Robbie roots reggae track, so he brought a copy of a Sly and Robbie-produced single, What a Feeling by Gregory Isaacs, to the studio so that drummer John Bradbury could mimic the drum sound. He also suggested the two-handed shuffle rhythm played by Dammers on the Hammond organ throughout the song. Using just eight tracks limited Collins’ recording possibilities, but as a reggae producer he decided to use the common reggae method of recording everything in mono.
“As we were recording eight-track, I did go with a track plan. I wanted the drums in mono on one track, the bass in mono on another and the rhythm – that shuffle organ and Lynval’s guitar – on another. They’re the backbone of a reggae song. Then there was brass on another track, lead vocals on another, backing vocals on another, and various little bits and pieces dropped in. Ghost Town is basically a mono record with stereo reverb and echo that I added in the mix. The same applied to the brass. Recording simply in mono really helped the instruments balance themselves.”
However, there was a tense moment when Dammers decided at the last minute that he wanted to add a flute to the song, and with no free tracks available Collins was forced to record it directly onto the track containing the previously recorded brass section, with the possibility that any error would have rendered the entire track unusable:
As it had not been decided where exactly the backing vocals would be used, Terry Hall, Staple, Golding and Dammers sang a full backing vocal track throughout the song, which Collins used to his advantage as the lyric “this town is coming like a ghost town” had become like a “hypnotic chant” by the end of the song.
Collins took a recording of the separate tracks back to his home in Tottenham where he spent three weeks mixing the song. Hall, Staple, Golding and Dammers all turned up at the house at various times to add further vocals. Since the song had no proper beginning or ending during recording at Woodbine Street, Collins recreated the idea of fading in over a sound effect, which he had used previously on Lift Off, the B-side of At the Club.
The single had two B-sides, written by two different members of the Specials. Why? is a plea for racial tolerance and was written by guitarist Lynval Golding in response to a violent racist attack he had suffered in July 1980 outside the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead in London, which had left him hospitalised with broken ribs. Friday Night, Saturday Morning was written by lead singer Terry Hall and describes a mundane night out in Coventry.
Contemporary reviews of Ghost Town identified the song’s impact as an “instant musical editorial” on recent events (the 1981 England riots). Although initial reviews of the single in the UK music press were lukewarm, by the end of the year the song had won over the critics to be named Single of the Year in Melody Maker, NME and Sounds, the UK’s top three weekly music magazines at the time.
The summer of 1981 saw riots in over 35 locations around the UK.
Terry Hall said: “When we recorded Ghost Town, we were talking about 1980’s riots in Bristol and Brixton. The fact that it became popular when it did was just a weird coincidence.”
The song actually created resentment in Coventry where residents angrily rejected the characterisation of the city as a town in decline.
At The Specials’ Top of the Pops recording of the song Staples, Hall and Golding announced they were leaving the band.
Golding later said: “We didn’t talk to the rest of the guys. We couldn’t even stay in the same dressing room. We couldn’t even look at each other. We stopped communicating. You only realise what a genius Jerry was years later. At the time, we were on a different planet.”
Shortly afterwards, the three left the band to form Fun Boy Three.
For a while The Specials were nothing but a ghost band.

Bearing in mind what a serious soul Kevin Rowland was (and doubtless still is) it’s probably a hard enough cross for him to bear that Come On Eileen, his most famous composition with Dexy’s Midnight Runners (actually credited to Dexy’s Midnight Runners and the Emerald Express), will forever be identified as one of the greatest dance floor fillers of all time rather than anything more significant.

Imagine his chagrin then that it is also (amongst other accolades) the opening track of the triple CD collection The Ultimate Cheese Party – alongside such other delights as Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy, Black Lace’s Agadoo and Jive Bunny’s Swing The Mood.

It clearly matters little that the song has been interpreted as riding “a wave of working class nostalgia and youthful pride, with the narrator trying to convince the titular Eileen that by pulling together and embracing music and sex they’ll break out of their crushing hometown and the chains put on them by their parents and the poor economy of the time. In effect, it’s the Celtic soul iteration of Born to Run.”

Why let some wordy analysis get in the way of a song which becomes increasingly attractive the more alcohol you’ve consumed before the dj gets round to playing it on his/her way to the end of the evening/morning smoocher? That’s if they still do that kind of thing of course.

Come On Eileen was released in the UK on 25 June 1982 as a single from the album Too-Rye-Ay. It reached number one in the United States, and was the Dexy’s second number one hit in the UK, following 1980’s fellow floor filler Geno. The song was actually written by Kevin Rowland and band members, Jim Paterson and Billy Adams, and was produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. It went on to win Best British Single at the 1983 Brit Awards and in 2015 the song was voted by the British public as the nation’s sixth favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV. It was ranked number 18 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs of the ’80s.

Lyrically it’s clearly chalk not cheese despite being doomed to share space with the Fast Food Rockers and Afro Man. Not that it necessarily makes too much sense. What’s this all about then?

“Poor old Johnnie Ray
Sounded sad upon the radio
Moved a million hearts in mono
Our mothers cried
Sang along, who’d blame them?
You’ve grown (You’re grown up!)
So grown (So grown up!)
Now I must say more than ever
(Come on Eileen)
Too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye, ay
And we can sing just like our fathers.”

It’s easier to interpret when the narrator finally admits “You in that dress, my thoughts I confess verge on dirty.” Or put another way: “These people round here
Were beaten down, eyes sunk in smoke-dried face
They’re so resigned to what their fate is
But not us (No never)
But not us (Not ever)
We are far too young and clever
(Remember)
Too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye, ay
And you’ll hum this tune forever, oh

Come on Eileen
Oh, I swear (What he means)
Aah, come on let’s
Take off everything
That pretty red dress
Eileen (Tell him yes)
Aah, come on let’s
Aah, come on Eileen
That pretty red dress
Eileen (Tell him yes)
Aah, come on let’s
Aah, come on Eileen
Please.”

