Fifty Greatest Misses

50 of my songs and stories written during and about my 50+ years living, so far...

Disclaimer... The artist (me) wishes to excuse some of the following... the crackle, cackle, buzz and pop, lazy lyrics and piquant pitching, bitching, scandal and slander. Any similarity to anyone alive or dead is occasionally unintentional.

38. Coming To Get You (Elephant Song)

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Suzanne Rhatigan

38. Coming To Get You (Elephant Song)

Tonight was perfection. Everything slotted effortlessly into place. A lock through a bolt a foot in a sock a spontaneous symbiotic moment in time. And yet… I’d planned it all my life…

Do things just happen or do we make things happen?

Coming to get you 1983 Photographer Gerry Boyd

For years I’ve tried to make things happen with my music: I’ve hung out, I’ve schmoozed I’ve stuck my neck out, sucked my stomach in, played the game! In the mid eighties when I moved to London age 21 I was totally fearless, armed with my demo tape I literally banged on doors. I was like a hunter, ready to seize my moment at every opportunity. I would turn up at recording studios and eye up my prey…

The Receptionist. The most important person in the building. I’d ask her to listen to my demo. I knew even then how important the follow up is and it held no fear for me. I would call by regularly, hopefully during a quiet moment, get to chatting, leave another demo, eventually the phone would ring. I was in. Some of my most lucrative jobs as a session singer came directly through my relationship with the studio receptionist…

It’s simple really, in this business you need an advocate, that person who says to the others… ‘you should listen to this’. It’s very hard to be heard above the clamour of ‘wanna be’ when it’s just you saying you’re great… I’ve been very fortunate at times in my career to have just such people on my side. Many doors opened, many opportunities gifted. Yet as you might expect, plenty of opportunities missed due to bad luck or bad judgement!

Most of the connections I’ve made through the years have been engineered to one degree or another; a favour pulled for a chance to be seen or heard, a good support slot, a demo passed along etc etc. But by the mid nineties having done all the big record deal, big flop stuff with Imago, I was starting to feel like I was running out of second chances. It was getting harder to connect to new people who could respond to the music without knowing the history! Putting in those follow up calls was getting harder and harder too, but with the Late Developer album we really believed we had something special. There was nothing for it, we would have to go hunting or at least make the follow up call!

Case Study….

Coming To Get You 1999 Photographer Gina Birch

Late Developer had been released in early ’96 on Org Records and despite an initial buzz around the record by summer it started to fall away. We lacked resources for the kind of promotion and support we really needed. We needed an advocate, a manager. I remember John and I sitting in my flat trying to figure a way forward… lets think of one manager we would really love to have. We thought of bands at the top of their game and one immediately sprung to mind. Radiohead. So we decided to approach Chris Hufford and Bryce Edge of Courtyard Productions who looked after Radiohead and Supergrass at the time, aim high eh! We popped a copy of the album in the post.

That was as far as it went and like so many demos and flyers we had sent around previously we might never have followed up. However this was part of our strategy. We decided, that fateful Monday, that unlike all those other occasions, this time we would follow up. So a week later we sat together and I made the call.

Much to my surprise Chris answered the phone. I nervously explained who I was. “Sorry to hassle you”, I said “but I just want to know if you got the CD we sent? The bands name is Rhatigan, the album is Late Developer.” I said nothing else. There was a brief silence and he said “yes, I think I saw that lying around here somewhere”. “Good” I said, “that’s all I wanted to know. I hope you get a chance to listen to it, I won’t be calling back. Thanks, bye.” I hung up. I don’t think I threw up at that point but it was damn close. We switched off the phone and got on with recording or something when an hour or so later the answerphone clicked in and we heard Chris leaving a message. Following my bizarre phone call, they decided to dig out the album and put it on and yep, they liked it. They liked it a lot actually.

Things moved along quite smartly, we met up, they came to a few gigs, gave us time in their studio to demo some new material. Everything was going swimmingly. They talked about signing us to their production company and releasing us through Parlaphone just one last piece of the puzzle, we were to set up a gig, to which they would bring the relevant players and bish bosh bang… Deal!

Now ‘Rhatigan’ was ready for this, buoyed in our confidence with our new found advocates and having gigged regularly and practiced our asses off, we were tight as the proverbial knot… so when an opportunity to step into a cancellation slot at the Monarch in Camden came up, we didn’t hesitate to grab it. We rustled up an audience at short notice and a couple of days later our game changing gig was upon us.

