Review by Andy Hawes for MPM
ATF or After the Fire as they were originally known, were a Christian rock band whose main claim to fame was having a big US hit with their incredible cover of the Falco track ‘Der Kommissar’ back in 1982. However, behind this track and the success it garnered is a story of a band who could and should have been far bigger than they actually were.
Bright Lights is a box set of all of After the Fire’s recordings from their early days in the mid-late 1970s as a Progressive Rock outfit through to their unfortunate demise in the early 1980s. It contains 6 CDs covering their 4 studio albums, plus a host of b-sides, live tracks and demos. It is the definitive collection of their music and represents a fascinating insight into the band’s history. I was a huge fan of the band from 1979 to 82 and thus eagerly welcome this collection. Much of it has already seen the light of day on the compilation Der Kommissar – The CBS Recordings from a few years ago, but that collection obviously missed their pre-CBS output and indeed the material originally planned for their 5th studio album, and thus is incomplete.
CD 1 contains the debut After the Fire album, Signs of Change. This was big news back in 1978 in the UK Christian music scene but was an album that stuck out like a sore thumb in the music world at the time. While the mainstream music world embraced Punk and New Wave, After the Fire were churning out material that sounded more like early Genesis with smatterings of Folk; hardly the sort of thing to set the world on fire at that time.
That being said though, despite being released on their own record label, the album sold a very respectable 4000 copies, selling out four pressings. It was briefly reissued in, I think, 1980 as I managed to get a cassette copy at the time and it was reissued on CD in 2004.
Listening to it now, it’s clear that a very decent remastering job must have been done because the album sounds fabulous, although extremely dated. With only six tracks, most are between 6-10 minutes in length (barring the 2 minute Folk fun-fest that is ‘Jigs’). The sound is firmly fixed around Pete Banks’ keyboards, most of which are swirling organ sounds so beloved of Prog artists in the 70s. Lead vocalist Andy Piercy provides guitar and the band at this time was completed by bassist Nick Battle, who also provides violin, and drummer Ivor Twydell.
The standout track on Signs of Change has to be ‘Pilgrim’, a 10-minute epic based on the novel ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ by John Bunyan, a 17th century allegory and one of the most important literary works of the early Protestant church. This track twists and turns through several movements showcasing the band’s compositional flair, although the instrumental virtuosity of bands like Genesis and Yes is not quite as evident here. Personally I think that’s a good thing: some 70s Prog is far too clever for its own good. Here, After the Fire focus on the story they are telling rather than being too clever with the ‘twiddly bits’ and it pays off big time! I found the rest of the album an entertaining listen, especially ‘Back to the Light’ and the instrumental ‘Jigs’, but it’s not really the After the Fire that I love and the bonus tracks provide more of the same – organ-drenched Prog, but not quite up to the quality of the main album itself. Overall, I enjoyed hearing Signs of Change again and it’s a fascinating insight into the band’s beginnings and the way they built their Christian faith into their music in a way that doesn’t preach or come across as ‘holier than thou’. A wise move on the band’s part!
CD 2 is more early demos and those that preceded their first CBS album. To me, much of this disc really is for completists only. The Prog tracks didn’t do anything for me, being too meandering and lacking in hooks. However, the demos of tracks that were later re-recorded for CBS are far more interesting. These are some of the songs that got me into the band in the first place and hearing their original incarnations here was fascinating – spotting which parts stayed and which were replaced gives a brilliant insight into the compositional and production process. Overall, I doubt I’ll listen to CD 2 again, but it definitely has its place in the collection and for the fans of Signs of Change, those early demos might be very interesting indeed.
CD 3 – Laser Love. Now we’re talking! Laser Love is the band’s CBS debut album released in 1979 and is a massive departure on the sound we heard on Signs of Change. Instead of Folk-tinged Prog, now we have a far more Pop-Rock/New Wave approach to things with concise songs, big hooks and a more up-to-date sound, with Pete Banks ditching the organ in favour of a mass of classic early synthesizer sounds.
Other changes had occurred too. Bassist Nick Battle was gone, with Andy Piercy ditching his guitar and taking up bass. In came John Russell, a left-handed Les-Paul wielding guitarist whose presence helped to define the new sound of After the Fire for the rest of the band’s existence. CBS pulled in the big guns for production too, with either Rupert Hine or Muff Winwood being responsible for all bar one of the tracks (which was produced by John Leckie).
