Yachts were a British power pop/new wave band, best remembered for their 1977 single "Suffice to Say", and minor new wave classic, "Love You, Love You".
Career
The group was formed by art students in Liverpool in April 1977 out of an earlier band, known variously as 'Albert Dock' or 'Albert and the Cod Warriors', who had supported the Sex Pistols on one of their infamous early gigs the previous year. The band originally consisted of Bob Bellis ; John Campbell ; Martin Dempsey ; Henry Priestman ; and Martin Watson. They played their first show at Eric'snightclub in Liverpool, supporting Elvis Costello. This led to a recording contract with Stiff Records, where they released one single, the witty and self-referential "Suffice To Say", written by Priestman and Campbell and produced by Will Birch. They also released a novelty single, "Do The Chud", as the Chuddy Nuddies. With label mates Costello and Nick Lowe, they then joined the newly formed Radar label. On 9 October 1978, a few weeks after releasing "Look Back in Love ", their first single on Radar, the band recorded the first of two sessions at Maida Vale 4 studio, for John Peel at BBC Radio 1. The track listing was "Hits", "Yachting Type", "Look Back in Love", and "Then And Now".. The band recorded their debut LP in New York City with producer Richard Gottehrer. One reviewer raved that " got this cool cheesy keyboard sound with a nice chunky guitar underneath and in addition to being catchy tunes, their songs have hysterically funny lyrics, like "Yachting Type", where the guy's girl runs off with a yachtsman, or "Mantovani's Hits", which hypothesizes a rock and roll world where Elvis records had not been hits but Mantovani's had, or "Box 202", where the guy's girl is killed in an aircraft crash so he puts out a classified ad to look for a replacement. The others deal with romance in equally oddball ways, but always rocking and always catchy as hell". Reviewing the LP in , Robert Christgau wrote: "You have to hand it to a group that can give itself such a ridiculous name and then come up with credible songs called 'Yachting Type' and 'Semaphore Love.' Actually, most of these songs are pretty credible, even the one structured around the word 'tantamount.' Funny boys, no doubt about it. But their biggest joke is a mock-snooty, mock-operatic rock crooning style that I'm not eager to hear again." They toured in the US and Europe with Joe Jackson and The Who, and released a second album with producer Martin Rushent. Both albums were released by Polydor in the US Campbell left the group in 1978, and Dempsey departed in 1980. Dempsey became a member of Pink Military; and Campbell helped to found It's Immaterial. Yachts finally split up in 1981. Priestman, who for a time was a member of both Yachts and Bette Bright & the Illuminations, then went on to join It's Immaterial, Wah! and, most notably, The Christians, more recently working as a producer with Mark Owen and Melanie C. Retrospective appraisals of the band's output vary. M.C. Strong dismisses Yachts as "one of the many outfits jostling for recognition in the overcrowded pop / rock marketplace". Colin Larkin is more generous, writing that "Yachts' popularity was fleeting but they left behind several great three-minute slices of pop, including a cover of R. Dean Taylor's "There's a Ghost in my House". Vernon Joynson summed up Yacht's approach. "Lyrically, much of their material was in the usual boy / girl realm but with humour. Musically, they ranged from sixties influenced rock with organ to fast-paced punk-cum-". Steve Gardner loved this approach. "They hammered out these rocking pop songs surrounded by swirling washes of cheap keyboards. Lots of their songs strung together common threads of boating and strange tales of love, and they had some hysterically funny lyrics, like "I wouldn't climb any mountain for you/Ford any stream that's a daft thing to do/'Cos I'm cynical cynical cynical through and through" from 'Love You, Love You'".
