Recommendations of the Editorial team
In the summer of 1985 my family went on vacation in Austria. The trip took a long time because we drove from Hamburg. In the back seat I heard two cassettes in the Walkman: for reasons, for reasons, “The Nylon Curtain” by Billy Joel. Somewhere at Kleinostheim I changed the program and put “Steve McQueen” from the British band Prefab Sprout in the subject.
This album was still pretty new, but not the type of record that I bought immediately. On the other hand, the cover illustration looked very cool. And what should that mean, “Steve McQueen”? No song was so titled.
Of course, Paddy McAloon and Wendy Smith sit on the triumph motorcycle that McQueen drives in the film “The Great Escape” from 1963. He plays an American officer who is interned in a prisoner of war in Germany and is repeatedly attempted to escape, caught and brought back.
In his prison cell, he throws a baseball on the bare wall. After all, he escapes with a bold jump over a fence, if not from Germany.
You give me Faron Young
So the record title is fabulous. Until then, Prefab Sprout had made a record, “Swoon” from 1984, the critics enthusiastically enthusiastically as “Soul Mining” by The The The year before. I liked “I Never Play Basketball Now”.
The songs somehow looked left -handed, they had a shy twist into the cranky. The songwriter McAloon sounded like he didn’t dare.
“Steve McQueen” had now produced Thomas Dolby, a magician who had a hit with “She Blinded Me With Science” and would soon be in Joni Mitchell. He has undergone the pieces with small sound effects and flourishes so that the changing speeds and moods are emphasized.
The first piece is called “Faron Young” and actually does not act, and yet the American country singer, not a popular figure in Great Britain from 1985: “You give me faron young, four in the Morning.” Already in this first song there is a wanderlust that also resonates in “Desire AS”, “Blueberry Pies” and “Goodbye Lucille #1”.
McAloon had what is called pop sensitivity, and he revered Brian Wilson and Cole Porter, Elvis Presley and Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen in a perhaps not so unlikely mixture that became even clearer at the next album, “From Langley Park to Memphis”.
“Hot Dog, Jumping Frog, Albuquerque” from “The King of Rock’n’roll” and a little silly video should promote career. It shouldn’t be.
More from Arne Willander
In the winter of the same year Prefab Sprout occurred in “Rock from the Alabama” on, a meritorious program of the Bavarian Radio. McAloon played a fender stratocaster, he soon took off his denim jacket, a white undershirt appeared.
He played “Steve McQueen” practically backwards, in between the song “Tifanys”, which was to appear on the next record, “Protest Songs”. At first she didn’t want the record company.
In the much too fast crawlers on the bottom of the picture, we were informed that Prefab Sprout was known for her “Sophisticated Pop” and that actor Steve McQueen prevented the record in the USA from being published under his name – it was called “Two Wheels Good”.
Steve McQueen died in 1980. Prefab Sprout played barely an hour. Later Paddy Mcaloon became a bit strange and let a long beard grow, but how wonderful was this concert!