“Different; not necessarily better or worse but definitely less interesting”: The Tubes bring in the big producer on The Completion Backwards Principle, with mixed results

The Tubes considered several producers for their first Capitol album, including Bob Ezrin and big Tubes fan Mike Rutherford of Genesis. They settled on David Foster, who had just had a hit with Earth, Wind And Fire’s After The Love Has Gone.

Frontman Fee Waybill considered Foster “one of the greatest producers ever” and thinks he saved The Tubes’ career. Guitarist Bill Spooner recalled nicknaming him ‘Bambi’, “because he was such a soft-rock kinda guy”.

Fellow guitarist Roger Steen recalled overhearing Foster talking to his manager: “He was having a tense conversation about how much money he had to make each month. He didn’t understand the soul of The Tubes. It was a business to him.”

But it was a business that gave The Tubes some much-needed hits. Released in 1981, The Completion Backward Principle included the ballad Don’t Want To Wait Anymore and the brisk, power poppy Talk To Ya Later, co-written with Foster and Toto guitarist Steve Lukather. The album went Top 30 in the US.

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Other albums released in April 1981

• Modern Times – Jefferson Starship
• Fun in Space – Roger Taylor
• Prayers on Fire – The Birthday Party
• Faith – The Cure
• Come an’ Get It – Whitesnake
• The Flowers of Romance – Public Image Ltd.
• Don’t Say No – Billy Squier
• Of Skins and Heart – The Church
• Go for It – Stiff Little Fingers
• Hit and Run – Girlschool
• Twangin… – Dave Edmunds
• Fair Warning – Van Halen
• Bad For Good – Jim Steinman
• Dedication – Gary U.S. Bonds
• The Nightcomers – Holocaust
• Punks Not Dead – The Exploited
• Spellbound – Tygers of Pan Tang
• Waiata – Split Enz
• Zebop! – Santana

What they said…

“The ballads (the Top 40 hit Don’t Want to Wait Anymore and the Toto-esque Amnesia) don’t suit the band, but most everything else does. There’s a pair of catchy new wavish rockers in Talk to Ya Later and Think About Me, the wacky Sushi Girl, and the R&B-flavored A Matter of Pride. The Completion Backward Principle rightfully earned the Tubes new fans and set the table for their commercial breakthrough, Outside/Inside, two years later.” (AllMusic)

“Is The Completion Backward Principle a sellout? The answer probably depends on who you ask. Capitol didn’t bring in David Foster to make another convoluted concept album, yet The Tubes weren’t ready to become Toto 2.0 just yet. That said, lampooning the business side of the music business doesn’t change the fact that The Completion Backward Principle is (good) product.” (Progrography)

“Maybe Don’t Wanna Wait Anymore and Amnesia sound more like Chicago than Devo but they are memorable and interesting with great chord changes, while the fairly risqué Sushi Girl could have come from Zappa’s You Are What You Is. Let’s Make Some Noise even taps into the kind of pop/funk that Let’s Dance took to the bank a few years later.” (Moving The River)

What you said…

Mark Herrington: The Tubes’ The Completion Backwards Principle contains quite an eclectic mix of styles. Toto seems to have influenced a fair amount of their soft rock songs (Don’t Want to Wait for example), a few could be in a Broadway musical production and there’s even one power rock track, Power Tools. So, it’s all over the place – and after a first listen – I subsequently found myself skipping the three or four zany and Broadway-type tracks, as their humour and style fell flat.

Overall, I found myself really liking 60% of the album and being fairly indifferent towards the rest.

Mike Canoe: In theory, the Tubes should be a band that I really like: Catchy melodies paired with smart and funny lyrics, a talented band led by a charismatic, sometimes outrageous frontman. Yet, with the exception of a couple of songs, they’ve always left me cold.

Most of the music on The Completion Backward Principle veers too far into adult contemporary for me, unsurprising once I read that it was produced by multiple Grammy winner, David Foster. I still like Talk to Ya Later and kept replaying Think About Me and Power Tools this past week but that’s about it.

The humour or satire is usually too vague for me to pick up on, or in the case of Sushi Girl, hasn’t aged well, pun not intended. I also realize that a lot of the “joke,” at least for this album, was handled by the packaging which streaming can’t give you.

Still, I feel like Sparks, Steely Dan, Alice Cooper, and Devo were all contemporaries that blended music and satire and/or humor and/or absurdity better.

