David Westlake
Encyclopedia
David Westlake is a British singer/songwriter. What few people who know and love Westlake and his tiny catologue of terrific tunes usually come from one of three associations. Firstly, Westlake formed indie band the Servants
in 1985 in Hayes, Middlesex, England; the Servants were among the very best things on 1986’s NME-associated C86
compilation, and the greatly expanded 48-song reissue version in 2006. Secondly, the Servants was the original home of Luke Haines
(leader of The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder). And thirdly, as chronicled in an interview in US music magazine The Big Takeover
(issue 53, 2004), Belle & Sebastian
frontman Stuart Murdoch
was a huge Westlake fan and was trying to locate him during the years that the older singer was dormant in the hopes of forming a band with him, before launching Belle in his school class instead.
Play Dusty for Me (2002) is only Westlake’s second solo LP (the first, 1987’s Westlake was on the fabled Creation Records
in its golden era, another place he made a small, but too slight, dent) to go with one Servants LP (and a posthoumous 2006 retrospective of that essential band, called Reserved, the best place to begin with that band), and even this one was released, sort of, in a highly limited issue that quickly sold out but was still never repressed. London's Angular Recording Corporation
issued a new, digital version in 2010, with bonus tracks. Interestingly, it is a highly reserved fare. The music has something in common with the “Pale Blue Eyes”/“Sunday Morning” Velvet Underground. Add in a wistful touch of Dusty Springfield
(an old Westlake favourite, feted here in the both the album title and opening title track), and a general unhurried nature of an LP put out for pure love rather than commercial gain, and this collaboration with guitarist Dan Cross and two Moore brothers for the rhythm section, Cormac bass and Willis drums, just seems to lay there in its relaxed, prettied, cooing loveliness. Don’t pick any one track, though any of them would give you the overarching idea; sit down for the whole hour and 18 songs and take in the charming, lightly perfumed, but soulful air. And the good news is that eight years later, Westlake is still recording on occasion, as his Doin’ it For the Kids compilation track with the Moore brothers in 2008 showed.
. The band's first single "She's Always Hiding" (March '86) is a disarming coupling of Dusty in Memphis
with Davy Graham guitars. Well received by the press, the band's appeal was obvious, with Westlake's excelsior, urbane English song writing (that's English as in David Niven, or Rex Harrison) and guitarist John Mohan's assimilation of a suburban Zal Yanovsky. Inevitably the band were invited to record a Peel session (March '86). Inevitably the session was great; has anyone ever attempted anything like the Brit / Lovin' Spoonful hybrid that is "You'd Do Me Good"? An invitation by the then popular NME to appear on their C86
compilation was grudgingly accepted, though the band insisted on the track being the B-side of their first single - the wrong-footing Syd-alike "Transparent". Keen to distance themselves from the retarded "shambling" scene, the band earned a reputation for haughtiness. (Never a bad thing.) Unfortunately the NME compilation sold well and the Servants became known for one of their inferior tracks. Still, with Westlake's song writing becoming even more deft, the band recorded "The Sun, A Small Star" (August '86). The four tracks on this e.p. confirmed that if Westlake had been living in L.A. any time between 1966 and 1968, then Boyce and Hart would've been out of a job, and the Monkees would not have been so keen to write their own material.
New year '87, David Westlake recorded a solo record for the then fashionable Creation Records
. Luke Haines plays Verlaine / Lloyd lead interspersed with Steve Cropper chops on six Westlake compositions. (This was the short-lived era of the "mini-album". Cheap to record, impossible to market.) Five days in Greenhouse Studios using the Triffids' rhythm section and Westlake is a minor classic. Obviously, it cuts against the grain of the paisley psychedeliasts and inept Byrds tribute acts clogging up the Creation roster. Westlake, Haines and a Dr Rhythm drum machine undertake a tour of the sceptred isle. Unfortunately, the record company forget to release the record until six months later. Westlake receives decent reviews, but otherwise disappears to a howl of indifference.
