e de ca de of the 12”

‘Th the decade’

and th e 12 ”s of
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DAVID BOWIE
ULTRAVOX

WHAM!
ADAM ANT N THE HUMAN
DEXYS

EURYTHMICS
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TLFeBOOK

LET ME TAKE YOU TO THE PLACE
WHERE MEMBERSHIP’S A SMILING FACE, BRUSH SHOULDERS WITH
THE STARS. WHERE STRANGERS TAKE YOU BY THE HAND, AND
WELCOME YOU TO WONDERLAND...
G
rowing up at the end of the
’70s was a total drag. All the
great punk action had fizzled
out years ago and we were left
bored and hero-less. And then
along came Adam Ant. One
of the least likely punk survivors, written off as a
pervy little also-ran, Adam put the ‘show’ back into
showbusiness at just the right time. The birth of MTV
was about to revolutionise the way we interacted
with our music and how you looked, how you acted
was about to become key to whether your song
became a hit.
Of course, your older brother hated him, protesting
loudly that the great anti-social punk rock ethic had
been betrayed. It was a fucking tragedy that this
pantomime ponce was what Sid died for. But the
warrior paint striped across Adam’s cheek was just
what a new generation of kids – both boys and girls
– were looking for and, before long, he was joined
by the boys from Spandau Ballet wearing kilts,
Steve Strange got up like some garden gnome with
a Liberace make-over and Boy George, a seasoned
scenester who suddenly made looking like a Cabbage
Patch Doll seem improbably cool. A little dressing up
and – hey presto! – pop was FUN!
Killer single followed killer single into the Top Ten.
The slavering tabloid press focused on the sexual
outrage of blokes dressing in blouses while the serious
LFI
The wild boys:
Steve Strange and
the Kemp brothers
music press launched a campaign of derision. Duran,
Spandau, Japan et al were mercilessly pilloried by the
grown-up rock papers for decadently fiddling while
Thatcher ground Britain’s future under her Tory
jackboot. The New Romantics were even accused of
being Nazis! All because of some eyeliner and the fact
that they preferred to play (spit!) synthesizers rather
than guitars.
It wasn’t long, though, before the music papers
cottoned on. Faced with young readers turned off by
its cynicism, NME was forced to conclude that the
New Romantics were succeeding in spite of Thatcher
and her grey old guard. As Adam told NME’s Lynn
Hanna in 1980, “If you don’t think you’re special.
If you don’t have personal pride and integrity and
self-respect, then spiritually you’re dead. Pessimism
is unforgivable. When things are down, you’ve got
to get up. There’s no point in giving in. Kids need
something to tide them over, something they can
have fun with. All they need is hope.”
In other words, he wasn’t letting the bastards grind
him down.
On the back of this and other stunning statements
such as Adam’s “Ridicule is nothing to be scared of”,
NME sashayed into an era of the most fantastical,
impenetrable, inspirational and self-indulgent
writing the paper had ever seen. Pouring over the
words of Messrs Morley, Penman etc, even today
TLFeBOOK
Introduction
I’m often at a loss to understand what they were on
about. Was it parody? Poetry? Piffle? Whatever, it felt
– and still feels – young and free and lively and great.
So here they come again – Soft Cell, The Human
League, Grace Jones, Frankie – the richest vein of
British pop since… well, ever really.
There will be those who will argue that the ’60s
– with The Beatles, Stones, Kinks etc – were better.
Others may argue for the Britpop of Oasis, Blur
and Pulp. But surely no generation has matched the
New Romantics for sheer, joyous, downright weirdo
pop. From the kitsch’n’sink realitypop of Soft
Cell’s ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’ to the infectious
sloganeering of Frankie’s ‘Relax’, 1980-86 were
untouchable pop years.
This volume relives that richest of eras and includes a
list of the 80 singles that brightened our lives.
All together now: “You were working as a waitress in a
cocktail bar when I met you…”
Steve Sutherland
Editor
NME ORIGINALS 3
 CONTENTS
A G
PAGE 7 PAGE 49

is for... is for...

Punks turn pantomime pirates, Adam silver buckle shoes GRACE JONES, scary catwalk queen, movie star
in the New Romantic movement and becomes the first and disco diva. MARILYN, Boy George’s mate and a
prince of pop video. glamourpuss to boot!

B H
PAGE 13 PAGE 53

is for... is for...

Godfather of the NR movement, the canny old glamster Sheffield synth pioneers who split to leave the imperiously
dons a fresh lick of paint and hires the Blitz kids for his voiced Phil Oakey in charge of two pouty disco dollies.
‘Ashes To Ashes’ video. Result: pure pop gold!

