“Virgin’s idea,” says Partridge, “was to find some American producer who could translate our ‘yokel Englishness’ to the American market. “You know that thing you do so well? Could you not do that? In fact, could you be a poor imitation of an American group?” And if we didn’t do this, they’d drop us. It was as simple as that.”

Myers, Paul. A Wizard, a True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio. London. 2010. p. 256

With their heads firmly planted in the pillory of a guillotine, XTC had little choice but to comply with Virgin’s edict. Determined to lift the band’s flagging fortunes in the USA, management promptly forwarded a list of American producers to Andy, who rejected the lot because he’d never heard of them. Refusing to give in to what they likely perceived as Partridgian intransigence, they supplied a second list, where Andy recognized one name at the bottom of the page: Todd Rundgren. “I think I had momentarily possessed a copy of Something/Anything,” Partridge recalls, “and I had liked a few songs, such as ‘The Night the Carousel Burnt Down.'” (Myers, p. 257)

When Andy approached Dave Gregory about the possibility of having Todd Rundgren produce the new album, he discovered that Dave was a huge Rundgren fan. Having only heard the more progressive Utopia, Colin was justifiably skeptical but changed his mind after Dave turned him on to the more pop-friendly “I Saw the Light.” Dave recalled his enthusiasm regarding the decision to go with Rundgren in This Is Pop: “I couldn’t believe it . . . just being flown from Swindon over to the wilds of New York State, the Catskill Mountains there, surrounded by nature, working with a legend. That’s the dream. How much better do you want it to get?”

Uh, hold that thought, Dave.

He should have known that the sessions wouldn’t be all sunshine and light. “We’d had producers,” says Colin Moulding, “but they were usually doing Andy’s bidding. He was, shall we say, the ‘executive producer.’ If there was something the producer was doing that Andy didn’t agree with, he’d let them know in no uncertain terms.” (Myers, p. 255)

The writing was on the wall before they arrived in New York when the band received Rundgren’s response to the demo tapes of the songs they had earmarked for the new album:

Rundgren, the conceptualist, began to imagine certain songs fitting into a pattern, or song cycle, broad enough to include all the different styles and stories in the songs. He also suggested a working title, Day Passes. “The album could be about a day, a year, or a lifetime,” says Rundgren, elaborating on his concept. “The evolutionary aspect of the theme allowed for transitions to different places, and there were songs that represented significant milestones along the way: birth, young love, family, labor, illness, death, sprinkled with moments of wonderment. Using this framework, I came up with a sequence of songs and a justification for their placement and brought it to the band.” (Myers, p. 257-258)

Though he would later admit that Rundgren was a brilliant arranger and his idea of a song cycle was an inspired approach, Andy was not happy about someone encroaching on his territory. “Moulding recalls that Partridge was less than thrilled about the forced abdication of his dominant role in the studio. ‘It was clear that we were meant to do whatever Todd wanted us to do, which didn’t sit well with Andy.'” (Myers, p 257) Andy was also miffed that Rundgren had selected more of Colin’s songs than usual, though he would later confess that Colin had written some of his best songs to date. He also resented Rundgren for having the gall to determine the track order without consulting him and hated the proposed title.

In a piece on BoingBoing, Gareth Branwyn succinctly captured the studio vibes and the ultimate result:

The clash between musician-producer Todd Rundgren and musician Andy Partridge during the recording of XTC’s ninth album, Skylarking (1986), is legendary. “At the time I said it was like one bunker with two Hitlers. We were like rams butting our heads together,” Partridge would remark. Both musicians have reputations for being difficult to work with so it’s hard to know who to believe in how they characterize their fraught collaboration . . .

While the sessions might have been fractious, the result is undeniable, a record that’s now widely considered to be one of the greatest rock albums of all time.

Despite all the interpersonal noise, Skylarking turned out to be the most cohesive and disciplined XTC album to date and Todd Rundgren deserves a lot of credit for reining in Andy’s impulses and bringing order to chaos. In comparison to Andy’s vague vision of making a “more pastoral album” that wasn’t all that pastoral (Mummer) or his non-visionary idea of a “more boisterous” record (The Big Express), Rundgren followed a clear methodology designed to bring out the best in a band:

Rundgren defends his song selection process, explaining that it was all about finding the ‘conceptual center’ of the bulk material. “For most artists,” Rundgren explains, “putting out a record is an act of ‘branding.’ You’re looking to make a record that, first of all, makes a strong coherent statement about where their band is at, musically. You find the center of all the songs and then draw a perimeter around it, like on a Venn chart. Some songs will fall inside or outside that perimeter, and that’s how you know which ones should be on the record. It’s also how you know if you’re actually ‘missing’ something.” (Myers, p. 258)

Though Andy Partridge continued to squirm in discomfort and soured the vibes so effectively that according to Song Stories Colin “suggested Andy use his rectum as bass guitar case and stormed out during a futile argument over bass parts,” he eventually admitted that Todd Rundgren saved XTC from extinction:

“Musician and producer Todd Rundgren squeezed the XTC clay into its most complete/connected/cyclical record ever,” Partridge wrote for a promotional insert that accompanied the record Nonsuch. “Not an easy album to make for various ego reasons but time has humbled me into admitting that Todd conjured up some of the most magical production and arranging conceivable. A summer’s day cooked into one cake.”

