PAUL HARDCASTLE – “19″
Before writing this entry, I spent a while researching Paul Hardcastle’s later career as a highly successful figure in the land of Smooth Jazz. I cannot tell you how long this actually took, as time can have no meaning in a world where tracks are called things like “Visions Of Illusions” and “Constellation Of Dreams”. But what this voyage of illumination showed me is that “19″ is a very odd fish indeed: even Hardcastle’s prior output, if YouTube is any guide, sounded like the on-hold music for a flotation centre. What happens when such a man decides to make a cut-up electro record?
As a lesson in recent history, “19″ is a phenomenal success: if there’s one thing any 1985 schoolboy could tell you about the Vietnam War it’s how old the poor bastards shipped out there were. As a pop record it’s half-triumphant, half-awkward, and the triumph and awkwardness are indivisible. If that rent-a-soul chorus hadn’t been on there – with its “those who remember won’t forget” clanger – the record wouldn’t be as memorable. But the way that chorus gets chopped and diced – “d-d-d-d-d-destruction!” – undermines any seriousness “19″ might have reached for, takes its indictment of Vietnam into goofy Max Headroom territory.
But then again, if it had been a wholly serious record, would it have been any better? It is possible to give this kind of quick-cut documentary pop weight without sacrificing its groove – check out Steinski’s fantastic “The Motorcade Sped On” for a dramatisation of signal becoming noise in the white heat of a massive event. “19″‘, though, is slick, glib, in love with its own techniques and surface and beat. But I think if it hadn’t it would have been even clumsier: judging by his other work, I wouldn’t trust Hardcastle with intentional resonance or nuance.
And as it is, “19″ manages unintentional resonance really well: the post-Vietnam generation working out, in public, what they thought and felt about the war. Hardcastle was part of a great spasm of mid-80s ‘Nam references, a door opening in history and things never resolved rushing back into currency. And the barrage of different impulses you get in “19″ – this was awful! But so visual! But horrific! But pop! – gives a better feel for that working-through than some of its more considered and famous products.
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bunny alert re discussion of fuller’s future: esp.as it will be VERY HOTLY CONTESTED, so let us contain ourselves and all opninions of upcoming no.ones till due time!
One of the mixes of “The Wildstyle” (1983), an early single by Time Zone (an Afrika Bambaataa project), uses talk samples, mostly movie clips, but a news clip of the Munich meeting between Chamberlain and Hitler shows up near the end.
did the “i wasn’t really sure what was going on” sample ever end up in any ‘ardkore records? if not, it surely should have.
My mother wouldn’t have been thinking of Cage or musique concrete; I can imagine radio in the ’20s through ’50s playing montages of spoken words over a song, the song making ironic comment on the words or vice versa, and that equivalent stuff would occur in movies and on TV, the idea being so obvious (though none is coming to mind at the moment). A couple of friends and I mashed up some songs (well, played bits in succession) and spoken word as the soundtrack for an Earth Day slideshow that we presented at a school assembly 1970, and we certainly didn’t have the idea that this had never been done before. Maybe we had no idea we were innovators. We thought this was normal!
Maybe it’s the TOTP synonomy but I am v fond of ‘The Wizard’ – definitely the third best TOTP theme tune ever ha ha.
This is either a fantastic, searing indictment of the Vietnam war and the treatment of its veterans, rendered unforgettable by its adaptation into a style never heard this high up the chart before; or it’s a crass cash-in of extremely dubious taste. Even now I find myself wavering between these two viewpoints. Certainly it was a handy subject with which to promote this kind of sound collage, totally unlike just about anything heard at number one before, and the subject matter of a protest record sits rather uneasily with a female chorus going “di-di-di-di-dis, di-dis, di-destruction!”
But on the whole I’ll let him off that, because it’s a superbly effective record in terms of getting the message across. Hardcastle was (according to Songfacts) inspired by an ABC documentary titled “Vietnam Requiem” made in 1984 and screened late that year by BBC2. You can readily imagine him being outraged by that statistic which gives the record its title, sufficiently so to contact Peter Thomas, the narrator of the documentary, who sent him some taped vocal samples from the programme.
