Paddy McAloon answers the highway from County Durham
In February 1988 Kitchenware released Cars and Girls, the first Prefab Sprout single in two years. Paddy McAloon had written it in 1985, and the band had already played it live that year. The sleeve showed a Bruce Springsteen figure made of matches, with its head on fire. The B-side was Vendetta. The 12-inch added Nero the Zero. The single spent five weeks on the UK chart and peaked at number 44. It never entered the top 40.
Thomas Dolby had produced Steve McQueen and several songs on the next album, but he passed on this one. He felt another producer could do the job as well as he could, or better. Jon Kelly produced it, with McAloon also credited. Richard Moakes mixed. Luís Jardim played percussion. The keyboards included Gary Moberley and Paul Wickens. Wendy Smith sang with McAloon, Martin McAloon played bass, Neil Conti drums. The album From Langley Park to Memphis followed in March 1988, Kitchenware through CBS. Langley Park is a real place in County Durham, near Witton Gilbert, where the group had started.
The lyric is not a note from someone who hates Springsteen. In a 1988 interview McAloon said he liked Born to Run, and that he was playing with the American habit of describing a life as a car on a highway, from Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys through to Springsteen. His version was English and smaller. No highway ran near where he lived. When they got in a car, he said, they felt carsick. He told NME he had written about a listener whose life did not match the records, not about a personal dislike.
I was really shocked and stunned when Cars and Girls wasn’t a hit. I always liked that song. I thought it was really cute. I woke up then and I’ve never had such high expectations since.
(Paddy McAloon, interview with Alan Corr, 1992)
The miss stung because Steve McQueen had taught him to expect a welcome back. He said the failure woke him up, and that he never aimed that high again. The next single from the same album, The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, reached number 7 in the UK, their only top ten, with performances on Top of the Pops and Wogan. In August 1988 the band was reported to have talked CBS into reissuing Cars and Girls. The reissue did not happen. The song stayed the one fans kept, the single that had missed.
The matchstick sleeve was the argument in one picture: Springsteen’s imagery, set alight, on a Kitchenware 7-inch that radio did not take into the top 40. McAloon kept the song in the story he told about his own expectations. The highways in the lyric still do not pass Witton Gilbert. A later compilation, A Life of Surprises, put the track back in circulation. The recording that matters is the 1988 single, produced by Jon Kelly, not the remaster on the collection.
