Chart entered : 24 February 1990
Chart peak : 70
This was Gilbert's first hit in nearly a decade.
Gilbert was hardly a glam rocker but his purple patch coincided exactly with glam's hey-day peaking when the unsurpassable "Alone Again ( Naturally ) " hit number one in the US in 1972. It peaked at number 3 here but there were number ones with "Clair", a lovely song tarnished by tiresome and ill-founded suggestions of paedophilia and "Get Down" which is unfortunately most remembered for a disastrous Pan's People routine on Top of the Pops. Thereafter his decline was swift with no hits between 1975 and 1980. By that time Gilbert was in dispute with his manager Gordon Mills over royalties . This escalated into a long legal battle which put his recording career on hold in the mid-eighties. Gilbert eventually won the case with the judge describing him as "a patently sincere and honest man" ( contrast this with the judicial verdict on a certain Mancunian singer some years later ). Gilbert had been vindicated but there was a price to pay for being out of action for so long. The mordant "Lost A Friend", his first single in seven years was completely ignored.
For this, his next release, he came out with a wheeze. The song was set to an electronic dance rhythm pre-dating Everything But The Girls' bedsit/ electronica fusion by half a decade.
It was then released to clubs as a white label under the name "E-Allora and Go'ss". The deception worked until the album "In The Key Of G" was released in November 1989 revealing the true identity of the artist. Gus Dudgeon then tarted it up for release as a proper single at the beginning of 1990. "So What" is probably the angriest Gilbert has got on record having digs at Mills ( probably ), his critics and standing up for unemployment demonstrators. Gilbert comes up with a Stevie Wonder-ish burbling keyboard riff to go with the electronic rhythms and it is genuinely funky. What it hasn't got is a decent tune, Gilbert mislaying his old gift for the wry offbeat melody in his effort to sound contemporary.
The very modest success of the single didn't lead to the album charting and the next single "At The Very Mention of Your Name", a reasonable attempt to re-boot his old romantic whimsy for the electronic age, made no impression.
After this failure, Gilbert's next album "Sounds of the Loop " in 1991 was initially only available in Japan. Not all of it hits the heights but there's ample proof that Gilbert's gift for an affecting tune with a smart lyric remained intact on gorgeous songs like "Divorce Irish Style and "Came And Went" while other songs like "Are You Happy" and "Having Said That " embrace new sounds and could grace the sets of artists like Red Box or The Lightning Seeds. A compilation album "Nothing But The Best" reached number 50 in the UK that year.
In 1992 Gilbert was back in the news when he sued the rapper Biz Markie for unauthorised use of a sample from "Alone Again ( Naturally )". Markie had approached him beforehand but Gilbert, all too aware of how the song affected people, refused to let it be used in a comic context. When the rapper went ahead anyway Gilbert sued and was once again victorious.
The renewed exposure meant he could test the water by issuing "Can't Think Straight" his orchestrated whimsical duet with Peggy Lee as a single in 1992 and the album followed in 1993.
In 1994, he released "By Larry", an album of short songs, some dating back to the sixties, performed with just a detuned piano and a string section. There are some good ideas on it but it sounds incomplete and wasn't the route back to fame and fortune.
Gilbert's next LP "Every Song Has Its Play" was a sort of concept LP with songs to compliment his autobiographical touring production.There are one or two nice songs in "Pretty Polly " and "I've Never Been Short Of A Smile" which stand comparison with his best work but the rest is either silly ,as in "Showbiz" which has a theatrical part for Nicky Henson , or overblown and dreary.
In addition to that the general tone of the lyrics gave him a reputation for bitterness about his current situation. That didn't go away with his last album of the nineties ,"Singer Sowing Machine" where Gilbert turns his attention to political matters on songs like "Not So Great Britain" and "Con-Lab-Lib" without anything very original to say. The album also contains some musical experiments which allowed Gilbert to get off his stool when performing, such as the dry funk of "Heavens Above" or the Northern Soul stomp of "I Don't Care", but don't sound very comfortable.
The noughties have put Gilbert in a strange position. He's increasingly feted as a national treasure and compilation LPs charted high in 2004 and 2012. He's played prestigious gigs like Glastonbury in 2008 and the Royal Albert Hall the following year. And yet it's all based on those seventies hits. He's released five more studio LPs and they might as well be radioactive. His rather ace 2002 single "Two's Company" featured on Top of the Pops 2 but otherwise you just don't hear his recent stuff. Even in the debased album chart of the last decade, his albums don't appear and it's hard to believe his fanbase are all inveterate downloaders. Gilbert does interviews when he's got new product out and they're always laudatory but it makes no difference to his sales.
Now 70, Gilbert carries on and starts his 50th Anniversary Tour this September.
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