While Rundgren’s production and arrangement skills were critical factors in the album’s success, it must be noted that Andy and Colin provided him with some damned good material to work with. The Dukes of Stratosphear adventure reconnected the songwriters to the value of memorable melodies, and the joy they felt in making that highly successful mini-album freed them to write and play the kind of music they loved best. As Andy explained when wrapping up the 25 O’Clock segment on This Is Pop, “I think it gave us the feeling that we could tap into what we liked as school kids. I think we all felt more comfortable in ourselves and we felt more comfortable in being this bridge from the 60s to the 80s. . . then at that point, it was like . . . we’re not going to deny any of our influences anymore, we’re just going to let ‘em all free.” Skylarking is loaded with exceptionally strong melodies and the lyrics penned by Andy and Colin qualified as their strongest and most consistent efforts to date.

It should be noted that Rundgren was indeed open to suggestions, especially if those suggestions came from Dave or Colin. Todd wanted to record the basic tracks in the Catskills studio with the band playing along to click tracks then send the tapes to San Francisco, where drummer Prairie Prince of Tubes fame would insert all the drum parts. That arrangement didn’t work for Colin, who (like any true bass player) developed his bass patterns in tight collaboration with the drummer. When Colin explained his unease to Rundgren, the producer dropped his original idea and arranged to fly the band members to San Francisco so they could work with Prince live and in person. Colin was “very happy working with Prairie Prince,” who was equally open to suggestions and wound up nailing every one of his drum parts.

*****

For the most part, the song cycle moves from adolescence to young adulthood to maturity, with one song confronting old age and death. What I found particularly ironic given Andy’s fears that Virgin was trying to Americanize the band is that many of the songs are based on Colin’s and Andy’s memories of growing up in Swindon. On the chalklhills.org page for “The Meeting Place,” Andy commented, “I must say I’m quietly stunned. In listening to this odds-and-ends, kitchen drawer of a collection, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s so much Swindon in so many of these songs, it’s scary.” The songs may have been born in Swindon but the experiences described in those songs are universal, at least in Western culture.

The songs on Skylarking flow into one another thanks to well-executed transitions (similar and compatible chords, natural sounds, etc.) that generally result in a nice, even progression—with one noticeable exception.

The originally intended track order placed “Dear God” in the thirteenth slot between “The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul” and “Dying.” Steven Wilson honored that sequencing in the 2016 remix “with input from Andy Partridge, and is fully approved by XTC.” When the album was first released, “Dear God” was removed after Jeremy Lascelles of Virgin suggested to Andy, “The American market isn’t going to like this song, and you’re going to get a lot of hate mail. What would you say if I suggested taking it off the album?” Andy claims he agreed to the removal because Lascelles’ suggestion “underscored or threw a spotlight on the fact that I thought I’d failed in my attempt to crystallise the subject matter in three minutes and a bit.” Todd Rundgren didn’t buy that excuse and concluded that Andy was a “pussy” for caving into the label. As things turned out, “Dear God” (originally the B-side to “Grass”)  became a radio hit in the USA and Geffen Records (the American label) was forced to reissue Skylarking with “Dear God” intact because the album wasn’t selling without it.

If there’s one song on Skylarking that doesn’t fit neatly into the progressive vision of a “summer’s day cooked into one cake” it’s “Dear God.” For purposes of this analysis, I will therefore follow the 2001 remaster track list that places “Dear God” at the end, allowing me to comment more extensively on one of XTC’s most important songs without unduly interrupting the song cycle narrative.

The Song Cycle

“Summer’s Cauldron” (Partridge)/“Grass” (Moulding): The first two songs form a thematic mini-suite bookended with sounds of the outdoors (crickets, birds, dog barks, a bee buzzing through your ears) and linked through a perfectly executed seamless transition. The theme combines the sensuous (pleasing to the senses) and the sensual (physically pleasing) aspects of summer. Both songs contain those two thematic elements, but Andy’s is the more sensuous and Colin’s the more sensual. The music of the suite is sweetly melodic and, unusual for XTC, seductively relaxing in part due to Rundgren’s rustic melodica in the intro and Dave’s chorused organ supplying a drone that reflects the mellow sounds that accompany an August afternoon. The feel is “wrapping oneself in the warm cocoon of a summer day.”

Andy’s offering is more poetic (the song is based on one of his poems) and as such, it is loaded with sensuous imagery and metaphors:

Drowning here in Summer’s Cauldron
Under mats of flower lava
Please don’t pull me out this is how I would want to go
Breathing in the boiling butter
Fruit of sweating golden inca
Please don’t heed my shout I’m relax in the undertow

Andy vociferously defended the unusual use of “relax” as an adjective in the chalkhills.org interview on the song, and I accept his usage as an acceptable bit of poetic license. “Undertow” possesses the metaphoric meaning of “underlying mood or feeling,” so the phrase “I’m relax in the undertow” translates to “I am the embodiment of relaxation, freely immersing myself in the irresistible pull of  summer’s cauldron.” The shorthand is also a far superior choice from a musical perspective.

Andy doesn’t completely ignore the sensual but chooses to present those aspects in well-known metaphors: “When Miss Moon lays down/And Sir Sun stands up.” Moon = woman. Sun = man. Lays down = show me your sweet spot. Stands up = boner. While he acknowledges the sexual he seems more committed to “floating round and round/Like a bug in brandy/In this big bronze cup” than consummating the act. His vocal reflects that nice warm feeling when you’ve had just enough brandy to anesthetize inhibitions, and Andy deserves a ton of kudos for not allowing the bad juju between him and Rundgren to seep into his vocal performances, which are generally top-notch.

