My Sister’s Records

Originally published January 2007

I could never understand why teenybopper girls like my sister screamed their knickers off over The Bay City Rollers, far as I could see they looked like a right bunch of twerps and made dreadful records. But David Essex I could understand because not only was he a very handsome chap – and I say that completely secure in my heterosexuality – but he also made some terrific music that even 12-year-old me thought was rather good. His records were far better than they needed to be, he could have made a mint and a whole career out of “Gonna Make You A Star” clones but he and his producer Jeff Wayne was far more ambitious than that. Along with Mickie Most’s production work for Hot Chocolate, Wayne made some of the weirdest-sounding, most inventive pop of the 70s using all sorts of strange arrangements and studio effects like on the spacey sound of “Rock On”.

His 1975 album All The Fun of The Fair was the only one his my sister owned but I think she picked a winner. Like most of his oeuvre it’s a schizophrenic affair, divided between sweet ear-candy like “Hold Me Close” and “If I Could” (that one really made the girls melt) and darker matter like the subterranean “Circles” and the grand title track. This wouldn’t sound out of place among the lurid theatricality of Aladdin Sane with Essex playing a cracked actor fairground barker, rolling his tongue with relish around lines like “Rrrrrroll on up, see the main attrrrract-shunnn” and leaning heavily on his Cockney like Bowie at his most Anthony Newley-ish. It gets increasingly deranged over its 6:40-minute length, Chris Spedding’s guitar fractures like broken glass and the track crashes in an ear-splitting pile before fading out into some maniacal, robot-clown laughter that must have made all the Mums who bought the album for “Hold Me Close” drop their copies of Woman’s Realm in shock.

Julie Burchill once said that the musical tastes of teenage girls have never been taken seriously by rock critics and I wonder what Essex’s cred was at the time, whether he was given his due by the grand poobahs at the NME and Melody Maker or simply ignored as teen fodder with pretty blue eyes. What would you rather have? An ugly face and critical adulation or good looks and hordes of young girls throwing their knickers at you? Decisions, decisions…

Download: All The Fun Of The Fair – David Essex (mp3)