LAUGHTER FOR AFTERS

LAUGHTER FOR AFTERS

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

by

Cynthia Rose

Dateline: Vacationsville. Just touched down on that International Runway with this month’s dispatch for you under my arm — and what should greet me but seemingly endless “analyses” of the culture behind what American journals apparently insist on terming the Second British Invasion.

The results of their “comprehensive surveys” seem to have ended up halfsincere, half half-baked and loaded with de facto howlers. (U.K. to Time, Inc: no one has greeted anyone with the term “coolbaby-o!” outside Roger Corman’s backlot meisterwerks of the ’50s.) But the major missing link is the essential incestuousness of U.K. rock culture. Britain is a small spot; we are an island. And, in these days of depression, rock culture does yield our most potent dreams—ideas of Somewhere to head, Someone to be, some Sound to match those neglected and down-trodden emotions which are readily, steadily pilfered by many vested interests: from advertising concerns to and through fashion retailers, film-makers and the likes of Smash Hits.

That’s why, however hollow it may seem, British music is always somehow more than just fashion and British fashion is more than mere clothes. Time magazine in fact got the closest to the truth of the matter: these affairs of art are, for the participants, a way to preserve the heart when both the age and the stage seem increasingly desperate.

Perhaps the country’s most noted dissector of the heart—Elvis Costello—just rolled in the capital’s Palais with This Year’s Model Roadshow: the Attractions in full MOR state, augmented by the Afrodiziak backup chorus and the four-strong TKO Horns. “Soul”— the latest music-press buzzword—was supposedly much at stake. But what we GOT was (to quote a gent I overheard) more like on John. OK, Costello is as renowned for anger-m-the-abstract as he is reliable for ineresting copy. But copy is talk into print, not moment-into-magic. And the Palais s ow was one of grossly overblown ego: grating, condescending and mean of spirit.

1 he much-vaunted TKO section sounded like aural paint-stripper and, after standing long bemused among an audience cheering every bit of abuse flung in their direction, I made an instant and unqualified ^*ea^ ^or ^he door.

The audience I left behind was largely couples with a capital C; perhaps because every pair of settled lovers in the U.K. seems to own a copy of Trust, still El’s big breakthrough elpee here. And—perhaps affected by this constituency—Costello seemed to be metamorphosing into his own father, former big-band leader Ross McManus. But, from the constant political haranguing through the jive lame Afro-wear sported by his black back-up girls, this was a grisly spectacle and one I wanted no part in. So, I was left on the pavement outside the Palais wondering what the hell ever happened to that plump, talented singersongwriter I saw re-open the Rainbow rock hall a scant two years earlier.

As I said, though, the inter-relation of rock with Everything Else in Britain can offer clues about what makes fame such a frame. Offbeat new film The Heartbreakers (a German artifact playing the London Film Festival before beginning its neighborhood run) is a perfect case in point. This 1983 narrative hails from West Germany, where it was directed by Peter Bringman. It sets out to tell a simple story: after a 1964 Stones concert in Essen, four small-town German boys and their pip-squeak manager struggle to form their own “beat band.

Deftly and disarmingly, however, Bringman manages to incorporate into their tale almost every facet of rock’s post-’60s dreams—as well as points about Germany’s particular relationship to pop’s structure and mythos (remember the Reeperbahn!). The Heartbreakers’ guitarist Uwe, for instance, emerges as a Brian Wilson figure: a musical talent restricted by the commercial formats of his day with an ungainly psyche hobbling along on the crutches of drug dependence. Pretty-boy Freytag, by contrast, stands in for many an explosive frontman (visually, he’s a ringer for David Bowie) but under his looks and commanding temper lurks emotional marshmallow.

