Back: Back of My Hand

The Jags: Back of My Hand
[purchase] 

One of the fun things about writing for this blog is that I never really know where the piece is going to go when I start doing my “research.” There are so many songs that have the word “back” in their title (and even more with the word in the lyrics, and even more songs that I could write about, if I took a broad view of the theme). When I saw The Jags’ “Back of My Hand” come up in my search, I thought, “hey, this would be easy—a fun song that I remember from college that has pretty much been forgotten.” And yet, when I started to look into it, it became more interesting. 

The Jags were formed in 1978 by the Yorkshire-based songwriting team of singer Nick Watkinson and guitarist John Alder with Steve Prudence on bass and Alex Baird on drums. In July of 1978, they signed to Island Records and released a four-track EP, which included an early mix of “Back of My Hand.” It’s a great song—catchy, fun, but with a little edge. And no, it isn’t about hitting someone—it’s about the excitement of getting a girl to write her phone number on your skin, since the song long pre-dates cellphones. 

After dealing with the almost mandatory management issues, the song was remixed by Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes (The Buggles), and the resulting single release became a modest hit in both the US (peaking at 84) and UK (hitting 17), at a time when “new wave” music was not common on the charts. It was, I suspect, more popular on college radio (I definitely played it a few times) and more adventurous commercial stations that were beginning to embrace new wave music. That version was on the US release of their first full album, Evening Standards, although a newly recorded version was on the initial UK pressings. Honestly, I’m not 100% sure which version is embedded above, but I kind of think that it was the original version, not the Buggles remix. 

But here’s the rub. When I thought about writing about this song, my first thought was, “The Jags—that band that sounded like Elvis Costello.” And constant comparisons to Mr. MacManus appeared to torpedo the Jags. It’s kind of an interesting phenomenon. I remember that Costello was, initially, compared to Graham Parker, without damaging his career, and early Costello comparisons didn’t prevent Joe Jackson from becoming a star. So, the only conclusion must be that the Jags just weren’t that good. 

That conclusion would be wrong. 

In researching this piece, I found a number of reviews that call the song “a power pop classic,” their output in general as being of “uniformly high quality,” and having “a range of power pop that few—including Mr. Costello—ever achieved.” And I have to agree—the band was tight, and they wrote clever new wave pop songs that deserved better than just being dismissed as knockoffs. Yes, the Costello influence is hard to miss, but there’s also other things there-Thin Lizzy, maybe the Kinks. It’s a similar situation, I think, to the Knack, who were turned into a punch line despite some excellent songs because of, well, because of a bunch of reasons that I wrote more about here. 

After “Back of My Hand,” the Jags had some personnel changes and recorded a second album. While band members insist that they never tried to copy Elvis, as one member noted, for the second album, they tried not to sound like him. The album was unsuccessful, the band members feuded, there were legal and management squabbles, and the band broke up. As far as I can tell, none of the members appeared to join other known bands, it seems that their music is out of print, and some of it never was even released on CD. In fact, the version that I’ve uploaded is from a compilation, and the Amazon purchase link is from the soundtrack for the 2006 Owen Wilson movie, You, Me and Dupree. 

Then I found an article from 2013 entitled, Donate to Fund for UK Power Pop Legends The Jags’ Watkinson, in which I discovered that Watkinson had since about 2009, been, as the article put it, “living as a transvestite and performing at select clubs in the greater London area, generally under the name Virginia Plain.” The reason for the funding request was that Watkinson’s home was destroyed by a fire set when a lodger fell asleep with candles burning. And, of course, the flat was not insured, and the culprit fled and never paid a penny. Another article that I found about this situation noted that Watkinson was earning a “living as a gardener.” 

It's kind of a shame that such a talented songwriter isn’t writing songs, and that a talented band never really made it. But it shows how everything has to align for an artist to succeed.

TWO WORDS: TWO TRIBES

It seems strangely apt to be looking at this song again, and the accompanying video, as relations between the US and Russia (nee USSR) become increasingly strained. (It's funny, as an adult in 1984, I can't quite recall things being that bad, even if reminding myself and reviewing, yes, they clearly were. Mind you, I would have guessed that the Reagan era was a decade or so ahead, so maybe it's my problem!)

Frankie Goes to Hollywood exploded onto and into the UK charts in 1984, buoyed on a wave of an outraged media and a keenly exploitative PR campaign. There is nothing my country enjoys more than the combination of scandal with prurience, always peeking through nearly closed fingers at the decried depravities and disgustingness. Indeed, the british press specialises therein, having a field day with this band. So, when an outraged disc jockey, those purveyors of public taste and decency, suddenly cottons on that "Relax" might be, um, rather more energetic than the name invites, with, shock horror, references to a then barely legal gay S&M scene, their star was guaranteed.

"Two Tribes", the follow up single, was barely a cats whisker behind, vaunting straight to the top of the charts, remaining there for longer than any other single of that whole decade, even sucking "Relax" back up the charts in its wake.. It's true that ZTT, the record company, were at the peak of their game, manipulating the charts and feeding a product hungry population: this was way before such science fiction as downloading and streaming. This was largely black plastic. With 5 varying mixes across the domains of 7 and 12 inches, all marketed as essential, with the collected sales all counting toward the same song, is it any surprise sales were massive, the last great surge of physical product. In truth the song is a slighter variation of its predecessor, both being, arguably, more the product of producer Trevor Horn and his Fairlight synthesiser than of 5 scallies from Liverpool, even if the singer, Holly Johnson exuded as much charisma as the others mostly lacked it. (And was the only one with a surviving career of sorts.) But, as a sound, as a template it is huge, a tsunami of rattly bass, clattering percussion and swathes of keyboard, vocals with echo on their echoes. The different versions varied largely as to what else was chucked into the mix, varying samples scatter gunned over the none-more-exuberant Mr Johnson. These came from sources as disparate as Public Service films around what to do when the  H bomb drops, to snippets of speeches from, amongst others, Hitler and lyrics from Don McClean, all fed into the mouth of Ronald Reagan, via  UK uber-mimic, Chris Barrie. The video came from ex-10 cc band members, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, and featured actors disguised as Reagan and the then USSR supremo, Viktor Chernenko. (No, me neither.....) Tussling in a boxing ring, compered by Holly Johnson, as fellow world leaders look on. It doesn't end well. There was also a substantively longer versions, with yet more samples of speech, but, given the original was deemed to strong, without edits, for MTV, this had little exposure. (Have I got it here? Sure I have.)

The song, in al its myriad versions, had a long life, eventually even reaching the US Billboard top 50, just, at 43. Re-releases came again in '89 and '94, with a 3rd assault in 2000. This time the remixes were by external parties, usually several available in each iteration, now on CD, with up to 5 versions on each disc. I have to say the song, in the majority, still excites, galvanising frissons of nostalgic glee in my ageing bones. The triad of songs, "Relax", "Two Tribes" and follow up, "The Power of Love" are, in my opinion, as strong a launch pad as any new band can or could offer, certainly compared to the fickleness of now where longevity seems more often down to luck than talent. Afterwards? Well, no such luck for Frankie as, sans Horn, the band were but a shadow of what once was, with little left to say, eventually dissolving in a sea of rancour and regret.

Fill your boots!!!