C I
PAGE 19 PAGE 61

is for... is for...

‘Boy’ George O’Dowd, queen mum of the scene, storms JAPAN’s mannequin of icy cool DAVID SYLVIAN is
the States in a smock and then succumbs to smack. dubbed by NME the most beautiful man in the world, his
‘Tin Drum’ the art of poise.

D J
PAGE 27 PAGE 65

is for... is for...

Chuck’n’Di’s Brummie homeboys, the Durannies rock Before he was weird (well, really weird anyway), Jacko
the Spandau formula all the way to the arenas and live the was the Peter Pan of the Studio 54 scene, the hottest star
James Bond life all the way. on Earth.

E K
PAGE 37 PAGE 69

is for... is for...

The odd couple. Annie looks like a well-hard geezer and Mysterious Krautrockers emerge from hibernation to
Dave looks like a mad muso professor. Their synth-soul cash in on the Ultravox/Human League synth zeitgeist
rules the world. their influence had created.

F L
PAGE 41 PAGE 71

is for... is for...

In which a washed-up singer with The Boomtown Rats

Scouse club chancers scrubbed up by Trevor Horn at ZTT rustles up some famous pals, attains Sainthood and saves
to become the voice of the mid-’80s. Frankie say… genius. millions of lives in the process. Salute!

4 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Contents

M T
PAGE 79 PAGE 113

is for... is for...

Opportunist Noo Yawk club vixen whose (literally) Breakthrough live TV show hosted by Jools Holland and
shameless naked ambition propels her to the heights of Paula Yates that provides the scene with a weekly national
discopop royalty. New Romantic catwalk.

N U
PAGE 83 PAGE 117

is for... is for...

Pioneer Brit futurists who strike the jackpot with ‘Vienna’

Marc Almond and Dave Ball create SOFT CELL and ease when the tres dapper Midge Ure morphs on board.
their sleazy way to Number One with ‘Tainted Love’.

O V
PAGE 87 PAGE 121

is for... is for...

Bath-based teenage duo TEARS FOR FEARS pioneer The Beau Brummel club runner and doorkeeper of the
the hits-for-therapy route into the hearts and minds of scene, Steve Strange, makes his own mark on the charts
bedroom mopers everywhere. with a New Romantic supergroup.

P W
PAGE 91 PAGE 123

is for... is for...

Minneapolis’ slinky cross between Hendrix and Sly George and Andrew, sheer chart royalty from the
Stone cops the New Romantic look and takes the scene get-go-go with their chirpy celebrations of the new
international. yoof highlife.

Q X
PAGE 97 PAGE 131

is for... is for...

Basildon futurists DEPECHE MODE ask, “People are SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK, preposterous band with the
people so why should it be you and I should get along so most bonkers futurist manifesto in the whole history of
awfully”? Ahem! pop. Fun for fashionistas!

R Y
PAGE 101 PAGE 134

is for... is for...

Crazy fundamentalist soul boys turn raggle taggle gypsies!

Cool new Stateside dance craze that takes the Peoples’ So anti-New Romantic they are instant clubbers’ faves.
Palace crowd by storm.

S Z
PAGE 105 PAGE 138

is for... is for...

Islington barrow boys Gary and Martin Kemp grow to Uber-producer Trevor Horn’s perfect pop factory,
be the style guvnors of the scene, while Hadders became mischievously marketed by NME’s own Paul Morley.
its Sinatra.

NME ORIGINALS 5
TLFeBOOK
 2500* songs 5 GB

• Actual Size

The power of
° Micro-sized ° Mesmerising blue glow ° Curved to fit in the palm of your hand
° Up to 12 hours battery life on a single charge ° Removable battery to extend playtime another 12 hours
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° Access the widest selection of downloadable songs through Zen supported music services

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©2004 Creative Technology Ltd. All rights reserved. The Creative logo is a registered trademark of Creative Technology Ltd in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

TLFeBOOK
*in WMA format at 64kbps based on 4 minute track length.
 A
is for ...

