Pop repeats itself first as the sublime then as the ridiculous. “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” – especially when you watch the gauzy video – comes across as a big budget remake of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”. Pianos, crescendos, abstraction, abjection. But bigger isn’t always better.
Or isn’t it? Jim Steinman is pomp rock’s master of scale: why settle for a delicate bas-relief when you could have Mount Rushmore every time? The avowed models for his colossal effects are Springsteen (I’m guessing not “Nebraska”) and Spector, but he takes them very much as pencil sketches for the absurd canvases he wants to create. Inevitably, what’s generally missing is heart: Steinman records have mightily entertained me but very rarely thrilled me in the way “Born To Run” or the Christmas Album have. In “Born To Run”, the record is big because the protagonist’s dreams are big. In “Bat Out Of Hell”, the record is big because it can be.
There’s honour in that, mind you, and when Steinman’s on, he is on. “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” may replace emotion with scale, but at the top end scale is its own emotion. That being “OMG”, and this record’s gasping, OMG, needles-in-the-red moment is when Bonnie shreds herself to pieces on “We’re living in a powder keg and GIVING OFF SPARKS!” before that toweringly preposterous arpeggio and her spent, release-filled “I REALLY NEED YOU TONIGHT!”. And then the planet she’s standing on explodes, or something.
Actually one of the great things about this monstrous balladosaurus is how even Steinman overreaches himself – the record buckles when it hits its climax and I get the (almost poignant!) impression he wanted it go to even bigger. This despite the fact that for the whole of that climactic verse the track already sounds like Zeus using his thunderbolts to play a drumkit made of atom bombs. Tyler herself does a terrific job in riding this song – even though it wastes the smokier gifts heard on “It’s A Heartache”, most other singers would have simply been jetsam flung into insignificance by the production’s bow wave.
A grand folly, then – with a title like “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”, how could it not be? – but a very loveable one. I was awfully tempted to write this post in all caps.
Score: 8
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I actually love this record more than “Billie Jean” even though I don’t think it’s as good. I have disgraced myself to it at Club Popular on occasion too I believe.
“Turn around…” for a rare case of stadium rock from a girlie, albeit a bit of a scary one. As Tom suggests, this is a good production and smoky old Bonnie really flings herself into it. For me it lacks the class of “Wuthering Heights” but this is a mighty fine blast from “the female Rod Stewart” so that one is not minded to attempt to chase this woman back over the Severn Bridge from whence she came (unlike many other artists from the Principality, past and present) and many hard men would probably not have the balls to try anyway.
This is a brilliant song! You won’t have reviewed or will review a song on this blog that has such an insane structure. There isn’t really a verse or a chorus it’s one massive Caps Lock. Wuthering Heights begins, middles, bridges, and ends; Total Eclipse…. explodes then explodes again, then shrapnel rains down, then it explodes again. 9
Hm, yes, I can see how you might admire the gargantuan scale of Steinman’s creations, but they just sound so UGLY to me! Caterwauling vocals and thumping and booming.
I suppose that I can find the comic overreach in the lyrics alone, which have got a pleasing join the dots lunatic escalation of metaphor and larger and larger delivery (falling in love/ falling apart!/ “Once upon a time there was light in my life/But now there’s only love in the dark!”/ total – eclipse – OF THE HEART!”. But this is always overwhelmed by the sheer discomfort of having to actually listen to it.
The only times when I can really find value in what Steinman does is when he’s orchestrating the work of somebody else with some sort of artistic vision of the world that I can engage with, be that Andrew Eldrich or Gary Barlow (‘This Corrosion’ may be my favourite hit of the eighties).
I slightly prefered the nineties rave version of this by Nikki French, if only because it seemed to wind up rock purists.
I think I hated this at the time (on principle) but having watched the video again for the first time in ages I quite enjoyed it in a ‘I ♡ the 80s’ kind of way. The video has big hair, shoulder pads and images of privileged youth with glowing eyes which epitomise a decade of excess.
#2 Watch: A week of Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’. A bit over-familiar, but certainly preferable to my ears.
I absolutely LOATHED this at the time, by the way. The first of quite a few records I’ve come around 180 on.
Nikki French is great too!
I think I must have had something against Bonnie Tyler (more of that later!) because this was another Number One I remember pretty much loathing at the time.
