LETTER FROM BRITAIN

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

THEY FEEL LOVE

by

Cynthia Rose

"And it's...WILLIAM!" trumpet the headlines this p.m., relieving us all after days of suspense about what Prince Charles and Princess Di would decide to call their son. "We Won The War, We're Winning The World Cup, And Now We've Got The Baby," brays the Sun, that tabloid which billed itself during the Falklands as "The One That Backs Our Boys."

Each of the papers boasts its own Royal aby supplement—and neither the skyrocketing unemployment figures or the combined rail and subway strike which has immobilized London for a week figures on the front page. Instead, "everybody can share the pride and joy of Charles and Diana as they introduce their son to the world. Why? "Because the baby is such a wonderful sequel to the romantic story of a girl marrying the prince next door," according to Royal in-law Barbara Cartland.

Ah!—romance. Babs couldn't be more on the beam there...lately Britain's youth have drawn a deep breath, averted their gaze from the South Atlantic, and escape into a breathless waltz with the very idea. From ABC's sleek lame prom jackets to the Human League's bourgeois bop to the lisping fetishism of Soft. Cell—right up through the resuscitation of Roxy Music, everybody aches to feel love. Only it has to be felt from a discreet distance. Discretion is taste, taste is style, and style is the key to sales these days. "How do you define glamour?" has become even more de rigeur than "Do you find it necessary to be in a state of turmoil to create?" as an interview question.

Glamour and confessional romance should have reached a joint apogee with Marianne Faithfull's recent one-night-only London appearance in the midst of an extensive European and transatlantic schedule. So the hype promised: Marianne's "Room Of My Own" in the Sunday paper's color magazine; Marianne as the artist's model in illustrator Adrian George's West End exhibition; Marianne on the cover of numerous magazines at once, promising inside her views on society, sex, drugs, and—modern romance!

Come Tuesday down the Dominion and the legend arrives (late) for her date with the public clad in faded denim and broderie anglais. Amid a light show and sound system that would be the envy of Van Halen, the "contradictory personality" we've been reading about for a fortnight starts to show.. .Marianne pointedly ignores her practiced four-piece backup band (Barry Reynolds and excellent bassist Fernando Saunders on guitar) and interrupts her own renditions with curtsies, kisses and frequent forays offstage in search of refreshment. Wiping her nose with an arm as she comes back on, or swigging theatrically from a bottle, she seems distinctly more arrogant than romantic.

Cynthia Rose, a contributor to the NME and City Limits in the U.K., will be filling in for the newly-maternal Penny Valentine for a few months.

The audience laps up this Joplinesque imagery; they roar when Marianne growls "Thank you, darlings" with a stoned expansiveness; they scream while she snorts and snivels and scrapes her way through a travesty of her recent work. The band are playing with their backs to her by the time she trots into position for a version of Lennon's "Working Class Hero" out of a whole circus of lighting effects. And by the time she stumbles over to her piano and pulls a lyric sheet to Patti Smith's "Because The Night" out of her Levis, it seems time to leave. Exiting past the front of the theatre, we catch sight of a white Rolls Royce waiting for the grand exit. I remember the Marianne of a year before, who told me, "Of course, I use the Romantic heritage...the reality of the music business for anyone who's signed contracts is the public's consciousness. You have to take into account what that is because it dictates how you will be presented and how your work will be intrepreted. So by God I'll use it."

Use or feel used? That's the bind of traditional teen romance, where sex is power and everything eventually breaks down into "winners" and "losers." This old-fashioned approach places a lot of stress on appearances of course, so marketing men love it. After all, when nobody's perfect you can always sell them self-improvement, a new arid better ME. The idea of the right attitudes, clothes and manners is implicit in the stance of current idols ABC (whose Lexicon Of Love LP cover was styled and shot by slick fashion photographer Gered Mankowitz, the. man responsible for curing Martin Fry's acne with his airbrush), Haircut 100, Human League and their imitators.

Even one Thursday evening's exposure to TV's Top Of The Pops will reveal to what extent the ensemble is now all. Kid Creole and the Coconuts alone have much to answer for here; now every male vocalist has a clutch of costumed cuties to whom he can play the pimp...Adam Ant's are * French maids and dominatrixes in black rubber, the Associates' girls sport swimsuits and sideswept hair and mime violin-playing. When the Stones' aging superstar circus finally rolls into town, the most scathing indictments ("mangy and middle-aged") heaped on it are directed towards the band's out-of-date couture.

With everyone taking such ploys to heart, it seems a small step from novelty numbers—like Captain Sensible warbling South Pacific's "Happy Talk" while Dolly Mixture accompanies him in grass skirts and war paint—to novelties. Such as Martin Fry's worldly pastiche of disco's brief history, complete with outspoken confessionals (from "The Look Of Love." "They say, 'Marty, you'll find true love'... There must be a solution."). Like so many before him, Fry is making a calculated bid for Ferry's disco following. Love has no guarantee! he warns us, spinning out his high-rent falsetto-and-strings sagas about "the law of di-min-ish-ing RE-turns" and "the highlights of her hair" (a marketing slip).

For these self-confident assertions, Fry is envied, lauded, worshipped. When Mike Finney of the now defunct Distractions— the band whose one Island LP was the true and superior precursor to this new pop— announces his new band Secret Seven, he also announces he "wants to be a winner, like Martin Fry." Teen mags launch popularity contests pitting the ambitious, clean-cut Fry against the ambitious, cleancut Nick Heyward of Haircut 100. Fashion editors speculate in print whether or not Boy George's band Culture Club and Haysi Fantawsee will outsell Fry's line in lame suits with their "white dread chic." True romance?

Not according to Tom Verlaine, who provided the month's finest (if most badly reported) gigs in London. "There's always been a fear of really feeling anything, but now it's worse than it's been," said the former maestro of Television fhe night before his first date. "People used to approach love more naturally, more honestly. Listen to 'Heartbreak Hotel'— that's a really honest song, lyrics and everything. Right now love songs are the hardest ones to write, because people aren't confronting the realities of emotion. They try to see only what they've been conditioned to want.. .that's the biggest problem." The audience at Verlaine's Venue gigs seemed as enthralled by the emotional pitch of Verlaine's idealism as they did by the expertise with which is was conveyed—ringing, chiming guitars climbing the sweaty walls until the packed niterie trembled. Obviously, these concert-goers agreed with the man onstage that the likes of "Marquee Moon" and "Coming Apart" were at bottom great dance songs. Love may very well have no guarantee, but it certainly has one or two faithful guardians left.

TURN TO PAGE 72

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 28