“Formed in 1979 in Liverpool, England, this band was a vehicle for the evocative teenage singer Lori Larty. With backing, production and songwriting provided by former Big in Japan alumni David Balfe and Bill Drummond, Lori emerged with an appealing, almost spoken-word tribute to Japan (the country), entitled Touch. A sparkling arrangement, the disc entered the bottom of the UK charts and appeared to signal the emergence of a new talent. The concept of the group appeared to revolve vaguely around exotic, travelogue pop, with each song title referring to a specific geographical location: Japan, Peru, Russia and the Ganges River in India. The second single, The Lonely Spy, boasted another impressive, atmospheric vocal from Lori and an astonishing backing that emulated the bombastic scores associated with James Bond films. After four superb tracks, which represented some of the best UK pop of the period, the group ceased operating. The journeyman Troy Tate reappeared in the Teardrop Explodes, while Drummond turned to management and was later the brains behind a series of pseudonymous groups […]. Lori, meanwhile, spurned imminent pop success by returning to art college and effectively retiring from the music business. Her fleeting career provided as much mystery and instant appeal as the extraordinary discs on which she appeared.” (see:
http://www.nme.com/artists/lori-and-the-chameleons )
Lori Larty came from the posh end of Huyton (Roby) which she left to attend Art School in Liverpool. Lori was quite a normal girl “who liked to dress as a child and could very well have been frightened off by the whole idea of music for a living via the rock business”. At about the same time as the Chameleon she provided backing vocals for Holly Johnson’s single Yankee Rose (1979).
Here are Johnson’s words: “I got Lori Larty, a good friend of mine at that time, to do backing vocals. Lori's `Yankee Rose' vocal line was meant to conjure up memories of Johnny Remember Me. Her voice really added something special.” (A Bone in My Flute). She married Martin Healy (ex Nightmares in Wax) and with him later formed the Dangerous Years.
The Chameleons benefited from the collaboration of Tim Whittaker (on drums, ex Deaf School, Sex Gods, and Gale Force), Gary Dwyer (also on drums, of The Teardrop Explodes) and occasionally Ray Martinez (on trumpet). The band released two singles:
Touch (August 1979)
- Touch (Drummond / Balfe)
- Love on the Ganges (Balfe / Drummond / Ward)
.
Touch – with its half-spoken female vocals, the plinky-plonky keyboards, the references to cliched teenage rebel tropes (motorcycles, blue jeans etc.) – is more or less an ode to Japan, and the b-side continues the travelogue over to the Ganges. (See also
here)
The Lonely Spy (Aril 1980)
- The Lonely Spy (Drummond / Balfe)
- Peru (Drummond / Balfe)
.
Peru seems to be featuring The Red Army Choir, which combines to a bass drum and Lori’s voice breathlessly talking about her search for the Incas.
Here are Bill Drummond’s recollections of his time with the band:
“There was another half-conceived song that I had. It was one that I originally thought could be done with Big In Japan but it was definitely something that could never be done as a live song at a gig.
I told Balfe about it and we worked on it together. I wanted it to be like one of those sad 1960s girl pop records that I loved but with a sort of disco beat. There was no singer we had in mind. Then we saw this girl in the street who looked weird and pretty and vulnerable with big sad eyes. We asked her if she wanted to be on a record. She said she had never sung. We said that didn’t matter because all she had to do was talk the lyrics, so she said yes.
We booked ourselves into Amazon Studios in Kirkby on the outskirts of Liverpool for two days. It was the first time I had been into a 24-track studio. It was going to cost us a fortune. We didn’t have a penny or any idea about how a disco record was made. We knew we wanted to have a bass drum that hit fours to the floor all the way through and we knew we wanted syn drums on it making that sound syn drums do on crap disco records. The girl was called Lori Lartey and she was on the foundation course at Liverpool Art School, or I think she was. Balfe and I had already decided to call ourselves The Chameleons as a production team. (I should add here that we were nothing to do with the rock band The Chameleons that came out of Manchester some years later.)