Other Hardcastle record worthy of mention – I did like the sparky “Don’t Waste My Time” with Carol Kenyon.
Sarah #3 – yes, of course it’s ten years too late to be a protest about the war itself, but by the mid-80s concern about the treatment of those who’d come home from the war was reaching a crescendo – hence the movie “Born on the Fourth of July” later in the decade, and of course Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” the previous year. Springsteen had recorded a quietly angry acoustic version of this song for the “Nebraska” album in 1982, but held it back to form the centrepiece of his biggest album two years later.
Unfortunately the tone of the reworking made it all too easy to misinterpret, as Ronald Reagan famously did. The day after Michael Jackson’s death the New York Times revealed that in 1984 a Presidential correspondence aide drafted a letter for Reagan to send inviting the Jacksons to the White House, only to receive a stern rebuff from a senior official named John Roberts – now US Chief Justice and the bloke who fouled up Obama’s inauguration oath. Roberts wrote back, “Such a letter would create a bad precedent… why, for example, was no letter sent to Mr Bruce Springsteen, whose patriotic tour recently visited the area?” Full story at http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/from-the-white-house-files-a-fight-over-michael-jackson/
I can imagine radio in the ’20s through ’50s playing montages of spoken words over a song: how though? By which I mean, what recording surfaces are the different elements captured on, and how was the mix effected? Useable — ie editable — recording tape didn’t exist till the mid-40s; there was certainly no mixing equipment before the mid-50s. Playing two records simultaneously on two phonographs is possible, but it’s VERY lo-fi — and the only people who had disc recordings of news broadcasts and so on would be the stations that broadcast them.
Radio before the mid-30s was 99% live anyway, music trasmitted via pick-ups equipment from the dance-club: Martin Block’s “Make-Believe Ballroom” began in 1935; generally considered the first programme to make a thing of playing records on air — doubtless this had happened before on a one-off basis, but I think you needed the arrival of relatively hifi disc recording for it to be remotely practicable, in terms of not just driving listeners away… ie an electronic signal that could go straight out on air, not just a mike stuck near an acoustic phonograph!
The early musique concrete technique was basically transferring from records to records — if anyone was doing this kind of montage before them, they certainly didn’t know about it!
The one technology I can think of which might have allowed this kind of montage playfulness is the synched-sound on celluoid for movies… where voice and music were routinely heard together. This arrived in the late 20s.
What radio culd and did do a lot, is have LIVE voices over recorded music — but that doesn’t let really you play news-broadcasts against the wrong kind of music, except on comedy shows.
This has had exactly the inverse historical effect on me that ‘Move Closer’ has;
1985 Billy reaction to Phyllis: “Making looove!” – How hideously uncomfortable and embarrassing.
2009 Billy reaction to Phyllis: This is a really touching and thoughtful evocation of what it means to be grown-up.
1985 Billy reaction to 19: “D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-DESTRUCTION!” This is the coolest thing ever! The combination of science fiction cut-ups and a powerful anti-war message, make this sophisticated and thrilling adult pop about serious things! I find this really quite frightening.
2009 Billy reaction to 19: “D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-DESTRUCTION!” This is incredibly embarrassing, vapid, and really quite distasteful.
I always get irritated when I read Paul Hardcastle complain that 19 never gets played on oldies radio because people still can’t handle his anti-war message, man. Not that it never gets played on oldies radio because most listeners would find it risible these days.
One for the footy fans – a reworking of “19” by the one and only Attila the Stockbroker (Brighton fan, need I add):
“Tuesday September 8th 1989 began like any other day in the footballing calendar – but it wasn’t… At Anfield the final score was Liverpool 9, Crystal Palace 0. Liverpool 9, Crystal Palace 0. N-n-n-n-nine nil, nine nil. N-n-n-n-nine nil, nine nil… And when the Palace players got home, obviously in need of moral support and counselling following their torrid n-n-n-nine nil experience, none of them received a hero’s welcome. None of them. None of them received a hero’s welcome. N-n-n-none of them… The long term effects of such an unbelievable n-n-n-nine nil annihilation are hard to predict, but it seems likely that many of the Crystal Palace squad may have been be so demoralised that they may have been forced to leave professional football and sign on. S-s-s-sign on. Sign on. S-s-s-sign on….”
