Garbage Days Revisited #34: The Only Ones - "Even Serpents Shine" (1979)

 

"Now I know what you want. But I don't have to give it" - The Only Ones - Flaming Torch

The Only Ones were the classic "thrown in with punk due to being around in the same era but really didn't have a lot in common with that movement at all" band. It probably says a lot that they were a classic "slow burn" band with me when I first discovered punk - when I first heard Another Girl Another Planet on various punk compilations, my thoughts were "what, this isn't punk, it's a love song and why isn't he shouting?"

Of course, twenty years later I'm more than happy to hold my hands up and say that my early twentysomething self was a total idiot who completely missed the point - of course the Only Ones weren't a punk band - if anything they were closer in spirit to imperial phase Stones (somewhere between Beggars Banquet and Goat's Head Soup if anyone's keeping track). When I came to warm to Another Girl… as I hit my mid-twenties and started getting hip to groups like the Dogs D'Amour citing them as a major influence, I quickly realised that actually yeah, they were pretty amazing.

It's always been a bit of an annoyance to me though that most people's knowledge of the Only Ones begins and ends with the aforementioned hit song (well okay, it wasn't really a hit but it was the only time the band ever breached the Top 75 and even then it took a re-release some 15 years later to make that happen) when there's so many other awesome tunes that they did. Their 1977 debut varied from the fast-paced The Immortal Story and City Of Fun (probably the nearest thing the band did to a punk song - ironic as it was actually a recycled tune from Perrett's early '70s band England's Glory) through the lovesick The Whole Of The Law and the forlorn It's The Truth to the menacing The Beast ("Out in the streets a modern vampire prowls/He's been spreading disease all around/There's an epidemic, if you don't believe me you ought to take a look at the eyes of your friends")

For me though, it's the group's second album Even Serpents Shine which is their finest hour seeing them taking the template of their debut and running with it. Opening with the mournful From Here To Eternity written by Perrett after a spell as a drug runner in South America (as will quickly become apparent when you listen to the Only Ones, the vast majority of Perrett's songs are inspired by narcotics lyrically - it's perhaps not a surprise that he was good mates with Johnny Thunders!) and some of the desperate situations he found himself in ("But in the darkness and in the light/I have found some hope/Of me getting out of this underground/Oh I can’t wait to get back home"), it's one of the group's best songs and sets the tone well for the album.

The panic attack of Flaming Torch ("I feel like our whole life together has been cursed/I dunno which one of us is worse/Is it the one who lies or the one who hides?") and the bitter breakup lament of You've Got To Pay ("Our love was a gradual descent from the firmament/I could tell by the tone of the letters you sent/What once was so sacred is now filled with hatred"), make it pretty clear that this album is Perrett in full confessional mode as evidenced by the woozy heroin lament In Betweens ("Some days when I wake up it feels like I never woke up at all"). The poppy "Out There In The Night" (an ode by Perrett to his missing cat!) is a rare almost-upbeat moment before side two dives headlong back into the abyss with the standouts being the desolate Someone Who Cares ("And when time has left you too weak to resist/I hope you will remember this") and Miles From Nowhere which is Perrett reflecting on a life less than wisely lived ("I used to reach for the stars but now I'm reformed") being standouts.

In a just world, Even Serpents Shine would have catapulted the Only Ones to chart stardom and it did perform respectively, making the Top 40 in the album chart but it failed to produce a hit single. Put it down to a mix of the lyrical subject scaring the radio programmers and the band (especially Perrett's) general unreliability or just plain bad luck. The group's third effort, 1980's Baby's Got A Gun (not of the same quality as the first two but still with a few fine moments like The Big Sleep and the callous Why Don't You Kill Yourself?) suffered a similar fate and the band would break up after running out of money midway through a US tour (drug purchases may have been involved) which led to them being stuck on a trailer park in the deep south for three weeks until bassist Alan Mair decided he'd simply had enough and set off home thus spelling the end for the band. Guitarist John Perry would go on to join Johnny Thunders' band in the mid-'80s and would play on the Sisters of Mercy's classic Vision Thing album before becoming a music journalist (though I saw him a few years back playing guitar with Deadcuts who also featured Mark and Cass from the Senseless Things - again, Deadcuts were definitely a band who were very open about the Only Ones being a big influence on them).

The Only Ones would briefly reform in the mid-noughties but the passing of drummer Mike Kellie in 2017 saw them understandably put things to bed for good. However, Peter Perrett has resurfaced in recent years putting out two recent albums - 2017's How The West Was Won (his first since 1995's Woke Up Sticky which in itself was his first effort after the Only Ones' split) was a brilliant effort which reaffirmed everything that, in this writer's opinion, makes him one of the best songwriters of the late '70s with the heartbreaking C Voyeurger, a tribute to his long time wife Xena, being a particular highlight. 2019's Humanworld was a good effort too showing that the acerbic sharp edge that informed a lot of his lyrics certainly hasn't been blunted by time. Perrett has also been the subject of an excellent and highly recommended by yours truly biography, Homme Fatale, by Nina Antonia who also wrote the rightly acclaimed Johnny Thunders bio In Cold Blood.

Anyway, I've rambled on enough here - suffice to say that all three Only Ones albums are well worth a listen if you're unlucky enough not to have encountered them already (as are both of Perrett's recent solo efforts) but for me Even Serpents Shine is their crowning glory with their debut coming a very close second. Bruised, reflective and magnificent, of course it isn't a punk album and you know what, thank feck for that. Sometimes you need somewhere to shelter from the storm when life throws its rocks at you and that's exactly what an album like this is for. Drift in, lose yourself and enjoy.