The Remedy’s sixth studio album, The Head On The Door, is arguably essentially the most pivotal launch in Robert Smith and co’s canon. Accessible and assured, it yielded the band’s first gold discs (in each the UK and US), and it efficiently brokered their transition from acclaimed cult heroes to fully-fledged mainstream stars.
Making that leap, nevertheless, proved time-consuming for Smith. Answerable for the reputation-building “gloom trilogy” of Seventeen Seconds, Religion, and Pornography, The Remedy had develop into a hip title to drop through the early 80s, however they imploded as a consequence of exhaustion and inner squabbles following the Pornography tour in the summertime of 1982 – after which era Smith was compelled to take inventory.
‘I just felt totally liberated’
He then did the very last thing his followers anticipated. Nonetheless, beneath The Remedy’s title, Smith issued a collection of a lot lighter, unashamedly poppy singles – “The Walk,” “The Lovecats,” and “The Caterpillar” – throughout 1983 and ’84. All of them crash-landed within the UK Prime 20.
“I just felt totally liberated,” Smith stated, recalling this creative volte-face in a 2000 Rolling Stone interview. “With ‘Lovecats’, I suggested that we were going to do something that’s kind of like a Disney take on jazz, based on The Aristocats. Suddenly, everything we did started to sell.”
At this juncture, nevertheless, The Remedy’s future nonetheless remained doubtful. In 1982 Smith changed guitarist John McGeoch in Siouxsie And The Banshees, performing with them till 1984’s Hyaena. He’d additionally lower The Remedy’s current singles with an advert hoc line-up that includes ex-drummer Lol Tolhurst (now on keyboards), Pornography producer Phil Thornalley on bass, and drummer Andy Anderson. An often-overlooked fifth Remedy album, The Prime, additionally snuck out throughout 1984, however it was a Smith solo album in all however title, with him enjoying each instrument bar the drums.
‘It was a great feeling to be in a band that played that well’
Craving his personal band once more, Smith reconfigured The Remedy after The Prime’s launch. He retained Tolhurst, but additionally drafted in drummer Boris Williams and multi-instrumentalist Porl Thompson. To the delight of the band’s previous guard, Smith additionally recalled bassist Simon Gallup, who had departed following the Pornography tour.
At the same time as this new-look Remedy labored up the songs for his or her subsequent album, Smith felt exhilarated by his new colleagues’ potential. “Porl [Thompson] has always been a great guitarist and Boris [Williams] is an extraordinary drummer,” he informed Rolling Stone. “It was a great feeling to be in a band that played that well.”
All involved greater than proved their mettle through the London-based studio periods with producer David M Allen which resulted in The Head On The Door. Spurred on by his new lieutenants, Robert Smith wrote a wealth of recent songs and the band emerged with their most numerous and compelling number of materials up to now. Tracks comparable to “The Baby Screams,” the evocative, Japanese-flavoured “Kyoto Song” and the atmospheric, Religion-esque “Sinking” recalled the beautiful disappointment of the band’s earlier work, however they have been interspersed with playful, poppy numbers (“Close To Me,” the quirky “Six Different Ways”) and dramatic, widescreen rock exercises (“Push,” “A Night Like This”) tailored for a band graduating to greater phases.
Elsewhere, Smith’s current acquisition of a brand new, metal-stringed acoustic guitar supplied the catalyst for the album’s signature hit. Launched by Williams’ spinning drum break, “In Between Days” mined a seam of wonderful melancholic pop and shortly made its presence felt on radio and within the UK charts, the place it rose to No.15 within the lead as much as The Head On The Door’s launch.
‘It’s nonetheless received a improbable freshness to it’
First issued by Fiction Information on August 26, 1985, The Head On The Door was virtually universally well-received, with the critics unanimously calling it The Remedy’s boldest and most satisfying assertion up to now. Typical of the critiques have been the NME’s, which picked up on the truth that “tunes abound,” and File Mirror’s rave, which praised The Remedy’s “mature musical approach”.
Commercially, the album’s efficiency saved apace, with The Head On The Door rising to No.7 within the UK Prime 40 and chalking up The Remedy’s first US Prime 75 success. The infectious, brass-assisted “Close To Me” then supplied the band with an additional UK Prime 30 hit, whereas the track’s ingenious, Tim Pope-directed video scooped up additional reward and heavy rotation on MTV. It wrapped up a outstanding marketing campaign that thrust Robert Smith and the troops into the mainstream, and led to additional creative triumphs with Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Disintegration: the fearless, sprawling late 80s classics which established The Remedy as one of the necessary alt-rock acts on the planet.
“[Even] during the demos of The Head On The Door, I knew that this was the band,” Robert Smith stated, reflecting on this pivotal interval in Remedy historical past in a 2000 interview. “It was a really pleasant environment, and the band became much more like a family. The album’s still got a real fantastic freshness about it.”
Purchase or stream The Head On The Door.
