Texas: From the heart
Article by Hervé Picart for "Music Up!" magazine, April 1999
Pictures by Luis Sanchis and Ellen Von Unwerth
translated for texasindemand.com by Luc Ghys
the photos can be found here
Overwhelmed by joy after the success of “White On Blonde”, Texas decided, from now on, to give free play to their pop nature and play the role of seducers. Their new album, The Hush, is a real “Soul & Brass” Juke Box that will easily touch all lovers of the summer to come. Between yesterday’s Tamla and today’s dance music, newly promoted Supreme Sharleen Spiteri exclusively unfolds the challenge of the new Texas.
When, today, we compare the new Texas album “The Hush” with the first opus of the Glaswegian band, revealed to us exactly ten years ago, with that surprising southern rock sound and shivering slide of “I Don’t Want A Lover”, we can’t stop being amazed by the covered path. Wondering whether we’re still talking about the same band, as there seems to be a world of difference between the juvenile bluesy rhythm of “Everyday Now” and the sensual dance-pop of “Sunday Afternoon”, one of many hits to come. Nevertheless, it’s still little Sharleen who’s cooing in front, it’s still that tall devil of Johnny Mac Elhone who organises the whole thing, and still the same modest Ally Mac Erlaine who’s decorating everything with his measured guitar playing. The original pub playing band however, is nowhere to be found. Henceforth, Texas decided to open up a dance-floor to the scale of our planet, trying to seduce us with languishing and artful pop music that subtly adapted all the magic of the Tamla Motown sound of the sixties to the disco-parade of the nineties. A pure alchemy of pleasure based on a hypnotising sensuality and a total science of the heart-striking melody. “The Hush” risks to become a huge success and it will reinforce even more the status of “million sellers” that these eternal, furtive and out of fashion youngsters have already reached today. Of course, some will accuse them of being too “commercial” and disapprove their search for the “hit” in itself. The same people that will never even think of judging The Beatles or Beach Boys although what they did shows no big difference. In fact, Texas belongs in that category of bands who can marry the subtlety of an indisputable feeling to a most beautiful refrain, those bands for which they invented the term “pop music”, denigrated for far too long, to which Sharleen and her companions just rendered all their credentials at one blow. And they did it with so much more honesty then their colleagues of britpop, without that hypocrite and provocative distant attitude, Oasis or Blur style, who have a suspect way of always spitting in their own soup. It’s also true that it was Texas’s wish to only express themselves through their music. This band is incorruptible, something never enough to savour.
The girl from the white house
It’s a completely white house in the beautiful quarter of Regent’s Park. Very white, very big. A stone lion, cosily dozed off, guards the door-step. On the inside, everything’s also white. And almost empty. In fact, Sharleen Spiteri has just moved to her new London residence. There’s no furniture in most of the rooms, only the essential stuff, at least for a musician : television, telephone, stereo rack. The rest will follow later but the owner of the house doesn’t care, she’s not the kind of person to commit suicide because the hue of her double curtains has faded….. Labourers are running in and out. Labourers who, surprise, when asking for directives, are calling Sharleen Spiteri by her first name. We can hardly imagine some other workmen asking : “Whitney ( or Janet, or Mariah, or Dolores ), where do I have to put this ?”. Sharleen however, rejects everything that isn’t simple or direct. This familiarity suits her well. In fact, I’ve always known her like that. For some years now, whenever we meet, whatever the circumstances, I’ve always seen her wearing a tee-shirt, trousers and sneekers, always in discrete colours and her hair hardly dressed. Natural. Never wearing make-up, no excessive jewellery : this girl persistently refuses to give in to any kind of artificiality, neither for her looks nor in her professional relationships. Very often, she hardly changes her clothes before going on stage. There’s no much more of an anti-star then this star. She always has that spontaneous appearance of a close friend dropping in unexpectedly and that, for sure, makes her so adorable. So how can we disbelieve her when she tells us that there wasn’t something like a pre-meditated plan or some kind of a strategy in the way Texas has built up their career ? Anyhow, she shows us how one can be a fabulous singer and dislike the frills at the same time.
