Rikki Sylvan

• Active: '70s, '80s
• Genres: Rock
• Instrument: Engineer

Biography

Whenever old punk rock fans gather to chew over the debris of their youth, sooner or later someone inevitably mentions Rikki & the Last Days of Earth. And the others all laugh. Even among people who've never heard the group, Rikki Sylvan and his barely remembered cohorts are generally regarded (and almost universally derided) for having released one of the most reviled albums of the entire late-'70s punk explosion -- as one critic put it, when your best song is a cover of an old Rolling Stones song, you know you're in trouble.

In fact, "Street Fighting Man" wasn't even close to being the group's best number -- they themselves buried it away on the B-side of their second single. Rather, Rikki & the Last Days of Earth were among the tiny handful of bands leading the charge towards the synthesizer-crazed years which followed punk's initial breakthrough, and comparing their early media coverage with that shared by fellow pioneers Ultravox, there really wasn't much difference between the two. The British press hated both bands.

But Ultravox had Brian Eno produce them and subsequently went on to considerable success. Rikki & the Last Days of Earth put out one album on an unfashionable label, DJM -- best known for bringing the world Elton John -- then broke up. It was only later, when Sylvan's name surfaced alongside that of Gary Numan in the small print of the latter's Replicas album, that many people even remembered what he'd been doing in 1977, while any fame that attends the singer today owes more to his groundbreaking work alongside the young William Orbit than to his own early career.

Rikki & the Last Days of Earth formed in mid-1977, immediately setting themselves apart from the pack with their synth-heavy sound and Sylvan's unmistakable Bryan Ferry-esque vocals. Their debut single, "City of the Damned" appeared that fall; the album, Four Minute Warning, arrived in 1978. Further singles "Loaded" (one of the funniest records of the entire era) and "Twilight Jack" followed during early to mid-1978, but with sales as poor as the reviews, the band's future was clearly as black as the worldview portrayed on their album.

The group broke up and Sylvan moved into studio work. During 1979-1980, he was instrumental in bringing Gary Numan's early electronic visions to fruition as mix engineer on both Replicas and The Pleasure Principle, and in 1981, Sylvan scored a solo deal with British Epic's Kaleidoscope subsidiary. His album The Silent Hours appeared that spring, furthering the Last Days' imagery across an album that remains a blueprint for much that the new romantic movement would go on to accomplish. But again sales were low and Sylvan retreated to the studio once again.

There he worked with the Lords of the New Church, before his union with Orbit as co-producers of the band Crown of Thorns in 1983, which brought fresh rewards and a cult following which remains strong. ~ Dave Thompson, All Music Guide