Their only American hit, the song reached number one in the USA on the Billboard Hot 100 charts during the week ending 23 April 1983 and prevented Michael Jackson from having back-to-back number one hits in the US.

Billie Jean was the number one single the previous seven weeks, while Beat It was the number one song the ensuing three.

The Dexy’s were never easy to categorise. They were founded in 1978 in Birmingham by Rowland (vocals, guitar, at the time using the pseudonym Carlo Rolan) and Kevin “Al” Archer (vocals, guitar). Both had been in the short-lived punk band The Killjoys. Rowland had previously written a Northern soul-style song that the two of them sang, Tell Me When My Light Turns Green, which became the first Dexy’s “song”.
The band’s name was derived from Dexedrine, a brand of dextroamphetamine used as a recreational drug among Northern Soul fans to give them energy to dance all night. While recruiting members for the new band, Rowland noted that “Anyone joining Dexy’s had to give up their job and rehearse all day long. . . . We had nothing to lose and felt that what we were doing was everything.”
Understandably the band went through went through numerous personnel, style and musical changes over the course of three albums and 13 singles, with only Rowland remaining in the band through all of the transitions and only him and “Big” Jim Paterson (trombone) appearing on all of the albums.

One minute they were zoot suited, the next dustbowl denimed Depression survivors, Irish vagabonds or street corner brawlers straight from New York’s Mean Streets.

Rowland said of the band’s sound and look in January 1980: “we didn’t want to become part of anyone else’s movement. We’d rather be our own movement”.

A unified image became very important to the group, with Rowland commenting “We wanted to be a group that looked like something … a formed group, a project, not just random.”

By 1985, the band consisted only of Rowland and long-standing members Helen O’Hara (violin) and Billy Adams (guitar). The band broke up in 1987, with Rowland becoming a solo artist. After two failed restart attempts, Dexy’s was reformed by Rowland in 2003 with new members, as well as a few returning members from the band’s original line-up (known as Dexy’s Mark I). Dexy’s released their fourth album in 2012 and a fifth followed in 2016.

Although often believed to have been inspired by a childhood friend with whom Rowland had a romantic, and later sexual, relationship in his teens, there was actually no real Eileen. He later said: “In fact she was composite, to make a point about Catholic repression.”

The phrase Come on Eileen, used as the chorus to the song was loosely inspired by A Man Like Me by the 1960s British soul group Jimmy James and the Vagabonds. There are various versions of the song, some in addition to the main section featuring either an intro of a Celtic fiddle solo, or an a cappella coda both based on Thomas Moore’s Irish folk song Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms.

In 1997, ska band Save Ferris released a cover of the song as a single from album It Means Everything. In 2004, the band 4-4-2 was formed to cover the song as Come On England with altered lyrics to support the England football team during their appearance in the 2004 European Championships.

On 7 August 2005, the song was used to wake the astronauts of Space Shuttle Discovery on the final day of STS-114 in reference to commander Eileen Collins. The song was used in the films Tommy Boy, Take Me Home Tonight and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Cheese? Eat your heart out Right Said Fred.

There’s always at least one song that’s suitable for just about every special occasion.
It can be the fairly general joy bringer of Cliff Richard with Congratulations, or the more time specific Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade, the anthemic Have a Nice Day by Stereophonics or the tissue soaking Anniversary Waltz and The Wedding by Anita Harris and Julie Rogers.

Even Tammy Wynette’s (or Billy Connolly if you prefer) D.I.V.O.R.C.E has been gifted with a celebratory life of its own since everything in life is these days considered a good excuse for a “paaaaarty.”
But top of the crop of celebration songs must be the joyful near chart topping Happy Birthday by Altered Images from 1981which has thankfully eclipsed the almost dirge like tones of its traditional predecessor – except in Italian restaurants when the lights are dimmed and the embarrassed staff are forced into song.

Clearly Altered Images’ Happy Birthday is a song to be sung (or danced to) at, well birthdays actually. Hence the opening lyrics:
“Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy, happy birthday.”

And then there’s the closing words:
“Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday.
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday.”

Get the picture?
As for the rest of the song it doesn’t make a lot of sense – even for those of us who find it hard to forget the not so altered image of Altered Images front person Clare Grogan bubbling and bouncing along on Top of the Pops.

Try these lyrics for size:
“Happy, happy birthday in a hot bath
To those nice, nice nights
I remember always, always
I got such a fright
Seeing them in my dark cupboard
With my great big cake

If they were me, if they were me
And I was you, and I was you
If they were me, if they were me
And I was you, and I was you
If they were me and I was you
Would you’ve liked a present too?

Happy, happy birthday in a hot bath
To those nice, nice nights
I remember always, always
I got such a fright
Seeing them in my dark cupboard
With my great big cake

If they were me, if they were me
And I was you and I was you –
If they were me, if they were me
And I was you and I was you –
If they were me and I was you
Would you’ve liked a present too?”

Rubbish really aren’t they? Well, they were Scottish after all.
Happy Birthday was released from Altered Images’ 1981 album of the same name. The song entered the UK charts in September 1981, and peaked at number two in October, holding that position for three weeks. It has been certified Silver by the BPI for sales in excess of 250,000 copies.

It is the only song on the album that was produced by Martin Rushent, who had already scored major success that year producing for The Human League and would win the Producer of the Year award for 1981 at the BPI Awards. Accordingly, the band chose Rushent to produce their next album, Pinky Blue (1982), in its entirety.

The song appeared in the 1984 John Hughes movie Sixteen Candles and was covered by The Ting Tings for the children’s television show Yo Gabba Gabba! in 2008, and by The Wedding Present, for their 1993 compilation album John Peel Sessions 1987-1990, as well as by Thomas Fagerlund (The Kissaway Trail) with Christian Hjelm (Figurines) in 2010.

Altered Images were an early 1980s Scottish new wave/post-punk band. Fronted by singer Clare Grogan, the band branched into mainstream pop music, scoring six UK top 40 hit singles and three top 30 albums between 1981 and 1983.

