Album: Talk Talk Talk
Year: 1981
. . .
I’d love to know what the reaction in the room when Duncan Kilburn first showed the rest of the P-Furs the crazy, dissonant, spiraling saxophone riff that anchors “Dumb Waiters.”
I’d like to think that the rest of the band broke out in laughter. Not because it was funny, because it was so weird and amazing and perfect, that joyous laughter truly was the only possible response to it. Like, how in the fuck are we going to base a song around this?
As it turned out, the answer was “very carefully.”
Give me all your paper ma
Give me all your jazz
Give me something that I need
Something I can have
Mrs. London’s coming ’round
She’s coming with her son
Gimme all your paper ah
So I can get a gun
And so “Dumb Waiters” eschews the forward momentum one normally associates with the Furs, Vince Ely laying way back on his snare, playing it on every other measure — and almost Bonham-esque beat which gives “Dumb Waiters” a feeling of menace, like it’s kinda wandering the streets like a monster looking for victims — while Richard Butler, rasping and weary-sounding, chants the verses like he’s worried that the monster is going to get him if he doesn’t get it all out.
She has got it in for me
Yeah, I mean it honestlyShe’s so meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaannnnn
And just as he holds the long note on “meeeeeeeeeeeaaaaannnnnn” he almost does get eaten, as that crazy-ass sax riff starts back in and rips everything apart, and it is one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard in my life, a completely insane combination of vocals and sax that is at once totally abrasive and mind-bogglingly beautiful.
Give me all your paper ma
So I can get a train
They just wanna suck you in
To being one of them
Tell her that I’m not in here
Tell her I’m a freak
Tell her that I fall about
Every time I speakShe has got in for me
Yeah I mean it honestlyI just screeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaammmmmm
After the second chorus, things get even nuttier: the guitars John Ashton and Roger Morris just kinda wander around the beat, playing drony beeping noises — occasionally almost soloing, but not really — while Kilburn makes random noises with his sax, because why the hell not at this point?
Give me all your paper ma
So I can buy a train
I don’t know how I got in here
It’s making me insane
Have another cigarette
And have another cigarette
In a room where lovers go
Talking on the telephoneThey have got it in for me
Yeah I mean it honestlyThey all dreeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaammmmmm
It got even crazier after the third verse: long sax solos, long guitar solos that sounded like spaceships landing in the desert, all the while Ely playing the same damn beat, like he knows he’s the only person bringing any kind of stability to all of the insanity.
When I first heard “Dumb Waiters,” it made no fucking sense; just complete and total chaos masquerading as a pop song. And yet, and yet, as I dug into Talk Talk Talk, it turned on me, and suddenly “Dumb Waiters” was practically my favorite song on Talk Talk Talk, not despite of all of the chaos, but because of it. What I love about it now is the continual melee consisting of the relative stability of Butler’s vocals and Ely’s beat, the take-no-prisoners sax riff and the fucked-up guitars.
Hilariously, not only was “Dumb Waiters” the opening track of the U.K. version of Talk Talk Talk — instead of, you know, “Pretty in Pink” — they even released it as a single. A single! It pretty much stiffed in the U.K., but Wikipedia tells me that it made #27 on the fucking U.S. Dance Charts. Honestly, this seems like a joke; somebody hacking Wikipedia, because imagine that you’re out at a dance club in the summer of 1981 grooving to Rick James or Evelyn “Champagne” King and this cacophony comes on? I don’t buy it.
In any event, nothing else had ever, and nothing else will ever sound like “Dumb Waiters”; it is totally and utterly sui generis, and you would be well within your rights to be completely repelled by it.
But you shouldn’t. Cos it’s glorious and beautiful.
“Dumb Waiters”
“Dumb Waiters” Official Video (short version & muddy sound)
“Dumb Waiters” live in Germany, 1981
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