The record was to be credited to Lori And The Chameleons. The song was called Touch. The lyrics told the tale of romance across the cultural divide between the singer and a Japanese boy in Tokyo. We recorded it with the help of Tim Whittaker, the drummer from Deaf School, doing the drum parts, Balfe doing the keyboards and me doing the guitar bits. I revelled in my cod-oriental guitar hook.
Balfe and I thought it sounded brilliant. Even revolutionary. We thought it sounded exactly how pop music should sound. Fragile, mysterious, beautiful, sexy. I haven’t heard it for 25 years now and if I did, I am sure I would think it sounded quaint at best.
We released it on Zoo records. It got ‘single of the week’ reviews in the music papers. Warner Brothers wanted to license it from us and give it a major push. We agreed and signed a deal. Dave Lee Travis made it his single of the week on BBC Radio 1. That means he played it every day for a week on his afternoon shows. This, in our eyes, was major exposure. It got to number 70 in the official UK singles chart. But the next week it dropped out, but then Warner Brothers picked up the option of us recording a follow-up single. Balfe and I wrote the song together – The Lonely Spy. This time the lyrics placed Lori on the edge of Red Square in Moscow. She watched her boyfriend gunned down in a hail of bullets as he tried to escape into her loving arms from the clutches of the KGB. The Lonely Spy required Lori to sing. We had no idea if she could. We booked ourselves into Rockfield Studios in Wales. It took us three days. We thought we had made the greatest pop record ever made. It didn’t even dent the top 100 and never troubled a Radio 1 playlist.
I had wanted Lori and the Chameleons to be a one hit wonder. After two failures we gave up. A one-hit wonder should appear to have happened by accident, it’s not something to be worked at. This also meant my first stab at girl pop had failed. I was never to be responsible for something with the shimmering beauty of Terry by Twinkle or Past, Present And Future by The Shangri-Las or even White Horses by Jacky.
At the same time as our attempts to be the Shadow Mortons of the late 1970s we were putting out records on Zoo by our Liverpool peers Echo And The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. The Bunnymen got signed to a major with us in tow as their managers and producers. Nobody wanted The Teardrop Explodes so Balfe and I used the £4000 we got for doing The Lonely Spy as down-payment on recording the first Teardrop Explodes album.”
(Bill Drummond, The 17)
lori
Send no Flowers formed in 1981 and featured feat; Lyn Sangster (a.k.a Lin Sangster, vocals, guitars, later Kit, see picture), Timmo O’Shea (guitar, keyboards, later of High Five), Paul Sangster (on bass), Jake Wakstein (drums, later of Kit). For live set Alan Wills (also Wild Swans) would join on percussion. At a certain point also Ian Astbury (later Cult) rehearsed with the band. When fired because of his singing (that was the very start of his artistic career), he fomed Southern Death Cult. They recorded a couple of songs for two compilation cassettes (Wall of Convention on Adventures in Reality in 1981, and Days of Rage for Index #2 in 1982). In August 1983 the band issued their first (and only) single, co-produced by Robert Blamire (bass player with Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls):
Send no Flowers formed in 1981 and featured feat; Lyn Sangster (a.k.a Lin Sangster, vocals, guitars, later Kit, see picture), Timmo O’Shea (guitar, keyboards, later of High Five), Paul Sangster (on bass), Jake Wakstein (drums, later of Kit). For live set Alan Wills (also Wild Swans) would join on percussion. At a certain point also Ian Astbury (later Cult) rehearsed with the band. When fired because of his singing (that was the very start of his artistic career), he fomed Southern Death Cult. They recorded a couple of songs for two compilation cassettes (Wall of Convention on Adventures in Reality in 1981, and Days of Rage for Index #2 in 1982). In August 1983 the band issued their first (and only) single, co-produced by Robert Blamire (bass player with Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls):
