Rose McDowall interview
29 Jan 02
The songwriting credit for Black Taxi. It's credited to you, Jill, Balfe and Mulhearne. Who was Mulhearne?
Mulhearne? I have no idea.
Jill has no idea either. She said a lot of the songs near the end she didn't have a lot to do with and maybe it was one of those, which kind of implies it would have more to do with you.
Black Taxi I remember because we were writing it in the studio as we were doing the session, like finishing the lyrics in the studio. Balfey came up with the keyboard stuff. Drew, my husband then, did a lot of the sequencing stuff. I wrote the lyrics and sang it. I don't know a Mulhearne! I have no idea, unless it was the engineer or something. Maybe it's Balfey's alter-ego so he gets half the money!
There is actually stuff like that with him! There was a 7 inch EP that came free with some Littlewoods promotion, four retro hits like Thin Lizzy Whiskey In The Jar, and one was Reward by the Teardrop Explodes. That was written by Alan Gill and Julian Cope, yet the EP credits it to Gill and Balfe. Let's not name names, but somebody made sure Balfe got the money instead of Cope! It's amazing that neither of you know of anyone called Mulhearne yet you allegedly wrote a song together.
I don't remember anyone else even being in the studio apart from the engineers, cos it was a radio session.
How much did you have to do with any of the 12 inch remixes?
[assorted can-of-worms oh-dear-me phonetics] I had an incredible massive fight with Balfey and Bill Drummond and one of them cos they said, 'ah we'll just go in the studio and mix it'. I said you won't, I want to hear it. They said, 'you don't need to be there'. I need to be there! It's my song! So I go down to the studio and they were completely blanking me out. I was saying things and they were just, 'be quiet Rose'.
Do you remember which one it was?
It was more likely to be something like Jolene or Let Her Go or something like that. I tried all I could to muster up the energy to destroy that tape but it wasn't happening. So I put a spell on Balfey. And it's still sealed in the notepad I had then that I used to write my lyrics and stuff. I'm too scared to let it out in case it happens, cos I was so angry! So if Balfey ever gets hit by a car, it's my fault. Especially if I'm driving it!
With Let Her Go they did that Kitchensynch Mix which has five names credited for remixing. Balfe and Drummond got Youth and others in for that.
I wasn't there for that session, they did that one without even telling us they were doing it. So I probably put my foot down at that point and said I want to know, so the argument would probably have been Jolene.
The others don't give any credits for remixers so we can't tell. It was such a weird thing in the 80s, you couldn't just release a single, you had to put a seven and a twelve inch out, and the twelve inch would have to have a longer version. It doesn't matter how good and perfect the seven inch was, it doesn't matter how rubbish the twelve inch was. It didn't have to be any better, just LONGER, just turn everything off and leave the drum machine going for a while.
Have a little prelude, and instrumental part. Twelve inches are for albums, seven inches are for singles. I was heartbroken when there stopped being seven inch singles.
It's the definitive pop format.
It is, it is. I've still got lots, and I still buy lots of seven inches from Oxfam and that, cos I love them. It's a perfect little art form.
It's perfect - like Echo Beach - do you want the album, do you want four extra tracks or remixes that you have to program your player not to play, or do you want to put it on, it plays Echo Beach, then it finishes?
Or you get one of those old players where you stack them up - I've got one of them, so you can play them like you used to when you were a wee lass. I mean CDs are great for what they are
For ambient stuff especially
But for artwork, they lack, they don't come anywhere near a really good album sleeve which is a really good size that you can see and you can touch.
When did you find out about the Japanese CD reissue of the album? Did they tell you in advance?
No. They didn't tell anyone. Someone just told me they saw it and said, was it a bootleg? I saw it and it wasn't a bootleg it was Warner Brothers. I even advised people to buy that one, because it's got more tracks on it.
Have you seen which extra tracks they are? Trees And Flowers extended mix, Since Yesterday extended mix even though the normal version's on there. And yet no Sunday Morning! They're in the vaults and they choose the 12 inch mix of Since Yesterday over Sunday Morning! Who was that person and can I please slap them?
I know, it's true. Especially the Japanese singles.
What's that, apart from Ecstasy? Did I Can Feel only come out in Japan too?
Yeah.
I've always thought those two are really anomalous. What are they?
They're nightmares. Ecstasy was basically an advert for something, I can't remember what it was now.
Subaru cars.
I thought that was the one they put Since Yesterday over. But it could have been. They used Since Yesterday just as it was over a car advert. Ecstasy, they called it 'Apple'.
'Ecstasy (Apple Of My Eye)'.
'Apple of My Eye'? Where did that come from? It was nothing to do with me. The song was called Ecstasy, that was part of the joke of it. They don't know what I'm talking about but I know what I'm talking about; some people will know, some people won't know.
How did you end up doing that? Did you understand what it was like?
It was a nightmare, that period. We did another stupid jingle for Shock Waves hairspray, and that was fucking atrocious as well. With Ecstasy they actually sent us the lyrics, and asked us to write the music for it. I said I'm not singing those lyrics. So I rewrote the lyrics which were just silly, but whatever. We just made a few bad mistakes at the end of our career, basically. Mostly Balfey pushed from behind, dollar signs popping up in his eyes. All that money that we didn't really see from those adverts. You get paid for doing stuff like that.
Of course, why else would you do it?
Exactly. And when I saw the advert I just thought [incredulous wince]. It's got these Japanese girls sprawled over the car like in those horrible car magazines where they have a dolly bird. It was like, oh Jesus, another nail in the coffin.
What's the story with I Can Feel?
What d'you mean 'story'?
Well, Ecstasy was basically an advert turned into a single, but I Can Feel was another Japanese-only single.
I Can Feel was a song that was actually properly written as a song. It's a good song, but the production left a lot to be desired I think. That would probably have been on the second Switchblade album, but done completely differently.
There was this other thing that we did, we did a bit of a soundtrack for an Ursula Le Guin story called Rigel 9 [David Bedford album 'Rigel 9', see discography]. The guy that did some of the orchestration on the Switchblade album asked us to do it. There's this part in the book where there's a procession of little aliens, it's a funeral procession and they're mourning, and he got us to do the vocals for it, these high little alien voices. I don't actually know if there's a movie or anything, but you'd wonder why there was a soundtrack if not.