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Old 19-08-2012, 10:48
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andy andy is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2012
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint View Post
It's not really about the music but about the band's attitude. The band wanted to be humongous and famous/infamous and GT would be their grand statement: they considered sandpaper sleeves that would destroy the albums next to it in the shelf, the famous "if we don't sell x million albums we'll split" statement and the general "blow up humongously and then throw it all away" plans, OTT antics like the 4REAL faffle to show how serious they were, the defiant "we are here and you WILL love us" attitude, etc. The music we got was glam/cock rock with budget drum production (although it's easy to hear that they wanted the album to sound MASSIVE as well but came across budget problems) but the ambition referred to came from the band itself - knowingly delusional in most cases, but something that was pretty much their trademark during that era.
The main reason they didn't, haven't and won't break the states is their lyrical content and focus.

Example: NWBML was left on gt and a song like that means little to the 'casual' uk rock fan. To someone in the states it means even less!

also - NOTHING on GT was budget. Remember this is a bands debut album:

1. 23 weeks - 6 months at Blackbarn Studios which had who, motorhead, weller, free, bad finger, gary newman, ray davies, moody blues and jethro tull (just to name a few) record albums there in a much sorter time

2. steve brown was hired to produce, and after having produced number 1 singles and albums and a string top top 10 hits with ABC, Wham!, The Cult and Alison Moyet he wouldnt have come cheap

3. it was a double album so even pressing costs etc would have been higher
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