There isn’t a weak track on Laser Love, although my personal favourites are ‘One Rule For You’ – a staggeringly brilliant piece of Pop-Rock with thumping bass pedal notes beneath a classic major key chordal pattern, topped off by a killer synth hook and vocals to match – ‘Life in the City’, another hook-laden beast of a song full of brittle yet incisive and choppy guitars, major key melodies and the most melodic guitar and synth solos you’ll ever hear and ‘Time to Think’, a Pop-Rock masterpiece with huge vocal hooks, twinkling layers of Moog synth sounds and a fabulous guitar solo.
‘One Rule For You’ charted briefly in the very low reaches of the Top 40 and garnered some respectable amounts of Radio 1 airplay, but although their sound was far more up-to-date than previously, the band didn’t quite fit in with the burgeoning synth-led electronica that emerged at the time and neither did they fit the Rock or New Wave moulds either. I personally wonder if the Christian angle might have also put people off. Although the band’s lyrics were very cleverly focused on not being overtly ‘worship’ or ‘preachy’ and you might not have known from a cursory listen that they were a Christian act, there was definitely less tolerance of such a thing in the mainstream music world back then and the media did push the ‘Christian Rock’ angle pretty hard.
All of that being said, Laser Love is still a superb album. The combination of guitar and synthesizers works perfectly. Andy Piercy’s vocals are not exactly your classic Rock vocals – his range isn’t massive and he doesn’t have roaring power, but he does have an absolute ton of passion, attitude and personality; all the hallmarks required of a classic New Wave vocalist. However, musically, perhaps the band were just a bit too ‘clean’ for that scene. Their uniqueness may have been part of the issue. The songs were superb, but they weren’t easy to pigeonhole at a time when music did love its pigeonholes! Apparently, the band were denied a spot on BBC’s Top of the Pops in 1979 because ‘One Rule for You’ was deemed to sound ‘too similar’ to Gary Numan’s ‘Are Friends Electric?’ which was listed for a performance that same week. Numan played the show and went on to massive success and After the Fire’s single never went higher than number 40. Who knows what might have been had things been the other way round?
The bonus tracks on CD 3 are various b-sides and live tracks which often appeared on 12” single b-sides. The former are leftovers from the album sessions with the same producers and are every bit as good as any tracks on the main album while the live tracks showcase a band on fire! A legendary appearance at the Greenbelt Festival in 1979 and their various appearances on BBC Rock Goes to College and Radio 1 Live In Concert from 1979-82 were ample proof of their brilliance as a live act, full of energy, attitude and humour, and this comes across in the live recordings both here and on CD 4 & 5. Absolutely excellent CD which sounds completely fabulous!
CD 4 – 80-F The period from 1979 to 1980 was marked by personnel changes in the drummer dept and the rather unfortunate incident of having an entire album of material rejected by CBS as not being good enough! However, with new drummer Pete King in tow, the band went back to the drawing board with producer Mack (who had also worked with Queen) and the result was 80-F. This continues in a similar vein to Laser Love, with the band cementing their synth and guitar approach with another very strong set of Pop-Rock/New Wave-esque songs. Highlights come in the form of opening instrumental ‘1980-F’, the glorious AOR-esque Pop-Rock of ‘Love Will Always Make You Cry’, the lyrically brilliant cautionary tale of life called ‘Who’s Gonna Love You (When You’re Old and Fat and Ugly)’, ‘Billy Billy’ – the tale of a kid who wants to be a rock star with all that goes with it – and the absolutely stunning ‘Starflight’ which has one of the best synth hook refrains you’ll ever hear.
I don’t think it quite reaches the majestic heights of its predecessor, but it’s still a mighty fine body of work. The bonus tracks are the usual b-sides, live tracks (a superb version of ‘Billy Billy’ which has a monumentally good extended guitar solo from John Russell) and alternative versions. As with CD 3, these bonus tracks are every bit as good as the tracks on the album itself. There are also a handful of tracks from the original shelved version of 80-F. Produced by Tony Mansfield, these tracks have a slightly different vibe from the rest of the CD but are still decent songs. Makes one wonder what the other unreleased tracks sound like. 80-F eventually became a quite successful album in Europe, especially Germany, where ‘1980-F’ was used on a TV show as its theme, but success in the UK was still comparatively modest, despite the touring and exposure on the BBC via ‘Live in Concert’.
