MYTHS, MELODIES & METAPHYSICS: - Prefab Sprout

Recommendations

Info

This book is a "Story Written Out Of Necessity"; an account of Paddy McAloon's <strong>Prefab</strong> <strong>Sprout</strong>; of their rise to success, McAloon's songwriting dissected, of their early days with Kitchenware Records and of the band's shifts in musical styles. It is not intended to set out or reveal McAloon's personal life. That would (in his words) "kill the mystery" completely. Hopefully it has been written along a parallel following this train of thought, from his days at school up to 1997. Humble Beginnings Paddy McAloon was born on Saturday 7th June 1957, and lived with his brothers and parents in the middle of a mining region in a small village called Consett, on the high grounds of County Durham, where the attitude of the people is very hard and where there's not much space given for things like poetry or artistic ambition. At the tender and impressionable age of eleven, young Patrick Joseph McAloon went to a nearby Catholic Seminary called Ushaw College in Durham. The College's Patron Saint is Saint Cuthbert, who left a lasting impression of his presence and Catholicism in the area. He was a missionary and for a time was a hermit on the Farne Isles. He died after being honoured as Bishop of Lindesfarne, itself a strong centre of cultural significance. Stories of miracles taking place at his tomb made him a leading figure of Christianity in the north. Paddy started school there in the year in which they first took in lay students, between 1968 and 1975. So unlike a lot of children who attended, he didn't necessarily go with the intention of training to be a priest. They taught the normal secondary education curriculum. Liking the idea of staying away from home, he opted to board there, having fallen in love with the romantic 'tuck-box'-imagery of the Billy Bunter comic strips, long before it was considered that the age of eleven could be considered as too young to board. Paddy was relieved to find that the boys were not all pious and that they knew dirty jokes and played football. In fact Paddy proved to be so bad in the music class that he was always chucked out to read football books with those that couldn't sing. McAloon reflects on how some people view him today in comparison with his schooldays, "People imagine me to be sensitive, but I'm definitely not a fey character, I'm much cruder than that, I'm afraid. And no, no, I wasn't ever introverted. Quite the opposite. I was a loudmouth, a show-off, until I was at least sixteen. I remember actually sickening myself by talking too much." He admits that he had "quite a strange time" at school but it was one that he enjoyed, having learned to play the guitar under the helpful guidance of the many priests who could play and to write songs there. He felt the urge to create his own songs in the first year at school after struggling home from a much-disliked cross-country run. He stumbled into school and Glen Campbell's voice on a radio singing Jimmy Webb's lyric, "I need you more than want you and I want you for all time."
Musically, McAloon was growing up in a post-punk time where rebellion was being replaced by liberation and in shocking people. Bolan, Bowie, Gary Glitter and Glam Rock all help 'camp' eccentricities. Though he admired Bolan and Bowie back then, McAloon didn't so much want to copy their 'look' (although he admits to cutting out magazine pictures of Bolan and sticking them onto his guitar); he was more attracted by their overall sound, their ability to write their own songs and in their commitment to doing what they wanted to do. McAloon fell in love with Ride a White Swan, Get It On, Young Americans and Station to Station. He was a frail-framed child, suffering with bronchial problems and being forced to wear national health glasses due to poor eyesight. As a ‘mature’ student there, he held a 'romantic' notion that he would maybe like to become a priest himself, but among other considerations decided that it is maybe one of the loneliest and hardest jobs and opted out. He always had the feeling of being misunderstood by all other than his parents. The fact that he was to go on to be a 'student' was intriguing to many in the village he lived in, as they were all from mining families and labour-dictated livelihoods. His father viewed the world from both sides of the fence, however, having had both manual and intellectual employment. As a result, he never pushed his sons into doing what he would prefer them to do, although he would always put his views forward with clarity. His father taught there for a spell and his Uncle studied there as a child, making it well known to the family. However, Paddy admits to being a slow student, taking seat in the middle of the class in the hope of avoiding questioning teachers. He liked English, and that was about it. Mathematics was a bad subject for Paddy. Although he quite enjoyed the lessons, he was never too good at it, which proved embarrassing as his father taught the subject at school. He was glad to get out of school for this reason. His parents suggested that after A-levels, he should look for greater things, taking the best of opportunities on offer to do something a bit more interesting. The chord that made him want to pick up a guitar was the suspended 4th at the start of Pinball Wizard. This led to playing "old folkie stuff – corny stuff" and then towards an attempt to emulate his pop idols of the time. McAloon says of his influences, "When I was a kid The Beatles and Marc Bolan had given me a great desire of forming a group. When I was thirteen years old I admired so much the incredibly cool attitude of Bolan. The Beatles affected me greatly but I never had any records by them on account of my parents being too old and me being too young to buy them." McAloon learned to play the guitar with just one chord, trying to mimic his heroes, but soon after developing a great desire to write his own songs because they did. He started with some bizarre influences, at one stage he found himself trying to sing like Marc Bolan. Both parents were musical, playing by ear and enjoying the old songwriters such as Cole Porter and George Gershwin. He himself picked up the guitar quickly, playing covers of old classics such as The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby and Bowie's All the Young Dudes, taking deep bows at the end of Wednesday night performances inside old people's homes and other Catholic coffee-time entertainment his mother had laid on and which he so readily provided. At the age of twelve, he started slipping in the odd McAloon composition, testing for reaction and developing his skills in songwriting.
Page 1: Foreword MYTHS, MELODIES & METAPHYS
Page 5 and 6: the new family home in Witton Gilbe
Page 7 and 8: The 'Sprouts', as they were becomin
Page 9 and 10: Goldberg and Hobson has known Armst
Page 11 and 12: A typical demo back then would see
Page 13 and 14: Newcastle adult comic VIZ held a sp
Page 15 and 16: or hold them up as ideals. As a con
Page 17 and 18: You're charmed by that and you get
Page 19 and 20: with the same basic arrangements as
Page 21 and 22: dropped the car but used the bike f
Page 23 and 24: McAloon was fascinated by Caulfield
Page 25 and 26: From Tiffanys to Acapulco Rolf's Th
Page 27 and 28: found that out when he found that t
Page 29 and 30: During the recording of the song, P
Page 31 and 32: Spitting Image puppet of Michael Ja
Page 33 and 34: Paddy and Wendy aptly visited Calif
Page 35 and 36: est songs, if I can say that, is 'T
Page 37 and 38: heard a record, I had no curiosity
Page 39 and 40: about the myths they create, whethe
Page 41 and 42: wanted to look at a group of contra
Page 43 and 44: centre to build a recording studio)
Page 45 and 46: confidently meet the challenge of t
Page 47 and 48: Church, where he began singing, see
Page 49 and 50: McAloon loved Webb's compositions,
Page 51 and 52: person's point of view. You can cho
Page 53 and 54:
In July, the second single, If You
show all

MYTHS, MELODIES & METAPHYSICS: - Prefab Sprout

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?