Their other hits included I Could Be Happy, See Those Eyes, and Don’t Talk to Me About Love.

Former schoolmates with a shared interest in the UK post-punk scene, Clare Grogan (vocals), Gerard “Caesar” McNulty (guitar), Michael “Tich” Anderson (drums), Tony McDaid (guitar), and Johnny McElhone (bass guitar), sent a demo tape to Siouxsie and the Banshees, who gave the band a support slot on their Kaleidoscope tour of 1980.

The band’s name referred to a sleeve design on the Buzzcocks’ single Promises, and was inspired by Buzzcocks vocalist Pete Shelley’s constant interfering with the initial sleeve designs.

After being championed by DJ John Peel, for whom they recorded a radio session in October 1980, they garnered enough attention to be offered a recording contract with Epic Records, but mainstream success was not immediate; their debut single, Dead Pop Stars, only reached number 67 in the UK Singles Chart, while its successor, A Day’s Wait stalled outside the top 100..
Dead Pop Stars was particularly controversial at the time, sung from the viewpoint of a “has-been” icon with irony, but badly timed in its release the day of John Lennon’s death, even though it was recorded earlier. A dance remix of it with different lyrics was recorded and released as the 1982 single Disco Pop Stars. After these singles and their first two sessions for John Peel, Caesar left and formed The Wake.

With additional guitarist Jim McKinven (formerly of Berlin Blondes), they recorded their debut album, Happy Birthday (1981), largely produced by Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees. But it was Martin Rushent’s title track which became the band’s third single and their biggest hit.

They quickly became established as one of the biggest new wave acts and were subsequently voted Best New Group at the NME Awards and Most Promising New Act in the 1981 Smash Hits readers poll.

After a successful headlining tour, the band retained Rushent as their producer and released their second album, Pinky Blue, in May 1982. It reached the top 20 of the UK Albums Chart and provided three more top 40 hit singles but was perceived as a disappointment by the British press.

I Could Be Happy was the group’s only foray onto the US charts, with the single peaking at number 45 on the Billboard Dance Chart.
Later that year, after McKinven and Anderson left to be replaced by multi-instrumentalist Steve Lironi (formerly of Restricted Code), the band began working on their third album and saw another Top 10 hit, Don’t Talk to Me About Love, in spring 1983 with the subsequent album, Bite, released in June. Half of it produced by Mike Chapman and half by Tony Visconti.

Although it reached the top 20 of the UK Albums Chart, it sold less than the band’s two previous offerings. Before breaking up later that year, Altered Images went on another concert tour that included the band’s American debut at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California, on Thursday, 11 August 1983.

After the break-up Grogan attempted a solo career, signing to London Records in 1987 and releasing a single, Love Bomb. She was also included on a London Records compilation album titled Giant, contributing the track Reason Is the Slave but after Love Bomb failed, plans for a follow-up single and an album were shelved.
Grogan also became a film and television actress. Prior to finding fame with Altered Images, she appeared in the 1981 film Gregory’s Girl. Afterwards she appeared in Red Dwarf (in which she originated the role of Kristine Kochanski), EastEnders, Father Ted, and Skins.
In recent years she has also become a presenter on UK television, as well as a children’s novelist.

She and Steve Lironi (who eventually married) formed Universal Love School in the mid-1980s, performing together but never releasing any recordings. Johnny McElhone went on to perform with Hipsway and eventually Texas. Grogan sang live under the name Altered Images in 2002 for the Here and Now Tour, showcasing a revival of popular bands of their era alongside The Human League, ABC, and T’Pau,[ and again for some separate shows in 2004.

She performed again in 2012 under the name Altered Images at Butlins Holiday Resort in Minehead on 11 May and at The Assembly in Leamington Spa on 12 May 2012. Also in 2012, Grogan put together a new all-female version of Altered Images and performed at Blackpool’s Rebellion Festival.

Although Personal Jesus could well be the song that Depeche Mode fans will class as one of the band’s finest moments (well, it’s not every synth pop tune that inspired the legendary Johnny Cash to revive in great style), it’s more likely that Just Can’t Get Enough will be the one that the long established outfit is long remembered for.

Alright, they probably won’t be too pleased about it – they have, after all, progressed from froth to feeling as the years have passed. And what’s more, it’s unlikely they ever saw the song as anything more than simply their third hit (it peaked at number 8 in 1981) – and the last contribution that founder member Vince Clarke would make to their catalogue.

But like or loathe it, somehow they’d created a footballing anthem almost up there with Three Lions – and one which, in part at least, could be chanted every week in every stadium just as long as your team was scoring goals and as long as you didn’t ask too many of the football fans just where the magic words “I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough” actually came from (despite the fact that they are repeated going on for 50 times during the course of the song).

There’s not much else in the song pointing to a kop classic. Not too many fans will feel inclined to sing the opening refrain of “When I’m with you baby I go out of my head” even to their favourite centre forward” and as for the first chorus “We slip and slide as we fall in love and I just can’t seem to get enough” it’s probably time for a cold shower. But somewhere along the line Just Can’t Get Enough was adopted wholesale by football fans across the land.

It was released in September 1981 as the third single from the band’s debut album, Speak and Spell. It was recorded during the summer of that year and was the band’s first single to be released in the United States, on 18 February 1982. It was the final single to be written by founding member Vince Clarke, who left the band in November 1981.
It was inspired he said by To Cut a Long Story Short by Spandau Ballet, which was released earlier in 1980.
Clarke had just turned 20 when he wrote it. He left the band after the Speak and Spell album was released, later joining chart success stories Yaz (with Alison Moyet) and Erasure.

According to Depeche Mode vocalist Dave Gahan, the song was written as the punk scene was winding down and London club kids were looking for music they could dance to that wasn’t so aggressive.

