Monocled Alchemist

Thrills’ll Fix It: Intrepid Adrian snatches an award winning interview with pop pollsters Altered Images just as they’re discovered by BBC TV. Or should that be an interview with the Award winning . . . ? Who gives a Monkees!

Article published in NME, 30th January, 1982

Altered Images | Good Golly Miss Gosh! | IT WAS TURNING out to be quite a day for Taloolah Gosh. Dwarfed by the large paint-splattered backcloth behind her, she is skipping sylph-like across the lip of a makeshift stage in one corner of a cavernous TV studio.

The elfin dancer’s face is barely visible beneath the bouquet of ribbons and bows that serve as her headgear, but the trill tones of her wispy voice are unmistakable.

She is warbling her way through some fanciful lines about climbing trees and flying out to the Isle Of Skye when someone suddenly shouts “CUT!” for what seems like the tenth time and tells Miss Gosh to start all over again. “I’m going to storm offstage in a minute if this goes on,” she mischievously teases a hapless cameraman before resuming her routine.

Scottish popsters Altered Images are patiently performing their ‘I Could Be Happy’ single for Noel Edmonds’ Saturday morning Swap Shop, taking an irritating series of false starts firmly in their stride.

Their colourful pop-art backdrop for the occasion is a rough BBC approximation of the stylish sleeve that artist David Band designed for the single, although it looks more like something that Rolf Harris accidentally left lying around the studio. And Taloolah Gosh is the typically prim pet-name adopted by the Images’ winsome singer Clare Grogan.

Altered Images | Good Golly Miss Gosh!

ALTERED IMAGES enjoy appearing on TV. Despite having just rushed across London from an exhausting session in another television studio — this time for Jim’ll Fix It—they still dive into their work with bewitching wit and energy. On two other floodlit podiums in the same room, six sour-faced Mobiles and the dour XTC stand in stark, joyless contrast to the bubbling, babbling enthusiasm of our Glasgow quintet.

As the most potent combination of snappy sound and video vision since Madness and The Human League, Altered Images are the perfect television pop group. Their sudden success at the tail end of 1981 gave them an opportunity to fulfil some of their potential as television naturals as well as singles chart hopefuls.

Banshees fans

It is astonishing to reflect that only four months ago the group were regarded as just another attractive but erratic Scottish cult, beloved of Banshees fans and John Peel and best breathed in alongside Orange Juice and Fire Engines, despite having signed with the major label Epic rather than one of the leading Scottish independents, Postcard or Pop Aural.

But what was then unsung, serene pop has quickly become successful teen pop and now great small-screen pop: the sound and vision of young Scotland in the luxury of your living room. One of their eventual aims, according to guitarist Jim, is their own television series in the grand tradition of The Jacksons, Osmonds and Partridge Family.

If they ever get it, however, they will be hoping for better luck than they got on Swap Shop: during a final attempt to get their videoed version of the single completely perfect, the carefree Clare clatters awkwardly into the neck of guitarist Tony’s instrument and falls screaming to the deck holding her head.

Leaving nothing to chance, a somewhat dazed Clare is rushed to Charing Cross Hospital for checks. The precautionary X-rays fortunately reveal nothing and the impish patient is discharged. The true trouper that she is, Clare returns to the same studio shortly afterwards to finish her Swap Shop spot live on the air. All in all, quite a day for Taloolah Gosh.

Altered Images | Good Golly Miss Gosh!

THE DAY HAD started 18 hours earlier with a dawn alarm call out in Reading where the group are currently recording their second album with man of the moment Martin Rushent at his Genetic studio. Photographer Peter Anderson and I met up with them a few hours later, at ten, in the theatre where they are to record their Jim’ll Fix It slot.

The band arrive at the studio, already buzzing in anticipation of the hard and hectic schedule that the day ahead holds for them — two television specials and an interview to coincide with their remarkable success in this week’s NME Readers’ Poll.

