Paul Young
Between Two Fires

He was among the most successful singers of the eighties, even in Italy.

The frequency of his videos broadcast in continuous rotation on the then very popular music television channel was a torment.

Then he practically disappeared shortly after, as if he never existed. Removed, even today. When it's too much and when it's too little… no one cares anymore, for decades now.

Among the less skilled and interesting, anyway. Blue-eyed soul… too kind! Little voice, even wheezy, at risk of aphonia.

Few of his own ideas in the songs. His producer/composer would pass them to him, when they weren't outright covers.

He had the right quiff, I don't know, he was a good six-foot-something guy with a pretty face, not too pouting, quite himself. He competed with Duran and Spandau and Culture Club and Lauper and others, but he always seemed to me like the weakest and most overrated of the bunch.

However, this third work of his (1986) works. Maybe because there's less electronics, because more space is given to the accompanying musicians who are quality: Pino Palladino on bass, Steve Bolton on guitar the best.

Above all, there are fewer covers, only two out of ten tracks, and in general, there's an attempt to create refined and “warm” pop rock, far from the coldness of electronic drums and the fake Yamaha-made pianos, another burden of those years.

Here and there a tasty Hammond bubbles, particularly on “In the Long Run” my favorite, or a resonant Stratocaster effectively barks, caressed with the tremolo arm, like on “Wonderland”: two successful pop rock songs, the second has a long and engaging initial crescendo.

I am specifically attached to this work for a particular circumstance: for my birthday in 1986, some friends of mine had organized a trip together to the Rolling Stone in Milan, where the Manfred Mann's Earth Band was playing, a group they knew how much I liked. The concert turned out to be ideal for my tastes: very few people, we must have been two hundred in a hall that could have held a thousand, glued to the musicians under the stage but free to move, to smile and give the musicians the OK, knowing we were being seen; great music then, great group. Midway through the evening, I went up to the bar at the back of the room for a drink and found a joyful group of tall foreigners, the shortest Steve Bolton still well over six feet, the tallest Pino Palladino over two meters. Paul Young was amidst them too, not noticed in the slightest by any of the few patrons. There was also the producer Hugh Padgham, the same one from Genesis. “What are you doing in Italy?” I asked. “We're recording at the Castle of Carimate!” Hugh replied. At the end of the concert, I saw them slipping to one side of the stage, towards the dressing rooms, to greet their colleagues. The fact was that Young's keyboardist, Matt Irving, had been the bassist of Manfred Mann a few years earlier, and evidently that evening he suggested to the others to take a break from the recordings and go to the concert of his former band.

Therefore, the record was entirely recorded in Italy, between Carimate and Milan, as well as being the source of my pleasant experience described above, and memory. Four stars of affection.