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IanB wrote: Hunter T Wolfe wrote: Really good, fast-paced and evocative writing, and the first article mirrors quite closely the narrative of my own belated discovery of Cope and the Teardrops leading quickly to obsession.
A question though for those who were on board earlier. The received wisdom- repeated in the blog entry for Cope solo- is that the Teardrop Explodes were resolutely a teeny-pop act in the Duran Duran / Whsm mould and that this was still Cope's audience when Fried was released, but the turtle cover was so shocking and scandalous to this market that it completely ruined his pop career.
Really? Was that how it was? I know the Teardrops were in Smash Hits, but they seem to me like they were always mainly a credible post-punk act who happened to have a couple of hits- closer to the Bunnymen or the Smiths than Duran, and with an older discerning fanbase.
This being the case, and given it was his 2nd solo album after the already far murkier and more psychedelic Wilder and World Shut Your Mouth already, how shocking was the Fried cover on release? Was it really seen as career suicide? It always seems to me a classic memorable LP sleeve- quirky and original and suiting the fragile music within, but not shocking or abject or this guy's completely lost it. But is that really how it was seen at the time?
Sorry, off topic a bit but it got me wondering.
As I remember it the Bunnymen were the serious all-male-all-the-time cheek-suckingly serious rock band trying for album oriented NME / Sounds credibility a la Joy Division. Teardrops meanwhile were in a slightly different tradition whose prime directive was to have extravagant, quality pop hits. That, in a way, made TTE a more modern band than the Bunnymen at that time. Modern in that they could easily be accommodated beside Altered Images, ABC, Linx etc and would be viewed postively by those with the kind of willful obtuseness of taste that made Dollar credible for a short while. The Associates were not that kind of band when they were on Polydor and during the Fourth Drawer Down period but certainly were during Sulk and Perhaps.
I think the people (including critics) who had got on board with Treason and Reward were already alienated well before Fried as Passionate Friend was the last gasp of TTE doing that kind of pure pop.
Fried didn't surprise me really as he was already established as something of a shop soiled pop star in the Syd / Roky tradition. It was also a convenient escape route from a string of stiffed singles. Also I don't think TTE were ever a good enough band in terms of the noise they made to make an album that would stand the test. High intentions and all that but it seemed like they had a really limited skill set. The writing was demanding something more complex than was within their collectively gift to actually deliver.
Agreed. From what I remember the mass alienation of early fans started a long time before "Fried". Hard to believe as it may seem now, neither "Wilder" nor "World Shut Your Mouth" sold especially well or received much critical acclaim at the time - there was a particularly scathing review of the latter by Barney Hoskyns in NME, who pretty much declared that JC was creatively bankrupt and that he'd been outgunned by Echo and the Bunnymen (really...!). I can remember reading similar reviews of "Wilder" that were already declaring that album an act of commercial suicide, and compared to "Kilimanjaro" it bombed commercially, so I don't think that many people were left to be shocked by the "Fried" sleeve Meanwhile the diehards that WERE still listening would have most likely have been open-minded enough to accept the non-commercial drift of JC's muse at that point.
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