Ha Ha I'm Drowning

Version one - BBC Session for John Peel, recorded 2nd October 1979, available on "Peel Sessions Plus" and "Kilimanjaro" deluxe edition

Julian Cope - bass, vocals

Ged Quinn - organ

Mick Finkler - guitar

Gary Dwyer - drums

Version two - "Kilimanjaro" album, recorded Spring 1980, released October 1980

Julian Cope -.vocals, bass

David Balfe - organ, piano

Mick Finkler - guitar

Alan Gill - guitar

Gary Dwyer - drums

Hurricane Smith, Ray Martinez - Trumpets

Version three - single on Mercury Records TEAR 4 / TEAR 44, recorded Spring 1980, released June 1981. (Available on "The Greatest Hit" compilation)

Julian Cope -.vocals, bass

David Balfe - organ, piano

Mick Finkler - guitar

Alan Gill - guitar

Gary Dwyer - drums

Hurricane Smith, Ray Martinez - Trumpets

Written by Cope / Dwyer / Finkler

"Ha ha I'm drowning" is a song which made a lot of progress in a year from radio session to debut album opener - but then the band made quite a lot of progress in that time too.

The lineup which recorded the October 79 Peel session was short lived. As noted in "Bouncing Babies", once Paul Simpson left in Spring 79, Dave Balfe had taken over on organ, but there was conflict between Balfe and Cope, which is why Balfe didn't appear on the band's second single. The Peel session just happened to coincide with a period where Balfe had been sacked, and his replacement was Ged Quinn. Quinn only lasted a short while in the band before Balfe took back his role as keyboard player and bete noire to Cope. 

For those listeners used to the version of "Ha ha I'm drowning" on "Kilimanjaro" the Peel session version must come as quite a surprise. The intro is like an inverse of "Bouncing babies" (or more like that song's inspiration "She is beyond good and evil" by the Pop Group), angular, staccato and off kilter, Finkler's guitar and Cope's bass seem to be in different keys, as does the organ. But once the song gets into gear, the pieces come into focus. Finkler's guitar riff jumps out still, the organ feels disconnected, but the bass and drums keep it together. Once Cope starts singing the familiar lines it make more sense. The ascending bridge at the end of each verse has a repetitive organ figure it would lose, the middle eight powered by Dwyer's snare rolls is in place, and the song's structure is fine. It just feels incomplete at this stage. 

"Ha ha I'm drowning" was written during the summer of 1979, certainly it was in the set by the time of gigs in London and the Leigh Festival in August, where Cope introduces it as "I'm drowning", or "I'm drowning in your love" and the "Ha ha" element of the lyric isn't so prominent. It's a peculiar lyric - conversational yet one sided. Is it an argument? Certainly nothing is resolved by the song's end. Cope may be drowning in the other's love but he's (seemingly) happy about it. 

(Personal side note. I first came across the song title in the back pages of "Record Collector", they ran a regular alphabetical feature in the mid 80s on collectable records in their final pages, they managed to call "Colours fly away" as "Colours fly fly", and I thought "Ha ha I'm drowning" was such a horrible song title. How can someone be happy about drowning? It freaked me out, man. Luckily it made a little more sense when I actually heard the song and the title in context. Even so it's a prime example of the following Cope quote - "The whole idea of The Teardrops to me is nice, nice melodies and lyrics that, while always sung hopefully, have dark secrets in them." Always bear that in mind, dear reader)

Somehow this angular and peculiar song became the album opener on "Kilimanjaro" a year later. There's definitely some work done on the arrangement, the tempo has been bumped up a little, the drums are more organised, the trumpets blast out a jubilant melody, the verses are pared down to bass, drums and a descending organ line, ending on an ascending (and still angular and ugly) guitar riff. The instrumental section has expanded slightly - guitar harmonics and sus4 / sus2 chords fill the first section before frantic drums and guitar scratching lead back into the final verse. It's a tour de force of melody and menace.

What is curious about "Ha ha I'm drowning" is that it features guitar from both Mick Finkler and Alan Gill. As noted in "Sleeping Gas" the Teardrops album was originally recorded in the Spring of 1980 at Rockfield Studios with Finkler, but nobody was satisfied with the results. Once Finkler had been replaced with Gill and Phonogram had signed the band, they returned to Rockfield to make amends to the album. So it's interesting listening to 

"Ha ha I'm drowning" - the only song on the album to feature both guitarists - and try to work out who plays what part. I would guess the introduction (that nifty little single note riff) and verses are Gill, the ascending bridges and middle eight are Finkler. 

