Yazoo’s ‘Upstairs at Eric’s’ turns 44 on 20 August
Mute Records released Yazoo’s debut “Upstairs at Eric’s” on 20 August 1982, recorded at Blackwing Studios with Eric Radcliffe. The album turns 44 this year.
Yazoo, the English synthpop duo of Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet, released their debut album “Upstairs at Eric’s” on 20 August 1982 through Mute Records. The album turns 44 this year. It reached number two on the UK Albums Chart and was later certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry.
How Yazoo recorded ‘Upstairs at Eric’s’
The title points at Eric Radcliffe, who ran Blackwing Studios in London, where the sessions took place. Radcliffe produced the record with Yazoo and engineered it with John Fryer. Daniel Miller, the Mute founder who signed the duo, added production. Clarke wrote seven of the eleven tracks: “Don’t Go,” “Too Pieces,” “Bad Connection,” “I Before E Except After C,” “In My Room,” “Only You” and “Tuesday.” Moyet wrote the other four: “Midnight,” “Goodbye 70’s,” “Winter Kills” and “Bring Your Love Down (Didn’t I).” Two UK top-three singles, “Only You” and “Don’t Go,” had already charted before the album arrived.
Clarke had left Depeche Mode after that band’s 1981 debut “Speak & Spell,” and the pair came together through an advertisement Moyet placed in Melody Maker. Moyet has described what she was looking for at the time: “I put an ad in Melody Maker looking for a semi-professional band […] Not someone who’d just had a massive hit album.” The two had known each other since their school years in Basildon, Essex. Clarke recalled taking the duo’s first recording to Miller, and getting a reading he misjudged: “I took the demo to Daniel Miller at Mute, and I got the distinct impression he was not interested. ‘That’s that,’ I thought. ‘Get a proper job’.”
Clarke has described the sessions themselves as unplanned: “Nobody really knew what they were doing. We were open to trying anything – it was like being in a toy shop, finding out what would happen if you pressed different buttons.” In North America the album appeared under the name Yaz, on Sire Records. Mute issued a remastered edition in 2008, the version now on streaming services, alongside the “In Your Room” box set and the duo’s Reconnected tour.
About Yazoo
Yazoo formed in Basildon, Essex, in late 1981, with Clarke on keyboards and Moyet on vocals and piano. Mute released their first single, “Only You,” in May 1982; it reached number two on the UK Singles Chart. “Don’t Go” followed and entered the UK top five, and “Upstairs at Eric’s” arrived on 20 August 1982. The duo toured Britain that year as the Guided Tour, and in 1983 won the Brit Award for British Breakthrough Act alongside a nomination for British Group.
The partnership did not survive the second album. Clarke and Moyet split in May 1983, before “You and Me Both” reached shops. Moyet began a solo career with “Alf” in 1984; Clarke co-founded The Assembly, then formed Erasure with Andy Bell in 1985. A quarter of a century later the two reconciled, reissuing both studio albums with the “In Your Room” box set and touring the UK, Europe and North America in 2008 as Reconnected, documented on the 2010 live album “Reconnected Live.” They shared a stage again in May 2011, performing three Yazoo songs at a festival organised by Mute. Side-Line has since covered Clarke’s first solo album in Vince Clarke launches debut solo album ‘Songs of Silence’ – Out now, the archive footage in The last Depeche Mode show with Vince Clarke – Watch it now, and a recent reworking of the duo’s final single in Yazoo hit ‘Nobody’s Diary’ gets Sgt Slick rework – Out now. Forty-four years on, “Upstairs at Eric’s” remains the first of the two albums the duo completed together.
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