As outlined in A Love Deluxe, the past year or so has seen me become just a little bit addicted to creating “fantasy” deluxe editions. You take an album, and use whatever extra material is available (B-sides, Single Edits, 12″ Remixes, Demos, Out-takes, non-album 45s) to piece together a multi-disc celebration of it.
Our next stop sees us back in 1983 (how I wish that were really true!), and one of the biggest albums of that year. No Parlez, with its trio of mega hit singles (Wherever I Lay My Hat, Come Back And Stay, Love Of The Common People), ended up trading places at #1 on the UK charts with Thriller and the first Now That’s What I Call Music! release. Yet it had not been all plain sailing; having plucked him from the highly-rated but commercially struggling soul revue band the Q-Tips, CBS found that the public were initially resistant to the charms of Paul Young the solo pop star.
Two singles in, and Young was still best known as the voice of accidental novelty hit Toast by his pre-Q-Tips outfit Streetband. Neither Iron Out The Rough Spots nor a first crack at Love Of The Common People had done anything on the chart. Billed at first as Paul Young & The Royal Family, the sleeve of the former perhaps reflected the struggles CBS were experiencing with their latest charge.
Hello sailor…..but PY’s solo career was still adrift….
Thankfully, all concerned got it spot on (groan) with the next attempt, a downtempo reinterpretation of Marvin Gaye’s fairly obscure Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home). Everything fell into place. The signature sound was all there, with the accentuated woozy bass and chiming keyboards, allowing Young’s terrific voice to roam free, rather than battle against frenetic arrangements and less-than-ideal material. Et voila! A #1 single in the summer of 1983.
No Parlez followed soon after, and would remain on the UK listings until 1985. Some 138 weeks, all told. It took two months to reach the summit, having debuted at #6 and stayed in the Top 10 thereafter. But having made #1, it rarely left the upper reaches, remaining in or around the Top 5 all the way up until Christmas and beyond. In fact its final week (of five) at #1 was at the very start of 1984.
For such a hugely popular album, you would assume that a straight replication of the vinyl LP would be on CD. And yet….even now, the exact version of No Parlez featured on UK vinyl copies has never been issued on Compact Disc.
The original No Parlez – not on CD? No comprendo!
The first UK CD edition mirrored the cassette, with 5 of the tracks in extended versions (CBS did the same with The Secret Of Association‘s cassette format two years later). In the US, where No Parlez also had different sleeve artwork, they opted for the same tracklisting as the UK vinyl, but with alternative mixes for three of the songs (are you keeping up with all this?). The latter iteration was almost….yes, almost but not exactly…repeated for a 25th Anniversary CD reissue (Love Of The Common People was in edited form, and not the full 4.56 mix).
So you see….SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE.
(Within reason and the boundaries of continued sanity).
First up, let’s get that original running order, with the appropriate mixes, onto CD1 of this Fantasy Deluxe:
01 COME BACK AND STAY 4.59
02 LOVE WILL TEAR US APART 5.00
03 WHEREVER I LAY MY HAT (THAT’S MY HOME) 5.17
04 KU KU KARAMA 4.19
05 NO PARLEZ 4.53
06 LOVE OF THE COMMON PEOPLE 4.56
07 OH WOMEN 3.35
08 IRON OUT THE ROUGH SPOTS 4.47
09 BROKEN MAN 3.54
10 TENDER TRAP 4.32
11 SEX 4.50
No Parlez. No single edits, no 12″ extended mixes. No problem.
That first UK CD which mimics the cassette version, can be our Disc 2. I’ve owned it since the mid-1990s, so this was the simplest part of the puzzle when attempting to put the set together.
01 COME BACK AND STAY 7.56 EXTENDED MIX
02 LOVE WILL TEAR US APART 5.00
03 WHEREVER I LAY MY HAT (THAT’S MY HOME) 6.02 EXTENDED MIX
04 KU KU KARAMA 4.19
05 NO PARLEZ 4.53
06 BEHIND YOUR SMILE 4.08
07 LOVE OF THE COMMON PEOPLE 5.51 EXTENDED MIX
08 OH WOMEN 3.35
09 IRON OUT THE ROUGH SPOTS 7.29 EXTENDED MIX
10 BROKEN MAN 3.55
11 TENDER TRAP 4.32
12 SEX 6.50 EXTENDED MIX
The 2008 2-disc reissue, released for the album’s 25th Anniversary….
