Best Friend (The Beat song)

"Best Friend" is a song by British ska/new wave band The Beat, released on 8 August 1980[1] as the fourth and final single from their debut album I Just Can't Stop It. It was released as a double A-side single with a dub version of "Stand Down Margaret". The single wasn't as successful as the band's previous singles and only peaked at number 22 on the UK Singles Chart.[2] The band raised 14 thousand pounds from the sales of the single, which went to the Anti-Nuclear Campaign and the CND.[3][4]

"Best Friend"
Single by The Beat
from the album I Just Can't Stop It
A-side"Stand Down Margaret" (Dub)
Released8 August 1980 (1980-08-08)
Genre
Length3:02
Label
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)Bob Sargeant
The Beat singles chronology
"Mirror in the Bathroom"
(1980)		 "Best Friend" / "Stand Down Margaret (Dub)"
(1980)		 "Too Nice to Talk To"
(1980)

Meaning and reception

Dave Wakeling said that he was "singing it to myself in the same mirror that "Mirror in the Bathroom" was written in" and is about "singing a song to a reflection, you know, I just found I'm your best friend – you".[5]

Reviewing the song for Smash Hits, David Hepworth wrote "more efficient than a Japanese watch factory, these boys continue to crank out hit product". This is another perfectly levelled 45, crisp, economical and punchy, the usual cleverly varied arrangement shifting the emphasis around a song so simple it's almost a cretin". "Like "Mirror in the Bathroom", it has an insistence to it which is further proof of The Beat's quite incredible sureness of touch".[6]

Stand Down Margaret

The other A-side "Stand Down Margaret" had appeared on I Just Can't Stop It as part of the mash "Whine and Grine/Stand Down Margaret". "Stand Down Margaret" is one of the band's most political songs and refers to the want for the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to resign. It also refers to Thatcher to "stand down as in get off your soap box. Get off your high horse. Stop trying to talk down to people. You don't really know that much more than them, anyway" as Thatcher "was acting as though she had airs and graces to the manor born".[5]

Background and writing

At the time, in the UK, there was high rates of unemployment and crime and fear of nuclear war.[7] According to Wakeling:

"...what most Americans didn’t see was the complete dismantling of towns and villages, of people's lives being cut short and then cutting their own lives short because they thought, like the Sex Pistols said, that there was no future. That time signalled a breaking of the English spirit, where people who used to have each other's back, and used to talk to strangers – Thatcher turned neighbours into competitors." "She broke the unions. She sold shares of companies that the people already owned, all of which flopped in value. A generation saw their parents give up on life as they saw their own opportunities stunted. They saw the town where they'd grown up dismantled. She was very divisive."

— The Hollywood Reporter, 9 April 2013[8]

The song was inspired by the 1978 novel The Third World War by John Hackett, where "he postulated that the first nuclear bomb would go off above Winson Green Prison", which was right above the hospital where Wakeling was born and also above the pub where the Beat started. The band "weren't very optimistic and very much of the mind that it was apocalypso and the world was going to end. So we thought, "There's a few things that need saying and a few dances that need to be had before we go".[9]

The lyrics "how can it work in this all white law" was written by Andy Cox and alludes to Thatcher's cabinet ministers Geoffrey Howe and William Whitelaw. Wakeling described this line as "one of the best satirical lyrics in literature".[3]

Reception

Reviewing the song at the time for Record Mirror, Robin Smith wrote " it washes over me not making the slightest impression on my ear drums. What these people don't seem to realise is that we have nuclear missiles because of those damn Ruskies, who are always trying to stir things up. Sucks boo to the lot of yer.[10]

Uncut magazine described the song as "polite insurrection set to uptempo reggae and African hi-life guitar".[11]

Left-wing singer-songwriter Billy Bragg said that he first heard "Whine and Grine/Stand Down Margaret" on The Old Grey Whistle Test and thought ""this is a nice reggae song." Then all of a sudden it started talking about white law and that pricked my ears: "Wait a minute, stand down Margaret. This is incredible". It was one of the first anti-Thatcher songs I ever heard. I went straight out and bought it".[3]

In 2008, Conservative politician, Ed Vaizey appeared on a BBC Four documentary by Michael Portillo about Thatcher, called The Lady's not for Spurning. In it, he said he "adored" The Beat despite being an "ardent Thatcherite" and "assumed that everyone in Britain admired Mrs Thatcher in much the same awestruck terms as he did so when it came to [the target of 'Stand Down Margaret']... the penny never really dropped. 'I couldn't work out what they had against Princess Margaret."[12]

Cheggers Plays Pop

In 1980, The Beat appeared on the children's television show Cheggers Plays Pop to play "Stand Down Margaret". During rehearsal, Keith Chegwin told Wakeling that some in the production room thought the song was about Thatcher and he asked him if it was true. Wakeling replied "Of course it's not", "it's the name of a dance from Jamaica". When the band started the song live on air, they took off their jackets to reveal t-shirts with "Margaret Thatcher as a robot with an atomic explosion behind her".[3][13]

Charts
Chart (1980) Peak
position
UK Singles (OCC)[2] 22

References
  1. "News" (PDF). Record Mirror. 2 August 1980. p. 4. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  2. "Beat: Artist Chart History". Official Charts Company.
  3. Rachel 2016, p. 280.
  4. Rachel, Daniel (8 September 2016). Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4472-7270-0.
  5. Songfacts. "Dave Wakeling of The English Beat : Songwriter Interviews". www.songfacts.com. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  6. "Singles". Smash Hits. 3 September 1980. p. 29. Retrieved 11 November 2020 – via sites.google.com.
  7. Rachel 2016, p. 279.
  8. Halperin, Shirley (9 April 2013). "'Stand Down Margaret': English Beat's Dave Wakeling Reflects on Anti-Thatcher Anthem | Hollywood Reporter". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  9. Rachel 2016, pp. 280–281.
  10. "News" (PDF). Record Mirror. 16 August 1980. p. 11. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  11. "Stand down, Margaret! | Page 5 of 6". UNCUT. 12 April 2013. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  12. Harris, John (18 March 2008). "David Cameron's Tories are trying to claim anti-Thatcherite rockers such as The Smiths and Paul Weller as their own". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  13. "Stand Down Margaret by The English Beat". www.songfacts.com. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
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