Prefab Sprout – Swoon

Absolutely invaluable info gleaned by a Steve Hoffman Forums member who emailed sleeve designer Matthew Caley:

“As far as I recall---[t'was 40 years ago]---we bought stills from a German company, I think-who owned the photo-rights to the shots of a performance of the Checkmate Ballet--- yes, Arthur Bliss- [or that's what they told us they were from!-] anyhow- it was going to be a gatefold sleeve from the off- everyone agreed on that [CBS funded it] as that was so 'un-Indie and 1970's-one of our starting-points was to NOT wear 'the badge of Indie' at the time -Letraset , photocopy-type images Etc- to make it as lush as possible...I Paddy's idea was 'a plane taking off' on a runway' [to match the 'Plane! Plane!' from Cue Fanfare...we did spend some time trying to acquire rights to the right sort of photo for that---[not something we could take ourselves!] but couldn't get the right type of shot for the 'wide-screen' efect of the gatefold- so, next, we came up with the ballet-theme- and that the woman would kind of SWoon when you opened the gatefold [no-one ever notices that!] we'd already started playing with Garamond and its possibilities as a font, and with songs like 'Elegance' and a title like 'Swoon' which Paddy, of course, disguised as Emma dubbed 'Songs Written Out Of Necessity' ....we thought the ballet-shots would give us scope- not just for the LP cover but the whole campaign-it was a massive campaign-posters ads, giant posters, in-store display, press-ads, press-packs, T-shirts, 12 inches, 7 inches -it went on and on---certainly the single biggest job we ever did- we went to London when it was out and it was 'everywhere'. Muff Winwood was semi-retired A&R man at CBS signed The Sprouts for 8 LPS on a near million pound deal [a big deal] and they gave us carte-blanche- hence 5 colour [twice] gold for the 'Don't Sing' 12 inch and silver for Swoon, plus special labels----we had to hand-paste-up all this-years before the Mac came in- I still don't know how I did it- I was just out of art college.”

Great Album ! My copy is a demo from one of my favourite bands of the 80's.

The emerging template of the genius eclectic melodic jangle-sophisti-pop of the incredible Paddy McAloon's Prefab Sprout.
The complex chord progressions, off-kilter rhythms, cryptic lyrics & tricky song structures have an unpolished vibrancy that would later morph into their more superior earworms on later efforts.
A uniquely sparkling listen & remarkable début hinting at extraordinary things to come.

Did the A4 booklet (fanzine style) 'The Militia Have Arrived' come with this version? I have the booklet but not the album!

Have a demo version of this, nicked off my brother who knew DJ. Prefabs were one of the most underrated bands in the UK