9. I’m being followed by the Rolling Stones – Murray Lachlan Young
There’s nothing quite so gratifying as seeing massive corporates fail on a spectacular level — especially when it’s as obviously wrong-headed as this little adventure was, and no casualties are involved. In that respect, Murray Lachlan Young represents one of my favourite stories about major label folly.
Specifically, EMI signed this briefly popular performance poet for a widely reported (though probably exaggerated) £1m advance, spent a truckload on packaging and promotion of a book with CD insert, and then proceeded to sell almost none of them.
I was introduced to this by Mark Roach, manager of Lucid 3 (double-click the videos to full-screen them) and next in line to the RIANZ throne.
Oddly, because I’ve never seen a photo of Murray Lachlan Young’s face, Mark is who I imagine performing his stuff — for which I apologise. It’s not fitting for a man of his standing in the popular music business to be pictured in a smoking jacket, spouting prosaic recitations in a posh proto-Russell Brand-alike tone over cheesy and melodramatic faux-serious melodies.
That said, there are some very good tracks in there. Casual Sex has a superb tango underlay and Simply Everyone’s Taking Cocaine should have been a number 1 single.
Apparently Young spends his days bothering pub dwellers in West Cornwall with his poetry, and has been known to bring a cellist along for the ride. I think I’d really enjoy an evening like that.
But until then, here’s a casiotone-soaked tale of obsession and fear at the hands of ‘that skinny one, thingummy — you know his name — the one with big lips, well he’s mainly to blame…’
But he does divide his audiences. There are two reviews on Amazon. One’s a five star rave, and the other reads:
“Almost, but not quite as bad as meeting the man in person. Having lived next door to the pretentious, irrelevant invertebrate for the best part of five years I can assure anyone who might be considering buying this album that listening to it for any period of time is similar to how I imagine Chinese water torture to be. Scratch that, it’s far, far worse.”
You can buy Vice and Verse here.
