THE FLYING PICKETS – “Only You”
Aged ten I didn’t have much time for the wounded, crafted dignity of the Flying Pickets. I probably wouldn’t have had time for Yazoo either, if I’d even remembered them. “Only You” was distilled adulthood, and not the kind of adulthood you aspired to, the kind you couldn’t put a name to.
I can put a name to it now though: defeat. Moyet sings “Only You” with flint in her voice and a clarity born of narrowed options: another opportunity for happiness gone, a forced shrug. So what do Brian Hibbard and his gang bring to the song? Sentimentality, a chance at comfort. “Only You” the way the Pickets sing it is a pretty, lulling song.
The way that works isn’t difficult to fathom. What once was mechanical is now human; a steel shoulder to cry on has become a consolatory close-harmony coo. No wonder the (excellent) video takes place in a pub, a place where whiskery men can compare bruises. A big part of it is the shift in attention from the lyrics to what used to be the synth line, now part of the lead vocal. That “ba da da um” is “Only You”’s intro, and coda, and climactic centre, driving out the specifics of the song’s pain and coddling the memory of its ache.
5
Tom in FT / Popular • Pop • 1,558 views • Share/Save
Paradoxically, I find this much colder than the Yazoo version. The Pickets’ harmonies sound as if they have emerged from an industrial cold storage unit, entirely emotionless (as is the video, despite the unintentionally bittersweet sight of a smoky pub haze).
This could be because the record is basically a gag (see how we can make the machines human!) at the expense of a very pretty song – nobody in 2009 would consider making this record because no one these days doubts that electronic music can have a beating heart.
nobody in 2009 would consider making this record because no one these days doubts that electronic music can have a beating heart
If only this were true! I could totally see Fleet Foxes pulling this kind of move.
I know what you mean – they could take on Laroux, or someone that they’d consider not quite red-blooded. But it felt/feels like the Pickets were taking on synthesisers en masse: Yazoo weren’t exactly Cybotron. It was a first in that sense – at least, I can’t remember authento doo wop/folkie/blues-rock takes on I Feel Love, Enola Gay or Love Action…
I guess Yazoo’s fusion of synth backing with more well-sanctioned vocal style might have raised heckles – were the FPs really a total joke band though? According to Wikipedia they had a fairly distinguished fringey theatrical career giving much succour to leftie causes. Obviously that doesn’t prevent their musical impulses being jokey or reactionary (it might make that more likely) but it doesn’t feel quite fair to dismiss this as simply a nose-thumbing at synthpop.
You’re right, they must have liked the song! Same goes for their take on The Marvelettes’ When You’re Young And In Love, which didn’t have any subtext. I didn’t mean to sound totally dismissive, because I quite liked it at the time.
I knew their name before this was a hit; they weren’t the Barron Knights by any means, but I mentally filed them under right-on cabaret. The sort of act who’d play at the Warehouse Theatre in Croydon, maybe with Atilla The Stockbroker or Helen Lederer or a bloody awful mime artist on the bill as well.
I had no strong feelings about this one either way, and my main memory of it is that it introduced me to the word acapella.
The other main memory this provokes is the alternate lyrics that used to get sung in the playground at school (I was 9).
“Looking from a window above
I saw your mum making love
to the milkman
she gave it all she got
just for a pint of gold top
behind the milk float
all she wanted was a pint of cream
what she got really made her scream
all she ever knew
was how to screw”
It was hilarious at the time.
This one makes me shudder, and not in a good way.
I like acapella things when they’re field music in a folk or blues way, the dignity of the unadorned voice, etc. But when several singers get together and start going “ba da da um”, unaccompanied singing becomes a fiddly and trying exercise in what I call poncing about, and certainly does a disservice to whatever song is being attempted.
When I was eleven I really disliked this for similar reasons to ‘Happy Talk’ the previous year, in that The Flying Pickets looked an awful lot like the type of children’s entertainers who would raise my hackles, getting us all to join in with a view of the world that I didn’t see myself as a part of. And, indeed, I seemed to be the only child in the class who didn’t like this.
#2 Watch: Very nearly a belated return to the top for Slade, with three weeks of ‘My Oh My’. An attempt to create a big “we are the people” communal singalong that’s not as good as their seventies heyday, and which seems to have become completely forgotten in the last 26 years. It’s still better than The Flying Pickets, though.
Yes, the human beatbox is another variation on this that I’ve never understood the interest in.
