Johnny Hates Jazz 'Heart Of Gold'

Chart Peak: 19
 
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Curiously enough, this is a single I remember for non-musical reasons: a Saturday-morning children's programme held a competition to take a cover photo for this single, and I recall them showing a film of the winner getting to meet the band and professional photographer who took the picture they actually used with the same model and location. I thought the original version was better, though. Whilst I must have heard the song itself at the time, I had no memory at all of it until I listened back to it on Now 12, and I was quite surprised to discover that, as my adult self can tell, it's blatantly a song about a prostitute, a sort of 'Roxanne' with synth-brass (er, no pun intended!). That possibly makes appearing on the cover less of a prize for the competition-winner's friend than it seemed at the time...

This story seems to encapsulate something about JHJ, caught between teenybop and the soul music they seemed to want to make (although one of them was Mickie Most's son, so possibly not determined to stay in the musical underground). The pitfall is, though, that when they tried to write about serious subjects their lyrics struggled to rise beyond the most obvious clichés, and this song suffers pretty badly from that. It's musically solid but no more and (in my experience at least) not very memorable, and moderate success seems about right for it. In fact this was their fourth Top 20 hit in a row, but they were never again seen in the Top 40.

Also appearing on:Now 10, 11
Available on: The Very Best of Johnny Hates Jazz

Johnny Hates Jazz 'I Don't Want To Be A Hero'

Chart Peak: 11

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The thing is, I do remember Johnny Hates Jazz. I remember a few of their singles (especially their biggest hit 'Shattered Dreams', which curiously failed to find its way to a Now album) but somehow I have no memory of ever hearing this one at the time. It seems to be the one you hear the most often now, for some reason.

Not that I really took any group that seriously when I was nine, obviously, but I could tell that there were some you were supposed to think of as important, and Johnny Hates Jazz never seemed to be one of them. It's mildly surprising to hear an anti-war sentiment, even a vague one like this, coming from a teen-friendly pop act; even if that's not what they wanted to be, that seems to have been how they ended up. That doesn't make this a very subversive record, though, partly because it wasn't released during, say, the Falklands or Gulf wars, when radio might have banned it, and partly because the lyrics tend rather towards the hackneyed. Also, the tune is a bit too much like 'I Can Make You Feel Good' for comfort.


Also appearing on: Now 11, 12
Available on: Turn Back The Clock