super groovy delicious bite: Jesus of cool / pure pop for now people

Nick Lowe bashed out his solo debut and cut a path between pub punk and power pop for an irresistibly irreverent introduction. Lowe spent years cutting his teeth with Brinsley Schwarz: "I don’t think it has a great place in rock history, really. It’s true that we were one of the first groups on that pub rock scene that happened in London in the early 1970s – but it really was only in London. They tried to get it going in other cities in the U.K., but it never really worked. It was just a, sort of, London-centric thing...But at the time, when pub rock started out, it was tremendously good fun, and was anything but earnest and blues-boogieing ... We used to copy other bands that we admired. As with any artistic endeavor—pop songwriting being absolutely the lowest head on the totem pole—you’re just a product of everything you’ve ever admired, really. Obviously, when you start off writing songs, your heart and your influences are very much on your sleeve. You just rewrite another group’s material that you like. And then you sort of get fed up with that and move on to another group and rewrite all their stuff. And so and so on, until the day comes when you’re doing one artist’s stuff and then you decide to add some other earlier influence you had in with that as well. As this starts to happen more and more often, you’ve got so many influences in there that you’ve got your own style...If you will put up with the premise that pop music started in the mid 50s—I’m talking about rock ‘n’ roll—I would contend that by about 1974, it all had been done. And I don’t actually think that really anything new has been done since. It’s just that every generation has sort of reinvented the styles that were done before it. And this was bang on the time when I and my contemporaries were the next generation. And we were most dissatisfied with what we saw. The pop business was full of these dreadful groups...And it was all safe and run by these bean counters and know-nothings. That’s why, over here, the pub rock thing started up. When punk came along a few years later, that was the thing that it really needed, but I would say that pub rock was spawned for the same reasons—dissatisfaction that it was all rubbish and needed to be pulled down. Because it had gotten to a point where you just couldn’t have another concept album or triple bullshit thing.”

Dissatisfied with his contract with United Artists, Lowe put out two songs that he thought would irritate them:
'Bay City Rollers We Love You' and 'Let's Go the the Disco'. “I really needed a complete change…I wanted to get fired.” Lowe joined his old manager Dave Robinson and his new manager Jake Riviera at their fledgling Stiff Records, where he became the in-house producer, putting out seminal records like the Damned's 'New Rose', Elvis Costello's first album, and his own 'So It Goes' which became the label's first release. Lowe also began playing with Dave Edmunds and Rockpile.

A year later, Lowe went with Riviera to Radar Records, which had been formed by former United Artist execs Martin Davis and Andrew Lauder. Lowe recruited members of Rockpile for the recording of his own album at Chalk Farm Studios, London, England; Eden Studios; Jackson Studios, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England; and Pathway Studios, Stoke Newington. He produced the sessions himself, sang, and played bass and guitar; with Billy Bremner on guitars; Dave Edmunds on guitars and vocals; Roger Bechirian on organ and backing vocals; Bob Andrews on keyboards; Andrew Bodnar on bass; and Terry Williams, Steve Goulding, and Pete Thomas on drums. John McFee did the guitar solo on "Tonight"; and "Nutted by Reality" featured John Turnbull on lead guitar, Steve Nieve on piano, Norman Watt-Roy on bass, and Charley Charles on drums.