Tom Bromley
I owe my first relationship to Climie Fisher, the feather-light late eighties duo who made Go West seem the very height of manliness.
I fancied this girl in my German class at school called Emma, and rather than learning which was the best way to the bahnhof, we had one of those faux-flirty arguments over Climie Fisher’s debut single, ‘Rise to the Occasion’: Emma claimed it started with someone shouting ‘I know you’re gonna dig this!’, while I was convinced it began with a more soulful, acoustic guitar lament. Whoever was wrong, we agreed, would buy the popcorn for our first date – going to see ‘Three Men and a Baby’ at the York Odeon.
As it turned out, there were two versions of the song and we symbolically split the cost at the concession stand. Climie Fisher, meanwhile, continued to provide the soundtrack for our fledgling relationship. As we carried on dating, ‘Love Changes (Everything)’ rocketed up the charts, a single that was conspicuously out of place in my otherwise more indie-rock record collection.
Perhaps if Climie Fisher had enjoyed more success we’d have continued going out. As it was, they never had another proper hit and I got dumped. It had always puzzled me why the band had bothered putting the “everything” in brackets. Now I understood why.
