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Article from One Two Testing, September 1985

how soundtracks changed one star's life


One Two's old friend Clint Surname, now with the revolutionary combo Clint Surname and the Past Participles, has recently shaken the world of popular music to its very foundations with his self-penned concept double-album "A Soundtrack To Life".

A clever songwriter is Clint, and that title is as carefully stolen, sorry, chosen as any of the tightly penned lyrics that grace the two LPs of Soundtrack. For if Clint's influences have ranged wide in the past — from the controversial Nazi strains throughout "Surname Uber Alles" to the drug-crazed psychedelia of "My Head Is In Tomorrow's Train" — then he is now firmly ensconced in the initially odd-sounding world of the film soundtrack lyric.

Memorabilia relating to his new-found favourites clutter Clint's Mitcham, south London, flat, and none more so than that of "Mary Poppins", the early 196Os Walt Disney classic that fused eye opening live-action-in-animated-background techniques with the marvellous acting of Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Full-size blow-ups of actors and characters from the film greet you at every corner of this Aladdin's Cave of a flat, and all the records stacked against the fridge in the kitchen are foreign language versions off "Mary Poppins".

Clint is keen to talk about the influences that have carved his new mark on the ever-developing history of rock and pop. Pouring some coffee into my Dick Van Dyke mug, Clint pauses only to light a cigarette, and then plunges headlong into a deep and revealing description of just how the new songs on "Soundtrack" came about and, most significantly, just how the new influences have shaped his writing. Over to you, Clint.

"Shoes Of Genuine Leather"

"This is like putting the cheapness of man-made plastics and all that into a sort of context, cos I reckon so many people just don't value like good quality stuff no more — which leads well into 'Oklahoma', where I got the line from, it's in that 'Surrey With A Fringe On Top'. Now that is sort of a quality film — which you just don't get no more. I was gonna do like a sort of south-east England rap: the fringe is like the spoils of capitalism and Surrey is where it all goes, you know? But then the shoes hit me — I dunno who threw them — and the whole song just sort of came to me. Gawd knows where they come from, I'm just like a funnel, you know?"

"The Saints And Apostles"

"Well you know that 'Mary Poppins' has probably been like more of an influence on the album than any other film — I've seen it 237 times now. Well, it'll be 238 tonight, as Dave at the Astoria does a special showing every Thursday and I invite a few close friends along, you know, me bank manager, me label manager, me manager, all me managers really, even the cinema manager. An' it's great, this is from the bit where they sing that really sad one 'Feed The Birds Tuppence A Bag', only I've sort of changed it round cos it comes in the, well, anti-religious segment, I s'pose, of 'Soundtrack To Life'. So I take the bit 'All around the cathedral the saints and apostles look down...' and then add my own, er, rejoinder, '...and think that if they were pigeons your heads would be messy'. I s'pose it's designed to turn around your ideas of religious figures and saying, s'pose they were something else — like a pigeon, here — what good would their religion be to them then, you know? And how would it affect other people? Some people have rejected that as shit, but I know what I mean."

"My Special Island"

"Well I 'ave to be a bit careful here cos it's still with the solicitors, but it's basically about my previous label. I was bitter, twisted, felt terrible after they dumped me like that and I hadn't even released anything, and I was on the bus going to the dole Monday morning with 'South Pacific' on the Walkman — it was the Japanese remastered-for-digital version on chrome tape, much crisper — and I'm listening to 'Bali Hi', you know, 'Come to me, come to me, My special island come to me...' and it just struck me then — get it out your system, Clint, do a song about it! Like Graham Parker's 'Mercury Poisoning', you know? So I dashed home, missed signing on, hah, and got it all down, even that bit where I go, 'Go away, I can't stand you, Go away, my special Island...' It's a similar tune, yeah, but I think it's out of copyright. I mean, listen to what the captain did to 'Happy Talk'. Sacrilege. I said to him at the time, I said Captain, I said what's all that about? He just said he had to pay for his Synclavier somehow. Funny bloke."

"Something Quite Atrocious"

"Yeah, 'Mary Poppins' again. What? Oh yeah, ha, ha, ha, I thought so too. Irony, I s'pose, really. Me delicate little arrangement on the album, DX harpsichords and sampled choirs and all that, and that title, ha, ha, ha. But that great song about language, 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius', is just such a biting comment on words and the way people use them. I like identify with that. I admire the craft of the writer in 'Go Fly A Kite', too, where it goes, 'Up through the atmosphere, Up where the air is clear'. That's a sort of political statement, I reckon, like all the shit is gone and I can see what's really happening, you know? But my favourite bit on 'Supercali...' gave me the title for this track from 'Soundtrack To Life', it's where they sing, 'Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious'. Now that's brilliant, cos they're taking the piss out of themselves. And you've got to be able to do that, haven't you?"

"Whip Crack Away"

"Oh I thought you'd pick this track, you being into all that technical stuff too. The sampling here I'm really proud of. First of all we tried it with a real whip, and playing it back it sounded nothing like a whip, it's funny with those Fairchilds sometimes. You have to be a bit clever. So we ended up with an elastic band flicked up against a window — yeah, s'unbelievable, innit? But that sounded just like a whip, specially up the top octave. It's 'Calamity Jane' where I saw the idea — no, ha, not the elastic band, the line for the title — cos there's this woman, Doris, I think, on a stagecoach and she sings this great bit about the Deadwood stage is coming on over the hill, blah, blah, blah, and then she goes, 'Whip crack away, whip crack away, whip crack away!' It scans so well, and the sound of the words is brilliant. I do love to use words sometimes just for like the sound they make, you know? So this worked very well."

"The Vanishing Breed"

"Ah I knew we'd get round to rapping about Dick Van Dyke — my hero. He's just so under-rated. People say that in 'Mary Poppins' his accent was terrible, you know, when he had to do that cockney stuff and him being like American. But I know it was actually intentional: he's really talking that way to show up sort of imperialistic attitudes to the adoption of like culture, and all this class stuff about how you should talk proper. I think it's brilliant. I can't actually remember the song (it's 'Jolly Holiday' — One Two) but this is from the bit where Bert, as Dick Van Dyke's character is called, goes right over the top on the cockney bit, you know, ''Appiness is bloomin' all around ya,' and then the songwriters make Mary Poppins say, 'It's a jolly holiday with you, Bert, gentlemen like you are few.' Now that alone is enough to blow me away, but then Bert says, you can only just hear him, just sort of in the background, he says, 'A vanishing breed'. Ah, I almost came first dozen or so times I heard that. A master."

Clint was clearly tired after revealing so much of his private influences. It was almost as if a small door had been opened into the conscience of one of the country's greatest thinkers and songwriters.

Now it was closed again because Clint had to go ride his bike for a bit. As One Two packed up its tape recorder, notebook and coloured pencils, it thought suddenly of the late great T S Eliot, who once said words to the effect of, "The immature artist plagiarises, the mature artist steals." Deep, Tom, deep.


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Publisher: One Two Testing - IPC Magazines Ltd, Northern & Shell Ltd.

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One Two Testing - Sep 1985

Donated by: Colin Potter

Scanned by: Mike Gorman

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