That morning I awoke excited and confident until I noticed a soreness on the side of my nose, a pimple but not a pimple, nothing a bit of make up wouldn’t cover. I headed off for a swim. I was determined today was going to be perfect. By midmorning the pimple was more like an open sore and a bit, weepy, I was starting to feel a wee bit anxious….

When you look back over events and the way things pan out you see more clearly the opportunities you had along the way to alter the course you were on, but of course you don’t see those opportunities at the time. So when Bryce called me that afternoon with the guest list and asked me how I was, I jokingly described my disintegrating nose, to which he immediately suggested canceling and I said…“Cancel, that’s a bit extreme. Nah we’ll go for it, a bit more makeup it’ll be grand”.

By five o clock the seeping sore had spread in a crescent shape around my right nostril and formed a thick scab. Despite my efforts with makeup the best look I could achieve was a bulbous crusty protrusion a blind man on a galloping horse couldn’t miss. My nerves were gone. My judgement was clearly impaired. I decided, in my hysterical state, that the best option was to surgically remove the scab with my trusty Stanley knife, then quickly douse the open wound with powder and slap some makeup on, which I did, ignoring the searing pain, so determined I was, to make this gig work. But even before I left the house 10 minutes later the prosthetic had slid off and new yellow and green septic puss was crystallizing around my nose, growing exponentially! So, ever the pro, I brought the blade with me and performed the procedure again in the toilets at the pub minutes before I went on stage…

No matter how well prepared you are, shit just happens.

Despite my best efforts to ensure the best possible outcome for this make or break performance, self mutilation being just one, I had also, last minute, decided to change the strings on my guitar, to try and at least reduce the chance of string breakage, a regular occurrence due to the ferocity with which I assaulted the guitar. In fact we were constantly beset by technical mishaps at gigs and I wanted to do the best I could to avoid the gremlins tonight. However, I hadn’t allowed enough time for the new strings to settle…

I’m on stage, I’m not feeling great, there’s no turning back. I peek out from behind my hair, long enough back then thankfully, to partially cover the horrific car crash that is my nose, and I can see the room filling. Some familiar faces near the front and the silhouette of industry turn out shuffling around the other half of the room eying each other up. The tension is palpable there’s a lot at stake…

It’s the moment of truth, nerves shattered, festering sore to the fore, I launch myself at the opening chords of the 1^st song… but far from the solid confident guitar intro we had rehearsed endlessly, a discordant clang, rings around the room. I look and sound like a demented zombie as I grapple to get my guitar in tune, half blinded by my hair, which by now is stuck to the septic oozing on my nose. John and Bryn play on heroically as I randomly squawk and screech my way through the first 2 tunes. It’s all over the place, a complete mess.

Our loyal rent a crowd cheer furiously, urging us on, their enthusiasm simply not commensurate with the appalling shambles they’re listening to. Then half way through the 3^rd song something clicks… Fuck it… The rest of the set we’re on fire, but it’s too late. In that same moment I see the back of the room dissolve. The guest list has heard enough. They don’t wait for the moment when the challenger gets up from the floor and wins the championship fight with a knockout blow. It’s over. Our one shot… in the foot.

I’d like to comfort you and myself by telling you that particular debacle was a one off in my show case/gig history, but alas it’s not, there were more, many more, not quite so gruesome perhaps, but none the less disastrous! I won’t lie and tell you I bounced back from those setbacks even more determined and thick skinned. No. But, bounce back we did. We were bowed but not broken on that occasion for sure, but much more music was to come from Rhatigan as the band changed and expanded over the following few years. Fact is in life sometimes, you stick your neck out you get your face slapped, it’s how you come back that matters.

Coming to get you 2015 Photo Cait Fahey

Still, the compulsion to sing and write and make music and to try to find an audience for that music pushes me out the door and into the bars and barber shops of Dublin on piss awful winter/summer days and nights to play. It’s a win win situation really. First, it makes me feel good, (I can’t stress the importance of this enough). Second I get to play my music and hear other music, and maybe one time, one person might hear something they like and that person might make a difference!

