Retrospective
Tim Glasswell
August 2005
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Europeans' album Recurring Dreams is, at long last available on CD. To celebrate this re-release I have created this page, collecting together all the relevant RD references from the whole of this site, including a Track by Track analysis, Reviews, Video information, Relevant Discography entries and 1984 RD Tour dates. I have also added some further background about the recording of the Album, Comments from the guys in the band, a history of how this re-release came about and also info on the new CD itself. Thanks must go to all the Europeans for finally making this thing happen, but especially Colin Woore who has seemed to have motored the whole thing along, and Steve & the staff at Marillion's Racket Records for providing the pressing. |
T H E A L B U M
By the summer of 1984, Europeans had recorded two albums, 'Vocabulary' (an overproduced studio effort) and 'Europeans Live', which contained a mix of Vocabulary tracks and non-album live favourites. By May, the band had written a handful of new songs including 'Writing for Survival', 'Love has Let me Down', 'Burning Inside You' and 'Don't Give Your Heart to Anybody' and a track called 'Listen'. The latter was released as a single in June 1984, and the remainder would later appear on the band's third album, 'Recurring Dreams'.
The sessions didn't get off to a great start. The week before the band was due to record, Ferg Harper was rushed to hospital after a gig at The Venue, in London. He explains: "I had lost my voice and managed to restore it by using every throat sweet and mixture known to man. Amongst the cures I had been gargling with an aspirin solution and drinking neat whiskey during and after the gig. As a result of that I somehow managed to burn right through part of my stomach causing massive internal bleeding. This led to me collapsing in Baker Street station a day later. As I crawled home, little did I know I was actually bleeding to death inside. This didn't become apparent until a day or so later, by which time I was nearly dead ! The local doctor was called in, and I was rushed to Central Middlesex Hospital with only one-fourth of my body blood remaining. I was extremely ill. I think my heart was ready to stop. They were hanging me upside down, because there wasn't enough blood floating round my veins to keep me alive. I was transfused with about eleven pints of blood as the hole gradually sealed itself several days later. It was all a bit of a blur, but I remember I had a strange out-of-body experience."
In the meantime, on Monday 18th June 1984 Geoff, Colin and Steve started work on the album at 'Rockfield Studios' in Wales with producer David Lord (XTC, Peter Gabriel) and engineer Warne Livesey.. A bass player friend called Steve Greetham was called in at short notice to lay down bass parts for two of the tracks, 'Hometown' & 'Burning Inside You.' Ferg had a week convalescing at Wally Brill's house, being nursed back to health by Annabel Lamb! Ferg's hospital visit and Steve G 'coming to the rescue' is noted in the album credits, and if you look closely at the 'run-off' groove on the original vinyl version of 'Recurring Dreams', you can see the words "FERGIE GOES TO HOSPITAL" !
The band moved to David Lord's own ' Crescent Studios' in the heart of Bath for vocal and guitar overdubs in July, and then to 'Sarm East Studios' in London in August to mix the album. It was then mastered for vinyl by Tim Young.
A free promo single `Acid Rain' (A&M FREE1) was released to promote the forthcoming album. The sleeve claimed "There are very few opportunities to hear album tracks these days. This record is not a single, but a trailer for our new album We hope the music speaks for itself but you'll make up your own minds." The b-side contained edits of a further 3 album tracks, all about a minute long.
There is a long story about the album cover too. I have made it quite clear on elsewhere on this site that I think that the cover is dreadful. The original concept was built around a set of very imaginative shots taken by photographer Nick Knight. The shoot took place by the River Thames, in Kingston, and was going to comprise a collage of surreal 'dream sequence' type photographs of the band in amongst the ivy. However, while the band were away on tour in Holland, A&M in their infinite wisdom had a meeting in the band's absence, because they didn't like the chosen cover. Ferg explains " They claimed that they were reaching a deadline, and because the band weren't around, Mike Ross, the head of the Art Department had gone out and taken a picture of some gravestone somewhere, and rushed a new cover together. So it was like "Hey boys, here's your new cover." And we were like 'What?' But it was too late, and had gone to the printers! It was a fait accompli ! I think the record deserved a better cover than it got. It looked like it had been chucked together in a day !" An 'Illustrated Lyrics' booklet also failed to make the print deadline, but was made available to fans for the price of a stamped addressed envelope to Euros HQ!
