Chart entered : 14 March 1987
Chart peak : 7
Number of hits : 11
This guy was undoubtedly one of the stars of 1987 but he also provides a salutary example of the folly of declaring someone's genius too early.
Terence Howard was born in Manhattan in 1962 , the illegitimate son of a black mother and white father. He took his stepfather's surname but the apostrophe was his touch. He started training as a boxer and won a regional lightweight championship but decided to go to college instead. He quit that after a year and enlisted in the U. S. Army. While posted in West Germany he started working with a band of English and German musicians known as The Touch and was dishonourably discharged for going absent without leave. The Touch released an album in Germany called "Love On Time " ( opportunistically re-released in 1989 as "Early Works" by "The Touch " ( in small letters) with Terence Trent D'Arby. The voice is very recognisable but the music is run of the mill pop funk in the Shalamar vein with a heavy reliance on synths. Terence moved to London in 1986 and spent some time in a group called The Bojangels but he was really looking for a solo deal and found one with CBS.
Terence would prove himself to be a somewhat eccentric artist but for this, his debut solo single, he was playing it pretty safe. "If You Let Me Stay " is a well-judged piece of retro-soul with only the crisp drum sound and ubiquitous Fairlight brass stabs identifying it as an Eighties artefact. The song is loose enough to give him plenty of opportunities to stretch his voice with lots of whoops and ad libs. He works hard to conjure up a sweaty, exciting R& B ambience and it paid off. People were willing to accept him as the real deal but it still feels a bit plastic-y to me.
The single got a sharp push from Terence's appearance on The Tube making him the last artist to benefit in this way as the show was axed at the end of the month. The very last show previewed a superb single, The Happy Man by Thomas Lang, but unfortunately to no effect. It was a decent show but had two major flaws. Firstly it allowed Jools Holland's Luddism ( and cronyism ) to have too much sway over its music policy so synth acts got short shrift and people got fed up of seeing Paul Young on all the time. Holland was actually allowed to get away with introducing one band - I can't remember if it was Tears For Fears or China Crisis - as " a couple of poseurs". The other problem was that, as time went on, the musical content of the show diminished with much more of the programme given over to alternative comedians. I remember they did a laboured Celebrity Squares sketch with an unidentified compere who was so appallingly wooden that I felt completely certain I'd never see him in front of a camera again. But no - he teamed up with a guy called Bob Mortimer and the rest is history.
Holland's absolute reluctance to do anything but "play it safe" on his TV shows has long made them an irrelevance to me. Even the token world or example of more "extreme" indie or rock music seem conceited.
ReplyDeleteBut Terence, I will say, does hold a place in my heart due to his singles from his debut album soundtracking many a holiday at the Butlins camp in Ayr. To my very youthful head, he seemed a more "grown up" version of Michael Jackson, which sounds absurd nearly 30 years on.