The morning’s new chart positions and Scotland’s ill luck in the recent draw for the World Cup Finals are discussed in detail over coffee before the work begins in earnest.

Jim’ll Fix It

Altered Images blend into the fake TV fun of Savile’s staged extravaganzas with the experience and aplomb of seasoned family entertainers, taking their place alongside the likes of a live penguin, a girl who wants to clean the Eiffel Tower and a Greek dance troupe, only their canny Scottish wit distancing them slightly from all the phoney commotion and contrived spills.

This week Jim has fixed-it for a young Belfast boy by the name of Gerrard Small to play chimes with the group on ‘I Could Be Happy’. As the cameras roll, Clare revels gleefully in her role as The Celebrity, meeting young Gerrard and his polite mother before cheekily embarrassing the callow chump by dragging him all over the stage. Not that he seems to mind much, his features perceptively glazed in the face of all the razzledazzle.

Altered Images | Good Golly Miss Gosh!

The other four Images — guitarists Tony and Johnny, bassist Jim and drummer Tich — leave Clare to steal the limelight on the screen, providing a sturdy foil to her playful frolics. Away from the cameras, though, Altered Images are more of a five cornered force and certainly not just the female face and her four male minstrels, an impression reinforced in conversation.

“Television is great . . . it’s really good fun,” says Clare as her ‘fixed’ fan eagerly collects his autographs and a souvenir T-shirt before being ushered away to the BBC hospitality room.

“No it’s not,” says Tich. “I think it’s a boring as hell. I hate it!”

“Tich says that sort of thing just for effect, don’t worry about it,” continues Clare. “The thing is,” Tich adds, “the group are really fed up with coming over all sweet and nice in their interviews, so I’ve got to be a bit nasty here and there to give us a bit of street cred . . .”

Ligger

The last two words are mockingly strung out for maximum effect by Tich, who resembles a pubescent Nick Kent and is generally regarded as the ligger of the band. While most bands are at pains to expound their pet theories on pop and politics, Altered Images have no such messages.

They deal in witty one-liners, continually seeking to wind up both each other and the interviewer. They are a lousy ‘interview’, although talking to them is probably the closest I’ll ever come to speaking to The Monkees.

“I never get too self-conscious about doing all these silly TV programmes,” says Clare. “If I started thinking about it, doing silly things in front of all those millions of people, then I’d never have the guts to get up and do it.”

So what is the motivation?

“The attention I suppose “

Altered Images | Good Golly Miss Gosh!

ALTERED IMAGES make a deft and delightful new pop noise and make it with a relish and effervescence that some groups lose and most never have. Next to their startling lack of self-consciousness, their greatest charm is the sheer simplicity of their music.

Clare’s carping vocals and whimsical words tumble over only two chiming guitars and the rolling rhythms of Tich and Jim, all these components being superbly balanced with immaculate precision in Martin Rushent’s dynamic single mixes.

Naturally, some people prefer to see such pure pop wizardry as cloying contrivances on the part of the cynical old men up at CBS/Epic. So are Altered Images just a little bit too cute for their own good?

“Of course we’re cute,” smiles Clare, bashfully crouching like a latter-day Shirley Temple in front of her dressing room mirror. “And we’re sweet and innocent . . . and lovely.”

“Clare’s cute,” taunts Tich. “But the rest of us are serious, dedicated musicians. Clare was still getting her nappies changed when she was ten years old.”

Mental age of 10

“And her mum still has to cut her toenails . . . she grows up very slowly,” adds Jim, prompting the wicked Tich to go totally onto the offensive.

“She’s mentally retarded,” he bawls. “She has a mental age of ten!”

Clare brushes off the boys’ jibes with a more thoughtful, considered rationale.

“The thing is that it would be really silly for us to try and come over all slick and professional when we’re not like that in the first place. Maybe we have gone too far the other way . . . but the Clare image is only a slight exaggeration of Clare the person. They’re not two different people.”

She refuses to accept that her ‘wee girlie’ image may have led the band into a corner in which they will soon be trapped.