We wrote Coming To Get You aka (Elephant song) a few years after ‘nosegate’ by then Paul had replaced Bryn on drums and an ever evolving horn and string section were occasionally thrown head long into the fray. I love Paul’s shuffling drums, John’s brilliantly simple bass from which the song was written, and Jacqui’s Elephant trombone. This was one of those recordings I’ve always felt slightly frustrated by though. Like most of our output it was recorded on 8 track in Cushy Studios, my basement flat in London, and it felt to me like the track was constrained too much by the confines and of my living room, surrounded as we were by irate neighbours… So I recently updated the original recording with some more horns, guitars, BV’s and drums, and I’m quite pleased with the results, yeah quite pleased. I definitely sound like I’m up for the hunt, maybe be it’s time to go a hunting again!

Suzanne Rhatigan vocals guitar keyboards
John Morrison Bass
Paul Murphy drums
Jacqui Grace Trombone

PS: That wasn’t quite the end of the story with Courtyard, I’ll fill you in on the ‘finale’ soon!

PPS: I get to try it all again on Friday night November 27th when I play an opening set for the wonderful Dr Millar upstairs at Whelans in Dublin onstage 8:45pm X

37. Teacher

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Suzanne Rhatigan

37. Teacher

I have a lot to learn, some lessons though I seem to have to keep learning, like when to speak up and when to shut up… still haven’t mastered that one despite the many great teachers I’ve been fortunate enough to have had. I think some people just cannot be taught and I’m one, however that too is something I’m starting to learn how to do, in my dotage!

Photo Derek Ridgers

Autodidactic, apparently that’s me. It’s not that I don’t want to learn, I just don’t always want to be taught. I’m impatient, I want to know everything without all the hassle of learning, listening and observing. I want to discover for my self and I certainly don’t want to give anyone else the credit for my achievements, or in fairness my failures.

For example one of my best teachers is my man, Manfred, or ‘Poor Manfred’ as he’s affectionately known near and far. When we first met I was computer illiterate. It was 1996 and I was still splicing and gluing and photocopying and posting flyers and updates to my mailing list about gigs etc using a label maker and my old typewriter, which was missing a few letters. It was all very lo-fi-diy, that was what I was into. So when my new boyfriend, a software engineer no less, offered to set me up with a pc and printer and the ‘internet’ of all things, I was understandably, or not, extremely resistant. I think he was visiting me from Germany every few weeks for a year or more, watching on flummoxed by my refusal to embrace the technology that he knew would eventually change my world, along with everyone else’s. I finally caved in and agreed to be helped.

Little did he know what he was letting himself in for. Within 20 minutes of setting the PC up I wanted to design my own website, market my gigs, record my band, animate videos and I wanted to do it now. By myself! Patiently he talked me through the frustrating basics those first steps everyone needs to learn, usually by being taught. Unless of course you want to use a manual or help function, which I certainly never would! A lot of swearing, gnashing of teeth, hair pulling and tears would be endured before I finally got going and that wasn’t just ‘Poor Manfred’. But get going I did and a very wide range of skills I learned along the way, however they were always with a particular task in mind, a means to an end. Like the Cushy Productions website.

Today, to set up a basic site like that would be a doddle. You plug into a template like WordPress and hey presto you have a website. There were no plugins like that back then. So Manfred set me up with an Adobe Pagemill html programme and I tortured a simple but quite well functioning website and blog out of it. I frequently ran into brick walls and would think nothing of calling Manfred at all hours of the day and night, wailing furiously about how stupid the bloody machine was that it didn’t know what I was thinking and seemed to go out of it’s way to sabotage my vision at every turn. With monumental calm he would talk me down from the precipice of madness and pick through my previous hours labour methodically, explaining as only a German software engineer can, where I went wrong, and maybe suggest an alternative route, only to be told to keep his bloody suggestions to himself and off I would streak headlong into the next brick wall and again and again and again and still to this day God help him!

But the Cushy web site actually worked and we developed a very nifty email marketing template which still works and the site has good original content and I’m very proud of it. I could have perhaps invested some time in a formal course in web design and web marketing and capitalised on all that experience, possibly carved out a solid career from it, but for me that was never what it was about. I wanted to make music and this was simply a tool to help me get my music heard. The whole learning thing was just something that had to be endured.

I guess the teacher/pupil relationship is hard for me because of my em, ‘control’ issues. I had a rough ride in school, what with my short attention span, repeated insubordination, combined with the rather embarrassing belief that anything I had to say no matter how inane was more interesting than anything anyone else had to say, particularly during maths! If I had/have one weakness however, it was/is flattery. Unbeknown to most of my hapless teachers they probably would have enjoyed my complete submission had any of them ever said anything nice about me to me. I would have done anything to please, anything but stay quiet and learn that is.

