Audio Autopsy, 1985: Prefab Sprout, Paddy McAloon: Steve McQueen UK/Two Wheels Good US Album + 2023 Acoustic Vinyl

Paddy Unplugged! What the EU got in 2019, the States finally got in April! Holy Record Store Day, Batman!

Prefab pilot, Paddy McAloon, newly 66, above. In 2010, Paddy told AVClub.com, “I started to write songs in ’71, aged 14. By ’72, the idea of having a band was in place. I started to play with my brother Martin, and our best friend Michael Salmon round about then. You’ll probably think I’m joking, but really, we were a ’70s band.”

“A lot of what goes on in a studio is on a sub–molecular level,” Paddy McAloon told SoundOnSound in 2014.

“The sound bashing off the walls, the same old instruments that everyone uses, but being played in a real live atmosphere. I still think things from the ’50s and ’60s are the best–sounding records:

“If recording is done well, it will have that unique stamp. You listen to a Peggy Lee or a Frank Sinatra or a Beach Boys record, where they’re done in what I assume to be rooms with well–designed acoustics, they have a sound.”

A Little Context

Steve McQueen was the second studio album by British pop band, Prefab Sprout. It was released in June 1985 on Kitchenware/CBS Records in the UK, and CBS affiliate, Epic Records, in the States. Fellow pop star, Thomas Dolby, produced (except for Track 4, produced by Phil Thornalley).

In a fit of apparent corporate cowardice, CBS Records named Steve McQueen, Two Wheels Good for stateside consumption (pictured above), fearing the actor might retaliate with copyright/likeness infringement or some such. The company’s UK office had no such fears, despite McQueen’s worldwide fame.

The U.S. company’s paranoia reached Olympian levels when they re-titled the album’s lead track from “Faron Young” to simply, “Faron,” again apparently sensing a litigious backlash. How they rationalized that all the world’s Bonnys (Track 2) and Lucilles (Track 5) would band together to somehow eschew class action suits is beyond me.

Prefab Sprout’s debut, Swoon, was released in March 1984, while their McQueen/TWG follow-up, From Langley Park to Memphis, saw the light of day in March 1988.

So, clearly (and unfortunately, it might seem), this quiet, little idiosyncratic band was buried smack dab in the heart of the ‘80s…under a heaping pile of “M” rubble: MTV’s emergence, chart dominance by Madge and Michael, as well as the rock radio preponderance of the ubiquitous hits of Duran Bon Journey….it was relentless.

Noel Murray of The A.V. Club wrote that Steve McQueen and its predecessor, Swoon, “are considered classics of the mid-’80s post-punk/new-wave era, even though they don’t sound like they belong to any particular movement.”

Prefab Sprout (from Witton Gilbert, County Durham, England), for McQueen/TWG, were:

• Neil Conti – drums, percussion

• Martin McAloon – bass

• Martin’s brother, Paddy McAloon – guitar, keyboards, vocals

• Wendy Smith – keyboards, backing vocals