7
RETNA

NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Adam And The Ants

I
n the brown bar of a provincial hotel the guests are NME 20 DECEMBER 1980 PAGE 32 “I just said, ‘OK, you’re not having the name. The Ants is
straggling slowly to the dinner dance upstairs. Their mine.’ I walked out the door and I haven’t seen them since.”
clothes are a drab, begrudged concession to dressing-up How much of the plan smacked of the arch schemer
for an evening out. Constricting suits and dreary A year ago Malcolm McLaren?
dresses, worn with a stiffness in the neck and an “That really doesn’t interest me now, although it
awkwardness in the walk make the occasion
look less like a pleasure than a social chore.
Aaam Ant was did at the time. It nearly broke my heart. I’m lucky
I’ve got some very close friends who helped me
Out in the lobby the lift stops, the doors slide
aside and there’s a sudden, confused impression
a figure of ridicule who through. In fact, Malcolm was very helpful at
the time. He wasn’t as heartless as he’d like
of colour and light, flashed back three-fold by the
mirrors inside. It’s a strange blaze of gold and
even had his band stolen. to make out. But two weeks later I was
reading in the press that he’d kicked
scarlet; a bizarre collage of feathers and braid, a
Undeterred, he stared into his
frieze of fierce faces with vivid paint slashed across
me out. It was just very hurtful.”
In the light of what followed, both
bronze skin and teeth that flash startling white.
The half pirate, half Red Indian raiding party make-up box and transformed for the new Ants, and the old group
that McLaren manufactured into
sweeps through the foyer, a shot of stunning Bow Wow Wow, Adam sees the break
glamour in a sombre scene. himself into a walking as greatly beneficial to both parties.
Adam And The Ants spin out through the Does he feel it’s a case of rival camps?
revolving doors and step into the night. treasure chest. Words “Of course I feel a rivalry, because when
they got rid of me, I felt really dejected.
Antmania is a barrage of flashbulbs from pocket cameras Lynn Hanna “They had a certain amount of material we’d
exploding in the face like a handful of fireworks. It’s a hand to worked on together. And I thought, ‘Wait a minute,
the window of the battered van and awed faces squinting anxiously I’ve done as much research as them.’ The sound belongs
inside. It’s someone shouting “Go! Move it!” and a race down the to the Burundi tribe anyway. And I wanted to use the
stairs, round a barrier of flight cases and through a tangle of taped elements that I’d learnt because I’d done a lot of work on
wires to the backstage sanctuary of a Cardiff club. them. I just said to them, ‘Look, there’s
And it’s an excited queue curving right round the a sound here, and it don’t belong to me
“I’m a dandy
precinct of the shopping centre outside. and it don’t belong to you. May the best
highwayman… well,
Antmania is also Adam Ant, a preoccupied I will be when I get man win. And you’d better be quick.’
figure in black leather prowling the empty cinema, this make-up on!” “I had ‘Kings Of The Wild Frontier’
lost in worries about the venue’s safety. out at the same time as ‘C30 C60 C90
After three years of being ridiculed and Go!’. The business is dog eat dog, and I
pilloried, portrayed as everything from a fascist think they’re realising that now.”
to an S&M obsessed monster, Adam Ant has Adam’s appraisal of McLaren is
confounded his critics with a sell-out tour so divided; he admires his ability as a
successful that venues were switched from clubs catalyst and he compares his genius as
to concert halls. an impresario to that of Diaghilev. His
It’s a success story that’s more surprising summary of his personal character is held
because, at the beginning of this year, the original more succinctly in four letters.
Ants under the management of Malcolm McLaren “Although I admire a lot of what Malcolm
unceremoniously disowned him, and it then McLaren thinks, the basic thing is I can’t work
looked as if Adam’s career was finally finished. with someone who doesn’t respect people,
“Malcolm came around my house early one I can’t work with people who are telling me
morning and he said, ‘Adam, you’ve got to put what to write and how to write it.”
your foot down because things aren’t working out The images that shaped the new Ants
JILL FURMANOVSKY-WWW.ROCKARCHIVE.COM/PETER ANDERSON/LFI

very well. You’ve got to take part in the music.’ are the result of ideas from both Adam and
“I got down to the rehearsal room and there McLaren.
was this really strange atmosphere. I started “Malcolm was in America when they were
talking to Dave (Barbarossa) and he suddenly got making The Island, a pirate film that really
up and said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I was really shocked but cleaned up over there. This time last year, I was
I said, ‘I’m sorry. But, you know, I wish you well.’ into total war-paint make-up.
Then I said to the other two, ‘We’ll have to find a “The tribe elements are there anyway. All
new drummer.’ And they looked very sheepishly rock’n’roll is tribal; it’s all black music. The
at each other. Then the bass player said, ‘I’m with fact of the matter is that the music belongs
Dave.’ So I said to the guitarist, ‘It’s you and me to the tribes, you’re just taking what you
then, Matthew.’ And he said, ‘No, I’m with Dave.’ find useful.”

