Bradley's Buzz

All Four One and One Four All

Today we continue with our look back at the Motels catalog - a collection of albums that I decided need to be re-released and once I tell you all about them, I'm sure you'll agree. Luckily, cause I have so much time on my hands, I added all 5 of the Motels plus Martha Davis' solo album to our Bubbatunes catalog, and today we are going to talk about bub78, All Four One, the Motels' third or really fourth album. In fact, let's start right now shall we?

bub78 – The Motels – All Four One (March 27, 2007)

All Four One, is the most popular and successful album that was released by The Motels, and likely so since the band actually had two shots at making it. In the fall of 1981, Capitol Records set up the Motels with producer Val Garay, who had just come off the highly successful Kim Carnes Mistaken Identity album (“Bette Davis Eyes”) and with some inner turmoil in the band, Martha hired a few new guys and the producer set up a few session men to help fill out the sound for what would be the Motels’ third album Apocalypso. As it turned out, that third album didn’t really get the release it was supposed to and everyone had to go back and re-record in order to come up with an album Capitol Records would release. But why take it from me, when you could hear it first hand from Martha herself?

From the liner notes of All Four One (Expanded Edition):
OK…I’m sitting down to write about perhaps one of the most confusing times of my life and certainly a critical time for The Motels. The first thing I realize is I’m still confused. Where do I begin…?? How do I describe…?? What the hell happened anyway…???!!

The Motels were a “lucky band.” We were lucky to be around during the 1979 signing frenzy. We were lucky to be signed (and not dropped 6 months later) and we were lucky to get signed by Capitol Records, a label that was about the music and the commitment it had made to its artists – the proof of this being that we had already released two albums that had basically done nothing in America.

So maybe it was time to rethink the situation. “A new producer.” Exit John Carter AKA ‘Carter’ (a friend to this day)…enter Val Garay. Let’s have a flashback, shall we? (I love flashbacks.) Between the first and second albums it became evident that Jeff Jourard and myself were incapable of working together – this is where the phrase “personal differences” comes in so handy. Exit Jeff, enter my then-boyfriend Tim McGovern. He was one of the greatest musicians I’d seen – he played everything – drums , bass, guitar…he was like a psycho Hendrix. Unfortunetly, the psycho didn’t always stay onstage, and our relationship was stormy to say the least. As for myself, I was pretty much a stark raving lunatic…

Now we’ve circled around and are back at Val Garay, who was just experiencing huge success with Kim Carnes’ Bette Davis Eyes, and guess what? He was also a lunatic. At this point I want to impress upon you the fact that there were three other Motels – Michael, Marty and Brian – who were wading through all this shit as well. But their lunacy paled in comparison to the aforementioned group.

The shit we were all wading through was the making of the third album, Apocalypso. We knew that we had to start achieving some sort of commercial success, and the pressure was on. I cannont describe the energies, egos & power plays at work here. It was kind of like Harryhuasen Clash Of The Titans – Tim obsessing because he was finally able to flex his musical muscle; Val obsessing on visions of his production and management empire; me writing, depressing and obsessing…

When we finished one year later, Apocalypso was born…stillborn, that is. You see, Val had never let the record company hear the work in progress. When they finally did hear it, I still remember Rupert Perry (one of the great ones) looking at me, saying, “we’ll release it, if you insist…but the promotion guys will probably not work it.” In other words, it was already dead.

I found myself muttering, “I can’t go on”…and then proceeded as though on automatic pilot (actually, more like “Night of the Living Dead”) to pick up and fire Tim (from both home and studio), write new songs, get a new guitar player and start recording again. It hit me and it didn’t feel like a kiss… We recorded the new record – I think it took another year. By the time we were finished, we were tired, hurt, a little broken and on the verge of being a success (overnight).

The album was entitled All Four One because it was the fourth album and it was the four of us that weathered the storm.

Apocalypso was an album that was maybe too kooky for its day…nonetheless, it has always been one of my favorites. And now, for the first time, some of those tracks get to come out and play. I hope you like these recordings and know that no matter how crazy it gets, there’s always joy in creating and performing music. Thank you for making that possible. – Martha Davis, 1999.

All Four One would be released in April in 1982 and end up reaching #16 on the pop charts, helped along by the hit single “Only The Lonely” – the definitive in Martha’s spooky ethereal divaness. The album also launched two more singles, “Take The L”, with its so simple it’s utterly fabulous finding that if you take the l out of lover it’s over, and the boppy pop of “Forever Mine”. Both singles scored on the top 100 and probably received more airplay than sales since the album was being bought up left and right.

The rest of the tracks on All Four One, are the ones that really blow my mind. I’ve had about five versions of this album in my catalog over the years. One Way Recording released it on CD around 1995 and then an Expanded Edition came out in 1999 that included 4 of the Apocalypso session songs. As the years go by, I find myself going back to this album over and over. Though I have to admit it wasn’t until I made the Bubbatunes version that I really got into it. Where I used to think Careful was a profound stop on the Motels tour, I now believe All Four One is their very best album.

