4. Cocteau TwinsHead Over Heels
I might as well get the Cocteau Twins over and done with! [Laughs.] You know you often ask people where were you when something happened? The old JFK thing? I’m a bit like that with music. I can remember listening to the Peel show one night and he put on ‘Wax and Wane’. And I just thought, now that’s my new favourite band! You can’t make a song as good as that by a fluke. I knew nothing about them but I immediately went out and bought their records. I just missed them on that tour with OMD. Football got in the way. And then I got the new record, Head Over Heels. Wow.
How many albums do you know, from the first note, to the last note, and indeed, the 12” EP that followed, is absolute perfection from start to finish? I could not even come close to telling you a favourite song from them. I just couldn’t. You’d think an obvious one is ‘Sugar Hiccup’. But then there’s ‘Musette and Drums’, and so on. You listen to ‘Musette and Drums’ and you know where the Mary Chain come from, you know? Robin’s playing and arranging is fantastic. And Liz’s voice, although untrained, is like no other singer, ever before.
When I was living in London and playing for Chelsea I went to see them play Head Over Heels. There were some weird things happening at that show. One was when they finished the second song and nobody clapped. Everybody stood with their mouths open, blown away. I’ve only ever known that happen twice. Another was me talking to this guy who was clearly loving them as well. We were both getting blown away by this wall of sound. He was a dead nice guy and we just kept chatting about the band. Anyway six months later he was in the band, it was Simon Raymonde! Simon became a good friend. I got to know the band a bit. And at that time, Simon and I would meet every single day for lunch in a scruffy cafe.
You couldn’t listen to Cocteaus without having soul. I never stopped loving them.
