The Primitives: ‘A reviewer said Crash would end the group. So it was in Dumb and Dumber’ | Music

PJ Court, vocals, guitars

The Primitives were formed in the summer of 1984 by a musician called Keiron, who brought me in to write songs. As he was leaving, we put out an ad in Coventry library and Tracy, who I had previously met at the Youth Opportunities Programme, responded. At that time, we sounded like The Birthday Party or Gun Club, so I wrote three new songs – Through the Flowers, On My Shoulder and Damaged – to try a more pop approach. Crash was simple and noisy, with a guitar lead that became the “Na na na” hook.

It was in our living space, but we quickly abandoned it. We thought we’d had enough of bubblegum, Ramones-style music, and we kind of forgot about it until 1987, when our producer Paul Sampson told us to go back. We had a couple of collections in the music press – Melody Maker and NME in the same week – and the record industry was starting to smell it. So we used Crash as bait to get attention. We didn’t think of ourselves as the most popular: 60s jangle and glam, which not everyone responded to. One live review said: “If their new Crash is anything to go by, this band is done.”

We went to Top of the Pops, The Roxy and Saturday Live. Saturday morning ITV show number 73, I looked down in the middle of the song and realized that my fuzz box wasn’t closed – my guitar sounded like a banjo the whole time.

I was in the studio in Coventry when the owner’s daughter, who lived in the United States, came and said: “This film is doing so well because of an accident.” He meant it Stupid is Stupid. The song was also released as Crash (The ’95 Mix) – about 40 seconds longer, with repetitive singing and added parts of ukulele, metal guitar, organ and shake, nothing we did with them. If it had been Paul McCartney, I don’t think he would have told him he was joking around with it, but we couldn’t complain. It gave the song a second life and it became a worldwide hit.

I have heard several articles. Belle and Sebastian‘s is probably pretty close to what it sounded like when I first wrote it – mild, almost a Jonathan Richman-type thing. People make mistakes with words. Today it’s easy to look up words, but years ago someone misheard them on a fan page and wrote “you need to watch how you live”, instead of “you need to watch how you walk / if you don’t look, I’ll break your neck.” Belle and Sebastian use the wrong line, too Matt Willis.

Tracy Tracy, singer

I used to live in Australia. I did a few music jobs, but I wasn’t very successful. So when I came back to Coventry, my goal was to join a band, but nothing was happening. I was about to go to London when I saw an ad in the library. It said they wanted a male singer, but I thought: “What? It’s auditioned. I remember it was dark and gloomy. I think someone applied – a boy – but he didn’t come so they thought: “We have to stick with him.”

We met every week at Steve Dullaghan’s house – our original singer who sadly passed away in 2009 – to exercise and eat toasties, as a little ritual. At first you couldn’t hear me because of these loud and powerful guitars. Everything had to be reduced. Our first gig in a pub in Coventry, mostly for friends and family, was great, but I was very nervous.

When we played Top of the Popswe became famous because we didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t because we had a female singer – there seemed to be a lot of female artists at the time. It just felt like we were this little independent band playing bubblegum pop, while the rest of the charts were stock Aitken Waterman. The first time we did TOTP someone stole my leather jacket that had a lot of badges on it and I had it for years. The record company offered me money to buy another one, but it wasn’t to be.

I haven’t started singing Crash these days because our amazing fans keep singing me songs. I just hold the microphone. I think this song has stayed strong because it has everything: there’s a good melody, fun lyrics and, just two minutes in, it’s a timely pop song.