HIPSWAY TAKES THE PLLINGE CROTCH DEEP IN THE HOOPLA

HIPSWAY TAKES THE PLLINGE CROTCH DEEP IN THE HOOPLA

Bud Scoppa

by

How sweet it is to be wanted—first by lotsa major-label A&R types, then by radio programmers, and finally by people with cash in their pockets. So far, everything’s been falling nicely into place for the three (formerly four, but the bass player and his brother the manager got sacked at the same time) Glaswegian funkateers who call themselves Hipsway. They were signed in the U.K. by Phonogram before they’d ever played a gig. And once the American label had inexplicably passed on the group (even after they’d enjoyed immediate British chart success), a bidding war ensued, with the high-octane Columbia label coming out on top.

The band’s first U.S. single, “The Honeythief,” won favor among trendites and plain folk alike, getting to number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 before it started to lose altitude. And there’s more where that came from on Hipsway’s self-titled debut album. These guys must think that making it in rock ’n’ roll is automatic.

What a life! Columbia’s publicity department couldn’t wait to get the guys on the plane to L.A. (first-class, of course) for some radio/press interviews, along with some corporate wining and dining. (Nobody in the company had so much as met any of the young Scotsmen until they made the trip—not even A&R man Jamie Cohen, who’d signed the band.) When they got to the CBS offices in Century City, the bandmembers discovered all they hadda do was say the word “beer” and three ice-cold Coronas would appear, or “Marlboro box, please” and a red-andwhite package of rock’s official smokes would instantly turn up. Gimme a C, gimme a B, gimme an S! This label takes care of business.

So how’d you get ’em, Jamie (of aforementioned A&R fame)?

“The first thing I ever heard was ‘Broken Years,’ and it jagged me because it was so funky and at the same time it satisfied all the commercial criteria.” Cohen’s speaking in his ninth floor office, which features floor-to-ceiling windows. “Broken Years” was Hipsway’s first British single. “How can a band you dig this much be hip, with such great voices, and yet be so commercial? It just clicked for me—the thrill factor was number one. And then the depth of the record started to come through.

“So I fell madly in love with the band, but I found out that PolyGram had the option here in the U.S. When I heard they got their release,” he says—incredulously, of course, “I got on the next plane to London, and finally tracked their manager down. The word was they were close to signing with Chrysalis in the U.S. And I said, ‘That’s ridiculous—we distribute Chrysalis!’ I did every sort of collusionary bullshit to get them on Columbia—I would not rest until I got ’em. It was a band perched with all the elements, and they just needed the big power behind them. And I was in a position to offer ’em that kind of power, so they decided to go. Now they’re seeing the benefit of what we’ve done for them. And the funny thing is, I never even met the band ’til yesterday!

“There's a line in one of their songs that goes, ‘I feel like setting the world on fire’—there you go,” Cohen says, obviously delighted by the coup he’s pulled off.

Down in the publicity conference room, the boys in the band grit their teeth for the last full day’s schedule of interviews. As beer and cigs are served (what, no church key?! The help these days...), frontman Grahame “Skin” Skinner, drummer Harry Travers, and guitarist Pirn Jones clink their bottles together and stare out the window at the sprawling L.A. landscape.

“I’m pissed off that I have to go to San Francisco,” says Sting... er, Skin. “I love it here. We thought that Columbia would be a good idea, and it is, obviously. If Columbia wanted us that badly, we thought, then they should have us.”

“Columbia put what they had on the line for us—they were right behind us,” Travers picks up. “We wouldn’t go to anyone that didn’t consider us a priority. It’s important that people understand that we’ve got something, and they’re willing to work for us as much as possible.”

“Phonogram over there have a great reputation,” Skin goes on. “Here it’s not like that. Like they lost Dire Straits over here. I think there was other mistakes as well. So I think company policy as far as they’re concerned will be changing.” Skin’s got a thumbs-down glint in his eyes.

Three years ago, Skin and Travers were only semi-committed to rock ’n’ roll as a career, having chosen to poke along on a semi-pro level. But they never doubted that they had something special going beneath the semi-blase surface of their garage band, the White Savages.

“We believed in ourselves, even though what we were doing was pretty amateurish,” Skin says. “We couldn’t play, but we always felt something. We had the attitude, as much as anything.”

They’ve got the attitude, all right. These guys actually expect to have four hit singles on their first album. “And in a perfect world, they’d all be #1,” Pirn affirms. So what was their motivation for getting serious as a band, thus making the world a more perfect place?

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“Seeing other bands around us getting signed, getting rich,” Travers responds. “And we’ve already gone further than most of them—just about all them. We’re like the most successful—”

“—of that crop,” Skin finishes. “Like we’d see Simple Minds, and we were big fans of theirs. They’ve been doin’ it a lot longer than us. They came from Glasgow; we related to them. So we thought, well, we could try to do that. But there were a lot of other bands that I don’t think are as good as them, and we thought we were better than a lot of ’em too. So we just thought, why wasn’t we doin’ it? It was obvious: ’cause we didn’t try. I’ve never tried anything in my life,” Skin smilingly boasts/confesses, “until, like, two weeks ago.”

“And only yesterday,” Travers boasts, “we had our feet in the Pacific Ocean!”

Take that, world. Next stop, San Francisco. Clink. ©