Wreckless Eric
One of the glorious things about Punk Rock was how wide its scope of inclusion was at the start and that included the legend that is Wreckless Eric.
Diminutive in stature the Norman Wisdom of punk/new wave/power pop/Find yer own label, Wreckless Eric AKA Eric Goulden arrived on Stiff Records doorstop at the fag end of Pub Rock and secured a contract on the strength of a cassette he had banged out. While he buggered off on holiday Nick Lowe picked up on the tape and the Whole Wide World single was on its way.
More Punk by association his drunken, shambolic performances may have shared some common ground but you’d be pushing it to say his sound was Punk. Like Ian Dury (Wreckless loved the Kilburns and even covered one of their songs Rough Kids on his first album) he was a sharp idiosyncratic bitter sweet songwriter and a master of the portraying the normal and gritty side of life.
And his songs like Dury’s, Costello’s and others on the fashionable Stiff label fitted the punk zeitgeist. The infamous Live Stiffs in October 1977 saw him stepping out on the road with Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Larry Wallis and Ian Dury.
One of Erics gems he gave the world was the sublime Whole Wide World. It was also to be his albatross as even as early as 1978 he would leave the track till the end joking (or perhaps knowingly) that that way the audience wouldn’t walk out!
He managed 3 albums and a handful of singles and was eventually dropped by Stiff. Unfortunately, everything he released wasn’t a hit despite massive full page advertising campaigns by Stiff at the beginning and it was a slow slide into obscurity and legend. Falling out with Stiff he left the label and the music business. The Seventies went by and the Eighties effectively sidelined him.
Relocating to France He returned with the Captains Of Industry Len Bright Como (but people wanted to see Wreckless Eric) before effectively resurfacing with his successful and excellent autobiography “A Dysfunctional Success: The Wreckless Eric Manual”.
Jon Romney in his 1978 interview with Wreckless Eric for the fanzine Negative Reaction summarises the appeal and allure of the man perfectly.
Wreckless Wrock is fun, because it’s possessed with all the sense of innocent irresponsibility of true teenage music, but coupled with a sense of misery and sordidness that puts the edge on the humour. Look at it this way: Is that anyway for a grown man to behave? I should hope so.
Whole Wide World/Semaphore Signals (Stiff August 1977)
Like it or not this song is Eric’s best known and arguably loved song and no doubt became a cross to bear. Love the way he used to lay it last knowing audiences had come wanting to hear it and so would have to stay until the end. Simple, effective and as catchy as crabs. The album version was speeded up, apparantly because some German compnay wanted to feature it in an advert and liked it that speed.
The song went on to make number 47 in John Peel’s ‘Festive Fifty’, the so-called ‘lost list’ of 1977; it was number 8 in the Sounds critics’ singles of the year; and it received an ‘honourable mention’ in the NME critics’ chart. The song’s reputation has grown over the years and numerous bands have covered “Whole Wide World”, such as the Lightning Seeds, Mental As Anything, The Monkees (on their Pool It! album in 1987), The Proclaimers (on their 2007 album Life With You), Paul Westerberg, and Cage The Elephant (on their 2017 album Unpeeled). Past Daily
‘What’s On’ Granada TV with Ian Dury on drums and Davey Payne on saxophone – 1977
Reconnez Cherie/ Rags’n’Tatters (Stiff February 1978)
OK so the second single off the album and maybe not the best track to follow up given the zeitgeist. It’s an okayish pleasant pop ditty that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the charts but you couldn’t help but compare it to Whole Wide World.
Rags ‘n’ Tatters sounds like Benny Hill gone mad!
Crying, Waiting, Hoping / I Wish It Would Rain (Stiff November 1978)
Hit And Miss Judy / Let’s Go To The Pictures / I Need A Situation (Stiff July 1979)
It’s a maudlin version Buddy Holly cover that doesn’t do much for my ears to be honest and I can’t see what market it was aimed at. Stiff would have been thinly spread as well with the range of artists they had on board.
This is more like it and a great little tune but by now Stiff had given up on Eric and they had already struck big with Ian Dury and about to strike big with Madness.
Wreckless Eric – Stiff Records March 1978
Punk77 Says: Looking back over 50 years later at the album it’s music in transition. It fits so well with on the one hand Ian Dury/Kilburns and the souped-up pub rock of Nick Lowe. Just by 1978 it had sounded dated as the songs were more suited to 1976/1977. That said there are some absolute pearls in there – Waxworks with its grind/groove, Personal Hygiene (classic lyrics – The Who Sell Out meets Ian Dury)), Whole Wide World (sped up) and what should have been the second single There Isn’t Anything Else (the twin of Magazine’s Shot By Both Sides surely?). It did indeed come in shit coloured vinyl and was produced by Pink Fairies/Motorhead guitarist Larry Wallis.
