During 1982, he created the backing tracks to what became a version of Leonard Cohen's song Suzanne, albeit one that would be, other than for the words, unrecognisable from the original. The search for a singer to provide vocals concluded with Dinah Mulholland, who Mick had met as part of Worldbackwards, who had released an album called Flesh. One major problem for Dinah was that her vocal had to go onto the parts of the backing track that had no more than percussion, leaving nothing to pitch her voice to. Nonetheless, the recording was completed and mixed in various forms, complete with double-speed trumpet solo.

Knowing this was just the sort of thing to liven up the charts, Mick played 'Suzanne' to Phonogram's then A&R man, Ashley Goodall and was offered free time in Phonogram's 24-track studio to 'record it properly'. Asked how long such a thing might take, Mick replied 'three days' but was offered two by the intrigued but doubtful Goodhall.

The two days eventually became one and Mick, aware of time restraints and planning to be creative with Phonogram's mixing desk, took the homemade backing track to the studio to allow more time for Dinah's vocals and additional percussion, in the form of a Phonogram fire extinguisher being hit with a screwdriver,to be added.

The trumpet part was also re-recorded, again at double speed, which obviously meant the tape being played at half speed, much to the shock of the engineer ('we had Soft Cell in last week, they didn't do that').

As far as Mick was concerned, the creative part of recording was the mixing. In this instance, the mix featured Mick further antagonising the engineer ('Kool and the Gang were nothing like this') by plugging his little Dr Rhythm drum machine into the 48-channel mixing desk and playing it live as the mix was being done, adding the heavily-reverbed fast snare crashes (for want of a better term) to the track.

Even though the engineer eventually admitted the drum machine sounded good, the track could have done with an entire day just to develop ideas at the mixing stage. As it was, it was the start of an idea, not the completion of one and, unsurprisingly, Ashley Goodall decided enough was enough and handed the tape back to Mick.

A few months later, Dave Barker of Glass Records decided to include 'Suzanne' on Shadow and Substance: The Wonderful World of Glass Volume 2, released in 1984. There it appeared alongside such luminaries as Bruce Pavitt, Ronaldo and the Loaf, the Jazz Butcher and Half Japanese.