This is the one that’s a cover of the Message, right?
Someone who worked for RP’s record company once told me the theory at the company was his death at such a relatively young age was probably connected to his industrial levels of recreational activities during time spent in the Bahamas…
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He was also a chain smoker - supposedly getting through something like 50 or 60 a day for at least a couple of decades - so that probably had something to do with it too.
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Isn’t “Addicted To Love” supposedly about cocaine?
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When I interviewed Chris Blackwell, he hinted at this, without outright saying it. See below:
Bill: Can you tell me a little bit about your friendship with Robert Palmer? Because he seems to me like a little bit of an unsung hero in Compass Point and contributed quite a lot.
Chris: Yes, well he was. His little house that I made the deal with him, I can’t remember if I sold it to him or leased it to him. But he and his family live there and they were right across the road from Compass Point. He was closest to all. And incidentally Robert Palmer, I learned more about the music business and music from Robert Palmer than anybody that I worked with. He is the person who really turned me onto African music.
Bill: Didn’t he recommend King Sunny Adé to you?
Chris: Yes he did that’s right. And he was perfection in a way because he was a great looking guy, he had an incredible voice, he had good songs. The problem was he just did a little bit too much of the kind of stuff you shouldn’t be messing with. I mean that’s the most tragic of all because Robert had the biggest potential, he had really huge potential. And he didn’t have a good person looking after him as it were, sort of managing day to day and stuff. He didn’t have a good person doing that.
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That terrible The Power Station project he did with the two biggest gak heads in Duran Duran can’t have helped. Peak 80s cocaine indulgence!
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I think his time in the Bahamas coincided with the breakdown of his marriage - to which his overindulgences were a key factor. Bizarrely, I remember reading an interview with his subsequent (and final) partner in which she said he had calmed down a lot after moving back to Europe and had replaced some of his older more damaging addictions with an addiction to making Airfix model kits. True story!
Edit: when I say that the story was ‘true’, I mean that’s truly what she said. Can’t guarantee it was necessarily entirely ‘true’, of course. Anyone who smokes 50-60 a day has an addiction, and that addictiveness is also likely to be expressed in other ways.
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I recall that in interviews Palmer described Addicted to Love as likening the infatuation of a new relationship to drug addiction in general (“your mind is not your own… Etc etc”). I suspect that the notion of the song being a paean to coke is an urban myth - albeit a well-informed one!
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Nothing like doing coke (or almost any other drug) with a new and attractive acquaintance of the opposite sex! Not that I’ve ever done such thing. Well, not for decades.
Near 40 years ago I fell into a romantic relationship with a coke dealer and soon we were living together. There was a fair amount of coke snorting as you might expect. Not to mention chaotic company around two in the morning when the bars closed in San Francisco. After a couple of months it all became too much fun, as the expression was in those days. I noticed that the major effect of coke was to make you want to do more, somewhat like smoking cigarettes turned out to be. I issued an ultimatum, “It’s me or the coke.” For some unfathomable reason she chose me. We were married for a few years and then - well, I fell for a pot dealer, which was a real disaster and ended the marriage. However, the coke dealer and I are still friends. She’s a serious Buddhist now into some of the more exotic forms of psychedelics.
Interesting world but more interesting and life goes better without coke.
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Btw, following on from my earlier post about the track Love Can Run Faster, the only other track to get a commercial release from Robert Palmer’s session at Black Ark Studios was on Perry’s ‘Upsetter’ label under the pseudonym Bree Daniel. I think RP was introduced to Perry by John Martyn who played guitar on the Black Ark tracks, having already collaborated with Perry around the time Martyn recorded One World. Perry co-wrote Big Muff, fact fans.
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Yes Bill, apologies for being unclesr. It’s definitely , 100,% a cover. What I was trying and failing to get across was I think that it’s been floating around for so long it could have been confused for the instrumental source/basis for The Message. It’s s bit spare and unfinished sounding so I’ve often thought it could pass for a demo/incomplete track that was repurposed- like Cavern being nicked wholesale for White Lines. Anyway, I shouldn’t scribble when tired as I garble what I’m trying to say. Sorry.
Ah ok. I did know about it, but couldn’t remember the name. I found it in my YT history. It’s pretty decent, right?
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I really like it as a nod towards history, I think covers & interpolations are ace in the right context- they can be really affirming to a snob/dilettante like me, or more accurately a way of dragging everyone into a common experience of “fuck that’s great”. Either way, I was initially suckered thinking it was some obscure original, then found it was a cover. Then ate humble pie.
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Many moons ago I worked in a bar and Kelvin Andrews & Balearic Mike occasionally played due to connections with their freewheeling mate John Taylor. The three of them booked Daft Punk on their debut UK tour (along with SLAM) so were right on the ball. vinyl exchange & Kelvin connections were everywhere at the time. I live next to Stoke so it was a rare oasis of the good stuff. Mike, Kelvin & the other people I met around then really opened my ears to loads more than rubbishy indie-dance and monotonous (but lethally good) 4/4 hedonism and I’ve been the same since.
I’ve lost touch over the years but due to things on DJh and banbantonton i know they are still fighting the good fight and am eternally grateful for their casual schooling back then.
It’s twenty + years on really and I always feel like an amateur, then realise a) I’m not so cloth-eared b) there is always someone better informed and its great they share c) sometimes everyone you respect likes may be wrong or miaguided, with retrospect.
I love that the forum is back, I’ve found so much new (and new to me) music that my partner is madly frustrated. It’s just like being an 18 year old b-side evangelist again.“what obscurity have you found this time?” “Um, a big boy told me to do it.”
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Further to this, Miike wrote a really good piece about Compass Point a little while back online, and made reference to “peanut butter” being essentially Pull Up to the Bumper and his love for all things Grace Jones/Sly & Robbie. So that’s quite serendipitous, but I can’t remember exactly where it was. Again apologies, I’m a bit of a luddite on forums I’m sorry
Are you thinking of this article penned by Mike for Disco Pogo?
“Although assembled as The Compass Point All Stars, the band were almost never credited as such, instead being listed under their individual names. With one exception. In 1981, Island released a single by Junior Tucker called ‘The Kick (Rock On)’. On the B-side, completely unrelated to the A-side was an incredible slice of futuristic, dub-funk, ‘Peanut Butter’ (no relation to the Gwen Guthrie record) credited to The Compass Point All Stars. Upon hearing the track, Jones re-recorded ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’, utilising ‘Peanut Butter’ wholesale, and producing one of her most enduring songs.”
Here’s a link to the whole article:
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That’ll be the one! Cheers for posting the link
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The story of Lee Perry and John Martyn is fairly bizarre. Chris Blackwell gives it some space in his Islander book. ‘Course everything was bizarre back then.
Stupid post 