I was very happy to learn that XTC insisted on recording Nonsuch in England’s green and pleasant land because I needed them to come home so I could test a two-pronged equation that I hope will earn me a shot at the Nobel Prize for Physics. Here’s the first part (please note that all material on this website is protected by copyright laws and if you try to steal my equation I will sue your sorry ass):
XTC+LA=BJ
Oh my! I see that those with filthy minds could misinterpret my equation. Let me spell it out for the perverts in the audience:
XTC+LosAngeles=BadJuju
For those of you who still don’t get it, here’s the plain English version. This first equation is designed to prove that the commercially successful but artistically unsatisfying album Oranges and Lemons was the result of an incompatible energy vortex. The blending of XTC and Los Angeles resulted in bad juju that caused the band to produce subpar results.
The basis of the equation is grounded in fact. Q: What happened to XTC in their previous visit to La-La-Land? A: They had to cancel their show at the Hollywood Palladium because Andy was physically and mentally unable to grace the stage. XTC would never tour again, a development that would wreak long-term havoc on their finances (further aggravated by a manager who screwed them in the ass without the lube). Nine years later, both Colin and Dave had to take a second job at a car rental agency to make it through the Nonsuch sessions without having to file for bankruptcy. Conclusion: They never should have pushed their luck and made a second trip to L.A.
I must warn readers not to extend the equation beyond the borders of the L.A. metro area. The Skylarking sessions took place near Woodstock and in San Francisco and the result was more than satisfactory. The energy vortex surrounding Woodstock is so powerful that festival-goers didn’t mind fucking in the mud, and at the time of the recording, San Francisco was still a magnet for bohemians instead of the magnet for narcissistic high-tech moguls it is today. The second equation will be proven or disproven in this review:
XTC+UK=GJ
My working hypothesis is that Nonsuch will benefit from the good juju in England and the good juju will lead to a superior album. Any place in the U.K. would have done, but they wound up recording Nonsuch in Oxfordshire.
Please note that these equations are designed solely for the purpose of explaining the noticeable differences between Oranges and Lemons and Nonsuch. They recorded Mummer and The Big Express in the U.K. and the results were less than satisfying, but that was because the uncontrollable variable known as Andy Partridge used the studio as his personal toy box, thereby dissipating the impact of good old English juju.
It should be noted that other variables impact the quality of an XTC album but those variables are unreliable predictors. One of those squishy factors involves Andy’s relationships with the producers. XTC created one high-quality album when Andy and the producer were at loggerheads (Skylarking) but they also recorded several solid efforts when the relationship was more collaborative (Drums and Wires, Black Sea, English Settlement and the Dukes of Stratosphear releases). Things tended to go haywire when the producer too often deferred to Andy’s judgment (Mummer, The Big Express and Oranges and Lemons). The same is true of the relationship with Virgin; sometimes their interference worked for the better (Skylarking) and sometimes for the worse (Oranges and Lemons).
In the case of Nonsuch, both the twits at Virgin and producer Gus Dudgeon presented certain obstacles. As Andy explained in an interview with Les Inrockuptibles (translated from the original French) “It is a rather sad story, a big melodrama. We were ready two years ago, but our English record company refused all our songs. Then, we were unlucky with the approached producers.”
Andy’s gift for understatement is admirable. The musical director at Virgin rejected all thirty-two songs they presented to him and “threatened that Virgin would drop the band if the band didn’t write an album of twelve Top Ten guaranteed singles” (Wikipedia). Requiring XTC to top Michael Jackson’s record of seven Top Ten hits from Thriller was an absurd demand of an album-oriented band and the boys rightly told the jerk to piss off. A full year passed before Virgin replaced that dickhead with someone who appreciated their work but also pressed them to make the record ASAP.
Hiring a producer proved to be even more of a challenge. The first four choices didn’t work out for various reasons, so they wound up hiring Gus Dudgeon based on his work with the Bonzo Dog Band, ignoring the fact that Dudgeon’s primary claim to fame involved his work with pop darling Elton John. For the most part, Dudgeon was a minor annoyance, (except when he suggested to Andy that he drop “Rook” from the album) but things came to a head during the mixing stage. Dudgeon wanted Andy banned from the premises; Andy showed up anyway. Dudgeon’s first three mixes turned out busts in Andy’s opinion and engineer Barry Hammond sided with Andy. Virgin was called in to mediate the dispute and concluded that Dudgeon’s mixes were indeed bloody awful. They canned his ass on the spot and hired Nick Davis of Genesis fame to complete the work to Andy’s satisfaction. As Hammond proved to be a superb engineer, it took only two-and-a-half weeks for Nick to complete the mix.
The one area that presented no problem whatsoever was hiring a drummer. Dave Mattacks had expressed a desire to work with XTC and happened to have an open spot on his busy schedule at just the right time. For a band that had received very few breaks over the years, Dave Mattacks was the ultimate in godsends. From: https://altrockchick.com/2024/03/16/xtc-nonsuch-classic-music-review/