But really at the bottom of it all, we all want to feel special, like we’re a bit more special than everyone else, right? And who better to make us feel special than our teachers. It’s an awesome responsibility and one that should never be abused of course. Teachers have all the power. Or do they?

Teacher the song was inspired by a tabloid story at the time about a young teacher who had run off with his 15 year old pupil to France. There was a terrible bru ha ha with tabloid hacks swarming all over the small village where they were holed up. I was struck at the time by how willing and complicit the young woman appeared in the editorial as compared with the almost naivety of the older teacher. I remember thinking I could have been that girl, so I wrote a little story about how that balance of power between teacher and pupil might swing with certain personality types involved, and this is the result. I certainly could have been the girl in the song too, yep that could’ve been me alright!

So this recording was one of the latter day Rhatigan ‘unfinished’ masters. I transferred it from 8 track 1/4 ins tape the other day with the intention of recording the missing vocal in the middle and doing a few overdubs. But it turns out my recently repaired Fostex R8 is running a bit slow and the track is a little flat of concert pitch. with the result the new parts I tried sounded unpleasantly sharp. In fact barring some minor lyric changes and backing vocals it is as it was back at the dawn of the new millennium. I really like this song and I’m so pleased to finally ‘finish’ it, though of course it isn’t quite right, not really finished….

Christ will I never learn?

PS: I’m rushing this blog to get it uploaded before I fly to London to celebrate my friend Gina Birch’s birthday. Gina was one of my favourite ‘teachers’. We met while she was gigging with The Hangovers in the mid nineties. We became friends and she came and recorded a few songs at Cushy and played at the Cushy nights at the 12 Bar Club in London. She is an inspiration to so many musicians, artists, friends… Not just for her punk pedigree, being a member of seminal punk band The Raincoats but also as a video director. Her work is very unique and every one she has worked with has leaned a lot!

PPS: The photo was taken by photographer Derek Ridgers, whose portraits of London club life over the last 30 years are wonderful and can be seen in his 2012 book London Youth. The photo was shot in a mansion on South Audley St in Mayfair where another wonderful friend Debs Hinkinson was living at the time. Another great teacher, Debs throws the most wonderful dinner parties and I was always delighted to be asked along as her commis chef. Thanks guys xxx

Suzanne Rhatigan vocals guitar keyboards
John Morrison Bass
Paul Murphy drums

36. The Most Expensive Record

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Suzanne Rhatigan

Today the future looks bright, so I’m able to look back, without feeling bogged down in the past and I’m able to remember with more fondness than regret, the adventures and mishaps of my life till now and the joy of re-acquaintance with old friends.

I’ve been very slow with this latest blog for many reasons, among them my on going efforts to move forward with new music and the feeling that perhaps all this reminiscing is counter productive. Nostalgia is big though, it’s everywhere. Retro this, vintage that, particularly music. I heard a Hawkwind track on the Marc Reilly show on BBC 6 music the other day and thought it was the next breakthrough alternative band, I should really know about…

The bands and songwriters I’m seeing around Dublin are happy to seamlessly weave their interpretations of classic and obscure covers into their own original songs both live and on record, to the point where unless you’re a musicologist you wouldn’t know where one ends and the other begins…

Last night was a case in point. I headed into Whelans to play a few tunes for John Byrne’s Song Cycle night, I particularly wanted to try out a new song but the lyric was frustratingly unfinished… The standard was high as usual but unfortunately the noisy bar made it difficult for the players. Nonetheless through the noise I heard some gorgeous tunes from Kevin O’Rourke, front man with Massachusetts based alt folk band Lo Fine. Among his own fine songs he slipped in a cover of Blondie’s Dreaming. All atmosphere and melancholy, nothing like the original which I love, but something else, something quite fresh surprisingly. While listening to Kevin I even managed to get a good working lyric finished, so I succeeded in playing my new song, which bucked my spirits up considerably.

Then I headed down to another great Dublin institution, The Stags Head, to a new Monday night session upstairs, ‘De Grand Old Oprey’, hosted by two wonderful musicians Tony Mc Loughlin of Dublin band The Young Folk and singer songwriter Niall Thomas, who has one of the most appealing voices I’ve heard recently. Together they turn their hand to a range of songs, mostly covers, across a vareiety of genres but in their own very appealing lounge, alt country style. They usually have one main guest, on this occasion a chance to hear Kevin O’Rourke again and his Blondie cover. Tony and Niall accompany the guests, and there are contributions from other musicians hanging out, so I had the pleasure of chipping in a tune too. As a result this morning I feel renewed and motivated to move forward with my new music, but also to put another story from the past out there, finally…

This shot from the THWL artwork predates pantigate but serves as an omen of what was to come!

