Martin Fry said, ‘ABC are going to
soundtrack the 80s’,” recalls Stanley.
While the other two are interviewed
in person, he’s on the phone from
Saltair, an artistic community in
Yorkshire where he lives with his
wife and young son (although he still
has a home in North London). “Talk
about condemning yourself not to live
up to your hyperbole! But we went in
the studio in January 1990 [to record
Only Love...] to try and do just that.”
He chuckles at the audacity, even
insanity, of it all. Actually, they had a
fi ve-year plan, because of the David
Bowie song, and because that was
generally how long bands lasted. He
wonders whether, notwithstanding
the plundering from so many
places and periods, and despite
the eight albums they have made
since – up to and including 2017’s
typically wonderful Home Counties- ultimately Saint Etienne are now
regarded as a 90s band.
“I certainly wouldn’t be
embarrassed if someone called us a
90s band, which we get quite a lot,”
avers Stanley, who prior to forming
the group with Wiggs worked as a
freelance music journalist for Melody
Maker. “It doesn’t bother me cos we
did a lot in the 90s, and there was
a lot of good music.” He pauses to
compile a mental list, one with a
possibly ironic fl ourish – you never
know with the deadpan, prodigiously
pop-omnivorous Stanley (his 2013
book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story
Of Modern Pop truly covered every
aspect of the music). “The KLF,
The Prodigy, Pet Shop Boys, um,
Whigfi eld...” He certainly “never
wanted to be one of those groups,
like Mari Wilson or The Maisonettes,
who obviously wanted to live in a
previous decade”.
“It felt like the 80s had ended a
good two years before [1990],”
he continues. “Acid house felt like
the beginning of a new decade - that’s what we were born from.
When I think of the 80s I think of
1980-’82, not the dire stuff at the
end of the decade like Go West or
Then Jericho. We were defi nitely
Against The 80s in that sense. But
we were obviously inspired by
C86 aesthetically – cos of the DIY
aspect and cos me and Pete wrote
that fanzine. But we always loved
pop music and the fact that, at the
beginning of the 90s, the charts were
suddenly populated by outsiders
and lunatics like The KLF, who were
the biggest band in the country for
a year, which was mind-blowing,
and is hard to see happening again.
Also, back then, you could buy
82OTHER MUSIC JOURNALISTS
TURNED MUSICIANSNEIL TENNANT
When Tennant quit Smash Hits, where he
had been News Editor and then Assistant Editor,
to launch the Pet Shop Boys, the magazine
published a mock-obituary.
CHRISSIE HYNDE
Interviewed everyone from Tim Buckley
to David Cassidy for NME before leaving
to form The Pretenders.
BOB GELDOF
Sir Bob had a brief stint as Northern Irish
stringer for the NME ahead of his tenure
at the helm of Boomtown Rats.
MORRISSEY
Used to send letters – more like missives – to
the NME, Melody Maker, Sounds and Record Mirror
on subjects varying from New York Dolls
to Sex Pistols.
MARTIN FRY
The ABC man started his writing career by penning
a review of Sheet Music, the second album
by Manchester brainiacs 10cc, and sending
it in, unsolicited, to the NME.
NICK KENT
Britain’s best-known music critic fl irted with
rock fame in 1980 when his band The Subterraneans
released a catchy punk-Byrds ditty entitled My
Flamingo, rumoured to have been about his
former paramour, Chrissie Hynde.
MARILYN MANSON
Wrote music articles for a South Florida “lifestyle
magazine” called 25th Parallel back in the 80s.
JOHN ROBB
The editor of Louder Than War actually
had parallel careers in the 80s as a journalist for
Sounds and as a member of, variously, The Membranes,
Sensurround (signed to Saint Etienne’s defunct
label Ice Rink) and Goldblade.
CLIFF JONES
Music journalist for Mojo and The Face turned, briefl y,
notorious frontman for Gay Dad, who never quite
matched the hype with actual chart success.
PATTI SMITH
Wrote reviews of, among others, Todd
Rundgren (an ex-beau) for Rolling Stone
before becoming, well, Patti Smith.
PAUL MORLEY
Britain’s second-best-known music critic
became a member of the fi rst
incarnation of Art Of Noise.keyboards for 100 quid from Loot,
which is how we started. We did
Foxbase Alpha on budget equipment
at Ian Catt’s studio in his bedroom
at his mum and dad’s house, with a
reel-to-reel tape recorder – this was
before DAT and memory sticks. It
was all very DIY, cheap and cheerful.
But somehow, you could get into the
Top 40.”
In fact, Saint Etienne got into the
Top 40 no fewer than 14 times
between 1990 and 2005, the year
of their last high chart entry. How
many records do they think they’ve
sold in total? Millions?
“I would have thought so,” says
Cracknell, ever a vision of English
loveliness – she and a fashionably
bearded Wiggs meet Classic Pop in
a North London cafe (well, of course
they do), travelling from their homes,
respectively, in Oxfordshire and near
Brighton. “We used to sell quite a lot
of records back in the 90s. We’ve
got a couple of 100,000-selling
Gold albums and a couple of
Silvers.” Were they the proverbial
Big In Japan? “Momentarily.” Wiggs
laughs at the memory of being
chased down the street in Tokyo by
fans on a school outing, although,
ever self-deprecating, he believes it
was more likely the teachers than the
pupils doing the screaming.HITTING THE HEIGHTS
Saint Etienne had their biggest hits
with 1992’s Join Our Club, 1993’s
You’re In A Bad Way and Hobart
Paving, 1994’s Pale Movie, 1995’s
He’s On The Phone and 1998’s
Sylvie and The Bad Photographer.
They initially used Beats
International’s 1990 No.1 hit Dub Be
Good To Me as the model for what© Getty ImagesCP30.Feat_StEtienne.print.indd 82 07/06/2017 16:54