Like A Forest Fire
Like a forest fire.We were all just barely teenagers, when in the fall of '84 Lloyd Cole and the Commotions released their new album « Rattlesnakes ». The media stamped it « college rock » and this album indeed was going to crystallise the high school years of a generation that had not yet experienced war (the likes of the Beatles vs the Stones, mods vs rockers, Donovan vs Dylan…)So at aged 13, you had to take a stand and pick a side.New Wave had reached a point of no return with bands like Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, and Heaven 17. Just a warning of even worse things to come for mankind..(Wham , Rick Ashley, Nick Kershaw, Kajagoogoo…)One had to react. So we bought Rattlesnakes .On the cover their was an open door. We walked in.Inside, we discovered a brand new world where Ronald Reagan,Margaret Thatcher, Bernard Tapie, Jack Lang and Marc Toesca did not exist. A world where the devastating materialism of the past decade had no more rights .And there in an open-air shed, we would read books by the corner fire:Play it as it lays by Jean Didion (the album title is a direct reference to the book) Norman Mailer, Simone de Beauvoir, Renata Adler....walking into the woods, we discovered that Lloyd Cole had laid records on his path, like hints to be used to put a story back together: Blood on the tracks by Dylan, Velvet Underground's third album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the Byrds, New skin for the old ceremony by Leonard Cohen, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys...All these albums became instant talismans, to be listened to as we watched the rain fall or the sun rise.In the ideal world of Rattlesnake, streets had girls names and we were driving Citroën's Deux chevaux. The "all synthetic" that plastified the world's sound system, was, for the first time in years, being turned off.Acoustic guitars and wind instruments had been brought back out.Hidden in the bushes, distant cousins: the Smiths and Prefab Sproutwere soon to come out of the thickest to revamp the flame of rock. Back to basics, to song-writing. In the horizon only one certainty: violins are always right.But Rattlesnakes ended up being a curse for Lloyd Cole who never managed to deliver such greatness again.Indeed half way into an almost perfect album bursts out an instant timeless classic. The kind of song you write once in a lifetime andthat strikes you for eternity:I believe in love, Ill believe in anythingThats gonna get me what I want and get me off my kneesThen well burn your house down, dont it feel so goodTheres a forest fire every time we get togetherDoo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo dooDoo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo dooLloyd Cole was letting us in on some thing essential we had not understood yet: in 1984, for the first time, we had fallen in love.Like a hurricane passing over us, Forest Fire came and carried us away.