In an interview with Q magazine February 2008, he recalled recording Depeche Mode’s debut album and their early days as a band: “Vince (Clarke) was the leader at that point. By the time we got into the studio, Vince had got bored with it. He didn’t like the idea of having to deal with other personalities. He wanted to be in control. That’s the only album where the songs had already been performed for a year and a half beforehand, and we went into the studio and recorded them as we would live. I think Daniel (Miller, their Mute record label boss) saw us as a cross between the Ramones and the Beach Boys, in an electronic way – fast and short with really simple riffs. We were courted by major labels and were very suspicious of signing a deal that meant five albums. We’d come from that punk ethic: we just wanted to make a single. Daniel came along and that’s all he really had the money to do, so it kind of worked. We wanted to keep in control. We never thought much beyond the next single and playing some gigs. That time was brilliant.”

The single reached number 8 on the UK singles chart and number 26 on the US Hot Dance Club chart, making it their highest-charting single at the time on both counts. It also became the band’s first (and biggest) hit in Australia, reaching number 4.
Not everyone appreciated the Speak and Spell album. Rolling Stone magazine called it “PG-rated fluff.”
Apart from its footballing adoption the song was used in ads for The Gap, which featured young people miming in front of a white background. They were selling a line of leather. Vince Clarke was also known to sing it with an acoustic guitar at Erasure concert dates. (Clarke formed Erasure with Andy Bell a few years after leaving Depeche Mode).

It became the first Depeche Mode song used in a film when it was featured in 1982’s Summer Lovers. It was also used in The Wedding Singer in 1998.

But it’s unlikely Vince Clarke ever kicked a football in his life.

In 1975 American duo Captain and Tennille reached number 32 in the UK charts with the Neil Sedaka composition Love Will Keep Us Together – a purer slice of cheesy pop you’d be hard pressed to hear.  In June 1980 British post punk band Joy Division set off for the number 13 spot with that song’s angst riddled antithesis, Love Will Tear Us Apart – just a month after its lyricist and doomed frontman Ian Curtis had committed suicide. He was 23.

Almost 40 years after his death the pictures of Curtis – gaunt and haunted, clutching a microphone as though it was a lifebelt from a sinking ship is still one of rock music’s most tragically iconic images.

Love Will Tear Us Apart was written in August and September of 1979 and was first aired when Joy Division supported The Buzzcocks on their September and October tour, and it is one of the few songs on which Ian Curtis played guitar (albeit somewhat minimally – his fellow band members taught him how to strum a D major chord for the occasion).

Deliberately countering the positivity of the Sedaka song, its lyrics reflect the problems in Ian Curtis’ marriage to Deborah Curtis, as well as his general frame of mind (he suffered increasingly from epilepsy and depression) in the time leading up to his suicide. Deborah had the phrase Love Will Tear Us Apart inscribed on Ian Curtis’ memorial stone (even after the first one was stolen).

The song was released in April 1980 and, after Curtis’ suicide that May, became the band’s first chart hit, reaching number 13 in the UK. It also debuted at number one in New Zealand in June 1981.

But Joy Division’s days were numbered. The band broke up after Curtis’s death and reformed as New Order.

Clearly not from the Salford School of Optimism the lyrics of Love Will Tear Us Apart reflect the problems in Curtis’s marriage, as well as his general frame of mind in the time leading up to his suicide.

Curtis was unfaithful to his wife while touring with Joy Division. While Debbie remained at home with their child, Ian had an affair with a Belgian journalist and music promoter, Annik Honoré, which weighed heavily on him.
In retrospect the lyrics are, in fact, an epitaph to both his marriage and life he was about to leave: “When routine bites hard and ambitions are low

And resentment rides high, but emotions won’t grow
And we’re changing our ways, taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again
Love, love will tear us apart again.”
Debbie wouldn’t have needed a divorce solicitor to interpret: “Why is the bedroom so cold? You’ve turned away on your side
Is my timing that flawed? Our respect runs so dry
Yet there’s still this appeal that we’ve kept through our lives
But love, love will tear us apart again
Love, love will tear us apart again

You cry out in your sleep, all my failings exposed
And there’s a taste in my mouth as desperation takes hold
Just that something so good, just can’t function no more
Then love, love will tear us apart again
Love, love will tear us apart again.”

The sheer intensity of the song meant it was no surprise when Love Will Tear Us Apart was named NME Single of the Year in 1980 and was even listed as the best single of all time by the NME in 2002.

In 2004, the song was listed by Rolling Stone magazine at number 179 in its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. In 2011, the song registered at number 181. In May 2007, NME placed it at number 19 in its list of the 50 Greatest Indie Anthems Ever, one place ahead of another Joy Division song, Transmission. The song is also listed as being one of the 5 best indie songs of all time in the All Time Indie Top 50.

When interviewed for New Order Story, Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys said it was his favourite pop song of all time.
in 2012, in celebration of the NME’s 60th anniversary, a list of the 100 Greatest Songs of NME’s Lifetime was compiled and Love Will Tear Us Apart topped the list.

That same sheer intensity meant despite numerous cover versions and revivals (including 10000 Maniacs, Fall Out Boy, Paul Young, PJ Proby (!!!), Simple Minds, Swans, The Cure and U2) no one has come a country mile close to Curtis’s delivery.

As for the suicide, the evening before the band were due to depart for America, Curtis returned to his Macclesfield home to talk to Deborah. He asked her to drop an impending divorce suit and to leave him alone in the house until he caught a train to Manchester the following morning. Early on 18 May 1980 Curtis hanged himself in his kitchen. Deborah discovered his body later that day when she returned home.

Joy Division formed in Salford in 1976. The group consisted of vocalist Ian Curtis, guitarist/keyboardist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris. Sumner and Hook formed the band after attending a Sex Pistols concert.

While Joy Division’s first recordings were heavily influenced by early punk, they soon developed a sound and style that made them one of the pioneers of the post-punk movement.

Joy Division’s final live performance was held at the University of Birmingham’s High Hall on 2 May, and included their only performance of Ceremony, one of the last songs written by Curtis.