Strangely enough I’ve come to despise it less as a song with the passing years having seen it performed at karaoke bars so many times – I can understand the appeal of singing it. Listening to Bonnie Tyler, however, is something which remains a particularly painful experience for me.
heart or not, this is an absolutely glorious (ridiculous, of course) record. actually, i think there is heart of a sort – it doesn’t seem to me that bonnie tyler has the slightest inkling that what she’s singing isn’t really of planet-stopping importance and it’s her lunatic, lung-busting commitment keeps you transfixed. and the video is just something else. ludicrous certainly – the choirboy suddenly zooming toward camera is a particular treat – but also so dramatic, so mad, that it actually ends up being a genuinely powerful peice of art.
three was once a great piece of (presumably accidental) programming on the late (and actually lamented, by me at least) mojo radio where ‘bat out of hell’ was followed by ‘born to run’ was followed by ‘fast car’, each making the claims of the former seem hollow.
TOTPWatch: Bonnie Tyler twice performed Total Eclipse on Top Of The Pops;
24 February 1983. Also in the studio that week were; Spandau ballet, The Thompson Twins and Eurythmics, plus Zoo’s interpretation of ‘She Means Nothing To Me’. The hosts were Dave Lee Travis and Andy Peebles.
17 March 1983. Also in the studio that week were; Bananarama, Mezzoforte, Bucks Fizz and Joan Armatrading. Tony Blackburn and Gary Davies were the hosts.
(I was wrong to say that Zoo had been mothballed at the end of 1982. They still turn up, very infrequently, until July 1983)
More on this later, but circa 1977’s sultry “More Than A Lover”, I would have rather liked to have had something against Bonnie Tyler. Mind you I was only 15.
#9 “it doesn’t seem to me that bonnie tyler has the slightest inkling that what she’s singing isn’t really of planet-stopping importance”
I was just thinking exactly the same thing while I was trying to fathom out why I might prefer karaoke versions of a song to its original. I think anyone I’ve seen singing it in a bar on a drunken night out has clearly realised that it’s a piece of over-blown fun and have performed it accordingly. Bonnie Tyler doesn’t give any indication that she understands that it’s a ‘fun’ song, and that makes her performance feel (unkowingly) pompous to me.
♯7 I think this song requires at least a 540 degree turn around
TV Sketchwatch: Was it Little & Large who did a parody of this where the guitarist kept of telling the singer to “Turn around” because her back was to the camera?
It might have been Kenny Everett. Either way, it made me laugh when I was ten (I didn’t care for this at the time, either)
An interesting run of number 1s (and they seem to have inspired some great reviews and comments) after the low-key end to 1982, and Janine-from-spinal-tap’s big sister hollers away to good effect here on what is nonsense, but enjoyable nonsense nonetheless.
It’s a lot more fun than meatloaf anyway.
Light entertainment watch. Bonnie has appeared on a really mixed assortment of shows over the years;
THE FREDDIE STARR SHOWCASE: with Bonnie Tyler, Phil Thornalley, Otiz Cannelloni, Gonzalez, Steve Lange, John Themis (1983)
LADYBIRDS: with Bonnie Tyler (1983)
LENNIE AND JERRY: with Patrick Moore, Doctor Magnus Pyke, Bonnie Tyler (1979)
LEO: with Peter Skellern, Tina Turner, Bonnie Tyler (1984)
LIVE FROM THE PALLADIUM: with Victor Borge, The Shadows, Bonnie Tyler, Mike Oldfield (1987)
THE MONTREUX ROCK FESTIVAL: with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Art Of Noise, Belouis Some, Bronski Beat, Eighth Wonder, E.L.O., Paul Hardcastle, Marilyn Martin, Ready For The World, Bonnie Tyler (1986)
NEVER MIND THE BUZZCOCKS: with Simon Amstell, Bill Bailey (Team Captain), Phill Jupitus (Team Captain), Melanie C, Bonnie Tyler, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Adam Buxton (2007)
REVOLVER: with Roy Hill Band, The Vibrators, Chris Hill, Les Ross, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Bonnie Tyler, The Buzzcocks, Sore Throat, Kandidate (1978)
RUSSELL HARTY: with Sadie Galvin, Bonnie Tyler, Toby Halick (1977)
THREE OF A KIND: with Bonnie Tyler (1983)
WOGAN: with Norman Tebbit, Anthony Andrews, Julie Walters, Shakin’ Stevens, Bonnie Tyler (1984)
WOGAN: with Michael J. Fox, Ian Botham, Bob Carolgees and Spit the Dog, Bonnie Tyler, Stevie Wonder (1985)
WOGAN: with Clive Dunn, Bonnie Tyler, Roy Walker, Jane Walmsley (1986)
WOGAN: with Michael Buerk, Ron Eyre, Lucy Knowles, Rebecca Branford, Mike Oldfield, Bonnie Tyler, Emma Thompson (1987)
the other thing that struck me about the video was how BT resembles Nessa from Gavin and Stacey with a blonde barnet
#12 but wouldn’t it be even better to see an absolutley serious karaoke singing really going for it? actually there’s a good greil marcus piece about a karaoke performer investing huge emotional weight in a song that was pretty much a joke to its original performer. but we’ll see about that in six months, bunny time. oh, and again in twenty-odd years, i think.