Number two watch: Three weeks of Duran Duran’s ‘View To A Kill’, much approved by all of us first year boys, The John Barry flourishes seeming to our ears to add a new element of sophistication and dynamism to the Duran sound.
#35 AGREED. This was a big part of my distaste for 19, actually.
Hitchcock was one of the pioneers of “ironic” movie soundtracking — like the rising fairground music when someone’s being strangled (in “strangers on a train”? that’s 1951)
Ah that may be why ’19′s reign irked me. I was obsessed with ‘A View To A Kill’. I remember telling a friend at school that it had been my favourite song for the entire Summer – I’m pretty sure I was writing down a little top 10 most weeks at this point and, well, for many many points after.
Such was my 19mania at the time, that when I was kept in the classroom for extra lunchtime handwriting lessons, I wrote out the 19 lyrics instead of the approved primer text. When the teacher saw my handiwork she told me “What a strange boy you must be”
Mark, you know way more about it than I do. But if they could do it on film, why couldn’t they do it on tape? (You could probably do a reasonable job broadcasting it “live” if you’re not needing an exact sync – if the voices aren’t part of the rhythm.) Anyhow, my mom did think it had been done many times before, whatever she meant by that. I wouldn’t bet on her remembering now what she meant in 1968, though I could try her. I need to call her today anyway.
not much to add to what’s already been said – this seemed like a slight return to the martial themes of the previous year. I don’t know how much of the appetite for Vietnam in music and movies was refracted concern over other conflicts such as the Falklands – or whether sufficient time had passed. It makes me wonder what impact the Iraq/Afghanistan war is having on popular culture – it seems more evident on TV – but that probably reflects the ignorance of my old age.
Other sampled songs around this time included ‘Five Minutes’ by Bonzo Goes to Washington and Malcolm McClaren’s use of opera on his ‘Fans’ album.
Earlier there had also been those 50s novelty singles where a DJ had included snatches of lyrics from hits of the day to produce ‘hilarious’ results.
N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-not sure what to make of this one.
It is of DEEP personal significance by dint of the fact that it was in the middle of its run at Number One when, one balmy May Saturday evening a major personal threshold was crossed…
but I didn’t really like it at the time mainly because it stopped Duran Duran’s A View To A Kill from reaching the summit (three weeks at No. 2 I think) – the last peak-era DD hit
Today, I quite enjoy some of what PH was trying to do. It doesn’t excite me particularly, not in the way say Brainfreeze or other Steinski, or Cut Chemist/Shadow cut-ups do, but it has a primitive kind of charm.
Best Ronald Regan sampling of the 1980s is to be found on the first Was (Not Was) album – “Can we deny (…) control?”, etc.
I really don’t know what to think of this record, the beats are nifty and it was great to see some electro on top of the charts, but when I hear “V-V-V-Vietnam” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s like some parody of a clueless hipster DJ making a “protest” record.
“F-F-F-Falkland Islands” would have been much better anyway and it’s not a patch on the “I-I-I-Ian McGregor” spoken by Scargill in ‘Strike!’
In the US, there was a show in the 80s called “Puttin’ on the Hits” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puttin'_on_the_Hits) where auditioners would lip-sync/perform to the top hits at the time. Arguably the most memorable Puttin’ On The Hits performance ever was a guy who called himself “3-D” performing “19″:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdOX6nihPo4
What’s striking about this video is that the song is editing to concentrate on the samples, which was obviously done to showcase 3-D’s lip-synching/stuttering abilities, but it also made the song even politically rawer than any other remix did. And the audience reaction is nuts, nonetheless!
As far as the electro + stutter precursors, speaking as a big Tackhead/Sherwood fan, while I like “No Sell Out”, “19″ is clearly more in debt to Arthur Baker’s work with New Order, isn’t it? “Confusion” is the obvious example here. (And “Shellshock” too, however “Shellshock” was released after “19″ I believe)
Despite 19′s claim to the contrary, I believe that the average Vietnam soldier’s age has not actually been verified.