8 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Adam And The Ants A
When Adam Ant isn’t a glittering incarnation of a swashbuckling
pirate and savage brave, he’s padding about in T-shirt and baggy
trousers, wearing a plain pair of thick-lensed spectacles. He has
a mobile, expressive face with animated eyes and his excellent
mimicry is spiced with a disarming sense of humour.
In the hotel room he’s sharing with co-writer, guitarist and close
friend Marco Pirroni, whom he contacted the day after the old
Ants split, the nightly transformation is well underway.
Marco, already clad as a formidable pirate, compares the
Ants’ success to Hollywood glamour during the economic
depression of the ’30s.

Like any development in rock,

Antmusic is at once revolutionary
and deeply conservative

“For the past two years music has been so incredibly

dreary I can’t believe it. Sooner or later someone had to
come along and do something that was fun and fresh.
Someone said our sound was everything that was
noble, exciting and free. That’s what it’s for basically.”
Adam, meanwhile, is dressing in his curious
combination of stage clothes, inspired by a complicated
trail of ideas and associations.
The loose shirt and silk scarf he wears round his upper arm owe
a debt to the Royalist/Cromwellian era and, combined with leather
trousers, the look is a little – he imagines – like early American
settlers when they’d incorporated some of the Indian styles.
The cane he carries was partly suggested by A Clockwork Orange,
although his is Edwardian and lacks, he adds, any violent overtones.
He has a real horse brass on his belt, a false, gold-threaded curl on
his cheek and a silver skull and crossbones ring on his finger that he
recently swapped with an ardent Antfan.
“I love the idea of the French Revolution. That was really just,” he
says, explaining his tricolour cummerbund. His military jacket is
authentic and was hired from a firm for the duration of the tour.
“I like borrowing things from different times. You can’t go out
and buy the Ant look, you put it together for yourself. I see no
reason why kids should all have to herd up the King’s Road to buy
a particular look.”
Ouch!
“There’s also the humorous elements there as well. It amazes
how much people really look forward to going to a fancy dress
party. You get the straightest girls, butter wouldn’t melt in their
mouths, going as vamps with suspenders, the lot.
“But whatever you’re into wearing, it’s the same sort of thing.
Someone who’s very conservative in their dress, you may not notice
what’s risqué to them. It may be a badge or a particular pair of

