Repeats of Top of the Pops on BBC Four. Part 6.

Billy Bragg wrote:
Seen a few comments on social media about my honorary Number One hit single after BBC Four broadcast a Top of the Pops from May 1988. It came about after I recorded a track for a benefit album that NME were putting together to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Beatles Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. An eclectic bunch of artists including Sonic Youth, Frank Sidebottom, Courtney Pine, the Fall and the Christians each covered a track from the original album.

I was one of the first artists to be approached and I chose ‘She’s Leaving Home’ because I felt it best reflected the work of the record’s beneficiary, Childline, a telephone helpline for children and teenagers run by the NSPCC, founded by Esther Ranzen. Also, it was one of the few Pepper’s tracks that I thought I could do justice to. I recorded it one afternoon during a break in the Worker’s Playtime sessions. Cara Tivey, my then keyboard player, did most of the work, playing piano and recorder and singing the part of the parents. We sent it off to the NME and didn’t give it much more thought.

When the album was released, it was decided to put out a double A side single, pairing our little song with Wet Wet Wet’s feelgood version of ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’. Three weeks later, I was in New York at the end of a US tour. Returning from a trip to the Yankee Stadium to watch a baseball game, I found there were several messages from my manager in London. The single had gone to number one and I was booked to appear on Top of the Pops the day after I flew home.

This was in the days when I insisted on playing live on TV. While everyone else on the programme was miming to a backing track of their single, I wanted to actually perform the song. 48 hours later I was in BBC Television Centre with a hastily assembled band. In recognition of her contribution to the track, the single had been credited to Billy Bragg with Cara Tivey, so she was on piano and vocals. But who was to play the recorder part? Dave Woodhead, who played trumpet on my early albums was a shoo-in, but I also remembered that my old pal and sometime sideman, Wiggy, had been in the recorder group at school, so I roped him in as well.

The one factor I hadn’t taken on board when I demanded that we play live was that I had only ever sung the song once, in the studio months before. I didn’t know the lyrics very well, so hastily wrote them on a sheet of paper, which I placed at my feet. It all went fine during the afternoon run through, but when it came to the actual recording, things were decidedly different.

As we began performing, at 23.45 on the clip, technicians unleashed a cloud of dry ice. It's not an uncommon feature of a rock show, where it surrounds the artist like a thin mist and allows the lights to look more meaningful than they actually are. But the BBC didn’t want their performers to disappear into a fog. As a result, their dry ice clung to the floor, wafting around your ankles like a layer of thick cloud. My crib sheet of lyrics was soon obscured.

You can see the effect at 24.42, when I fluff the lines. Although I look relatively calm, I was panicking inside, hoping that I’d get another chance to perform the song. My saviour appeared in the shape of a BBC technician placing a ladder onto one of the overhead gantries. I saw him walk across the space behind the audience, watching me intently. He continued to look at me while he put his ladder into position. Except he missed the gantry and the steel ladder fell from the vertical to the horizontal with a loud crash. You can hear it at 26.12.

I relaxed a little then, feeling sure the director would be forced to go again. But no. We finished the song and were ushered off the green room to make nice with Simon Bates and Gary Whatshisname. I felt awful, like we hadn’t delivered. I was Number One and it was backside torpedo. Fortunately, I didn’t have to witness the broadcast, as the next day I flew to Warsaw to start a tour of the Baltic States.

Looking at the clip after all this time, it’s not nearly as bad as I remember it. But did Simon Bates really introduce us as “Cara Tivey…..and also some bloke called Billy Bragg”?

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:They look a lot better than I remember. I remember them looking terrible. I think I may have been getting them mixed up with Anything But the Girl.

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:Ofra Hazar - Min Min Maloo (or something).

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:Didn't she make a record with the Sisters of Mercy?

Butterfield wrote:where Middle East meets West.

Butterfield wrote:

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:They look a lot better than I remember. I remember them looking terrible. I think I may have been getting them mixed up with Anything But the Girl.

Anything But the Girl?