During the guided tour, we quickly understand who she is by the way she insists on certain things. First, she shows us the room where the future studio will be installed, as close as possible to the garden. It wouldn’t be the first time that she insists on recording with open windows. In her case, it’s a symbol, of her open mind, of her refusal to be a rat who jealously wants to keep all her secrets. Next, she indicates with pride and joy the spot where, in her immensely deserted cuisine, she’ll put a big “French” table, accentuating the r in French just like all good Scottish women do. Texas means also hospitality and a permanent accessibility for Sharleen can only work amongst friends, otherwise she can’t work at all. In passage, she’s taking the opportunity to settle a quarrel with her neighbours, too “English” to her taste, who never stop teasing her : “This would never happen in Glasgow” she shouts! “At least, there, people are hospitable. Evidently, it’s much easier for me to live in London because it facilitates my work enormously. But they are so anti-social here…..And that’s the reason why I refuse to give up on my house and my studio in Glasgow”. She eagerly admits : she’ll always stay a pure and true Scot - there’s no other kind anyway….The more, in Scotland, she’s a real national glory. For a Briton, a singer who makes it is just an example of an individual success, nothing more. The Scots however, are just as much enthusiastic about their rock bands then that they are about their rugby team. The success of the Simple Minds or Texas strengthens their national pride more then we’ll ever know : it’s almost as good as winning the Calcutta Cup. Also, our little Scottish woman seldom feels herself completely at ease in the big City of London. So it was in a particular atmosphere, rare in the world of rock, that Sharleen granted “Music Up” this premier interview, in a large and empty room with just two armchairs and without any luxury. But the warmth and the human conviction were the essential. Sharleen laid herself down, just like she loves to do whenever she feels confident about an interview, her legs pulled closely to her small body, her head backwards and her eyes burning with passion for the band that is her life.
99, Texas Road
It’s not her address but it could well represent this year’s destiny of the band : a highway to the stars. A slightly changed band for that matter, Sharleen immediately adds : “The band changed and increased but I believe that, fundamentally, it stayed the same. We have another drummer, a second guitar player and also a new partner to play the DJ and to take care of the sound effects. It was all a natural process. There was no fighting between us at all, neither was there a drastic plan to change things. There are bands who are changing the effective because they can’t get along and suddenly, their music changes also. Then there are the bands who first decide to change their music and subsequently are forced to change the team. Not us. We’re making some spontaneous readjustments, it goes along with the music and responds always to internal needs, it’s just a part of the natural life of the band. In fact, from the very beginning, it was the trio Spiteri / Mac Elhone / Mac Erlaine who formed the hard core of Texas. But, although the band hardly changed, we can’t compare the Texas of today with the one from ’89. Seldom has a rock band, given such a strong identity from the start, changed so much over a period of 10 years. “Indeed, it’s still the same band” explains Sharleen Spiteri, “but 10 years older. The world around us has changed and so did the music. We all changed : so it would be extraordinary if our music still sounded the same. I’m a 32 year old woman now and I can’t imagine myself playing like I was 18 and having the same values or the same points of interest. For as long as they existed, The Beatles never changed but nevertheless, if you’d play “Love Me Do” directly followed by “I Am The Walrus”, you would find it hard to believe that it’s the same band. I don’t believe that bands should stick to their first identity, to their basic sound, to a fixed, distinctive and well recognisable image. I would be bored to death if it were like that. Being yourself doesn’t mean you have to stay yourself, it also means that you have to accept to change but, in a natural way. We at Texas, we don’t sit around the table and decide what we’re going to do next. We just let the songs come and then we realise that they, indeed, no longer sound like the songs we made before”.
It’s true that the passage from “I Don’t Want A Lover” to “In Our Lifetime”, our sparkling new single you’ll enjoy as from April, didn’t take just one day. But what seems to be the most surprising thing, is the renewal of our influences, things so basic that you wouldn’t even consider to renew them. It also meant that we had to reprogram our genes. In the beginning there was Ry Cooder and the Southern bottleneck music, then we added gospel and country music, now Texas seems to be fallen in the Tamla melting pot where the magic potion of The Supremes and Marvin Gaye used to fizz.
“If you re-read the first Texas interviews”, Sharleen contests, “you’ll see that I already quoted Diana Ross as a major reference. It’s just that the press forgot most about it as it wasn’t so evident in our music at the time. If I had to go today and live on a deserted island, I could easily take only the whole Tamla Motown collection and be happy till the end of my life. It’s only recent that this influence became present in Texas, and also very visual with “Black Eyed Boy”. I guess I was just too young before, to get into Soul. But don’t exaggerate, don’t say that our new album is completely devoted to the revisited Tamla sound. A song like “The Hush” is very different, it’s a strange cocktail of Roxy Music, The Human League and even Abba. Yes, I know, it sounds funny. It’s uncommon that Rock bands are referring to Abba, but still. I completely re-discovered this band. I’ve been listening to all of the Abba albums, not only the singles, and I truly believe that they were The Beach Boys of the seventies. Their compositions are superb and their production just fabulous. And then these voices! Everybody considered them as just another ridiculous band made for Eurovision contests but they’re becoming a cult-band and I’m the first one to admit it”.
