Hazel O’Connor blazed into my consciousness when I was seventeen – the impressionable age, the impossible age. This was the punky/nihilistic zeitgeist, the early Thatcher chill, hunger strikes, Berlin Wall still permafrosted solid, the dour Moscow Olympics, a buffoon of an actor heading, bafflingly, for the White House, and everyone obsessing about who shot JR. This was before personal stereos – the only place to hear music was around a record player, or on the radio. I would stop in my tracks whenever and wherever “Will You?” came on: her broken hearted voice, and that incredible sax, all that teenage angst about dating and sex. It is a perfect song. Music was incredibly bland and soupy and sweet in those days, all Cliff Richard and Air Supply and Babs singing “Woman in Love” and anything with an edge was devoured: Blondie, Joe Jackson, The Pretenders, Madness, Talking Heads, and Breaking Glass, the soundtrack, by Hazel O’Connor.
