"Don't Leave Me This Way" by the Communards - February 29th 80's Quest Song/Band of the Day

I am not a huge fan of lilty, high pitched, falsetto singing voices on men, or women....so I was never much into singer Jimmy Somerville and his band Bronski Beat.  However, I did enjoy some of the covers of dance tracks that he sang with his new band The Communards.  They covered some great dance classics like  Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way" and  The Jackson 5's "Never Can Say Goodbye".

The thing that amazed me back in the 80's was that Jimmy Somerville was living his life "out", and very unapoligettically gay.  Things were still pretty different back then.  In order not to offend mainstream audiences, other singers and bands who were clearly gay had to be secretive or coy about it, mask it, remake their videos in the U.S. to be "less gay", and come right out in interviews denying they were gay (I'm thinking.... Boy George of Culture Club, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Jermaine Stewart, and George Michael of Wham! are some that come to mind).  Not Jimmy Somerville....he looked gay, he sounded gay, and he wasn't hiding it.  That alone was something kinda shocking and different for the 80's.  It was an honest move!

The Communards were an English band that formed in 1985 after lead singer Jimmy Somerville left his previous band, Bronski Beat and teamed up with Dave Renwick (bass), and Richard Coles. Coles was a classically trained pianist, but he played other instruments too, and had even played clarinet on Bronski Beat’s song "It Ain’t Necessarily So". Renwick had also played with Bronski Beat.

James "Jimmy" William Somerville was born in 1961. His background is Scottish. In 1983 he had co-founded the band Bronski Beat whose biggest hit single was "Smalltown Boy" (a song about a gay male who leaves his hostile small town for the big city). Bronski Beat had numerous number one hits in the U.K. As mentioned above, he left Bronski Beat in 1985 and formed The Communards.
　

In 1985 The Communards single "You Are My World" hit #30 on the U.K. Top 30 hit list. In 1986 they realized their biggest hit with their cover of Harold Melvin and the Blue Note’s "Don’t Leave Me This Way". Thelma Houston had also done a disco cover of this song back in the 1970’s, and The Communards version was their own take of the Houston version of this song. The Communards "Don’t Leave Me This Way" became one of the biggest selling singles in the U.K. in 1986 and spent four weeks at #1. The song also crossed over to the U.S. They had another U.K. Top 10 hit with "So Cold the Night", but the single was not big in the U.S.
Somerville also sang background vocals on the Fine Young Cannibals song "Suspicious Minds" (my favorite by them! I did not know this before, prior to researching for 80’s Quest!)

The band released their second album, Red, in 1987. This album featured a cover of the Jackson 5 song "Never Can Say Goodbye". 70’s disco singer Gloria Gaynor had also covered in this song, and again, it was this disco version that The Communards based their rendition off of. The song reached #4 on the charts (I’m not sure if that means U.K. or U.S…). They released a second single from the album in 1988 called "There’s More to Love" which became their last hit.

The band dissolved in 1988 and Jimmy Somerville set off on a solo career. In 1989 he participated in the second Band Aid project (Band Aid was a conglomeration of bands and singers popular in England who came together in 1984 to record a Christmas album, "Do They Know It’s Christmas" whose proceeds could be used to aid the famine in Ethiopia - see January 20^th 80’s Quest post). In 1989 he also released an album, Read My Lips, on which he covered Sylvester’s disco hit "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" and The Bee Gees song "To Love Somebody". In 1991 he participated in the Cole Porter tribute album Red Hot & Blue which benefited AIDS research. That same year he worked with Caroline Buckley and Sally Hebert of the band Banderas (they had been his backing musicians in The Communards) providing background vocals on their album. In 1992 he acted in the 1992 film of Virginia Woolf’s "Orlando", and in 1998 appeared in another movie, "Looking for Langston" and on an episode of a science fiction television series called "Lexx". He recorded more solo work from 1995-2005. In 2009 he released a solo album called Suddenly Last Summer which contained acoustic cover songs. The album was originally only available as a digital download, but in 2010 a limited edition of 3,000 CD’s were sold in the U.K. In 2011 Somerville released an EP of dance songs called Bright Thing.

Richard Coles followed a religious path. He began writing for Catholic Herald and then became ordained in the Church of England. He became the curate of St. Botolph’s (The Stump) in Boston, Lincolnshire England and then an assistant priest at St. Paul’s Knightsbridge. He was also the chaplain at the Royal College of Music. In 2011 he became the Vicar of Finedon in Northamptonshire, England. He can be heard regularly on radio in the U.K. on the Saturday Morning BBC Radio 4 program, "Saturday Live".

Lyrics:

Don't leave me this way
I can't survive, I can't stay alive
Without your love, oh baby
Don't live me this way
I can't exist, I will surely miss
Your tender kiss
So don't leave me this way

Oh baby, my heart is full of love and
desire for you
So come on down and do what
you've got to do
Your started this fire down in my soul
Now can't you see it's burning, out of
control
So come on down and satisfy the
need in me
Cos only your good loving can set me
free

Don't leave me this way
I don't understand how I'm at your
command
So baby please don't leave me this
way.

Don't leave me this way
Cos I can't exist
I will surely miss
Your tender kiss
So don't leave me this way

Oh baby, my heart is full of love and
desire for you...

Don't leave me this way
Cos I can't survive, I can't stay alive
Without your love, oh baby
Don't live me this way
I can't exist, I will surely miss
Your tender kiss
So don't leave me this way

Oh baby, my heart is full of love and
desire for you...