Despite their short career, Joy Division have exerted a wide-reaching influence on many bands including their contemporaries U2 and the Cure to later acts such as Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Neurosis, Interpol, Bloc Party, Editors and even. In 2005, both New Order and Joy Division were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame.

The band has been dramatised in two biopics. 24 Hour Party People (2002) – a fictionalised account of Factory Records in which members of the band appear as supporting characters, and the 2007 film Control, directed by Anton Corbijn, a biography of Ian Curtis (portrayed by Sam Riley) that uses Deborah Curtis’s biography of her late husband, Touching from a Distance (1995), as its basis.

The final words are probably best left to Curtis himself who, in a 1979 Radio Lancashire interview said: “Basically, we want to play and enjoy what we like playing. I think that when we stop doing that, I think, well, that will be time to pack it in. That will be the end.”

There’s nothing quite like a radio ban to guarantee the enduring success of a song or its singer.

Where would Judge Dread have got if people had actually had radio access to his pretty samey string of deliberately controversial 1970s hits? And as for Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg’s breathlessly erotic Je T’Aime, it might have found use as an asthma commercial rather than charting three times.

So what about Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s 1983 smash Relax?

Well, after umpteen remixes it was plodding along quite nicely and looked like peaking at around number six when in the second week of 1984, DJ Mike Read, then of BBC Radio 1’s influential breakfast show, stopped the song mid-spin and refused to air it again after reading its lyrics and reviewing its cover art.

Presumably until then he’d been too busy being a dj to actually listen to what he was playing and later said, “They are an exciting, competent new band, but I just feel the lyrics are overtly obscene.”

The rest of the BBC soon followed suit but other UK radio stations then bragged about playing ‘the song that the BBC banned’ – a move that sent the song to number one for five straight weeks.

Clearly a lyrical whizz kid himself – his own musical Young Apollo (about the life of Rupert Brooke) didn’t do well; Oscar (a 2004 show about Oscar Wilde) was derided by critics and closed after one performance) and Cliff – The Musical closed after just three months in the West End – he’d done the band the best of favours.
Still, it must have been easy to miss lyrics such as: “Relax, don’t do it
When you want to go to it
Relax, don’t do it
When you want to come
Relax, don’t do it
When you want to suck it, chew it
Relax, don’t do it
When you want to come
When you want to come.”

Maybe he’d been cueing up the next breakfast track when FGTH sang: “But shoot it in the right direction
Make makin’ it your intention
Live those dreams
Scheme those schemes
Got to hit me (hit me!)
Hit me (hit me!)
Hit me with those laser beams
Ow ow ow!
Laser beam me” …….etc etc etc.

Comprising of a motley crew from the lesser light Liverpool music scene, in February 1983, the group was invited to record a video for Relax by the Channel 4 show The Tube at the Liverpool State Ballroom. After the broadcast, an earlier John Peel session was repeated on radio, and a new session recorded for the BBC, comprising Welcome to the Pleasuredome, The Only Star in Heaven and Relax. These performances, along with a repeat of the Tube video, convinced producer Trevor Horn to sign the group to his new label, ZTT Records, in May 1983.

Relax was released by ZTT in October 1983, with production and remix directed by Horn, and received a modicum of airplay, allowing it to make steady progress into the Top 40.

It was also accompanied by a full frontal, so to speak, promotions campaign.

ZTT promotions guru Paul Morley intentionally courted scandal with an ad campaign featuring images of band member Paul Rutherford in a sailor cap and a leather vest, and frontman Holly Johnson with a shaved head and rubber gloves. The images were accompanied by the phrase “ALL THE NICE BOYS LOVE SEA MEN” and declared “Frankie Goes to Hollywood are coming … making Duran Duran lick the shit off their shoes … Nineteen inches that must be taken always.” A second ad promised “theories of bliss, a history of Liverpool from 1963 to 1983, a guide to Amsterdam bars”.

Following a debut on the BBC’s Top of the Pops on 5 January 1984 while at number 35, the single rose to number six the following week.

But two days after the Read ban – almost three months after the single’s initial release, and eight days after the group’s Top of the Pops appearance – the BBC banned the record from all its TV and radio outlets. Its future was assured even though te BBC could not feature the nation’s best-selling single on Top of the Pops.

The BBC lifted its ban at the end of 1984 to allow the band to perform it on the Christmas edition of Top of the Pops (it had been, aside from Band Aid of which Holly Johnson was a participant, the biggest-selling single of the year).

As for which band members were actually on the finished product it’s a bit like asking how many Monkees does it take to make a hit?

Trevor Horn loved Relax but wasn’t happy with the band’s performance of it in the studio. He brought in Ian Dury’s backing band The Blockheads to record it, but was not satisfied with that recording either. He then recruited engineer Steve Lipson, session keyboard player Andy Richards and Fairlight programmer JJ Jeczalik to perform the song, but still wasn’t pleased with the results. After a few weeks of recording, he found an old rhythm he’d made on a drum machine and started from scratch a fourth time with Lipson, Richards and Jeczalik, building the song around this beat. FGTH members Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford were called into the studio that night and both recorded vocals on the track until 4am – making them the only two band members who are featured in the final version of the track. After Relax (b/w Ferry Cross The Mersey), and second single Two Tribes (b/w War), the entire band was featured on the later recordings beginning with Power Of Love.

At first, to calm controversy, the band claimed the song was written about “motivation” to make a case for radio play, but never fully committed to the guise bassist Mark O’Toole wrote in the album liner notes: “Everything I say is complete lies. Like, when people ask you what Relax was about, when it first came out we used to pretend it was about motivation, and really it was about shagging.”
For his part Holly Johnson tweeted in 2013: “Never complain. NEVER EXPLAIN … it’s not an order it’s a motto that I refer to when asked to explain the meaning of songs.”

He had earlier claimed that the words of the song came to him as he was walking in Liverpool: “I mean they were just, you know, words that floated into my head one day when I was walking down Princess Avenue (in Liverpool) with no bus fare, trying to get to rehearsals – I mean there was no great sort of calculated, ‘Oh I’ll sing these words and this record’ll be banned’.”