Violins provide the sonic cue that we’re now listening to “Grass,” and the seamless transition was achieved in a most unusual manner. Andy explained the methodology to Neville Farmer in Song Stories:

When we said, “How are we going to get from ‘Summer’s Cauldron’ to ‘Grass,’ he (Rundgren) said, “Well, you just put your had on your instruments and stop the strings ringing and then we punch in the start of ‘Grass.” I just got the impression he didn’t want to spoil his nice reels of tape.

Colin’s exploration of the sensual involves either an adolescent memory of a specific event or a teenage fantasy with nascent kinkiness:

Laying on the grass my heart it flares like fire
The way you slap my face just fills me with desire
You play hard to get
‘Cause you’re teacher’s pet
But when the boats have gone
We’ll take a tumble excuse for a fumble

I can’t believe that anyone would want to fuck on a surface filled with bugs and dog piss, but adolescent hormones tend to encourage the participants to overlook the details. Colin recognized that flaw in the fantasy in the single-line chorus: “Shocked me too the things we used to on grass.”

Colin’s first attempt at the vocal was an octave lower than what you hear on the album, raising objections from the producer. “Todd said, ‘Don’t sing so deep. You sound like a bit of a molester.'” (Farmer, p. 189) His reaction is completely understandable, as the lyrics in the second half of the second verse do hint at something pretty close to date rape:

I will pounce on you
Just us and the Cuckoos
You are helpless now
Over and over we flatten the clover

Since no woman in Swindon has followed recent trends and filed charges decades after the fact, we can safely assume that the sex was consensual. The melody is quite lovely and the counterpoints on guitar, violin (legato and pizzicato) and tiple (played by Rundgren) make for a sweet and pleasant soundscape. The pairing of two exceptionally strong songs makes for a breathtaking opener, revealing both clear artistic intent and Todd Rundgren’s mastery of song arrangement.

You can hear the two songs as a single piece on one of the fan uploads on YouTube. Comment: XTC really needs to get their act together regarding video publication and licensing. None of the official uploads include the Steven Wilson remix. Harrumph!

“The Meeting Place (Moulding): The song begins with the sound of “coconut shell horse hooves” giving way to the Swindon Works hooter that for decades signaled the start and close of another workday and both ends of the lunch break. “When they were in their late teens, Carol Moulding worked at Swindon’s borough press and Colin would meet her for lunch . . . ‘It was me meeting her at the gates for a sandwich in The Beehive pub, embroidered with a suggestion of a lunchtime quickie.'” (Farmer, p. 189). Colin paints the scene in the three well-penned opening lines that capture the budding excitement that accompanies waiting for your honey to arrive:

Meet you in the secret place
Scuffling in the dirt I wait
Whistle will blow, whistle will blow

As Colin noted, the consummating events Colin described are fantasies . . . very pleasant fantasies:

Strolling under grimy skies
Machines that make you kiss in time
Smoke on your breath, smoke on your breath

Chimney never looked so good
Never looked the way it should
From lying in the bracken wood
Coat on the ground, coat on the ground

Take a walk down the lane
We’ll be late back again
Hmmm . . . the meeting place (2)

That passage triggered my curiosity about the effects of midday sex on worker productivity, so I googled the phrase, “Do people have sex breaks when working from home?”

Of those who do schedule time with their partners and work remotely, roughly 26% said they have had sex during work hours. About 26% of those couples reported they did it while their online status was set to “away,” while 19% waited for their lunch break.

Boo to those employers who want their workers to come back to the office! Hey, dumb shits, sex makes your workers happy campers! Think of all the money you can save by letting them get their rocks off in the comfort of their home instead of in the supply room! Sexual harassment lawsuits would become a thing of the past!

Back to the song, this is clearly one of Colin’s best vocals. I’m most impressed by the clean glides on the challenging melodic line attached to the single word “place” (play-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-yea-ay-yea). I also love the bright circular chiming guitar riff that serves as a counterpoint to the melody (played by Andy) and the piano accompaniment (supplied by Dave). It’s a lovely, joyous song with a bit of the old nudge-nudge wink-wink and a perfect fit for the song cycle.

“That’s Really Super, Supergirl” (Partridge): I found this song rather befuddling when I first heard it. I knew Andy was into comic books but I’ve never heard of a guy having a crush on a comic book character. Andy later claimed that “‘Supergirl’ isn’t one girl—it’s an amalgam of all the women who had better things to do than be around me.” Taking Andy’s claim with a grain of salt, I played the song for my father and asked him if guys of his generation had fancies for female comic book characters . . . and he blushed. “I have to confess I had kind of a hard-on for Veronica Lodge in the Archie comics.”

It just so happens that Veronica Lodge bears a striking resemblance to my mother.

I imagine adolescent Andy as more class clown than hunk, and when either a guy or girl in secondary school doesn’t measure up to the standard set by jocks and cheerleaders, they’re going to find the pickings pretty slim. I always found the non-conformists more interesting, so it breaks my heart when I hear Andy sing “And I feel like you’re trying hard/To sweep me like dirt underneath your cape.” Geez, bitch, give the guy a chance!