Maybe an acapella version of a synth-based song could work (although I think it would be difficult to avoid it sounding like a novelty record). But this is a very uninspired and cloying interpretation of a pretty gloopy song to begin with.
Good song, less good version. I had the original taped off the radio and I had a bit of a crush on Alison Moyet’s voice, so found this a bit of a travesty really. Though of course from the name I discovered a fair bit about unions which would stand me in good stead as the Miners Strike rolled on. So perhaps I should owe my loyalty to the collective movement as a legacy of a band who I never liked.
Discovered the album it came off a couple of years ago (someone had a copy). There is some terrible tat on it (much is obvious):
1. Remember this
2. I Heard It Through The Grapevine
3. Disco Down
4. So close
5. The tears of a clown
6. When You’re Young And In Love
7. You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling
8. Psycho Killer
9. Wideboy
10. Factory
11. Monika The Engineer
12. Only you
13. Masters Of War
A version still exists releasing records which seem to strengthen their novelty credentials. Acapella version of Walk The Dinosaur. No thanks: http://theflyingpicketsltd.com/
For ages I had seen this written down on lists of Xmas No 1s and assumed that this was the Platters song of the same name (had heard the song on an advert, didn’t know what the Platters were actually called, knew that Wilson Picket was some old singer dude, and so logically the Flying Pickets must be the ancient 60s band that sang it and this was a re-release like Heard It Through The Grapevine). I was very disappointed when I actually heard this and it was even more boring than [insert name of Xmas No 1 3 years hence]. I don’t like the Yazoo version either – it’s so empty and plodding, like the demo on your first ever Casio keyboard.
This song infuriates me because it is NOT ACAPELLA. There are synths all over it, most obviously in that high decending syn-choral line over later verses, but also in the bass part, which at several points (maybe even all the way through) is a sampled and replayed “dum”. And yet yes, these fuckers mimed along to it on the telly, with po-faced “look, real voices are better than electronics, aren’t they?” chutzpah. I defy anyone to find true live footage of them performing it: I suspect half the band couldn’t even hold a note.
Also of note: Later, the lead singer popped up (alongside Kenn Dodd!) in a cameo role in what could well be the worst Doctor Who story ever, Delta and the Bannermen.
Don’t know about a ‘joke’ band. Wasn’t this a case of a record designed to raise money for the miners? A first outing for the synthetic ‘charity’ band of which more anon?
I was looking forward to this, not for itself though it’s pretty and likeable enough, but because It’s the only opportunity I’ll have to talk about Yazoo and the wonderful Alison Moyet, who really should have had a number one and quite possibly this is the song they should have done it with. I’ve never made a secret of my disdain for electronica (it goes hand in hand with my general preference in all areas for the mechanical over the electronic) but Yazoo were one outfit who made it work for me. Not least because of the starkness of the original, where Vince Clarke’s spiky arrangement gave it the right kind of creepiness. I’d still have preferred to hear Alison doing it alone though – one of the few genuine singing voices in pop.
That said, the song is capable of other interpretations, as a good song should, and the Pickets brought that out nicely.
the British artist Richard Hamilton (perhaps best known for designing the sleeve for the Beatles ‘White Album – and arguably one of, if not the first, Pop artist) defined Popular culture like this:
“Pop art is popular (designed for a mass audience), transient (short-term solution), expendable (easily forgotten), low-cost, mass-produced, young (aimed at youth), witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business.”
What seemed to develop in the early 80s was an impulse to put ‘classic’ pop on a pedastal (’sitting on it’s ass in a museum’ to quote another Pop artist Claes Oldenburg), to deny its transience. This can be seen in some of the Jams later hits, Phil Collins’ ‘You can’t hurry love’, Spandau ‘listening to Marvin’, Paul Young’s embalming of ‘WILMHTMH’, UB40s ‘Red Red Wine’, Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl’ and, perhaps to a lesser extent, this cover by the Flying Pickets. Even Bowie appeared to be looking back to an earlier age with ‘Lets Dance’. The experimental, ‘futurist’ approach for which he had been the figurehead was replaced by a far more conservative aesthetic. Interesting that the repetitive synth lines that Spandau (for instance) abandoned in favour of their more ‘authentic’ soul boy roots would be picked up and developed by Hip Hop and House acts.
