JIMMY NAIL – "Ain't No Doubt"

This is a great record to sing along to!

(SHE’S LYING)

The most successful of the Geordie actor’s occasional forays into music – in 1992 he was best known as the star of the BBC detective series Spender – “Ain’t No Doubt” is an extremely sharp, smart slice of metapop. Indeed, Nail almost seems like a spectator at his own record. The verses consist of a monologue where his lover is leaving him and offering him bland and palpably false words of reassurance, but Nail could just as well be sitting in his chair, listening to another lie of a love song (“She says it’s like in the song, remember? If you love somebody, set them free? Well that’s how it is with me”), counting off its clichés– “She says, it’s not you, it’s me/I need a little time, a little space” – before adding his own blunt reflections: “Oh yeah, I know a goodbye when I hear it,” “So I say ‘Fine’ and just hope that I’m a better liar than she is.”

Then a second voice, Sylvia Mason-James (sounding very much like Sarah Cracknell) comes in to turn the track into momentarily lush Brill Building pop, with Nail still cynically grumbling – “I don’t want nobody else, I love you (She’s lying)/There won’t be somebody else and that’s true (She’s lying!)” – before he explodes into an exasperated, slightly strangulated howl of a chorus, patterned after the US Army jogging chant: “Ain’t no doubt it’s plain to see!/A woman like you’s no good for me!” over a brightly energetic white soul backdrop (very reminiscent of late period Style Council with its horns and Guy Pratt’s marauding bass). Pratt also co-wrote and co-produced the record (with Danny Schogger and Nail himself) and echoes the singer’s inner turmoil with clattering drum drop-outs, slamming doors and Neil Sidwell’s morose trombone solo. Only right at the end of the fadeout does Nail break down: “It’s you saAAAAA-ying goodbye!” he wails, aghast.

It’s a brilliant piece of work, easily worthy of Saint Etienne – who at the same time in 1992 released their greatest single, the staggering “Avenue,” seven-and-a-half minutes long, discursive and therefore little played, but which pulled all the punctum strands in avant-pop, from the Pretty Things to Dollar, together with a rare mix of acuity and tenderness; it peeked cautiously into the chart for one week at number 40 before thinking better of it and beating a swift retreat – though it took Nail’s sense of theatricality to make the bleeding sound as though it is coming from a real person, and not, as with so much other “worthy” pop-soul of the period, a bar chart of demographic responses to “emotion,” since its role is to examine and question the truthfulness of “emotion” in the pop song as a whole. Did somebody say Lexicon Of Love?

Very much better than anything the Streets ever came close to doing (all of which is monochrome in comparison), and much better than anyone had any reason to expect it to be. Definitely better than a four in my book, too. Maybe a six.

But as good as “Avenue” – indeed a quite outstanding work, of some intricate beauty – or even the weakest track (if I could even decide if any of them might deserve to be described as such) on “The Lexicon of Love”?

I can’t go for that (no can do).

Although maybe Hall and Oates – on a track like, say, “Private Eyes”, isn’t such a bad point of comparison (although “Ain’t No Doubt” is its inferior, melodically. (I’m not lying)

TOTPWatch: Jimmy Nail thrice performed ‘Ain’t No Doubt’ on Top of the Pops. Details of the Christmas edition shall be provided anon;

16 July 1992. Also in the studio that week were; Wet Wet Wet, The Wedding Present, Jason Donovan, The Shamen and Sophie B Hawkins, plus a live performance by satellite from Billy Ray Cyrus in Nashville. Mark Franklin was the host.

23 July 1992. Also in the studio that week were; Sunscreem, Shakespeare’s Sister, Enya and Jon Secada. Claudia Simon & Tony Dortie were the hosts.

I think “unintentionally funny” is spot-on. Nail is not stupid, no, but this is ludicrous and half-inching the US Army jogging chant simply pushes it over the edge of ridicule.

The chorus screws this up for me. US army marching songs seemed to be all over the place (post gulf war?) at the time, so it was a smart move. But a novelty song called I’m On The Train would have been a smart move a few years later – doesn’t mean it would have actually been GOOD.

I assumed Sylvia Mason-James would emerge, Seal-like, as a star after her cameo, and listening to her now I can’t believe it didn’t happen.

