The Primitives: ‘A reviewer said that Crash would finish the band. Then it was in Dumb and Dumber’
The Primitives formed in the summer of 1984 with a singer called Keiron, who brought me in to write songs,When he left, we pinned up an advert in Coventry library and Tracy, who I’d actually met before on a Youth Opportunity Programme, answered,At that point, we sounded more like the Birthday Party or the Gun Club, so I wrote three new songs – Through the Flowers, Across My Shoulder and Crash – to test a more pop direction,Crash was simple and noisy, with a basic guitar line that became the “Na na na” hook,It was in our live set, but we dropped it quite quickly.
We thought we already had enough bubblegum, Ramones-style songs, and we more or less forgot about it until 1987, when our producer Paul Sampson suggested we revisit it.We’d had a couple of covers in the music press – Melody Maker and NME in the same week – and the record companies were beginning to sniff around.So we used Crash as bait to generate interest.We never thought of ourselves as power pop: more 60s jangle and glam, which not everyone responded to.One live review said: “If their new single Crash is anything to go by, this band are finished.
”We went on Top of the Pops, The Roxy and Saturday Live.On Saturday morning ITV show No 73, I looked down mid-song and realised my fuzz box wasn’t plugged in – my guitar sounded like a banjo for the entire performance.I was in a studio in Coventry when the owner’s daughter, who lived in the US, came in and said: “Crash is in this film that’s doing quite well.” She meant Dumb and Dumber.The song was released again as Crash (The ’95 Mix) – about 40 seconds longer, with a repeated chorus and added layers of ukulele, steel guitar, organ and percussion, none of which we were involved in.
Had it been by Paul McCartney, I don’t imagine they would have told him they were bollocksing around with it, but we couldn’t complain.It gave the song a second life and it became a worldwide hit.I’ve heard a few covers.Belle and Sebastian’s is probably closest to how it sounded when I first wrote it – a gentler, almost Jonathan Richman-type thing.People get the words wrong.
These days it’s easy to check lyrics, but years ago someone misheard them on a fan site and wrote “you should watch your stay”, instead of “you should watch your step / if you don’t look out, gonna break your neck.” Belle and Sebastian use the wrong line, as does Matt Willis.I’d been living in Australia.I did a few vocal jobs, but I wasn’t very successful.So when I came back to Coventry, my aim was to get into a band, but nothing was coming together.
I was about to go to London when I saw an ad in the library.It said that they wanted a male singer, but I thought: “Why not?” and auditioned.I remember it was dark and dingy.I think one other person applied – a guy – but he didn’t turn up so they thought: “We’re going to have to stick with her.”We’d meet every week at the house of Steve Dullaghan – our original bassist who sadly passed away in 2009 – to practise and eat toasties, like a little ritual.
You could hardly hear me at first over all these strong, powerful guitars.Everything had to be toned down.Our first gig in a pub in Coventry, mainly to friends and family, was exciting, but I was very nervous.When we played Top of the Pops, we stood out because we simply didn’t fit it.It wasn’t because we had a female singer – there did seem to be more female artists around then.
It just felt like we were this independent little band playing bubblegum pop, when the rest of the charts was all Stock Aitken Waterman.The first time we did TOTP someone stole my leather jacket that had loads of badges on and I’d had for years.The record company gave me some money to buy a new one, but it wasn’t the same.I don’t get to sing a lot of Crash these days because our wonderful fans just sing it back to me.I simply hold out the microphone.
I think the song has stood the test of time because it’s got all the ingredients: there’s a great melody, catchy lyrics and, at just over two minutes, it’s a perfectly timed pop song.
‘Protected for another century’: experts lift 15-tonne foremast from HMS Victory
There is only one correct way to extricate a 15-tonne wrought iron mast from one of the world’s most famous and beloved warships – very slowly, and with extreme care.Which is precisely how a 30-strong team led by shipwrights and riggers set about their task on Monday night into Tuesday morning when they lifted the foremast from HMS Victory as part of a £42m conservation project.A 750-tonne crane removed the 23-metre mast from the ship in an operation requiring power to lift the wrought iron structure but also a great deal of delicacy to make sure the fabric of the vessel was not harmed.In the coming days, as long as the wind does not get up, two more masts – the mizzen and bowsprit – will also be craned off Nelson’s 18th-century flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar and laid on a Portsmouth dockside ready for conservation work to begin.At daybreak on Tuesday, Patrizia Pierazzo, the deputy project director, hailed it as a “great start”
Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest review – painfully earnest tale of trauma and transition
Kae Tempest’s new novel is dedicated to “you”, the reader. It also comes with a plea: “Be gentle though.” But to whom or what should we be gentle? The book or the writer? Having Spent Life Seeking is Tempest’s second novel, arriving a decade after his first and following a period of considerable personal change, including gender transition. Perhaps inevitably, it is a book full of struggle and soul-searching. It is also painfully earnest: an enervating read with an exhausting intensity that neither relents nor resolves
The Primitives: ‘A reviewer said that Crash would finish the band. Then it was in Dumb and Dumber’
The Primitives formed in the summer of 1984 with a singer called Keiron, who brought me in to write songs. When he left, we pinned up an advert in Coventry library and Tracy, who I’d actually met before on a Youth Opportunity Programme, answered. At that point, we sounded more like the Birthday Party or the Gun Club, so I wrote three new songs – Through the Flowers, Across My Shoulder and Crash – to test a more pop direction. Crash was simple and noisy, with a basic guitar line that became the “Na na na” hook.It was in our live set, but we dropped it quite quickly
‘I wanted alcohol to take me to a place where I was not’: comedian John Robins on the moment he realised he had a drinking problem
For most of his life, John Robins assumed he got more out of alcohol than it took from him. Now he knows it was the other way round ‘I picked up the bottle of wine and drank straight out of it. I was seven’ Read an exclusive extract from his new memoirThe Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
Tate at a turning point: new director must confront unwieldy ‘beast’ of an art institution
Roland Rudd, the chair of Tate, is in a bullish mood when we meet at his offices in the Adelphi Building, which sits on the Thames between the art institution’s two London sites. “Things have never been better,” he says.It’s a rebuff to any suggestion that the organisation is in flux – and, as if he were expecting the question to arise, Rudd produces a piece of paper from his suit pocket with notes to prove his point. The recent wins, he says, are so numerous that he has written them down so as not to forget any.At Tate Britain, Turner and Constable drew in 270,000 people, which Rudd insists “is phenomenal”; Lee Miller was “the most popular photography show anywhere in the UK”; and “Tracey” (Tracey Emin, to you and me) has brought in 125,000 paying visitors, “a remarkable number”, over at Tate Modern
The Guide #240: My new obsession is the mesmerising world of the Chipmunks at 16rpm
The best album I’ve heard so far this year isn’t from this year at all. It’s from 2015 (though its recordings were made decades before that), and is a collection of sludgy, doomy covers of late-70s punk, new wave and pop perennials: My Sharona, Call Me, Walk Like an Egyptian. The guitars on this mysterious tribute album have had their pitch tuned down to a low, thick squelch, the drum beats are slow and punishingly thudding, and the vocals, while sung in a sweet tenor, have a strange, almost lobotomised quality to them. The weirdest thing of all though is who is performing: Alvin, Simon, Theodore.OK, let’s explain
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