Relax ultimately became the seventh best-selling UK single of all time. It also won the 1985 Brit Award for Best British Single. Their debut album, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, reached number one in the UK in 1984 with advanced sales of over one million. After the follow-up success of Two Tribes and The Power of Love, the group became only the second act in the history of the UK charts to reach number one with their first three singles; the first being fellow Liverpudlians Gerry and the Pacemakers. This record remained unbeaten until the Spice Girls achieved a six-single streak in 1996–97 followed by a number two then three more chart toppers.

In the USA Relax reached 67 in late 1984, but after the release of Welcome To The Pleasuredome, the song re-charted with the much higher peak of 10 in early 1985.

Basic rules of a Spandau Ballet song:

Must be suitable for a lavishly expensive video like the ones Duran Duran had so much success with.

Must have just a touch of George Michael about it.

Must be catchy but not cause too much perspiration -New Romantic make-up runs so easily and those frilly cuffs are a devil when they’re damp.

Must include at least some chantable element in the lyrics (which rules out 1984’s Highly Strung with its clever but decidedly unchantable “She used to be a diplomat but now she’s down the laundromat” – and even, ironically, 1981’s Chant Number 1 because it sounds too much like they are singing “I don’t need this pressure iron” – which in fact they probably did need for those frilly shirts.

Must not invent its own vocabulary – so out goes 1982’s Instinction. What does it mean anyway for goodness sake?

Must have a long shelf life bearing in mind the band’s first hit was in 1980 and various parts of its frequently fractious line-up are still going “strong” with sets spanning Spandau’s chequered history.

So in terms of a Great British Songbook song from their surprisingly extensive back catalogue it’s probably down to a tie breaker between True (chart topper in April 1983) and Gold (number two in August the same year).

But before even looking at its lyrics the accolade has to be handed to Gold for ticking so many correct boxes.

GARY KEMP

Founder Gary Kemp wrote the music and lyrics; the song was produced by the partnership of Steve Jolley and Tony Swain. The music video was filmed on location in Carmona, Spain and directed by Brian Duffy. A ‘making of’ video featured photographs of the band taken by his son, Chris Duffy. The video featured Sadie Frost (later to be Mrs Gary Kemp and later still Mrs Jude Law) as a gold-painted nymph, in one of her earlier less demanding roles.

Some parts were also filmed in Leighton House, which was also used in the video for Golden Brown by The Stranglers.

The song is Spandau Ballet’s second-highest charting single in both the UK and the USA – being held off the British top by KC and the Sunshine Band’s Give It Up.

The song has featured in various shows and films. As part of Absolute Radio’s celebrations for the 2012 Summer Olympics, Christian O’Connell, the network’s breakfast show host, pledged to play the song for every gold medal won by Team GB. Spandau’s lead singer Tony Hadley was also invited onto the programme for a live performance of the song.

It has also been turned into a football chant, with fans of both West Ham and Celtic replacing “gold” with “Carlton Cole”, who has played for their teams.

Hadley has said of the song: “Gold is the song which even today’s kids enjoy singing along to in student bars up and down the country, and is one of main reasons I get so many corporate shows. It’s requested all the time at awards shows.”

He said this to explain his earnings being higher since the start of the twenty-first century than they had been in the band’s 1980s heydays.

Gold was used in the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on the fictional in-game radio station “Wave 103”. It was also the theme music for the fictional game show Gold Rush in the 2001 Only Fools and Horses episode “If Only They Could See Us Now”.

It was also used on an episode of MTV Cribs that featured the virtual band Gorillaz showcasing the attributes of Noodle, their guitarist.

But whilst most us are familiar with some or all of the chorus: “Gold (gold)
Always believe in your soul
You’ve got the power to know
You’re indestructible, always believing
You are gold (gold)
Glad that you’re bound to return
There’s something I could have learned
You’re indestructible, always believing.”
We must still have been trying to get a drink at the bar for the first verse: “Thank you for coming home
Sorry that the chairs are all worn
I left them here I could have sworn
These are my salad days
Slowly being eaten away
Just another play for today
Oh, but I’m proud of you, but I’m proud of you
Nothing left to make me feel small
Luck has left me standing so tall.”
And we were probably queuing for the toilet by the time of: “After the rush has gone
I hope you find a little more time
Remember we were partners in crime
It’s only two years ago
The man with the suit and the face
You knew that he was there on the case
Now he’s in love with you, he’s in love with you
And love is like a high prison wall
And you could leave me standing so tall.”
And back just in time for a fists in the air finale repeat of “Gold (gold)” etc etc.

Not bad for a band inspired by the London’s post-punk underground dance scene who, after first forming at school performing playing speeded-up versions of The Rolling Stones’ Silver Train, The Beatles’ I Wanna Be Your Man and The Animals We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place, emerged at the start of the 1980s as the house band for the Blitz Kids, playing “White European Dance Music” as The Applause for the new club culture’s audience.

NEW ROMANTICS

As Spandau Ballet they became one of the most successful groups of the New Romantic era of British pop and were part of the Second British Invasion of the Billboard Top 40 in the 1980s, selling 25 million albums and having 23 hit singles worldwide.
The band have had eight UK top 10 albums, including three greatest hits compilations and an album of re-recorded material. Their musical influences ranged from punk rock and soul music to the American crooners Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

Its classic line-up featured Gary Kemp on guitar, synthesiser and backing vocals, his brother Martin Kemp on bass, vocalist Tony Hadley, saxophonist Steve Norman and drummer John Keeble.

Gary Kemp was also the band’s songwriter. And along with his brother – a successful actor.

You can seldom be sure where the inspiration for a song title comes from but it could just be that the origins of the Pet Shop Boys/Dusty Springfield collaboration What Have I Done To Deserve This? had its roots in the night PSB Chris Lowe was knocked back from the leading “fun bar” in his home town of Blackpool for being “inappropriately dressed.”

