PJ Proby

1985

Savoy Humungus Records

PJS1

12"

Tainted Love
(Cobb)

AA 45rpm

Shake A Bum
(Ziggy)

Recorded and mixed in the UK at Suite 16, Rochdale, Lancashire.

Distributed by Probe Records, Liverpool

VINYL SOLD OUT

BUY AT APPLE MUSIC

...and the recording started...at the unsuspecting Suite 16 studio, Rochdale, deepest Lancashire. Newly opened and owned by New Order's Peter Hook and Shaan (of The Stockholme Monsters), the recording sessions in February and March '85 proved to be the studio's, as well as our, 'baptism by fire' into the recording business. Putting it very mildly the sessions, at which was also attempted an early live take of Love Will Tear Us Apart, were anarchic. Proby had suffered a rift with his girlfriend, Alison Hardy (the young lady with whom he had Jerry Lee'd two years earlier, when a schoolgirl of 14, scandalising the nation). He was in an emotional state, and did so many vocal takes—none of which finally worked out—that he lost his voice. When the band's expectations of working with the Big Man were seemingly dashed, the drummer threatened to hit the guitarist and the camera woman (Linda Dutton of Ikon Video) walked out in disgust. Accidentally, she now has a very bizarre Warhol-ish film record of the LWTUA session.

The Golden Larynx sometimes did not co-exist well with the live situation, we learned, and after that first experience we vowed to take a different route. The vocal line in Tainted Love—where the words just would not come out right—turn half-way into a storm of reverb. The B-Side, Shake-a-Bum, penned by Ziggy, of early '60s combo The Rocking Vicars, was the song P J thought he was coming to the studio to record.