HELEN LOVE

HELEN LOVE have been releasing records since their first single on Damaged Goods in 1993 and in 2023 we released a compilation to celebrate 30 years of Helen Love! It featured the best singles, album tracks, rarities, and fan favourites! It was on double vinyl or CD, both in gatefold sleeves!

We asked Helen about it…

“Almost all the songs on here were recorded on an 8-track second-hand tape machine. We recorded everything ourselves, we mixed them ourselves in the attic, we made all our sleeves on the back of cornflake boxes, Pritt-sticked, cut-outs from The Face and Nintendo magazine covers and a sheet of Letraset. We couldn’t play,vwe used auto accompaniment pre-sets off old Casio keyboards, and an old Woolworth electric guitar.vThere was only going to be one single. No plan… we still haven’t got a plan… we are still here though 30 years later. Punk Rock forever! Xxx” 

So, here’s a bit about the history of Helen Love…

Helen Love started life as a one off single around the Riot Grrl period in 1993, I had received a demo from Dave who was in Lovesick and it was great. Formula One Racing Girls’ came out in late 93 and it sold pretty well but no press or anything followed, we decided to do another single which was ‘Joey Ramoney’, as soon as this was released we had a call from Everett True from the Melody Maker who wanted to do an interview. Mark Radcliffe started playing them on Radio 1 and it all started looking really good for the three girls from Swansea.

Wat Tyler had wanted to do a xmas single that year so I asked Helen Love to come up with a Xmas track, Happiest time of the year arrived in the post and was duly released (just after xmas I think). By early 94 they had finished there third proper single ‘Punk Boy’. It got great reviews and led onto an ‘On’ piece in the NME. It was later covered by Ash on their Fierce Panda single. Around this time Joey Ramoney got in touch with the band saying how much he liked their stuff and inviting them to go over to the states to play at his club, very exciting times.

Their next release was a 10” mini album ‘Summer Pop, Punk Pop’ with 6 tracks on it, this went straight in at No. 4 in the indie charts. A compilation of all their early singles was released soon after caller ‘Radio Hits’. 

 

After that we did 4 more singles over the next two years and another singles compilation called Radio Hits 2 before they signed a worldwide deal with Che Records.

After 5 years away Helen Love returned to DamagedGoods in late 2001 and

released another now deleted, and rather good Xmas single (DG 206) and we also re-released their Che album, on vinyl as well as a repackaged CD plus another compilation of single tracks called Radio Hits 3.

In 2012 we did a one-off Christmas single with them which also featured ‘Ricardo Autobahn from the Cuban Boys called ‘And The Salvation Army Band Played’

In 2013 we did another single to celebrate 25 years of Damaged Goods called ‘New Boy In Town, as a 7″ Picture Disc

and as mentioned before in 2023 we did the ‘Yeah Yeah We’re Helen Love’ 30th anniversary compilation, which we love to death!