Images of Peter: Finding Peter Godwin

Peter Godwin: I came very close to being the first English artist to be signed to Quincy Jones’ label Quest, but the guy who was hot on me left the label before the deal was signed and it fell through. New Order had that honour a few months later.

Meanwhile, I had kept myself busy writing and producing for a wide spectrum of acts. One of my best experiences of this time was writing, recording, and producing two cuts for The Drifters with musicians that included the great soundtrack composer Hans Zimmer and Ultravox’s Warren Cann! An unlikely backing band for The Drifters you might say, but it worked well and became a single for them.

The song is called “Your Broken Heart”: I wrote it with Colin Wight who was in the second line-up of Metro with me and played guitar-synth on “Images of Heaven.” And it’s actually quite classic Drifters. The lead singer was the late and truly wonderful Johnny Moore who had first joined the band in 1955! He sang lead on many of their big hits, including “Saturday Night at the Movies” and, still my favourite Drifters song, “Under the Boardwalk.” Love that Latin lilt, just a sexy summer stroll. . .

They were such a joy to work with and the single (both “sides”) was finished in two days and we did a dance mix, too. Once when I went to see them play and hear them sing “Your Broken Heart” in concert, alongside of their huge hits like “Up on the Roof,” I got a big surprise. Suddenly, in the middle of “Save the Last Dance for Me,” Johnny starts talking over the music and introduces me to the audience with a big accolade. Then he invites me up and I end up singing “Save the Last Dance for Me” with The Drifters. Surreal. I seem to remember that Steve Severin and Siouxsie from Siouxsie & the Banshees were in the audience, sat quite near me. . . even more surreal. . .

I also worked with a great German band called Camouflage, who had something of the flavour of Depeche Mode, but also very much their own atmosphere. Really haunting melodies. Dan Lacksman of Telex was producing their album Methods of Silence. He asked me to join him and kind of check and edit their lyrics and help him capture the vocals, with an English ear. I ended up getting more into the songwriting than we had originally planned and the guys were very gracious and gave me a songwriting credit on the song I felt most involved with, as a thank you. It was called “Love Is a Shield” and became a huge hit in Germany many times over and in other countries, too. I was surprised to find that many of my young tango friends from Argentina that I’ve met through dancing know and love this song and have it on their iPods all these years later. It was apparently massive in Argentina both times it was released there. Who would have guessed? I must say, I do love the lyric.

I also worked with a really gifted Dutch singer called Michel Van Dyke, who was living in Germany but making albums in English at the time. He’s now singing in German with a very cool band called Ruben Cossani who are doing very well in Germany. Michel was a Metro fan whom I met through a chance encounter with a mutual friend in a bar on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, a couple of doors away from The Star Club, where The Beatles played when they were teenagers.

We co-wrote two albums together, Reincarnated and Kozmetika. These did well and produced some hit records in Germany and releases all over the world. The biggest hit was “She Comes at the End of the Day;” it went Top 20, I think.

I also wrote and recorded some new songs, three of which—”Rendezvous,” “Another World,” and “Naked Smile”—appeared on a compilation album called Images of Heaven on Oglio Records in the US. This was a mini retrospective of my career at that point and included two Metro tracks, “Criminal World” and “Gemini.” “Rendezvous” was an unusual single release choice for America, in that the main radio version was a French-English duet; there were also several other mixes, including an all-English version.

What is most surprising is that Billboard reviewed it and gave me probably the best review of my life for any of my records! I didn’t even think they would review a record that was half in French. . . and quite a sultry, sensual moody piece. More Baudelaire than The Boss, if you know what I mean! And it was played on a lot of radio stations, even in the Midwest. . .

Click here to read more from Peter Godwin on. . .

Setting The Scene
Influences
Cult Following and Italo-Disco
Benitez, Bowie, and Electronic Music
French and Spanish Inspirations
Producing and Writing
The English and European Aesthetic
Working with Steve Winwood
Off The Map
Working with Others
Forays Into Acting
More On Acting

Introduction:

Cherchez la femme: “Images of Heaven”
Discovering Peter Godwin
Rediscovering Peter Godwin

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