Evan Sanders: This is a fun choice for the week. I was introduced to The Tubes from their first album, with White Punks On Dope.

I remember that The Completion Backward Principle caused a split among fans, some liking it and some thinking the band had gone too commercial. Listening to it now, it’s a fun album, still with quirky songs, but more radio-friendly. The first side is stronger, getting things going with Talk To Ya Later and Sushi Girl. Things start to slip midway through the second side, and I think the low point is Don’t Want To Wait Anymore, which sounds like the band is channelling REO Speedwagon.

And I need to point out how their keyboardist Vince Welnick joined the Grateful Dead in the 90s, adding his covers of Baba O’Riley and Tomorrow Never Knows to their setlists. Too bad they never attempted White Punks. A solid 6/10, not exactly a classic, but still listenable most of the way.

Gary Claydon: So, corporate rock spoof or sell out? I suspect it’s somewhere in between.

I remember being underwhelmed by The Completion Backwards Principle at the time of release. I always found The Tubes a hit-and-miss band anyway. At their best, they were funny, quirky and could rock with the best of them but too often the ‘zany’ humour missed the mark. The Completion Backwards Principle is a different Tubes, obviously aimed at a more commercial market. David Foster wasn’t brought in to oversee anything leftfield and despite Waybill’s insistence that the album was a spoof, he was only too happy to embrace Foster’s ideas and to relinquish a deal of creative control to the producer. The result is too AOR. The Completion Backwards Principle is a different Tubes; not necessarily better or worse but definitely less interesting. Which is a shame.

Chris Elliott: A band that were never as clever, funny or rebellious as they thought they were. In reality, my interest starts and ends with White Punks on Dope.

By this time it’s some overproduced, underwritten AOR plus some vaudeville “humour”.

There’s a certain amount of doesn’t export well possibly – a bit like asking Americans to get Ian Dury (oddball pub rock with music hall influences marketed as punk – borderline genius but you know it’s so English it won’t sell anywhere else).

Henry Martinez: It’s a shame how much the Tubes have become a bit forgotten from those trailblazing days. Too many think they’re just about She’s A Beauty, but Talk To Ya Later and other gems on this LP proved their twisted way with a pop tune. They were streamlining their act after being a bit theatrical live, sort of a zany American counterpart to the Genesis-Peter Gabriel era. Remember the Tubes! (6.5/10)

John Davidson: The Tubes, at their best, were an off-kilter band, spoofing genres while producing great songs in the process. Kind of reminiscent of Blue Oyster Cult ( though BoC were far more consistent).

On The Completion Backwards Principle, it’s harder to tell if they are subverting AOR or embracing it at times. The inclusion of Steve Lukather as a songwriter suggests the latter, but songs like Mr Hate and Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman suggest that Fee Waybill still has a twinkle in his eye. Don’t Want To Wait Anymore, however, is as bland as the power ballads it’s parodying.

The Tubes were always inconsistent, and The Completion Backwards Principle is no different really, just slicker. 6/10.

John Edgar: I was a teenage rock fan in the 70’s. I was pretty entrenched in the sounds of bands Like BOC, Aerosmith, Nazareth and Ted Nugent. As a result, the early Tubes releases were completely off my radar.

On a 1978 trip to a local record store/head shop I came up empty-handed in regard to something new that fell within my normal preferences, so on a lark I bought What Do You Want from Live‘ My friends and I revelled in the raunchy zaniness of the whole thing, but it didn’t drive me to the band’s back catalogue.

Then, the next year gave us Remote Control. I immediately knew this was a stripped-down and much tighter version of the band. I became a fan. Now to the next release, The Completion Backward Principle. It was even tighter and a little bit more commercial. I would consider it a rock/pop cornerstone of the 1980s. No bad tunes. As I like to say; All Killer, No Filler.

Looking back, it feels like the second album in a four-album run of excellence for The Tubes. If you like this album I would highly recommend picking up Remote Control, Outside Inside and Love Bomb. These four releases will keep you rockin’ and laughing for hours.

Steve Pereira: The Tubes were a tongue-in-cheek mostly theatrical comedy act from the 70s who survived, considerably stripped down, into the 80s and blossomed commercially, though their most interesting work is in the 70s.

The debut album, The Tubes (1975), is mostly known for the single White Punks On Dope, though it contains a decent amount of interesting and well-played songs to hold the attention, and is their best release; the albums that followed were somewhat ordinary and lacked the zany inventiveness and sheer cheek and joy of the debut.