The Yazoo original played up the tension between Alison Moyet’s bluesy voice and the modernist precision of the synths – a contrast that is lacking from this version. It still has some appeal so around 4 or 5 for me.
I think Hamilton wrote that in the 50s, as part of the teaser manifesto for the (1956?) ICA Show that called Pop Art into being: and of course his own work, and Peter Blake’s and whoever else’s, immediately complicated the idea themselves — they were bringing pop into the the art gallery (and saying “Hurrah for Us!”)
the 80s was definitely the decade when a detailed and differenitated sense of pop’s own history became “part of pop”: you could be fancy and say this was Hegelian and an inevitable element in any culture’s self-awareness; or you could be cynical and say “The Admen said Retro was Cool”. Either way I think the idea of pop that Hamilton is valorising is actually a bit non-existent: it’s an unattainable ideal that we spoil as soon as we mention or depict it.
This version has too much of the neat party trick about it to match the despondecy of Alison Moyets vocal. In recent years there have been one too many genre-hopping covers of this sort. Indie bands covering pop tunes and vice versa cos like ” it’s so unothordox!!!! ”
Some of these covers are vile. I recently heard a bluegrass version of
Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John with a hoe-down fiddle in place of the whistling solo. You could hear the smugness dripping from it. Also Radio 2 insists on playing Richard Thomsons version of Ooops I did it again and insisting it’s great seemingly unaware of how wrong a fiftysomething man bellowing ” I’M NOT THAT INNOCENT ” actually sounds.
rosie@13 – 6 months early for the miners strike, surely? (a pedant writes) .
Light Entertainment Watch: Quite a few appearances;
THE BOB MONKHOUSE SHOW: with David Frost, Emo Philips, The Flying Pickets (1986)
CANNON AND BALL: with Jimmy Tarbuck, Henry Cooper, The Flying Pickets (1984)
CARROTT’S LIB: with The Flying Pickets (1983)
CHAS & DAVE’S KNEES-UP: with Mike Berry, The Flying Pickets, Dave Ismay (1983)
DES O’CONNOR TONIGHT: with Roger de Courcey, Elaine Paige, The Flying Pickets, Miss World (1984)
THE LITTLE AND LARGE SHOW: with The Flying Pickets (1984)
THE ROD AND EMU SHOW: with The Flying Pickets, Musical Youth, Faith Brown, Diana Moran (1984)
SUNDAY, SUNDAY: with The Flying Pickets, Sean Connery, Roy Kinnear (1983)
SUNDAY, SUNDAY: with Michael Barrymore, Bonnie Langford, Fred Feast, Zandra Rhodes, The Flying Pickets (1984)
THE VAL DOONICAN MUSIC SHOW: with Roger Whittaker, The Flying Pickets (1984)
THE VIDEO ENTERTAINERS: with Legs and Co, Ken Goodwin, Ricki Lee, The Searchers, The Flying Pickets (1982)
WOGAN: with Kenny Everett, The Flying Pickets, Val Doonican, Geraldine James (1984)
WOGAN: with The Flying Pickets, Anna Ford, Barry Norman, Edna O’Brien, Redmond O’Hanlon, Graham Souness (1985)
WORLD IN ACTION: Flying Pickets (1974)
(I wonder how many of you spotted my deliberate mistake…)
Supplementary data: my eldest son is now – when prompted – offering comments on the videos. I’ve been asking “Is this a happy song or a sad song?”. This was – correctly – identified as sad. The next #1 was happy, though.
I saw one of them in Shakespeare ten years or so ago. He was terrific. Yes, they were more of a ‘project’ than a band, weren’t they? Very 1980’s.
I quite like the song and the way they did it. I do find the original cold, I certainly don’t see any smugness or calculating ‘down with electronic music!’ in the Pickets’ version. To me, it just sounds like they’ve found a strong song that they like and are having a go at it. 6 is good for me.
TOTPWatch: The Flying Pickets performed ‘Only You’ on four consecutive editions of Top Of The Pops;
8 December 1983. Also in the studio that week were; Thompson Twins, Tears For Fears and Howard Jones. Mike Read and Tommy Vance were the hosts.
15 December 1983. Also in the studio that week were; Status Quo, Slade and The Pretenders. Simon Bates and Janice Long were the hosts.
22 December 1983. Also in the studio that week were; Slade, Tears For Fears, Dennis Waterman & George Cole and Howard Jones. John Peel and David Jensen were the hosts.