Recurring Dreams (AMA 5034) was released on October 30th 1984. Sadly, it was very badly promoted despite the free promo single, extensive UK and Europeans tour and press adverts. This was not helped by Derek Green, Managing Director of A&M leaving the company a day after the release of the LP, and most of his A&R staff who had originally signed the band were made redundant too. This led to the eventual break up of the Europeans in 1985...
D I S C O G R A P H Y
A selection of Recurring Dreams - related items:
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T R A C K B Y T R A C K
Comments by me (revised August 2005). Click the titles to see the illustrated lyrics.
Fading up with a strong riff, this marks the start of the second Europeans studio album. Immediately, the performance sounds much more mature and polished, with a better production value than the raw Vocabulary tracks. All the elements are here: Ferg's vocals and solid bass playing, tight drumming, nice keyboard work and a lush guitar sound. (particularly on the last refrain). The edited 'free single' version is simply the first verse and chorus.
I must admit that this one has grown on me. I originally described it on this site as "an average Europeans effort...frustratingly slow and long." I have since revised my opinion and rate it as one of the best tracks on the album! The choruses are a great multi-vocal harmony affair, backed with strong piano chords, and a strong soul-full feel. Geoff Dugmore: "In my opinion, one of the best songs we ever wrote. Fantastic lyrics, very deeply felt."
One of my favourite Europeans tracks. This opens with thumping percussion from Geoff, soon layered with keyboard effects and a noticeably stronger Hogarth lead vocal. The first instrumental passage plays a nice off-beat rhythm, building into another chorus and repeated vocal line "I'm holding your heart..." The production is top class, peaking at the end, with the full band and vocal harmonies. Hogarth has since hinted that the lyric referred to someone who has since become "very famous" (Whatever that means!) The edited 'free single' version splices the first chorus with the end "Burning Inside You" chorus.
You Don't Want Me (In Your Life)
Another Hogarth fronted number, this is a characteristic, mature late-Europeans number. Hogarth's vocals sound so much more controlled and confident on the Recurring Dreams album. A remixed version was released for promotional purposes in 1984, with extended drumming and percussion at the beginning, and the instruments individually brought to the forefront of the mix. Dugmore "We had a cassette mix of 'You Don't Want Me (In Your Life) with no fade. The tape was left running and we kept playing for hours! This version just went on and on, with all sorts of weird and wacky things going on!"
This opens with an effect sounding like the music is being played through a mono AM radio, making the moment when the full band sound comes in very powerful. Dugmore's characteristic 'tribal' tom-tom drum rhythm is as solid as ever, backed with an exciting bass line, while Hogarth and Harper's vocals play so well off each other. The lyric deals with the music press and reviewers. Hogarth says "the band as a whole has opened fire upon the British Pop magazines... We make it clear that pop journalists write because they have to..." Dugmore on the other hand was "always dubious about the lyrical content of the song, because it was going to alienate us even more from the music press."
"This is a song for the heart. One about Love" says Harper. A great rocking opening flows in to a Harper vocal reminiscent of the Vocabulary album. The shared lead vocals are refreshing, and the uplifting choruses are well produced. Geoff Dugmore: "That was probably the closest to what I thought was a single from the 'Recurring Dreams' album."
Don't Give Your Heart To Anybody
Proof of Hogarth's developing writing style, this starts out as a piano and vocal ballad, dropping the name of the album in passing ("I think about when I was small, recurring dreams that scared me stiff") The band comes in half way through, seamlessly with a rising chord structure. The lead break with pounding drums and delayed-guitar always reminds me of the band Big Country. This sounds a world away from "The Animal Song" or "Recognition" !