Haines was in the Servants line-up when the band returned in '87. Out of the blue Westlake receives a telephone call from Hugh Whitaker
, drummer with the hugely popular Housemartins. Whitaker feels his band have become too big. He offers his services to the Servants. He has made the right decision. The Servants return to the studio to demo new material for Creation, great songs including "Hey, Mrs John" and "Who's Calling You Baby Now", which has more in common with Vegas period Elvis than anything else going on at the time. At the end of the year Creation Records fearlessly drop the Servants. Goodwill from the music industry is low, and luck is thin on the ground. Mid '88 the Servants are thrown a lifeline by Dave Barker, owner of Glass Records. Glass promise a reasonable budget to record an album. The plan is to go into Elephant studios with John Brand producing (they even borrow a Yamaha DX7, keyboard du jour). At the eleventh hour they hear that Glass distributors Red Rhino have "gone bust". The budget is slashed. They go into the studio anyway (without Brand and thankfully without the DX7) and record a single, "It's My Turn". It is an epic. One of Westlake's finest lyrics: "The light at the end of the tunnel is a train headed this way / To remind me what love is . . .". They do some gigs and, quelle surprise, the record company forgets to release the record for about a year. The Servants eventually release an album in 1990 on Fire Records
. It is called Disinterest. It is Art Rock. Ten years too late and fifteen years too early.
With six bass players, three drummers and two uninterested record labels behind them, Westlake and Haines painstakingly record demos for one more Servants album, provisionally entitled Smalltime. "The demos are great," says Haines, "but the album never gets made". The Servants last gig was at the Rock Garden, August 1991. With no room to manoeuvre and no opportunities left the band finally split. Cherry Red Records released a 2006 retrospective of the Servants, called Reserved, the best place to begin with the band. Reserved features all of the releases prior to the Disinterest album plus Peel session tracks and demos.
David Westlake is a solicitor, and he lectures part-time in English literature at Brunel University, West London.
Albums
Videos
The Servants, "The Sun, A Small Star" (1985)
The Servants, "Who's Calling You Baby Now?" (1988)
The Servants, "Look Like A Girl" (1990)
The Servants
The Servants was an indie band formed in 1985 in Hayes, Middlesex, England by singer and songwriter David Westlake. The Servants were on 1986’s NME-associated C86 compilation, and the greatly expanded 48-song reissue version in 2006. The Servants was the original home of Luke Haines...
in 1985 in Hayes, Middlesex, England; the Servants were among the very best things on 1986’s NME-associated C86
C86 (music)
C86 is a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine NME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from independent labels of the time. As a phrase, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based musical genre characterised by "jangly" guitars and fey melodies, although other...
compilation, and the greatly expanded 48-song reissue version in 2006. Secondly, the Servants was the original home of Luke Haines
Luke Haines
Luke Haines is an English musician, songwriter and author, who has recorded music under various names and with various bands, including The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder.-'New Wave':...
(leader of The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder). And thirdly, as chronicled in an interview in US music magazine The Big Takeover
The Big Takeover
The Big Takeover is a bi-annual music magazine published out of New York City since 1980 by critic Jack Rabid.-Overview:The Big T usually appears in June and December, with most recent issues coming in around 200 pages. The review section, featuring Jack’s Top 40 for the issue, is regularly 60-80...
(issue 53, 2004), Belle & Sebastian
Belle & Sebastian
Belle and Sebastian are an indie pop band formed in Glasgow in January 1996. Belle and Sebastian are often compared with influential indie bands such as The Smiths, as well as classic acts such as Love, Bob Dylan and Nick Drake. The name Belle & Sebastian comes from Belle et Sébastien, a 1965...
frontman Stuart Murdoch
Stuart Murdoch (musician)
Stuart Lee Murdoch is a Scottish musician, and the lead singer and songwriter for the indie pop band Belle & Sebastian. The majority of his childhood was spent a stone's throw from the birthplace of Robert Burns in Alloway, Ayr until he left school and attended university in...
was a huge Westlake fan and was trying to locate him during the years that the older singer was dormant in the hopes of forming a band with him, before launching Belle in his school class instead.
