Song 13: Goodbye Suzie

Goodbye Suzie - John Howard
From a song that everybody knows that is, I think, kind of mediocre (entry below, not entry above), to a song that nobody knows that is, I think, super fantastic. If I can persuade one person of the merits of one song they don't know, then that gives this blog a bit of worth.

So, 'Goodbye Suzie' by John Howard. What a spectacularly rock star name! I used to know a man called John Howard, a very very nice man, but not a rock star (though he did have a car phone in 1991, which was pretty snazzy). But this is not that John Howard.

This John Howard was a big hope of the late-glam period, 1975ish, so an awkward time really, from the North of England, gay, but, in appearance and styling, not gloriously out there glam gay and marketable like Elton John or Bowie, but quietly, stylishly effete. The sound - well 'Hunky Dory' era Bowie might be the best point of reference - think the grandeur and drama of 'Life on Mars' or perhaps 'Drive-in Saturday'.

Anyway, it didn't work out for John Howard - despite a lot of investment, he was perhaps not marketed correctly, and Radio 1 wouldn't play this, the first single, because it was deemed too depressing.

Perhaps understandably, as it's about the mysterious death of a girl (Suzie James) in a seaside town.

It's super, really on a par with Bowie, dramatic and well-told, well-produced and confident - it certainly feels like a lost classic. It's glam-pop, with a great chorus and well structured verses, and his voice is really excellent - again Bowie is the best comparison.

Thankfully, John Howard's is not a tragic tale - he had a successful afterlife in the business side of music, and then, thanks to reissues and Uncut championing, a mini-revival in the last ten years. So no need to feel bad, kids.

When I first heard it, there was another song around which had a broadly similar subject matter. Any idea? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Well, it was the debut track on the debut album by a band who have gone on to be monstrously massive, namely 'Jenny Was a Friend of Mine' by The Killers, which is also about a dead girl by the seaside, but is perhaps more likely to have taken its inspiration from, say, Richard Marx's 'Hazard' or Nick Cave and Kylie's 'Where the Wild Roses Grow', perhaps even The Hold Steady's 'Sequestered in Memphis' (even though that was five years later). Men seem to like writing songs where they hint at having murdered women. John Howard's song is more distant, the narrator seems to be more "the town" than a specific person.

Anyway, I'm going to shift a little on to the Killers now, as it's given me cause to consider the vagaries and vicissitudes of taste and critical favour, namely my own.

At some point, I decided the Killers were shit. And I sneered whenever anyone said they liked the Killers. I've held that position for quite a few years now. But why? It's quite hard to tell, listening back to their debut album now.

But I've developed a theory. Quite a simple theory, but a theory none the less.

My default position on the Killers has been "Yes, Mr Brightside's an indie disco classic, but the rest is all filler at best, and often even worse." Which, listening back, is quite a hard position to defend - 'Jenny Was a Friend of Mine' is great, 'Somebody Told Me' is fun, I love 'Glamorous Indie Rock'n'Roll' - that first side is a pretty powerful start to a career.

But here's my theory - artists have an unspecified number of strikes (maybe around five), and the Killers struck out in quick succession. I've always been aware that the point at which I really turned off the Killers was 'When You Were Young' the first single off their second album, but I've realised there's slightly more to it than that. If that had come in isolation. those pesky kids might have got away with it.
But here were there faults as far as I remember

1. The second half of 'Hot Fuss' is, come one, be honest, a lot weaker than the first half. So I reckon I got a real adrenaline rush from Side 1 which fell away precipitously and made me feel actively bad.
2. I didn't appreciate Brandon Flowers' obvious and overweening ambition in interviews.
3. His voice is rather like a 2000s Simon Le Bon - this, to me, is a very bad thing.
4. People said they were Anglophile, but I didn't really hear that. I felt that was just a ruse to get popular in the UK
5. "I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier" - I've seen and heard vast groups of people singing along to that like it means something, like it's a beautiful clever lyric. But it doesn't. It doesn't mean anything. So there's something horrible about that. Emptiness, utter emptiness, which has been taken on as a slogan. Even if it said "and" rather than "but", it wouldn't be quite as bad
6. So six strikes is it - 'When You Were Young' is horrid - a cursory reading of Springsteen which sounds thin and cynical, and again, has various horrible lyrics like "Can we climb this mountain? I don't know" and "You watch him now, here he comes", and they had silly moustaches and more American clothes and it seemed all so thought out, but poorly.

And so that was enough. Since then, the Killers are, in my mind, an abomination. I've turned against them like a zealot, even though they've probably done loads of good songs since then. Music taste is a funny thing. There are some bands I'd let get away with a lot more than that, but perhaps because the Killers don't seems like the kind of kids who needed me rooting for them, I turned away pretty quickly.
If i'd been around in 1975, something tells me I'd have kept on rooting for John Howard long after the possibility of fame and success had given up on him.