Mike at 21: but Paul Hardcastle had always been “fresh, contemporary and relevant” – he’d made soul/disco (only white bloke in a band of black Londoners)in the late 70s, then jazz-funk with First Light in the early 80s (when these genres were what you heard on the “street”).
Then he did the COVER version (not the later remix) of “You’re The One For Me” (which everyone gave big props too because Hardcastle knew the score and it was a labour of love to apparently try to get the composition the commercial success he felt had been denied in 1982)
Then he made stuff like “Rain Forest” which you dismiss as inconsequential when that track was on just about every b-boys ghetto blaster at the time and was along with ‘Chief Inspector’ was inescapable on the pirates for months (and it crossed over to even the mainstream clubs where the shopgirls loved it)and was probably the only British track which ever got near the status of such classics as Tyrone Brunson’s ‘The Smurf’ or the Extra T’s ‘ET Boogie’.
It was obviously this pedigree and the fact he HAD the funk and the soulboys/early hiphoppers knew it that got his tracks accepted by the black music scene whilst white chancers like New Order and the Clash’s attempts to cash in on contemporary black styles whilst appealing to the rock press never had a chance of being anything but derided in the black music community…
I should have added to the above an answer to someone’s question about why this hit was so big.
Probably not a complete answer but in a move that became the default option post house this was played as a white label on the London pirates for what semed like weeks before it was officially released.
Solar Radio in particular (from where I recorded my copy)seemed to play it every few records. The buzz on the early hip hop (and even soul/funk scene) was as massive as I ever remember on a dance track pre-house and I know everyone presumed it would cross over to the very top of the pop charts.
A very similar feeling on the pirates accompanied Shut Up And Dance’s “Raving I’m Raving” years later and the only reason that didn’t replicare the success of this track and we’re not going to talk about that is because it was withdrawn before it could get the the very top…
Worth mentioning that as this was Simon Fuller’s first and last proper discovery for Chrysalis, he seems to have taken it as his good-luck charm: the company he formed immediately afterwards is called 19 Entertainment, and it’s through it that he runs his empire, and manages many people that we will see later, and Annie Lennox.
Thanks Andy @ 47. That gets me half the way there I think – a recurring feature of my formative years was amazing, weird, mindblowing dance tunes appearing in the upper reaches of the charts from nowhere: ‘Beat Dis’, ‘Charly’, many many others. I never understood where they came from because I’d never hear them on the radio before they landed and blew everything else away for just a moment. I’d subconsciously put it down to the clubbing population being far larger than I’d ever dreamt of, backed up by that ridiculous stat of 1m Es dropped a night – but then who ever hunts down the names of tunes while they’re out clubbing anyway? Some kind of pirate radio network in other parts of the country makes a lot more sense.
The other half of my bewilderment is: why *this* record in particular? ‘Planet Rock’ is about the biggest electro record I can think of (at least with hindsight – I wasn’t there and have only really started getting to grips with electro retrospectively) and it didn’t even chart. I know it came out a couple of years earlier, but I’m just not aware of any great electro wave building up to ’19′.
PS I’m hopeful that ‘Raving I’m Raving’ might get a sympathy review here when the time comes. I like to think that Popular might have a small role in redeeming those no.2s only denied by a deus ex machina – sadly my attempt to get ‘Last Christmas’ in recently was unsuccessful.
Was Tom Clay’s “What The World Needs Now Is Love/Abraham, Martin and John” a hit in the UK? Certainly not a dancefloor filler, and virtually nothing *but* cut together recordings (or Clay’s remakes), but in the 1971 pop arena it stood in stark relief to everything around it.
Sorry to have disrespected the Hardcastle, Andy! I guess this is partly due to the old London/South East versus Midlands/North divide – the South East always liked its soul/funk smoother than we did, and so the likes of “Rain Forest” never registered much. But it was on a trip to London while “19″ was still on pre-release that I felt the huge buzz; one of the guys in the house I was staying at had a white label copy, and so it was very much the hit of the hour.
