Martin McAloon
credit: Peter Freeth
In his time with Prefab Sprout, the acclaimed British pop/rock band from the 1980s, bassist Martin McAloon never sang — the vocals in the group were primarily handled by Paddy McAloon (Martin’s brother) and Wendy Smith. But he will tell you that he knows the Prefab songs very well because he’s performed them throughout the band’s career. So the idea of McAloon now playing the material as a solo artist on stage with just his voice and guitar doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary.
“I was asked to do something on a Facebook group in the middle of the pandemic, where I played some songs,” McAloon recently recalls. “I didn’t know that I could play the guitar. I didn’t know that I could sing. But I did that and I quite enjoyed it…So I figured I’d be daft not to spend more time playing these songs.”
This October, McAloon will be playing dates in the U.K. for his Two Wheels Good tour to commemorate Prefab Sprout’s 1985 classic album Steve McQueen. He will perform that record in its entirety as well as other songs from the esteemed group’s catalog.
“All the singles and things like that,” he says about the upcoming tour. “And some things from B-sides that turn up. A few people have had demo requests. I don’t know how they’ve heard them, but they’ve got their hands on things. I’m thinking, ‘Oh God, how do I go about doing that?’ But it’s just good fun.”
Throughout the history of Prefab Sprout, which formed in 1977, Martin’s brother Paddy had been the focal point of the group by his voice and songwriting. According to Martin, Paddy first found out about what his previously non-singing brother was planning to do from an email sent by a friend (“But you can’t sing,’” Martin remembers of his conversation with Paddy). But Paddy has since become supportive. Says Martin: “He wishes me luck, and he does say, ‘How’s it going out there?’ He wants to know where I’m playing.’ He does think it’s great. So he’s thrilled by it.
“At the same time, I do remember it being nerve-wracking [being on stage at first],” he continues. “But it’s been good. I’m getting the confidence of playing in front of people, and I no longer worry about my voice.”
1986: British pop rock group Prefab Sprout members: Paddy McAloon, Martin McAloon, Wendy Smith, Neil … More
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Steve McQueen, which turned 40 last month, has since become Prefab Sprout’s signature work: a collection of dazzling and exquisitely crafted sophisti-pop and jazz pop that draws from Tin Pan Alley, American soul music and Steely Dan. The quartet’s popular lineup was more than the sum of its parts: Paddy McAloon’s cryptic and clever lyrics; Wendy Smith’s lush and angelic voice (arguably the secret weapon of the group); and the tight rhythm section of Martin McAloon and drummer Neil Conti. That album was the follow-up to the County Durham group’s 1984 debut Swoon.
“Swoon was kind of a collection of songs that were probably more recent,” McAloon explains. “The first three or four songs on Steve McQueen were all dated back to ’76 – ’79. A lot of those songs — “Faron Young,” “Johnny Johnny” and “Bonnie” were from that era. They’d been the staple songs of our live performance when we were doing our early gigs. So when it came to doing an album, we thought, ‘What if we never get another chance to do an album? We don’t want to waste our time doing these songs that are old. Let’s do the new, interesting stuff.’ So when we went into Swoon, it was all kind of the recent stuff that Paddy had been writing. It was very, very fresh to us.”
Thomas Dolby, the innovative electronic musician best known for the 1982 hit “She Blinded Me Science,” produced and played keyboards on Steve McQueen; he would go on to produce Prefab Sprout’s latter albums. During an interview with Forbes last year, Dolby recalled his introduction to the band. “I was a guest on BBC Radio one day reviewing new singles, and most of the singles I hated,” he said. “This one [from Prefab] started up and I just loved it from the first opening salvo, sort of mad harmonica. And I said very nice things about the band,
“They happened to be listening. So they contacted me and asked if I was up for producing. I took a train up to County Durham, and I sat in Paddy McAloon’s tiny bedroom while he played me about 40 or 50 songs on the acoustic guitar that he’d accumulated over the last 5-10 years. I picked out my favorites, and we went into the studio and recorded them. There was something very magical about that Steve McQueen album.”
“I knew his background,” Martin McAloon says of Dolby. “He’d worked on punk records, but I also knew he’d worked with Foreigner and the producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange. He was always talking in an interesting way about lots of things. When Paddy was singing his vocal lines, Thomas was very good at taking the best elements from each delivery of a line, not just the notation, not just the phrasing, but also the meaning. And he had a great sense of not just rhythm, but of being laid back on certain songs. Neil Conti, our drummer, was great at playing at the back end of the beat. I was always ahead of the beat. I was more of a punk, and Neil was more of a soul guy.”
