This is cribbed from a previous posting on the band.
Love and Money rose from the ashes of Friends Again when three members of the latter decided to continue to work together while drafting in a new bass player. The fact that I had been such a huge fan of Friends Again should really have meant that I’d fall for the charms of this new combo but in all truth it never quite happened. It wasn’t for a lack of effort on my part as I went along to a lot of the early gigs in Glasgow and bought the singles and then the debut LP (All You Need Is….Love and Money) almost as soon as they were released. But the purchases were often out of a feeling of loyalty to James Grant (vocals/guitar), Paul McGeechan (keyboards), Stuart Kerr (drums) and Bobby Paterson (bass) as the music was just a bit too clean and antiseptic for me, certainly in the form it was released on vinyl, although they remained at all times a formidable and entertaining live band with a great mix of pop, soul and funk to get your feet moving.
Love and Money were signed to Mercury Records who first of all teamed the band up with Andy Taylor (Duran Duran and The Power Station) and then with Gary Katz, a producer who had done much to popularise Steely Dan.They even sent the band to Los Angeles to make what proved to be a very expensive second album, Strange Kind Of Love (1988), where all the rough edges were smoothed out. The singles should, by the formula they followed, have been huge hits on both sides of the Atlantic but it just never happened.
In 1990, a third LP was rejected by the label but they provided enough finance for another release the following year, Dogs In The Traffic, one of the most locally critically acclaimed albums of the era, and one which, with many of its tracks being acoustic-led, was a long way removed from the early material.
mp3 : Love and Money – River of People
The song featued above, however, is a track from the 1986 debut album.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
“Still livin on Jocelyn Square”
Hadn’t heard this before – strange as I bought and still love the debut Candybar Express. Perhaps it just got lost in the sheer amount of great musicof the time. Thanks for posting.
Love And Money arrived just as the mid 80s musical doldrums had begun to set in. But there was and energy in the Love And Money debut that caught my ear. Candybar Express has always been one of those “earworm” singles. It may have come out a year after The Power Station, while also being produced by Duran Duran/Power Station guitarist Andy Taylor, but it has so much more soul and funk than anything on TPS’s album.
But it was the second album that really got me. To this day, I love playing Inflammable, Jocelyn Square and the massive Hallelujah Man. I feel Gary Katz did for Love and Money some of the same things Walter Becker did for China Crisis a year or two earlier. There’s a cohesive, confident sound through out Strange Kind Of Love that has kept it sounding contemporary for me 30+ years later.
I just came across your blog, it’s fantastic.
Always loved Love & Money, and I too saw Friends Again live, in Edinburgh I think. They were good but not great, and All You Need Is . . . didn’t turn me on. But Strange Kind Of Love has been in my top five albums ever since it came out and I’m going to play it again this evening . . .
I was thrilled to hear their reunion stuff – live album and The Devil’s Debt – as they’d been so long coming. Their last record LittleDeath doesn’t get much mention but I think it’s a gem. Terribly introspective of course and quite sad, but it has a special place for me. Overall great band and what a talent James is.
Thanks!
Thank you so much, Balconybar, for the kind comments. You might have picked up that I’m very much a Friends Again fanatic, to the extent that I recently bought a newly issued CD of a bootleg of their very first gig, from a time prior to James joining the band. It’s clear from listening to it that James was a guitarist who took the band to better things.