Punch The Clock (1983) — Elvis Costello & The Attractions
I have twenty-two Elvis Costello albums. I have twenty-four Peter Gabriel albums. I have ten Talk Talk albums. I never thought about the fact that they share a percussionist.
The percussionist is Morris Pert. His name appears on the Discogs credits for Punch The Clock — just “Percussion: Morris Pert.” No bio. No explanation. No mention that this was a man who had won the Royal Philharmonic Society Award at twenty-three for an orchestral work called Xumbu-Ata, or that he had studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Lennox Berkeley, or that he had spent two years as a member of Brand X — Phil Collins’s jazz-rock side project.
Pert died in 2010. His Wikipedia page describes him as a Scottish composer, drummer, and pianist who worked in both contemporary classical and jazz-rock. But the session credits tell a different story — one about a musician who moved between genres so fluidly that the albums he played on sound like they come from different planets.
Three Albums, Three Genres
The first is Peter Gabriel’s third solo album — the one commonly called Melt — released in 1980. It was produced by Steve Lillywhite, and Pert is credited for percussion. This is the album famous for its “gated reverb” drum sound, engineered by Hugh Padgham. The sound would later define Phil Collins’s Face Value and much of 1980s pop production. Jim has both the Gabriel album and the Collins album.
The second is Talk Talk’s It’s My Life, released in 1984. Pert is credited for percussion on this album too. This is the synth-pop record that produced Talk Talk’s biggest hit — the title track, later covered by No Doubt. The album sounds nothing like Peter Gabriel’s Melt. One is art-rock with avant-garde percussion; the other is synth-pop built around drum machines and synthesizers. Yet the same musician played percussion on both.
The third is Punch The Clock. Costello’s 1983 album was produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, and it features a brass section drawn from members of The Bureau — a band that spun off from Dexys Midnight Runners. I have twelve Dexys albums. The brass players on Punch The Clock — Geoff Blythe, Paul Speare, Jim Paterson, Dave Plews — were their sidemen. But Pert is the one who caught my eye, because his name also appears on the Gabriel and Talk Talk records.
A Classical Composer in the Rhythm Section
What makes Pert unusual is not that he was a session musician — London had thousands of those in the 1980s. It is that he was a classically trained composer who chose to spend his career in other people’s rhythm sections.
According to his Wikipedia page, Pert studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Edinburgh. He won the 1970 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his orchestral work. He composed three symphonies, chamber music, choral works, and “sonic landscapes” for electronic media. But he also spent two years (1970-1972) playing with Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta in the ensembles “East Wind” and “Red Buddha Theatre.” He then formed the group “Come to the Edge” with Robin Thompson and Andrew Powell — the same Andrew Powell who produced Kate Bush’s first two albums.
In 1977, Pert joined Brand X for their second album, Masques, composing three tracks. He stayed with the band until 1979. Brand X was Phil Collins’s jazz-rock project — the place Collins went when he wasn’t playing drums for Genesis. Pert was the other percussionist in that room.
After Brand X, Pert became a session musician. His Wikipedia page lists his session credits: Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd Webber, John Williams, Kate Bush, Mike Oldfield, Peter Gabriel, Peter Hammill, Jon Anderson, Elvis Costello, Bryan Ferry, and Talk Talk. I have twenty-one Bryan Ferry albums. I have ten Kate Bush albums. The overlap between Pert’s session work and my collection is larger than I expected.
The Connection
I cannot tell you why Morris Pert showed up on these three specific albums. The credits do not explain it. The Discogs pages list him as “Percussion” — no detail about which tracks, which sessions, or who hired him.
What I can tell you is that three albums in my collection — Peter Gabriel’s Melt, Talk Talk’s It’s My Life, and Elvis Costello’s Punch The Clock — sound like they come from different musical universes. One is avant-garde art-rock. One is synth-pop. One is new wave with a Falklands War protest song. But they all have the same percussionist in the credits, and that percussionist was a classically trained Scottish composer who had played in Phil Collins’s jazz band.
I did not know any of this until I looked at the credits on Punch The Clock and saw a name I did not recognize.
Album: Punch The Clock — Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1983, F-Beat) Key credits: Morris Pert (percussion), Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley (producers), David Bedford (string arrangements), Caron Wheeler & Claudia Fontaine (backing vocals), Geoff Blythe, Paul Speare, Jim Paterson, Dave Plews (brass section)