Unless anyone knows otherwise, I think this is the earliest Prefab Sprout interview in print, from the “Helter Skelter” North East Music Magazine from Feb/March 1981.
To set the context, this was the three piece band with Mick Salmon on drums, preceding Wendy’s involvement by a couple of years. You can hear what they sounded like the previous summer at the Domefest recording. The seeds of Paddy’s persona have already taken root and are flourishing nicely.
At this point, I think most accounts suggest that Martin was the driving force behind the band’s emergence. He was doing the heavy lifting in terms of sending tapes around, getting and promoting bookings – you can find Prefab Sprout listed in the gigs section of the NME from around 1980. But as ever Paddy got the attention.
It is ironic to me to read McAloon’s disparaging remarks regarding Elvis Costello, because it was Mr. Costello who pointed me in the direction of Prefab Sprout. Several of my friends and I had traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan to see Mr. Costello play a solo gig in 1984. Among the tunes by other artists that he played that evening was “Cruel”. In his introduction to the song, Elvis went out of his way to praise Mr. McAloon as a promising new songwriter. This sent many of us scurrying to pick up a copy of the album.