Disc three shall have the version which nearly replicates the 1983 vinyl, and which shares the running order of the US release, with one main difference (a shorter version of Love Of The Common People) and one or two other very minor differences in the mixes themselves.
01 COME BACK AND STAY 4.25
02 LOVE WILL TEAR US APART 4.17 ALTERNATE MIX
03 WHEREVER I LAY MY HAT (THAT’S MY HOME) 5.17
04 KU KU KARAMA 4.19
05 NO PARLEZ 4.53
06 LOVE OF THE COMMON PEOPLE 4.01
07 OH WOMEN 3.35
08 IRON OUT THE ROUGH SPOTS 4.47
09 BROKEN MAN 3.54
10 TENDER TRAP 4.32
11 SEX 4.50
Phew. Now we can move on to the myriad of edits, remixes, demos and B-sides from the era which haven’t already been assigned to one or more of the above discs. They can all be housed together:
01 LOVE OF THE COMMON PEOPLE 3.40 1982 7″ VERSION
02 BEHIND YOUR SMILE 3.56 1982 DEMO
03 TENDER TRAP 4.17 1982 DEMO
04 IRON OUT THE ROUGH SPOTS 3.40 7″ VERSION
05 WHEREVER I LAY MY HAT (THAT’S MY HOME) 4.54 7″ VERSION
06 COME BACK AND STAY 3.37 U.S. SINGLE VERSION
07 YOURS 3.54
08 LOVEOF THE COMMON PEOPLE 3.41 1983 7″ VERSION
09 I’VE BEEN LONELY FOR SO LONG 3.39
10 BEHIND YOUR SMILE 5.06 LIVE VERSION
11 OH WOMEN 9.15 LIVE VERSION
12 IT’S BETTER TO HAVE AND DON’T NEED 5.57 LIVE VERSION
13 WHEREVER I LAY MY HAT (THAT’S MY HOME) 4.11 7″ EDIT
14 COME BACK AND STAY 7.24 EXTENDED CLUB MIX
15 YOURS 5.40 EXTENDED CLUB MIX
This is where we find the 7″ mixes of nearly every UK single (and a US one to boot); Come Back And Stay‘s UK 7″ version is the 4.25 mix included on the US edition, just to confuse matters even further! Wherever I Lay My Hat even comes in both an official 7″ version and a shorter edit (from one of the 10th Anniversary NOW compilations, if memory serves).
The majority of these tracks would have been virtually impossible to track down had it not been for the CBS Singles boxset, a 20-disc (19 CD, 1 DVD) extravaganza that bundled all the relevant material from each single (A-Side, B-Sides, edits, mixes, instrumentals etc) onto separate discs.
The CBS Singles Box – an absolute must for those wanting to create Paul Young deluxe editions…
Having said that, the 1991 retrospective From Time To Time, and another couple of Demon/Edsel reissue projects – Tomb Of Memories: The CBS Years and Remixes & Rarities – came in handy for a few tracks. This also applies to the Fantasy Deluxes I’ve put together for The Secret Of Association, Between Two Fires and Other Voices (I plan to tackle The Crossing eventually as well).
If I’d wanted to be even more exhaustive, some further material exists in the shape of an alternate edit of Oh Women (Live), a studio out-take from the sessions entitled Souls Unknown, various instrumental versions of the singles, plus a couple of demos featured on the second disc of the 2008 reissue (Sex and a cover of Tears For Fears’ Pale Shelter). That would have meant an extra disc in the set, and figuring out the best way to split all the bonus tracks across 2 CDs. Maybe one day….
As usual, I wanted to have some artwork that differed from the official version(s), and settled on the shot of PY at the bar, taken from the back cover of the UK vinyl LP (and US CD). A small version of the iconic No Parlez pose makes it onto the spine, while the rear makes use of the red/grey/white zig-zag motifs as a background for all the text.
Amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes 
Great work EG!
Always sad to see this album in a charity shop; such a well-crafted LP as was the follow-up. I’d love if something special was done for the 40th anniversary.
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Thanks 🙂 There’s also another live track from the period, I Close My Eyes And Count To Ten, which turned up on a Sony anthology in the early 00s and – I think – again on that excellent Tomb Of Memories boxset. Really enough to spread over 6 discs, I reckon.
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