A Wonderful World Paint It Black

Rip It Up, Issue 130, 1 May 1988, Page 18

A Wonderful World Paint It Black

Over the last six months there have been two Black albums worth having. One was by that little guy with the , waterbed and the other was by this Englishman. Prince’s Black album was never released, but the second, Black’s Wonderful Life was. Which is why everyone knows the track listing of Prince’s album yet nobody has seen the video for Wonderful Life. Confused?

Black first emerged in Liverpool as a trio in 1981. In the years following they released five singles, toured with Orange Juice and cut their staff down to just one — Colin Vearncombe. Ex-member Dave Dickie also stayed on, first as a keyboardist and then, when A&M snapped them up, as a producer. Black’s Wonderful L/'fe al bum was neither perfect nor an instant hit but it remains one of the most original of the year. And the year before. And maybe the year before that, since the history of the songs on the album remains more than a little confusing. Colin Vearncombe remembers the oldest song on the LP as being written in 1982. Despite being recorded over the same sessions at the beginning of 1987, Wonderful Life is patchy, sounding more like a collection of singles than a finished product. Black’s sound could go anywhere; Wonderful Life boasts a wealth of possibilities. And Colin likes the

Surrealists. “Ah do. In particular Man Ray whom Gerard [their video man] is well into. And Cocteau, if you'd include him as a Surrealist — Ah would — and Do-champ. He came from Dada but I’d still include him because he was one of those mind-merchants. And Max Ernst; I like all that frottage stuff, the rubbings. Whoops, probably digressed there.” You can only talk so much about pop music. “Well, you can’t even take it seriously, can you?” Simple! And you can’t even call Wonderful Life pop, even though future publicity will be aiming fair and square for that audience. Parts of it are raw and funky, others are slow and romantic, and it's all as bare and simple as the bum of a newborn. “A&M were prepared to let us do that, which is very unusual for a major record company. It was also Dave's first album so we

were both learning. I’ve been on and on at him about pop / music being about singers, not drum sounds;‘Get that voice right, son, or else...’” So, in 25 words or less, where are Black coming from? * . . • “It’s got a lot to do with thex*J type of person I am; your .-4' ; ’ Joe Average middle-class <? eclectic who listens to • < ':y\. ■. everything and reads V/‘-< everything and then it spews -; ji. out. If you can find a way of - ; - putting your own stamp on it jW then you’ve got something that’s yours. It took me five years to get anywhere near that.” Modern! Highlight of the five years is the title track

‘Wonderful Life’, atumbling, ironic affair that doesn't remind you of other songs so much as places where you’d like to stay. It shares its sense of idyllic tourism with OMD ('Souvenir') and China Crisis ('Arizona Sky') but it’s not as precious as either. A genuinely sophisticated music? “What I would see as the greatest strength of it is what other people would see as its greatest fault — [the fact that] it falls between any number of styles. If it begins, at any point, to sound too much like a “form” then I try and do something about that. It makes it difficult for people who like to have a tag or reference point.”

The other standout track is 'Paradise', a ballad arranged with the cool of Heaven 17 but

performed with the sentiment of Alexander O’Neal.

“‘Paradise’ I can’t particularly claim any credit for. It was a backing track that Dave had; I said ‘lt’s great’ and he said 'lt's shit’, so I went away and wrote the top-line melody and the lyrics. Then people were saying, 'Marvellous song...”' Do you think that the exciting parts are the overlaps between genres? “Well, that would be for you to say, wouldn’t it? I’m not very good at blowing me own trumpet." Well I would say that; I think Wonderful Life is a very interesting album. “I must say that I enjoy listening to it, still. I always wanted to make the music that I would be listening to.” Visual! As usual, the video for ‘Wonderful Life’ will be what gets other people listening to the music which Colin Vearncombe makes for himself.. A wee masterpiece, it was shot in 35mm blackand white by a young filmmaker named Gerard Town, who first came to Black's attention via his videos for Xmal Deutschland, Fine Young Cannibals and the Cure. The latter, made at film school, didn’t actually feature the Cure, but Smith and co. liked it so much they bought it off him anyway. “We knew ‘Wonderful Life’ was an important single because the head of A&M said it was! He said, ‘This is a hit across the world', which meant we knew it was going to be released everywhere and of course that the video was going to be important. We went ' through two weeks of discussions and then went up and shot it over three days in Merseyside. “Black and white is something that record companies don’t like; they’ve got this idea that. people like bright colours. The attitude of the lowest common denominator being the best for everyone — iLs why soap * <

operas are so fucking popular over here.” Hence the chatter re the Surrealists, because that’s the first description of the video that comes to mind. “Gerard hates us to do this but we always say, ‘You've nicked this from such and such, that’s a bloody Cocteau, that’s an Orson Welles! ’ He hates it and says ‘Yeah, it is—but it's a good one, innit?’ I hate story videos — I like images that are appropiate. He did one for the Damned; he had this desert and this flamenco dancer dancing and all of a sudden this fucking big oil tanker appears and kicks up this huge sandstorm...” And Opera! Vearncombe’s Japan press conferences were likewise confusing (“One simple sentence takes three minutes to translate over there. Their words must be three yards long”) and after a week in Australia he can only pronounce it “sort of sticky. ” When he returns to the UK he will begin work on the second Black album, with Dave Dickie and Sade-man Robin Millar sharing production credits. The presence of the latter may give a clue to where Vearncombe is going but still not a hint as to where he’s coming from. The only music we discuss apart from his own is... opera. “Me singing teacher suggested I try some,” he chuckles, in dry Liverpudlian tones. “It was a fascinating challenge, although I can't claim to be totally knowledgeable." Which ones? “Usually arias. Carmen is always a good standby—there are good tunes and stuff in there — Schumann as well, Schubert. We never really got into the terribly heavy stuff like Wagner —we only got to Handel's Messiah, which is a fiend. I’ve only got as far as being afiend."

Chad Taylor