Rattlesnakes (1984)

Rattlesnakes is the debut studio album by the British rock and pop band Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, released on 12 October 1984 by Polydor Records. The album reached number 13 on the UK Albums Chart and included the singles "Perfect Skin" (number 26 in UK), "Forest Fire" (number 41 in UK, number 25 in New Zealand) and "Rattlesnakes" (number 65 in UK, number 31 in the Netherlands).

Composition and recording

The bulk of the album was written by frontman Lloyd Cole, who formed the band while a student at the University of Glasgow. Cole cited Bob Dylan and Booker T. & the M.G.'s as major influences, but also noted the impact of his studies in English and philosophy on both the album's title, a reference to the novel Play It as It Lays (1970) by Joan Didion, and its lyrics, which also reference Renata Adler, Simone de Beauvoir and Norman Mailer.

The album's songs were written at Glasgow Golf Club, where Cole's father worked as club master and where the family lived. Cole recalled, "'Perfect Skin' and 'Forest Fire' were written one weekend in the basement, underneath the golf club where we used to live and my parents used to work. We'd got our publishing deal so we bought a Portastudio, a [Yamaha] DX7 and a drum machine. I demo-ed both of them that weekend and we had a record deal within a month of that; it was that quick. Every single song on Rattlesnakes was written within a year of the record coming out."

Cole described the songs on Rattlesnakes as "about the things people do when they are in love. People get in all sorts of weird scenarios and I quite like the idea of that. I write about that more than anything. Sometimes it is comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny and tragic at the same time. After years of trying to deny it, I'm also starting to realise that I basically write about myself." He later reflected, "It's like most of [the characters in the songs] live in that same basement flat. It's very romanticised." After the Commotions broke up, he later stated to being embarrassed by some of his lyrics on Rattlesnakes: "'She looks like Eve Marie Saint [sic]/In On the Waterfront'. Yes, some of the earlier lyrics were very naive. But I was a young man! I really was. You can just imagine me trying to wear a French trenchcoat at the time, thinking I looked very cool when, in fact, I looked really stupid. But maybe that's why people liked it."

The track "Speedboat" was inspired by the 1976 novel of the same name by Renata Adler. In the book the narrator is startled when a rat runs across the table in the restaurant where she and her partner are dining, and her partner says, "You were all right there until you lost your cool": Cole said that he stole the line and included it in the song because he loved the phrase. Cole stated that "Down on Mission Street" is "about a character who says he'll never look back and will step all over other people". The character in "Charlotte Street" is "based very closely on me. My idea of romance obviously is meeting a wonderful, beautiful girl in the library. I wrote that song and it took me a year to realise that I hadn't actually mentioned that it was set in a library. I forgot to put that in, which is a bit stupid really." Of the album's closing track "Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?", he said, "It's about being so in love there's only one way to go – if you get so happy then you're ready to be heartbroken".

The album was recorded during the British summer of 1984 at The Garden studios in Shoreditch in east London (built and owned by original Ultravox frontman John Foxx), with Paul Hardiman producing. All the band members remembered the recording of Rattlesnakes as a very easy and relaxed process: bassist Lawrence Donegan later said, "Every day we'd arrive at the studio, lay down a few backing tracks, nip along to Brick Lane for a curry and some pints, then head back and record some more. The album was finished in a month. Happy days indeed." Guitarist Neil Clark added, "It was great... Paul Hardiman was great to work with and the weather was great. We just went in and did our stuff. It was like the best job ever at the time. We'd start at 10 am and finish at 6 pm, though I did the 'Forest Fire' solo late one night but that was an exception. We were well organised and we'd played the songs in."

The album cover is a picture by photographer Robert Farber which was chosen by design company Da Gama from a selection of stock photographs.