Now here we have something genuinely interesting, unique and
original. Considering the wide and more than often, very weird scope of their
output, to try to classify or confine them under the “Goth” tag seems somehow
insulting, and like many bands at the time, it seems wildly unlikely that they
would concur anyhow. To attempt to describe their work as anything more
specific than what falls under the very wide umbrella of bizarre art-rock is
probably self-defeating – it simply doesn’t work. That is not to say however, that what The
Virgin Prunes would produce was frequently very grim, desolate and grotesque. That
said, they certainly belong here, but people who understand “Goth” only as
something that sounds like The Sisters of Mercy or Fields of the Nephilim would
likely find their material extremely strange and difficult to get a grip on.
However, we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.
The tale we need to tell of the band, begins quite strangely indeed with something called Lypton Village. Don’t for one moment go thinking that this was a band however, rather it seems to have been a kind of odd little tribe of the more arty young Dublin folk, who finding their existence in that city rather more than mundane, retreated into a sort of fantasy land where everyone got a new identity. And so, Fionan Hanvey became Gavin Friday, Derek Rowan became Guggi, his brother Trevor Rowan became Strongman, Daniel Figgis became Haa-Lacka Bintti, Paul Hewson became Bono Vox and David Evans assumed the moniker of The Edge.
If those last two names seem familiar, then well they should, since they would of course go on to form U2, one of the biggest bands in rock history. Strange as it now may seem, in the early days, both U2 and The Virgin Prunes would often share a stage together. Indeed, The Edge’s brother & U2’s original guitarist Dik Evans would later join Virgin Prunes. I must agree that in retrospect the combination superficially appears very odd, but then that’s probably due to the fact that most people have long since forgotten that U2 started out as a very good, albeit very accessible post-punk act.
U2 – Out of
Control (1980)
It wouldn’t last of course – U2’s increasingly mainstream musical tendencies would soon cause the two bands to drift apart. I suspect, although can’t find any direct evidence to support the hypothesis, is that U2’s increasingly Christian inclinations by the time of their second album October (Island, 1981 )may also have had a part to play.
But enough of
U2 – you can read about them anywhere! Back to Virgin Prunes.
Virgin Prunes release their debut EP Twenty Tens (Baby, 1980), three years after their formation. The cover art of a small girl playing with her bunny wabbits certainly seems innocent enough – almost like an illustration from a Victorian children’s story. However, combine this with the band’s name, the unsettling and generally sombre musical tone and song titles like “Twenty-Tens( I’ve been Smoking all Night)”, “Revenge” or “The Children are Crying”, and it’s impossible to ignore that there is something very subversive, and perhaps even unwholesome going on here. It’s probably safe to say that Gavin Friday’s happy warblings of
“I hear the children crying as they all die of fever” was never going to get the band a shot on the Eurovision Song Contest at any time soon.
The Twenty Tens EP
The following year saw the band release the Moments and Mime (Despite Straight Lines 7” (Rough Trade, 1981). Once again, the front cover art appears innocent enough, although the back cover gives us a much better idea that things are far from normal here, and that impression is confirmed by the B-Side track “In the Greylight” which serves to complete the impression that we’re no longer in Kansas anymore Toto.
In the Grey Light
The same year sees the band start to release the “New Form
of Beauty” series in four parts (Rough Trade, 1981-82), its name itself perhaps
a manifesto of intent. These will all be
later compiled into a single CD (A New Form of Beauty, New Rose, 1993), of
which sample tracks like “Come to Daddy”
clearly indicate that we’re not destined for safe or familiar territory quite
yet. Much strangeness remains. Meanwhile, drummer Haa-Lacka Bintti has left the
band and gone off to do his own project with the disconcertingly monikered
Princess Tinymeat. He is replaced by Mary D’Nellon.
Come to Daddy
These early gigs must have been quite something to
behold. Jonny Slut (later to become
keyboardist with
Specimen) describes his first encounter with Virgin Prunes
shortly after he arrived in London:
“Saw the Virgin Prunes
the next week though, they blew my head off a bit. That was the best gig I’ve
seen in my life…The whole audience when they played at Heaven…David came on and
did his spastic stuff and I thought oh, this ain’t that brilliant! Then Gavin
and Guggi came in their black and white dresses and the audience were like that
(holds mouth open for impromptu dental appraisal)…honestly, it was quite
frightening, we were just like that for half an hour, no-one in the audience
clapped, we didn’t know what to do. They went off and came back on in their loin
cloths with their fruit and started chucking tables about, demonically
chanting…it was just brilliant – the best.”