Andy Gill, NME, 11.3.1978 It’s rather appropriate that you can buy a hideous dung coloured version of Wreckless Eric’s first album. Like the person who reminds you that the Queen defecates, Eric’s an obsessive debunker, constantly pricking holes in the sanitised skin of life and pointing out imperfections underneath. A 20 century Kasper Hauser in some respects.
It’s a picture which doesn’t come across on the singles, where Eric’s somewhat twee, “untutored innocent” side is emphasised – although “Reconnez Cherie” does have that great balloon-bursting couplet “Do you remember all those nights in my Zodiac playing with your dress underneath your pacamac?”
Even the cover to-“Wreckless Eric” is disquieting: there’s this circle bearing the legend “ONLY ’69/11 d”, which serves as a frightening reminder that this album costs more than twice as much as, say, “John Wesley Harding” did when first released. And it’s not a “removable” (ha ha) sticker – it’s a permanent reminder.,
The brown ten-inch version is for those mugs who place collectability over content, seeing as how they pay the same 69/11 d and get two fewer racks, these being the classic “Whole Wide World” and a captivating little tale called “Telephoning Home” about a teenage girl who leaves home, finds that The Big City ain’t Canaan, tries to telephone her parents, and ends up committing suicide (or getting murdered?) by strangling herself with the telephone cord.
Click on the above images of reviews from the time – Right Record Mirror and Left – Sounds
The ostensible reason for their non-inclusion is that they use different musicians to the other eight tracks, which all feature Eric on guitar and vocals, Davey Payne on saxes, Dave Lutton on drums, Charlie Hart on keyboards and Barry Payne on bass.
The album’s highlights, for this listener at least, are the closing trio of “Personal Hygiene”, “Brain Thieves” and “There Isn’t Anything Else”, the latter an apt closer worthy of single release and – featuring a smart guitar part by Larry Wallis (who also produced the album). “Personal Hygiene” is probably the best-realised piece on the record, a catalogue of cosmetic cover-ups culminating in the cautionary couplet “Sluice yourself down in the bath, and pray God your souls keep clean “, all set to a slow, melodramatic plod over which Davey Payne blows some appropriately dirty sax.
I suppose parallels could be drawn with the working-class obsessions of Ray Davies and Ian Dury but, unlike Davies, Wreckless Eric doesn’t romanticise situations which are lacking in finery. Like the fool dangling faults in front of our faces, he peeks behind the finery to reveal those embarrassing understains – a similar process to some of Dury’s work, but Eric employs a humour that’s blacker and didactically nastier than Dury’s. (Incidentally, the only non-original on “Wreckless Eric” is Dury’s “Rough Kids”).
It’s the most eminently, quotable album I’ve heard since Talking Heads `77″ and Wire’s “Pink Flag”, and, like those, it’s also sufficiently idiosyncratic musically to ‘set it at a distance from all other albums. Of course it’s flawed and rough in places: what would be the point of harping on about imperfection and then tarting it up in God’s Own Arrangement? As it is, it’s got a reckless (Ha, ha, Ed) vitality reminiscent of the Kilburns, which may be due in part to the presence of Davey Payne, but which seems to stem from something deeper. It’s spirited rather than spiritual. It’s an album which grows on you, but it’s so initially off-putting (I hated it the first time round) that it’ll probably be remaindered before long, to be hailed as a masterpiece in three years’ time. Me, I reckon it’s pretty important already, and I think it speaks volumes about the revitalised state of music in Britain that a genuine but unorthodox talent like Wreckless Eric can have the chance he deserves.
And even if you don’t reckon his acute observation of imperfections is reason enough to buy the album then at least you’ve got to admit it goes some way towards explaining why he bites his nails as badly I do. Are you satisfied with things? Andy Gill, NME, 11.3.1978
The Wonderful World Of Wreckless Eric – Stiff August 1979
Ok this album arrived with indecent haste after the eponymous debut and you have to wonder if they spent half the budget on the sleeve. More curious are the musicians involved in it. Look closely and you see Brady, Johnny Belsen and Geir Wade as his backing band which was pretty much the New York Dolls type band The Hollywood Killers and then the London SS.