The music is ironically upbeat and marked by a highly unusual chord pattern mixing sixth chords, major sevenths and minor ninths . . . but I prefer Andy’s metaphoric explanation: “I’d written it with these rather exotic chords, which are sort of sixth chords—a B-flat with an open G ringing—and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s rather slick and shiny. I kind of fancy playing a Blues harmonica all over it.’ So, you get the earthiness of the Blues-y harmonica against this stainless-steel, Metropolis, Chrysler Building architecture of these sixth chords, and I thought it was a nice mixture.” The main drum line was lifted from the Utopia album Deface the Music, but with due respect to Todd’s cleverness and efficiency, I think Prairie Prince would have done a better job with the part instead of limiting his role to filling the gaps around the sampled snare. Dave Gregory has a nice guitar solo and the song has an offbeat but highly memorable melody that lingers in the brain for days.

“Ballet for a Rainy Day”/ “1000 Umbrellas” (Partridge): Our second mini-suite involves two “rain songs” linked by a passage consisting of a string quartet that becomes more prominent in the latter piece. Kudos aplenty are due for Dave Gregory, who painstakingly created a string arrangement for which George Martin would have given his stamp of approval.

“Ballet for a Rainy Day” is the lighter and more cheerful of the two, with the music featuring high vocal harmonies and the ever-busy Mr. Gregory nailing both his piano and guitar contributions. The most attractive aspect of the song is Andy’s poetry, an impressionistic take on a rainy day filled with color and memorable imagery, a game attempt to find the beauty in the gray muck:

Orange and lemon
Raincoats roll and tumble
Together, just liked fruit tipped from a tray
Pineapple wet heads
Watch new hairdos crumble
As scenery sunlight shifts away

Ballet for a rainy day
Silent film of melting miracle play

Apples and cherries
Are varnished in water
Despite striped awnings bright dismay

I push my paintbrush
To conjure a new world
While this one is slowly washed away

Ballet for a rainy day
Silent film of melting miracle play
Dancing out there through my window
To the backdrop of a slow descending grey

The song ends with a gloomy descent from the string section that heralds a shift from optimism to misery (literally speaking) as we move to the more common view of rainy days expressed in “1000 Umbrellas”: they suck. In this case, the rain is metaphorical, capturing the sadness and frustration that accompany a crumbling relationship:

One thousand umbrellas
Upturned couldn’t catch all the rain
That drained out of my head
When you said we were
Over and over I cried
‘Til I floated downstream
To a town they call
Misery oh oh misery
Misery oh oh misery

An unseen friend appears on the scene and tries to get Andy to buck up, but he’s not having any of that nonsense:

How can you smile and forecast
Weather’s getting better
And you’ll soon forget her
If you let the sunshine come through
How can you smile and forecast
Weather’s getting better
If you never let a girl rain all over you
Just when I thought that my skies were a June July blue
One thousand umbrellas opened
Two thousand umbrellas opened
Ten thousand umbrellas opened to spoil the view

Dave worried that the song was too gloomy and tried to think of ways to add a bit of sunshine to the mix, but Rundgren wisely stepped in and put a stop to that line of thinking. I vividly remember my first winter in Seattle and there’s a reason why employers in the Emerald City try their hardest to avoid relocating new hires during the endless rains that stretch from fall to mid-spring (and sometimes beyond)—it can get pretty fucking depressing, especially if you don’t know anyone in town. When taken as a whole this two-part suite depicts both the blessing of rain and the psychological impact of having too much rain to handle, and Andy deserves some kind of award for writing two clever pieces of poetry that wring the most out of the rain metaphor.

“Season Cycle” (Partridge): Joe Stannard of Uncut viewed this song as part of a three-part suite: “Ballet For A Rainy Day”, “1000 Umbrellas” and “Season Cycle” distill the flawless orch-pop of Smile and Abbey Road into a handy three-song suite, paving the way for the string-stroking likes of Beachwood Sparks.” I vehemently disagree—one of the longest pauses on the record falls between “1000 Umbrellas” and “Season Cycle” and the music on the latter is (as Andy admitted) more Beach Boys than classical-influenced rock. I’ll also add that the “suite” on Abbey Road had no coherent theme and makes for a terrible comparison to the thematic triumphs of the Skylarking suites.

The harmonies and disparate parts are definitely Smile-era Beach Boys, and I have to toss an “oh, for fuck’s sake” Andy’s way for asserting that “I think it’s nearer to Harpers Bizarre than the Beach Boys personally. Think about it. (starts humming “Feelin’ Groovy”)”. Harpers Bizarre was little more than a short-lived cover band and never came close to creating anything as interesting as “Season Cycle.” In my exploration of XTC I’ve learned that Andy Partridge flips from the defense of the indefensible to uncalled-for self-criticism, so I’ve learned to view his opinions with due skepticism.

The core song is a snappy little number in the mode of “Good Day Sunshine,” though Andy’s lyrics possess far more depth than McCartney’s. Though it pissed off Todd Rundgren, I rather admire Andy’s successful attempt to rhyme “umbilical” with “cycle” and his use of the bicycle metaphor to describe the season’s progress (“Who’s pushing the pedals on the season cycle?”). Dave Gregory does a standup job on both organ and piano, and Prairie Prince adds plenty of punch to the core song. Colin’s harmonies and vocal counterpoints are exceptionally enjoyable and make me wish he and Andy had harmonized more frequently on earlier recordings.