I can hear you thinking : will The Hush be some kind of techno version of “Fernando”? No panic. Influence just accidentally rimes with dependency, especially with Texas.
Avant-première
O.K., maybe it’s time now to cut the crap and finally tell you what The Hush is all about, the more because you’ll all have to wait until May before you can make your own judgement. As we could lay our hands on this precious cd in avant-première, we’ll light your fire and make you understand more of Sharleen’s comments. The party starts, without ambiguity, with three indisputable mega-hits : a question of making Banknote, Mr. Mercury’s cat, purr of joy. “In Our Lifetime” is a distant but frisky cousin of “Say What You Want” and has an intriguing oriental singing, completely magnetising. In “Tell Me The Answer”, Sharleen’s walking down both Marvin Gaye’s and Prince’s path. Finally, “Summer Son” has indeed a lot of Abba to thank for but it’s not really the best song of the album.
Then “Sunday Afternoon” ignites a marvellous sequence, very Tamla, where Texas shows us how to create the magical sound of The Supremes or Temptations and how to decline these “very sixties” accents into a musical language that couldn’t be more contemporary. From there on, Sharleen’s singing becomes very sensual, and, especially on “Move In”, the band abandons itself with a feline suppleness to a music, completely rolling in & out a very insinuating feeling, capturing the best of the whole spirit of Rhythm & Blues inside. Even the violins, a brilliant discovery of Tamla, are reproduced with a captivating modernity. When listening to “When We Are Together”, another potential hit, and “Day After Day”, one of the masterpieces of this album, the comparison with Diana Ross becomes even more striking. Suddenly, all Whitney Houston’s and Janet Jackson’s efforts to become and replace Diana Ross seem to vanish into nothing and we can’t stop wondering how the “black” soul of the divine Diana seems to have nestled itself into the “white” and milky body of a small Scottish woman from the Glasgow suburbs. A curious instrumental, derailed Human League-style, Sheffield In The Dark-period, assures the transition to a third, very different in sound, part of the album. First the monument of the cd, “Saint”, a floating and moving ballad with some quasi-cosmic accents, it’s for the Scots what “With Or Without You” represents for U2. Nothing less. “Girl”, “The Hush” and the last song “The Day Before I Went Away” are complementary to create some kind of an erotic musical fusion between new wave, dance and soul, all in a spirit that couldn’t be more pop, which stays the essential label on this whole album. Through her comments, Sharleen shows us that her preferences go to “Move In”, “Day After Day”, “The Hush” and “Saint”, coincidentally the most elaborated songs that are also drenched into that persuasive and mysterious feeling that flavours this album. Those who were waiting for a quiet remake of “White On Blonde” will be disappointed. The commercial potential of “The Hush” however, seems to be even bigger.
Trip Pop
Sharleen Spiteri’s rather satisfied about her latest album but she’s still cool enough to analyse it : “White On Blonde was an album very influenced by France although the French didn’t really realise it. I was very touched then by a French lifestyle, my head was filled with images of French movies. This album however is very different. But don’t think that we started by assessing the results of “White On Blonde” to make it. We could have chosen our favourite songs from the latter and had them developed, or in order not to copy ourselves, we could have done just the opposite. No such thing. That kind of pre-meditated strategy isn’t like us. First, we forced ourselves to work, and I can tell you that our new album is the result of an obstinate labour, of a real discipline that we imposed upon ourselves. After we sold millions of albums, we could have taken it slowly and watched things coming. In stead, we decided to work every day. Sometimes, nothing really happened. The other day, we had two or three ideas for new songs at the same time. We made a lot of them but, in the end, we withdrew only the songs we personally enjoyed the most. Evidently, it gives the album a very dispersed side, leading it into all kinds of directions. It’s like a voyage into everything we can be. However, it can’t be detrimental to the personality of the band nor to its identification. The albums of The Beatles were also very different from one song to another, but nevertheless, they were always recognisable , even without a directive idea. Above all, we want to have fun. In the end, that’s the most important thing for us. Nowadays, many bands are gloomy, sad, depressing and it seems that they are only capable of accentuating all the negative aspects of the world that surrounds us. Personally, I’m trying hard to look for some fun and pleasure, to be positive. Actually, it’s easier to be negative than positive. Our quest for fun is our way to resist to the cruel world we’re living in today. We also had our dark days, during the Mothers Heaven period. I don’t miss them, oh no! I admit that some may accuse us of being light, that our main goal is making hit-singles, but Texas has always been a “poppy” band and as I love