Play Dusty for Me (2002) is only Westlake’s second solo LP (the first, 1987’s Westlake was on the fabled Creation Records
Creation Records
Creation Records was a British independent record label headed by Alan McGee. Along with Dick Green and Joe Foster, McGee founded Creation in 1983. The label lasted until its demise in 1999. The name came from the 1960s band The Creation , whom McGee greatly admired. McGee, Green and Foster were...
in its golden era, another place he made a small, but too slight, dent) to go with one Servants LP (and a posthoumous 2006 retrospective of that essential band, called Reserved, the best place to begin with that band), and even this one was released, sort of, in a highly limited issue that quickly sold out but was still never repressed. London's Angular Recording Corporation
Angular Recording Corporation
Angular Recording Corporation is an independent record label originally based in New Cross, South East London. Set up in June 2003 by two ex-Goldsmiths College students, Joe Daniel and Joe Margetts, who reclaimed a local Ordnance Survey Triangulation Station and made it their first artefact: ARC 001...
issued a new, digital version in 2010, with bonus tracks. Interestingly, it is a highly reserved fare. The music has something in common with the “Pale Blue Eyes”/“Sunday Morning” Velvet Underground. Add in a wistful touch of Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...
(an old Westlake favourite, feted here in the both the album title and opening title track), and a general unhurried nature of an LP put out for pure love rather than commercial gain, and this collaboration with guitarist Dan Cross and two Moore brothers for the rhythm section, Cormac bass and Willis drums, just seems to lay there in its relaxed, prettied, cooing loveliness. Don’t pick any one track, though any of them would give you the overarching idea; sit down for the whole hour and 18 songs and take in the charming, lightly perfumed, but soulful air. And the good news is that eight years later, Westlake is still recording on occasion, as his Doin’ it For the Kids compilation track with the Moore brothers in 2008 showed.
The Servants
The Servants played their first gig at The Water Rats Theatre in London's King's Cross on July 1, 1985. They were signed by Head Records, a new independent label started by Jeff Barrett, later head of Heavenly RecordsHeavenly Records
Heavenly Records, aka Heavenly Recordings, is a London-based record label, distributed by EMI. Founded by Jeff Barrett, a former press officer for Creation Records and many successful indie bands of the time including Happy Mondays, Heavenly Recordings' first releases were 7" and 12" singles for...
. The band's first single "She's Always Hiding" (March '86) is a disarming coupling of Dusty in Memphis
Dusty in Memphis
Dusty in Memphis is a landmark album by Dusty Springfield, released in 1969. It was produced by Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin and engineered by Tom Dowd. "So Much Love", "Son of a Preacher Man", "The Windmills Of Your Mind", "Breakfast in Bed", "Just One Smile", "I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore",...
with Davy Graham guitars. Well received by the press, the band's appeal was obvious, with Westlake's excelsior, urbane English song writing (that's English as in David Niven, or Rex Harrison) and guitarist John Mohan's assimilation of a suburban Zal Yanovsky. Inevitably the band were invited to record a Peel session (March '86). Inevitably the session was great; has anyone ever attempted anything like the Brit / Lovin' Spoonful hybrid that is "You'd Do Me Good"? An invitation by the then popular NME to appear on their C86
C86 (music)
C86 is a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine NME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from independent labels of the time. As a phrase, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based musical genre characterised by "jangly" guitars and fey melodies, although other...
compilation was grudgingly accepted, though the band insisted on the track being the B-side of their first single - the wrong-footing Syd-alike "Transparent". Keen to distance themselves from the retarded "shambling" scene, the band earned a reputation for haughtiness. (Never a bad thing.) Unfortunately the NME compilation sold well and the Servants became known for one of their inferior tracks. Still, with Westlake's song writing becoming even more deft, the band recorded "The Sun, A Small Star" (August '86). The four tracks on this e.p. confirmed that if Westlake had been living in L.A. any time between 1966 and 1968, then Boyce and Hart would've been out of a job, and the Monkees would not have been so keen to write their own material.
New year '87, David Westlake recorded a solo record for the then fashionable Creation Records
Creation Records
Creation Records was a British independent record label headed by Alan McGee. Along with Dick Green and Joe Foster, McGee founded Creation in 1983. The label lasted until its demise in 1999. The name came from the 1960s band The Creation , whom McGee greatly admired. McGee, Green and Foster were...
