Deborah Evans Stickland is best known as the slightly scary, six-foot tall, vocalist of the Flying Lizards. The band, was formed in 1976 as a loose collective of Art School graduates, and along with Deborah, the line up included musicians David Cunningham and David Toop and occasional vocalists and fellow art school rockers Patti Palladin and Vivien Goldman.
Deborah herself has described the band as “an exercise in pop absurdism” and they aligned themselves far more closely with the avant grade movement, than as potential pop stars. Despite their own admitted lack of musicianship, combined with the fact that they didn’t write their own songs, they took their arty ideas of performing only cover versions using “prepared instruments” into the UK top 5 in the summer of 1979.
The band, the artists, the avant-gardists…pretty much mangled the rule book as far as pop production was concerned. They used a bass guitar string hit with a stick as the bass drum sound, and managed to give the piano a banjo like quality by throwing an array of objects onto the piano’s strings; ashtrays, sheet music, a rubber toy and possibly the remains of the rule book itself. These simple steps turned a humble piano into the avant-garde “prepared instrument” monster as previously described.
Deborah’s vocals were unique, she delivered them in a spoken, BBC announcer monotone which gave the record an easily identifiable, robotic and entirely unemotional feel. The music too, was a simple and stripped down version of the original, relying on its repetitive rhythm, electronic sound effects and avant-garde production over any kind of virtuoso musicianship.
This is a sentiment echoed by Simon Reynolds, in his book “Rip It Up and Start Again – post punk 1978-1984″,
“All icily enunciated hauteur and blue-blooded sang-froid, singer Deborah Evans replaces Lennon’s lust rasp with the dead-eyed disdain of the ruling class. It’s no coincidence that ‘Money’ was released a few months after the election of Margaret Thatcher, who spoke in a fake-posh voice not a million miles from Evans’ exaggeratedly aristocratic tones and who championed a callous economic theory known as monetarism. This unlikely fusion of avant-garde tomfoolery and subtle political satire became a massive novelty hit in the UK and a New Wave dance-floor cult smash in America.”
Since their glorious moment in the spotlight, and the poshest sounding punk girl ever, Deborah has continued to work as a voice-over artist, and psychotherapist, and you can learn more about her post lizardian exploits HERE.
And if you need just a bit more Lizard deadpan, just listen to what they did to James Brown.
Hi my name is Stephen Glibbery and the most incredible D was a guest at my house in Ingatestone, 2 Bakers Mews .would love to catch up after all this time 🙂 Stephen Glibbery glibbery@y7mail.com
Thank you for this! I’ve been reminded of Money. I’m going to be performing it as part of a Panto soon (as the Evil Sheriff of Nottingham). Its brought my memory of my best loved cassette tape flying back
Hi Adam, thanks for the comment. Sheriff if Nottingham huh? that’s exciting news, where is this Panto???