Category: Singles

I want to thank Dave from A Sound Day for contributing this post for this series. Dave was the first one to really open my eyes to this very different record label and the pop culture importance of it…as well as music. 

Thanks so much, Max, for inviting me to take part in this special event and for having the idea in the first place.

Stiff Records really were something special back in the day. A little indie label with memorable taglines (“if it ain’t Stiff, it ain’t worth a ****”) that could be seen on buttons and t-shirts in all the cool, low-rent record shops in the ’80s, and a great but variable roster of talented artists that included (at times) Ian Dury & the Blockheads, Ian Gomm, Dave Stewart, Madness, Nick Lowe, the Damned, Tracey Ullman and so many more. It truly was a special part of the British music scene in the late-’70s and ’80s and the whole scene there was unusual. We have indie record labels over here too, but few ever send out a hit record or make much real impact. Over there, though… boy! Big name acts like New Order and the Smiths were on little indie labels and selling millions. It helped keep the creativity going in my opinion, as those little labels tended to offer a lot more freedom to their artists than some of the big, multi-national ones did or do to this day.

Anyway, I’m going to pull a wee bit of a trick on Max here and squeeze in two songs in the one post. You’ll see why. It’s kind of a “he said, she said” affair.  I had a lot of fine songs that I thought about choosing, but I opted for one of my favorites of the ’80s. Or two of my favorites of the ’80s : “A New England”. By Billy Bragg, but also, and more relevantly for our purposes here, Kirsty MacColl.

The song is a song of a couple breaking up, wishing the other would just care a little more. Billy wrote it and performed it first, in 1979 on his debut album, Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy (a great title I might add) . He said he was inspired by seeing two satellites in the night sky once when walking home from a pub… which led to one of my favorite lines in pop – “I saw two shooting stars last night, I wished on them, but they were only satellites! It’s wrong to wish on space hardware, I wish, I wish you’d care.”  Interestingly, he admits the first two lines of the song (“I was 21 years when I wrote this song, I’m 22 now but won’t be for long”) were taken directly from a Simon & Garfunkel song. He’s a fan of theirs as it turns out and he liked giving them a musical tip of the cap. Bragg did the song in a very sparse, stark manner and as you might guess, it was only him and his guitar on the record. That’s all.

Fast forward about four years and there’s Kirsty MacColl. She’d had the biggest hit record that wasn’t a hit with her debut single, “They Don’t Know”. The BBC loved it, and the public did too and it hit #2 on British charts based on airplay. But Stiff didn’t have good distribution AND there was a strike of some sort, so bottom line was, the single didn’t arrive in stores nor on the singles chart.  Probably little surprise she moved on to Virgin Records instead by the time of her first album, which was in 1981.

In 1983-84, her friend, comedienne Tracey Ullman put out her debut album and her take on “They Don’t Know” (on which Kirsty sings the high-pitched “bab-yeee”)  which became a hit over here. MacColl was seemingly biding her time between albums, doing some backing vocals for the Smiths and Simple Minds and helping her then- husband, Steve Lillywhite, do things in the studio including mixing a couple of songs on U2’s The Joshua Tree a little later on. 

She somehow got back together with Stiff and decided to put out a couple of standalone singles… one of which was “A New England.”

She loved the song and said “I always thought it would be great with loads of harmonies.” She noted she liked Bragg’s version but “Billy does it … like a busker doing a really good Beatles song.” She also felt the song, 2:14” in Billy’s hands, was a wee bit short… so Bragg agreed to write more to it for her! That included a new verse at the end with the fine snipe “once upon a time at home, I sat beside the telephone waiting for someone to pull me through, when at last it didn’t ring, I knew it wasn’t you”.

Unfortunately, as a single, no one seemed to note who performed on the song, but clearly it was much fleshed out from Bragg’s original. Given her connections and husband Lillywhite’s (who produced it), we might imagine there could be some real sta r power behind her on it.

The song took off and made it to #7 over there and #8 in Ireland… by far her best showing not counting her counter-culture favorite Christmas song “A Fairytale Of New York” which she did with the Pogues. Over here, it didn’t break the charts but did make the year-end best-ofs on cool stations like CFNY Toronto and KROQ in L.A.  Bragg was happy too, saying “I never thought Kirsty MacColl would put it in the top 10.”

MacColl would put out a couple of albums later on and have some more minor success but mostly from then on won her contemporaries over more than the public. Bono says of her she is “one of a long line of great English songwriters that includes Ray Davies, Paul Weller and Morrissey.” And speaking of the Smiths front man, he said Kirsty “has great songs and a crackin’ bust!”  Who knew Morrissey noticed things like that? Not me!

Sadly, there was no happy ending to the Kirsty story. She was killed in Mexico in 2000 while snorkeling with her kids, run over by a speeding boat. It sounds like black humor but was true and she apparently died pushing one of her children out of harm’s way. It’s quite a scandal, as the boat was owned by a Mexican millionaire many think was responsible, but he deflected blame to one of his lackeys. There are several good, but sad, documentaries about it if you care to check that out, or check out the article below.

I can’t really decide if I like Billy’s “A New England” or Kirsty’s better. I love them both. And really love that there was so much good music coming out of Britain in the ’80s, often on tiny labels like Stiff.

Thanks again, Max… and Stiff!

https://www.alixkirsta.com/articles/kirstymaccoll/index.htm

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