Remember When Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe Released Albums a Day Apart Using the Same Backing Band in 1979?

It might have seemed odd to those music fans who pored over album credits when they noticed that Dave Edmunds’ Repeat When Necessary and Nick Lowe’s Labour Of Lust featured the same musicians. Even odder still was the fact that the albums were released within a day of each other in 1979.

Many simply didn’t realize that Edmunds and Lowe were releasing solo albums within the confines of an already-formed band. That unusual process led to two of the finest LPs from the New Wave era.

Building a Rockpile

Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe crossed musical paths many times throughout their careers, going all the way back to the 60s. Edmunds became a solo star in the United Kingdom thanks to the 1970 smash “I Hear You Knocking”. Lowe, meanwhile, gravitated to the band Brinsley Schwarz, an extremely influential outfit that didn’t quite make it to the mainstream.

In the late 70s, both men found their respective styles (Edmunds’ rockabilly and Lowe’s pub-rock) dovetailed nicely with the New Wave music of the time. They were playing regularly on each other’s solo records along with a few other musicians.

Those other musicians, guitarist Billy Bremner and drummer Terry Williams, joined Edmunds and Lowe as the band Rockpile for live performances. They also backed Edmunds on his 1978 LP Tracks On Wax 4, while chipping in to help Lowe on his acclaimed solo debut Jesus of Cool from the same year. An even more enmeshed collaboration was the next step.

Two Stellar LPs

While Edmunds and Lowe didn’t exactly concoct a formal plan to do a kind of Rockpile double-dip, they did pool their resources and use the band pretty much exclusively on their respective 1979 records. Lowe later claimed that they would have just made a Rockpile record if it weren’t for the two men being on different record labels at the time.

Edmunds concentrated on his standout interpretive skills on Repeat When Necessary. That includes killer takes on a pair of songs (“Girls Talk” and “Crawling From The Wreckage”) from two of the hottest writers of the moment (Elvis Costello and Graham Parker).

Lowe, meanwhile, continued in the somewhat irreverent vein of Jesus Of Cool on songs like “Cracking Up” and “Born Fighter” from Labour Of Lust. He was also convinced to record a song that he’d written in his Brinsley Schwarz days as a kind of homage to the Philly Soul sound. With Edmunds piling on cool vocal harmonies, “Cruel To Be Kind” became Lowe’s US breakthrough single.

The Aftermath

In 1980, record company issues were cleared away, allowing for Rockpile to release its official debut album. Seconds Of Pleasure won critical plaudits but didn’t do much in terms of sales or hit singles.

The band remained together to play on Edmunds’ country-tinged Twangin’… album in 1981. They disbanded not long after that. Bremner and Williams found high-profile gigs in other respected bands (The Pretenders and Dire Straits, respectively).

Meanwhile, Edmunds and Lowe moved on with their solo careers. But you can argue that they never again found a groove so beneficial to them as when they were rolling with Rockpile.

Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images