I want to upload The Most Expensive Record now, because I hope that will really put an end to it…

The song is quite ‘old school’ in its composition and arrangement, if not exactly retro. It’s funny, most tunes are timeless but arrangements and particularly lyrics can betray an old song masquerading as a new one. The lyric of this monster is a good example, referencing MTV as the ultra important outlet for music and video, that it was, back in the 80’s and ninety’s. TMER is a parody, chronicling, sort of, the madness and mad money spent making and promoting To Hell With Love. This song and a number of other tunes were demos for what should have been the follow up album, which of course never happened. We had just finished a European tour and things were looking up…ish. We had great support from RCA/ BMG around continental Europe particularly in Netherlands and Germany, but weeks later, shortly after these recording sessions I was dropped from the label and my band, recruited during my time in New York were let go. It was over.

It wasn’t all bad you know! I did have some great times in NY, particularly playing live with the band. My right and left hand man, guitarist Matt Backer and I, held auditions in New York for the touring band and we really fell on our feet. Jack Daley is a world class bass player. He lives and breathes his instrument. He plays in a kind of groove induced trance, the heavier the better. He was the bottom and we built up from there. Jack brought drummer Julius Klepacz in and together they were a great rhythm section. Julius, aka ‘The Count’ a larger than life hilarious and sometimes terrifying mix of wild cat and pussy cat. You wouldn’t want to rub him up the wrong way, but when you did, you just let him cough up his fur ball and he was soon purring away happily again. Piano virtuoso George Laks was the baby, a wonderful sensitive beautiful man, just starting out on his career, but with an old soul. After a while we added violinist Deni Bonet. Deni was and still is one of life’s optimists. When the shit came down as it often did, Deni would stay positive. We travelled in the states, Europe and Australia together and we had some laughs, many laughs.

SO, in between I was wheeling around in a maelstrom of marketing mayhem that was the set up for THWL. Meetings were endless and it seemed that any suggestion of ways to get my name out there was up for discussion. All parties had their say and one idea after another thrown into the mix with quite spectacularly disastrous result. There was the whole ‘I Hate Suzanne Rhatigan’ campaign for example.

Only a few pics of the stickers in action survive

It started innocently enough. I sat down with my good friend, writer Neville Farmer. to work on a biography and as we chatted a pattern seemed to form. One unfortunate life event leading to another, one failed demo/band after another. I was a bad girl. A bad girl in school, bad girl at the office bad bad bad. This all sounded like a fun, harmless way of setting me up, you know, the tough rock chic turns out to be not so bad after all. Ok, not such a good idea either and not particularly original, but it was sort of true. However a few sessions around the table at Imago with press and promotion, chairman and VPs, artiste, management and entourage and before you know it the full blown ‘I hate Suzanne Rhatigan’ campaign was in production.

Thousands of speech bubble stickers with snappy slogans like “Suzanne Rhatigan stole my boyfriend” Suzanne Rhatigan ate my lunch” and on. Yeah how much $5000, sure ca-ching! How about mail them to every radio station, retailer, journalist etc in the US along with the record and some merchandising. Sure! T shirts are boring so how about a few thousand Teddy bears with “Suzanne Rhatigan is a Bitch” T shirts on instead? Yeah, ca-ching. And take out ads in all the music/trade papers, with famous characters on, I don’t know, how about Ghandi with a “Suzanne Rhatigan stole my laundry” speech bubble, yeah that’s funny, isn’t it? yeah. why not. Wait how about, a ticker tape on Times Square every 10 minutes for a week running up to the album release “TO HELL WITH SUZANNE RHATIGAN” etc etc etc $$$ ???? CA-CHING.

