Last week (10 October) would have - no, should have - been the 65th birthday of Kirsty MacColl, had her life not been robbed prematurely almost a quarter of a century ago.
We will dwell more on that later, but what we tragically lost on that December day in 2000, was a hugely talented, beautiful songwriter, singer, mother - a person it seems from all accounts to have been ballsy and hilarious and thoughtful and fragile. What is undoubtable is that she was adored and respected by her musical peers, yet seemingly criminally underrated by the music press and record company executives, and perhaps never got the level of commercial success those talents deserved.
No Chip Off The Block
Kirsty MacColl was born in 1959, growing up in Croydon with her mother, the choreographer Jean Newlove. With her eventual entry into the world of music, everyone assumed that she must of been a chip off the old block, for her father was something of a legend in the world of folk music. Ewan MacColl, writer of Dirty Old Town, was a Scottish Communist, who also hated pop music (he was one of those who leapt on Dylan when he went electric). By the time Kirsty was on the scene, he was already with American born folk artist Peggy Seeger (half-sister of Pete Seeger) - and the young Kirsty only really saw her father on weekends.
She would wear that relationship with a certain amount of unease over the years. She seemed to veer between being dismissive of him and his musical status and being proud of it all. Her love of classic pop groups like the Beach Boys were at odds with his folk roots, and it was Neil Young's Harvest Moon, rather than her dad, that inspired her to pick up a guitar. He did, however, give her an album of Mexican Mariachi music when she was young, that set off a passion for Latin American music that would last an all too brief lifetime.
Down at the Chip Shop
She featured in the Croydon punk band, the Drug Addix, as a backing vocalist for the one EP they managed for Chiswick Records. When Stiff Records took a look, they weren't impressed very much with the main band, but did like what they saw with MacColl, who was using the name Mandy Doubt at that stage.
They put out her first single, They Don't Know in 1979, and while it got some decent airplay, a strike among distributors meant that the record didn't make it into the shops and it failed to chart. MacColl didn't feel like she was getting the backing from Stiff that she needed and left them, ending up with Polydor in 1981.
They Don't Know (Audio only)
Debut album, Desperate Character, was seen to be a competent record and showing that she had potential, if a little generic and unoriginal. But what it did have was a whip smart single that showcased the kind of wry, stinging lyrics that would become a trademark for Kirsty down the years. There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis gave her a breakthrough hit, reaching number 14 in the UK. It has one of the best killer lines there has ever been in pop music:
"There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis, just like you swore to me that you'd be true. There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis, but he's a liar and I'm not sure about you."
There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop (TV appearance, 1981)
Despite this modicum of success, she was dropped by Polydor and found herself back with Stiff. But while touring in 1981, she started to suffer from stage fright, which it would take years for her to start shaking off. She once remarked that, "why subject yourself to such humiliation?"
Sparkles In The Rain
She was picking up work as a backing vocalist, which was handy for several reasons in the mid-80s.
In 1983, she was hanging out with a bunch of Scottish lads at their hotel in London, where they were staying while recording the follow up album to their big 1982 breakout LP, New Gold Dream. She was enjoying her time with Simple Minds, and bassist Derek Forbes took her under his wing, and she somehow ended up in the studio with them as they worked on Sparkle In The Rain.
Singer Jim Kerr would fondly recall, "She didn't take any.... she was cute as a button and smarter than anyone, and didn't take any bullshit." He also realised she could sing better than most and got her doing vocals on two tracks, Speed Your Love To Me and their cover of Lou Reed's Street Hassle. The producer, Steve Lillywhite, was obviously also impressed with Kirsty - and the two were married the following year.
Simple Minds: Speed Your Love To Me (Official video)
Then, in 1986, Stiff went bankrupt, and no other record company bought out her contract from the receivers. This made life difficult, but luckily having a top record producer for a husband helped her get some more backing vocal work. She would work with the likes of Robert Plant, Johnny Marr, Alison Moyet, Talking Heads and The Wonder Stuff.
Lillywhite was doing some of the mixing for what would turn out to be U2s magnum opus, The Joshua Tree, and MacColl found herself hanging out with those guys too. In fact, Bono credits her quite significantly to the records success, as while they had a bunch of songs they liked, they had no clue what order to put them in. So, it was Kirsty MacColl who went through and sequenced the album in the running order you hear today.
That Christmas Record!
It would be remiss to talk about Kirst MacColl and not at least mention that Christmas tune.
The origins of Fairytale Of New York are disputed, but seem to begin around 1985, with Shane MacGowan saying it was part of a bet by their producer, Elvis Costello, that they could never write a Christmas hit. But whatever the true origin, the tune and the concept were developed by Jem Finer (with suggestions from his wife, that prompted the concept of the couple in conversation).
