Lead Sister by Lucy O'Brien

Author:Lucy O'Brien [O'Brien, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2023-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

1977

We didn’t see Star Wars until we were mixing [“Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”]. The [track] was an enormous undertaking, but from the time we started we couldn’t wait to get back at it. We let other things slide “cos we were working on “Occupants.” We kept thinking, When will this thing be done?1

On March 10, 1977, the Sex Pistols stood outside Buckingham Palace and publicly signed to A&M Records. During the after-party Johnny Rotten insulted executives, Steve Jones hooked up with a fan in the toilets, and Sid Vicious smashed a toilet bowl and trailed blood round the building. The band then recorded “God Save the Queen,” an antimonarchist song that in the year of the royal Silver Jubilee went straight to the epicenter of the punk movement and became an alternative national anthem.

Twenty-five thousand copies of the single were pressed by A&M, but in the ensuing media outrage most of the Sex Pistols’ tour with the Damned and the Clash was canceled and most copies were destroyed (only for the song to be released by their next label, Virgin, and go to number two in the UK charts). The Sex Pistols’ relationship with A&M was short-lived and they were dumped after a week. A&M’s John Deacon said, “Unfortunately the group’s behavior since signing with the company compelled reconsideration of the situation.”2 Although the Sex Pistols departed, that signing set the tone and along with other punk and new wave signings like the Dickies and the Police, there was a new mood at the record label.

A&M video director Clare Baren shot videos with the Police for “Roxanne” and “Can’t Stand Losing You” in a rough hand-held style before their set at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles. She wanted to do something a little more experimental with the Carpenters, but felt that the band had already been type-cast. “The Carpenters weren’t the biggest thing any more and things were passing them by. The industry was changing, too. Their songs were solid MOR love songs and their image was quaint. Thinking back, I wish I broke out of the mold more. I was always trying to make them feel comfortable and please them, but I think Karen really wanted to break out. I believe the label were not willing or interested in trying to make the Carpenters edgy, for fear they would look ridiculous. They had a place, a very successful place and to pretend that they were the Sex Pistols would’ve been a big mistake.”

Chris Briggs, who was head of A&R at the label in the 1980s, says that A&M had a distinctive philosophy that allowed for both the Sex Pistols and the Carpenters to coexist. “Herb Alpert is a properly out-there member of the alternative society. He and Jerry Moss were entrepreneurial leaders and owners who cared what the artists thought and they wanted us to sign stuff that worked internationally. It was a lovely place to work—we socialized together and worked all hours and didn’t mind.

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