It was never clear what their musical identity was, or how authentic or serious they were, and that contributed to them not achieving significant commercial or critical success. They were a mix of glam, new wave, and pseudo rock, sometimes sounding like a mash-up of The Rocky Horror Show, Frank Zappa, Jonathan Richmond, Todd Rundgren, and New York Dolls.

They made more sense when seen live, but even there they were a niche attraction, hated as much as they were adored. A live album was released, but without the visual theatrics to accompany the music it feels lacking. At the end of the 70s they got together with Todd Rundgren as producer. They had always sounded a little like Rundgren, and Rundgren had very successfully produced the theatrical rock act album Bat Out Of Hell, so it seemed a good match. The album, Remote Control (1979) is certainly the best produced of their career – tight and rocky, with much of the comedy theatrics toned down, and a greater emphasis on the music. It feels more Rundgren than The Tubes, and marks a move toward smooth pop with songs such as Prime Time.

By the time of The Completion Backward Principle the band had changed record labels, were more firmly in the pop music mould, and the 80s had started. The Completion Backward Principle bears little resemblance to the energy, cheek, fun, and expansive musicality of the debut album. It is a slick pop record, produced by David Foster who had just worked as keyboardist and string arranger on Earth, Wind and Fire’s I Am album.

There is a widescreen disco feel to the album, so this is never far away from Boogie Wonderland, though less relaxed, less melodic, and far less fun. It’s a commercial record showing all the hallmarks of 80s production values – clean, slick, and lacking in the edges and commitment that define rock music. It will be more liked by those who came to music in the 80s than by those who came to music in the 70s or 90s. It is not the album by which The Tubes will be or should be remembered.

Graham Tarry: This is such a great album; every song has a hook. A definitive ‘no filler’ record.

James Last: I have this and haven’t listened to it yet cos Im still relatively new to The Tubes (I got Remote Control first a few months back) and wanted to go back and buy /listen to all the earlier albums first before I got to this one. So Thanks for the reminder!

Kevin Mahieu: Classic favourite!

Greg Schwepe: I learned about The Tubes’ The Completion Backward Principle the old fashioned way; college dorm friend comes back from summer break with album that the station he listened to at home played (my station in a different town did not!), he talks about it, plays it, you borrow it and record. And then voila… you’re a Tubes fan! And that’s how it all started.

For some, The Tubes are kind of a novelty act; smart, humorous, witty, sometimes semi-raunchy, tongue in cheek songs with a lot of double entendres. A lot. And you had a wild stage show to act out some of these songs in concert. My kind of humour to the “nth” degree with a show to match. What could be better?

After the spoken word instructions for listening to the album, we kick into Talk To Ya Later, filled with cool guitar, synthesizer, background vocals to assist Fee Waybill, and here we go.

And since I mentioned semi-raunchy and tongue in cheek songs, our first example comes in the form of Sushi Girl. Yep. Plenty of lyrics to pay attention to, or you’ll miss the joke. Which happens with a lot of songs on this album.

Basically The Tubes take you on a little 3-4 minute journey with each song. Amnesia talks about…well, forgetting stuff, mainly that woman you really loved. Mr. Hate is a take on a killer that just got messed up with everything in society and you don’t want to cross him. Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman lets you in on what happens when your date gets too close to the nuke facility down the road. She gets big… all of her!

All the songs here have what I call “Velcro.” You get to the end of the album, I guarantee something will stick with you. Lyric, riff, guitar solo, synthesiser whoosh… it’ll be there.

My favourite song is Don’t Want To Wait Anymore, which was a staple on my weekly college radio show. Here’s where you’re not sure if it’s a parody or just the best swoony power ballad ever made. The keyboard intro gets you hooked and then you’re just singin’ along. And then that guitar solo kicks in…and once again you’re “are they spoofing, or is this meant to be somewhat serious?” I’m not sure, but as the key changes and Fee takes the vocals up another notch, you just go with it!

Power Tool” and Let’s Make Some Noise finish out the album. If you stuck around for the end, you can probably tell The Tubes are a lot of fun, and like them or not, lots of those songs are going to stick with you a little bit. 9 out of 10 on this one for me. And just what is that white plastic thingy on the cover?

Final score: 7.68 (29 votes cast, total score 223)

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