(Gothic Rock, Mercer, Pegusus, 1992)
And so we arrive in 1982 with The Virgin Prunes’ first full
length album, If I Die, I Die. It’s no exaggeration to say that this is one of
my favourite albums of all time, at once hauntingly beautiful and deeply
unsettling, and effect only added to by the band’s very unorthodox vocal
stylistics. There’s something oddly faux-oriental about the guitar on this
album that doesn’t come out on the band's other releases. Indeed, after
listening to it many years ago after consuming something hallucinogenic and almost
certainly illegal, I had to give it a rest for a few months because it kept
conjuring up recurring mental images of insane Fu Manchuesque vivisectors.
We begin with the yearningly desolate “Ulakanakulot / Decline and Fall” which sets the tone for the rest
of the album – it’s very clear that this is not going to be a happy journey.
“See the children play by, running try to
touch the sky,
When one falls you hear a cry
‘You’re dead, you’re dead, you must die’
‘Take a dream and fly away, take a dream and
fly away’
She will call
They will wait for you not I, they will wait
for you not I
See me crawl
And sometimes I feel so old
I never smile nor do cry
Shadows flicker from above.”
“Sweet Home Under
White Clouds” follows and is similarly bleak, although perhaps less
harrowing than the earlier version that appeared on A New Form of Beauty 2, and
next comes the very enigmatic “Bau-Dachong”
which is anyone’s guess as to what it might be about.
At this point we arrive at “Baby Turns Blue”, a happy little ditty about drug overdose, and of
course, the band’s big single, still packing out dance floors in Goth clubs to
this day. To judge from the behaviour of some DJs, it would be easy to believe
that it and the “Pagan Love Song” single (Rough
Trade, 1982) were the only songs The Virgin Prunes ever wrote. Indeed, back
when I was DJing in the 90s, it got so over-requested that I actually started
refusing to play it. Nevertheless, it remains the cheeriest and most upbeat If
I Die, I Die would get. I was also released as a 12” remix The Faculties of a
Broken Heart (Rough Trade, 1982).
The Baby Turns Blue 7" - that commercial success would
elude the band seems simply inconceivable
After this we unfortunately hit the sole low point of the
album “Ballad of the Man”. What the
fuck were they thinking? The nicest I can imagine is that the song was a
deliberate attempt to take the piss out of contemporary folk music. Whatever their
reasoning, it very much spoils the flow of an otherwise near-flawless album.
Fortunately things quickly pick up again with “Walls of Jericho”, a song so strong that
it could easily have been a single in its own right. The puzzling Caucasian
Walk follows before the album closes with the excellent “Theme
for Thought” with its reflections on individuality and quoting of Oscar
Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”.
“He did not wear his scarlet robe, for blood
and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands when
they found him with the dead.”
Ulakanakulot / Decline
and Fall (Live)
Sweet Home Under White Clouds
Bau-Dachong
Baby Turns Blue
Ballad of the Man (not live but WTF cares?)
Walls of Jericho
Caucasian Walk
Theme for Thought
After this, the band produce the Heresie EP, making them one
of the very few bands from the scene to receive an arts grant for a
commissioned work. Work on a second full length album Sons Find Devils (Not to
be confused with the video of the same name) is commenced but never released
and in 1984 the original band begins to dissolve. A final studio album, The Moon
Looked Down and Laughed (Baby Records, 1986) appears after which Gavin Friday departs
for a solo career, effectively ending Virgin Prunes forever. Some of the remaining members will eventually
reform as The Prunes, but it is reportedly a much tamer beast than its
notorious ancestor.
Track Listing
i.
Ulakanakulot
ii.
Decline and Fall
iii.
Sweet Home Under White Clouds
iv.
Bau-Dachong
v.
Baby Turns Blue
vi.
Ballad of the Man
vii.
Walls of Jericho
viii.
Caucasian Walk
ix.
Theme For Thought
Later versions on CD include a
variety of bonus tracks, most notably Pagan
Love Song, but also Dave-id is Dead,
Fado, Chance of a Lifetime and Yeo.
Line Up: Gavin
Friday, Guggi, Dave-id Busarus (vocals), Dik Evans (guitar), Strongman (bass),
Mary D’Nellon (drums)