“Ahoy me
hearties!”:
Adam onstage in
London in 1982

NME ORIGINALS 9
TLFeBOOK
 Adam And The Ants

“I’d never wear a Swastika like they said I did. If anyone showed
me anything like that I’d fling it on the floor. I can understand
people who wear Nazi armbands, because really it was just done to
shock. But I personally would never wear anything like that.”
It’s an allegation that he personally finds galling because many of
his family are Romanies, and under Hitler gypsies suffered the same
persecution as Jews. And he maintains that his own use of Nazi
imagery was to defuse a subject by exposing it to ridicule.
“When I went to Berlin, the kids over there live with it all the time,
the devastation of the war is still all around them. And at every party
I went to some kid would come up and say (he imitates a precise,
educated German accent) ‘Adam, you must listen to this record. It is
most interesting. It is by a group called The Spitfire Pilots.’”
His own ‘Deutsche Girls’ was inspired by the Mel Brooks film
The Producers and its spoof production number ‘Springtime For
NME 6 DECEMBER 1980 PAGE 21
Hitler’ which punctures the power of Nazi imagery and fascism’s
ADAM AND central manipulated impression of irresistible force by turning its
THE ANTS dark glamour into something utterly ludicrous.
ANTMUSIC He also intends the seriousness of his subject matter to continue
CBS
in the new Ants material.
Adam is making a
bubbly, babbling pop
“Some people say I’m not writing seriously now. But if they think
music that’s actually less the extermination of the American Indian isn’t a taboo subject here
obvious and ordinary or in the USA, they’d better think again. The fact that I reduce it to a
than when Adam fancied simple format is out of choice.”
himself as a different
sort of rebel/devil. The
surprise of seeing Adam Behind the safety curtain at the Lewisham Odeon, it’s suddenly
on TOTP was one of the very still in the heart-stopping few seconds before the start of the
Adam in 1981: year’s most refreshings concert. The Ants are standing in position on the dim, dusty stage.
“Damn, forgot jolts. ‘Antmusic’ is about
me make-up seven times better than
“Innit quiet?” says someone softly. “You’d never guess there were
bag again!” ‘Dog Eat Dog’: a Glitter- 3,000 out there.”
billy, Skids-swirl, tribal The heavy curtain starts to slide up. The sound of Tchaikovsky’s
shoes that make them feel they’re taking a chance. If clothes make celebration. “Unplug the ‘1812 Overture’ crashes over the PA, mingled with a growing chant
jukebox/And do us all a
you feel good, then that’s good. If you’re too tired to dress up for favour/That music’s lost
of “Ants! Ants! Ants!”
yourself or other people, then you’re really in trouble in a way.” its taste/So try another The rising curtain reveals layers of faces, one row after another,
Adam Ant lunges across his hotel room practising a little false flavour”. Adam’s turned from the packed photographers’ pit to a pudding-faced Mohican, to
fencing. Once more he tries – and fails – to spin his stick right himself into a pop event: the kids clutching posters at the back of the balcony.
rejoice at its corniness
round without dropping it. At the mirror he pauses and strikes a and liveliness.
mock heroic pose, one arm flung in the air and flashing a dazzling,
self-deprecating Errol Flynn grin. Then he turns a scornful smile
Paul Morley
“I borrow things from different
at the can of lacquer he’s holding in his hand.
“I dunno,” he mutters. “Who heard of pirates using hairspray?”
times. You can’t buy the Ant look,
If the aura around the new Ants has all the charm of a children’s
you put it together” Adam Ant
pantomime, Adam’s own image has not always been so unsullied.
“People now say the early imagery I chose was S&M. In fact
there were all sorts of different things in the songs. But I chose
NME 2 MAY 1981 PAGE 18
that sort of imagery because it appealed to me, and because I felt it
hadn’t been used in a productive and intelligent way. It had always ADAM AND
been taboo.” THE ANTS
STAND & DELIVER
It’s enduring fascination for the taboo that has cost Adam CBS
dearly in terms of his career. Who is that young chap
Two years ago he was, he says, about to sign a contract with riding the fiery charger
a major record company when the first of the fascist allegations into the night capturing
appeared in the music press. They came at a time when flirtings all the ladies’ jewellery
and hearts? Musket
with fascism preoccupied several artists (for instance there was in hand and gleam in
more than a hint of something very nasty just under the surface his eye – why Tommy
in many of Siouxsie’s early songs). And justification for the Pistols’ Steele in Columbia’s
‘Belsen Was A Gas’ has never been satisfactorily explained. 1968 clinker Where’s
Jack? But who comes up
In Adam’s case, the claims understandably affronted Jewish in the slipstream? Aloft
businessmen high in the structure of the company. They a pantomime nag with
immediately withdrew their offer and, Adam claims, he was training wheels, here
blacklisted by the business until his present contract with CBS. comes the man of the
hour! Adam Ant! ‘Stand
Certainly the sales of ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’ – 30 to 40,000
& Deliver’ stretches the
on an independent label in the first few weeks of release – show joke thinner and as he
that ordinarily he should have been an attractive commercial gallops by we shout
proposition for a major company. off into the night after
this unstoppable
Adam is fairly philosophical about his past brushes with the
rapscallion. “Take heed,
press but it’s very obvious that the fascist charges still sting. Adam Ant! We’ll see The Ant hill
“They were lies,” he snaps. “I can only think that the people you dance at the end mob: (l-r) Kevin,
who wrote those things never came to the gigs and saw what was of a yardarm yet!” Marco, Adam,
Danny Baker Merrick and Terri
going on with both me and the audience.