The first disparate part is a precursor to the more in-depth perspective on religion in “Dear God.” The chords in the core song are fairly straightforward (except for the unexpected insertion of a C chord in the E major composition); the chords in this first departure from the norm become a bit more complex with ninths, minor sevenths and light augmentation, a change that highlights the shift in lyrical focus. In the core song, Andy ponders how the season cycle came to be, then uses the disparate part to express healthy skepticism regarding the go-to answer:

I really get confused on who would make all this (is there a God in Heaven?)
Everybody says join our religion (get to Heaven)
I say no thanks why bless my soul
I’m already there!

The music builds to a climax that leads to a brief reprise of the main theme followed by the second disparate part, a gorgeous display of Beach-Boys-influenced vocal harmony which leads us back to the bouncy music of the verses. After the musically-valid misery of “1000 Umbrellas,” “Season Cycle” is a breath of sweet air.

“Earn Enough for Us” (Partridge): Wait a sec. You’re trying to tell me that this wasn’t released as a single? A catchy power pop tune produced by one of the progenitors of power pop? Are you fucking kidding me? Triple harrumph!

Interestingly enough, the relatively simple chording (G, F, C, F with an Em/E transition) threw Dave Gregory for a loop until “Todd squeezed the opening riff out of Dave. ‘Come on, Dave. You can think up one of those melodies that every kid in his bedroom wants to learn to play,’ says Andy.” (Farmer, p. 194) Dave finally came up with a great jangly riff on his Rickenbacker 12-string that served as the intro and reappeared in the form of touchpoints throughout the song. Prince Prairie confirms his status as a great rock drummer with a pounding, driving performance that encourages hips to grind and asses to shake.

The subject matter involves a theme initially explored by the Kinks in “Get Back in Line”: the anxiety of the young adult male in the traditional role of providing for his wife and family. What’s different about “Earn Enough for Us” is that the breadwinner is not only struggling “to make some money and bring you home some wine” but has to put up with daily degradation from the boss. Andy described his personal experience with a boss from hell in Song Stories:

“The humiliating and hurtful boss was the Middle Mr. Tunley of Tunley’s paint shop in Swindon, where Andy sold artists’ materials and mixed paint. ‘He was a tiny, wingeing little man who sucked in his snot when he spoke,’ says Andy. ‘I’d work there for a pittance and this bloke used to come in and humiliate me for no reason,’ he says . . . ‘He’d come into the shop and go, “Snort, snort! Look at ya, you fuckin’ useless little cunt, snort, snort! You got a fuckin’ girl’s haircut, ya little cunt, snort!”

This sort of abuse exists in most organizations, large or small.  In college I took a class in organizational development and I remember the professor telling us that “all organizations are sadomasochistic entities” and me raising my hand. “You mean without the fun part.” At first he glared at me then broke into laughter. “Yes, without the fun part. There are too many managers who consider humiliation of staff an essential part of leadership and a way to build their fragile self-esteem” (or something like that).

Andy blended that experience with other personal experiences (living in an apartment with a leaky roof, getting screwed out of money by Ian Reid and the pressure of a baby on the way) to paint the glum reality of the common people:

Found a house that won’t repair itself
With its windows cracking
And a roof held together with holes
Just because we’re at the bottom of the ladder
We shouldn’t be sadder
Than others like us
Who have goals for the betterment of life
Glad that you want to be my wife, but honest

I’ve been praying all the week through
At home at work and on the bus
I’ve been praying I can keep you
And to earn enough for us

So you’re saying that we’re going to be three
Now, a father’s what I’ll be
Don’t get me wrong, I’m so proud
But the belt’s already tight
I’ll get another job at night, but honest . . .

One would understandably think that the combination of upbeat music and a rather bleak story may be something of a mismatch, but the undertone in Andy’s voice is “I get knocked down, but I get up again/You are never gonna keep me down.” They’ll make it . . . and maybe Labour will finally get their shit together, kick the Tories out of office and give people at the bottom of the latter a real shot at betterment.

“Big Day” (Moulding): Colin had written this “paternal pep talk” to his son for The Big Express but held it back as he wasn’t sure it was ready. He presented it to his mates during the 25 O’Clock sessions and both Dave and Andy thought he should save it for the next XTC album. The psychedelic influences survived in the heavily layered arrangement marked by church bells, ringing guitars and distorted voices.

My reaction to the song is straight and to the point: Colin is a damned good father. He told Neville Farmer, “My son wasn’t marriageable at the time but this was aimed at the time when he would be.” (Farmer p. 194) That kind of foresight is fairly rare in parents (unless they’re like Nigel’s parents and have already programmed his life for him). By contrast, Colin gives his son a realistic assessment of the risks and rewards of what comes after the “big day.”

So you want to tie the knot
Tie it tight, don’t let it rot, the memory of this day
Are you deafened by the bells
Could be heaven, could be hell
In a cell for two

Big day come and big day go
Life goes on after the show
But will your love have the fire and glow
Like on the big day?

Statistics they don’t say a lot
But can you keep what you have got forever together
There’s a lesson to be learnt
Many fingers have been burnt with the touch of gold
Love can come and love can go
What your chance is I don’t know
But if you have love then let it show like on the big day

Oh, how I wish Brenda and Eddie had parents like Colin.