#8 Good Lord, you’ve done something amazing – that list of artists from those two editions of TOTP (and the songs they were performing) succeeds in making 1992 look like, if not a year of pop greatness, then at least a year in which there genuinely were some great pop numbers doing the rounds. Which is not how I have ever thought of it. Sunscreem! Jon Secada! Sophie B Hawkins! One might not get that impression from the no 1s. (I know this has been said of 1989 too, but for that year it was easy to find a counter-response to the naffness of Jive Bunny et al)

Re 14: I remember it as a pretty great year, and the no.2s tend to bear that out on the whole. Not in this case though – Jimmy kept the pretty dire Sesame’s Treet off the top. Phew.

Yes, Jon Secada! Just Another Day is one of the most oddly structured hits of the day. A musicologist could probably explain it, but the chorus comes it an odd moment, the chord progressions seem unresolved, the whole thing has an air of desperate melancholy.

In the days before I realised I was a bit rockist, I would have said this was a bit well…naff, really. Without properly understanding why songs like this send me running for cover, I would have dismissed it as an actor’s vanity project, like Bruce Willis for instance. There’s nothing wrong with his version of “Under The Boardwalk” except that I’m imagining a smug little smile on his face which says “I’m doing this because I’m Bruce Willis, and I couldn’t give 2 cents whether it’s any good or not.”

To be fair, that’s a bit harsh on Ooor Jimmy, who has quite a versatile voice. There’s an oh-so-subtle hint of grit, compared to Rod Stewart’s gravel. The chant-along chorus lifts the song, but I can’t forgive those spoken asides, having been subjected to McCartney/Jackson’s “The Girl Is Mine” from a few years back. I like the idea of giving an almost *cough* bluesy song, a funky twist, but in a more deft helmsman’s hands like say, Chris Rea it might have been so much more. I just can’t love it. 5

I remember this song at primary school, and Jimmy Nail being an unlikely (in hindsight) heartthrob for some of the girls. I also remember the schoolyard joke that Jimmy Nail was going to get togther with Pliers (of Chaka Demus fame) to form some kind of tool-based supergroup.

As a song, this really represents what Popular is all about. As a song, it really isn’t great. It deliberately steals from a US Army chant, is repetitive to the point of distraction, and is “sung” by a man who is about as far from a natural popstar as you could get. However, as a “great” number 1, it ticks all the boxes. For repetitive, read catchy. It’s more memorable than most of the songs either side of it on this list, but I wouldn’t want it anywhere near my Ipod! In addition, the fact that it’s by Jimmy Nail, and not, say, Wet Wet Wet, or UB40, means that it stands out, and led to a USP.

Where is Jimmy Nail now? Surely he’d be perfect for I’m a Celebrity – instantly recognisable, down on his luck, and a “cult” figure.

One mark off for the “She’s lying” voice NOT actually being the bloke from PM Dawn (so 5).

#16: “Sesame’s Treet” is not “dire”; greatest TOTP performance ever (if only I could find it on YouTube).

I’m surprised that a Pet Shop Boys fan like you, Tom, hasn’t mentioned the glaring similarity of this track’s spoken passages to some of Neil Tennant’s.

This UK number one marks the first of 1992 that I wasn’t around for – by July I was travelling in the states on my way home from my student year – so I was never immersed in it to the degree you all were, although it did hit number 5 in Australia that September. We knew Jimmy from Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, but that had a low enough profile that the “celebrity” angle seemed secondary to whether or not it was any good.

And to me, it is. Listening to it without the video, the mixture of elements works well – I’m tempted to go to 7, and wouldn’t go below a 6.

#24 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQtB2x3EDAw

This is OK, quite funny. But Crocodile Shoes would be firmly within my top ten least favourite songs of all time.

It seemed like it was in the charts forever, and it was irritating beyond belief.

Much better than I remembered it being, it just seems to work – though the showboating in the last minute is perhaps a bit much. Still pretty funny, but not in a way that detracts from the song itself. Glad this got to number one and not Crocodile Shoes.
Item of note: prominent appearance of a Mercury phonebox in the video – one of those things that just seemed to disappear one day in the mid 90s.

And finally, Charly >>>>>> Trip to Trumpton >>>>> Sesame’s Treet > Roobarb And Custard, surely?

Surely another source of this specific sound (and concept) is the groove Chaz Jankel fashioned for the Blockheads: and with Dury (and Mike Skinner IMO) there’s the sheer incongruity of extremely non-American voice+accent versus translatlantic glide of sound… which not really so with Nail, who seems to downplay the Geordie when speaking and to banish it entirely when singing.

On the strength of I’m not sure what, JN got a whole South Bank devoted to his renaissance-man panoply of talents.

Nail’s “Aw yeah” > the “aw yeah” sample fortunately by this point consigned to the dumper after severe over-use.

