Undiscouraged by cardiac surgery complications, wildfire smoke, or a nation's harrowing turn toward autocracy, the improbable pairing of The Milkmen's Lory Kohn with The Manfreds’ Marcus Cliffe and Simon Currie has dropped a farm-fresh single. “Suits That Fly,” a paean to the appeal and peril of wingsuit flying, backed with “Sunflower in a Sunshower,” a bittersweet recollection of a brief yet meaningful tryst at an isolated hot spring, is manna from heaven for fans of both groups.
The “Sunflower in a Sunshower” beat is a bit … primordial.
Which Manfreds are we talking about? Yep, those Manfreds, a.k.a. Manfred Mann, of “Doo Wah Diddy,” “Pretty Flamingo,” “Sha La La,” “The Mighty Quinn,” and “Blinded by the Light” fame, who remain huge in Britain. The ones whose Fall 2024 tour culminated at the legendary Glastonbury Festival, where worshipful crowds sang along to one hit after another.
And which Milkmen are we talking about? Yep, the original and best ones formed in 1979, famous for longevity, infamous for following prolonged dry patches with sieges of frenzied recording activity culminating in their catchiest material yet—just when their long-suffering fans have all but given up any hope for new material.
Merge them this past holiday season into “Manfred Menn” and what do you get? The juncture of in-form and in-the-moment musicians with meticulously crafted material full of hooks and twists.
A least-likely-to-succeed rhythm section goes deep
You’d naturally expect Marcus to handle all things bass and Lory to select an A-list skin-pounder—like the ones he chose to beat on past Milkmen recordings from Ric Parnell (Spinal Tap's exploding drummer) to Pat Mastellotto (Mister Mister, King Crimson, XTC)—forging a dynamic rhythm combo.
Of course you would: Marcus has manned the position with the Manfreds for some twenty-odd years. Mark Knopfler hand-selected him to fill the same role with The Notting Hillbillies. So did Elvis’ guitarist Scotty Moore, to round out a rockabilly outfit cast to recreate Sun Records classics live. But Marcus didn’t write either bass part—Lory, the third-best bass player in The Milkmen, did!
Somewhere between flabbergasted and flattered that his demo parts had survived preproduction, the last milkman standing still had enough sense to insist that Marcus replay those parts with prized specimens from his Norbury Brook Studio's cache of holy grail gear (1960 P-bass with flat-wound strings and Overwater Custom 5 Jazz bass into an old Ampeg B15, for you gearheads). Those vintage rigs, expertly wielded by a session whiz with atomic-clock precision, carved the final recordings in stone.
But bass was only half the battle. Marcus, only weeks removed from barely surviving open heart surgery, decided to take a crack at the beat making himself, presumably as “a guide for the real drummer.”
Hmm. Lory was well aware of Marcus’ prowess on keyboards and guitar, but it was news to him that the multi-instrumentalist even owned a drumstick! However, that strategy—providing what amounted to a set of blueprints for a top session drummer to follow along to—was not one he was familiar with; it didn't strike him as promising at all.
Then this kludgy, hodgepodge rhythm section promptly went out and laid down the Mariana Trench-deep grooves you'll find here:
The search for a session drummer was over before it began!
A mix-up animates “Sunflower in a Sunshower”
For the past decade or so, the ability to transfer large media files quickly and safely has enabled music makers from every corner of the world to collaborate. Empowering as that can be, when the talent isn't physically in the same room, wires have been known to get crossed. Lory, working in Pasadena on an evacuation alert as toxic smoke seeped into his studio from the uncontained Eaton fire, and Marcus, half a globe away in London, kept in touch via email. That arrangement worked well enough … until communiqués about the song arrangement became so jumbled by the they reached Simon that a planned sultry sax solo turned into a lilting flute solo instead (Simon features on both with The Manfreds).
Marcus Cliffe at his ever-evolving studio setup
Stunned to hear flute where sax was planned, Lory was absolutely gobsmacked. Marcus’ intuition that the substituted flute lines “might have been serendipitous” initially fell on deaf ears. After the initial shock wore off, Lory started coming around. There was something about pan flutes in woodland settings, something that reminded him of Debussy's ballet music for Afternoon of a Faun. That faun (mythical half-human, half-horse being with horns), like most of them ever depicted, kept a pan flute at the ready to seduce any nymph he might encounter. And saxes are awfully ungainly to lug through forest and field. Viewed in this fanciful context, the simpler woodwind suited the mood to a tee.
Dreams of flight
“Suits That Fly” became a gleam in Lory's eye after a series of YouTube wingsuit flying videos spellbinded him during the pandemic.
“First you leap, then you dive straight down, toward the lush terrain below.”
Wingsuit technology was evolving at the same time the coronavirus was spreading, tensions between individuals, political parties, and governments were escalating, and fear-based media was hellbent on spreading doom and gloom 24/7.
The veteran tunesmith marveled that inventor types, working cooperatively with little to no publicity, had figured out a way homo sapiens could fly without mechanical intervention. Mankind had only been attempting to do that for some 545 years—or ever since Leonardo da Vinci first sketched a flying machine in 1480 AD.
For someone confined to their apartment under a strict stay-at-home order, those videos came as both a welcome reprieve and a reaffirmation of human potential. Yet Lory found one aspect troubling—the soundtracks for these otherwise beautifully realized productions invariably settled for stock music.
Why? These daredevils and cinematic innovators went to extraordinary lengths to fly and film. Surely someone out there was capable of composing a bespoke song that was actually about wingsuit flying? If one existed, it could provide the basis for an ultimate wingsuit flying video to rule them all.
“Over land, over seas, stretching out extremities …”
Lory already knew a qualified volunteer ready, willing, and able to tackle the ambitious project: him. And he had a pretty good idea who he wanted in the foxhole with him to inject just the right amount of sonic goodness into the project: Marcus Cliffe, criminally underutilized as “just a bass player,” who, in addition to being a session player par excellence, just happens to be one of the top mixing engineers on the Planet.
When asked if he was okay with being conscripted for active duty so soon after a significant operation, Marcus confirmed that he was born-ready. The rest is history.
—Patrick Pedigree