A #15 in the States, Hardcastle is mostly known as a Smooth Jazz pioneer. Before this song he had “Rain Forest” from early 1985, which is now a staple of that genre. Funny how a record about the Vietnam War charted higher overseas than in the States, but controversial subjects never chart high in the States, even today. I like this pastiche, but always wished it hit harder as a protest song. But then if it had it wouldn’t have gotten very far on our charts. BTW- Hardcastle is still releasing Smooth Jazz records and charting on that format.
#50 One of the very few times in a club I’ve ever been moved to ask someone what a song playing was called was in the Lyceum one night in the early 80s (I think Steve Walsh was DJ-ing) seeing these two black kids bodypopping to this electronic record that just blew me away. When it was over I asked one of them what it was called, “Planet… something, I think” he said. Bought it the next day, actually went into the record shop and asked if they knew of a new dance record called “Planet something”.
‘Rainforest’ is pretty awesome in my view, and some of its sound was a big influence on people way outside of smooth jazz, e.g., Aphex Twin. Rainforest would have been a nifty 1980s ‘Telstar’ if it had fluked into the #1 spot rather than ’19′.
Ha Lee, that’s excellent! You’re lucky to have a cool story about such a cool record – if I had such a story, the kids would probably have gone “Stutter … something, I think” instead.
The pirate radio diversion is also shedding a bit of light on another, lesser, fad of the time – the anonymous hit single, brought out on white labels or under pseudonyms to overcome DJs’ prejudices and prove that Cliff Richard or whoever could still cut it. I could never work out who exactly was supposed to be being fooled – by the time these things ever reached my ears, their main point of interest was precisely: ‘woah, here’s the unofficial new George Michael single!’
(finally, proving pirate radio must’ve been a bigger phenomenon than I realised, I have half a memory of Lenny Henry having a whole series where he was the hapless controller of a station, broadcast from an antennae hanging out the window of his tower block bedroom)
#50 Izzy I know where you’re coming from. This was in the Top 5 before I’d even heard it.I always used to think that there were more of Gallup’s machines in London and the South generally so that was why those dance records did well while it always seemed a struggle for Hi-NRG records which were massively popular in the North (Laura Branigan’s “Shattered Glass” is the prime example) to make the Top 40.
I think this is a watershed number one (besides being the only one I actually bought in 85) which showed that the rules of the game were changing. An anonymous performer with a meagre track record gatecrashing the Top 5 without any play on Radio One ; that seems to be a first. Of course it soon became commonplace.
I agree that “Just For Money” was a bad move (and an awful record) but it did seem that until Prodigy and Chemical Brothers came along dance acts were unable to engender the same loyalty as rock groups and were rarely able to survive putting out a poor single.
#47 – thanks for filling me in on the lost fashionability of Paul Hardcastle – not surprised that this passed me by at the time but it’s been largely written out of (google-able) history too: perhaps his slightly naff later hits and smooth jazz incarnation mean his pre-”19″ fans don’t have much interest in setting any records straight.
That said I heard “Rain Forest” for the first time yesterday and thought it was dire, so perhaps fashion was on the wrong side back then.
OK – having listened to “Rain Forest” again, I can see its appeal much more clearly now than I did then. In fact, it’s worn rather well – rhythmically tougher than I remember, and not as smothered by tinkly Shakatackiness either.
Donning my metaphorical black polo neck sweater, I then sauntered down a pleasant path of re-discovery. Wally Badarou’s “Chief Inspector” sounds as great now as it did then, reminding me that 4th & Broadway was my favourite dance label of 1985. Maze’s “Twilight”, DSM’s “Warrior Groove”, Harlequin 4′s “Set It Off” (also recorded by Strafe)… all, in retrospect, pointing the way towards house.
And then there was the electro instrumental that peaked at Number 2, a month or so after “19″, which we’ll be dealing with many, many years from now…!
Seemed to be groundbreaking at the time, remember thinking Paul Hardcastle was really cool, sampling
old Vietnam news footage in a track. For me conjures up images of a Glitzy nightclub in Norwich back in the days when men/boys had to wear at least a shirt & tie to get through the door and lots of girls with perms
and bright yellow stilettos with electric blue rara skirts.