When "Kilimanjaro" was released in October 1980, the Teardrop Explodes did a tour to support the album - known as the "Daktari" tour and featuring a backdrop which looked like a zebra. This was a particularly fractious tour - at Leicester University Cope claims at the end of the gig "We can't do an encore because we're splitting up tonight" though there were eighteen more gigs on the tour so take that with a pinch of salt too. The tour isn't represented well by bootlegs either so it's just as well there's visual evidence.

On 11th November the Teardrop Explodes played two songs live on "The Old Grey Whistle Test", that bastion of 70s music television. Bob Harris was long gone by then, the programme was presented by Annie Nightingale and featured the Teardrops as well as Pat Benatar. The show was filmed at Shepperton Studios, and the band were pretty much off their heads on amyl nitrate. In "Head on" Cope describes the performance of "Ha ha I'm drowning" as "dreadful - my voice was shit, the guitar was deafening me and the brass, oh man. These two young trumpeters we'd hired were the absolute crappest of the crap". It doesn't sound that bad - judge for yourself.

Now jump forward to June 1981. The Teardrop Explodes are one of the biggest pop bands of the year, based on two hit singles, and not even that huge hits either. But product must be ... er... produced. At the time of the tour "Treason" is climbing the UK charts, they've been on Top Of The Pops and everything. And then on June 26th at the Coventry Odeon, Phonogram A&R man David Bates turns up and shows the band their new single. It's "Ha ha I'm drowning". Cope flips out, punches Bates and disappears for a few days to his parents' in Tamworth cancelling the last few tour dates. It's the punk philosophy - value for money, don't rip off the fans. Yet here was the fourth single from the album, which Cope believes is one too many. A few days later he has a discussion with the head of Phonogram and all copies of the single are removed from sale, even though it was already at no 66 in the charts after three days of sales. 

At least that's the story that Cope tells in "Head on".

And yet there are holes in the story. There were two more dates in the tour after Coventry and I can see no evidence that these two concerts were cancelled. Also there's no sign of "Ha ha I'm drowning" appearing in the charts for one week - either on the official chart website or older editions of the Guinness Book Of Hit Singles (thanks Will McAlpine for the fact check). And yet there seem to be plenty of copies of "Ha ha I'm drowning" in circulation. It was issued as a standard 7" single with a small edit in the instrumental section, with an edit of "Poppies in the field" on the b side, and as a double pack 7" single with an extra disc featuring two Zoo sides (with equivalent labels). This is the edition I picked up at a record fair for £3 in Hull in 1988. Also Discogs confuses matters even more by showing two different sleeves for the single and double pack - what it thinks is the "standard issue" with stylised Arabic writing (which is the edition I had) and what it says is the "withdrawn" sleeve with a picture of some cracked land. So was just the sleeve withdrawn and the single was issued but in limited numbers? I must admit from my years of flicking through the T racks of singles at record fairs I've never seen the double pack with the cracked land sleeve and I've never seen the standard single with the Arabic writing. 

And yet, if the full release of "Ha ha I'm drowning" in late June had happened, could it have changed the fortunes of the Teardrop Explodes? A new single released straight after a top 20 single in "Treason" and at the end of a successful UK tour would have been a guaranteed success, especially with the bonus disc of rare Zoo recordings ("Bouncing babies" b/w "Read it in books", if you're interested). While the single was approved by Bill Drummond, it wasn't approved by Cope. If Bates and Drummond had approached Cope with the idea of the single and given him a chance to add a cool b side and have some input into the artwork he might have let the release happen. It may have been another hit* and may have given the band a chance to recharge their batteries in the wake of three hit singles before the recording of their second album. 

But that's a huge "what if?" really. By June 81 Cope wasn't really coping (yeah, sorry) with the success of the band, and either consciously or unconsciously was trying to sabotage it. But sometimes I do wonder if the outcome for the Teardrop Explodes could have been different if the single was properly released. We'll never know. 

* The "withdrawn sleeve" possibility thrown up by Discogs indicates that maybe the single was released but was an ignominious flop, which puts a huge hole in my hypothesis. Maybe those readers / record buyers from the time could help here?

UPDATE

Thanks to responses from Harvey Williams, Bob Stanley and Matthew Lees to my initial tweet on this post, it seems the double pack was widely available at the time but the lack of any new material on the release made fans reluctant to purchase it. So bang goes my theory. Thank you to Harvey, Bob and Matthew for their insights into what happened at the time.  

UPDATE 2

Thanks to Mark G for his comment which makes a good point about the "HHID" single - seems that when the single was withdrawn all copies were shipped abroad then sold back as imports. Also on Twitter a lot of fans have said they ignored the release as there wasn't anything new on it, and that only one person has briefly seen the cracked earth sleeve and everyone else has the Arabic script sleeve. 

Thank you to everyone who has responded to my questions, I'm hugely grateful for your thoughts and knowledge on the subject. Cheers