Album: Naked
Year: 1988
. . .
“Nature is Healing.” For those of us who are terminally online, that’s one of the best meme jokes to come out of COVID. It dates back to those early days where everybody — not everybody, of course — stayed home for a couple of weeks. Almost instantly, people would sincerely post pictures of stuff like dolphins in the canals of Venice or birds in Central Park or some shit with the caption “nature is healing.” Because, you know, the humans aren’t around.
Like “Welcome to the Resistance, [Right-winger who mildly went against Trump]!” the “Nature is healing” meme almost instantly went from sincere to ironic: I found a Buzzfeed article from April 2020 talking about how funny it was. Just like “(Nothing But) Flowers,” which is a prescient post-apocalyptic look at a world where nature has healed.
Here we stand
Like an Adam and Eve
Waterfalls
Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
Birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs, cars have run on gasoline
Where? Where have they gone?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
After the Smiths broke up in 1987, it was, of course, obvious what Morrissey was going to do: hook up with producer Stephen Street, another guitarist and drummer and start releasing solo material post-haste. Less known, of course, was what the hell Johnny Marr was going to do. The first answer, of course, was “join the Pretenders,” which I’m not sure anybody had on their bingo card, but at least I got to see Marr do his stuff in the context of Chrissie Hynde’s songs when they opened for U2 at the Oakland Coliseum.
He also joined The The, formed Electronic and became a session person, including playing on four songs during Naked’s Paris sessions, including “Nothing But Flowers,” still perhaps his greatest contribution as a session player. I don’t know for sure if Marr played all of the guitars on “Nothing But Flowers,” but he sure as shit played enough of the guitars, instantly jibing with the afrobeat rhythms like they were where The Smiths were going to go next.
Another guest on “(Nothing But) Flowers” was Kirsty MacColl, who was not only a friend of Marr’s, but also married to Naked’s producer, Steve Lillywhite. She’s all over the verses for sure, and probably in the very very very long (and very very funny chorus).
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now we’ve got something for dinner
You’ve got it, you’ve got itThere was a shopping mall
Now it’s all covered with flowers
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawn mower
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
And the chorus rises, Marr goes from just playing rhythm guitar to adding his trademark curlicue leads, which drop out in between the verses — though there is a lovely point in between the first chorus and the second verse where Jerry Harrison’s organ floats over the guitars and all of the percussion — both Brice Wassy and Abdou M’Boup are killing it throughout — and it is incredibly lovely.
Also incredibly lovely: Marr’s long solo near the end of the song, which goes on for so long that you think it’s gonna last the rest of the song. Which it still kinda does, it’s just that Byrne sings one more chorus during that solo.
I dream of cherry pies
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
You’ve got it, you’ve got itThis was a discount store
Now it’s turned into a cornfield
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
Don’t leave me stranded here
I can’t get used to this lifestyle
I mean, if you think about it, of course a guy who hooked a song called “Don’t Worry About The Government” around the phrase “My building has every convenience” and titled an entire album More Songs About Buildings and Food isn’t going to react well to a scenario where the buildings are gone and the food is less plentiful. One last song about buildings and food.
Armed with a video featuring all of the guest musicians — and look at the band in the video and tell me that you wouldn’t have loved to see Marr unleashed live on the entire Talking Heads catalog — “Nothing But Flowers” was the greatest of the late-period Talking Heads singles, but sadly, didn’t dent the pop charts, though it make it to number five on the mainstream rock charts.
Watching the video for the song, you have to wonder what any kind of tour in the second half of the 1980s might have meant for Talking Heads, especially given how easy it would have been to play the Little Creatures / True Stories songs live. But, alas, it was not to be, though unlike, XTC, — or even R.E.M. in the early 90s — I don’t recall a huge deal being made of Talking Heads not touring those records. I guess they figured they couldn’t top Stop Making Sense, but of course, they didn’t have to. Especially with Johnny Marr on guitar.
Instead, after recording a single — the perfectly serviceable “Windows of The World” — with the Pretenders, Johnny Marr spent the next 15 years doing The The, Electronic and session work before he formed a band called “The Healers.” Coincidence? I’ll leave that for you to decide, though the one record they released, 2003’s Boomslang, couldn’t have healed a paper cut, much less nature.
As for Talking Heads, they released one last single, 1991’s “Sax and Violins,” on the amazing soundtrack to Wim Wenders even more amazing Until The End of The World, and as 1991 ended — with Nirvana beginning to take over the world — David Byrne announced that the Talking Heads were over. I’m not sure he had previously consulted the rest of the band. Obviously everybody kept working: Byrne on his solo career, Chris Frantz & Tina Weymouth on Tom Tom Club and Jerry Harrison as a producer, but they’ll never hit the heights they did with Talking Heads, one of those bands that changed everything.
“Nothing But Flowers”
“Nothing But Flowers” Official Music Video
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