However my lasting legacy from this will be the TOTP’s theme tune, bring back ‘Whole Lotta Love’ please…
Light Entertainment Watch: Several UK TV appearances listed for this seemingly untelevisual performer;
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)
SATURDAY LIVE: with Pamela Stephenson, Cliffhanger, The Dangerous Brothers, Richard Digance, Ben Elton, Stephen Fry, Paul Hardcastle, The Rt Hon Denis Healey MP, Tamsin Heatley, The Inspirational Choir (1986)
WOGAN: with Nigel Davenport, Samantha Fox, Paul Hardcastle, Diana Quick, Ken Smith (1986)
(I have a feeling that the Saturday Live one is just a credit for his dismal theme tune though – “S-S-S-Saturday! Live!” pasted together inna ’19′ stylee)
Mike at 59: Thanks for reminding me of “Warrior Groove” by DSM which was an alias of Dancin’ Danny D who a couple of years later was DMob of “We Call It Acieed Fame”.
For years I had a tape from the Bognor weekender of 1986 where on the weekender radio station on Kev Hill’s (Essex soul later rave DJ)show Paul Oakenfold (in one of his pre-house guises as a record promoter) was trying to chat to Danny D about “Warrior Groove” and it seems that Oakenfold’s annoyed him in some way because he seems to spend the whole interview trying to placate him.In view of Oakenfold later becoming the biggest DJ in the world I’d love to have kept hold of that…
I lost contact with what Paul Hardcastle was doing years ago I seem to have a memory of him making some acid house record as the Sound Syndicate in 1988/89 and also having a hit with some generic soul track with a female singer “Don’t Waste My Time” sometime after “19″
Ha! Perhaps Oakenfold asked Danny D where he got his inspiration from for Warrior Groove. Us brummies know it was Birmingham DJ Shaun Williams’ creation – a mix he did in his sets which is where Poku heard it. DSM stands for Danny, Shaun and Mambo (went on to manage Apache Indian) but when I googled it all I could find was info about Danny Poku. No mention of Williams or Mambo apart from credits on track. I guess the guy’s just a good self-publicist.
I suppose this happens all the time in this industry and the recorded history is distorted, but this is one I actually know about.
The thing is I always thought he just sounded a grumpy moody git on the tape although perhaps after what you’ve there was more to it and it was a bit of guilt making him sensitive about discussing it!
I was always a bit unconvinced by the claim that absolutely none of the Vietnam veterans received a hero’s welcome.
I hear this is being resurrected for the troops in Afghanistan. Not sure how that’s going to be slanted politically or factually as the good people of Wootton Bassett will surely attest.
Listen to the man himself at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8599087.stm.
His son’s friend has been killed in Afghanistan – at the age of 19.
#47:
whilst white chancers like New Order and the Clash’s attempts to cash in on contemporary black styles whilst appealing to the rock press never had a chance of being anything but derided in the black music community
Really? Is there any evidence of New Order ever having cashed in on “contemporary black styles” (since via their involvement with BE Music/ACR/Marcel King etc. and their subsequent influence on House and Techno they would appear to have done the precise opposite)? The thought that the Clash were ever cashing in – as opposed to attempting to gain greater exposure for the “contemporary black styles” they clearly loved – is equally bizarre. Perhaps you ought to ask Norman Jay, for example, what he feels about Strummer & Co.
If, on the other hand, by the “black music community” you mean middle-aged white people like Chris Hill spinning Maze sides and moaning about how black pop had gone down the toilet since Kraftwerk became its main influence then I guess they wouldn’t have had much time for either.
Cross pollenation between “black” and “white” music (which in itself is somewhat anachronistic) usually presents a positive step forward, and is generally accepted as such. When a genre of music retreats within it’s own community and closes itself off, that’s when there are negative connotations attached to it. The very least of these being elitism.
Look out for this track returning to the top 40 in the next week or two, assuming Manchester United pick up one more point – http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/may/09/manchester-united-song-19-title
According to the original the sample was edited from, the average age was “nineteen and a half” !
Which is still nineteen, so he just edited for brevity.