Chart entered : 12 March 1983
Chart peak : 66
While one ex-punk came back with a bang, another exited with the faintest of pops.
In stark contrast to The Jam, the Buzzcocks petered out in rather messy fashion. Having established themselves as regular visitors to the Top 40 visitors in 1978-79, they were rocked when "You Say You Don't Love Me " failed to chart in September 1979, probably because it was released too soon after the re-issue of "Spiral Scratch " which did chart. Despite the parent album "A Different Kind of Tension" making the Top 30 , the band decided to abandon producer Martin Rushent and work with Martin Hannett on the next. The sessions with Hannett who was still traumatised by Ian Curtis's death were acid-fuelled and the results were fully in the post-punk vein. The band decided on the Factory-esque jape of releasing the results on three singles in quick succession and naming them "Parts 1 2 and 3". "Part 1" , the spiky and tuneless "Are Everything" peaked at number 61 for their last hit; the others were ignored. Besides these questionable artistic decisions the relationship between Pete and lead guitarist Steve Diggle was deteriorating by the day and the latter deliberately bumped Pete during their performance of "Are Everything" on a kids TV show.
Nevertheless the group hooked up with Rushent once more in early 1981 to record a fourth album only to discover that their label wasn't willing to pay for the sessions. Rushent called a halt to them and invited Pete alone to work at his new Genetic Sounds studio. Pete was enthused about working with the new technology and applied it to songs he'd written before the Buzzcocks were formed. When Island's Andrew Lauder offered him a solo deal on hearing the duo's demos Pete decided it was time to leave the Buzzcocks. The band announced their dissolution in the summer of 1981. A singles compilation released that autumn and itself the cause of friction between band and publishing company, failed to chart.
Pete himself roared back into action with "Homosapien" in September 1981, regarded by many as his "coming-out" record though I'd first heard he was a fruit at school when "Ever Fallen In Love" was in the charts. It was a sleek , driving synth pop number with an arresting contrast between the precision electronics and Pete's inimitable Mancunian sneer. David Jensen played it but it got a daytime ban; even the cloth-eared suits at the Beeb understood what "Homo Superior in my interior " meant. They didn't need to bother with the follow-up "I Don't Know What It Is" ; Pete's overly abrasive vocal effectively sabotaged it. With two flop singles the omens weren't good for the "Homosapien" album , released early in January 1982. Rushent's machine-tooled synth sound was up to the mark but unfortunately the songs weren't, suggesting Steve Diggle and the other two may have had an important role in quality control.
"Telephone Operator" was the lead single for his next LP. It's a powerful synth-pounder in the mode of Depeche Mode's Photographic decorated with synthetic horn blasts and Sympathy for the Devil backing vocals. It sounds impressive on first listen but it's hollow. The song, wherein Pete chats up the operator for kicks , is slight and his mannered vocal , particularly the campy syllable-stretching in the third line of each verse , becomes aggravating. Its single week in the charts was Pete's last acquaintance with them as a performer.
The album "Xl-1" did rather better, peaking at number 42 and notching up four weeks in the charts. However this was almost certainly due to the novel gimmick of including a program for the ZX Spectrum ( I remember being in a Manchester record shop a few years ago when two computer geeks discovered a copy and chortled over the sticker on the front ) which displayed ultra-primitive graphics and the lyrics in time with the music. The latter was not to the album's advantage; it's hard to believe that lines like "I react to your reaction, I'm attracted by your attraction" came from the same pen as What Do I Get and Sixteen Again.
There was a potential hit on the album in the tuneful and plaintive "I Just Wanna Touch " but the bracing "( Millions of People ) No One Like You" was chosen instead probably because it was the only track featuring a prominent electric guitar and might re-connect with his previous audience. It didn't.
We can perhaps give Pete the dubious credit of being a pioneer of the idea of music as mere adjunct to dicking around on a home computer but it didn't do his career much good. By the time of his next single "Never Again" in November 1984, a bland pop number, over-wordy and crushingly boring, he was off Island and even the night time jocks had given up on him.
What must have made Pete's situation more galling was the burgeoning lionisation of the Buzzcocks as the decade wore on. Orange Juice started the ball rolling; at the same time that "Telephone Operator" made its brief mark on the chart they were in the Top 10 with Rip It Up which not only name-checked "Boredom" but included a brief snatch of Pete's famous one-note guitar solo in that song. Then Mike Joyce of The Smiths cited the Buzzcocks as his favourite band. They were clearly an influence on the new wave of American punk bands particularly Husker Du and spiritual godfathers to the C86 scene with The Soup Dragons in particular getting flak for sounding too like them.
