"The First Picture of You" is the debut single by British New Wave group The Lotus Eaters. The song was first recorded during a John Peel Radio 1 session in 1982 and when aired, stimulated a bidding war between major UK record labels. It took some time for the band to find the right producer for this delicate, acoustic sound, but they eventually teamed up with Nigel Gray, who had produced The Police and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Recorded at Surrey Sound Studios in Leatherhead, the track features session bassist Alan Spenner, well known for his work with Joe Cocker and Roxy Music. Former Cure and Associates bassist Michael Dempsey joined soon after and is featured on the rest of the band's debut album.
The song came to typify the dreamlike ambience of British summer of the early 1980s and received more UK radio plays in 1983 than any other song. "The First Picture of You" was a top 20 hit in the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number fifteen after the band had twice appeared on BBC TV's Top of the Pops. The follow-up single, "You Don't Need Someone New", scraped into the UK Top 40, but this and subsequent songs were more successful for the band in France, Italy, Japan and the Philippines.
"The First Picture of You" is still aired regularly on UK BBC and independent radio. Veteran DJ Peter Powell cites it as being his all-time favourite song.
Norwegian singer Anne Marie Almedal covered the song on her 2007 album, The Siren and the Stage.
Famous quotes containing the words the first and/or picture:
“Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The difference between human vision and the image perceived by the faceted eye of an insect may be compared with the difference between a half-tone block made with the very finest screen and the corresponding picture as represented by the very coarse screening used in common newspaper pictorial reproduction. The same comparison holds good between the way Gogol saw things and the way average readers and average writers see things.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)