#- The Passions were a British pop band which formed in 1978 and disbanded in 1983. They were archetypal one-hit wonders with their misty, trance-like pop song, "I'm in Love with a German Film Star".
- Contrary to popular belief, the German Film Star referred to in the song is not Klaus Kinski, Bruno Ganz, Rutger Hauer or even Marlene Deitrich! In fact he was neither German nor a star but a certain Steve Connelly, aka Roadent, one time roadie for the Clash. However, rumour has it that he did actually appear in a German film at some point.
- The echoplex guitar sound was inspired in part by the early 1970s recordings of John Martyn. The strange bass drum sound on the record was achieved by feeding the signal through a vocoder.
- The track was produced by Pete Wilson who was the in-house Polydor producer at the time. He also worked with the Jam and produced ‘Waiting for a Miracle’ with the Comsat Angels. He was responsible for the ‘drums in the stairwell’ sound on that album.
- The record was single of the week in all the music weeklies, ‘Peoples Choice’ on London’s Capital Radio and sold more than 130,000 copies in the first few weeks of release. Despite all this and two ‘Top of the Pops’ appearances, it only reached number 25 in the UK charts. Strange but true. Did this have anything to do with the record company not being able to get sufficient records into the shops because they hadn’t pressed enough?
2 comments:
A fine song. Whatever happened to them? Thanks for the info - I'd never really known much about them or the recording of this tune.
the shining light amongst there back catologue,got all 3 albums and i loved there guitar sound
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