Sub Sub, ‘Ain’t No Doubt, Ain’t No Use’: Doves’ miraculous escape from the 90s

Sub Sub featuring Melanie Williams
‘Ain’t No Love, Ain’t No Use’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number 3 on April 18, 1993

1.

It’s a Saturday morning in 2002 and I’m lying face-down in my bed. I’m hungover, I’m cold, and I want to sleep more, but my thin windows are rattling to the ceaseless rhythm of South London traffic.

I had arrived in London a year previously, hoping for an early-20s big-city adventure, the start of something exciting. It didn’t happen. Instead, I got caught in a grim grind of temp work and dive bars, living a life that could happen anywhere and that wasn’t any better just because it was happening in London.

The truth began slowly creeping into my thick head. I wouldn’t be here much longer. This was only a pit stop in my life.

Right now though, it’s still a Saturday morning in London and I’m still hungover. I turn on the radio (we still had radios in 2002), which is tuned to XFM, which was London-only at the time and one of the few things I still loved about the city.

XFM have been pushing a new-ish band called Doves, who sound a bit like Coldplay/Elbow/Snow Patrol, but before Coldplay/Elbow/Snow Patrol became uncool Dad Rock.

Doves have a new single called ‘Pounding’ that sounds like this:

A lyric catches my ear (I always notice lyrics before melodies). It goes:

Let’s leave at sunrise
Let’s live by the ocean
I don’t mind if we never come home at all

And in my third-floor London box room, which is always freezing even in summer, in an apartment with flatmates with whom I’m now feuding, surrounded by insane Russian neighbours that party until 5am every night, near the tube station that fills my nose and mouth with black soot as I travel to the job I hate, in a city that’s so big and yet weirdly claustrophobic, I think to myself, “I would love to leave and go live by the ocean”.

One of those moments in life where you’re ready to take the next step, but you have no idea how.

That’s when the DJ cuts in and banters a bit about Doves and their new album, The Last Broadcast, and he says something like, “The members of Doves used to be in a band called Sub Sub. If you’re an old geezer like myself, you might remember them having a hit in the 90s with ‘Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use’.”

This pop trivia jolts me awake. It’s strangely shocking, like when you see a teacher outside of school, or when you glimpse a mirror and briefly fail to recognise your own reflection.

2. Gimme the one thing I’m asking you for

Sub Sub were three working-class kids from Manchester: twin brothers Jez and Andy Williams, plus school friend Jimi Goodwin. The trio began their music career as teenagers, and they had one very specific goal: become just famous enough to be able to skip the queue at The Hacienda.

Everything seemed to be going well when they signed with a major label, Virgin Records. Their first single, the sci-fi techno epic ‘Space Face’, appeared in 1991.

‘Space Face’ was a flop, and Virgin dropped them like a hot potato. This disaster might have meant the end for other bands, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Sub Sub.

(This will be a recurring theme in this story.)

They met Rob Gretton, manager of Joy Division and then New Order, who signed them on the usual Factory Records terms: no contract, 50/50 profit split, artist owns everything. Factory Records was gone at this stage, having finally sunk under the disaster of the last Happy Mondays album, so Gretton released them on his own label, Rob’s Records.

In one of those “An oral history of…” interviews in the Guardian, Andy Williams explains what happened next:

“Me and my twin brother Jez used to go to this fair when we were 13. One day I won a prize – a record – and we were chased back to the train station by some locals who didn’t like us being there. I played it when I got home, thought it was crap and stuck it at the back of my collection, never to be seen again. It was a version of Hair – not the official soundtrack but music inspired by the film of the musical. It was pretty dreadful.”

In 1992, the guys found the record and stuck it on for a laugh. It was still dreadful, but this time they noticed the excellent disco rhythm of ‘Good Morning Starshine’:

They built a track around that sample and took it to their friend Melanie Williams. Melanie’s band, Temper Temper, had once made it to Number 92 in the singles charts, which isn’t much—but better than anything Sub Sub had ever done.

Melanie wrote some additional lyrics and laid down a vocal, and the song took off almost overnight. They were booked on The Word before the single had even been released. A few days later, they were dragged in to appear on Top Of The Pops as the week’s highest new entry.

https://youtu.be/mFCoCMO9f7E

‘Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)’ sold 700,000 copies. If the band had stayed with Virgin, most of the profits would have gone into Richard Branson’s pocket, but the generous Rob’s Records agreement meant the band got paid.

Sub Sub were now—quite unexpectedly—rich.

3. Let it all out, get it all out

Most of the ‘Ain’t No Love’ money went on booze and drugs, which is understandable. They were only 23—roughly the same age I was during my London adventure.

Fortunately, they had enough sense to invest some money into their careers. The trio built a studio in Northern Manchester and got to work on their debut album, Full Fathom Five.

Which flopped as miserably as ‘Space Face’.

I haven’t heard the record, but one online reviewer gave this quietly devastating analysis:

“There are some strong and enjoyable moments amidst the cliches and anachronisms, but if you never hear it [the album], you’ll survive.”

The band pushed on. Most of the 90s were spent touring, boozing, making records, and failing to crack the Top 40. It seemed like they were heading for permanent one-hit-wonder-dom.

In 1996, something truly terrible happened. A devastating fire ripped through their studio, destroying everything, including most of their instruments.

Sub Sub were back to square one.

4. You lie and you cheat and you fall on your feet

But they weren’t finished. In 1997, they released a single with New Order frontman Bernard Sumner called, ‘This Time I’m Not Wrong’.

Again, it flopped, but the dozen people who bought a copy might have noticed a shift in Sub Sub’s musical direction. The club anthem vibe had given way to a more organic inside sound.

A year later, Sub Sub officially broke up and immediately reformed as a new band called Doves.

Bernard Sumner gave Doves access to a small studio he owned in Cheetham, one of the more lively Manchester neighbours. They worked on their new album while under constant threat from feral locals, who pounded on the door and walked on the studio’s ceiling.

At one stage, the band were so nervous about a break-in that they installed their own external CCTV cameras. Almost immediately, someone nicked the cameras.

Early 2000 saw the release of Doves’ official debut album. Lost Souls was quite successful, making the charts and finishing 11th in the last-ever Melody Maker Albums of the Year poll.

The next album, The Last Broadcast, was a smash. Lead single ‘There Goes The Fear’ reached Number 3, while the album made it all the way to Number One. It also contained ‘Pounding’, the song that made me think about leaving London and living by the ocean.

5. Walk on by, gonna walk on through

The moral of the Sub Sub/Doves story is: keep going, because disaster might just be the prologue to success.

Sub Sub were kids when they got dropped by Virgin, which must have been hurtful and scary. Watching their studio burn down must have been devastating, They didn’t just lose their space and their instrument—they also lost the surprise cash windfall from ‘Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)’.

But they persisted, and they figured everything out.

I persisted too. I actually enacted that lyric from ‘Pounding’ a few years later: I got up at sunrise one day, and I went to live by the ocean. But that’s a story for another day.

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