Probably the best track on the 'Recurring Dreams' album, this is a simple and well played ballad, addressing the destruction of the world and wider consequences of environmental pollution. It works well, due to the atmosphere laid down by heavy keyboards, the slow pounding percussion and the perfectly matched vocals (Hogarth high, Harper low). The lyrics are inspiring and beautifully sung, particularly the last wordless refrain. The title track of the 1989 Marillion album 'Season's End' dealt with similar themes. Although the lyric written by John Helmer, Hogarth then explained "...for my own part, I wrote a song called 'Acid Rain' when I was still in the Europeans, about four or five years ago. I've been a member of Greenpeace for about four years, so this isn't me waking up to something as the wagon rolls by..." The edited 'free single' version misses out verse three and fades early. As the track fades out, you can Hogarth quietly sing the lines "The sun is out, the sky is blue, There's not a cloud to spoil the view, But it's raining..." from Buddy Holly's "Raining in My Heart." Also occasionally played by How We Live on tour in 1986, and nearly played by Steve's h-band project in 2001!
B A N D C O M M E N T S
Taken from the exclusive interviews featured elsewhere on the site.
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Colin Woore
'Recurring Dreams' was a much smoother affair than recording 'Vocabulary'. Apart from the fact that Ferg was quite ill and so couldn't be there for the first few days. Steve and I were also suffering badly from hay fever in the middle of the Welsh countryside at 'Rockfield Studios' in the middle of June. After all our demo work with Warne Livesey, we had insisted on using him to engineer on the album, and we had a lot of respect for David Lord's musicality as producer. We all enjoyed making the album and liked the result. It's a great shame that A&M fell apart at that time, on the day of its release, stopping it from getting the promotion it deserved. This eventually led to the break-up of the band. |
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Steve Hogarth
I think we all felt more comfortable (on Recurring Dreams) apart from Ferg who was in hospital! We started the album with bass player Steve Greetham while Ferg convalesced. We had a great production team in David Lord (who'd just done the Peter Gabriel 4 album) and Warne Livesey engineering (who went on to produce The The, Midnight Oil and Mark Hollis). It is a much better album than "Vocabulary" on the whole. My favourite song is "Hometown". Ferg's finest moment. The sax player (Barney Joel Rachabane) turned up again later on Paul Simon's "Graceland". I was quite pleased with "Acid Rain" and "Burning Inside You". "We were very affected by the fashion of the times. We were very fast anxious and industrial, if you know what I mean. But by the time of the second studio album, we'd developed. If we hadn't left A&M when we did, I think we might have done something..." |
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Ferg Harper
It was really beautiful recording in Wales. David Lord did some really interesting things, and we had a much better vibe all together. We really trusted him. We all got really excited, and thought "This sounds like how we dreamt our music would be taken and turned into." I liked a lot of the tracks: '1001 Arguments' was probably one of my favourite ones. I liked 'Hometown.' 'Love Has Let Me Down' was alright, a good live track. I think if I listened to some of the more epic tracks on 'Recurring Dreams' now, I would probably still quite like them. 'Burning Inside You' and things like that, really built, and had quite a good tension. 'Acid Rain' was great. It was unfortunate that it was our last album, because I think had we gone on from there, the next album would certainly have been a cracker. We really saw where we were going. We established our style. We weren't doing so much of the quirky, off the wall stuff anymore, and had gone in to this more full production progressive rock kind of thing. I don't understand how that album didn't get more promotion than it did. |
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Geoff Dugmore
By the time we got to 'Recurring Dreams' we were super confident players, and with David Lord we could really explore the full potential of our playing and songwriting at the time. We cut the basic tracks at 'Rockfield Studios'. Ferg had been really ill and I was feeling a bit of strain from that as I had been really worried about him. We started doing tracks with a bass player friend of ours called Steve Greetham. He knew how tight we were as a unit and did a fantastic job of getting the album started. When Ferg came back after a couple of weeks it was like the old family unit and felt great. He re-did his parts and made it his own again. We then went on to David's Studio in Bath where we spent time doing vocals and general overdubs. From there it was on to Sarm East to mix it. It sounded fantastic. 'Hometown' was fab - Ferg's best lyric by far, and also 'You Don't Want me in Your Life', with passionate vox from Steve. To me, that was everything that the Europeans were |
A L B U M R E V I E W S
A handful of contemporary reviews. Not always kind, or even very constructive, but interesting none-the-less!