I always wanted the East Enders writers to work the phrase “turn around, bright eyes” into a script, whispered in some unfortunate’s ear by Phil Mitchell on a foggy night in the square.
This was a single that sounded like a no.1 the first time I heard it; though I loathed Bat Out Of Hell the (relative) light and space on TEOTH, plus Bonnie’s career-altering performance, meant I had to tip my hat.
Though I couldn’t love it because it’s basically too silly, like all his productions, I think it’s the ONLY Steinman hit with any heart – the falling in love/falling apart couplet really works.
Tom, you’re right about Steinman wanting to make this even bigger – the percussive thunderclaps on the instrumental verse are something even Spector didn’t dare to use on the Ronettes’ Walking In The Rain.
Erithian, good call on More Than A Lover, much darker, saucier, and Welsher than TEOTH.
I disliked it at the time – maybe it’s my changing tastes, but when a record like this is so prevalent, you do feel rather bludgeoned by it. With Steinman, I dislike his pomp on all but a few tracks – when something works, I can love it, as I do on this and Bat Out Of Hell. (I’ve always liked bike/car crash songs, for some reason.)
Big shout out for the sleeve, which looks like a mid-70s sci-fi novel.
#12: Bonnie Tyler doesn’t give any indication that she understands that it’s a ‘fun’ song
Dear God man, why should she? I can see most of the arguments against this song, but surely you’re not saying it would be improved by a sneer or a smirk?
As regards the comparison in the first sentence, show me something as awesome as this video inspired by Wuthering Heights, and we’ll talk.
(but then it will surprise no-one who knows me that I don’t consider sublime vs ridiculous to be a difficult choice, or even a proper choice at all).
Oh come on guys, I came back from my bowls match this afternoon (I won, for once) fully expecting to have to fight a one-woman rearguard action in defence of this record, and you all like it! Thank you for stealing my thunder!
This really is the last single I ever bought, complete with that excellent picture sleeve but disappointingly black vinyl pressing. And I bought it because I really liked it at the time, not only because the first week of its number one-ship coincided with my turbulent sojourn in the little pit village of Bearpark in County Durham and the second week coincided with my total deflation at my mother’s house in Hitchin.
I’ll cheerfully admit to something else, too. I really enjoy Jim Steinman. I love his unmistakeable, totally individual joyfully over-the-top take on rock. I love his absurd rock operas including, and especially, the first Bat Out Of Hell album. I even have my own copy of Jim Steinman’s own album, Bad For Good (his own voice is much too thin and weedy to carry the Wagnerian epics but it’s enjoyable all the same. Rivalling the Bat for my favourite Steinman album is Original Sin, attributed to “Pandora’s Box” which is actually the regular Steinman ensemble with a quartet of big, raunchy female voices in the Meat Loaf role.
Steinman works best with big, raunchy female voices, and even a heavy-duty Welsh accent helps it along, which is why I think this record is the best of the lot. A big nine from me.
#20 You can’t beat a good car crash song! Personally my favourite is “I Want Me Baby Back” by Jimmy Cross in which we hear the story of the other vehicle involved in the leader of the pack’s fatal accident. Admittedly it’s a little short on the ‘song’ element but it’s worth it for the lyrics: “well… when I come to I looked around… and there was the leader… and THERE was the pack… and over there was my Baby …and over THERE was my Baby …and WAY over there was my Baby!”
P.S. I think I know the reason you like songs about bike/car crashes, by the way …they skid more!?!
#22 well pop’s key lesson about ridicule has been discussed here at length already so I hardly thought it needed repeating!
