Prefab Sprout

Patrick Joseph McAloon was born in 1957, nearly five years before his brother Martin, in England’s North East and the pair spent their childhoods in the village of Witton Gilbert, near Consett, Durham County. As a 14 year old schoolboy, Paddy devised the name Prefab Sprout and, by his ‘A’ level years, was a brilliant guitarist, according to his peers, absorbing music influences from all directions. He formed a band, Avalon, with four friends, mostly playing covers, but college places ended the venture. After three years at Newcastle Polytechnic, studying Humanities, Paddy returned to Witton Gilbert and, while working at his father’s garage, formed Prefab Sprout with Martin on bass and Michael Salmon on drums to work on original material. By the end of the decade Prefab Sprout were a local gigging force to be reckoned with, their collective abilities fast catching Paddy’s musical ambitions.

In February, 1982, Prefab Sprout record debut single, Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone)/Radio Love – “Written about my girlfriend being away at university in Limoges. I just saw the word Limoges written down on an envelope and tried to see what kind of phrase I could make from the letters,” explained Paddy -  and released it on their own Candle imprint. By September, Wendy Smith had joined as the band’s backing singer and second single The Devil Has All the Best Tunes/Walk On appeared. Reviews for both indicated Prefab Sprout’s fanbase was eloquently waxing and Keith Armstrong, then manager of Newcastle's HMV record store, saw the potential, signing Sprout to just locally launched Kitchenware Records in March 1983. Kitchenware then re-released Lions… in April and by August the band had completed a debut album. October saw the re-release of The Devil... and Armstrong visited London to meet with CBS Records’ Muff Winwood, resulting in the latter signing the band to an eight-album distribution deal with Kitchenware retaining management of the band. Sprout continued to tour and opened for Elvis Costello. In January, 1984, Don’t Sing, the band’s first CBS-supported single, just missed the Top 60 and, in March, debut album Swoon was released and garnered enthusiastic notices, while the band, now joined by drummer Neil Conti, continued to tour the UK and then Europe to promote it.

The press loved Swoon’s urbane, un-rock sound, the fresh confidence of Paddy’s mellifluous, mid-Atlantic voice and his educated references - details like opening song Don’t Sing referencing Graham Green and second Cue Fanfare chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer, Cruel with its exquisite lyrics and subtle latin rhythms and Couldn’t Bear To Be Special’s inescapable irony – and quickly had Paddy joining the ranks of the new generation of pop craftsmen, which included Green Gartside, Edwyn Collins, Roddy Frame, Thorn & Watt, Morrissey & Marr, Loyd Cole and Paul Buchanan. Paddy’s writing seemed informed as much by Berlin, Gershwin, Porter and Richard Rogers as modern pop sophisticates Bacharach & David, Motown, Lennon & McCartney, Brian Wilson and Steely Dan’s Fagen & Becker. The pop funk influence of Chic and Prince would emerge later. Swoon reached #22 in the UK albums chart and turned numerous influential heads.

For the band’s second album, Thomas Dolby was drafted in on production duties, having revealed himself to be a fan. Dolby was a writer (Lene Lovich), gifted synth-slinger-for-hire (Thompson Twins, Foreigner), pop star (She Blinded Me with Science, Hyperactive!) and, most importantly, producer with an ability to create beautiful settings for deceptively simple pop songs using modern equipment, sounds and techniques, perhaps best exemplified on Screen Kiss from Dolby’s second album, The Flat Earth. The Sprout-Dolby partnership worked wonderfully and in June, 1985, Steve McQueen – re-named Two Wheels Good in the USA – was released. Although it only improved on Swoon’s chart position by one place, it’s packed with outstanding pop gems and is rightly regarded as Prefab Sprout’s magnum opus. It has possibly the greatest ‘Side One’ of any album from the Eighties. Critical acclaim poured forth for Paddy’s craftsmanship – the brazen genre-hopping (truckin’ country for Faron Young, jazz and funk for Moving The River, bossa nova for Horsin’ Around), the stubborn regret of Bonny, the bitter-sweet ache of Appetite and Desire As, the heart wrench of When Love Breaks Down. In a concerted effort to secure a hit single, CBS released the latter more than once, but, in a typical indictment of UK radio at the time, lack of support meant it never rose above #25 on the charts. Despite this, all recognised a major talent had arrived and the bar of expectation was duly raised.

Later that year, the band record a number of songs, which won’t reach the public for another four years as this album, Protest Songs, is shelved. In 1986 Prefab Sprout begin work on more songs for a third album, some with Dolby and – due to Dolby’s other commitments – some with other producers. After a gestation of over two years, February, 1988’s single Cars And Girls, a cheeky satire on Bruce Springsteen’s ‘highway-to-glory’ themes and a UK Top 50 hit, finally heralded the arrival of From Langley Park To Memphis a month later. Their first UK Top 5 album, it featured a selection of diverse songs, from the obviously commercial (assisted by novelty video) of UK Top 10 single The King Of Rock ‘N’ Roll to the soaring strings and uptempo, celebratory vibe of Hey Manhattan!, from the declamatory, faux-boogie of The Golden Calf to the gorgeously wistful Nightingales, which featured Stevie Wonder on harmonica. Commercially a high mark, but with various producers involved it lacked Steve McQueen’s sublime cohesion.

In June 1989, Protest Songs finally appeared and featured such gems as the anthemic Life Of Surprises (later re-worked for a UK Top 30 single in 1993), the addictive Wicked Things, the melancholic Dublin and the prescient Diana. In September 1990, Prefab Sprouts fifth album Jordan: The Comeback was released to much critical and fanbase acclaim – it was nominated for Best Album at the Brit Awards. A sprawling, quasi-concept, double album examining celebrity, religion, and mortality and starring God, Elvis and Jesse James, it included classic Sprout in the romantic nostalgia of We Let The Stars Go, the millennium celebration Carnival 2000 and the roadtrip shuffle of Looking For Atlantis. It was, by Sprout’s modest standards, a commercial success, but, after a productive Eighties, chasing that illusive big hit single, it was to be another seven years before a new Prefab Sprout album. 1992’s Best Of collection, A Life Of Surprises, which included new songs The Sound Of Crying and If You Don’t Love Me – both UK Top 40 singles – gave the band it’s highest UK chart position at #3. Drummer Neil Conti then left the group and Paddy spent time writing new songs, three of which appeared on Jimmy Nail’s 1994 album Crocodile Shoes with two making 1996’s follow up.

1997’s Andromeda Heights, which arrived just months before Paddy’s marriage to Victoria, whom he met in the classical music section of a record shop, continued a journey into melodic, almost dreamlike romanticism. Paddy and co-producer Calum Malcolm, who worked with The Blue Nile on their seminal Eighties albums, used a very ‘orchestral’ approach. UK Top 30 single A Prisoner Of The Past featured a Phil Spector-esque arrangement, while tracks such as Swans and Life’s A Miracle feel like a smitten man entreating us to slow down and smell the flowers; the gorgeous title track an allegorical invitation to start afresh, to build on a foundation of love.

2001 saw a new album, The Gunman And Other Stories (which included some of those songs recorded by Nail), on a new label, EMI/Liberty, with a veteran, but new-in-partnership producer, Tony Visconti, while in 2003, a mostly instrumental Paddy McAloon solo album, I Trawl The Megahertz, was released to warm critical response. Despite health problems in recent years, Paddy McAloon is writing again and hopefully it won’t be long before another thrilling Prefab Sprout album is finished.