- War Babies was always a single contender but jostled with
Glitterball over the running order. In the end, Glitterball
was seen as the ideal introduction to the sound of Neapolis and War Babies
was considered the knock-out punch.
- Trial edits and single mixes of War Babies were created throughout the album sessions. In the end,
Chrysalis called in Dave Bascombe, and he remixed a single version in late November 1997 at Wisselloord Studios in Holland.
(This was also where the initial sessions of Real Life were recorded).
- With no other options for bonus material - the band simply delivered the nine-track album and live recordings were ruled out -
Chrysalis fell back on more remixes. The long promised Utah Saints remix (in a Remix and Dub form) turned
up in January. Also arriving the same month were a Main Mix and Dub from Interference of
The American and a mysterious remix of
Glittering Prize which fell at the first hurdle and only eventually appeared on a 12" acetate.
- Johnson Somerset delivered several reworkings and ideas - fashioned on the old 12" remixes of the 1980s - that March, just
making the cut-off date.
- Chrysalis originally planned for the single to appear on the 21st April, which would've been an important immediate post-album boost,
and production masters for the single-track promotional CD were cut that March. This made space for a third single,
pencilled in as Tears Of A Guy, to promote
the tour a couple of months later. The record company had already planned for Stephen Lipson
to remix the title track.
- Instead, perhaps worried about the chart performance of Glitterball, the company cut their losses
and delayed the War Babies single to coincide with the tour.
- Therefore it looks like the original War Babies single was planned to include Bascombe's single remix, Johnson Somerset's
extended mix, and the Utah Saints, Interference and Glittering Prize remixes.
- In the meantime, other commissioned remixes arrived for the proposed, and now dropped, third single: Waiwan's contemporary reduction of
All The Things She Said arrived in March; whilst Silicon Valley Def Star's unrecognisable
strip-down of Up On The Catwalk was delivered in early April.
- The full list of remixes now collected were:
- The masters for the singles were created on the 9th April at Metropolis. With such a large number of potential B-sides
now available, Chrysalis separated the remixes between the UK and European releases. A relatively large number of Metropolis mix CDs also escaped
from the studio which collected together many of the remixes - including the dub versions which were never commerically released.
- In the UK, a 7" with a unique wrap-around sleeve and cassette single (nicely packaged in a case and not a slip-sleeve) featured
Dave Bascombe's Full Length Version of War Babies and an edit of Utah Saint's
I Travel. The third format was an enhanced CD which featured remixes from Fluke and
Waiwan, along with Johnson's Extended Mix (which quickly became a fan favourite) and the
video for War Babies.
- The eCD's title (when viewed on computer) was "WARBABY" which was the original demo title of the song.
- Two CDs were released for the European markets. The cheap-and-cheerful card sleeve 2-track budget CD featured a remix of
The American by Interference and the more expensive 3-track version added the full-length
version of the Utah Saint's remix. Anyone wanting to collect all the tracks commercially released for this single therefore had
to search out the 3-track European CD to complete their collection.
- Like the Glitterball release, Chrysalis heavily promoted the single, with a single-track
CD for journalists and radio play; and two 12" records for club play. One of the 12"s collected together some of the full length remixes
released on the singles, namely by Fluke, Utah Saints and Waiwan; whilst the second 12" included two harder remixes
(which were considerably removed from the original songs), namely Ultimate Lobotomy's remix of Love Song
and Silicon Valley Def Stars remix of Up On The Catwalk. Neither of these
were commerically released. A four-track CDR with a typed company sleeve was also issued - this was probably the first promo
distributed before the artwork was completed.
- Some standard CDs were also sent out as promos. They had black-and-white promotional stickers on the back of the jewelcases:
- In the end War Babies was a disappointing failure, only managing to scrape a lowly
43 in the UK charts. By saving the stronger track for the second single, Chrysalis repeated the failure of Arista nearly twenty
years previously, where Chelsea Girl failed to replicate the success of
Life In A Day.
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