“Another Satellite” (Partridge):

There is no doubt that Todd Rundgren is a great producer, but even the greats aren’t infallible. He didn’t want “Another Satellite” on the album “because it didn’t fit the concept of Skylarking.” (Farmer, p. 195)

Huh? The two preceding songs dealt with marriage. What often happens after marriage? One or both parties either have an affair or seriously consider the possibility. Whether the two parties consummate the relationship or “commit adultery in my heart” like Jimmy Carter is irrelevant; the temptation to explore extra-marital opportunities is common enough to earn a spot in the human life cycle. There’s no doubt in my mind that “Another Satellite” belongs on this album and I’m glad that Virgin pushed for its inclusion.

As he explained in the booklet accompanying the Steven Wilson remix, Andy was more peanut farmer than lothario:

Oh, I am so sorry I wrote this song but a certain female was putting me in a very difficult position back then. A very beautiful young fan who became a friend whenever I was Stateside was a tricky thing to get out of my married head. The lyrics were a way of telling myself, quite mistakenly, that I didn’t feel deeply attracted to her . . . who was I fooling? Married men have the responsibility to act honourably, which I did, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about her . . . all the time.

As I abhor the thought of spending any effort exploring the private lives of people in the public eye whether it’s Beyoncé and Jay-Z or Andy Partridge and Erica Wexler, let’s just say that Andy met an attractive young woman with an artistic temperament in the early 80s somewhere in the East Village and both parties felt a strong connection from the get-go. As Andy was married at the time, he avoided consummation but still met up with the woman from time to time when he was in the States. Things remained in limbo for years, then Andy decided to write “Another Satellite,” a musical Dear Jane letter. One might think that a simple phone call explaining that he had no intention of giving up his marriage would have done the trick, but before you condemn Andy for taking the roundabout path of writing a song, let me remind you that Paul McCartney wrote several songs expressing satisfaction and dissatisfaction with Jane Asher. When a creative type feels the need to express emotion, they’re more likely to express their feelings through art than through direct, conversational language.

That said, if I had been the song’s target and heard it on the radio, I would have headed immediately over to Swindon and given Andy a well-earned kick in the nuts:

My heart is taken it’s not lost in space
And I don’t want to see your mooney mooney face
I say why on earth do you revolve around me
Aren’t you aware of the gravity
Don’t need another satellite

I’m happy standing on my feet of clay
I have no wish to swim your milky milky way
I say why on earth do you send your letters ’round here
Only to gum up the atmosphere
Don’t need another satellite

I could have accepted the rejection, but not the insults. There was no need to pile on.

Given my reaction, you might assume that I loathe the song, but the funereal mood established by the Fairlight CMI and the anguish in Andy’s voice triggers a decidedly empathetic reaction. As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, I am a firm believer in William Blake’s life advice: “Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.” I believe the phrase “easier said than done” was coined in response to that valid truism.

Bottom line: it’s hard to be a human.

“Mermaid Smiled” (Partridge): One of many downsides of becoming an adult is the loss of the inner child and the accompanying sense of wonder regarding the world. When we reach adolescence, we are told to “stop being childish,” implying that life is something that should be taken seriously instead of lightly—advice that embeds the fear of fucking things up, which in turn results in stress, battles with depression and prescriptions to rein in high blood pressure. Imagination becomes a useless appendage limited to dreams.

Andy had to fight to have a childhood because his OCD mother wouldn’t let other kids into the house and frequently threw away his toys. He recalled in This is Pop, “I was a kid that always made my own entertainment. For me, it went with the territory of being an only child.” He compensated for the bleakness by immersing himself in comics, and as an adult, became a passionate toy collector and a staunch defender of the inner child.

The inspiration for “Mermaid Smiles” came from a cherished childhood treasure—“Book Full of Sea,” one of those childhood volumes with plastic-covered cutouts filled with fish that you could put into motion by shaking the book. The resulting song moves beyond childhood memories to an urgent plea to the adults in the audience to embrace the divergent thinking that comes naturally to children and serves as the source of creativity.

In the opening verse, Andy suggests that music is a gateway to his inner child (“From pools of xylophone clear/From caves of memory/I saw the children at heart/That we once used to be”) and the fantastical image of a mermaid serves as his muse (“Shrank to stagnant from Atlantic wild/Lost that child ’til mermaid/Smiled”). In the second verse, he begins by letting his imagination run free until his alter ego reminds him he still inhabits the prison of adulthood. Fortunately, his muse comes to the rescue:

Summoned by drum rolling surf
As laughing fish compel
The young boy woken in me
By clanging diving bell
Breakers pillow fight the shore
She wriggles free in the tide

I’m locked in adult land
Back in the mirror she slides
Waving with comb in hand
I was lucky to remain beguiled
Grown to child since mermaid
Smiled

The accompanying music is equally magical. In the chalkhills.org interview, Andy explained how his own divergent thinking created the perfect mood: “So, I’d found this D6 tuning—I was messing around with a lot of tunings at the time and stumbled upon this ‘Fool on the Hill’ D6 tuning. And then I started to throw my hands around the fretboard and discovered some great-sounding stuff—all simple chords.” The unusual D–A–D–A–B–F tuning was enhanced by a fast chorus filter to give the guitar a distinctly watery sound, strengthened further by the introduction of a vibraphone.

It’s a shame that “Mermaid Smiles” was deleted from the American version of the album to make room for “Dear God,” but I am grateful that it was restored to its rightful place in the 2001 remaster and the 2016 remix. I would have axed the next song in a heartbeat.