CD 5 – Batteries Not Included. This is the final official After the Fire album, by which time most people were referring to them as ATF. Once again it was produced by Mack and was recorded at his studio in Munich. There is a definite step-up in production on Batteries Not Included. Keyboard player Pete Banks (who had by now changed his name to ‘Memory Banks’ to avoid confusion with his Genesis namesake) was definitely exploring a wider range of synth sounds. The synth layers are expansive, with clever use of what sounds like arpeggiators and sequencers on some tracks. The guitar sounds much bigger too, with a more Rock than New Wave vibe in the huge slabs of rhythm guitar, especially on album closer ‘Bright Lights’ with chugging almost Hard Rock chords and squealing feedback. The material on here is very strong, with plentiful highlights, including the singles ‘Frozen Rivers’ and ‘Rich Boys’, both of which criminally failed to chart (largely through CBS not pushing them enough), the uptempo Pop-Rock of ‘Sometimes’ and ‘I Don’t Understand Your Love’, the delicate balladry of ‘Gina’ and ‘Sailing Ship’ (featuring another superb John Russell guitar solo) and the atmospheric spoken word and synth weirdness of ‘The Stranger’. Then there’s album closer ‘Bright Lights’ which rocks harder and is almost a second cousin of ‘Billy Billy’ from 80-F in that it tells a cautionary tale of a kid searching for streets of gold in the big city but only finding the horrors of the street. It’s a diverse and brilliantly written, played and produced album and the two bonus tracks here are, as usual, just as good as anything on the album.
Big, high profile UK and European tours followed the album’s release with the band supporting ELO (where drummer Pete King had to play with the headliners as well as with ATF owing to ELO drummer Bev Bevan being hospitalised with appendicitis) and Queen, and a massive US run with Van Halen (where the band’s Pop-Rock/New wave sound was severely disliked by the partisan Hard Rock US audiences.) The band returned from these tours utterly burned out and with bubbling discontent in the ranks – the dreaded musical differences were beginning to strike. The band was effectively over by the end of 1982 and officially disbanded in 1983.
CD 6: AT2F. This is a collection of demos that would have made ATF’s 5th studio album. It has already been released in its entirety by Cherry Red and is an interesting set of recordings. Listening to it again now having just played Batteries Not Included again, I am struck by the difference in the songs. It’s clear that this is a band who are physically, emotionally and creatively just a wee bit tired. There are still some lovely moments on AT2F, notably ‘Young Love’ which has a proper AOR chorus, the gentler ‘Over and Over’ (always nice to hear a slightly more ‘ballad-esque’ sound – there are not many in their catalogue), up-tempo instrumental ‘1984-F’ that takes us back to ‘Joy’ from Laser Love and ‘1980-F’ from 80-F and the total New Wave-AOR overload of ‘It’s Over’, which has a crazily accurate voiceover prediction of the move from cash to bank cards and other technology, but overall, it’s the sound of a band who are slowly running out of new ideas. The songs just lack the sparkle of the previous three albums and it isn’t just the self-produced ‘demo’ feel that does it. A lot of it just sounds rather like retreading ground that was trodden rather better in the preceding 3 years. It’s not that the material is poor; it’s just not quite ‘there’. It’s still a fun listen though and the collection certainly wouldn’t be complete without it.
The CD is rounded off by two versions of ‘Der Kommissar’ which ironically was the band’s biggest hit right at the tail end of their career. It’s still a classic piece of early 80s nostalgia, brilliantly produced by John Eden and with the band sounding absolutely fabulous. In some ways, its placement here, the very last track on this compilation, is entirely appropriate, being the band’s swansong. Yet in many ways it fits sonically better with Batteries Not Included and I’d have been tempted to put it on CD 5 for that reason. A minor quibble though and easily fixed when I upload the CDs to my Mac and pop the tracks into a playlist.
At £35.99, this CD box set is great value for money, even if I rarely listen to CDs 2 and 6 again. The studio albums, b-sides and live tracks just sound absolutely brilliant – way better than they have ever sounded to my ears and that’s what gives it the value for money, along with the sheer number of tracks. For true fans of the band from back in the day (all of whom will probably be 60+ years old now) this is THE definitive collection we’ve waited for and, as such, it’s absolutely brilliant and in the main, it’ll be those people who flock to buy this, especially in the UK and Europe, although there’s more than enough value in this for the casual fan or for those who remember ‘Der Kommissar’ fondly (especially in the US) and just want to explore further the sounds of an era sadly long gone. It’s also a fitting tribute to drummer Pete King who sadly died from cancer back in 1987 and who played on everything from 80-F onwards – your legacy lives on, Mr King!
For me as a long-time fan, it’s great to listen to it all and experience the nostalgia and the memories of being 15-18 years old and all that goes with that. But it’s far more than that. It isn’t just good because of the nostalgia: it’s just really well-written, well-produced and well-played music that, even though it doesn’t really fit into any of the old pigeonholes of the time, encapsulates its era perfectly and the remastering done on all the CDs gives the music a fully rounded warmth that the originals (like a lot of the music at the time) lacked. If you’re curious, I challenge you – give it a punt. You might be very pleasantly surprised!
Great job Cherry Red! This is a fitting tribute to a great band and will be played regularly for a long time to come in my house!
