Lori & the Chameleons – "The Lonely Spy" (1980) (part 2)

You try to run

I cry with fear

A single shot

Today’s 2 or 3 lines features the second part of my interview of Bill Drummond, who co-wrote, co-produced, and played guitar on “The Lonely Spy,” one of the many great records I first heard on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show in 1980.

Bill Drummond

Click here if you missed part one of that interview.  (Or simply scroll down.)

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2 OR 3 LINES:

 “The Lonely Spy” tells the story of a Western spy who hopes to meet up with his lover and make his escape from Moscow on the Berlin train.  But before he can rendezvous with her, he is gunned down by the KGB.  It all sounds like something out of a spy novel or James Bond movie.    

BILL DRUMMOND:

“The Lonely Spy” was totally a joint effort – conceptually, lyrically and musically.  Both David Balfe and I were into cinematic pop music.  

As for literary influences, I had read every novel that Graham Greene had written – I was probably reading his Doctor Fischer of Geneva at the time.  The Third Man was an obvious influence.  

As for John le Carré, I know Dave Balfe was watching the television adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with Alec Guinness as George Smiley.  I did not have a TV at the time so had not seen it. 

I did read the whole of the “Karla Trilogy” around that time.  But for me, John le Carré never had the magic of Graham Greene. 

Alec Guinness as George Smiley

I should add here that the song had nothing whatsoever to do with James Bond – I never liked James Bond in books or films.

[NOTE: The great British writer Graham Greene penned the screenplay for the 1949 movie, The Third Man, which is set in Vienna at the outset of the Cold War.  (In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Third Man the best British movie of all time.)  Best-selling spy novelist John le Carré’s “Karla Trilogy” – which includes the 1974 novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and its two sequels (The Honorable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People) – depicts a fictional rivalry between the British spymaster George Smiley and his Soviet counterpart, who was known to Smiley only as “Karla.”]

2 OR 3 LINES:

The Cold War heated up around 1980 – there was the Solidarity crisis in Poland and the USSR deployed a new class of missiles, among other things.  Did those real-life events have any influence on the song?

BILL DRUMMOND:

Very much so.

The ongoing subliminal, and not so subliminal fear that the Cold War spread is now so forgotten.  This is a topic of conversation that I have returned to on numerous times with my children.  There seems to be an innate human assumption that if the previous generation survived an era, then everything was all right and it was never really a threat.  But of course, while you are actually living through something, you have no idea that things are going to be all right and that you will survive.

Winter in Moscow

So, yes – those real life events that one would hear about on the radio or read about in the newspapers had a profound affect on how you saw the world.  Thus it was not just the Graham Greene and John le Carré novels that had that Cold War influence on “The Lonely Spy,” it was the reality of its threat as well.  

2 OR 3 LINES:

Had either you or David Balfe been to Russia before you wrote the song?

BILL DRUMMOND:

Neither of us had actually ever been behind the Iron Curtain.

2 OR 3 LINES:

Are there any particular aspects of the arrangement or production of “The Lonely Spy” that are particularly noteworthy in your opinion? 

BILL DRUMMOND:

As I do not have a copy of the original – and even if I did, I would have nothing to play it on – the only way that I could listen to it would be to go to YouTube via and listen to it on the speaker in my phone.  And I don’t even have headphones for my phone.  Thus I am unable to pass any real comment about the production. 

What I can say is that from a song structure point of view, it is very much missing a intro riff between each of the verses.  And the choruses need to be bolstered up more in some way.  

That does not mean to say that the record’s naive charm does not get me.

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Click here to listen to “The Lonely Spy.”