None of this gave any sort of boost to Pete's solo career ; it was almost as if his continued music-making were an embarrassment to the memory and best ignored. Nevertheless Mercury took a punt on him in 1986 and put him to work with producer Stephen Hague. Unsurprisingly - and ironically given his support for the fledgling Joy Division - he ended up sounding like New Order. That said, the three singles he took from the "Heaven and the Sea" album , "Waiting for Love", "On Your Own" and "Blue Eyes" are all at least listenable and probably deserved better. In July 1986 he played at Tony Wilson's Festival of the Tenth Summer concert at G-Mex though some way down the bill behind The Smiths and New Order.
The following year he recorded the song "Do Anything" , a brash but bland drum-heavy pop number for the John Hughes teen drama Some Kind of Wonderful which is to date his last recording as a solo artist. His coffers were swelled that year when Fine Young Cannibals covered ( not particularly well ) "Ever Fallen In Love" and even more so when they included it on their mega-selling The Raw and the Cooked album two years later.
In 1988 he formed an outfit called Zip who lasted for one single "Your Love" , an instantly forgettable Goth-rock number. The following year he collaborated with a production outfit Power Wonder and Love on a new version of "Homosapien".
Ever since the Buzzcocks split Steve Diggle (initially with John Maher ) had been toiling away in a band called Flag of Convenience. A friend of mine Stuart Dawson who had been at art college with Steve's brother Phil designed one of their sleeves. They got absolutely nowhere and in 1989 in a rather desperate move decided to market themselves as "Buzzcocks F.O.C. ". As you might have expected , Pete was none too happy about this but instead of ending up in a law court, the dispute resulted in a full band reunion.
Buzzcocks went off on a world tour at the end of 1989. John Maher had in the meantime built up a successful business restoring and racing Volkswgens and was reluctant to commit to anything more so he was replaced by his disciple Mike Joyce for a couple of years. He briefly returned in 1992 before quitting the music business for good. Steve Garvey also left the band at this point and emigrated to the US where he has a low-key career as a record producer.
After recruiting replacements , Pete and Steve went into the studio to record a belated fourth LP "Trade Test Transmissions". Diggle's contributions betray some acquaintance with the likes of Sugar and Dinosaur Junior but with Pete's songs it's like mainlining straight back to 1978 even if you don't pick up on all the references to former glories embedded in the music and lyrics. It was a strong set but didn't restore them to the charts. The video for the single "Do It" got on The Chart Show and they got a prestigious support slot on what turned out to be the final Nirvana tour .
They recorded their next album "All Set" in California for I.R.S. with Green Day's producer Neil King. It's another strong album with "Point of No Return" and "Hold Me Close" as good as anything they've ever recorded. It was to no avail and their future albums would be recorded for minor labels in the UK.
1999's "Modern" was produced by bassist Tony Barber and does attempt to modernise the sound but it's pretty uninspiring throughout with the songs not really up to par.
Pete took time off in 2002 to team up with Howard Devoto once more as ShelleyDevoto. Pete handled most of the musical chores on the album "Buzzkunst" with Devoto doing the vocals on the non-instrumental tracks. On a first listen it's uncommercial electronica of limited appeal.
Perhaps working again with Devoto influenced the following year's "Buzzcocks" album on which both Pete and Steve set out to sound as snarly as possible. Melody is sacrificed for expletive-ridden aggression on the under-produced album for Cherry Red and there's really nothing much to warrant a second spin. They toured as support for Pearl Jam that year.
Pete recorded another version of "Ever Fallen In Love" with several bigger names as a tribute to John Peel in 2005 but few noticed. Another Buzzcocks LP "Flat Pack Philosophy" came out on Cooking Vinyl the following year. It doesn't exactly see them mellowing out but there's a definite feel of batteries running down to it. Pete's voice in particular was showing signs of age.
Still the band carried on. The rhythm section was replaced in the following few years. In May 2012 Maher, Garvey and Devoto re-joined the band for a couple of special gigs in Manchester and Brixton. Two years later came another LP "The Way" funded through PledgeMusic. I hope those who subscribed feel they got their money's worth because "The Way" is a worthless pile of crud that finally proves they should pack it in, at least as a recording act. For the first of time on a Buzzcocks album, Diggle gets an equal share of the songs but you suspect that's less to do with egalitarianism than sparing the listener from too much of Pete's singing. His voice is shot to pieces and he sadly now sounds like someone's dad making a fool of themselves, particularly on "Virtually Real", an old man down the pub rant about social media that's the most embarrassing thing I've heard in a long time. The other songs are hardly much better , regardless of who's written them.
Buzzcocks clearly intend to plod on, despite both their mainstays turning 60 this year , playing half way down the bill at festivals and entertaining old punks. Pete himself regularly pops up on music docs, amiably chatting about "Spiral Scratch", the Free Trade Hall or other aspects of the Manchester music scene and let's hope that continues.
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