From the chugging “Faron Young,” through the elegant “Hallelujah” and “Moving the River,” and to the exuberant finale “When the Angels,” Steve McQueen is filler-free pop at its finest. Asked about whether the album had a thematic concept, McAloon says it was a collection of tracks that Dolby felt he could work on. “There were certain songs that Paddy had brought which were new, things like “Appetite” and “When the Angels.” He’d written those on keyboards. So there was a certain element of he’d set up a sequencer himself on his JX-3P [synthesizer]. And he had a sequence running and he worked those things. I think the thematic thing was after the event.”
Several singles were released from Steve McQueen, including the beloved and magical “When Love Breaks Down,” which first came out in 1984 and was then re-released the following year. “It was the first track recorded,” McAloon says. It wasn’t recorded by Thomas [but] by another guy Phil Thornalley. It was recorded at Mickie Most’s studio in London. That would have been in the late summer/early autumn of ’84. When we went to make Steve McQueen, “When Love Breaks Down” was kind of the elephant in the room, ‘Oh, at some point, we’re going to have to do that. Let’s just get on with these.’
“It was just a day or two after my birthday, which was the 4th of January [in 1985]. We finished the record. We got home, and then the question came up, ‘What about “When Love Breaks Down”? And it was kind of, “Oh, okay. So we went back into the studio at the end of January for a day or two. We did a remixed version of it. Thomas wanted to redo Paddy’s vocal because he wanted it to fit more in with the style of the vocal on the album. So that’s the only real change.”
With its addictive chorus and jazzy atmospherics, the brilliant “Appetite” should have been Prefab’s breakout hit in America. ““Appetite,” yeah, it’s a great one,” McAloon says. “I really like that. I remember the bass being particularly syncopated. I like it because it grooves and its great lyrics and good chords. I do like playing it live.”
Another standout song from Steve McQueen, “Goodbye Lucille #1,” was released as a single under the title “Johnny Johnny.” “I can’t remember whether it was on all of the songs or just on “Johnny Johnny” — Paddy’s guitar was having an earthing problem. So there was a buzz every time you touched it. At one point, I think I had a bit of wire tied to the tuning fork, which I held to the earth whilst he played it. It was just the only way that you could cancel out the hum from it. So I remember that. And I remember him going for the vocal screech.”
Steve McQueen was released in the U.K. in June 1985. In the U.S., it was issued under a different name, Two Wheels Good, due to potential legal difficulties with the late American actor’s estate.
“CBS [our American label], I think, were worried that there would be a writ of some description if it came out in the States as Steve McQueen,” McAloon says. “We were recording a doing a live TV show somewhere in Carlisle and we got a message from our manager saying they need a new title for America. I think I said, ‘Two wheels good, four wheels bad.’ And Paddy went, ‘Two wheels good.’ And that was it.
“I was in touch with Steve McQueen’s widow many years later. She’d been involved in a photography book. And I knew the publishers, and I got in touch, and she was very lovely. There wasn’t a threat or anything like that. It was a precaution. We just changed the name to not have that worry over our heads.”
McAloon says he never really thought of Steve McQueen as the potential breakthrough album around the time of its release “I was still caught up in why Steve McQueen hasn’t sold as many as Thriller. I’m sure every band that releases a record goes, ‘Well, if Michael Jackson can sell 50 million, why can’t we?’ Or perhaps it’s just my ego. I knew it was good, but I don’t even know whether it did break through for us. Revisionists might think it broke through more than we did. I like that I did it. I’m very proud of that.”
Prefab Sprout continued to release subsequent albums after Steve McQueen, including From Langley Park to Memphis, Jordan: The Comeback and Andromeda Heights (Compared to the U.K., commercial success had always eluded the group in the U.S., a territory where they never toured). Their last studio record was 2013’s Crimson/Red, and Paddy McAloon has been dealing with health issues over the years, particularly with his vision and hearing.
Martin McAloon.
credit; Feliks Culpa
“I don’t think I’m carrying the torch for the band,” Martin says in response about promoting Prefab’s legacy by playing live. “But it is absolutely astonishing when you feel the love coming back from the audience. You see grown men and women in tears, and they come at the end of the night and tell you, ‘That one meant the world to me.’ And everybody’s got a song that means the world to them. It’s heartwarming, heartbreaking sometimes. It’s absolutely astonishing the effect that those songs have. And I can’t get enough of it.”
Martin McAloon’s Two Wheels Good tour in the U.K. begins on Oct. 17. For information, click here.
