Chords – "Something's Missing" (1980)

 I got a feeling 

Something is missing

Raise your hand if you haven’t ever had the feeling that something is missing.

Anyone?  (Bueller?  Bueller?  Bueller?)

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I heard “Something’s Missing” by the Chords on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show on May 10, 1980.  (I’m a little OCD when it comes to music.)

I’m confident that’s the only time I ever heard the song on the radio.  Steven might have played it on another “Mystic Eyes” show – but if he did, I wasn’t taping his show that night.

If I was a glass-half-full kind of guy, I’d be marveling at my good luck in stumbling across “Something’s Missing.”  

But I’m more of a glass-half-empty kind of guy, which makes me wonder how many great songs like this one I missed over the years.

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The Chords formed in London in 1978.  Their fans included famed BBC DJ John Peel and Paul Weller of The Jam.

The Chords

The band’s first five singles all charted, but none were big hits.  Its only album, So Far Away, peaked at #30 on the British album charts.

The Chords followed up So Far Away with two singles in 1981, but neither one charted.  So the group decided to call it a day in September 1981.

I recently tracked down the group’s primary songwriter and lead guitarist, Chris Pope, and talked to him about the Chords in general and “Something’s Missing” in particular.

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2 or 3 lines:  “Something's Missing” is a great record.  On the one hand, it’s clever and has a tight structure – it was clearly written by a skilled songwriter.  On the other hand, it’s loud and fast and the band seems to be on the verge of losing control – but never does.

Chris:  It's probably the one and only song in terms of production and playing that captured the Chords perfectly.  There is a thin line between taking a song to the limit and going over the edge and crashing.  I think we managed to stay on the right side of the line on that tune.

2 or 3 lines: What inspired the lyrics to “Something’s Missing”?

Chris: It’s about how I felt about the original punk bands.  They had become a bit too popular – too “big.”  You felt a bit detached from them when you saw them play in a big concert hall as opposed to seeing them close up in a club.  And some of the leaders of those bands had gotten a bit “gobby.”

 2 or 3 lines:  The key change as you go into the instrumental break at the midpoint of the song is very interesting.

Chris: Always loved a key change in a song! 

2 or 3 lines:  What kind of music did you like when you were young?  

Chris:  I grew up listening to my dad’s Beatles and Stones records.  I’ve always liked guitar-oriented pop music from the sixties and seventies – I went from the Who and the Kinks, to glam rockers like T. Rex and Slade to punk groups like the Sex Pistols and the Clash.

2 or 3 lines: I understand you ended up with the Chords as a result of a classified ad in the New Musical Express magazine.

Chris:  I answered an ad in the January 1978 NME – I think the headline was “New wave band with aspirations.”  That’s how I met Billy Hassett and Martin Mason.  

[Note: Original Chords members Hassett – a singer/guitarist – and bassist Mason were cousins.]

2 or 3 lines:  I guess you passed the audition.

Chris: I remember playing “I Can’t Explain” – badly! – in Billy’s bedroom, and “giving it large” about stuff I hadn’t a clue about.  It must have worked. 

2 or 3 lines:  The Chords have been described as a “mod revival” group.  Do you think that’s an accurate description?  

Chris:  To me, the Chords were a power pop band – sort of an amalgamation of mid-sixties English pop combined with seventies punk.  We were obviously influenced by the Who, Small Faces, and Tamla Motown.

[NOTE: Tamla Motown was what Motown records were labelled outside of the U.S.]

British mods (circa 1980)

2 or 3 lines:  My knowledge of British “mods” is limited to what I learned from the Who’s Quadrophenia movie.

Chris: A lot of kids at the time were into Quadrophenia both for the fashion and the music.  I saw the Who half a dozen times and must have played the Quadrophenia album a million times by 1978.  But as far as mod fashion goes, I look rubbish in anything other than t-shirt and jeans.

2 or 3 lines:  One of my favorites from that era is “Hypnotised,” by the Undertones – who were from Northern Ireland.  I understand that the Chords toured with the Undertones back in the day. 

Chris: Our first ever tour was with the Undertones in May 1979.  They were brilliant on that tour, which was put together to promote their debut album.

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Chris bounced around after the Chords broke up.  Several years ago, he formed a new band called the Chords UK, which has released two albums: Take on Life (2016) and Nowhere Land (2018). 

Chris Pope (2017)

Click here to visit Chris Pope’s website, where you can buy those albums as well as Chris’s solo releases.

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Click here to listen to “Something’s Missing.”  It is, I dare say, a stick of dynamite.

Click on the link below to buy a live recording of the song from Amazon: