Skylarking

And then the other side was male, with the meadow flowers inserted in the pubic hair. But, you know, it was very close up and you couldn't really see what was going on. It was all very tastefully done. There's no, sort of dick flashing. There's no todger swinging there in the breeze. ~ Andy Partridge

WL: That brings us to Skylarking.

AP: Well, I think you know this has got quite a tale attached to it.

WL: Does it? I'm not aware of that much of a tale to this one.

AP: Well, Todd (Rundgren) kept on pressing us to do this thing called Day Passes.

WL: That's right.

AP: And he drew a little sketch and he said, "You have two railway tickets there, like The Big Express, keep the railway theme. You have two railway tickets, and they're day passes. Get it?" And we thought, "Jesus, that is so corny." And a phrase my father used to use a lot when

I was a kid was, "Come on, stop your skylarking." You know, stop skylarking, get out of bed and get to school and stuff.

WL: Stop goofing around.

AP: Yeah, so skylarking was like a Navy term for actually messing around on the... frigging in the rigging, basically. [laughter] You know, messing around on the rigging was known as skylarking, 'cause you're messing around up there. And it was a phrase he used with me a lot. And I liked the sort of summer connotation, and the countryside connotation of it. The skylark is just such a joyous kind of thing. It's a joyous sound. And I liked the idea of it. It's young men messing around. You know, the Navy connotation. So I said, "Well that's a great title." And the other two liked the title. And I wanted the sleeve to have a sort of pagan sexuality. And I liked the idea of the Lady Chatterley's Lover thing of having flowers in your pubic hair. Wild flowers.

WL: Now, I've seen a sketch for that.

AP: I've got the color contacts from the photo session somewhere in the house.

WL: Neat.

AP: And I got Dave Dragon, Ken Ansel and Design Clinic, and said, "This is what I want." They said, "Well look, we found somebody, a couple who've agreed to do it. But they said they don't want you at the photo session. They feel kind of nervous about it." So I said, "Okay, fair enough." And I sent them drawings of what I wanted. I said, "Well I want it to look like this." And they did this photo session where they fitted daisies and buttercups into the pubic hair of a woman. And that was to be one side of the bag. We're still thinking twelve-inch vinyl at that time. And it was to be a double front and double back. There was to be no front and back. You could choose whichever one you wanted to look at, there's no preference. The opening would be at the top. And then the other side was male, with the meadow flowers inserted in the pubic hair. But, you know, it was very close up and you couldn't really see what was going on. It was all very tastefully done. There's no, sort of dick flashing. [laughter] There's no todger swinging there in the breeze. And Virgin really got the, no pun intended, they really got the willies when they saw these photographs. And they said, "Look, what we want to do is to make a mockup of the sleeve as you want it to be and we're going to take it to the stores." Basically I think they went down to Oxford Street and a couple of other streets and they went in the big chains: HMV and Woolworth's.

WL: Sure. And said, "What do you think of this?"

AP: Yeah. They went around and they pulled this sleeve out and they said, "Would you have... I think they went about it all wrong. They went in and said, "Would you have any trouble displaying this?" Of course, you immediately think, "Why, what's wrong with it?" Basically, these stores said they thought it was too risqué and they wouldn't display it. And then they got together a big meeting at Virgin with all the kind of marketing people and the Virgin art department and the A&R man. And I don't think we were invited. I don't remember going to it. And they were all arguing, half of them were saying is was so tasteful it was beautiful and it fitted the music. And the other half were saying it was sexist and it was just smut, porn.

WL: [laughing] Porn.

AP: And Virgin got cold feet. Really what gave them the coldest feet was the fact that none of these big chains would agree to stock it.

WL: That would do it.

AP: You know, they would stock it but they wouldn't put it on display. So what's the point?

WL: If it hurts sales, we're not interested.

AP: Exactly. You know, I think one of them... I can't remember which one it was, HMV or something said, "Sure, we'll stock it, but we'll have it below the counter and people can buy it in a brown paper bag."

WL: [laughing] Come in wearing a trench coat, [whispers] "Uh, do you have the new XTC album?"

AP: [laughing] What do you want this week, Wankers Weekly? No thanks, I'll have the new Skylarking.

WL: [laughing] That's ridiculous.

AP: So Virgin said, "That's it, you're not using that as the sleeve." And again it was a last minute panic. And I thought, "Oh my God, this is coming out next week and we don't have a sleeve." And in a rush I flicked through... If I tell you this I hope you don't get sued for copyright. I think I was flicking through an old Graphis Annual. You know those old collections of graphic arts?

WL: Yeah, sure.

AP: Well I had one from the early to mid fifties, fifty-three I think it was. And I was flicking through and there was a Swiss poster (by Hans Erni) of a couple of satyr-like people. And there was one crouched on his

up with something now, right this second." And so I said, "Look, can we take this poster and adapt it and change the eye of the man looking at the woman. Can we change it into a skylark?" And so Design Clinic did that for me. And I said, "Can we de-boss it so that it looks like a label, sort of a high quality gold label stuck onto this textured paper?" And we had this textured paper with sort of bits of thread in it and stuff. And we de-bossed it so that it looked like a really rather exclusive label attached separately to the front. And that was simply a last minute panic sleeve because the "dick and fanny" sleeve was deemed unacceptable.

WL: [laughing] Are you satisfied with it now?

AP: It's okay. I still would have preferred the original one because I had a whole series of potential single sleeves ready, if Virgin would pick certain tracks as

singles, that were all in the same vein. In fact, "Grass" was one of them. You know, that's from the same session. I think that's the neck of the girl whose pubes would have been on the album. The same meadow flowers and stuff.

WL: Yes, I've got a copy of the clear version of that.

AP: Right, it looks smoky. The idea was that it was almost made out of factory smoke or something. And the hand from the factory was symbolizing meeting and holding hands, sort of communication with human hands. But they were made out of bricks and the bricks were turning into factory chimneys. I think I'd been inspired by a Polish artist called [Bronislaw Wojciech] Linke. He did a lot of work with making things out of brick. And they had a real urban, but somehow oddly human character to them. They really looked like they were crying out, or like people trapped inside buildings and things. And I liked the idea of the hand being done in brick. It symbolizes the human element in a factory. Because the whole song is about sort of skiving off from a factory and meeting up with your girlfriend and stuff. Yeah, I had good fun doing a lot of them. That's really where I get to do my kind of art thing these days.