Monocled Alchemist

HUGH FIELDER enjoys a happy hour with ALTERED IMAGES

Article published in Sounds, 29th May, 1982

Altered Images | Pinky & Perky | WHAT I WANT to know is, why are people so suspicious of happiness?” asks Clare Grogan hugging her knees on the back seat of the luxury coach that’s transporting Altered Images from city to city (in this case Exeter to Cardiff) on a tour to promote their second album ‘Pinky Blue’.

Suddenly, Altered Images are on the receiving end of a hefty slagging in the music press. Those zany, fun-loving Scottish popsters have suddenly become boring, shallow, trite and childish.

So what’s happened? Nothing apart from success. The band haven’t altered their own image since they gave up school a couple of years ago to become a pop group.

Their object then as now is to provide an evening’s entertainment and gaiety with a bundle of highly enjoyable pop songs they’ve written themselves.

Having a big hit single gave the bandwagon an exhilarating push forwards but the group weren’t so dumb as to believe that it automatically made them a better band. But neither did they think that it made them any worse.

“When you think about it, what are they actually slagging us off for?” muses Clare. “One, for being young. Two for being happy. Now, what does that mean?”

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What it means, I suspect, is that Altered Images have failed to provide a deep and meaningful inner core to their glossy teenage pop music. And that’s sufficient to make your average rock critic turn away in disgust, not least because it makes him redundant.

If they had ever pretended to be more than they are they’d have put themselves on the chopping block but as far as I can make out they never have.

Clare’s never pretended she could sing particularly well and the rest of the group freely admit to learning to play as they went along.

And all that happiness? Well, it’s for real; the result of being 19 or so, doing what you’ve always wanted and being successful at it. They let it show and audiences enjoy them the more for it.

Live Shows

THERE’S A QUAINT Sixties air about Altered Images on stage. They point their faces and instruments towards the audience for the whole show and rarely look at each other.

The buzz of watching an audience get pleasure from them engrosses them, perhaps too much for their own good. Instrumentally they’ve got themselves together in a competent enough combo with the bass and drums providing sufficient anchorage and the guitars putting the jangling character on top.

It’s good enough for what they’re doing. If they want to do more they’ll have to play and sing better but that move is up to them. I’d question whether they had much more than one album’s worth of material in them at the moment but most of that album would come from the second rather than the first.

And if you think Clare’s cutsie doll image is a put on, of course it is. But it’s nothing in comparison to the way she’s been sitting on the coach reading Nabakov’s Lolita with her pink heart-shaped sun glasses and white mini. Only John Peel could take that seriously!

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Oops, they nearly saw me plugging a lollipop into my cassette recorder instead of a microphone. But it’s time to move in for ‘the interview’ now that everyone’s finished watching The Big Bus on the video, Clare’s proved no great threat to Las Vegas at pontoon and Jill Furmanovsky has dragged everyone off the coach to have their picture taken by the roadside.

So this seems like the right moment except that Jim, the only one over 20, is allergic to the countryside and has gone to sleep, the drummer Titch is preoccupied with his Buzzcocks videos.

But Clare, Tony and John (who’s really been making me feel my age by asking what the Rolling Stones were really like on stage in the Sixties) are awake, if slightly more thoughtful than usual although you can’t keep their spirits down for long.

New Producer

Fortunately they were forewarned about their critical pasting by producer Martin Rushent who told them they’d reached that stage in their career. But nothing has prepared them for a vicious and disgusting personal attack on Clare in the previous week’s Melody Maker by a provincial stringer trying to make a name for himself at her expense.

Even Clare’s chirpy demeanour has been badly dented by such defamatory abuse and when she says “Somehow, you think that journalism is supposed to be about honesty. Now I don’t know why I thought that,” you can’t feel anything but shame for your profession.

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What puzzles John about the album reviews is that “they slagged us off for what they praised us for originally,” while Tony found them a back-handed compliment.

“Some of the reviewers got so worked up about us they took nearly half a page to tear us to shreds.”

“It’s funny because the first album is a thousand times worse that the second but it got better reviews,” remarks John. “And it was the same people who reviewed the album each time.”

“After all, the first album was the first time we’d really worked in a studio and it was also Steve Severin‘s first bash at production so obviously it wasn’t going to be that brilliant,” adds Clare.

“But this time we had much more experience and Martin Rushent certainly knows what he’s doing. He’s got so much energy I just can’t believe it. While we were there he worked constantly and he keeps everyone going around him.”