10 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

“It hits you in the stomach and you breathe in and you can’t
breathe out again. You stand there gasping,” Adam says later.
The lighting pours onto the stage, the drumming starts to
swing heavy, slapping tide, and the Ants’ opening number rolls
into motion.
Like any decent development in rock, Antmusic is an original
slant on an old tradition, at once revolutionary and deeply
conservative. It has a tongue-in-cheek charm that’s a long way
from the deadly seriousness and consequent castration of much
of what has come to pass for hard rock music. Visually the Ants
now slot as cleverly into rock’s mythology as The Clash’s early
urban guerrilla chic.
JILL FURMANOVSKY-WWW.ROCKARCHIVE.COM/LFI
Adam himself describes the traditional rock world as “very
squalid, impersonal and degrading; an egocentric circus full of
people who aren’t really human beings at the end of it all”.
“There’s a new generation of groups who won’t take part in it. MM 5 SEPTEMBER 1981 PAGE 13
I think music has got to get more realistic. There’s a lot of things ADAM AND
yet to be done to improve the state of things live. And it’s bad that THE ANTS
kids are paying £4 for a record that hasn’t any kind of effort from PRINCE CHARMING
CBS
either the band or the company.
The best, sometimes the
only, way to deal with a
success so phenomenal
that it seems hardly able
to last is to stay one step
ahead; keep a trick up
your sleeve and deal it
when the sceptics’ voices
scream loudest.
Adam Ant knows
that. And he’s trumped
them all with a
masterpiece of a single; a
potential monster. Here,
he takes one simple
idea, twists it, turns it
and inflates it to epic
proportions, combining
repetition with a sense
of the unexpected.
Opening with a series
of wails, it moves into
a thick percussiveness
surrounded by dramatic
texture and layers of
vocals building up to
a stirring, disturbing
conclusion. “Ridicule is
nothing to be scared of”,
he sings. And if anyone
should know about that
it’s Adam Ant.
Carol Clerk
TLFeBOOK
Adam And The Ants A
NME 2 JANUARY 1982 PAGE 31
“With ‘Kings…’ it was an experiment that involved a lot of
work from both myself and the band in designing the catalogue.
It paid off not just in the fact that it went silver and sold as many,
but that it actually set a standard.
“I’ve put a lot of thought into the product they receive rather
than profess to be on a street level, go down the pub with the lads
sort of thing. I’ve never been into that at all.
“But in a lot of rock’n’roll, an audience comes just to observe.
And if a kid comes to an Ant concert he’s taking part for an hour.
The audience may even come just to see each other. An interviewer
could get just as good a report from either side of the stage.”
Which I do. During the Cardiff gig I go out and ask some of the
audience why they like Adam And The Ants.
“Why?” gasps a stout boy in a T-shirt, somewhat surprised.
“Because I love ’em, that’s why.” He stops dancing for a second to
point at the stage. “They’re warriors, they are.”
“I like the clothes and I like the beat,” explains a girl. “It’s
different. Punk has got so boring now. Well, I think so anyway.”
“I don’t know anything about them,” says another. “It’s their
energy I like. That’s why I think they’re good.”
“It’s original,” declares a small Antperson in a leather jacket.
“I’ve always been a fan. I’m addicted to it. I think I preferred the
first album, but they’re great onstage.”
“I dunno,” confesses a boy in suede boots with a cool sweep of
blonde fringe. “Why d’you like anything? Why d’you like sex?”
Sexmusic for Antpeople in truth.
And sex, says Adam, is central to rock’n’roll. It’s a sense of dash
and daring, of physical fun encapsulated for him in the photo of
Bryan Ferry’s frozen sexual sneer, eyes almost closed under his
exaggerated quiff and with his knowing smile, half a snarl, on the
cover of the first Roxy Music album.
“Even the word rock’n’roll is black slang for fucking. Why not
bring it out into the open? A lot of kids who come to our concerts
are just beginning to find out what it’s all about. There’s a sense of
danger and excitement in it. If you say the word onstage, you look
at the audience and you see a girl look at her boyfriend and they
giggle, and that’s great.”
It’s during one of the four encores after that Lewisham concert
that Adam tells the audience he’s proud of them. I ask him
afterwards what he meant.
“If you don’t think you’re special, if you don’t have personal
pride and integrity and self-respect, then spiritually you’re dead.
Pessimism is unforgivable. And when things are down you’ve got
to get up, there’s no point in giving in. Kids need something to tide
them over, something they can have fun with.
“All they need is hope.”
N
NMM EE O
ORR IIG
GII N
NAA LL SS 11
??
TLFeBOOK
 B
is for ...

13
CORBIS

NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
14 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 David Bowie B

NME 16 APRIL 1983 PAGE 27

Despite the persistent line about Bowie’s inconsistency, he

has always been remarkably constant in those matters he cares
Drugs and most about.
His concern for the young dates right back to Ziggy Stardust
dodgy right-wing when he was first alerted to the awesome responsibility that
goes with mass popularity. His “inconsistent” taking and
flirtations are out and shredding of masks, his cultural leaps are all ways of keeping
that responsibility fresh and his audience on their toes.
now he’s – literally – doing I mean, can’t a man change his mind without being hauled
over hot coals for doing so?
it for the kids. David If rock critics have generally been loath to acknowledge his
integrity, preferring instead to see only the chameleon figure

Bowie explains to Chris intent on protecting his privacy from public scrutiny, the
Japanese director Nagisa Oshima chose Bowie to play a godlike
prisoner of war Major Jack ‘Strafer’ Celliers in his upcoming
Bohn about how life film Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence precisely because he saw
in him such a quality.
begins at 36 “People ask my why I cast actors
from the world of rock,” remarks
Oshima in the film’s publicity
notes. “It is because they are
sensitive to what people want

