January 7 2013 - Entry#13 - Towers and Tiaras
It was March of 1982 and the time had come to make a cover for our new record; something to divert our attention while John slaved away without us at his tropical paradise in Montserrat. Brett put us in touch with a very creative and avant-garde photographer named Peter Noble. He had a reputation for being very clever with where he photographed his subjects and he wasn't about to let us down. He scouted out locations in Toronto and, after some deliberation, had the brilliant idea of shooting us in the CN Tower, the tallest free standing structure in the world at the time. And he was about to shoot us higher than most anyone else had ever been before.
Somehow he twisted some arms and managed to get permission to take a second elevator from the regular observation deck, all the way to the radio tower at the very top. The part that regular, sensible tourists didn't see. I'd never been too comfortable with heights anyway and the idea of going even higher made me a bit nervous. For anyone who's taken the trip, you know the ride up isn't an easy one. Attached to the outside of the tower, the elevators shoot up and pretty well leave you suspended in space for what seems like an eternity. A few of us were starting to have second thoughts about this photo session half way to the clouds. But the real and true agony was borne by Sandy alone. Reg and Joe had concocted a work of art so groundbreaking that it was sure to become an icon among follicular creations. One that would cause Sandy to shed tears of pain.
They set to work, starting with a wire frame shaped in a circle, feverishly braiding and weaving her hair, sewing it in place here and there for stability. The end result was amazing. It was hair architecture. It was the tiara from hell. And Sandy's silhouette, shot in one of the circular windows in the tower, would stand out among our photos on the Nova Heart cover that you know today. Apart from the glowing egg in the video we were yet to make, that image is probably more synonymous with the name Spoons than anything else.
Sandy had mentioned that it wasn't exactly comfortable all during the shoot, but it wasn't until the car ride home that the full extent of the damage hit her. The moment she began to undo Reg and Joe's handiwork, to cut out the strings and disassemble the wire frame beneath, the excruciating pain set in. It was as if the tiara of terror, so tightly bound, was now released and the blood in Sandy's head rushed back all at once. She cursed the evil hairdressers all the way home between tears of agony. It would take days until her head made a full recovery. A high price for a bit of new wave infamy.
Nova Heart 7" picture sleeve
When John Punter's mix of Nova Heart reached Canada from Montserrat, all memories of pain and sacrifice melted away with the snow. It was the gift we had hoped for. The end product retained all the elements that we'd put into it; a concern when letting a producer take your work away somewhere out of your reach to mix. But it had become so much more.
John had added his indefinable magic, like a coat of polish on a fine piece of furniture, and brought it totally into the realm of the international that I wanted so badly for us. This was the first time I truly believed we had something to put out there alongside the big bands like Duran Duran and Ultravox. We might even make Orchestral Maneouvers proud. We finally had a true representation of what I'd always hoped and believed we could be. And it was still unmistakably Spoons. We'd created a little world that belonged to us. When Peter Noble's album sleeve with the CN Towers photos on it arrived and we slid the twelve inch vinyl record into it, the package was complete. We were ready to take on the world.
February 24 2013 - Entry#14 - Arias & Symphonies
A few days after the Police Picnic, Sandy and I, accompanied by Carl and Pat, flew to London to complete the Arias album. Having recorded the bulk of it in Toronto, John suggested we do the vocals and mixes in England. With A&M support, Ready Records had no reason to say no and we jumped at the chance. You can imagine how international this made a couple of kids from Burlington feel. Not only were we going to England, the land of most of our musical influences, but we were going to record at George Martin's Air Studios; as in George Martin, producer of the Beatles. We were headed to a place were musical history had been made, hopefully to create some history of our own.
Police Picnic Poster
I, of course, had even more reasons to be excited about flying to England. From The Prisoner to The Avengers to Monty Python, I had a thousand reasons. British television and film had always connected with me to the core and, unexplainably, made me feel homesick for a country I'd never been to. The British shows that I watched had that darker element I always liked and were infinitely more inventive than what American television had to offer. Except, of course, the Twilight Zone.
John, the old dear, picked us up at Heathrow and the usual driving on the wrong side of the road jokes started pretty well right off the bat. As we slipped into the outskirts of London, I felt a deep electric tingle of anticipation, knowing I'd soon be coming home to a place that I'd, until then, only visited in my imagination.