Versions were made with Pogues bassist Cait O'Riordan doing the female lead, but it didn't seem to quite work. And when she left the band in late 86, there was no longer a female vocalist in the band. As it happened, Steve Lillywhite was in to produce their album If I Should Fall From Grace With God. He took the demo back home for Kirsty to record a guide vocal, but the Pogues were so impressed with her work, they kept it.
MacGowan said, "Kirsty knew exactly the right measure of viciousness and femininity and romance to put into it and she had a very strong character and it came across in a big way." It has of course, gone on to become one of the most played of UK Christmas tunes - it has been released and made the UK Top 20 an incredible twenty times (famously never making number one)!
Fairytale Of New York (Live at the Town & Country, 1988)
Days I'll remember all my life
Despite not having had a record of her own out for a while, when the time finally came (1989) to record the next album, MacColl still managed to line up a few decent musicians to help. It includes collaborations with Johnny Marr and Dave Gilmour, but is perhaps best remembered for her beautiful, slowed down version of The Kinks Days, with the now poignant lyrics, "And though you're gone, you're with me every single day believe me."
The album was going to be called Al Green Was My Valet, a delightful pun on the film How Green Was My Valley, but for some reason her label didn't like that. So instead they went with Kite. This was suggested by Gilmour - it is slang for a cheque, and follows his refusal to be paid for his contribution, instead insisting she send a cheque to the appeal in Armenia following a deadly earthquake in 1988.
Days (Official music video)
Still Life (B-Side of Days - worth sharing as it is a beautiful gem of a tune)
Dave Jennings, writing in Melody Maker, said it was "thoughtful, mature, yet sometimes exhilarating," where MacColl's "carefully layered, deadpan vocals" match the anger in her lyrics (the them of Thatcher's Britain is quite strong).
She also got a bit of a regular tv gig, appearing as the regular musical feature on series three of the French & Saunders Show, where she played songs like 15 Minutes and Still Life
while Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, and often the comedy double act Raw Sex (Rowland Rivron and Simon Brent) goofed around in the background. When people said she looked unhappy doing the show, Kirsty said, "In fact, I was just terrified."
Eclectic Landlady
The title for her 1991 record was also a pun, but this time the title stuck. It was friend and collaborator Johnny Marr who suggested the idea for Electric Landlady, as a slight readjustment / homage of Hendrix's Electric Ladyland. After doing much of the writing legwork on Kite, in part to prove to a still largely sexist music world that she could - she felt that she had less to prove, and so opened up to more co-writing on this album.
My Affair (Official music video)
This may have proved too much for some of the critics though, as many seemed to think that this extra collaboration made things too eclectic - with too much variety of sound and too many guest musicians. She just couldn't win. (What a guest list though - Spider Stacey, Philip Chevron, Jem Finer and Darryl Hunt from The Pogues, Johnny Marr, Mark E Nevin of Fairground Attraction, legendary session bassist Pino Palladino, Guy Pratt from Icehouse and Pink Floyd, Mel Gaynor from Simple Minds and Eliot Randall - who did the famous guitar solo on Steely Dan's Reelin' In The Years).
Regardless of what the critics thought, it delivered another fabulous single in Walking Down Madison (a co-write with Marr), which gave her biggest moment in the US, when it made it as high as number 4 on the Modern Rock Chart. Despite that, it was not commercial enough, and when Virgin were sold to EMI, Kirsty was once again without a label.
Walking Down Madison (Official music video)
The 'Sad Divorce' album
If Electric Landlady was too eclectic for some, the follow up, 1993s Titanic Days was Kirsty's self-confessed 'sad divorce album', reflecting in part on the falling apart decade old marriage to Lillywhite. Released on the ZTT label, as well as her doomed marriage, it also looked at the state of the rest of the world around her, making for often more sombre tones.
Money was tight and so MacColl recorded much of it in her small Ealing home studio, with her loyal band of musicians deferring their payments until she had that deal. As Neil McKay wrote in Sunday Life, the record told "tales of domestic violence and strife, intercut with a neat turn of phrase and sense of humour." Billboard magazine called it, "a brew of pop sense and biting wit at least as satisfying as her previous work."
Angel (Audio only)
1995 saw two singles released somewhat oddly on her last label, Virgin. There was Caroline and then a cover of Lou Reed's Perfect Day that she duetted with chief Lemonhead Evan Dando. There was then a best of LP, Galore, which provided her with her only UK Top10 album. She was also suffering with writer's block and a general frustration with the music business - and was threatening to move to South America and become an English teacher.
