Born: Hersham, Surrey, 9 February 1955
Bio / Discography
Mensi, Angelic Upstarts, Maximum Rocknroll, 2001: I've put me hand on my heart. He's not a bad person and I'm not going to sit here and slag him off. He's not a bad person. I like Jimmy. It's just, I can't understand him, I don't understand what he's going on about. I don't. I just don't know, I'm at a loss with him. He went from making great music to absolute fucking rubbish. He didn't progress in any way, he just went fucking mad!
Upon departing the mighty Sham 69 Jimmy Pursey made one of the most astonishing, baffling and derided about-faces, issuing a clutch of very peculiar solo albums, getting involved with the Batcave bands and even reinventing himself as a pretentious ballet dancer! The shaven-haired masses that once held him dear opted for the safer waters of The 4-Skins and The Business, leaving Pursey to crawl up his own pseudo-intellectual arsehole with only the occasional bout of sniggering to remind him that people were watching him.
Having said that, his debut album, 1980's Imagination Camouflage, was pretty good, although few others agree with this assessment, including Polydor who, reeling from the less than positive response from fans (who deserted him) and critics (who had a field day), dropped him.
Pursey: I wanted this album to be the first emotional brain washing that I could possibly do to myself. I wanted to rinse the sweat dry from Sham 69 and empty my imagination camouflage that haunted me like any self-intention spontaneously coming about. Then it would be over. I would hopefully find my soul again or endeavour, if not musically, to walk a path of toil and trouble until I found it.
Wow.
Moving to Epic, Pursey's next endeavour was the stand-alone single Animals Have More Fun, recorded with substantial input from Peter Gabriel and John Ellis (in between stints with The Vibrators), followed by a second album, Alien Orphan, which did even worse than the debut and caused Epic to drop him as well.
Thus relegated to the Code Black label, Pursey at this point started billing himself as James T. Pursey and decided to go even further down this ill-advised route in mind-boggling artiness.
He famously appeared on the BBC arts programme Riverside, performing a "ballet" to the tune of The Stranglers' 'The Meninblack', although to describe it as "ballet" was stretching it a bit! You have to hand it to him, it took a lot of bottle to do this, but it's pretty excruciating to watch. If you must, though, it can be easily accessed on Youtube. Less celebrated but equally funny was his other Riverside appearance, sporting eyeliner and pyjama bottoms and miming to 'Have A Nice Day' (from the debut LP). Cue lots of rolling around on the floor and drama school theatricals.
"James T" released another single in 1984, the roundly-ignored If Only Before, a dub-reggae snore-fest, and tried once again two years later with the useless Zap Pow!!, which had the 80s over-production down to a tee and sounded like an Alan Vega solo effort, only worse. After that, a Sham 69 reformation was in order.
__________________________________________________________________________
DISCOGRAPHY
Singles & Albums
Lucky Man (7", 1980)
Imagination Camouflage (LP, 1980)
Animals Have More Fun (7", 1981)
Naughty Boys Like Naughty Girls (7", 1981)
Alien Orphan (7", 1982)
Alien Orphan (LP, 1982)
Revenge Is Not The Password (LP, as James T. Pursey, 1983)
If Only Before (7", as James T. Pursey, 1984)
Zap Pow!! (7"/12", 1986)
Selected Foreign Releases
The First Deadly Sin (7", 1982)
Various Artists
Jungle Heat UK LP 1982 (Warwick): Animals Have More Fun
Batcave: Young Limbs And Numb Hymns UK LP 1983 (London): Eyes Shine Killidiscope
__________________________________________________________________________