The review below is very rough on it.
+ + BEV BRIGGS. Record Mirror 7.10.78
ERR, SORRY, but this so called `Wonderful World Of W E’ is startling in only one respect – the total one dimensional aspect of the whole thing. This monogamous marriage between Wreckless and several assuredly ‘noted’ musicians is astonishingly dull and tiresome. A hotchpotch of yawns and snores, with little to determine the end of the big sleep.
Now don’t get me wrong, I mean I respect Wreckless in some ways, his exquisite amateurism, youth club charm, enthusiastic lyrics, pleasurable platitudes, especially his ‘Whole Wide World /
Semaphore Signals’ release, which was played to saturation point on a certain Hope And Anchor jukebox, but sadly this album seems to lack where his previous work excelled.
Ten tracks of which eight are original (? ) Wreckless Eric creations. Wrapped in a generous shroud of irritating boyhood coyness, with save few redeeming features.
Silver linings appear on side one in the form of ‘Veronica’, a rather gauche trinketty number, the laments of a boy soldier going to war to fight for his true love, but nevertheless is catchy in the same vein as ‘Whole Wide World’. Side two delivers ‘The Final Taxi’, an unyielding melody on the last cab to heaven, which focuses on Wreckless Eric’s corruptions of pronunciation.
The rest? A drab mess. It’s been a long time since we last heard from Eric, but judging from this effort, one can’t help feeling that perhaps he has reappeared in the public eye too soon. God Save
Stiff!
This is a cracking interview from Fanzine Negative Reaction #3 which came out around the time of Eric’s second album in September 1978. Find out about Ian Dury drumming, Eric’s links to the infamous London SS and did he really play with an ex-member of Chelsea in his band. The interview was by Jon Romney.
STIFF Records can be fairly summed up by the fact that they’re the only record company I know that have a pub slap in the middle of their offices. Well, maybe not quite, but since they’ve moved operations out of their former office in Alexander Street, using it as a sort of seedy shop, and moved into new offices further down Alexander Street, they’ve managed to combine real record business efficiency with their patented eccentricity.
What more could you ask? An office with a pub in the centre, no less. Stiff staff drift to and fro past the crumbling Georgian terrace belonging to one of Mr Truman’s hostelries, while erstwhile Stiff pressman and genealogist Pete Frame await the well-belated arrival of Wreckless Eric.
When Eric finally arrives in a taxi, he’s true to form, apologising to Mr Frame’s imprecations with the same voice he uses to sing with, a weird rasping Hull drawl. He’s wearing a ludicrously incongruous pair of mirror shades, which, hardly match his dusty Oxfam jacket. He’s a weird tyke, is Eric. If I didn’t know anything about him, l’d probably take him for a right pinhead, only I’ve heard his records, see, so I’d have to think twice.
The Wreckless Eric album is one of my favourite platters of ’78,and it’s, horribly underrated. It might be a bit unsatisfying, not particularly well programmed, but it shows the grinning geezer on the sleeve to be one of thewittiest, nurkiest writer/performers to grace the scene, and without a doubt, the best of the selected few who’ve made their recording debut on Stiff, old Declan McMisery notwithstanding.
Wreckless came to public attention with the classic “Whole Wide World” track, included on the first Stiffs compilation. After that, he knocked about for a while, wrote some more songs, and then paid a visit to Stiff, who suggested he reannounce his presence by releasing “World” as a single.
The B-side, though, was the track that showed he was a talent to be reckoned with: “Semaphore Signals”, one of the best tracks cut by anyone in 1977. That track surprised a lot of people, as it featured Ian Dury not only as producer, but also playing drums.
HR: How’d you get involved with Ian Dury?
Eric: I met him at this Graham Parker gig and we just got on. I phoned him up, he told me to come round, so I did. We were talking about songwriting, that’s all he was doing at the time, just writing songs and going around telling people he was going to do the Eurovision Song Contest. I always liked the Kilburns, they were incredible…
NR: Were they a definitive influence on you then?
E: Well, I didn’t like it when it was that flashy jazzy band. What was good about the Kilburns was that they were so seedy. The first band with band …I saw ’em again with Charlie Sinclair on bass, I tried to get him in my band at one stage, but he was a bit wary of it. I think he always thinks that people want ‘im because of his size. I didn’t realise he was that little actually!
NR: What’s Dury like as a producer?
