Sadder Than Sad

The (English) Beat : Tears of a Clown

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On December 2, 1979 The interracial Birmingham ska band, The Beat, made their debut on the U.K. singles chart at #67 with their cover of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles'  "Tears of a Clown". Dave Wakeling says the band constantly rehearsed the #1 hit from 1970 with no plans to ever play it live, much less record it:

Drummer Everett Morton said, 'Why don't we find a song that we all know and learn that one by ourselves, come back next Tuesday, and we'll play that song and get a groove with that one. And then we'll go back and play one of your weird songs, like that mirror thing.' And so that's what we did, we'd play 'Tears Of A Clown,' then we'd play 'Mirror in the Bathroom,' then we'd play 'Tears Of A Clown.' We'd play 'Twist And Crawl,' and we'd play 'Tears Of A Clown,' 'Big Shot,' 'Tears Of A Clown,' 'Click Click,' 'Tears Of A Clown.' And by the time we got five or six songs together that would hold together, David Steele, the bass player, said, 'Let's do a show. We should do a concert.' 

We're like, 'We've only got six songs.' He said, 'Yes, but one concert is worth a thousand rehearsals.' Because you can sit around and be pretentious in rehearsals as long as you like. 

 So we started doing shows, and in order to have seven songs instead of six, we put 'Tears Of A Clown' in the set. We'd practiced that song more than any of the others, it turned out. Because it was our magnet, our training model for all the other tunes.

The song peaked at U.K.#6, the first of five Top 10 hits for The Beat, who would be known in the U.S. and Canada as The English Beat to avoid confusion with Paul Collins' band. They had only been playing together since March where , in reference to Three Mile Island, they were introduced on stage as "the hottest thing since the Pennsylvania meltdown". 

Ranking Roger takes the lead on the irresistible B-side, "Ranking Full Stop". The sax is played by First Wave ska legend Saxa who played with the new scene's hero Prince Buster.