The collaboration between Terry Hall and Dave Stewart produced an album of elegant sophistication. In October 2012, the album reached its 20th anniversary. Chris Wik and myself felt we needed to recognise this with this small minisite. Please, if you have any photos or memorabilia you’d like to include, send us an email to webmaster@eurythmics-ultimate.com
VEGAS 20
2012 marks the 20th anniversary of Vegas self-titled debut album; a piece of work definitely worth celebrating! So, let’s talk a little about a musical collaboration between Dave Stewart and Terry Hall that resulted in a totally unique, and one of a kind, music experience. Or as Andy Gill put it in his review of the album in The Independent: “It’s a fortuitous dovetailing of Stewart’s musical mise-en-scene and Hall’s droll pop musings, the ex-Eurythmic buffing a sheen of hope on to the ex-Special’s lugubrious lyrics”.
The album was officially released the 5th of October 1992 and was promoted by three singles: “Possessed”, “She” and “Walk Into The Wind”. But… how did it all begin? Well, according to an interview with Stewart in 1993 the story goes:
“Terry and I met about a year ago and we got together to basically write some songs together, just for fun. And those songs turned very quickly into the idea that it should be an album. And it had a particular sound about it”.
Terry Hall is, as we all know, famous for being the lead-singer of legendary Ska band The Specials, but he was also a member of groups such as Fun Boy Three, The Colourfield and Terry, Blair and Anouchka.
Dave also invited his musician friends Manu Guiot and Olle Romo to be part of Vegas. In the promotional material that preceded the album release Stewart was quoted as saying: “Manu and Olle have worked with me on numerous things over the years and they represent much more than session musicians and engineers. They make Vegas into a natural band”.
The band did not, however, embark on a big tour. They only played one “proper” gig as far as I know, three if counting the two concerts Dave and Terry played in Japan in 1997 in support of Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour. The set list to the left is from the only UK gig. But, and this is well worth mentioning, Vegas played live quite a few times on TV shows. And thanks to some good people out there we can now see some of the appearances on YouTube! For example, check out Vegas perform: “Possessed”, “Walk Into The Wind”, “She’s Alright”, “The Thought Of You” and great cover versions of Charles Aznavour’s and Herbert Kretzmer’s evergreen “She” and Talking Heads classic “Psycho Killer”.
Although the Vegas album was released as long as twenty years ago, it still sounds just as fresh and exciting as it did then. Vegas experimented with different sounds and combined diverse and seemingly disparate musical influences – reggae music, pop, electronica and acoustic elements. For example, listen to the haunting beat, the beautiful orchestration and Stewart’s sublime acoustic guitar solo in “Walk Into The Wind” or as Andy Gill described this particular song in his review:
“The album’s highlight, though, is ‘Walk into the Wind’, a gentle Caribbean pop mood with a well- crafted love lyric and a chorus that adds an extra layer of harmony counterpoint each time round, building to a euphoric finale. It’s quite exquisite, rather like what the Pet Shop Boys might do if they were as sentimental as P M Dawn”.
Vegas would often use rather strange-sounding chords and patterns to help set the mood. For example, the track “Lying In Bed Barefoot” (featured as an extra bonus track on the CD-single “Possessed”) contains an interpolation of another Vegas album track, “Take Me For What I Am”. And this is one of the things I’ve always loved with Vegas; the fact that you often discover a new dimension or meanings with each listen.
Andy Gill also pointed out in his review that “working with Hall has clearly brought out the white rasta in Stewart, the bulk of these tracks built upon the reggae offbeat, from the tight skank of ‘Take Me for What I Am’ to the Depeche Mode-style electro-pop of ‘The Thought of You’ and the dub-pop of ‘Nothing Alas Alack’”.
Vegas music often had a large sense of humor to go along with the often observational and surreal lyrics. Just listen to “Nothing Alas Alack” and you’ll see what I mean:
“It’s Christmas day in the doghouse / Lassie´s gone barking mad / Here comes Father Christmas / Handing out lucky bags”.
Andy Gill also praised Terry Hall’s lyrics in his review:
“Lyrically, Hall’s on top form for most of the album. His dry, Keaton-esque way with a deadpan observation enables him to thread a line like ‘I even like myself again’ into the album’s most positive song, whilst retaining the nerve to write a couplet as dumb as ‘Sometimes she gets wriggly / Sometimes she lies still’. That takes a special kind of talent, and a fair amount of gall, too”.
A standout track, in my opinion, is “The Trouble With Lovers”. Again listen to the great lyrics:
“The trouble with us is we don’t give each other a chance / The trouble with us is we’re living in cloud Disneyland / We try to be happy / We’re never happy / Try not to argue / Then starts to argue /Truth equals beauty /Sun equals laughter / That’s all we’re after”
In the 1995 November issue of music magazine Select Terry Hall remember himself and Stewart playing this particular track to Barry Manilow:
“With Vegas we wrote this fantastic song called “The Trouble With Lovers” and met up with Barry Manilow and played it to him to see if he wanted to sing it. Such a fantastic fucking highlight”.
For myself, I can only say that the Vegas album still is “a fantastic fucking highlight” and I really hope this album one day will be re-released as a deluxe edition with all the excellent B-sides as a special treat! One can dream, can’t one?
Chris Wik