“I think we are aware of the dangers. I don’t think we are going to be trapped. We’ve got it all sussed out. We’ve got our little masterplan! People are only going to take us the way we are for so long. Then we will have to change somehow. I don’t think that I can kid on that I’m just a wee girl for ever. People just won’t let me get away with it. We’ll just have to change or CBS are going to have to fork out a fortune in keeping my voice squeaky and getting my chest flattened!”

“We never planned the ‘wee girlie’ thing anyway,” adds Johnny. “We’re trying to lose it actually.”

“We are trying to lose Clare,” sniggers Tich.

“We’re just not sure who we are going to get in as a replacement,” ponders Jim. “We want it to be someone really good. Lena Martell . . . or maybe Moira Anderson! Now she has got stage presence! You can’t take your eyes off her! We’ll be the Scottish answer to Shirley Bassey!”

Altered Images | Good Golly Miss Gosh!

I think I’d prefer a coy Clare somehow. At least she is wary of coming over as being too childlike, although her personality is quite naturally a vivacious and mischievous one. Occasionally, however, the surface cracks to reveal the sensitive and forthright young woman that is also Clare Grogan.

“I do think about the traps of pushing the image too far,” she says. “I suppose I do worry about it sometimes. But if I get depressed, then I just try not to think about it . . . ”

“Shut up Clare,” interrupts Tich. “Stop trying to be too intellectual!”

“I . . . I’m . . . ” Clare flounders and stammers, momentarily lost for words in the face of Tich’s constant provocation.

“Come on Clare,” continues the drummer. “We’re not going to help you on this one . . . ”

“I CAN BE A VAMP YOU KNOW!” she giggles.

“A vampiress maybe,” replies the watchful Tony.

“I bet you don’t go along to other bands and start picking their image to pieces,” challenges Clare, turning back to face me.

I’m not picking it to bits. Just pointing out the contradictions of a girl who will be 20 in March acting as if she was a 12-year-old on stage.

“You just want Clare to be a sex symbol,” pouts Jim pointedly. “Come on, admit it, you just fancy Clare, don’t you!”

We’re just good friends.

“I think that you’re a pervert,” he continues. “There’s something wrong with you. These Englishmen! They’re all perverts and liars!”

Altered Images | Good Golly Miss Gosh!

WE AGREE TO change the subject and talk instead about the group’s musical roots. Johnny, Tich and Tony were all friends from school when they first formed the band, meeting their singer through a mutual acquaintance – Clare was Johnny’s brother’s girlfriend’s sister! The stubbly Jim, slightly older than the rest of the group, joined later after a spell in Glasgow’s original glammy futurists The Berlin Blondes.

Before the epic chart success of “Happy Birthday”, their biggest breaks had come via a set of Siouxsie support dates, a couple of precious Peel sessions and Clare’s role as one of Gregory’s girls in the Bill Forsyth film of the same name.

“It’s funny,” reflects Clare. When our first single, ‘Dead Pop Stars’, came out, we couldn’t get anybody to play it apart from John Peel. Now, last week, ‘I Could Be Happy’ was the most played record on Radio One. I think we were the only people who really thought we’d make it . . . that was probably just our naivety.”

So was it always Clare’s ambition to he a singer?

“It’s still her ambition to he a singer,” chortles the sarky Jim.

How about acting then?

“I don’t really know,” says Clare. “I didn’t want to do anything in particular when I was at school. The music that I liked was stuff like David Cassidy and The Jackson Five. I never liked The Osmonds, they were awful! David Cassidy was always much better because he was in The Partridge Family and that was always my favourite TV programme.”

So the Images are aiming to be the New Partridges?

“No way!” exclaims John. “The new Top Cat maybe, but never the New Partridge Family. Bring back Top Cat!”

Punk was great

How about punk? Were you into that?

“The Pistols and everything were great, but you had to move on. It was never the sort of thing that was going to last. At the time, it was dead glamorous, but now it seems hip to frown on it You can hardly find anyone who admits to being into it now.”