'Sounds' 17th Nov. 1984 LP Review by Andy Hurt
Not to be confused with the Bristol band of the same name, whose Heartbeat single 'Europeans' was one of the highlights of 1978. That was their only moment of inspiration, but that's one more than is likely from this boresome foursome. They really don't live up to their name, the musical alignment of 'Recurring Dreams' being emphatically that of US/UK axis, Police meets the Fixx meets the Thompson Twins. What they do, however, they do well, aided by the crisp production of David Lord who extracts the maximum atmospheric effect from inadequate raw material such as 'Burning Inside You' to manufacture the best track on the album. In fact, the whole album consists of mediocre songs transformed by the twiddle of a knob and the inflexion of a note into very passable end product.
'Melody Maker' 17th Nov. 1984 LP Review by Ted Mico
I closed my eyes and envisaged a utopia where ghouls only exist on the telly, and George walks back to 'Brookside' a free man. Then I sent the needle coasting around the new Europeans' new disc, and all such illusions cascaded in to oblivion. "Recurring Dreams" are exactly that : Having failed to impinge their name on the collective consciousness of the pop market with their first, and most attractive single, "Animal Song", the Enduro-peans must feel their time for glory slipping away. While the rest of us are content to put our clocks back an hour, The Europeans have decided to set their digital timepieces back a decade. "Acid Rain" and "Burning Inside You" offer a summation of all the nightmares born around '74. Beneath an auto-pop exterior lurk the spectres of "Tales of Topographic Boredom" retold from Genesis to resignation. A special commendation for valour in the face of hopeless tedium, must be awarded to Geoff Dugmore whose strident drumming struggles to revive the likes of "You Don't Want Me (in Your Life)", but eventually succumbs to the soporific irritation of Harper and Hogarth's vocals. In fact "Recurring Dreams" has only one saving grace - it isn't a double.
BEST Magazine, February 1985 LP Review by Georges Daublon (loosely translated from French by unknown)
1983 and 1984 have been good years for music, with U2 in particular coming through. Some of us have discovered Europeans' first album 'Vocabulary', and the rare pearls of modern rock that the album contains. However we have been disappointed by the media, which greeted it with silence rather than acclaim. Europeans have been able to shrug off this injustice, and now release 'Recurring Dreams', produced by the Master, David Lord (XTC, Peter Gabriel, Echo & the Bunnymen). On their first album, one found many strong passages - some very powerful songs which could be danced to and which really grabbed the listener, but they were also somewhat abstract. On the new album, one discovers a music with more depth, rich in subtlety sensitivity and finesse. Some tracks take love as a theme (a topic not touched on in the first album), and on the whole these are of a moderate or slow tempo, which gives the limelight to Steve Hogarth (Who sings five of the eight tracks; Fergus Harper was seriously ill in hospital at the commencement of the recording of the album). Steve displays much powerful emotion in singing songs such as 'Don't Give Your Heart to Anybody', 'I'm Burning Inside You' and 'I Don't Want You in My Life', three sufficiently strong reasons for buying this haunting album. Fergus Harper expresses himself more strongly on the up-tempo numbers such as '1001 Arguments' which reminds us of the best moments of the first album. There is definitely a strong direction and style present in Europeans, and now is the time for good things to happen to the band!
Source Unknown LP Review (Taken from 1985 Europeans Press Pack)
EUROPEANS: Recurring Dreams (A&M): Guess who was in charge of producing this album? None other than our local hero David Lord. Well done chap, because it's a sharp, thorough and impressive album, more cohesive and powerful than their previous work, and should give them access to a far larger market.
Source Unknown LP Review ("")
EUROPEANS: Recurring Dreams (A&M): As the Europeans had promised, gone are the rough edges of their previous releases, instead, and album full of feeling and energy. The Europeans obviously determined not to be distracted by pressure of commercialism, have been able to evolve their own distinctive style. Producing such songs as 'Hometown' which grows from humble beginnings and then flourishes into a full bodied chorus that leaves you searching for more. With other songs such as Acid Rain and '1001 Arguments', (they) add up to an album that will not wear thin after a couple of plays.