“The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul” (Partridge): I will admit that Andy and Todd Rundgren achieved their goal of creating a “beatnik, existential spy Las Vegas lounge” piece. I will also give Andy credit for a solid set of lyrics that expose the emptiness of modern man. I will concede that the piece fits nicely in the progression of the song cycle, bringing us to the late middle-age phase of life when the clueless begin to crumble. The problem I have with the song is that Andy sounds like a third-rate lounge singer, displaying no talent whatsoever for jazz vocals. If I’d seen him on stage in Vegas, I would have headed for the blackjack tables before he finished the first verse.

Damn. I thought I’d finally found a no-flaws album. Oh, well.

“Dying” (Moulding): I will freely admit that I feel deeply uncomfortable with the thought that I and the people and animals I love are going to die someday, so I wasn’t looking forward to reviewing this song until I read the backstory in Song Stories:

. . . Colin had bought Dolphin College, a semi-detached house in the Wiltshire countryside. The adjoining cottage was a ramshackle tangle of weeds owned by an old man called Bertie. “We didn’t see him for the first six months and thought he might be dead. But people in the village said that he’d recently lost his wife and had become very quiet and sad,” says Colin. With time on his hands, Colin befriended the old man and would sit with him, drinking tea and discussing the past. “He used to get these attacks and be very short of breath,” he says. “But he loved to talk about the old ways.”

Bertie didn’t die in the house, though he did a while later, in a rest home. But the sadness around him, and the way children abuse old people inspired what Colin, and others, believe to be one of his most beautiful songs.

Farmer, Neville and XTC. Song Stories: The Exclusive Authorized Story Behind the Music. Hyperion, New York 1998, p. 197-198.

A beautiful song about dying? Yes, particularly if you apply the Keatsian equation truth = beauty. In the remix booklet, Colin concluded his take on the song with “I don’t think I missed anything out that I hadn’t seen with my own eyes,” whether in his chats with Bertie or in hospital visits where he saw “old people’s mouths . . . open in some kind of terrifying fight for breath.” He identified the song as “one of my faves because it is small—and I like writing about smallness.” The lyrics are a masterpiece of poetic economy, and though some of the images may spark a desire to turn your head and look away, the story is quite touching:

It frightens me when you come to mind
The day you dropped in the shopping line
And my heart beats faster when I think of all the signs, all the signs
When they carried you out your mouth was open wide
The cat went astray and the dog did pine for days and days
And we felt so guilty when we played you up
When you were ill, so ill

What sticks in my mind is the sweet jar on the sideboard
And your multicolored tea cosy
What sticks in my mind is the dew-drop hanging off your nose
Shriveled up and blue
And I’m getting older, too
But I don’t want to die like you
Don’t want to die like you
Don’t want to die like you
I don’t wanna die I don’t wanna die I don’t wanna die like you

Colin described the plucked chords as “pretty much an accident . . .  the only way I can work now.” I think it’s safe to conclude that accidental chords qualify as an XTC trademark that makes their sound unique and refreshing. The accidents in this song include Am9, Gadd9, G/F#, Fmaj9(b5), E7sus4, E+ and E7, a combination you rarely find outsize of jazz. The clincher in this song is the Chamberlin imitation of a bass clarinet supplying a mournful melody in the fade, made possible through Dave Gregory’s superhuman effort to repair a broken Chamberlin, which involved clearing out the rats that had made a home in the instrument and shoveling out buckets of rat poop. Dave Gregory is one stand-up guy!

“Sacrificial Bonfire” (Moulding): The end of the song cycle takes us back to Celtic times when superstition in the form of sacrifice was the cutting-edge approach to farming:

Fire they cried
So evil must die
And yields are good
So men pull back hoods and smile
The scapegoat blood spilled
Spittled and grilled it crackled and spat
And children grew fat on the meat
Change must be earnt
Sacrificial bonfire must burn
Burn up the old
Ring in the new

Primitive indeed. As Colin notes in the second verse, “And the clothes that were draped/Was all that told man from ape.” It seems like an odd fit in the song cycle, as Colin makes no connection to currently-held superstitions that have lingered for centuries, leaving it up to Andy to fill in the gap with “Dear God” (which is why I think that song should have been the album closer).

The song Colin presented to the interested parties featured a no-frills arrangement with a simple but compelling motif played on guitar, but “Todd saw bigger things for the last song on the album,” adding a string section at the start of the second verse recorded with heavy reverb to add drama to the vivid scenes depicted in the lyrics. The string enhancements work for the most part, but at times they overwhelm Colin’s earnest vocal and the lovely melody. I prefer the quieter parts with the beautiful guitar-rendered motif and unfiltered toms and kick drum from Prairie Prince.

“Dear God” (Partridge)

Before we begin our journey through “Dear God,” I feel obliged to give the opposing side equal time. Here goes:  The Dear God book series that Andy Partridge viewed as child exploitation is available on Amazon if you’re interested.

I’m not.

Just in case you missed the full meaning of the preceding two-word sentence, I am a confirmed atheist, a bias I also feel obliged to disclose.

Okay, that’s enough obliging for one lifetime, so let’s get on with it. This may seem ass-backward but we’ll start with a summary of the American reaction to “Dear God” courtesy of Wikipedia and Song Stories:

The song’s anti-religious message ultimately provoked some violent reactions. In the US, one radio station received a bomb threat, and in another incident, a student forced their school to play the song over its public address system while holding a faculty member hostage. Partridge also received a plethora of hate mail. He stated that he “felt sorry” for whoever he upset, however, “if you can’t have a different opinion without them wanting to firebomb your house, then that’s their problem.” (Farmer, p. 201)

One aspect of religion that makes it a non-starter for me is the intolerance of alternative views, manifested in the concepts of heresy and blasphemy. If you have to protect your belief system through threats of excommunication, lifetimes in hell, burning witches, stoning people to death or tracking down Salman Rushdie, it’s a pretty fragile belief system. I’m glad Andy stood his ground against the maniacs.