Two random treats for you here:
Miss Otis Regrets (with the Irish Guards on Jools Hootenanny, 1995)
Perfect Day (with Evan Dando, audio only)
To the Tropics
Her love of the Caribbean, and especially Cuba, came to the fore across the 1990s. MacColl spent much of that decade travelling through Cuba, Brazil and beyond, becoming fluent in Spanish and Portuguese in the process. That love of Latin music, kindled by that mariachi record her father had given her decades earlier, had blossomed into a full grown love of the music and culture of the region.
In These Shoes? (Groovy live version on Later with Jools)
This manifested itself with the album Tropical Brainstorm, a record packed full of that Caribbean influence, which bought her both renewed critical acclaim and some measure of success. Caroline Sullivan wrote in The Guardian that "The vivid colours of her new musical palette with its up front brass and percussion, provide life to her tunes hitherto lacked - even her deadpan voice has blossomed into expressiveness."
England 2 Columbia 0 (Live version on Later - another example of her phenomenal wit)
She was careful though to note the Cuban influences, rather than trying to actually be like a Cuban musician. "First of all cos I'm not Celia Cruz [popular Cuban singer] and a lot of people like my music mostly because of the lyrics. I didn't want to try and fail at being the Buena Vista Social Club. I wanted to succeed at being Kirsty MacColl." She added that, "I didn't want to make anther melancholy record. That would have been grim. Instead, I started to do some of the things I'd wanted to do since forever."
Tragedy
In November 2000, MacColl was in Cuba again, recording a programme on local music for BBC Radio. She then set off on a holiday to Cozumel in Mexico, with her boyfriend James Knight (the sax player from her band) and her two sons.
On 18 December, the family were diving at the Chankanaab Reef (situated in a National Marine Park), an area where watercraft were restricted. When the group came up to the surface, a speeding powerboat entered the no-boat zone - MacColl saw the danger before her two sons and managed to push fifteen year old Jamie out of the way (her other son was not in its path). While he sustained some minor injuries, Kirsty stood no chance - she died instantly, doing what any parent would do.....
The boat was owned by Carlos Gonzalez Nova, owner of Mexican hypermarket chain Comerical Mexicana. One of his employees, José Cen Yam stepped forward and admitted to be the driver at the time of the accident. However, several eyewitnesses said that it wasn't him behind the wheel, but rather Carlos's brother Guillermo (the company CEO). It was also apparent that the boat was travelling much faster than the one knot that was stated to police.
The consensus seems to be that Yam was paid by the family to take the blame, although in the end he only had to pay a paltry 1.034 peso (about £60 at the time) to avoid prison, and a pittance of $2,150 to MacColl's family in restitution (which the Nova's will have paid for him anyway).
The Justice for Kirsty campaign was established to try and get the truth out, but there was a distinct lack of co-operation from the Mexican government. In 2006, Emilio Cortes Ramirez, a Federal Prosecutor, was found liable for breach of authority in the way he had handled the case. When U2 played a show in Monterrey, Bono spoke publicly about the situation and the government now said they would take action.
When Carlos Nova died in 2009, the campaign was shut down, with them saying that they could achieve no more. The remaining campaign funds were split between two charities that would have been close to Kirsty's heart; Casa Alianza Mexico (a non-profit shelter for the homeless) and Cuba Music Solidarity (a campaign to end foreign intervention in Cuba).
The Bench
In 2001, a bench was placed in London's Soho Square, the setting for one of her best known songs, complete with a plaque of the lyric - "One day I'll be waiting there, no empty bench in Soho Square." It is a place where friends and fans often meet up, especially on her birthday, to celebrate her life and legacy.
The fact that she was so loved by her peers says a lot about the person, and while she never had the level of success her talents deserved, it is nice to know that many people still think about her life and music.
Soho Square (Audio only)
Bono called her "the Noel Coward of her generation" for her sparkling wit. "I just remember her humour really, She was really funny."
David Byrne waxed lyrical about her talent, paying her a huge double complement, "She has the wit of Ray Davies and harmonies of the Beach Boys."
David Belcher of The Herald newspaper, compared her career to her most famous moment, working with The Pogues on Fairytale. "At their best, MacColl's lyrics were similarly witty, fresh, direct and colloquial.... their meaning was often in earnest and melancholy counterpoint to the upbeat nature of the tune."
Jim Kerr remembered her ballsy attitude with fondness; "She didn't take any.... She was cute as a button and smarter than anyone, and didn't take any bullshit."
But we'll leave the final summing up of her talents to her long time friend and collaborator, Billy Bragg. "As a singer, she was a one woman all-girl vocal group, and in a previous era would have made a tidy living writing songs for Phil Spector's stable of artists."
Never forgotten.
We leave you with the song she 'borrowed' from Billy Bragg - and even persuaded him to write more verses, as she thought it wasn't long enough. He knew, as soon as she had recorded it, that her version was the superior one - in fact, it is one of the most perfect pop songs of the 1980s.
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