The trouble is it’s never as good. Obviously. It ultimately meant the records lost something magical. Moroder got mimics in “but kid, honestly, if it ain’t Pacino himself it don’t have the swing...”
Moroder listened to our work; we’d reduced the songs back to the original style of the demos and I’d sneaked a few thinly disguised movie samples on the tracks as well. As we left for LAX, he proclaimed he would remix the whole record again for a third time (for free to show how seriously he took it) and take “everyones ideas into account.” So near...and yet still so far!
Once back in Moroder’s studio, we quickly mixed our own version’s of all the songs (some of which later turned up on the Sci Fi Sex Stars EP and various remix compilations). I’d taken to having my video camera with me at all times and whenever I heard anyone with an interesting voice I got them to say famous lines while I recorded them. I was trying to build up a catalogue of those catch phrases that are so recognisable but wouldn’t give the lawyers a heart attack. So obviously it couldn’t be Clint Eastwood saying “Go Ahead make my day...” it was a dentist on holiday I met in Ibiza... and it couldn’t be Arni saying “hasta la vista Baby” it was the pizza guy at the studio.
I’d got used to doing most of the heavyweight interviews on my own and now found it increasingly frustrating if I was ever paired with Degville, who talked like a character out of a John Walter’s movie. Although I’d found it funny at first, I was now becoming increasingly irritated at the inanity of it all. I wonder now if he could sense my irritation? He just seemed so far removed from that sweet, funny guy I used to meet off the train at Euston station on a Friday night in those early days. Now a swaggering, bitchy, spiteful, over-confident ego had enveloped him and he was becoming this new person for real, with only the very occasional glimpses still of the old Martin.
But who could blame him? ...the seeds had always been there, right from the start, and I had watered them well, grown him into this new Martin and now people were hanging on to his every word. How could he not think he was ‘fabulous me’? And I still wasn’t listening.
A classic Degville quote was splashed on the front of a girls teen magazine... “I hate all women, especially fat ones”. Not good Martin... not good at all. Even I knew that saying this sort of thing was asking to alienate a big part of our core record buyers.
And now we were unleashing him on the unsuspecting Japanese press... but he was with Magenta who would hopefully control the worst of his verbal excesses. Magenta and I were still incredibly close and I trusted her judgement more than anyone else’s... knew that she, above all people, had not just my interests at heart, but the interests of the band that we had spent so long discussing all that time ago in Pindock Mews. I put Degville out of my mind and flew once again into the L.A. sunshine.
