Despite Memory Muscle’s cascade of supersized strings scored by James Bond soundtrack supremo David Arnold, Mark Morriss’ first solo effort was so apologetically low-key it was almost invisible in commercial terms. Sophomore set, the more ambitious Latin-tinged A Flash Of Darkness, did little better, which is one reason why the Bluetone boy went all-out covers project for LP No. 3…
As head honchos of West London Britpopping quartet The Bluetones, Hounslow’s the Morriss boys always appeared to have a much steadier relationship than other more northern musical siblings I shouldn’t bother naming.
Though it might be worth doing a reminder blinder that when the band’s debut album Expecting To Fly crashed into pole position in February 1996 it knocked something called (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? off its perch. Well, for one week only, at least, before the brothers boor regained chart composure, buoyed by the release of yet another Quo-Quo single Don’t Look Back In Anger.
The sibling Libran lads that make up half of The Bluetones — ie chisel-featured Chiswick=born frontman Mark and illustrator bassist brother Scott (the latter named after the Walker Brothers’ Californian crooner, no less) —were born two years apart, in mid-October 1971 and 1973 respectively, so it feels doubly dutiful that the Random Jukebox has settled on Mark’s erratically intermittent side hustle.
Welcome to that thing called The Solo Career.
The elder Morriss is no stranger to quirky covers. Indeed, his current Apple Music stats unearth the double-edged chord that Mark’s most streamed solo song is his sweetly sincere take on Girls Aloud’s Call The Shots. See, I always said it was a masterpiece.
Not only that, but the only time I’ve seen him perform music to date was at the 2000 Glastonbury Festival, where I have a (cough) hazy recollection of a strangely muted afternoon set which culminated in the Bluetones in Beatles suits doing a version of the Dennis Waterman monstrosity from Minder, I Could Be So Good For You. No, I don’t know why either.
Who was I mainly there to see parade their deviant disco on the Pyramid Stage a day later? Oh, only those solilloquists of sound, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, natch… followed by the Spaceboy himself, David Bowie, the next day.
A decade and half on, and the commercial misfires of his first two solo sets (not to mention The Bluetones albums after the Glasto-adjacent Science & Nature) forced a rethink. Case in point: the best thing about the 2015 covers album The Taste of Mark Morriss wasn’t that the singer was inspired by Bowie’s clash of PinUps versus Bryan Ferry’s These Foolish Things (he was) but that LP-3 was veritable kaleidoscope chock-full of unexpected and unapologetically 80s pop reworks you might not expect the singer in a rock ’n roll band to even like, let alone record.
Therein lies a primary reason why I’ve always had a soft spot for Mark Morriss, if you forgive the blatantly obvious sexual pun. Famously anti-lad culture, his delicate vocal style attempts no machismo bravado in the slightest. He sings exactly like he talks: sensitively soft-spoken, gossamer thin and charmingly reedy. Fey and effete if you’re unkind, love.
Mark has also been vocal in giving a refreshingly un-snobbish nod to a clutch of favourite albums which include eighties stalwarts Rio, Please and Substance — as well as a few which don’t have one-word titles — so perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise he’s a Pet Shop Boys fan. And not in a charlatan-esque Johnny-come-Lately way like that Noel Gallagher either. Oh, damn, I’ve gone and mentioned an Oasis goon after all. Father forgive me.
So, among LP3’s radical reinterpretations are choice tunes made famous by Madonna (Angel), Laura Branigan (Self Control), OMD (Souvenir), and something from 1986 by that other seminal synthpop duo — the one with a snatch of sax from a Roxy Music man written by Tennant and Lowe with semi-spoken middle eight supplied by its producer Stephen Hague.
The penultimate point on Taste, MM’s Love Comes Quickly is brilliantly melancholic as it strips PSB’s second hit of its Moroder-esque mechanik mantra and reimagines it as a mellow guitar-based groove in Brentford Nylons with faintly loungy undertones and additional speaky bits by the BBC’s Lillian Todd-Jones.
In other words, groovy enough that the track and parent project eased him of his writer’s block. To date, there have been two further albums, 2019’s Look Up, and 2026’s Atlas with the reformed Bluetones.
By now a resident of ‘Royal’ Tunbridge Wells, the Morriss evolution has also included a refinement of his visual aesthetic, ditching his shoulder-hunched shimmer (basically Ian Brown minus the simian) for a less baggy and more languid stage presence. Indeed, his reinvention as an accomplished multi-instrumentalist extends to 21st century regulation facial fuzz, either a full rather sexy beard or pared back prominent porno tache that’s more distinguished WW2 officer than Freddie Mercury.
An attractive man then. Though he might not thank me for recalling that we crossed paths once, back in the glory days of 1996. In fact, that very day I’d was dropping off some copies of a Bowie magazine I used to publish.
Said fanmag was called Crankin’ Out. And after handing over 20 of the latest issue at Selectadisc in Berwick Street (famously pictured at the time on the left side of the street on the cover of Morning Glory?) I made the short walk from Soho to Denmark Street — the music world’s Tin Pan Alley — to dump the remaining copies at Helter Skelter.
With synchronicity aforethought, the now also long-gone bookshop (really, they sold all sorts) was located at Denmark Street’s highly symbolic No. 4, ie the former site of Regent Sound Studios, a historic music mecca where everyone from Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, and even the Dame himself recorded formative early sessions.
We EMAP staffers even launched the Q Dylan “Maximum Bob!” special there some four and a half years later. But in ’96 the fanzine-laden me encountered MM standing forlorn outside with a guitar or two.
We didn’t speak because that wouldn’t be cricket but, yes, he was remarkably ruggedly handsome in his suburban boy next door way, but rather older-looking than I’d have expected. No doubt he probably thought the same about me, whoever I was.
Oh, and the No. 1 single at the time? The song both Morriss and Bowie rightly loathed — Babylon Zoo’s Spaceman, which kept The Bluetones firmly in silver. Carpe diem.
Many happy slight returns, Space Cadet.
Steve Pafford