#22 I think I’m saying it would be improved by a singer who isn’t Bonnie Tyler! I’d probably prefer it if it was sung by Meat Loaf, to be honest – he seems to have mastered the requisite ‘twinkle in his eye’ to carry off even the most emotionally overwrought of Steinman compositions with a warmth (and, dare I say, ‘sense of irony’) which I feel Tyler’s performance lacks.
And none of that is an argument against the SONG, by the way. As a piece of song-writing I think it has its merits. This is one of those instances where I have a more positive view of the SONG than I do of the RECORD.
I wonder if anyone has ever done a light wistful acoustic version of this? (like Beth Orton’s cover of the Ronettes’ Wall of Sound epic “I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine”) I think I’d quite enjoy that.
link followed in wikipedia’s meat loaf article supplies material for long-delayed answer record: “a syndrome of pre-excitation of the ventricles of the heart due to an accessory pathway known as the Bundle of Kent. This accessory pathway is an abnormal electrical communication…”
I was going to comment going AWESOME WONDERFUL BRILLIANT A++++ earlier but didn’t think I could do it justice in the 30 seconds I had to spare – the song is epic and bombastic and totally THUNDEROUS. The video is just as good! Argh words are still failing me now – I think this is the musical equivalent of Galactus eating universes. Dudes, the choirboys have glowing eyes :-O
The review and comments here all make a lot of sense to me, but I still don’t like the song. It just does nothing for me at all, and I can’t say exactly why.
This version, however, I like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIaz6zBz1go
(Damn, you’ve got to be quick around here. I wrote this on my laptop this afternoon after reading the first few comments, and come back after dinner to post it only to see half its thunder stolen. Ah well. Here’s what I wrote a few hours ago:)
It’s impossible to choose one song to sum up the 1980s, but if I were choosing one to sum up 1983 it would have to be this. The most striking thing about the UK charts compared to the Australian ones is how briefly your number ones reigned compared to ours; it’s a rare exception indeed that dominated your charts for as long as this did ours (I won’t be mentioning the obvious parallel for fear of the Bunny). ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ sat on top in Oz for six weeks: six weeks of backlit big hair and over-literal bright-eyed kids on Countdown; six weeks of lyrics that seemed meaningful when puffed up with musical bombast but fell flatter than a flathead on the floor of a flat-bottomed boat on closer inspection. But what bombast! Has a number one ever felt more over-the-top than this? And shouldn’t that be the aim of every glory-obsessed hitmaker?
It was clearly Jim Steinman’s aim. First he masterminded Meatloaf, another performer Aussies took to their hearts (Bat Out of Hell sold a gazillion copies there, like everywhere), and when Meatloaf over-the-topped his vocal chords one time too many Steinman released Bad for Good, the Meatloaf album you have when you aren’t having meatloaf. One of my high school art teachers was obsessed with that, and played it all the time in class; I’ve since seen it described as a notorious turkey, although really only the vocalist had changed (‘Meatloaf’s off, love – it’s turkey tonight’). And this, too, could have been a Meatloaf track, or a Steinman solo track, though I doubt it would have been as endearing without Tyler’s rasp – as if she were ruining her vocal chords in the act of recording, that’s how devoted she was to wringing totally the last drop out of this eclipsed heart.
‘Total Eclipse’ holds a special place for me in this Popular journey, because it’s the first actual single I helped push to number one back in the day. My three dollars went towards that first week or two of Australian chart dominance, and is no doubt helping keep Steinman (if not Tyler) in the gaudy rock-star luxury that such a hit demands. No one involved in ‘Total Eclipse’ could possibly go on to a quiet retirement of carefully managed investment portfolios: Steinman and Tyler today must either be living it large in coastal mansions or living in poverty after burning through all their cash, there can be no in-between. And I’m not about to look them up to prove myself wrong.
Naturally, I was part of the backlash, and palmed this single off on my brother too, so I couldn’t even tell you what the b-side was. But 26 years later I can still remember the whole thing without checking YouTube, and now know that there a lot worse ways to reach number one than this: a lot of sillier, weedier, less infectious and less impassioned ways. I hope you kept your millions, Jim and Bonnie, because you earned them. 9, before I lose my resolve and listen to it again and award it 6.
This was my first “favorite song”.