music so much, I owe a lot of my fondest memories to these hit-singles that I played over and over again until they turned grey. The cracking of the old vinyl record at the beginning of the album isn’t some kind of a joke. It’s a real symbol for me. In former times, the pop dimension of Texas wasn’t so visible also because we sounded more like a rock band. But if there’s one thing that has never changed within this band, than it’s our ultra-classic concept of a song, ever since the very beginning. Couplet, refrain, bridge : there’s no mystery, nothing new, it’s the oldest pop recipe but I truly believe that it’s just the perfect form, so why change it?” The very summery sleeve confirms it - Sharleen considers it as a remake of Eric Clapton’s 461, Ocean Boulevard sleeve, the one with the famous palm trees -, the music of The Hush is, before all, a long summer romance. It’s exactly the kind of music we’d like to hear when we’re driving in an open convertible, on a hot and steamy August night by the side of the ocean. “I admit that the music suits the summer well but I don’t consider it as a daytime, too sportive music nor do I consider it as a nightly, too sexual music. It’s the music at twilight, when sensuality is at its strongest, when feelings grow dim”. Sharleen’s stretching out, she’s feeling good. She starts singing and all of a sudden, her voice makes the room less white and empty. Outside, it’s getting dark over a grey London. It’s good to know that there are still musicians who can be happy just by playing their music inside of their heads.
The no of the rose
(About the title of this paragraph : the French title of the movie “The Name of the Rose” is “Le Nom de la Rose”. The word “Nom” has exactly the same pronunciation as the word Non which means No ).
How “poppy” she may be and how sweet her music may sound, Sharleen has a fiery character though, decisive and combative, which allows her to stand tall against the business that surrounds her. For her, there are a certain number of subjects that can’t be discussed. For example, Texas is probably the only -ten years old- band that has never released a live album nor a compilation. Sharleen refuses both, and while she’s smoothing back her hair she suddenly looks more rebellious : “first, we all want our music to be fresh. Being able to produce an album doesn’t happen frequently. Only every two or three years nowadays. You don’t want to spoil such a very rare occasion by doing things we already did before. I’m aware of the fact that some of our old songs, such as “….Lover”, have been modified so thoroughly that we could easily re-release them, or even put them on a live album. But what’s the use of it? There are so many ideas for new songs inside of us and they’re waiting to be recorded…..Releasing a Greatest Hits can be useful when you run out of inspiration, and that goes for a live album too. It’s easy money. But there’s such an abundance of ideas, we make room for new things first”. Same recalcitrant attitude towards the music industry : “Given our way of thinking and who we are, I believe we should be on an independent label. We don’t belong to the in-crowd, jet-set or whatever. And for a long time, with my boy friend more precisely, I’ve been thinking of creating an independent structure in music production, cinema, press. But I also believe that this liberty will become very disappointing because the independent distribution system is very deficient, even indifferent towards artists, so that you can only end up frustrated. In fact, we were very lucky that we grew all along with our label that became major at the same time we got popular. There has always been a perfect balance between the both of us. We’ve got to respect the clauses of the contract of course, but we’ve kept the essential under our control and I always have the power to say no”. And she says it all with a serious face, very determined. Ditto concerning the pressure she sometimes feels, to quit Texas and to start a solo career : “Out of the question. Those who tried to talk me in to it quickly saw from the look on my face that it was wise not to insist. Why should I leave a band in which I feel great, where-else can I find the best friends I’ve ever had in this whole world ? It’s all because of them that I can enjoy the music I’m making. In case I should use my own name, what more could it bring to me ? In fact, I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy myself as much as I do now”.
And so, the industry fabricated a clone impersonated by Nathalie Imbruglia. It rather amuses her : “In the end it’s flattering, also because “Torn” is a good song and that girl is very pretty. To be copied is something you’ve got to accept, there’s no such music coming out of nowhere. Everyone copied somebody, starting with us, isn’t that so ? It’s also true that she’s collecting the awards but you won’t hear me complaining, not after selling four million albums. That’s the law of the business. You just have to let it go. It won’t stop me from having fun”. Having fun. That’s what it’s all about. Above all, that’s what motivates her. It makes Texas’ music so flattering to body and soul. Too many bands forgot how to have fun. At least, there’s still one, fortunately.
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