Listening to the demo version of Telegraph, it's noticable that the lyrics are different. You get the impression that the word 'Telegraph' is actually being used as a metaphor for religion
The words are not dramatically altered but yes I think you're right, I think that Telegraph was being used as a metaphor for both religion and politics. I mean the line "God's got Telegraph" is in both versions. In fact actually I'm not sure whether the response to it: "It makes him powerful" is in the first version or not actually. But I think the one thing that is noticeable is that the delivery on the version from 1981 is even more aggressive that the version from 1983. The singing is quite aggressive. I'm obviously singing... yeah I'm using it as a metaphor for something negative and I'm angry about it and I'm singing like I'm angry.
Is it fair to say that on the one hand you have on Dazzle Ships this strong political content - and on the other you have this challenging sound to the album - that one had to give? Perhaps to make it more accessible you stripped back International, you stripped back Telegraph and just made the album a little less challenging in that respect?
Yeah I don't recall that it was a conscious decision. But just because I don't recall it doesn't mean there wasn't a decision and that I've forgotten it. Or even more likely, there may have been an unconscious decision that knowing the subject matter was going to be challenging that we tried to make the sound of it a little bit more sweet. I don't know. I mean some of the songs on there have got some very painful and difficult subjects and yet they're delivered in a very easy to listen to sound.
I think you have to be careful though, you have to be careful reading into situations too much. It would be easy to make an assumption that we sugared the bitter pill. We were conscious that there was heavy political content so we got in Rhett Davies and we tried to make it sound sweet and lovely and polished. We weren't that clever. There was a lot of stuff that was not consciouslyÉ we just made decisions and went with them. Sometimes we got them spectacularly right as with Architecture & Morality when other people would have said "Why have you changed your sound from that album or the first album?". Then we changed the sound again and we did something that generally wasn't well received.
