Alphaville

From Roxy Art

From Roxy Art

There are a good dozen different artworks available for this "lost" Bry album, some of which was remade and remodelled into 2002's Frantic and some of which was further beaten into shape for 2010's Olympia.

The story goes that Bry started working with David Stewart on Alphaville in 1995, got bogged down as he does and eventually stopped working on things, rang up Colin Good, recorded "I'll See You Again" for a compilation of Noel Coward covers in 1998, decided he wanted to sing a bunch of similar '20s and '30s songs instead, and that was the last anybody heard of this stuff until 2002.

While in the studio doing Alphaville, he occasionally surfaced to do at least three other rock-oriented numbers: "Dance With Life," which is not included on this version of Alphaville, for the film Phenomenon, "Sonnet No. 18" for the tribute album for Diana, Princess of Wales, and the oft-recorded "This Love." This song was written by Craig Armstrong and Jerry Burns and I think that Elizabeth Fraser recorded it first. I'm not sure, but I think Bry was approached to do it for a soundtrack. The Sarah Brightman version is probably the best known. No offense, Bry, your version's great, but Brightman sounds like she'd swallowed you whole.

So basically, Alphaville as it was leaked was a ten-track album, and various 'leggers put them in various orders and added various tracks. Some of them add songs from the much earlier Horoscope sessions - a story for another time - and some from the much-more-difficult-to-nail-down Whatever, Whenever quasi-sessions.

A CD-R version of Alphaville using this twelve-track configuration first appeared on eBay in 2001 to much shock and awe. It eventually sold for something like $200. Somebody continued making a freaking mint off the thing for months until the price finally got down low, probably because the high-rolling BNFs had been quietly passing copies in and amongst themselves.

The appearance of what can only be called "stolen goods" among the general public had long been a source of aggravation for Bry's management. This generally led to various people posting and displaying artwork for Alphaville and Horoscope while maintaining an air of complete deniability. Oh, I don't own this record, guv, honest, but doesn't this artwork look neat? More on this subject when we get around to it.

Anyway, this artwork? Don't know who made it, but it looks like Reklaw to me.

(For posterity, a post to the Avalon mailing list in 1/01 suggested eight songs were recorded with Stewart: "Cruel," "Frantic," "Love War," "Nobody Loves Me," "You Can Dance," "Too High, So I'm Going Down," "Alpha Ville" and "Couldn't Get It Right." An actual song called "Frantic" has yet to emerge, the sixth song is probably "Goin' Down," which was released in 2002, and "Couldn't Get it Right" is unknown to me.)