Nonsuch

And if we're gonna call it Nonsuch - there is none better than this - then we might as well have the house. And I liked this little compact, square CD-sized drawing that John Speed did back in sixteen-o-plonk. ~ Andy Partridge

WL: Nonsuch? Nonsuch Castle?

AP: Nonsuch was originally to be called Balloon, or The Last Balloon. I hadn't written the song at the time. But we were thinking of calling it Balloon and doing it like a... to be truthful, something like the original vinyl sleeve to South Pacific. Where you get those large format dusty looking color photographs of scenes from the film. The thing was that we were rapidly coming to the point that it was almost gonna be put out purely as CD. So we had to think CD first, not vinyl. So that really spoiled the whole idea of us being in this kind of Around The World In Eighty Days scenario. And it being called Balloon. I found the picture from John Speed's map of the counties, or whatever it's called. And there was

WL: Sure

AP: And if we're gonna call it Nonsuch - there is none better than this - then we might as well have the house. And I liked this little compact, square CD- sized drawing that John Speed did back in sixteen-o-plonk. And I suggested printing it on the sleeve so that it threw a shadow on the booklet. The sleeve of

Nonsuch, I don't think worked fantastically. It was just a descriptive, almost dictionary like reading of the word Nonsuch.

WL: A friend of mine actually sent me a book he found somewhere in England. I don't know if it was about castles or castles of that area, but it has the same sketch on the cover of the book.

AP: Oh really?

WL: I've got that here somewhere. I can run find the book if you want some more information on it.

AP: No. I mean, I've got a few books that it occurs in. Including a couple of different paintings and drawings of it. But as soon as it came out, somebody who worked at Virgin at the time gave me a book called The Quest For Nonsuch, by John Dent. (1962) And he was on the archaeological dig for Nonsuch, working on finding the

remains and trying to assert how large it was and what it consisted of. Just how grand it was. And there was a miniature version of it built half-way across London Bridge at one time.

WL: Really?

AP: Yeah, like a little sort of miniaturization version.

WL: When you say miniature, how big was it?

AP: I don't think it was castle-size. You obviously had to drive through it because it was part of the bridge.

WL: Oh - it was part of the bridge.

AP: It was some fancy apartments or whatever.

WL: Interesting.

Colin Price was kind enough to send me photos of these mockup sleeves he received in trade from Andy Partridge. At this time the track listing of the album had a different running order than the Nonsuch we all know:

The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead; Wrapped in Grey; Bungalow; Rook; Omnibus; Then She Appeared; My Bird Performs; Books Are Burning; Dear Madam Barnum; Crocodile; The Smartest Monkeys; Holly Up On Poppy; Wardance; The Ugly Underneath; Humble Daisy; That Wave; The Disappointed.

Here's the track sequence that finally made the grade:

The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead; My Bird Performs; Dear Madam Barnum; Humble Daisy; The Smartest Monkeys; The Disappointed; Holly Up On Poppy; Crocodile; Rook; Omnibus; That Wave; Then She Appeared; War Dance; Wrapped in Grey; The Ugly Underneath; Bungalow; Books Are Burning.

I burned a CD with the tracks in the order they appear on these test images. It's a fun way to see - er, hear - what might have been.

These early mockup designs of Nonsuch are one of a kind - according to their creator, Andy Partridge - and are made of card, glue and transfers. These images are owned by Colin Price and Optimism's Flames - please do not duplicate them without permission. Each image is a link, click on one to view the image in full.

WL: The singles from Nonsuch, and this is something I didn't touch on when we talked about the Nonsuch cover, where did all the images on the back come from? The ones that pertain to each individual song.

AP: Well, they were adaptations of eighteenth century chapbooks, or learning books. Which would just have a picture of an object, usually drawn in a very folksy kind of style, and then the word for the object underneath. Like you'd have an apple there and it would say apple. Or you'd have a bird and it would say bird underneath, whatever. It was a teaching aid. They were called chapbooks. I'm a big sucker for naive art, and people who can't really draw - drawing. I love that look. And I like the idea of simply communicating in

an image what your word is, or your name. Argh, I'm tying myself up here. Let's start again. [makes whip cracking sound] It's the cold dampness of the crotch that's throwing me off here. [laughter]

WL: Maybe I should moisten my crotch so we'll be on the same page?

AP: [laughing] Okay, you take one mug - two thirds full of decaf coffee that's gone cold - and your elbow slips off the edge of the desk, you spill it on your crotch. You'll get the same effect.

WL: Well, I think I 'd rather have cold coffee on my crotch than in my mouth.

AP: [laughing] That's the place for it. On the crotch I mean, not in the mouth. I just liked the idea of primitive drawings as a kind of teaching aid.

WL: So, were those actually lifted directly from something or were they drawn?

AP: No, they were kind of drawn in the style of the songs.

WL: Well, they're great little images.

AP: There's a Dover book... Do you know Dover Publishing?

WL: Yes.

AP: They do a lot of stuff that's gone out of copyright or it's in public domain, that sort of thing. And I think there is one called Chapbooks, or Eighteenth Century Chapbooks. [Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century] I remember I was on a flight to America and I just bought this book. I can't remember what I was going to America

for. And I was looking at these illustrations thinking that I'd love to do something with them. Something in this style. So I spent the whole flight just losing myself in this book of chap pictures. And when it came around the time to do Nonsuch I thought "Well, it's the perfect excuse to use this kind of thing." And so we just redrew, altered a lot of original ones or drew them from scratch to illustrate what we were doing. Like "War Dance" or "My Bird Performs" or "Wrapped In Grey" or whatever it was. "That Wave" I think, was a picture from a tutor treatise on swimming. [laughter]

WL: One of my favorite XTC songs by the way.

AP: Cheers.

WL: I love that song.

AP: I'm putting a quarter in your virtual cup - clink.

WL: [laughing] So I've got that going for me.

AP: You've got a kind face sir. Right. So yes, they were all slightly altered chapbook pictures.

WL: So, basically when you put the album together you thought that any single that came off of it was just going to be one of those pictures.

AP: Yeah, you could just magnify that picture and use it.

WL: That makes the single process a lot easier, doesn't it?

AP: [laughing] Yeah, sure. You don't have to think about where you're going with the singles. It's just "Okay, that's the picture that goes with it." But I very much liked the idea of them being a teaching aid.