ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #043

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#043– Jilted John – Jilted John’ (Rabid Records ’78)

Hello friends,

first of all: a very happy 2024 to you and your loved ones: keep healthy, keep the faith, and keep reading (and commenting to) this ongoing nonsense of mine!

Now, in 1978, 18-year old, Manchester-based, Sheffield Polytechnic drama student Graham Fellows managed to write and record one of punk’s most eponymous tales of teen angst, rejection and confrontation, underpinned by its wickedly infectious “Gordon is A Moron” chorus and featuring perhaps the most poignant line ever to grace a Pop song, “I was so upset that I cried all the way to the chip shop.”

You remember it well, do you? Yes, it’s debatable whether the record has dated well or not – in my book it surely has, which is reason enough to have included it in the 111 singles – box. But om that, if you’re honest to yourself, a) you would never have named your son ‘Gordon’ and b) the tale being told in the song is (or rather: has been) most common to all of us, isn’t it? I mean, when I was younger, I found myself stuck in the very same situation a handful of times, I must admit (greetings, at this point, to Sabine and the twat she ran off with in 1993 – I hope your piles got worse in the last 30 years, you bastard!!).

Jilted John’s very existence owed everything to a fragile combination of luck, inspiration and sheer chance. As Fellows recalls: “It all came about by naiveté really, I’d written a couple of songs and I wanted to record them…so I went into a local record shop and asked if they knew any indie or Punk labels. They said there were two, Stiff in London and Rabid just down the road. So I phoned Rabid up, and they told me to send in a demo.”

“We did the demos with the late Colin Goddard – of Walter & the Softies – on guitar, and the drummer and bass player of The Smirks, I took it along to Rabid, who loved it…so we re-recorded it a few days later, at Pennine Studios, with John Scott playing guitar & bass and Martin Zero (aka Martin Hannett) producing. Martin did a great job creating the vocal choruses and that bass pattern before the ‘here we go, two, three, four’ bit.”

mp3: Jilted John – Jilted John

The single got approved by Tony Parsons, Paul Morley, Bary Lazell and John Peel, which was enough to shift half a million units, making it to Top Of The Pops and number 4 – not too shabby for the picture Fellows presented of himself: a naive, anorak-wearing nerd, a failure with girls.

To me, this song still is a Pop drama, no less: “so here I am, all alone, in my bedroom, with my chips, feeling, SAD”: priceless!!

Enjoy,

Dirk

PS: ‘Jilted John’ was a B-Side to start with, as pictured above. Alas, I only owe one of the EMI company sleeve represses, but no matter …