Notes For The Rattlesnakes Twitter Listening Party

And images

December 30th 2024

I can’t type well enough or quickly enough to host a real time texting event. So I prepared. Then I copied and pasted as we went.

From SimpleText app. I thought I’d already posted this at Patreon but no.

---

PREAMBLE

Before the Commotions, Blair and I had a band called the Casuals. Neil helped out on guitar. Maybe 2 or 3 months after our debut concert I decided to change things & morph into The Commotions, but then an actual concert promoter contacted me & wanted to promote a Casuals show...

... so we played a farewell show. The death of The Casuals 😅

My copy

Titles on the front was homage to this.

Lloyd Cole and The Commotions. Rattlesnakes. Track 1, Side 1. Perfect Skin. #timstwitterlisteningparty

We recorded Perfect Skin, Forest Fire and (b-side) You Will Never Be No Good with Paul Hardiman in early 1984 at The Garden studio in Shoreditch. We returned in the early Summer to record the rest, which took a month or so. We stayed in a flat Polydor rented for us in Maida Vale.

Aside - The Garden was owned by John Foxx from Ultravox! at the time. He sold it to Matt Johnson (the The). Not sure if Matt still owns it. Amek (poor man's Neve) recording console. Almost all of my guitars were recorded directly into it. No amp.

Starting the 2nd recording session, based on my notebooks I just dug out, Rattlesnakes, Heartbroken & Patience were the only completely finished songs. Charlotte St was close. 4 flights Up was just called #10, and it looks like we were working on Jesus Said. Don't remember that!

Perfect Skin was released in April, but it took a while to climb into the top 40. Eventually peaking at 26. Lower than many people seem to recall. Good enough to get us on Top Of The Pops, though... That performance was probably the most fun I ever had on a stage.

Lloyd Cole and The Commotions. Rattlesnakes. Track 2, Side 1. Speedboat. #timstwitterlisteningparty

Speedboat - not sure if anyone in the band noticed, but nobody told me - I had stolen the bassline from What Presence? By Orange Juice. I was mortified when I realised, but it was too late.

Alan Horne and @EdwynCollins didn't like us at the time. Us signing to Polydor didn't help. My theory - I think they liked to think that they were the only ones who loved The Velvet Underground AND The Staple Singers... and then we came along.

My wife and I had tickets to an @EdwynCollins solo show in NYC in the mid 90's & we heard, somehow, that he and Grace needed a babysitter for their William. We already had one so we shared our babysitter. I think we've been good since then. Eddy is very charming tweeter.

Until making these notes I'd completely forgotten that Claire, the bass player in Orange Juice at that time, sang some backing vocals, but she isn't credited on the sleeve. I can't recall why. I know I ended up singing the high parts on Patience, at Abbey Road in a small overdub room.

Lloyd Cole and The Commotions. Rattlesnakes. Track 3, Side 1. Rattlesnakes. #timstwitterlisteningparty

Neil's song. His riff. I wrote the vocal melodies and my other input was to come up with the idea of the strings playing a sort of reverse of the guitar, starting on the high note, not the low one.

Brilliant bass playing on this. Bass playing on the whole album is perfect which is more than can be said for my guitar playing. I speed up terribly in the breakdown and we were very worried that I'd ruined it but nobody seemed to notice or care once it was a record.

Rattlesnakes was the 3rd single from the album. I was outvoted. I voted for Heartbroken? Touring non-stop needed to record a b-side. 1 day in Rockfield with Paul. Sweetness was the only song recorded between Rattlesnakes and Easy Pieces and remains our best b-side IMO.