Well if a setup like that isn’t going to kill off a record I don’t know what is. As the campaign started heating up I was sick inside. It started sinking in how completely shit it all was. How mortifying. And now to make matters worse I would have to endure hours of interviews and questions, about why everyone hates me so much. What do I do? Explain that no, I’m not really so awful it’s all just a publicity thing wink wink? Or do I live down to my reputation, tell press and radio one or two ‘stories’ about my unfortunate life and act a bit stripy now and again, a bit ‘Prima Donnaish’ so they might believe the hype? And then do what? Play the record? Write about it? Unlikely… Well amazingly thanks to the efforts of one of the best Press Officers in New York, Sandy Sowatka, quite a few people did write about the record and even said quite nice things. But no amount of press is enough to generate the kind of sales Imago needed to break even on this thing, so more drastic measures were necessary!

Money must be spent. And fair play to Terry Ellis he spent money alright. 1^st we needed to introduce THWL to the retailers. Very important back in the day when people ‘bought’ records in ‘record shops’, or Walmart and Woolworths or wherever. So… the record company bought a prime slot at the NAMM convention that year, one of the US Music Industry’s most important events. I had 6 minutes to wow the 10,000 strong audience with some songs from THWL kind of mashed together. The band rehearsed the edited songs for several days and boredom had well and truly set in. Matt had taken to playing the last few bars of his guitar solo ala Hendrix, guitar thrust behind his head and out of devilment, while he was in full flow I deftly undid his belt and his jeans slid to the floor. Oh how we laughed particularly Matt who thankfully had reasonably well fitting and clean underwear on that day.

And that should be the end of that little anecdote, but no. Out of this this harmless japery the idea that we should repeat the pantymime during our costly 6 minutes was now on the table for discussion and it kind of snowballed. Here’s where I want to set the record straight. I did not want to do the, unbuckle the belt trick at all and I said so. More than once!

But the hilarity of it all and the ‘potential’, of such a stunt, in a convention situation like this, where every record company in the land was pushing their new product for that year at the retailers, to get everyone talking, about ‘Suzanne Rhatigan’, the same Suzanne Rhatigan of “Is A Bitch Fame”, and her album, was just too irresistible for the label, the pressure was on… So when my good friend Matt in his easy going ‘let’s do it for the Gipper’ kind of way said he didn’t mind, I acquiesced.

Well we turned up at the convention centre all suited and booted as you might expect and headed on to the stage of the enormous convention centre, with giant screens all around the arena for any delegates unfortunate enough not to have front row seats and we launched into our truncated show. All was going well and the moment of truth was almost upon us… Again I wish to remind you I did NOT want to follow through with the stunt so I left the decision to Matt. We agreed if he put the guitar behind his head then I could assume he was up for it, if not fine. So I glanced at Matt as the moment drew near and he winked, threw the guitar behind his head and walked, guitar hero like into the spotlight. That’s when everything kind of became a bit weird. It was like the stage was made of foam and the moment had a strange slow softness about it. I reached out for Matt’s belt, flipped the buckle open (I’m good at that) and….

Nothing happened…

New jeans!

The bastards were standing up alone and not budging. So thinking on my knees, because for some reason I had dropped to them, I decided to give the jeans a tug.

Nothing…

The last few notes of the solo were ringing round the room when in a last ditch attempt I gave them a yank and low the reinforced steel jeans and brand new red silk boxer shorts gave way, and Matt, his manhood and me on my knees gaping mouth open in horror were broadcast around the convention on giant screens. So no one and I mean no one could miss it.

Matt was needless to say extremely embarrassed and I was horrified. The record company on the other hand were over the moon. A small price to pay, dignity, for the promotion we got. Everyone knew who Suzanne Rhatigan was that day. Thankfully Matt being the professional he is and the friend and ally I was so in need of, recovered himself and though I’m sure he would rather not think about it, he’s pretty much over it now, though I’m not sure I am!

While having a long overdue chat with the man himself recently about ‘Pantigate’ and my plans to write about it, Matt gave me his blessing. “On the plus side” he said “I haven’t had the naked on stage dream since!”

I love you Matt Backer hope we hang out together again soon.

PS: I promise not to pull your pants down!

PPS: I did transfer this recording from 24 track and remixed it. I tried to re do the vocal as I remember struggling to sing through laryngitis that day and I hear it in every note. However I couldn’t improve it. Some things are better left in the past…

Vocals Suzanne Rhatigan
Guitar Matt Backer
Piano George Laks
Bass Jack Daley
Drums Julius Klepacz
Violin Deni Bonet
Backing Vocals Suzanne Matt and Deni

35 The Further In We Go

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Suzanne Rhatigan

35. The Further In We Go

S Rhatigan

I’ve no one else to blame really. I think back to me circa 1991-1993 I can see why it didn’t really work out. I’m ok with it now but I was all over the place then…

It was a long time coming, my 1^st record deal. Having sung backing vocals on so many hit records for other artists and served my time as the support act, I was starting to think I would always be the bridesmaid and never the bride! Until that fateful day my friend Neville Farmer asked me to put him + 1 on the guest list for a gig I was playing at the Borderline in London. After my set he came bounding over with his friend Kate Hyman.