Wikipedia is a bit scant and I’m not quite ready to buy and read his autobiography A Northern Soul, but between the lines there seems to be a bit of a melancholy story here: Oz in Auf Wiedersehn Pet was actually his first significant acting role, and it looks a little as if he’s spent all the time since — including really not very much activity at all, on screen, stage or record — trying to shake off the cartoonish Newcastle identity that saddled him with.

GONERIL: Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter;
Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e’er loved, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable;
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.

LEAR: She’s lying!

REGAN: Sir, I am made
Of the self-same metal that my sister is,
And prize me at her worth. In my true heart
I find she names my very deed of love;
Only she comes too short: that I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys,
Which the most precious square of sense possesses;
And find I am alone felicitate
In your dear highness’ love.

LEAR: She’s lying!

25: there was one (around the ‘Charly’ time) which sampled a children’s nature programme from early/mid 70s the name of which has slipped my mind but everyone remembered it – and that tune unlike most of the rest was thought happening enough to get in the Steve Jackson evening show’s rave chart on Kiss FM at the time, then there were not very good minor pop crossover hits for heavily sampled themes from ‘Rainbow’ (always used to play that one in my local nightclub for some reason), ‘Banana Splits’,obviously loads of ‘Dr Who’ (theme and dalek sounds), a few ‘Star Treks’, ‘Blockbusters’ (‘Ivory’ by Skin Up)Mr Men’, ‘Black Beauty’,’Six Million Dollar Man’ (the ‘Mr Men’ and ‘Black Beauty’ records actually being worth good money now on the old skool hardcore scene!), seem to recall there was some ‘Captain Scarlet’s, ‘Joe 90’s and a ‘Pink Panther’ too…I should imagine there’s a few more to add to those too

At the time wanted to do a ‘White Horses’ one think it could have been massive and think a ‘Tomorrow People’ one would have worked too

25 Urban Hype put out some very good tracks (‘Teknologi’ ‘The Feeling’ etc) which are now quite sought after but I think they were compromised as an act not worth bothering with by many on the scene because of ‘Trumpton’. It might have been worth their while sticking out the other stuff under a different name.

^^ I agree. I used to tune into Kiss regularly, not only Steve Jackson, but also Colin Faver for the industrial stuff. Another source was Green Apple (a pirate based in West London), with a fledgling Ras Kwame spinning an eclectic mix of Hardcore and proto-Jungle.

By the time he was in Spender Jimmy Nail was one of the easiest people on tv to imitate – simply standing looking out a window unsmiling and remarking ” ah can remem-bah when there were boots on da tyne ” to whoever was in earshot. Ain’t No Doubt is a real actors record in that a lot of it is a monologue. Musically it’s very 1992 and certainly has enough hooks to deserve a number 1. It’s palatable rather than especially great.

#37 We only played Sesame’s Treet because the large group of randoms dancing requested it. I never liked it much, whereas Trip To Bleddy Trumpton was Actually Banging.

All interesting stuff about Ain’t No Doubt. I think punctum’s review makes all the key points, and I’m slightly concerned that having never previously heard it as a US army jogging chant, I’ll never again hear it as anything else. Also, my eyebrows raised at the thought that this appears to be – to a greater or lesser extent – something that many others had noticed. Silly me.

Clearly, this is atypical of Jimmy Nail’s work. If his other records are poor, I’d agree it’s firstly because he takes himself (too) seriously (when his popularity emerged from humour); secondly, because he does so partiuclarly as a singer, and thirdly because his desire to take himself seriously as a singer has been indulged by others. As an actor, he got to sing in Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and someone (not necessarily Clement or La Frenais but it seems likely) must’ve seen this as a talent worth showcasing, perhaps even developing. Even the script lauded him (“How can someone so ugly make a nice noise like that?” “He must be miming?” “That lad’s wasted laying bricks!”). It was difficult to suspend disbelief and think that the characters were commenting on Oz the bricklayer for what may, in the plot, have been a surprisingly composed performance from their building-site mate – it seemed like they were being fed lines to promote Jimmy Nail, the actor, and his ability to sing. This indulgence begat Crocodile Shoes.

Yet here, it’s really not the surprise-an-actor-can-sing that makes the record such a quirk. There’s a bit of singing in there, but it’s the gentle comedy and exquisite timing and delivery that separates this record from so many others. It sounds like the lyric could have been written by Clement and La Frenais, even down to the external reference to a song by another writer from Newcastle.

Sorry (about all the brackets).