I was crushed when it didn’t win Casey Kasem’s year-end Top 100 countdown, which I heard on a portable radio in the woods behind my house in a clearing that my dad had spent several grunting months creating, and which we called “the holler”. We made a bonfire for New Year’s Eve, had neighbors and friends around, and everything in my own history seemed to be building to this moment, in which I would be somehow validated and vindicated by such a clearly superior song as this topping them all. It lost to “Every Breath You Take”.
Meat Loaf, not Meatloaf, sorry. For some reason I think of him as someone with no space.
Never liked it, still dont.
UK and US charts temporarily converging at this point… Last five entries also huge hits in US… 10 of last 13 entries, in fact, dating back to “Fame.” Meanwhile US press talking about a “Second British Invasion”…
The following only goes to show how many possible interpretations there are in the world….
Goodness me, I honestly had no idea. I first heard the song because Guatemalan radio stations were playing it after the Nikki French version became a hit, but somehow I never heard it as anything other than a decidedly minor work, something in the range of “Bette Davis Eyes” or “Jessie’s Girl” (and now you’ll tell me that they, too, are timeless masterpieces) — I certainly never thought of it as a MASSIVE GARGANTUAN RECORD on a Loafian scale.
My primary association with it is playing Jesus in a church skit set to the song, where I came in and saved the protagonist from faceless all-black figures wearing signs like DEPRESSION and ALCOHOLISM and SELF-HATRED and SEX. Whenever Tyler starts thundering “forever’s gonna start tonight,” I expect to hear a wildly distraught “JESUS!” (the only word in the otherwise-silent skit), and start feeling to make sure my borrowed alb is properly velcroed. (A similar but inferior production can be seen [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sI0bCfj7FI]here[/url].)
Then Old School came out and none of the teenagers the skit was supposed to be affecting could take it seriously. As, to be frank, neither could any of us who were putting it on.
I dislike this so much, and the same goes for Steinman & Lunch Meat & I’ve never understood how those records became hits, but that’s another story. Aside from the bevy of modern-thinking 12″ funk singles of the day, I really hate 80s music. Bonnie shoulda quit after “It’s A Heartache”. And thanks #24 for making me remember “I Want My Baby Back”. HOT DANG – PAYDIRT!!!
# 32 – You’re quite right, Rory. As has so often happened before he was due on stage: “TELEGRAM FOR MR LOAF!…TELEGRAM FOR MR LOAF!”
my mum was a big fan of the loaf, for some reason — i think she was tickled by the notion of a big fat sex symbol (my dad has always been gaunt and wiry)
This is a travesty – Bonnie Tyler ? Meatloaf ? Jim Steinman – in the words of Catherine Tate’s Nan – ‘what a load of old sh*t’. A complete load of nonsense that doesn’t entertain on any level. Strangely enough I did actually go through a period of fancying Bonnie and my record of choice was ‘More Than A Lover’ but that was a million miles away from this over-blown piece of fluff. Meatloaf elicits a similar reaction in fact it all makes me physically sick. I can’t listen to it. I haven’t forgiven Todd Rungren either. If I could award zero I would.
For someone as resolutely Steinman-averse as myself (there’s a Number One of his coming up many years from now which I find almost impossible to sit through), I can’t offer any rational explanation for why I love this record so much. Although I like what wichitalineman says at #19: “I think it’s the ONLY Steinman hit with any heart.”. Overblown, overstuffed, operatic, like Punk Never Happened – all my principle aesthetic objections to Bat Out Of Hell were re-stated, and yet I still fell hard. Maybe it’s just the added diva-ness, and I’m just a total sucker for a screaming diva playing the victim…
Incidentally, I have long fantasised about sneaking into the backroom of a gay club, and addressing the heaving throng with Bonnie’s killer couplet: “Once upon a time there was light in my life, now there’s only love in the dark…” Oh, I’m sure they’d all see the funny side.
# 38 – Blimey! That’s us telt, then!
# 39 – Just Blimey!
#38 – Oddly enough, I can empathize with your reaction and the other God-it’s-horrible ones here, to the point where it feels as if my score is oscillating between 9 and 1; but Tom’s wonderful “balladosaurus” phrase and “then the planet she’s standing on explodes, or something” put me in such a good-natured frame of mind that I could only recall it fondly, a feeling that persisted even when I did finally listen to it again this morning. It’s weird, though; out of thousands of CDs and records and MP3s, I own nothing with Steinman’s name attached, and the only one I ever did was this single, which I gave away within months of buying it 26 years ago. It seems really strange that I feel so well-disposed towards a song that bears no relation to 99.9% of my adult musical tastes. The only reason can be that it so thoroughly sums up the feeling of being fifteen for me, which is totally contingent on the time and place that I happened to be fifteen. But that’s been the fascination of Popular to me as a reader all this time: seeing Tom and the rest of you retracing your own personal journeys through these songs, and trying to figure out how your subjective impressions and memories relate to their actual quality, if any.
