BANGLES – "Eternal Flame"

Walk Like An Egyptian and/or Manic Monday would have made much better Bangle Number 1s …

Bit harsh I reckon – the lift towards the end takes this into ‘7’ territory for me. The whole thing is super sweet without turning sickly, and the sound is pleasingly Big without blustering a la Robin Beck.

As well as the famous ones The Bangles did a great rendition of ‘Hazy Shade Of Winter’ and I’ve always been fond of their minor hits from around this time ‘In Your Room’ and ‘Be With You’.

Susannah Hoffs has a wonderfully distinctive voice. This song has been done a great disservice by the dreary Atomic Kitten cover I think. Generic sentiments, perhaps, but a very classy and actually quite restrained (for the 80s) pop ballad.

Yeah, I think I’d prefer it if either there was slightly less going on – just the triangle and the harmonies – or a hell of a lot more, under the control of a Spector or a Steinman. As it is, it feels pleasant enough, but its no ‘Like A Prayer’, that’s for sure.

1989 discourse about this from older people was unedifying praise formulated around it being “classy”, “classic pop”, etc. It was also a bona fide sleeper hit, released to little fanfare or initial enthusiasm, crawling incrementally up the charts each week; 81 – 79 – 72 – 60 – 53 – 52 – 47 – 33 – 13 – 5 – 1!

For us 16-year old boys, however, our chief source of interest was which Bangle we most fancied.

‘In Your Room’ was pretty good, though.

Number two watch: Three whole weeks of Simply Red’s excruciating interpretation of ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’. Now there’s an act that should have been banned from doing cover versions…

The interesting thing about this is that it didn’t – as far as I know – owe its popularity to a film soundtrack. Because that’s what it sounds like, and that’s what made hits of Take My Breath Away and a bunnied-song from a singer from a related scene to the Bangles.

Tom’s right, of course: to the extent it works it’s because of limits of Susanna Hoffs’s voice. It’s a song I like a bit more now than I did then: at the time, it marked the final passing of interest in a band I had quite enjoyed. For me the tension came in seeing how long the Paisley Underground traces lingered – still there on the second album, gone by this point.

Pre-makeover/fully 60s-styled Bangles from 1983 .

(Youtube also has scratchy footage of them doing Seeds songs etc, from even earlier).

I have to say I have access to no objectivity on this, it being one of the first singles I ever bought (or was bought for me), and also being the source of an unreasonable amount of happy and confusedly sublime (at the time) childhood emotions. A 10 from me!

A U.S. #1, and the obvious Big Ballad that turned out to be their 2nd biggest record. Susannah Hoffs’ vocals do indeed sound like they are going to break at every moment, but then she always sounded like that. And that’s why she sounds so perfect for this type of ballad. A big late 80’s Power Ballad 9 from me.

Apart from nostalgia I think the song can be defended on a number grounds, though not to the extent that a 10 is justified, I will concede.

The vocal performance, for one, is properly characterful, the song sitting snug in a range apposite to the tenor of the lyrics. There’s not much bloom or heft to her voice, but you go along for the emotional intent more than any special technical prowess. I’m not entirely convinced by the lift into falsetto on the climax (the last ‘is this burning, an eternal flaaame‘), but the strain and crack of her chest voice at the latter ‘am I only dreaming, or is this burning…flame’ and the crucial ‘oh’, are wonderful. I also love her ‘do you feel ‘a’ same?’ same, for ‘do you feel the same?’.

The structure of the song does similar things, being both gauche and charming at various points. The move into the contrasting ‘Say My Name’ Bridge/Middle Eight sections, with a totally convincing and invigorating lift into an emotionally heightened flattened seventh tonality via a twisting, turning major/minor dominant, is wonderful. The shift into a truncated verse for the solo guitar interlude is smart enough in itself but doesn’t feel dynamically in proportion at all. However, it serves its function of setting up a gravitation field for a move back to the surging Say My Name. Heading back to a culminating verse is succinct, and allows the resolving denouement its full force.

The harmonies are competent throughout, and tapered enough that their joining in communion at the end just about works, even if they’re a little too polished, too bland, for my tastes. The production itself is of its time, but I would contend that its thrashing and crashing destiny, out of an intimate beginning, is preferable to the anemic and horribly ‘contemporary’ efforts of those behind the corrosive Atomic Kitten cover. The triangle, admittedly, is upsetting.

So, on reflection, I would say an 8.

a solid seven from me. i really like the quavering, slightly too intimate atmosphere of this – it’s got a kind of devotional quality that, to me, places it somewhere between ‘pet sounds’ and ‘the man with the child in his eyes’ (in intent, if not quite quality) rather than in robin beck territory. i’ll second their version of ‘hazy shade of winter’ too – fierce! and will note that the bangles cover of ‘september girls’ remains the closest i’ve ever got to hearing a record by big star.

finally, (#10) wogan, with guests julie goodyear and tom wolfe!!!!

First Bangles album ‘All Over the Place’ is great in a new wave/60s revival style, though better than that sounds. Think of a slightly spikier Go-Gos. ‘Different Light’ has the big hits but is spottier. Never got around to the last album.

This is one of those songs which I dismiss when it starts but sucks you in with Susanna Hoffs earnestness, 7/10.