25 December 1983. Also in the studio that Christmas were; Freeez, Shakin’ Stevens, Eurythmics, Adam Ant, Bucks Fizz, Heaven 17 and UB40. Simon Bates, Janice Long, Mike Smith, Andy Peebles, Adrian John and Gary davies were the hosts.
Re 14. Hamilton is also known for being one of Bryan Ferry’s art teachers at Newcastle University. Ferry’s song ‘This Is Tomorrow’ takes it’s name from that famous ICA exhibition and the ‘collage’ style of early Roxy Music (in songs and visuals) was directly influenced by him.
i once got into furious debate on ilm about whether ferry was correct to use the duchampian term “readymade” for an extant pop-song he was about to cover: my position was yes obviously, this is exactly what duchamp had meant
i imagine the er détournement of the term was probably originally hamilton’s (of course ferry also “covered” the “bride stripped bare”)
Gawd I hated this and still do. Yazoo on paper constitute one of my ideal pop concepts and on the original I think Moyet’s voice (partly because she doesn’t belt or stretch it much at all here – no need to) shares evenly the show with Clarke’s distinctive quarks (he seems peerless when it comes to jaunty synth hooks). So why remove the latter when it’s just as important imo – the harmonising adds little if anything to my ears (altho the “ba-da-da-da” had potential…I like it more after Osymyso’s ‘Intro Inspection’). That said I don’t particularly like the original either (certainly not compared to ‘Don’t Go’). 3.
re 22 I recommend Michael Bracewell’s ‘Remake/remodel’ which uses Roxy as a lens to examine the effect of the 60s British Art school experience and features interviews with the musicians plus all the associated stylists and designers.
Ah, this song. Although I thought that I had never heard this song , it became the soundtrack to a very, very sad dream that I had . I recall the dream , which I won’t share, but suffice to say that I woke up in tears. It wasn’t until many months later that I heard the song while I was awake and was able to track it down.
It was weird but I still have uncanny feelings when I hear it.
This was one of those UK hits that earned a 30-second snippet in the Countdown world charts round-up but never made an impact in Australia (our Christmas number one was Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long”). I doubt I’d ever seen the video before, because my mental image of the Flying Pickets was completely wrong (big peroxided hair – guess I was thinking of Vince Clarke). But what a video! It’s like a buncha Guy Ritchie geezers singin’ all posh, like. Ahh, for the days when the local rubbity was a good-enough video set.
I quite like the Yazoo version, so I’ll give this marks for the source material. 5 sounds about right.
This reminded me of a “Two Ronnies” guest act (New World? Swingle 2?) – Completely tame and pointless. The fact it came so close on the heals of the admirable original added more points to my personal Irritateometer. Not one of the year’s greatest hours.
Sleeve notes: “Pure genius”
Disappointing…
mum update. this and joel before it marks a final hurrah for my mum caring about the charts i think.
the FP were doing the rounds on fringe and left wing cabaret sort of things around this time, and my mum saw them live a lot before this point. and i remember an album getting played a lot, and their (mildly comedic – ie not) version of Summertime is stuck in my head. gah.
@JimD #12 — i made the connection with the sideburns dude in that Dr Who story for myself, but never checked it was true. how awful for poor stubby kaye.
Compared with the Yazoo version this is awful but at least it kept that contrived Slade single off the top.
The Pickets were good value for their brief stint in the limelight. I remember Smash Hits asking the bald bass singer who called himself Red Stripe for a Christmas message to Mrs Thatcher and his reply was “How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand dead ?” (referring to the Falklands).
Wiki reveals that some of the Pickets had been active in the miners’ strikes of the 70s, and that Brian Hibbard wasn’t the only member to feature in fantasy adventures – David Brett went on to appear in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
I’d heard of them before, although I couldn’t tell you where from, and enjoyed the novelty aspect – there were many worse candidates for the Christmas number one, although I’d agree with contributors above that Yazoo should have got there first and that Alison Moyet is a national treasure.
The song takes me back to finals year in the fourth floor of the east wing of Founders Hall (Billy will know what I’m talking about). After the nightmare neighbours of first year and the life-sapping landlady of second year, finals year saw me in with a great bunch of blokes as neighbours. There’d be a competition to play the coolest music you’d hear as you walked down the corridor, but nobody forced theirs down your throat at high volume, and it was just a good atmosphere. One bloke had an early interactive computer game, and I’d wind down from finals revision by playing The Hobbit in his room until the early hours (and a few years later I was best man at his wedding).