E: Ian’s not a Phil Spector, there’s no Phil Spectors knocking about, the nearest is Dave Edmunds…well, what Ian does there’s got to be no slip ups on a record. I don’t think he actually goes to this extreme, but he nearly does – of getting a metronome out, or a drum machine, to see if the thing doesn’t speed up.
NR:But it’s difficult to play with a drum machine because it’s always going to be more precise than you.
E: That’s what screwed me up with Ian, I wasn’t getting into rock ‘n’ roll anymore, I was getting into technology. If I play with a drum machine, over a space of 8 bars, I get out with it, and by the end of the sequence I’ll be back in with it – you make one bar longer and one a fraction shorter, a tight band is always doing that, it’s microscopic, but if you play with a drum machine, you’ll see it, because you never fall in with the beat properly. Playing with a band isn’t mechanical, it’s biological.
THE collaboration with Dury carried on through the Stiffs tour last October, on which Eric was accompanied by ex-Kilburn sax ace Davy Payne (now a paid-up Blockhead), Denise Roudette on bass, and Ian on drums again.
Eric: He’s very good. He used to know Charlie Watts and he gave him a drum kit. His left hand’s a bit weak, he’d just lift it up and let it fall on the snare drum; he had the stick taped to his hand.
Right – Ian with the gorgeous Denise. Photo Credit?
Discussing the art of singing, the Sultan of Scruff explained the somewhat chaotic state he found himself in at the time of that tour, a period in his life which led him to be the scourge of Stiff’s offices for a while.
Eric: Eventually, due to living on 30 bob a week and eating fuck all, I got into quite a poor state of health, and that came to a head on the Stiff tour …I had flu and laryngitis and God knows what else. It took quite a long time to get my voice back, but it’s on top form at the moment, and that’s through doing breathing exercises, running, all the things that drummers do. It’s really boring…most people don’t bother about it…
NR: You’re not training to sing like Etta James or someone like that, are you?
E: She’s a sophisticated soul singer, really, they have to use throat sprays, all hind of things. Larry Wallis used to use a throat spray in the Fairies. Now, you’re supposed to use it once a day, it’s got a small amount of opium in it, and every number he’d turn round to the amp and PSSHHT: down his throat, and he used to come off every night and ruin himself.
Larry Wallis also produced the Eric debut album, and a fine piece of work it is, too, perfectly capturing the manic roughness of the songs. I’d always thought of Wallis in the past as just another heavy metal scrap merchant, so I was surprised to hear him turn out such a consummate piece of …well, you can only call it anti-production. How did he come to work with Eric?
E: Hell, I did some things with Ian and it didn’t really work out. Well, that’s what he did with the Kilburns, it started off a bit grubby and then he cleaned it up. That’s what he was doing with my stuff, and I was getting a bit worried about it, so I got to know Larry on the Stiff tour, drinking and that, and then his producing the album was a foregone conclusion.
Eric far left – Larry second from right
NR: You’ve got a very weird guitar sound on there, very scratchy…
E: Yeah, I did that on a Rickenbacker with everything on full treble, no bass on it. I also used a Fender Twin which I had turned right down, and a Fender Champ which I had turned full up, all with treble on. But I’m not playing much guitar now, just concentrating on singing.
NR: So when you get back on stage, you’ll be just hanging around the microphone?
E: No, what I’m thinking of doing is taking my guitar with me and taking all the strings off, having it plugged into a really flashy amp and just pretending to play. People’ll say, I saw Eric, what sort of strings does he use? I’ll say, I use ultra-light strings, psychic gauge strings. I had to mime on a TV show that we did in Amsterdam. I had a short curly lead that went in the guitar – out the guitar and into the bass. Nobody noticed. I was playing the guitar left-handed, it looked like I didn’t have a clue.
To coincide with the album, Eric took a band on tour. Davy Lutton and Barry Payne who’d played drums and bass respectively on the album, stuck around, as did John Glyn, who’d played sax on ‘Telephoning Home’ (the track that didn’t make the 10-inch version). Together with former Chelsea member Henry Badowski (now in Cpt. Sensible’s King), the band were christened the New Rockets, but all was not stable…
E: It was a very unbalanced sort of band. I mean, the drummer had been with T.Rex for four years, been in Eire Apparent, loads of bands, Steve Ellis, he worked with Wings… he was about 35 and getting pin3ed off with riding up and down the M1…it gets to be not people’s idea of fun after a while; he was a good drummer, just not the right sort of drummer for me. He’s OK, lived round at his house for a bit.
NR: John Glyn played in X-Ray Spex for a while, didn’t he?
