Sweetheart Contract (VS 368) : Released July 1980 on 7″, 12″ and 2×7″
We drank from cups on standard issue sofas under scaffolding
Informed sources said we were seen by observers, it’s a meeting
Howard Devoto has always had a fine way with words as evidenced by the opening two lines to Sweetheart Contract, one of the standout tracks on The Correct Use of Soap and which was given a single release in July, some two months after the album had reached the shops. I think everyone expected it to go the same way as all the other singles and not bother the chart compilers. It certainly didn’t seem to have #54 written all over it.
mp3: Magazine – Sweetheart Contract
It probably had a lot to do with the fact that initial copies came with an additional, free 7″ as a double pack, offering up three live tracks that had been recorded in May 1980 at the Russell Club in Manchester. Or maybe the fact that, after all this time, Magazine were finally on a 12″ single, with the three other tracks again being those live takes.
mp3: Magazine – Feed The Enemy (live)
mp3: Magazine – Twenty Years Ago (live)
mp3: Magazine – Shot By Both Sides (live)
The most interesting one is the very different version of Feed The Enemy.
The original, as found on the album Secondhand Daylight, is a slow-paced and tense affair, extending out to almost six minutes in length, in which Howard Devoto seems to carefully and cautiously select his words over a tune packed with anxiety and menace. The live version comes in at just under four minutes and is a raucous new-wave take on things played at 100mph, driven along in particular by Barry Adamson‘s frantic bass and John McGeoch‘s angular guitar work. Over time, I’ve come to enjoy it, but I was shocked and to some extent horrified the first time I played it, given it was such a departure from the version I knew so well.
This proved to be the last Magazine record involving John McGeoch. He had played with the band on a UK tour in April and May and then on ten dates in Spain, France and the Netherlands in June. By the time the Sweetheart Contract single was in the shops, he had left the band, replaced by Robin Simon for the North American and New Zealand/Australia tours in August/September, during which a live album would be recorded at the Festival Hall in Melbourne on 6 September 1980 and released by Virgin Records in time for the Christmas market. By then, Magazine were back in the UK getting ready to record new songs.