The History of The Blow Monkeys

1981 saw the formation of The Blow Monkeys. Robert Howard returned to the UK after five years spent living in Australia and met up with Neville Henry ( saxophone), Mick Anker ( Bass) and original drummer Angus Hines .The band made their recorded debut on the tiny independent imprint, Parasol, in January 1982 with “Live Today Love Tomorrow” and supported its release with extensive gigging in London, eventually securing a residency at the dearly departed Moonlight Club in Hampstead. The band’s idiosyncratic pop songs secured a record deal with RCA, inked in July 1983 and Tony Kiley replaced Angus Hines on drums.. The Blow Monkeys debut LP Limping For A Generation was released the following year, produced by Jam/Style Council sound manicurist Pete Wilson.

Animal Magic was the band’s second album, released in May 1986, and achieved the much sought after breakthrough. It contained the massive worldwide hit Digging Your Scene, which burst into the top ten singles listings both Europe and the USA. Amongst the album’s many gems was a duet with bizarre Jamaican toaster Eek-A-Mouse, entitled Sweet Murder. Such duets were a portent of things to come.

By January 1987, the band considerably consolidated their status with the irresistible single, It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way, which peaked at the number five position in the UK top ten. March of that year saw the release of the band’s third album, She Was Only A Grocer’s Daughter, and achieved silver sales status on release. Produced by American Michael Baker, it featured Celebrate (The Day After You), a glorious duet with Chicago soul/funk legend Curtis Mayfield. If the album title was a thinly veiled reference to the then British Leaderene, Margaret Hilda Thatcher, the duet made explicit what much of the UK would have felt had she been ousted from power in the 1987 election. However, the BBC banned the single from broadcast because of a perceived anti-Conservative lyrical theme. Undeterred, the band further underscored their political affiliations by joining the Red Wedge tour later that year.

The band’s next album, Whoops! There Goes The Neighbourhood, was a thematically linked collection written in response to the aforementioned prime minister’s notorious pronouncement “. . . there’s no such as society”. Contained within its grooves was another collaboration, this time with soul diva Kym Mazelle, entitled Wait. This earmarked the band’s status as pop innovators, not only by embracing political themes but also by seeing the potential in the dance/pop experimentation crossover at a time when the whole dance scene had yet to go “overground”. This experimentation would achieve its full fruition on the band’s last album, Springtime For The World. In the meantime, RCA released the band’s “greatest hits” collection, Choices, in 1989 – the album going “gold” on release.

Springtime was an eclectic and unusual album which, despite confusing both record company and music critics, has retrospectively become revered as an innovative record – perhaps some way ahead of its time. It contained the Balearic classic La Passionara, and Be Not Afraid, a duet with Algeria’s primo Rai exponent Cheb Khaled. The track gave the band a profile in such rarely-charted pop places as Pakistan and North Africa. The band split in late 1990 after nearly ten years together.

Little did they know that - 18 years later.....