“It certainly seems a hit forgotten these days,” says Clare

“And so it should be!” adds Jim “It all happened six years ago. That’s a long time in musical terms.”

The Images find more of an affinity with the bright, mobile pop groups that have enjoyed the same lofty chart status as them over the past year.

“I think that bands like us and The Human League, Depeche Mode and Soft Cell are all in the same boat in a lot of ways. A year ago, no one thought that any of us would get into the chart,” says Clare

“It’s good that all those bands are around,” adds John. “Things were beginning to get really stagnant around this time last year. It was like the mid-’70s all over again. Now at least it’s starting to look a hit livelier again. And they’ve brought back Sergeant Bilko on the TV!”

Altered Images | Good Golly Miss Gosh!

THERE ARE really eight people in Altered Images. The five hand members, their dynamic young manager Gerry, their legendary roadie Cheesy and producer Rushent . . . and the band are ready to give much of the credit for their sudden success to the former Buzzcocks and Stranglers producer.

Their first two singles, produced by Banshee bassman and Image buddy Steve Severin, were disconcerting and interesting. They went nowhere fast. It was only with Rushent’s hands on the console for ‘Happy Birthday’ that things began to pick up. Significantly, Rushent had shown an even earlier interest in the group, sending a telegram of congratulation to CBS on hearing that they had signed the Images.

“Martin did change the sound a lot,” admits John. “But the songs have also got to be good in the first place. It’s no good having the best producer if the band hasn’t got the potential in the first place.”

“All we needed really was a few Marshall stacks,” adds Tich, dropping as many rockist terms as possible into the conversation.”

“Martin Rushent made us more danceable,” says Clare, going on to explain one of the unorthodox quality control tests the group give their material.

“If we want to see if a song is danceable, we just get Martin to bring his three kids, Joanne, Timmy and James, into the studio. If they dance, then we know that it is a good song!”

John Peel

Rushent’s acknowledged expertise gave the Images the chance to crossover from cultshire to chartland and enjoy a far wider audience, a diversity reflected in the NME’s recent tale of two charts, one John Peel’s traditional festive 50 and the other a dancefloor selection. Altered Images were one of only three hands to feature in both lists

“That’s the sort of thing we want,” says Clare “We want to be played on Junior Choice and John Peel. Even when we were a cult band last year, we always wanted to have a wider audience as well as our credibility.

“I think we’re also very wary of becoming too fashionable, too stuck up. We’ve always been the opposite of that.”

“We’ve never really been part of any trends,” adds John. “If you link yourself too strongly to a trend then you go under when that trend dies. Even the so-called Scottish scene. We were never really part of that. That scene never really existed It was just the press building something up. The hip bands were people like Orange Juice and Josef K, but what’s happened to them?

“The hardest thing in the world is to write a good hit single. It’s quite easy for a band to be self indulgent and get praised by all the critics. It’s much harder to be poppy and successful.”

SO WILL THEIR deserved success alter the Images in the coming months? Their collective wit seems capable of ensuring no one in the band grows too big for their boots. So how are they going to handle their success — both in the chart and in the current poll?

“This is just the start,” whines the ever boastful Tich. “Eventually, we’re going to be so big that we buy up our record-company CBS.”

And then?

“The first thing we’d do is order Joe Strummer to get a facelift. I mean, The Clash are a good rock band and all that, but . . . well, they just need a few more Marshall stacks.”

What’s to come?

And then?

“We’re just going to get bigger and bigger. I mean, I’ve grown an inch in the past month.”

“Don’t he disgusting Tich,” says Tony.

“Nobody mentioned anything disgusting Tony,” says Clare reproachfully. “That’s just your dirty mind.”

AND WHAT of Clare in the coming months? Is she destined to lie awake at night and agonise about being an overgrown schoolgirl?

“Only when she takes her dummy out,” replies Jim.

It promises to be quite a year for Taloolah Gosh and Altered Images.