I remember seeing this being panned on the video vote on “Saturday Superstore” (or was it “Going Live”)? One of the panel argued that it had a video you wouldn’t be able to actually see if the sun was shining on the TV screen – something I was later able to vouch for.

It was also roundly disliked by Bangles fans at the time for being their giant “sell out” disc. In retrospect it’s not appalling, but it is lacking ambition – I agree with Billy Smart’s comment that it either needed a lot more going on, or considerably less.

I also once got it into my head that Demis Roussos could easily do a version of this, and once that idea struck, I could never quite shake it off. It does have a definite summer holiday Euro-ballad vibe to it (right down to the big key change at the end) when I’m sure what they were actually trying to channel was the spirit of the Mamas and the Papas. Not that there’s anything wrong with the odd Euro-ballad, mind you, but it was a bizarre kind of thing for the Bangles to handle.

I always thought this was a stodgy syrupy single, and disliked it at the time. My opinion of it hasn’t changed much in the intervening twenty-one years. I’d give it 4 out of 10.

From the sacred to the profane. I find it difficult not to think of the saucy playground re-write of Eternal Flame. Putting aside such scatalogical recollections this really is ponderous tosh. Susannah Hoffs voice is too weedy and nasal for a song this size. The main hook is repeated once, twice too often as if the writers are a bit too pleased with it. Add to this the scatter cushion arrangement and the horlicks flavoured production and the effect is to my ears soporific.
At least I now have a clearer indication of who was actually listening to the Bangles. They’ve always struck me as a band not quite hip enough for those in the know but also too grown up (or specifically too twenty-something) for younger pop fans. I guess they were one of those bands who got popular without any so-called demographic.

Re 28: Certainly in the early footage, Hoffs seemed to do very little of the singing. Then again, she did the lead vocals on Hero Takes A Fall, Manic Monday and If She Knew What She Wants – their best singles I reckon, with her reediness again working well against the swelling Californian harmonies of the others. Plus, of course, there was her sideways glance thing…

I loved this at the time but find it unlistenable now, despite the girls’ as usual shrewd harmonies. In the U.S. the Bangles’ chart success was bigger but just as erratic: their #2’s were much better than the #1’s (“Manic Monday” and “Hazy Shade of Winter,” the latter being one of the most radical covers ever essayed, surpassing the original in emotional and sonic punch), and their middling hits just as interesting (“In Your Room” and their magical take on Jules Shear’s “If She Knew What She Wants”).

swanstep, i can’t remember a playground version but your attempt sounds too sophisticated to me – replacing “burning” with “bumming” is probably more like it. (cf the playground version of ashford and simpson’s “solid as a rock”)

@pink champale. I like your suggestion above that EF draws on Pet Sounds (You still believe in me and Caroline No especially I guess, listening to bits of PS again now). It makes me think that maybe my assessment above was a bit harsh. Actually, reflecting that I did once own a Bangles All around the place t-shirt convinces me of that too.
@alfred, 31. Yeah, that Hazy Shade cover is amazing – most covers are quite redundant, but this one’s essential.

#13 nails it. i too remember loving this song at the age of 9, but being confused by the feelings of melancholy it brought out. i’d loved pop music practically since i was born, but no song had ever made me feel that way before (besides maybe “girl” by the beatles). it was extremely confusing, but i can still feel that melancholy when i hear this song today.

the bangles were as solid a hit-writing group as it got in the mid-80s. anyone interested in exploring deeper would do well to check out their debut album, All Over the Place. cheeful rollicking pop songs, as well as a great cover of the classic “Live”, by another oft-overlooked LA band, the Merry-Go-Round.

Heard the Atomic Kitten version in a supermarket this morning.God it is desperate.Easily a contender for one of the worst cover versions in history.

Enough said.

I respect the laws of bunnyville as much as the next man tom but it was always unavoidable here.

Anyway i dont think personally anyone will be too bothered about Atomic Kitten by the time we get round to them but your the boss.

Going back to that ‘Behind The Music’ documentary on The Bangles, it was one of the band members who wasn’t Susannah Hoffs who remarked on it that EF was (to paraphrase)..” a lovely song, something Whitney Houston should have recorded.. not us!”. I’ve always liked it and still do so it’s a solid 7 for me with an honorary point added on for keeping Hucknall’s wretched cover of a fine song off the top (shame nobody could have done the same same in the US). 8 in total.

Re:30 Haha yeah it was in that style.
We made our own fun in them days.

7 from me too. Though I preferred their other singles (Hero Takes A Fall is probably my favourite) I’ll always have a soft spot for Eternal Flame, for personal reasons mainly.

It was Number One when I embarked on my first ‘proper’ relationship. So yes, to this day I’m a sucker for the ‘say my name/ sun shines through the rain’ section because that’s how 1989 felt for me – a huge shaft of romantic sunlight after years of teenage gloom and despondency.

This has got me to dust off my old copy of All Over The Place, the first Bangles album, which sounds terrific in a rather unremarkable way these days . It does all the things a lightweight, throwaway power pop record should do, its just short of a couple of big time hits (though as mentioned many times above, Hero Takes A Fall is really very good). I think I found Eternal Flame intensely moving at fifteen, now its just good karaoke fodder, but All Over The Place is anything but.

Now dare I listen to their reformed in 2003 album? Any guidance?