I still think that bombast can be entertaining, though, even if one spends one’s middle-aged evenings listening to Bon Iver and the National (ahem); and this has to be one of the best examples of pull-out-all-the-stops, set-the-controls-for-the-heart-of-the-Sun bombast in chart history.
And actually, this probably has left a bigger impression on my tastes than I’d acknowledged, because I’ve spent most of the last decade as a huge fan of Muse.
Haven’t read anything yet and I’m curious to see if someone can win me over to this song, which I resent on general principle of its being so universally popular at karaoke. I realize this makes me a cantankerous old fun-hater, but certain songs (Don’t Stop Believin’ and Bobby McGee are the other ones) have just been run into the ground for me on this count…
Well well well, what a difference a day makes! All the bile and venom that I was confidently expecting for this magnificent specimen of theatrical pop, now oozing out of the wood work! I mean, how dare anybody like this, say the Cool Police!
I say again, I love it.
Another one where my appreciation of its initial impact was muted by having to listen through radio interference from Vannes. My reaction to it now is akin to standing alongside a monumental building – you admire it, you appreciate the ambition behind it and the work that’s gone into it, although somehow you don’t love it quite as much as the smaller building next to it. The smaller buildings are the hits from her earlier career, which somehow I come to associate with Noel Edmonds!
The elegant and pretty “Lost In France” featured on the Top Ten Swaps board in the very early days of Swap Shop, while she made a memorable appearance on the programme shortly after “It’s A Heartache” had been a hit. Noel, ever fond of a misheard lyric, had renamed it “It’s A Hard Egg”, so Bonnie came on and said, “Noel, here’s the difference between a hard egg and a heartache!” and threw an egg at him. At his feet sadly rather than his head, but the point was made. All in good humour though.
In between times came “More Than A Lover”, which I utterly adored and is high on my list of late 70s “shoulda been a monster” contenders. Warm, sexy, atmospheric and sadly stopped in the low 20s. On the strength of that I got her album “The World Starts Tonight”, which included a very passable version of Janis Joplin’s “Piece Of My Heart” (hello LondonLee!)
Her career seemed to have stalled post-“Heartache” – J Edward Oliver in Record Mirror included in his Tips for 1978: “Bonnie Tyler: from superstar to housewife in just 6 weeks!” – so it was gratifying and surprising to see this comeback. No objection to it, a terrific kitchen-sink production and deserved number one, but I just enjoyed those smaller-scale hits from earlier on that bit more.
#43 – Heh! Well, we’d hate to let you down, Rosie! That said, I took something of a sabbatical from the Cool Police during 1983 – hence perhaps the fondness for “Down Under”, the unqualified love for Phil Collins’ “You Can’t Hurry Love”… and that year’s guiltiest pleasure of all (takes deep breath), Mike Oldfield’s “Moonlight Shadow”. (Inescapable on German radio in the autumn, as someone said on another thread.) My first six-to-nine months of 1983 were all about embracing the mainstream. Hell, I even bought a pair of trousers from Top Man, to match my lovely “Limahl” hairdo…
Erithian – It’s a mighty shame that Bonnie didn’t ignore both “heartache”and “hard egg” and simply administered to Noel a “dead leg” by kicking the bearded little dwarf right in the knackers. Try calling the Banker after that one, you irritating little c**t!
#45 – Don’t worry, mike, we Oldfield fans find your pleasuring Not Guilty. (I was resisting the opportunity to wax lyrical on Bonnie Tyler’s 1987 appearance on an Oldfield single, the unexciting “Islands”, but now you’ve forced me to come out. But my fandom has been pretty muted for the past decade, so I can’t see any reason to bother you all with it from here on.)
Well anyone who played with Kevin Ayers automatically earns a get-out-of-jail-free card from this Cool Cop. (And Ommadawn was always my favourite too.) Hmm, wonder if I’ve still got that old “Don Alfonso” 7-inch…
I must admit I didn’t mind Bonnie Tyler so much during her “Lost in France” phase …I just couldn’t stand the various phases after they found her again and she kept releasing all those god-awful records!