An extract from Higher Than The Sun looking at Screamadelica's problematic second single...
Yet while he was making overtures to Teenage Fanclub, Alan McGee once again had his hands full with Primal Scream, albeit on this occasion for entirely musical reasons. Against some expectations, the band had come up with a more than adequate follow-up to Loaded in the form of the gospel-influenced laid-back dance groove of Come Together. Once again, they had elected to work on separate versions of the song with Andrew Weatherall and Terry Farley; the latter had turned in a hymnal and infectiously catchy treatment tailored for radio play, while the former – despite some initial friction with Robert Young, who was uneasy with the idea that this version would feature no guitar at all – took Gillespie’s suggestion that the song should be ‘transported to another planet’ and transformed it into an overpowering ten minute plus epic, embellishing the drums, organ and bass with judiciously punctuated samples, not least another opening call to arms in the form of an address by civil rights activist Jesse Jackson to the 1972 Wattstax Festival.
However, perhaps betraying his relative inexperience in the field, Farley found himself unable to come up with a final mix that everyone involved was happy with; several attempts at a finished version were rejected out of concern that they didn’t sound right for top forty radio, and as a consequence serious consideration was given to simply putting out an edit of the non-vocal Weatherall version as the a-side. McGee in particular objected strongly to this, and was characteristically vocal in his disdain for the idea of putting out a single that did not audibly feature Gillespie at all. Despite the clear commercial potential of the song itself, it seemed increasingly likely that Come Together would end up being shelved.
Only at the very last minute did Farley manage to deliver a satisfactory version of the mix, and while Come Together, which on the 12” also featured a more conventionally ‘rave’-styled remix by recent Creation signings Hypnotone featuring an unlikely sample from the Pearl And Dean cinema advertising jingle, would stall at number twenty six on its eventual release in September – possibly not helped by the video being a near carbon copy of that of Loaded– it was clear that Primal Scream were slowly breaking through to a new and receptive audience. Key amongst this was an accompanying feature in Smash Hits where Gillespie showed the magazine’s readers around his record collection, placing obscure dance white labels and reggae albums alongside The Sex Pistols, Inspiral Carpets, The Who, The 13th Floor Elevators and The Stooges. Like Saint Etienne, Primal Scream were successfully synthesising a blend of ‘old’ and ‘new’ sounds, and there was certainly a potential audience for that approach.
However, some at Creation still had some misgivings about the likelihood of this apparent new direction both catching on and indeed proving to be something that the band would even adhere to, and plans to issue a harder-edged dance single featuring Denise Johnson as a guest vocalist later in the year were forcibly shelved by the label; McGee’s established unease at the idea of Primal Scream singles that did not feature the band’s lead vocalist did not exactly help matters. More to the point, there still wasn’t an album ready to launch off the back of Loaded and Come Together, and in the meantime many other indie-dance acts had already got their albums into the shops and in some cases into the charts. The fact that many of these were shoddy and hastily thrown-together efforts that indeed are scarcely remembered now was neither here nor there; if the music press wanted to pounce on a latecomer as trends changed, Primal Scream would be squarely in their line of fire.
Higher Than The Sun - the story of Screamadelica, Foxbase Alpha, Bandwagonesque, Loveless and Creation Records' first attempt at taking on the world - is available as a paperback here or as an eBook here.