Source Unknown LP Review ("")
EUROPEANS: Recurring Dreams (A&M): Simply stated, if you like the idea of The Thompson Twins vocals set against a Big Country backdrop then the chances are you'll enjoy this offering from the Europeans. The question is, 'Is there room for yet another guitar and drums orientated band in this already overcrowded genre?' In this case the answer is a definite maybe. This album follows closely enough along the line lines of others to let them off any charges of rip-off which might be leveled against them. In the tradition of the new big sound there are only eight tracks, averaging about five minutes each - something which makes me slightly uneasy. Whatever happened to the three minute masterpiece anyway? If you get this one home and hear snatches of Peter Gabriel or Icicle Works in it, that's because producer David Lord has worked with both bands.
Source Unknown LP Review ("")
EUROPEANS: Recurring Dreams (A&M): With 300 gigs behind them in eighteen months, this third album could be the one to lift this undeniably powerful band another notch up the ladder. Whilst the guitar led, string vocals movement of which this outfit was a part seems to have subsided, a little help from XTC producer David Lord and a marketing strategy which is giving away a seven inch sampler of the record on request won't exactly damage their career prospects. Hugh Masakele's sax player Barney Rachabane adds depth to slower numbers such as 'Acid Rain' and 'Hometown'. Elsewhere there is more than enough to open up the nation's eardrums.
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H E 1 9 8 4 T O U RUK & European Recurring Dreams Tour dates
V I D E O G R A P H Y
Two clips have surfaced from the 'Recurring Dreams' era on video. The first is a clip from a German television show called "Dr Mambo" in 1984 (strip one below). This starts with an interview with a weary Ferg and Steve, then includes an exciting promo video for 'You Don't Want Me (In Your Life)' filmed at the Metropole in Berlin. The second (strip two below) is a
moody performance of 'Acid Rain' filmed for a French TV show 'Midi Public in early 1985. Geoff and Ferg play keyboards in the background, while Colin and Steve take centre stage for a fairly straight run-thru of this 'Recurring Dreams' album track.|
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R E - I S S U E
H I S T O R YIt has been on the cards for years... Here's a timeline of how it happened...
T H E R E - I S S U E
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The CD has been released as "Intact CD03." (Intact is a subsidiary of Racket Records, Marillion's own label) The disc itself is black and red, with the 1984-style euros logo and album title in silver. Four Nick Knight portrait shots are reproduced on the back of the case, with track details and timings (not on the original). The original LP sleeve had a 'key' to show which tracks were sung by Steve and which by Ferg, but this has not been included. The new version also adds a link to this website, www.theeuropeans.co.uk . Inside the case, underneath the clear tray that holds the CD is page 8 from the 'Illustrated Lyrics' booklet, with a great band shot (reproduced on the 'Lyrics' page on this site) plus a list of all the instruments played by each member. There are also thanks to the 'Live Crew' and a credit for Dave Western's drawing and calligraphy. |
The booklet itself consists of the front cover (an exact copy of the LP sleeve, however bad it is!), the intro page to the Illustrated Lyrics (giving recording info and a 'cartoon' style image of the euros) and a further five pages of illustrated lyrics, with various scribbles and photos from Dave Western. The back of the booklet repeats the four portrait shots which look really good!
There are no details in the new CD about the re-mastering of the CD, but I'm informed that Erik Nielsen, one of Marillion's studio crew mastered it at the Racket Club earlier this year. The spine uses the same text layout as the front cover which looks very smart. The only original Recurring Dreams piece that has not been incorporated is the title page of the illustrated lyrics book, which contains a few more scribbles. (See it here).
Please do email me at t.glasswell@btinternet.com with your thoughts and opinions on Recurring Dreams, and I'll include them on this page. Also, let me know if you'd like to see the other Euros albums on CD and we'll try and get some support for re-releasing them too!