E: Yeah… I think he did it for the experience, I think he went back to art school afterwards. It wasn’t a vocation with him-The bass player was only 17, it was his first professional gig, he’s very strange, he’s Davy Payne’s brother; Davey’s strange, but his brother’s stranger, he’d go all day and never talk to anyone. Charlie Fiart (another ex-Kilburn played on the album, and he played keyboards for a week, then we got another guy (Badowski)…he was 19 and a fucking lunatic, he used to have fits in the back of the van. It was the most disastrous outing, in a way.
NR: One important feature of the tour and the album was your suit. (The one he wears on the sleeve, a hideously good concoction laced with birds on a satinish background). Where did you get it?
E: I made it, It’s dead easy to make clothes, you can almost do it by lying down on the floor and getting someone to draw around you. Making clothes is common sense, really…
NR: But it must take dedication to year a suit like that.
E: What’s wrong with it?
NR: Well, it’s horrible, or beautiful, depending on your sense of irony. It looks like there are still pins stuck in it. Did you make the shirt yourself, too?
E: No, Brighton, Brighton’s the place for shirts. There’s a shop in the backstreets of Brighton where you can get these horrible shirts for £1-99,and they’ve got helicopters end insects and birds all over them … they’re all too small and they come from Hong Kong. The cuts on the sleeves come up to your elbows.
NR: The Hong Kong shirt industry’s putting British shirts out of business.
E: I’m not surprised, they’re bloody good shirts, I love ’em. Clothes are all right, there are some ‘orrible ones. Yeah, interesting subject, shirts …I like that Plummet Airlines song, “Silver Shirt”…
The mention of Plummet Airlines brings us on to the subject of a bloke who used to work with that now defunct band, namely Malcolm Morley, better known for his work with Help Yourself, and briefly with Man in their “Rhinos Winos” period. Malcolm, it seems is, currently working with Wreckless in the capacity of musical advisor, but won’t actually be in Eric’s new band, who are currently coming together with a view to a tour in October.
Eric; Malcolm’s sort of helping me out a bit. I’m going to have a permanent band together. I’ve been working with a drummer and a base player, they’re really nice blokes, a very good tight rhythm section, they’ve been working together for three years …They used to be in a band called the Tools…did you ever hear of them?
NR: Yeah, with Kelvin Colney.
E: That’s right, he’s in the White Cats now. The drummer’s Norwegian, he’s called Geir Wade (pronounced Geer Vahder), the bass player’s just called John Brown. He used to call himself Johnny Belsen and wear leather trousers apparently. They used to be in a band with a guy called Andrew Matheson…
NR: Oh, I know, Zigzag’s always cracking him up to be semi-legendary. He’s tied up with all that Norwegian scene, Casino Steel and so on…
E: Yeah, we’re on to a great topic here. There’s a possibility I might do some work with Casino Steel. I hope my band’ll be called the Firm, anyway…
NR: Better still, you should call it the Corporation. On the publicity photos, instead of having a picture of the band, you could have a fat man, with an arrow pointing to his stomach, marked “the Corporation”…
E: A fat man that looks like he works for the council yeah!!
NR: What new songs have you got for the next album, then?
E: Oh, do you want a complete rundown? Yeah, why not. Well, there’s “Roll Over Rockola” -that’s my rock ‘n’ roll song, and it mentions a Viva Tonester, that’s my favourite record player; “I Wish It would Rain”…
NR: The old Temptations song?
E: No…”The Final Taxi”, “Walking On The Surface of the Moon”, a version of “Dizzy”, a song called “Veronica”.
NR: Ahh, that’s a nice name.
E: Really? I thought it was the silliest name I could think of.
NR: No, it’s a great name…like Veronica Lake.
E: What, is that somewhere in America?
NR: No, she was n film star, She had this famous peek-a-boo hairstyle over one eye-maybe she only had one eye …
E: Oh, I see…They’re all my songs except “Dizzy”. The new album’s gonna have a lot of bollocks, no saxophones kicking about, just clangy guitars and sicky tunes on the Voz Continental.
NR: Really? That’s a pity, I thought Davey Payne really stole the first album …with him playing with you, was there a conscious attempt to sound like the Kilburns? When I heard “Rags and Tatters”, I thought it was an old track of theirs or something. especially that Benny Hill sax bit at the end.
E: Yeah, I probably did a little ‘bit. You move through things. Probably my next album after this will be a country album or something.. If you want to, you can do anything, and I’ll have a permanent band, so..