I
t’s been a long, strange, trip now, they are performers;
for David Bowie from ‘Scary their antennas are screwed
Monsters’ to ‘Let’s Dance’, on right and they don’t
lasting two movies and three mind getting in there and
years, plugged only by three having a go at the truth.”
bizarre single collaborations. The David Bowie
There was Bowie and Brecht sitting opposite is
on the excellent ‘Baal’ EP, Bowie charming and chatty,
and Moroder on ‘Cat People’, the laughing frequently to
overblown melodrama of which relieve the tension.
makes perfect sense when heard over Now aged 36, he
the closing credits of the film and, has never looked
finally, the oddest of them all, Bowie healthier. His
and Queen on ‘Under Pressure’! sun-bleached hair
“Yes, I found that quite odd,” smiles is a natural straw
Bowie. “I’m not quite sure how I colour, his face
got involved in that really. They tanned an ochre
turned up in Montreux, which is not brown by his recent
far from where I live in Switzerland. working sojourns in Australia
Needless to say when groups come to and the South Seas. He is
town to record, they find out where spritely dressed in an olive green
I live… so this is how I tend to see khaki blouse that emphasises
a lot of bands, under the influence his boyishness.
of Switzerland.” Within the confines of
Once the shock of Bowie working a 50-minute interview he is
with Queen passes, it stands up extraordinarily forthcoming about
surprisingly well, and Bowie’s his work, revising opinions of his
words are consistent with both past in light of his present attitudes.
REDFERNS/REX FEATURES

the sentiments of ‘Scary Quite naturally he only lets slip so

Blond ambition:
Monsters’ and the positive the high-waisted,
much of himself as is relevant to what
Bowie to come – his new but not wasted, he is doing. Dare we expect more from
LP, ‘Let’s Dance’. Bowie of the ’80s our public figures?

NME ORIGINALS 15
TLFeBOOK
 David Bowie

The interview
The strongest impression left by your press conference was your
concern about the worthwhile nature of popular music.
“For me, personally. My business is my business and it just strikes
me… er, I don’t really have the urge to continue as a songwriter
and a performer in terms of experimentation – at this moment.
I feel that at the moment I’m of an age – and age has an awful lot
to do with it – I’m just starting to enjoy growing up. I’m enjoying
being my age, 36, and what comes with it in terms of the body. It
actually physically changes. Mentally and emotionally there are
big changes, especially if you have been thrust in front of popular
and mass observation.
“If you’ve been observed, as I have for the last 12 years, well,
you have to contend with that one way or another. You either care
about it, or you don’t any more. You think, ‘Well, as I have this
platform, there’s something I can do with it.’ NME 2 AUGUST 1980 PAGE 19

“And, frankly, I don’t think I would want to continue performing DAVID BOWIE
any more if I didn’t think I could do something hopeful and ASHES TO ASHES
helpful with my music, both for myself and my audience.” RCA

How do you define music that is “hopeful and helpful”? What Have you ever noticed
evidence we have from you at the moment is a celebratory dance how the line of Bowie’s
jaw on the cover of
record, as opposed to something that points anywhere. ‘Heroes’ is apparently
“Yes. I think it will have a lot to do with (adopting a mock preachy retouched to accentuate
tone) people shouldn’t fight each other. People shouldn’t kill each the thinness of his face?
other and people should try to live together.” There’s something of
that about the cover
Isn’t that a little simplistic? to ‘Ashes To Ashes’:
“Yes, it is simple.” around the central
Your positivism seems to parallel that of Jack Celliers, the Is-This-Man-A-Prat
character you play in Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr photo depicting Bowie
as a glittering clown
Lawrence – leading by action and deed. are a number of smaller
“Instead of intimating change try and do something about it.” frames showing random
You identified pretty closely with the character, then? stages in his disrobing.
“Yeah, I think I immediately identified with him because of his Some are crossed out,
as if rejected frames of a
own personal turmoils, his and mine stemming from different contact-sheet. Musically,
sources. With Celliers, he’s ridden with guilt most of his life it’ll gladden the hearts
because of his relationship with his younger brother, which caused of those radio producers
him to embrace that particular strength. That is pointed up a lot and jocks who broke
out in a cold sweat
more in Oshima’s screenplay than it probably is in the book. with ‘Alabama Song’.
“I guess it’s the idea of through all my experimentations I have Innocuous and OK, in
learned a lot and there must be something I can do with it on a its own way, but the
very simplistic level now. I don’t have the urge to play around with point is this: all the
indications are
musical ideas. At the moment. Any more.” that this is another
The present loss of urge to experiment… is that an indictment David Bowie
of the ‘Low’/‘Heroes’/‘Lodger’ period? Can’t humanity and song about
technology sit together? David Bowie.
Andy Gill
“It’s just another way of using my songs, I think I’m just a little
tired of experimentation now. But electronics are rewarding in
terms of playing around with atmosphere and trying to reach
different parts of the mind, funny corners of the mind…”
But there is a proliferation of synthetic instruments being used
in that kind of icy cold vein.
“It’s such a wide sweeping statement that, at the moment,
I feel it’s very hard to use those instruments without a kind of
preconditioning already there. That if you use the synthesizer it
means this particular thing: that I’m part of this angular society.

