A Wild Ride, Over Stony Ground

Tommy Vance’s Friday Rock Show on BBC Radio 1 was the only contact young, provincial me had with the whole wide wild world of rock. So from 10 to midnight on a Friday night I used to listen to it intently, often in the dark, working out what I liked and what I didn’t*.

One Friday the show was taken over by the singer and drummer from a band I’d only vaguely heard of that were big in the US, chatting amicably with Vance and playing tracks from their influences and some from their new LP that had apparently been a while in the making. I thought they sounded like nice chaps and wrote the name ‘deaf leopard’ down carefully on a notepad I kept nearby for just such eventualities.

A month later I bought the single, Animal, from Track Records in York and loved it, a taped copy of the new LP Hysteria followed shortly and it quickly became the soundtrack to my life for the next 18 months, seemingly always on in someone’s car. Every rock chick I knew absolutely flipped for it as did every dude, although sometimes they pretended not to muttering about it being ‘a bit soft’.

---

It is a funny experience listening back to something so intertwined and enmeshed with all my life, loves and socialising back then**. So much so that I actually find it difficult to listen to Hysteria while it plays, as opposed to just thinking about it instead; like Proust’s madeleines, but with more synthesised drums and bigger choruses.

My overall impression spinning it now is that a) I find it difficult to see past that incredibly impressive surface sheen that Mutt Lange and the boys painstakingly encased the album in and b) that I really do want to get past that protective coating. The uniformity of sound and tone is hellishly impressive, corporate even, Lange really did get to make the rock version of Thriller he set out to make. It could really have done with some deeper bass though.

Hysteria from the excellent cover art on in, is a hell of a thing, a real imposing edifice on the skyline of 80’s rock. Track after track just surges on over you, as catchy and synthetic as anything else around in the charts back then and certainly not much heavier, which was just fine by me, then and now.

---

Negatives first – despite some initial guitar bite, I’ve never liked ‘Don’t Shoot Shotgun’ – it’s the bridge (‘run for cover, she’s so dangerous’) that seals the dumper deal for me. ‘Love And Affection’ always had a bit of a B-side vibe about it and once the excellent intro to ‘Excitable’ is over then the rest is a go-go beat non-event for me, I’ve heard heavier tracks by the Commodores. ‘Love Bites’ is okay but a bit of a poor man’s ‘Too Late For Love’ in the bitterness stakes, which is what I really wanted aged 17 and newly resident in Shedumpedyou City.

The rest can stay.

---

My favourite track on Hysteria by far is ‘Rocket’, the Adam & The Ants-style drumming and all the references to other bands/tracks is great and I just love the chorus an use of samples throughout; it is just such an imaginative track. Like a couple of others here it really is given room to breathe and develop.

Which leads bang into ‘Animal’ narrowly my second fave here, partly because it was the first Lep I ever heard and really liked but mostly because it all just sounds so complete; it should do after it was worked on for nearly 3 years. It is also by far my favourite vocal on Hysteria, the least mucked about with, during the verses at least.

I really love the rhythm and beat of ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’, I tried not to like it for about 24 hours recently and I just couldn’t. Incidentally, perhaps taking Mr Elliot’s metaphor too literally a girlfriend did in fact once, if not pour then sprinkle, said sweetener upon my recumbent body. I don’t advocate doing this, it can act as an abrasive. True story, wisdom shared.

I’ve never thought much of ‘Armageddon It’, Godawful title pun aside, but I really like the primo glam rock guitars. Ditto ‘Gods Of War’, which surely must be the least angry song with ‘war’ in the title ever? which is saved by the sheer cheeky scope of itself, although the sound of Thatcher’s voice still makes me spasm in anger.

My vote for hidden gem^ on Hysteria goes for ‘Run Riot’ which is a great little rocker, great vocals and guitars that sound like, umm, guitars. It segues nicely into the Police-like bassline of ‘Hysteria’ which is another track I really like, for reasons I am not at liberty to divulge here fully and for its poise and class. ‘Hysteria’ really should be the album closer.

---

Hysteria is not an album I play more than annually in the usual course of events, it is great in places, but just so damned glossy; I really crave a humanising touch of imperfection somewhere along the line. I wish it was more of the ‘wild ride over stony ground’ that ‘Animal promised us.

I can think of few LPs of any genre that embody the 80’s so well and when I discovered it a few years later Pyromania usurped its place in my affections.

---

My copy of Hysteria is the US picture disc version that I bought in 1989, because it had different, and upon reflection inferior, artwork. On my system now the sound of it isn’t great and there’s definite surface noise present. Note to self and to band, should have tried a touch less hard to be flashy.

1078 Down.

*scary Teutonic thrash bands mostly, there seemed to be lots of these. I used to write down the names of bands/tracks I liked.

**life = callow; loves = frequent, mostly unrequited; socialising = sweet cider and falling over were prominent features thereof.

^on a 20 million selling LP?