. Luke Haines plays Verlaine / Lloyd lead interspersed with Steve Cropper chops on six Westlake compositions. (This was the short-lived era of the "mini-album". Cheap to record, impossible to market.) Five days in Greenhouse Studios using the Triffids' rhythm section and Westlake is a minor classic. Obviously, it cuts against the grain of the paisley psychedeliasts and inept Byrds tribute acts clogging up the Creation roster. Westlake, Haines and a Dr Rhythm drum machine undertake a tour of the sceptred isle. Unfortunately, the record company forget to release the record until six months later. Westlake receives decent reviews, but otherwise disappears to a howl of indifference.
Haines was in the Servants line-up when the band returned in '87. Out of the blue Westlake receives a telephone call from Hugh Whitaker
Hugh Whitaker
Hugh Whitaker is the former drummer for the British indie rock band The Housemartins. He replaced original drummer Chris Lang and drummed for the band's first album, London 0 Hull 4, and its attendant single releases. He left the band before the recording of their second album, The People Who...
, drummer with the hugely popular Housemartins. Whitaker feels his band have become too big. He offers his services to the Servants. He has made the right decision. The Servants return to the studio to demo new material for Creation, great songs including "Hey, Mrs John" and "Who's Calling You Baby Now", which has more in common with Vegas period Elvis than anything else going on at the time. At the end of the year Creation Records fearlessly drop the Servants. Goodwill from the music industry is low, and luck is thin on the ground. Mid '88 the Servants are thrown a lifeline by Dave Barker, owner of Glass Records. Glass promise a reasonable budget to record an album. The plan is to go into Elephant studios with John Brand producing (they even borrow a Yamaha DX7, keyboard du jour). At the eleventh hour they hear that Glass distributors Red Rhino have "gone bust". The budget is slashed. They go into the studio anyway (without Brand and thankfully without the DX7) and record a single, "It's My Turn". It is an epic. One of Westlake's finest lyrics: "The light at the end of the tunnel is a train headed this way / To remind me what love is . . .". They do some gigs and, quelle surprise, the record company forgets to release the record for about a year. The Servants eventually release an album in 1990 on Fire Records
Fire Records
Fire Records was an independent record label set up in 1959 by Bobby Robinson . Among others, it released records by Lightnin' Hopkins, Elmore James and Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup.-Selected discography:...
. It is called Disinterest. It is Art Rock. Ten years too late and fifteen years too early.
With six bass players, three drummers and two uninterested record labels behind them, Westlake and Haines painstakingly record demos for one more Servants album, provisionally entitled Smalltime. "The demos are great," says Haines, "but the album never gets made". The Servants last gig was at the Rock Garden, August 1991. With no room to manoeuvre and no opportunities left the band finally split. Cherry Red Records released a 2006 retrospective of the Servants, called Reserved, the best place to begin with the band. Reserved features all of the releases prior to the Disinterest album plus Peel session tracks and demos.
David Westlake is a solicitor, and he lectures part-time in English literature at Brunel University, West London.
Discography
Singles- The Servants, "She’s Always Hiding"/"Transparent" (Mar 1986, Head Records, HEAD1 [7”])
- The Servants, "The Sun, a Small Star"/"Meredith"/"It Takes No Gentleman"/"Funny Business" (Oct 1986, Head Records, HEAD3 [12”])
- The Servants, "It’s My Turn"/"Afterglow" (Sep 1989, Glass Records, GLASS056 [7”])
- The Servants, "It’s My Turn"/"Afterglow"/"Faithful to 3 Lovers"/"Do or Be Done" (Sep 1989, Glass Records, GLASS12 056 [12”])
- The Servants, "Look Like A Girl"/"Bad Habits Die Hard" (- 1990, Fire Records, - [7”])
Albums
- David Westlake, Westlake (Nov 1987, Creation Records, CRELP019 [LP]; reissued on CD by Sony in 2004 -)
- The Servants, Disinterest (Sep 1989, Paperhouse, PAPLP005 [LP]/PAPCD005 [CD])
- David Westlake, Play Dusty For Me (Jun 2002, Mahlerphone, CDA 001 [CD]; reissued Jul 2010 Angular ARC 018 [digital])
- The Servants, Reserved (2006, Cherry Red, CDMRED297 [CD]) (compilation)
Videos
The Servants, "The Sun, A Small Star" (1985)
The Servants, "Who's Calling You Baby Now?" (1988)
The Servants, "Look Like A Girl" (1990)