Kate is a force of nature, she has as much if not more charisma than the many artists and bands she has signed and nurtured over the years. She was so different from any A&R (mostly) men I had encountered in London and I was blown away. She was full of energy and unbridled enthusiasm telling me I reminded her of an old school friend who was always in trouble. We hit it off straight away and happily for me she had just taken the job as head of A&R at a brand new American label and she was determined to sign me up despite the fact that I had been either overlooked or turned down flat by most major labels in the UK. She had a vision for me and for Imago and that was that.

The Imago Recording Company, to give it its full title, was based in New York and so was I for the duration. I should have been thrilled about that, the opportunity to live all expenses paid in NYC is quite something, but alas instead of embracing the whole experience, I was mired in anxiety. I felt a bit of a sham really, there I was hobnobbing with the crème de la crème of hip NY musicians and producers and I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t able to join in the banter with the lads, chuck around cool references. I couldn’t name the nose flute player on every obscure alternative release since 1962 and such. I hadn’t heard of half the records and bands that I apparently should have known. I wasn’t able to communicate in their language use references they could understand and instead of holding my hands up and letting go of the reins I held tight to my vision, which I couldn’t properly articulate. I bluffed my way through the recording sessions believing that if I let on I didn’t know what I was doing, which of course I didn’t, it would be a disaster, which if you think of it in terms of – the record cost quarter of a million to make and recouped a miniscule fraction of that- it probably was!

To Hell With Love was a mish mash of styles and influences. Alternative rock attitude coming from producer Fred Maher (Lou Reed, Scritti Polotti) and the musicians he brought in Mathew Sweet, Drew Vogleman and Robert Quine, along side legendary funk master Bernie Worrell and my old friends from London guitarist Matt Backer and drummer Martyn Barker who contributed a r& b element. Then of course me with my mainly pop background dragging everything into the centre and over singing in way I hardly recognise today.

I know I know, I’m probably committing a cardinal sin now confessing that I didn’t really think the record worked, even then. I certainly don’t wish to alienate or offend the people who worked on To Hell With Love or those who bought and enjoyed it, in fact it is as a result of some recent correspondence I’ve had from people around the world who want to get hold of copies to replace lost ones, that prompted me to give it another listen and upload this song.

The Further In We Go is without a doubt my favourite song on the album. It’s a straight ahead R&B ballad. No harm there. I still love the feel of the track and the dry vocal sound which I still favour, also some very expensive but rather nice string arrangements. Yeah I think it holds up pretty well.

You know, despite the many terrible decisions I made professionally and personally at that time, my only real regret is that I should have been having the time of my life, and instead I spent most of my time crying into answerphones thousands of miles away. I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t to impress people who were pretty much indifferent to me and I was trying too hard, and ultimately failing so hard to make the record I had dreamed of making for so long. Thing is, if I had it all to do again would it be any different?

Ok, searching for a pic to upload for this tune I found this, a still taken from the 1^st Video shoot to promote the song. Yes the 1^st! Some crazy decisions were made, mostly by me and stupid money spent after stupid money. The 1^st video was a typically ludicrous over ambitious idea (I had) of doing a mock time lapse ageing process from childhood to old age complete with full prosthetic makeup. This shot was one of the few in the video where I looked like myself. Well I say looked like myself I mean an expensively coiffed and made up version of myself. The haircut cost $500 alone! The rest of the video I look ridiculous. Thankfully I don’t have a copy of it to show you!

I assume the generally unflattering 1^st video prompted the making of a second which also proved overly ambitious relying on my bad acting skills to carry off a pretty weak narrative, (my idea again!) performed directly to camera ala Peep Show, though more than a decade earlier and not funny! Cringe… No copies to hand of that either thankfully. Do let me know if you have any, before you put them in a bin and set fire to them. X

Suzanne Rhatigan Vocals
Mathew Sweet Bass
Matt Backer Guitar
Martyn Barker Drums
Howie Wyeth Hammond organ
Biti and Suzanne Backing Vocal