To The Moon And Back
Mike Scott’s engrossing account of the creation of a pivotal album and a signature song. By Terry Staunton
The Waterboys 1985 ★★★★ Chrysalis ENCLB 5 (6CD)
Mike Scott’s multi-disc dissections of the nuts and bolts that went into the making of both Fisherman’s Blues and Room To Roam were a fan’s wet dream, so it was inevitable, perhaps, that those albums’ predecessor, the commercial breakthrough This Is The Sea, would be afforded the same treatment. Far from the typical ‘deluxe’ reissue with a bonus disc of off-cuts and demos, these are essential artefacts for devotees, fleshing out the story of the source album with insight and a sense of cultural context.
Chrysalis and its Ensign imprint knew they were onto a winner with The Waterboys, and despite underwhelming sales stats for the group’s 1983 eponymous debut and the following year’s A Pagan Place, the label’s confidence is evident in the sheer wealth of recordings they bankrolled as Scott, Anthony Thistlethwaite and Karl Wallinger painstakingly assembled their vision. Including a handful of postrelease live cuts and radio sessions, there are 95 tracks to wallow in here, 64 previously unreleased
The shorthand for casual observers is that This Is The Sea was the album that introduced the classic-in-waiting The Whole Of The Moon; a song which, like Prefab Sprout’s When Love Breaks Down released less than a year before, all but defines the band but took its time to embed itself in the nation’s collective consciousness. Moon stalled at No 26 on its first outing, but climbed to No 3 when reissued six years later, when it also won an Ivor Novello award as “Best Song Musically and Lyrically” – of 1991!
Sessions for the parent album sprawled from February to August of ’85, prior to which Scott spent close to two months in isolation working on ideas for, in his own rough estimation, between 35 and 40 songs. Just nine made the final running order, but listening today to the material the group shelved suggests a double or even triple album could have held its head high in the marketplace with nary a dip in quality.
Having said that, there is the occasional pit-stop in the pages of 1985 where selfindulgence rears its head, but it tends not to undermine the rest of the material, and arguably adds to the three-dimensional portrait of an artist at work. They’re interludes of light relief during a sevenmonth spell when a musician renowned for his perfectionism kicks back and has fun.
The bare bones tracks on this box’s second disc are particularly revealing, especially Scott’s piano demos of Don’t Bang The Drum and Custer’s Blues, and it’s delightfully instructive to hear the full band putting bricks into place for the likes of All The Bright Horses and No Sun In The Sky. There are surprises along the way, too, not least a ragged rendition of the album’s title track with Television’s Tom Verlaine weighing in on lead guitar.
The accompanying hardback book is full of revelations and trivia, Scott writing with frequent wit and a warmth that suggests, nigh on 40 years later, he remains passionately proud of his and the band’s accomplishments. And well he should be; the humble nine-track album still thrills, but here’s where you’ll find the whole of the tunes.
Ensign knew they were on to a winner with The Waterboys