The darkness and allure that would’ve been found on Apocalypso isn’t completely gone from All Four One. The moodiness of the hit single is just one instance of this, but add in the surf scare sounds of “Tragic Surf” and a cover of the Crystals strangely alluring “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)” and you get the Shangri-La’s going new wave. It’s hard not to feel the venom of Martha’s sting when she’s singing such ‘carefree’ songs of death and domestic violence. “Art Fails” is another crowning achievement in the Motels repatoire, with its new wave jaunty back beat and Martha pleading, “I don’t want you to see me this way.” There’s also the title track of that misbegotten album with the jungle rhythms, off kilterness of “Apocalypso” – “they dance all night at Love Café/ Gina finds it very good that way/ no day/ no tomorrow/ all the children making love out of sorrow…” Martha is a supreme lyricist and her takes on foreboding love and city life attach themselves right into my psyche.

Of course nowhere is she more evident about singing the city life than in “So L.A.” another moody track that tells the tragic story of LA life – “Jimmy cracked when he came out here/ his precious dream was never clear/ though he practiced it a thousand times/ the city should’ve been his that night/ but the man on the corner got something new/ and something new is good for you tonight!” It’s always been one of my favorite Motels songs.

There’s even moody jazz thrown in, with the ballady “Change My Mind” and the opener of the album is a song that inspired me to write Swivek’s “Mouth” – the straight up new wave rock of “Mission Of Mercy” – “He didn’t say where he was goin’ but he left in such a hurry/ saying something about a mission of mercy/ mama hasn’t been sleeping well at all/ as she lays stretched out in the hall/ waiting for him to call…”

Though Capitol released All Four One as an expanded edition including some of the Apocalypso tracks, the CD is way out of print and they didn’t include a number of songs they could have. So when I decided to put Careful (1980) and Shock (1985) two Motels albums that saw the light of a CD release very briefly in the 90’s, on the Bubbatunes reissue list, I decided with all the rare Martha Davis and Motels I had, I would just re-release their entire catalog. And though I didn’t go the full way and actually release Apocalypso as a single disc, I did add all the tracks I could find as bonus cuts – including the groovy dreaminess of the original piano driven “Only The Lonely”, the first versions of “Mission Of Mercy” and “So L.A.” and three super cool tracks that would’ve been on the third album – “Lost But Not Forgotten”, “Schneekin’” and “Who Could Resist That Face?” and for a special added bonus there’s a bonus cut from the All Four One sessions called “Surrender” which is so frickin’ cool I can’t believe it didn’t make the final cut. But once again Martha’s words are probably more interesting than mine so here are her rundowns on a few of the tracks.

MARTHA’S RAP SHEET All Four One (1982) Apocalypso (1981)
What Martha Davis has to say for herself:

bub78 The Motels – All Four One (2007, 1982)
Track List:
01. Mission Of Mercy – Very few heartbreaks are as tough as parental abandonment, and whatever the reasons for leaving, I doubt that they will ever be understood by the children left behind. (2000 Martha Davis – Anthologyland) Mission Of Mercy is a song of abandonment, initially inspired by a child I knew whose father had disappeared. I now realize that it could very well have been about myself, dealing with the loss of my parents. After all, I did spend a lot of time “stretched out in the hall.” (Martha Davis; November 2001 for Classic Masters – the Motels)
02. Take The L – This classic, brought to you by Marty Jourard and Carter, is about being in the end of a relationship and not feeling too good about it. I remember Marty was going thru a break-up, and he and Carter were having a heart-to-heart. Carter said something to the effect of “Take the L outta lover, and it’s over.” Marty then excused himself, and went immediately to the piano. (Martha Davis; November 2001 for Classic Masters – the Motels)
03. Only The Lonely– Memories of the conception of this song are vague. I don’t remember what time of year it was, what room I was in or my state of mind. I know that in interviews I have said that it was about the paradox of “making it”, of being signed. In one hand you have the applause, the tours, the roses and the champagne; in the other, a feeling of emptiness, insecurity and loneliness. The diversions seemed necessary to fill the void. The one thing I do remember about this song is that it wrote itself. I picked up my old guitar (the one I’ve had since I was 8 years old), and there it was waiting for me. I guess if I could say anything about this song, it would be that it was a gift. (Martha Davis; November 2001 for Classic Masters – the Motels)
04. Art Fails
05. Change My Mind
06. So L.A.
07. Tragic Surf
08. Apocalypso
09. He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)
10. Forever Mine
11. BONUS TRACK Surrender – I kinda like this song…the arrangement needs some work…but who knows, I might take it back to the shop and tinker with it some more, don’t be surprised if you hear it at the next show. (2000 – Martha Davis – Anthologyland)
12. BONUS TRACK Only The Lonely (Alternate/ Early Version) – From the famous album that got away, APOCALYPSO, we bring you the original, Only The Lonely. That was the album that we had to do over, cause there “were no hits on it.” By the way, I apologized personally to Roy Orbison for using the title, he said it was cool. (2000 Martha Davis – Anthologyland)
13. BONUS TRACK – Lost But Not Forgotten – The verse of this song still makes me hot. It does what The Motels did best, “music noir.” With a little work on the chorus, who knows? (2000 Martha Davis – Anthologyland)
14. BONUS TRACK - Schneekin’
15. BONUS TRACK - Who Could Resist That Face?
16. BONUS TRACK - So L.A. – Apacolypso version
17. BONUS TRACK – Mission Of Mercy – Apocalypso version
18. BONUS TRACK – Only The Lonely (Live)

For more fun with the Motels visit the website www.marthadavis.com and www.jourard.com

Labels: All Four One, Apocalypso, Martha Davis, Marty Jourard, Retro music, The Motels

posted by swivek @ 12:38 PM