This is brought out by the film’s most interesting character: songstress Lisa, a talented working-class girl whose sacrifice of romance for a career chance rings all too true even in such an unassuming vehicle. The simple plot of The Heartbreakers moves from the garbage-strewn, deserted outside of the concert hall where the Stones have just triumphed to the similarly littered, abandoned local center of provincial Reckinghausen—where Lisa has captured a “Battle Of The Bands” trophy. But it contains considerable sophistications, from the characters (Schmittchen, another Heartbreaker, is every Hard Days Night myth about the Fab Four rolled into one roustabout) to the implications about what it means to Europeans to sing about a received culture in a foreign language. (It is Lisa and Uwe, the progressive thinkers, who move beyond covers of U.S. and U.K. hits to original material.)

The Heartbreakers is more than sentimental, then; it’s also still somewhat accurate. Take a band like our own Dolly Mixture, a post-punk girl pop band who started off entirely under their own steam out in the fens around Cambridge. While the Go-Go’s were but a gleam in Belinda Carlisle’s eye, the Dollies toughed it out on the U.K. circuit until they could conquer London bookings. Since then, they’ve weathered a spell on Chrysalis, they were the first band signed by Weller’s Respond (also the first, after two singles, to decamp out of dis-satisfaction), plus they’ve employed and dismissed two managers. They’ve even survived a rather demeaning stint as sidekicks to ex-Damned weirdo Captain Sensible and served as the subject for a yet-to-be-aired documentary of their “history.”

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All the while the trio have struggled towards a single aim: making their music the way they wanted to, without resort to sex emphasis or stereotype. Like the fictitious Heartbreakers, they’ve had to rely on covers (their “Femme Fatale” is a big fave) and a loyal live following. But grit and perseverance have at last led them to a rather imaginative way of getting product out as they want it heard; they’re releasing their demo tapes as a double album. The feat has been made possible by a deal with IDS (the Independent Distribution Service), who’ve turned the 28 songs into a white-jacketed collection called The Dolly Mixture Demo Tapes: A Limited Edition. A nice accomplishment for one band who refuse to be written off just because they won’t play the game as gurls.

Aside from the tried-and-true Chick Singer Syndrome, the latest way to run the same seam in popular culture is as a “comedienne.” And the hottest example is a lady called Tracey Ullman. Ullman was primed for feminine stardom early at the Italia Conti Drama School for talented tots (that’s where Franco Zefferelli found his 14-year-old Juliet in Olivia Hussey). And she dutifully legged her fair share of stage time in musicals: Elvis with Shakin’ Stevens; second runs of Grease and The Rocky Horror Show.

What really brought Ullman to public attention, however, were two TV slots. The first was a comedy series called Kick Up The Eighties and the second a wilder set of revues entitled Three Of A Kind (which also featured the cult black comic Lenny Henry). Only seconds elapsed between such notice and an offer from Leading Novelty Vendors Stiff Records to cut a 45, which was called “Breakaway.” Gracey recorded “Breakaway” just as she began a large-screen role in Paul McCartney’s celluloid experiment Give My Regards To Broad St., due out late this year.

Her persona being a TV creation, Tracey was assured of airplay for the single and it predictably cracked the top 5. So she quickly followed it up with a breathy 7-inch called “They Don’t Know.” This dim little spectre de la Spector was actually written by Kirsty MacColl, a Stiff label-mate who has recorded her own novelty single (“There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Thinks He’s Elvis”)—and who is the daughter of noted English folk singer Ewan MacColl. Again, “They Don’t Know” has shot Ullman to the top of the hit parade. And there she basks, her pic sleeve a gleaming portrait of Woman in Spaghetti Straps, coyly raising her full skirt and pointing pink stiletto-ed feet. Trite stuff, truly, and no help at all to the British woman who would rather have a few more role models to choose from than just a bouncy bunny rabbit, the torch priestess, or the Boy George clonette. “I’d rather see a sense of humor recognized than costumed,” one 18-year-old girl sniffed to me when I ventured to ask what she thought of Tracey’s various successes.

Finally, speaking of sheer costume, the London ready-to-wear fashion shows have just closed—and on a note which may well rebound in your direction. I’ll just say this: platform shoes are back! Got it?