I recently saw an interview in a magazine in the UK Done with Neil Arthur, half of the duo named Blancmange, the other half being Stephen Luscombe.
You can imagine my surprise when Neil mentioned that he had personally received a correspondence directly from ABBA complementing him on his version of their song. "The Day Before We Came" which was one of their biggest all time classic hits.
The real kicker here is that this was one of the songs I produced for Blancmange while I was working with them over at Marcus studios in the UK where I spent months working with them. It was quite a time with Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller upstairs and we downstairs in the big room.
I knew this was gonna be quite a difficult task because we were trying to work on something that had historic success oh and just happened to be done by one of the greatest groups in the history of the POP music industry. No pressure there!!!
To say the least, I took a new approach and try to utilize some sounds that one more Indian flavored in complimented the vibe the blancmange created with a unique music.
I think we ended up with something that was special, did not sound derivative of anything else and with the new approach I came up with, ended up being truly different from original especially in the way I treated lead vocalist Neil Arthur’s dead pan delivery.
As Neil Arthur said, he was gobsmacked when he heard from ABBA on their approval of his rendition and now, years later, I guess I can say I am as well.
Hope you enjoy the song and I’ll post the interview here as well.
Here is “The Day Before We Came” as performed on top of the pops in 1984 to my production track!
Happy Monday everyone!
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