MYTHS, MELODIES & METAPHYSICS: - Prefab Sprout

"Armenian Santa Clause outfit" in the Cars and Girls video. McAloon reflects, "We
thought we were going dead classy and dead cool. So it just goes to show you can be too
clever and you can think yourself out of the game."
The band was becoming a lot more aware of their appearance. "In the past we'd all wear
the clothes we'd like to wear," says Wendy Smith. "In the boys' case that tended to be
leather jackets and in my case it was girlie dresses, which was a mistake. When you're the
only girl in the band and you're not playing an instrument, you don't want to stick out
like a sore thumb."
McAloon was at a stage in his relationship with CBS where he was becoming more
compromising with regard to maintaining an image for the period of a record, but
comments, "It's just that if you're away for a while you tend to go through a lot of changes
and you don't think anything of it. I thought nothing of this whole beard business or my
long hair - I had very long hair simply because I was only writing and my hair grew - but
as soon as the record is out and you're among other artistes it looks like you're playing a
game. Personally I don't want to be pinned down. That's quite true, I feel we'd be dead if
you got your Prefab Sprout record and knew exactly what you were going to get all the
way along the line, I would be disappointed. I try and keep all aspects of it fresh."
An equally-as-bright video of the next single, The King of Rock 'n' Roll made for wider
and more commercial appeal, now drawing in the under-16 age group with its catchy
"Hot Dog, Jumping Frog, Albuquerque" chorus and accompanying frog waiter and
dancing hot dogs beside the King of
Rock 'n' Roll's swimming pool. The single made for their biggest selling single to date,
reaching No. 7 in Britain and top 10 status all over Europe. This both pleased and
concerned McAloon.
On the one hand, the song was never meant to be a serious one. He dreamed up the
idea while travelling on a bus and it was written in a matter of minutes, as a 'laugh'. He
was almost too embarrassed for people to hear it originally, yet he toyed with the idea of
sending it to David Bowie just for the cheek of it. Paul McCartney commented that
McAloon had found his My Ding-A-Ling like Chuck Berry, suggesting that the public and
the press would in future immediately mentally hook onto the song's chorus when they
heard the band's name mentioned.
On the other hand, McAloon receives no consolation from the fact that so many people
say, "You're an albums band." Singles mean so much to him just through being a fan
because that's how he, like so many others, got into records. After all, he does want to sell
as many records as he can at the end of the day.
The single was welcomed as Single of the Week by Sounds and earned a muchbegrudged
admission by an NME reviewer that they actually liked the band, despite
Wendy's voice on the record suggesting it sounded a "bit like she has a pencil stuck up her
bum."
The Elvis-tinted slogan "50,000,000 fans can't be wrong" was used in CBS's campaign for
the single and limited boxed trivia games were given with initial copies of the singles,
heralding a start to a run of promotional gifts mainly designed to drum up the attention of
the music business more than the public themselves, followed by the Hey Manhattan!
snow-dome, featured in Music Week in July, plugging the release of the follow-up single.