30th December 1991, ON the STREET
Flight of the Doves
London combo Thrashing Doves made two albums in the mid-to-late 80s - the sorta soulful Bedrock Vice and the curiously more rocky (considering the title of their first effort) Trouble In The Home. A few years ago they seemed to totally disappear, but now they're back with a leaner, cleaner and sleeker body of album work entitled Affinity, a new record company (Elektra) and a name change. Lead vocalist and guitarist Ken Foreman says the new name is due to the band's addition of vocalist Angie Brown (who warbles a great lead on the huge, pensive ballad Beaten Up In Love Again) and "mainly 'cause everyone called us The Doves."
Ken calls from London and almost immediately starts interviewing your correspondent - something he does quite frequently throughout the course of our conversation. He wants to know about the "high standard" of our bands, crowd capacity and the nature of our pubs and clubs, the complete rock'n'roll demographic and the phenomena of our tribute bands (how the hell did he hear about them?!). Wanna get back to the interview?
"Oh yeah," he laughs. "I forgot about that,"
You'd think with "Thrashing" in your old name you must've been crazed punks back then.
"You'd think it would be loud wouldn't you?" he laughs.
Actually, the Doves' sound has more to do with subtlety and songcraft than blast power. Along with Ken and Angie the music is made by brother Brian Foreman (keyboards and programmes), Ian Button (lead guitar) and Kevin Sargent (piano and synths), they are augmented by Gail Ann Dorsey (bass) and Steve Creese (drums).
The charming and chatty Ken delivers a brief life story and explains the band's disappearance: "Brian and I started writin' songs together when we were still living with out mother. I was 17, he was 15. We did some indie records, then we met up with Ian and Kevin. We sort of went along, then in '85 started creating a real buzz in London. It was a period when everybody wanted to see us and we were getting masses of press, and that's when we got our deal. We just sort of evolved. We really didn't have any plan. We signed to A & M and spent a lot of time in the States, 'cause our first album did pretty good there, then the second album followed along the same path.
"Then, the guy that signed us to A & M...the whole thing was falling apart and we were finding it more and more difficult to get people to respond to what we did, so we got off the label and spent 18 months fighting off the baliffs! I had a guy coming 'round to the house asking me how much my hi-fi was worth 'cause he wanted to sell it. We found that our management hadn't paid any tax. They said that they'd put tax aside but, in fact, we owed five years of tax. We had a really, really rough year-and-a-half before we signed to Elektra."
This horror couldn't be proved as managerial neglect?
"In English law you're always responsible for your own tax and ignorance is no defence. We did everything we could, spoke to a lawyer and got other advice, but in the end we were left out in the cold holding the accounts and we had to start paying them monthly," he laughs. "They did the whole thing: made us list out every piece of equipment that we own, and we had to even come down to things like our record collections, hi-fis, the car, everything. They wanted to work out whether there was enough money there to make it worth bankrupting us. In the end they decided it wasn't. What happened was, they gave us a year to get a new record contract, and when we got that they steamed in and took all the (advance) money. Which made it quite difficult to live (laughs), but at least we got back to square one."
Suddenly Ken wants to know about Crowded House, starts talking about books and old movies. Then he talks about how the Doves feel now: "After that year-and-a-half, now we just want to survive. Kevin went back to work in an office for his father, as a clerk and he said, which really summed it up for me, he said "All I wanna do from now on is just not have to work in an office again, I just want to play the piano". I think that really sums it up, all we want to do is play the piano."
What, no global ideals?
"I don't know what that really means. I think you have to have some sort of aspirations to Hitlerism to go for this world domination idea, having your face on every paper. It must be a nightmare!"
After answering Ken's enquiries on Australian radio and TV formats, he talks about Affinity: producer Tommy Lipuma (George Benson, Dr John, Nat King Cole and more), an unusual choice considering his jazzy background, was tough and exacting to work with and "a lovely guy"; Ken went to Minneapolis with Prince protege David Z to remix the album, and met his highness and "he's very, very shy. He just said "Hi" and that was it, really. He's a workaholic. He was always around and threw a party when I was there, but essentially he was working."
Ken asks another pile of questions on anything from local geography to INXS....phew! Time to get a question in edgewise... Have you and Brian always written that balance of tasty, romantic songs like Cry On My Shoulder and Beaten Up In Love Again with stories and social commentary like Bankok Attorney and (the extremely funky) The President's Share Of The Promised Land?
"That's definitely true. You'll find that on both the other albums."
What are your feelings on pop: are you against soap opera stars having hits, are you into rap or heavy metal, was punk a good thing, do you thing Emerson, Lake & Palmer should get back together?
"(Laughs) I've go comments on nearly all those things. E.L.P.: our current manager used to manage them, as well as Roxy Music, T-Rex and all those bands, so I guess, yeah, love them to reform - I don't know whether it'd be that good for the state of music. Soap opera stars: I can't get away from Australia righ now, you bastards come over here, you kick our arse in the rugby and then you send us Jason and Kylie to round it all off, (laughs)."
Ken starts pumping for more local information, (surprise, surprise!), meanwhile, get in touch with Affinity.
STEVEN CADBURY