THE HOUSE OF LOVE

official web site
www.thehouseoflove.co.uk

Ready Steady Go pays tribute to one the eighties great, lost enigmas, the House of Love. Before the Stone Roses and just after the Smiths came another great white hope, the House of Love. Their unique sound briefly lit up a decade that was limping to a depressing end. Although they struggled to match the raw, primitive beauty of their early work all their subsequent releases proved to be highly consistent and polished but sold poorly. Internal struggles and media indifference meant the later work was virtually ignored but remains much loved and respected by die-hard House of Love fans. If ever a band were candidates to be re-discovered in years to come, the House of Love fit the bill perfectly. Their tragically short-lived and troublesome flirtation with the pop scene was vastly under-rated.

Ready Steady Go caught up with singer Guy Chadwick in 1992 to talk about the then latest effort, Babe Rainbow.

Guy Chadwick, lead singer of The House of Love, adores music. His influences stretch from Fleetwood Mac, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page to Metallica and Guns'n'Roses!

Guy was in his early thirties when he finally broke onto the scene with The House Of Love and the critics went wild over a scorching new guitar sound that eventually put intense pressures on the hand to come up with something better.

He started playing in bands at the age of twenty-three partly inspired by the bands of that time such as New Order, Depeche Mode and The Cure. These bands played an important part in his early musical direction but Guy soon choose to take an interest in guitar based sounds and met up with Terry Bickers to form The House Of Love.

Their first LP for Creation went down a treat and the timing was perfect, the big bands were gone by 1988, The Smiths had split and The Stone Roses were still Goths! The music scene was at it's worst. The charts full of pop stars having bad hair days and way too much make-up. Indie bands had absolutely no chance whatsoever of making the top 40. Even end of year polls in the NME listed bands like Wham! as cutting edge! These were truly desperate times.

The innovative guitar soaked sounds of 'Christine', 'Man To Child' and 'Hope' and the impact the band made must surely have helped turn guitars fashionable again and no doubt pave the way for bands like The Stone Roses to make a bigger impact on the charts. Like all lost legends, they were truly before their time.

At the time of their next release for Fontana records, personal problems threatened to break the band. The split between Terry Bickers and Guy Chadwick was well documented in the press at the time on a par with the Morrissey and Marr saga. By 1992 it was 'water under the bridge'. The House of Love would carry on without Bickers. Both could no longer possibly work together with musical differences so far apart.

Soon later though, Bickers replacement, Simon Walker, also left the band and people began to suggest Guy was maybe too heavy handed with his partners and a bit of a control freak.

In interviews Guy Chadwick would never get worked up when the fact was pointed out and wisely refuses to get caught up in a slang match. It's obvious Guy has his own ideas and the continuing improvement of the band supports the fact that Guy is more effective when in full control.

Surprisingly, the colourful album 'Babe Rainbow' failed to make a serious dent on the charts in l992. Needless to say the album had classic written all over it, in the mature structure of the songs, the yearning melodies and the array of guitar sounds that continue Chadwick's classic philosophy of noisy guitars creating the cleanest sound possible.

'Babe Rainbow' is where The House of Love shows they have shaken off the past and a rejuvenated Chadwick has penned more classics such as the swoonsome 'The Girl with the Loneliest Eyes'.

"The songs were written over a period of about two a half years" says Guy, "while the actual recording of the LP took about four and a half months, including mixing. This was quite a landmark for us after twelve months recording Fontana!"

Guy goes onto explain more about the songs.

"The songs were written as a whole during one of my most frustrating periods as a writer and therefore somewhat reflect the external struggles going on in my head, very bizarre indeed".

"Funnily enough these lyrics are the first people have seriously seemed to pick up on, especially in the USA, where everybody wants to know what the fuck I'm going on about. But with me anyway, the real accent has always been on the music and melody".

"The recording was done in three sessions, each one month long. We basically recorded the backing tracks live and then I arranged the guitars pretty much around the dynamics of the drums. We feel this is the best album we've ever made, and although there is some that might disagree with that, this is the first time we've ever had a strong sense of direction, and that is very exciting".

People gave up on The House of Love when Bickers departed but judging by Guy's comments the future looked brighter. During the time of Bickers involvement, Guy admitted to be suffering from a lack of confidence which affected the output from the band, so it's good to see Guy Chadwick talking confidently about his work".

Guy rounds up by mentioning some of the songs on 'Babe Rainbow'. The album kicks off with the edgy 'You don't understand', a tough sounding number that has a neat melody with the vocals on top form.

"'You Don't Understand' is based on an old Spencer Davis record called 'I'm A Man' and was the song that everyone went nuts about when they first heard it. 'Crush Me', is a song I wrote pretty much at the end of the recording of the Fontana LP and I always felt it was one of the best songs I've ever written."

The range of guitars and effects that bring the best out of this album sound very complicated and precise.

"Generally speaking I did most of the guitar playing using a variety of guitar and amps, the most predominant guitar used was a Gibson 335. Simon Walker played some brilliant guitar on 'Cruel', 'The girl with the loneliest eyes' and 'Yer eyes'. We tried to hold back from using too many effects because of the multi-layered arrangements, because it was felt a certain amount of clarity was going to be needed."

Guy signs off by revealing the album took a princely sum of 150,000 nuggets to make and I'm sure you will agree it's worth every penny! Hunt down any House Of Love albums, you will not be disappointed.

Guy Chadwick is now back after years in the wilderness recording as a solo artist for Setanta Records, his debut acoustic based album, 'Lazy, soft and slow'. Terry Bickers left the House of Love and gained some commercial success with the shoegazing/psychedelic sounding Levitation before fading into obscurity.