Most of the literature I read on the song defines it as “agnostic” rather than “atheist,” based on the assumption that because Andy addresses his message to god, he does not deny the possibility that god exists. Horsefeathers! “He had recently concluded that there was no god and therefore the idea of a child’s to-god letter questioning god’s very existence might be a poignant irony.” (Farmer, p. 200). To be fair, the initial verses express a certain ambivalence, so I can understand the confusion to some degree.

Andy wanted a young boy to sing the first verse to make a clear linkage to the book series but accepted Todd’s choice of eight-year-old Jasmine Veilette to provide the child’s voice. Over a background of the root-note-then-chord strumming pattern borrowed from “Rocky Raccoon” (with a slightly different chord pattern), Jasmine steps up to the mike and delivers the opening salvo in a clear and confident voice:

Dear God,
hope you got the letter, and…
I pray you can make it better down here.
I don’t mean a big reduction in the price of beer
but all the people that you made in your image, see
them starving on their feet ’cause they don’t get
enough to eat from God, I can’t believe in you

The implication is that god exists but is doing a lousy job and his priorities are all fucked-up. Dave Gregory enters the fray in the closing lines with a bright guitar arpeggio that continues through Prairie Prince’s transitional drum riff which in turn cues Colin’s bass and Andy’s vocal in verse two:

Dear God, sorry to disturb you, but… I feel that I should be heard
loud and clear. We all need a big reduction in amount of tears
and all the people that you made in your image, see them fighting
in the street ’cause they can’t make opinions meet about God,
I can’t believe in you

“Opinions about god” have been the cause behind countless wars over the centuries and continue unabated in the world today. I’m sure that true believers who dared to listen to the song took exception to the use of the word “opinion” to describe what they perceive as “truth,” but as noted above, instead of offering any proof of god’s existence, they sent Andy hate mail and threatened to bomb a radio station that played the song—essentially validating Andy’s point of view.

A brief bridge follows, with Andy and Colin harmonizing on the lines “Did you make disease, and the diamond blue?/Did you make mankind after we made you?” The introduction of a cello adds a solid bottom to the mix, after which Andy adds the appendix, “And the devil, too.” The full string section makes an appearance, dominated now by the violins, opening the way for Andy to deliver the third verse with a noticeable increase in intensity:

Dear God, don’t know if you noticed, but… your name is on
a lot of quotes in this book, and us crazy humans wrote it, you
should take a look, and all the people that you made in your
image still believing that junk is true. Well I know it ain’t, and
so do you . . .

The strings fade as Andy lowers his voice a bit to sing the closing lines of the verse over a reprise of the opening strum: “Dear God, I can’t believe in . . . I don’t believe in . . . ” The stillness of the arrangement at this point supports the hesitation in Andy’s voice, and for a second or two you might assume he’s going to leave it at that. Then WHAM! Drums, bass and guitar pound a staccato rhythm and Andy gives voice to unbridled, justifiable outrage:

I won’t believe in heaven and hell. No saints, no sinners, no
devil as well. No pearly gates, no thorny crown. You’re always
letting us humans down. The wars you bring, the babes you
drown. Those lost at sea and never found, and it’s the same the
whole world ’round. The hurt I see helps to compound that
Father, Son and Holy Ghost is just somebody’s unholy hoax,
and if you’re up there you’d perceive that my heart’s here upon
my sleeve. If there’s one thing I don’t believe in . . .

Strings enter the mix shortly after the halfway point, adding to the already off-the-charts intensity. The music then stops for a split-second and Jasmine returns to deliver the final blow: “. . . It’s you, Dear God.” She delivers that final “Dear God” in the tone of the epithet, as in “Dear god, another mass shooting.”

As Neville Farmer noted, ” The song singlehandedly reestablished XTC in America.” I don’t know if Virgin threw a big “welcome back” party for the boys and hung a banner containing the phrase “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” but we can all be thankful that XTC survived the ordeal.

Just don’t thank god. “Dear God” was a human-only achievement.

*****

During my research, I ran across some resentment among fans of English Settlement regarding the lofty critical status awarded to Skylarking, which most critics identify as XTC’s best album. It’s an argument as inane as the arguments between religious adherents as to which faith owns god’s truth. Calling any album the “best” is nothing more than an emotional response to music a person likes very much. Any attempt to objectively conclude that this song or this album is “best” is an exercise in futility.

I would identify English Settlement and Skylarking as my two favorite XTC albums, with the understanding that I’ve yet to listen to the remaining albums in depth. I firmly believe that English Settlement was an artistic breakthrough that would have been their commercial breakthrough in the USA had things turned out differently. It took XTC some time to regroup after they became a studio-only outfit, hence the unevenness of Mummer and The Big Express. Transforming themselves into The Dukes of Stratosphear opened the path to making the kind of music they always wanted to make, and with Todd Rundgren’s assistance, Skylarking became the album that realized the promise of English Settlement and put them back on track to reach their full potential.

My advice: stop these silly and meaningless arguments about “best” and just enjoy the fabulous music.