Experiments

John: “He also gave us a lot of chances to experiment which was good. Not to the point where you get self-indulgent and start trying to prove how good you are. But that’s where Martin is good because he’d make us record each part separately and give us a chance to experiment while we went along rather than recording us all together. He can’t make a bad song sound good but he can make a good song sound great.”

Clare nails Altered Images’ colours firmly to the mast: “The thing is, we want to be as commercially successful as possible which means that you can’t go too far overboard because it gets to the stage where it becomes commercially unacceptable.”

John: “People say ‘Oh, it’s just a pop single’ but they don’t realise that it’s the hardest thing in the world to write a song that appeals to everyone. Another part of the problem is that I think the press started picking up on us as an underground band when we released ‘Dead Pop Stars’ as a single early on. We never felt like that at all.”

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But you can scarcely blame people for looking a little deeper into a song called ‘Dead Pop Stars’ now can you?

“No, but you’re just meant to listen to it and get the meaning you want to get. There’s nothing more. I mean, if you listen to all those great pop songs of the Sixties or any of those Tamla Motown hits you never understood all the words but you always knew what the songs meant.”

Tony: “But there’s this dreadful tendency to treat our songs too seriously. I mean, we didn’t intend anyone to take ‘Song Sung Blue’ seriously but people seemed to get so intense about it and they were saying ‘Why have they done a Neil Diamond song?’ It was fun, that’s why.

“That’s why we got John Peel along to sing and whistle on it. It was just giving an old man a lot of pleasure, that’s all.”

“And I didn’t sit on his knee once all night,” rejoins Clare. “That let him down. Actually, he took the whistling bit very seriously. He suggested it, as he keeps reminding everybody on the radio, and he really got into it.”

Mick Jagger

“The thing about Peel is that he’s always optimistic. Even after all those years.” adds Tony.

“It’s supposed to be entertainment isn’t it?” queries Clare. “I mean, razzle dazzle and all that kind of thing?”

John: “Look at Mick Jagger. He doesn’t go around looking glum all the time. He looks quite happy and nobody seems to knock him in front of a crowd.”

Tony: “Good rock and roll should be like a good film. All the individual bits in it are quite technical but the end result should be pure enjoyment.”

John: “That’s why its fun to work off a crowd and watch the way they react. Like when we explode this cannister of confetti at the end of the show. It’s fun to watch people’s faces. They’re silent for a few seconds because they’re taken aback and then they start cheering.”

Clare: “Most people think that the PA’s just blown up.”

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But entertaining has become such a cliched business these days that there’s always a tendency to think that a band are putting it on.

“Well we’re not,” answers John smartly. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was to play in a band and play the music that I like to play and watch people enjoying it. So why should I look glum about that.

“People think we should be taking it so seriously. Like when we said in Sounds that we’d break up if ‘Happy Birthday’ ever got to Number One. People started coming up to us and saying that Epic deliberately stopped the single getting to Number One when they read that.”

Tony: “The thing is, we work hard at it but we take it optimistically.”

Even in the face of the criticism they’re getting now?

John: “Yes. I think all the reviews have actually made us stronger together.”

Clare: “It made me want to run out and get ten million more ribbons, wear my skirts even shorter and frillier and keep talking in baby language from now on. They’re just trying to make us out as if we can’t think beyond birthday cakes and jellies which is so stupid. A lot of the time the way we behave is tongue in cheek, a bit silly for silly’s sake, that’s all.”

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AND IF SILLINESS keeps the cynicism at bay then I’m all in favour of it. With the one aforementioned dishonourable exception they’ve let all the flak roll past them and behind the ribbons and bows they’re even smart enough to know just why it happens.

“Some people just have an axe to grind,” says John. “Like Ian Ravendale of Sounds up in Newcastle. He believes that when we signed to Epic we prevented his favourite band Erogenous Zones, from getting signed as well and so he slags us off every time we play in Newcastle. Last time we played there the Guardian reviewed the same gig and thought we were great.

“If there was anything constructive in any of the criticism we’d pay attention but it was all petty and destructive. Only Betty Page sounded as if she’d actually listened to the album. Thanks Betty.”

Tony: “We know we’ve got a lot to learn. We’re all 19 or so.”

John: “Ah, but we’ve got Jim. He’s a veteran.”

Clare: “That’s why he’s sleeping at the moment. He mustn’t overdo things.”

As we get off the coach and make our way towards the Cardiff Top Rank Clare turns and says in her primmest Scots accent, “We’re not rich either you know. We’ve only got one of these coaches each.”

For as long as Altered Images keep demanding Smarties and Corn Flakes in their dressing room — and getting them —then their chances of survival at a notoriously fickle end of the rock market must be high.