One record at a time: 558. Propaganda - A Secret Wish

Back in the eighties, when I was young, television did not seem especially troubled by an excess of sport. Therefore a programme I naturally gravitated towards was the BBC’s coverage of the annual Lombard RAC Rally, then the United Kingdom’s premier international motor rally. The cars were exciting, of course, but a particular highlight for me was the theme music used for the highlights programmes. I loved it so much that I recorded it by holding a cassette recorder next to the television speaker, a sophisticated audio capture technique chiefly distinguished by its inclusion of every noise in the room. I would play the tape back and marvel at the music. As I was not an avid student of the charts, I had no idea that it was a record by an actual artist, I just thought it was the theme music to the programme. 

When I finally gained unfettered access to the internet in the late nineties, I used the search engines of the day, including Lycos and Ask Jeeves, to identify music I loved but could not name. Eventually I discovered that the music used on the rally coverage of the eighties was in fact “Duel” by Propaganda. This being the period it was, I downloaded it from Napster immediately. Respectability followed: I bought its parent album, “A Secret Wish” on compact disc a few years later, and this reissued 180g LP joined my collection in 2018. It then disappeared into the shelves and escaped my first trawl through the collection, which is either a comment on my filing system or proof that records can hide when sufficiently motivated. According to Amazon, I paid only £11.87 for it, so at least my administrative shortcomings came as a bargain.

The album is now regarded as a classic, with era-defining production from Stephen Lipson. Opener “Dream Within a Dream” drifts in on bass guitar and PPG Waveterm textures while Susanne Freytag recites Edgar Allan Poe’s 1849 poem “A Dream Within a Dream”. A recurring trumpet refrain is interrupted by drums, synthesiser solos and flashes of guitar. The result is an eight-minute subversion of conventional eighties synthpop, the sort of opening track that politely informs the inquisitive pop fan that the album has no intention of behaving itself.

The sampled slap bass of “The Murder of Love” could hardly sound more eighties if it arrived wearing shoulder pads and carrying a Filofax. As Claudia Brücken sings of being strangled by charm, resistance to the groove is futile. Much as I love “Duel”, I am less taken with its aggressive, brutal counterpart, “Jewel”. For me, the majesty of “Duel” lies in the counterpoint between the buoyant PPG Waveterm bass and the Roland Jupiter-8 chords, not rocking guitars. 

The second side opens with another single, “P:Machinery”, a suitably imposing piece shaped by contributions from figures as varied as David Sylvian of Japan, Glenn Gregory of Heaven 17 and Derek Forbes of Simple Minds. It was not a spectacular chart success, but it has become an undeniable cult classic and deserves the retrospective praise now routinely bestowed upon it. History may have been late, but at least it eventually turned up.

I am less enamoured of “Sorry for Laughing”, although I suspect the muddy production is more at fault than the songwriting. There is probably a sharper song buried in there somewhere, wearing a headlamp and waiting to be rescued.

“Dr Mabuse” is something of an outlier, drawing on two sources not encountered much elsewhere on the album: Trevor Horn and the Fairlight CMI. I think the version included here is the “First Life” mix, but I am not venturing into the differences between the various mixes and running times. The bewildering number of versions makes advanced mathematics look like a relaxing alternative. What matters is that I like the track, particularly the Fairlight samples that were shared with recordings by The Art of Noise.

“The Chase” is more relaxed and melodious, but it retains that immaculate eighties production sheen and the wonderful sounds created by synth wizard and programmer Andy Richards. The album ends with two separately listed tracks that function as a single joined piece. “The Last Word” is an instrumental remix of “Dr Mabuse”, while the internet informs me that a thunderclap and the sound of rain announce the beginning of “Strength to Dream”. Together they form an instrumental coda filled with brooding textures and majestic strings, ending the record not so much with a tidy full stop as with an ominous bank of weather rolling in.

It may be illegal in certain synthpop circles to speak disparagingly of “A Secret Wish”, so perhaps a favourable verdict is compulsory. Fortunately, it is also deserved. This is unquestionably a classic of the genre, made with wit, ambition and immaculate production. It was a critical triumph, although retrospective accounts can make it sound as if everybody bought a copy on release and immediately recognised its genius. I certainly did not. I had never heard of Propaganda until 1999, when I finally identified the theme from the BBC rally coverage, and I did not buy the album until 2006. I may have arrived late, but at least I got there before the vinyl vanished into my own shelves. 4/5

Trevor Horn book

I like the work of Trevor Horn. I don't regard him as a 'production god' or the new messiah, but there are quite a few records in my collection that bear his name. As a result, I took a great interest in his recently published autobiography. 

The book is generally quite good and is full of interesting stories. However, there are some aspects of the book that contradict other people's accounts and whole chunks of Horn's career seem to be omitted.

In the book Trevor repeats the story that the lady who says "Goodbye" in ABC's "Look of Love" is the actual girl Martin is singing about in the song. However, in a podcast first broadcast in April this year, engineer Gary Langan tells us the lady in question was actually the receptionist at SARM studios who happened to be his girlfriend and not Martin's. Who to believe?

Trevor recites a tale of meeting Michael Mertens in the canteen at Townhouse Studios following Propaganda's defection to Virgin Records. In the book Mertens approaches Horn and gets short shrift. In Mertens' version published on Facebook he merely says hello to Horn and receives an angry tirade in return.

I am not a Frankie Goes to Hollywood fan so I don't really know their history; but Horn's account of the band's demise and the subsequent court case seems relatively cursory to me. Maybe this is because Trevor regards this as a less interesting aspect of his career and he doesn't want to dwell on it. Maybe he doesn't go into detail because ZTT lost the court case. Either way, those looking for more information about the whole Frankie saga will be left a little wanting. 

There is no mention of recording "It's Alright" with the Pet Shop Boys and only some vague references to the creation of the album "Fundamental". Disappointingly there is no room for Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells II" and the chapter dedicated to Seal only discusses "Crazy".

I acknowledge you can fit everything into one book and at no point does Trevor state this is a definitive version of events; but I still felt a little short changed. Hell, the only production tip I got from the whole book is that tweaking a mix to get a good stereo field can be a waste of time: just pan some things hard left and others hard right. Easy. 

So whilst it is an interesting book, it is not perfect. This is clearly one man's recollection of events and as Winston Churchill wrote, "History is written by the victors."