John had the car radio on and we drove into London with Dexie's Midnight Runners' Come On Eileen as our soundtrack. I probably had my face pressed to the window like a little kid, taking it all in. Every street corner, every old church, every pub reminded me of something I'd seen in a movie. If Emma Peel had pulled up beside us in her little powder blue Lotus Elan, it couldn't have gotten any better than that.
Putney Bridge
We made a quick stop at the London A&M office and picked up our keys for our accommodations in Putney Bridge. In west London, on the Thames, I recently learned that Putney Bridge was home at the time for one of our later keyboard players, Steven Sweeney. He was probably there as Sandy and I rolled into town to put the finishing touches on the Arias album. They say it's a small world, but music makes it infinitely smaller still.
Our temporary home was in one of those u-shaped apartment complexes with a central garden accessed by a small iron gate. Not quite Baker Street, but it had its charms. The apartment, or flat as the English call it, was rented out by A&M for visiting bands. I was immediately hit by the smell of cooking gas that, as I would find out later, is part of everyday life in Europe. I was also struck by the fact that a lot of dodgy activities had probably transpired within those walls, after years and years of harboring rock bands and their little excesses. By imagining they were groups we'd grown up listening to, we were able to adjust to the edgy vibe of our slightly rough new digs. We were, after all, stepping into a part of living history.
Boy George 1983 by Rob Preuss
Our hair dressers Reg and Joe had put us on a mission to find a shop that carried clothes as worn by Boy George and the Culture Club. Very colorful work by a local designer with a distinct urban/tribal edge, we needed to track some down and bring it back home across the Atlantic. We were vaguely aware of Boy George, about as much as anyone else was, due to his already infamous androgynous persona. But that was the extent of it. We had no idea that the following year, by strange twist of fate, we'd be doing Culture Club's first North American tour. We'd be getting close enough, in fact, to nab one of those loud frocks right off George's back.
The first place we hit on our shirt quest was, naturally, Kings Road. We'd hailed down our first London cab to get around town and quickly learned that this was a prerequisite to the Londoner experience. Dropped off on Kings Road, we came face to face with our first bonafide punkers. Compared to our tamer Canadian counterparts back home, these were the real deal. Kings Road, after all, was the street where punkers were first born and bred.
King's Road Punks
The neighbourhood oozed style and rebellion and we soaked it all in as we spent the afternoon walking up and down its well trodden sidewalks. I'm not sure if we ever found the clothes Reg and Joe wanted but, in the process, we had our eyes opened wide to all sorts of possible stage styles for the Spoons. It was time to drop the plain white uniforms and go for something more adventurous. Our friend Judie Cornish would take her cue from what we saw here and go on to design her own take on urban tribal. But not until a slight detour into one of our more ridiculous periods; a look that somehow melded the worst of Barbarella with The Creature From The Black Lagoon. But more on that little derailment later.
The main reason Sandy and I were in London, of course, was not to clothes shop, but to record our vocals tracks. Everything else had been finished back in Toronto. A half hour Tube ride took us from Putney Bridge to Oxford Circus downtown and we were immediately hit by the crowds of people. Kings Road was one thing, but central London was a madhouse. Never in my life had I seen so many pedestrians clammoring for space on the sidewalks. I felt like we were constantly walking against the flow and soon wondered if pedestrian ediquette in London had it's own unique logic, like driving on the left side of the street.
Finally making it to the front doors of Air Studios was like reaching an oasis. Stepping inside from the mad outside world, we entered the cool, stone interior of one of the great all time edifices built to create music. Actually, it looked older and more stately than anything from the recording age and had probably housed a bank or government offices of some sort in another era. In any case, this would be our home for the next few weeks.
Air Studios London
John Punter met us, signed us in at the reception desk and took us up the elevator. We were in his house now. After a short tour, he showed us the studio that would be our workspace. The tiny room was just big enough for a huge Nieves mixing board and a small vocal booth. Oh, but the history in those walls! Countless great recordings had been made there throughout the decades. In fact, the big, old Seinheisser vocal microphone in the vocal booth was so caked with grime from years of singers and their historic performances that it was not allowed to be cleaned. I've heard that the English have the same strange habit with their tea pots. There was pent up magic in that smelly old thing and we weren't to question it.