TERENCE TRENT D’ARBY DECLARED 1987’S INTRODUCING THE HARDLINE... “THE GREATEST ALBUM SINCE SGT. PEPPER’S”, BUT HIS 1989 FOLLOW-UP, NEITHER FISH NOR FLESH, FARED LESS WELL, PROMPTING LEGENDARY CRITIC CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY TO SUGGEST “TERENCE IS THE WALRUS”. HIS BIZARRELY FLAMBOYANT SECOND LP NONETHELESS REWARDS REINVESTIGATION.
WYNDHAM WALLACE
It’s a hot summer’s night, a couple of months before the release of Terence Trent D’Arby’s second album, bombastically titled Neither Fish Nor Flesh (A Soundtrack Of Love, Faith, Hope & Destruction). The preacher man’s son, former soldier and boxer – born Terence Trent Howard, known in the 21st Century as Sananda Maitreya – is hosting John Leland from the US-based Spin magazine in his plush Knightsbridge house, having earlier driven him to his North London studio to listen to the record. They returned home at 3am, where Leland will stay till breakfast, and the cover star’s still holding court while a patient publicist twiddles his thumbs on a nearby sofa.
“What is my destiny? How big is it?” artist asks journalist, if only rhetorically, as his next words confirm. “I’ll just have to wait... You’ll just have to wait and see. My destiny is not something that I can sum up in two pages. I think I know what it is, but some things are better left unsaid. I’m not saying this to take the heat off me, but I think there are a few of us around who will be used for something. Martin Luther King wasn’t an accident, Gandhi wasn’t an accident, Dylan was not an accident. Dylan was the drum major for a social movement. Those people who are destined to be read about in 2,000 years’ time are those that were in the right place at the right time.”
It’s 1989, and D’Arby – as we shall call him for history’s sake for this album – definitely believes he’s in the right place at the right time. Indeed, his audacity is Caesarean, up there with “It’s only hubris if I fail”. To some, such comparisons are rock star braggadocio, to others merely laughable, but it’s been forever thus. Early on in his career, he told NME that “I am a genius – point fucking blank.” On that occasion, the similarly bombastically titled Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D’Arby topped charts around the world, going five times platinum in the UK and twice in the US. Who’s to say he’s wrong now?
D’Arby recorded his second album with four Top 20 UK singles under his belt, including the US No.1 hit, Wishing Well, as well as a Grammy and a Brit. Hopes at CB