It mattered little that he was high in the charts at the time with his performing partner Neil Tennant. He’d clearly not read the dress code – “no track suit bottoms, no baseball caps, no trainers, no outfits made out of bin liners.” OK, maybe that last bit of advice wasn’t actually written down but having been brought up in the resort he should surely have remembered the rules of Blackpool clubbing – ie don’t try and look different, don’t say “this wouldn’t happen in London” and don’t tell the door staff you are quite famous (and by the way, that’s one of your tunes the dj is playing!).

“A Pet Shop Boy? Yeah right and I’m one of The Nolans.”

GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS

Anyway it pretty much sums up how Chris (particularly) and Neil (not quite as much) have managed to remain out of the spotlight and headlights of a career which has, so far, spanned 38 years and seen sales of 100 million records worldwide.
The George and George of pop are the most successful duo in UK music history (it’s in The Guinness Book of Records so it must be true), three-time Brit Award winners and six-time Grammy nominees. Since 1985 they have achieved 42 Top 30 singles, 22 of them Top 10 hits in the UK Singles Chart, including four UK number ones: West End Girls” (also number one on the US Billboard Hot 100), It’s a Sin, an acclaimed cover of Always On My Mind, and Heart.

Other hit songs include a cover of the Village People’s classic Go West, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money) and the barrier breaking What Have I Done To Deserve This? duet with Dusty Springfield.

Released in late 1987, it peaked at number two in the UK and also at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the fourth top ten hit for Pet Shop Boys as well as the biggest hit of Springfield’s career in the US.

It was kept from the top by Seasons Change by Exposé and Father Figure by George Michael in the US, while in the UK it was stopped by Rick Astley with his debut single, Never Gonna Give You Up. The single made it to number one on the Irish singles chart, where it was their second chart topper in the space of just six weeks.

Its success helped revive Springfield’s career and led to a resurgence of interest in her music. Together they performed the song for the 1988 BRIT Awards. Following the duet, the Pet Shop Boys wrote and produced the singles Nothing Has Been Proved and In Private for Springfield, both included on her 1990 album Reputation.

The video for it was filmed in a music hall, featuring a female chorus line and male members of the pit orchestra. It made significant use of the theatre drapes and stage curtains for dramatic effect.

Although the duo had wanted to release the song – co-written by AlleeWillis – on their debut album, they had been unable to track down Springfield and were reluctant to record it with any other female singer.

Springfield’s manager finally contacted them in 1986 and towards the end of that year, she travelled to London to record What Have I Done to Deserve This? with them.

It was eventually the first track to be recorded for the duo’s second album. They’d been warned that Springfield was difficult to work with and even that she could no longer sing; however, her performance on the track put any concerns to rest and they began a collaboration with her which lasted until the end of the decade. The duet was also the start of a series of collaborations with high-profile musicians, going on throughout the band’s career.

BRIT AWARDS

At the 2009 Brit Awards in London, they received an award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2016, Billboard magazine named them the number one dance duo/group over the 40 years since the chart’s inception in 1976. In 2017 the duo received NME’s Godlike Genius Award.

Not bad for a couple who met in 1981 when Neil Tennant was 27 and Chris Lowe just 22 in a London hi-fi (remember what that was?) shop.

Tennant, then an assistant editor at Smash Hits (remember that?), had bought a synthesizer (remember them?) which sparked a conversation with Lowe, who was working in the shop. With a mutual interest in dance and electronic music, they began to work together on material.

They claim the name was taken from friends who worked in an Ealing pet shop and were known as the “pet shop boys”.

In August 1983, Tennant went to New York to interview Sting. While there he arranged to meet Hi-NRG producer Bobby Orlando and gave him a demo tape containing It’s a Sin and Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money).. From 1983–84, Orlando recorded 11 tracks with Tennant and Lowe and in April 1984, the Orlando-produced West End Girls was released, becoming a club hit in Los Angeles and San Francisco. On 2 November, it was voted Screamer of the Week by listeners of Long Island, New York, radio station WLIR. It was a minor dance hit in Belgium and France, but missed out in the UK

It was only after eventually cutting their ties with Bobby O (giving him significant royalties for future sales), hiring manager Tom Watkins and signing with the Parlophone label that they packed up their day jobs and saw things begin to take off. But although the bin bag days are now long gone it could still be Chris Lowe stood behind you in the supermarket queue and you wouldn’t know.

It’s not until you sit down and listen to their back catalogue pretty much end to end that it dawns on any compiler just how difficult it is to highlight only one song by probably the least likely looking pop stars of recent times.

Alright, it’s not looks we should judge Scottish twins Craig and Charlie Reid by. You’ve only got to slip on a Best Of collection to realise just how persistently under-rated The Proclaimers have been.
Yes, they’ve had their fair share of commercial success but have they been taken entirely seriously? No.

Perhaps it’s their own fault – after all they’ve refused to change their bank-clerk-next-door image or water down their accents, but more power to them for that.
Apart from a bit of politicking here and there, they pretty much shun the limelight and the headlines but over the years they’ve come up with a string of gems such as the travelogue Letter From America, the love song to their homeland Sunshine On Leith, the linguistic patriotism of Throw the R Away, the political statement of Cap In Hand, the hot highland gospel of The Joyful Kilmarnock Blues and, of course, the closing time anthem that will probably be carved on their headstone, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).

It was already a staple tune of any self respecting party, stag do or hens night long before Peter Kay, Matt Lucas and a cast of seemingly thousands emphasised its marching beat and made it a million-plus fund raiser for the Comic Relief charity.

But apart from anything else it deserves its place in the pop psyche for being (so far) the only hit song to feature the word “haver” in its lyrics. Haver? The Oxford Dictionary defines the word as a Scottish verb “to talk foolishly, babble,” or a noun “foolish talk, nonsense.” In English it’s to act in a vacillating or indecisive manner.”
Whatever. It was as welcome as Hoagy Carmichael’s unique use of “reverie”” in the song Stardust.