And around Christmas that year there was a fad for singing the intro to “Only You” as you passed people’s doors, making the opening “B” as explosive as possible, i.e. “BBBA-da-da-da, BBBA-da-da-da…” It particularly amused one bloke named Butterworth: I never knew his first name because everybody just called him Lenin, since he was a complete ringer for, well, Lenin. One night he was leaning up against a wall in the hall of residence, pissed out of his head, going “BBBA-da-da-da…” at the top of his voice, and someone peered out of his room to say “Excuse me, could you keep the noise down, I’ve an important exam tomorrow?” Lenin threw a scrunched-up piece of paper in hIs general direction with the immortal words, “SHO ‘AVE I…”
The Flying Pickets always maintain that their career was stopped in its tracks by state censorship because of the political climate once the miners’ strike began in 1984.
Not though anyone would claim that they were an irritating novelty act with an obviously short shelf life in the first place, mind you.
Brian Hibbard went on to play a mechanic who had an affair with Denise in Coronation Street in the early nineties. The exposure from this was enough to propel him into one of the leads in a pantomime at the Lewisham Theatre in 1995, a performance which my friend Harry had to see many dozens of times as usher. The memory of Hibbard’s duet with Britain’s olympic gold medal heroine Tessa Sanderson still makes him uneasy after all of the intervening years.
I always thought their shelf life was shortened by the rather conservative (small “c”) choice of “When You’re Young And In Love” as the follow-up. By the time they released the perky and greatly superior “So Close” people seemed to have lost interest.
A very familiar song which for some reason the pickets thought needed resurrecting within a year of it charting. I’m not convinced they cared too much for the song more about making a statement (look what we did there !). It’s mildly impressive on first hearing but doesn’t bear too much close inspection. I disliked it intensely at the time preferring (as I generally tend to do) the original. Their image also made me feel uneasy – not sure why although a few of them looked as though they might have a bag of sweets to hand. As my Mum would say they had something of the night about them. Christmas 1983 wasn’t one of my better ones (two relationships had gone west this year) and the FP’s inappropriate Xmas no1 certainly didn’t help matters.
This was a hit about the miner’s strike, in my opinion, and the version doesn’t warrant revisiting but the song does, one of a handful of fantastic Yazoo songs. A superb, seminal duo, as anyone who saw their reunion tour last year will testify, and this song was their finest moment.
It may be about the miners strike (and it may have become about it in memory) but considering it went to number one four months before the strike started, its unlikely to be the case. About previous and potential miners strikes, well that comes with the name of the band.
maybe it’s because i was in a succession of choirs as a kid, and actually spent time listening to choir competitions and the like — radio 3 used to broadcast them, esp. from eastern europe — and part of the art was effectiveness of arrangement, given the relative paucity of means (nothing but voice) — but i think everyone’s been quite harsh here: one of the things acapella is “about” is capturing a feel *just using voices*, and i think the FPs’ arrangement achieves machinic coldness pretty effectively (it’s the lead that’s weak)– i don’t even slightly buy that this was a sneery gag at yazoo’s expense, having just taken a peek at the huge range of songs they’ve covered down the years (“smells like teen spirit!”)
The FP cover of ”smells like teen spirit” is kind of terrific, in a kronos quartet howdya-do-guitar-chords-AHA way: also fun that they very deliberately rhyme “albino” with beano instead of rhino…
NMEWatch: Gavin Martin, 3 December 1983;
“Scrupulously fashioned and very clever accapella arrangement for the Yazoo classic. The textures are smooth as ice, the harmonies crystal clear inspired by The Beach Boys and The Bee Gees, I’d say. The lead vocal’s a bit on the nasal side but perhaps the song’s current chart-slog status will leave the way clear for the group to fire some of the pithy political pellets I’m assured they have in their live act.”
No single of the week was awarded. Also reviewed;
Culture Club – Victims
UB40 – Many Rivers To Cross
Robert Plant – In The Mood
Adam Ant – Strip
Billy Joel – Tell Her About It
Nick Heyward – On A Sunday
Def Leppard – Too Late For Love
Elton John – Cold As Christmas
Status Quo – Marguerita Time
I agree with the comments on this song’s coldness. Which is odd, as you would think that what is basically a novelty hit would be a bit more endearing.