Someone's Looking At You

Boomtown Rats
In the book I explain how I happened to find the Boomtown Rats when I was really shopping for the Police. This was probably the most serendipitous moment of my life. ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ was a huge hit for the Boomtown Rats but as far as I was concerned the best tracks were the rest of them. There is no crap track on this album it is fucking perfection.
I am probably the only person I know who really loves the Boomtown Rats, everyone knows the hits but no-one else seemed to get the brilliance of The Fine Art of Surfacing the way I did. I reckon most of my mates liked it, and were force fed it by me, but they didn’t seem to connect the way I did. There were 6 guys in the band and the musical interaction between them was incredible. I learnt that the little things count in music, just a short bass run followed by a little riff or a drum role make songs unique. With the Rats I could actually sing along to the instruments, its all in the arrangement and surprise this was an album produced by the one and only Mutt Lange, another South African. Mutt went on to be one of the best producers in the world and this was the first album I ever heard that he produced.
Strangely this video for ‘Someone’s Looking At You’ has been taken down and marked as private so Bob if you could allow us to see it I would be most grateful as it is an absolute classic and shows how brilliant you were. In the meantime I ave replaced it with ‘Diamond Smiles’

JAMES DAUBENEY