I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) was first released as the lead single from their 1988 album Sunshine on Leith. It reached number 11 in the UK Singles Chart on its initial release, and has since become their most popular song worldwide, initially becoming a number one hit in Iceland of all places (perhaps they do a lot of walking there?), before reaching number one in both Australia and New Zealand in early 1990.

In 1993, following its appearance in the American film Benny & Joon, the song was released in North America and many other countries around the world, reaching the top five in both the United States and Canada.

But the real sit-up-and-notice moment for the song was 2007 when they re-recorded the song with comedians Peter Kay and Matt Lucas for the UK’s Comic Relief charity telethon, scoring a UK number one and outperforming their original singles performance by (500?) miles.

Not bad for something Craig banged out for his then girlfriend Petra (now long time wife) in under an hour whilst waiting in Edinburgh to be picked up for a gig in Aberdeen.

As he later said in The Scottish Sun: “It’s basically about the woman who was my girlfriend then and who’s my wife now. But when something like that comes so fast it’s maybe best not to think too much about it. It happened so quickly I really wasn’t thinking about much really.”

He’d earlier admitted: “I knew that it was a good song, maybe even a single, but I had no idea how popular it would become.”

He could also have expressed surprise (and delight) that the band’s earnings from the song are about five times the rest of their catalogue combined.

Keen ears and eyes will spot the comedy version makes a slight change in the title of the song, with the parentheses placed around “I’m Gonna Be” rather than “500 Miles”. The lyrics also include a change with the words “roll 500 miles” replacing “walk 500 miles”, because the lead characters in the accompanying video Brian Potter and Andy Pipkin are both in wheelchairs.

It reached number three on the official UK Singles Chart on download sales alone and a week later reached number one where it remained for three weeks. It sold 126,000 copies in its first week, making it the biggest selling number one of the year up to that point. Its sales were double that of the official Comic Relief single by Girls Aloud vs. Sugababes, and their cover of Aerosmith’s Walk This Way. The song ended 2007 as the year’s 8th biggest-selling single in the UK.

The unlikely duo were born in Leith on 5 March 1962, and grew up in Edinburgh, Cornwall and Auchtermuchty. When they lived in Auchtermuchty they attended Bell Baxter High School and after several school punk rock bands (honestly!) they formed The Proclaimers in 1983.

The pair came to public attention when a fan sent their demo to the English band The Housemartins, who were impressed enough to invite them on their 1986 UK tour. The exposure won them a January1987 appearance on the pop music television programme The Tube on Channel Four. Subsequently Letter from America peaked at number three in the UK while the debut album This Is the Story went gold.

At the end of the day who can resist a good love song with its little notes of reality. Spot them in this verse:

“When I’m workin’, yes, I know I’m gonna be
I’m gonna be the man who’s workin’ hard for you
And when the money comes in for the work I do
I’ll pass almost every penny on to you
When I come home (when I come home), oh, I know I’m gonna be
I’m gonna be the man who comes back home to you
And if I grow old, well, I know I’m gonna be
I’m gonna be the man who’s growin’ old with you.”

What have a grumpy and chunky Irishman with a liking for fedoras (that would be Sir George Ivan “The Man” Morrison) got in common with a very cheerful and annoyingly slim Englishman who spends half his time dwelling on his Scottish roots (Sir Roderick “Rod the Mod” David Stewart) got in common? Apart from the fact that they’ve both earned a decent rock-and-roll-and-pop-and-blues-and-more crust for more years than even they probably care to remember, Van and Rod share a place in the annals of excellence for their renditions of the classic romancer, Have I Told You Lately (That I Love You)?

It’s unlikely that the man whose stage presence makes Bob Dylan’s performing persona seem like a stand-up comedian (Ivan) and the geezer who these days risks putting his hip out by still kicking footballs into his adoring crowds of fans (Roderick), ever thought they would share anything other than the year in which they were born – 1945 (Rod in January and Van in August). Rod may have made it out of the maternity ward first but it’s Van who claims first dibs on Have I Told You Lately.

An ever decreasing number of people will, of course, recall that he can’t claim the same got-their-first rights on the song’s title. He may have written the song more modern pop pickers recognize for his nineteenth studio album Avalon Sunset (1989) but a song of the same name had been doing the rounds since Scotty Wiseman wrote it in the mid 1940s with later versions of it recorded by such luminaries as Bing Crosby with the Andrews Sisters in 1949 and later by rockers Eddie Cochran and Elvis Presley.

It’s claimed to have originally been written as a prayer and most of its original lyrics could certainly double as a hymn. For example:

“Oh the morning sun in all its glory
Greets the day with hope and comfort too
And you fill my life with laughter
You can make it better
Ease my troubles that’s what you do.”

More recently though it has been adopted as the song most likely to be played as the first or sometimes last smoocher at weddings. After all, it’s a hard heart (or a short lived groom) who can resist the sentiment of:

“Have I told you lately that I love you
Have I told you there’s no one above you
Fill my heart with gladness
Take away my sadness
Ease my troubles, that’s what you do.”

Proof? Well In August 2006, Van’s original recording was voted number six on a list of the Top 10 First Dance Wedding Songs, based on a poll of 1,300 DJs in the UK and in October 2007 he received a Million-Air certificate for over four million air plays of Have I Told You Lately at the BMI awards ceremony in London.
Not bad for a number which spent just one week in the UK singles charts – peaking at number 74 in 1989. Rod’s version did better – reaching number 5 in June 1993 and spending nine weeks in the charts. He had originally covered the song for his album Vagabond Heart (1991) but it was the live version from his album Unplugged…and Seated (1993) whish caught the public’s imagination – and certainly rang the changes from the Jack the Lad image created on the likes of Hot Legs and later Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.

He can probably even be forgiven for the subtle secular lyric changes:
“There’s a love that’s divine, And it’s yours and it’s mine” becoming “There’s a love less defined, And it’s yours and it’s mine.”
With umpteen other covers and revivals even the normally taciturn Morrison might occasionally have been tempted to rename the song Have I Told You Lately That I Love the Royalties.