NR: I was wondering whether you were influenced by John Cale at all. “Waxworks” sounds a lot like “Helen of Troy”, the mood’s quite similar…
E: Well, actually, it came out wrong. It was a difficult number to do. It should have come out much more in the Captain Beefheart vein. When people ask me about my influence, I always tell ’em about Beefheart.
NR: Everyone uses a Beefheart influence this days, but they seem to get it wrong. It’s always just chopped up like “Lick My Decals Off”, but they never get the character of it; what does Beefheart mean to you?
E: Well, there’s lots of influences in it, lots of Robert Johnson and Sun Ra, that Delta Blues thing, it might sound like old hippy music sometimes, but there’s always that blues thing in it. Like in the song ‘Clear Spot” – “swamps all stinkin’ and rotten …ughh..” and all that.
NR: “Sleepin’ on the bayou in an old rotten cot…” That’s really sticky-…
E: Sounds like John Lee Hooker, he’s very spiritual. It all sounds very earthy, and a lot of people don’t get the connection, but it’s something higher than that. Jimi Hendrix…it was apparent with him, he was a black blues chap, really. But I dunno, I used to think about the Delta and all that a lot, but I’ve moved off that now.
NR: What have you moved on to listening to now, then?
E: MY demos!’ If you tune into long wave radio, foreign stations, they play all these jumpy tunes, really horrible jolly tunes. They ‘re amazing, I’ve been working on them.
NR: Yeah, you can still get Teutonic drinking song sometimes.
E: Yeah: I’ve been using a Vox Continental to do some of my writing on, and you set all these silly tunes that they insist on … I’m an appalling organ player. I’ve got the Vox Continental , it’s that very 60s poppish sound…I don’t want to get into any powerpop numbers or anything… “
Despite the witty and somewhat acutely observant nature of some of Eric’s songs (for fear of making him sound like Patrik Fitzgerald) he still maintains a very firm conviction in the basic stupidity of rock n’ roll.
E: I was talking to Larry, and he said, “Well, I’ve been writing these songs, but I don’t know if they’re any good’. So I said, ‘Well, pop’s a load of shit anyway, you don’t have to worry about that’. When the Flamin’ Groovies are doing “Yeah My Baby”, I mean, ‘Yeah my baby yeah my baby you’re drivin’ me crazy’, …but it works it’s marvelous. All them people who’ve got religion, look at Pete Townshend, he’s acting like a wimp …Look what happened to Cliff Richard. Have you heard Tony Hancock’s ‘The Blood Donor’? He’s talking to this fat woman who’s going in to give blood, and he says, “Just think – Cliff Richard might get yours, that’ll slow him down a bit”.
Jerry Lee Lewis is the chap, actually, he says, “Rock ‘n’ Roll is the Devil’s music, but I’m not a good Christian”.’ He’s still playing with the same amount of bollocks…he’s much more into country music which is ok, I love it, he’s still into wine and women. lt’s no good being Christian about rock n’ roll ‘coz rock ‘n’ roll is fucking awful music. I still cling on to the whole thing that rock n’ roll is what your mum and dad don’t like. Gels is another thing. They seem to like rock ‘n’ roll, but actually they don’t, most gels are very straight. It goes against all those things like getting married and having kids…a nice young man. What mother wants her daughter to come home with a geezer that stands on a stage and screams into a mike for a living? Well, if you put it that way … I dunno really.
These last couple of years were supposed to have been an age of enlightenment, every new band pushing down the barriers of musical intolerance, and clearing the way for a Golden Age in which the Residents and Abba alike will reign supreme at the top of the charts …And then you get someone like Wreckless Eric or the Groovies come along and put forward some blatantly reactionary opinions about the whole thing, and make them sound totally convincing. Rock ‘n’ roll is rubbish? Try telling that to Pere Ubu. Girls don’t like it? Try telling that to the Slits.
Wreckless isn’t revolutionising anything, except the fact that you can look and sound like you’ve been through a hedge backwards and still be a pop star (I remember when Eno’s first solo album came out – how could you sing like that and get away with it that. Well, it’s the same sort of feeling with Eric’s records; he breaks all the rules. A record should never sound like that, but it does. Songs can’t be that off-centre, but they are, and it works completely.
Wreckless Wrock is fun, because it’s possessed with all the sense of innocent irresponsibility of true teenage music, but coupled with a sense of misery and sordidness that puts the edge on the humour. Look at it this way: Is that anyway for a grown man to behave? I should hope so.
Jon Romney.
TalkPunk
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