“Through all my experimentations I have learned

a lot. I don’t have the urge to play around with
musical ideas. At the moment. Any more”

“So that’s why I’ve used a very organic, basic instrumentation

on this new album. Such instrumentation doesn’t say anything
other than it comes from a hybrid of white and black culture. That
is the only underlying subtext it has really.
“As I say, experimentation can be rewarding for finding
awkward stances musically. But it just isn’t satisfying after a while.

16 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 David Bowie B
“That’s had a very positive and strong bearing on whatever
I intend to do in the future. I feel I have to make a commitment to
something more altruistic to that which I’ve been concerned with
before. If that sounds like a turnaround, then it’s a turnaround,
and it has to be and I would have to face that charge. But I don’t
think it will quell my natural inclination to want to experiment
with music, though I think it will modify it greatly.”
You wouldn’t want anything you do to upset your son?
“It would make me reflect on anything that would produce the
kind of nihilistic quality which was part of my early music.
“Hopefully I was falling out of that anyway. That period had
a lot to do with my problems as a human being. To produce that
kind of music, though it’s interesting to look at someone really
fucked-up writing music, it’s not very helpful.
“The very simple problem is that we’re on a terrifying voyage
NME 1 NOVEMBER 1980 PAGE 21
and the effects that have been brought about by those causes are
Bowie looking
peachy in New
really quite transparent and obvious the need to belong to small DAVID BOWIE
York, July 1983 tribal units when there seems to be too many other people about; FASHION
RCA
the mistrust of somebody who is not from
one’s own origins. David’s gotta New
Dance and, with Robert
“Those kinds of things are so obvious that Fripperonic growling
I guess maybe it’s quite a good idea to write menacingly on steel
about them in a very obvious way. And I want tooth guitar, it proves
to utilise videos to the same extent. to be a continuation of
the paranoiac diamond
And it’s not satisfying because it’s “It’s easy enough to glamorise a pop song. hard funk explorations
not very useful, except – as Brian I’ve done that often enough in the past! of ‘Fame’. As with its
Eno would say – for setting up a You know, give it a surreal quality, kind of predecessor, Bowie
new kind of vocabulary. Now I’ve detached. That’s fine if you’ve got time to may well adopt an
anti-disco attitude
got the vocabulary I’m supposed watch promos at that level, but these videos while at the same
to do something with it! Ha ha.” reach too many people and, anyway, there’s time acknowledging
On the other hand the too many of those kinds of videos. that he’ll fill the disco
subliminal aspect of electronics dancefloors rather than
empty them. Similarly,
allows one to speak more through the ambiguity of Bowie’s
the music than does rock’n’roll, where the vocabulary is so well
known it has lost its efficacy.
“I’m writing something I’ve never lyric allows the listener
to decide whether it’s
“That’s the promise, surely, yeah. It does speak in those terms, touched on before, an emotional concerned with the
manipulative world
but I think also to reach a large audience they’re not willing to
listen to music, or play the records, if they’re couched in terms situation between two people” of sartorial elegance
or the ever-increasing
they’re not really familiar with. left versus right power
“I mean, they’re not going to sit and listen to that kind of music struggle. Whichever way
one conceives it, the
and accept it. It’s like American television; the record buying song’s overtly political.
public of America is still very much in the television format “So it occurs to me that it would be a very good idea to utilise Roy Carr
mentally and it is impossible for them to listen to something those four minutes of space and try to make them say something
that doesn’t make its point in the first 30 or 40 seconds. And I’m simple and as hard-hitting and as hard-selling as a commercial,
starting to subscribe to that at the moment.” but in terms of human quality and human life as opposed to, ‘This
Previously you’ve said you’re not worried about your is the kind of outfit, this the way you wear it and this is the kind of
experiments losing your old audience, that you were content to cool you have to have to be able to carry it off.’”
pick up new audiences as you go along. Is it easier to deal with complexities on film than it is in song?
“Hmm.” “That is the problem I’m having, dealing with it in song format.
Are you effecting a reconciliation with your old audience? Sometimes you can end up sounding neo-Dylan or something
MM 19 MARCH 1983 PAGE 19
“I don’t think so. The music I’m writing at the moment is and that is already stylish and part of a particular cliquey kind of
probably going to reach a newer audience for me. But if I am going songwriting. I’m not very good at it yet. I’m still working on the DAVID BOWIE
to reach a new audience, then I’m going to try and reach it with one-to-one relationship, and from within that situation trying to LET’S DANCE
EMI
something to say, which is on a very obvious and simplistic level. create an overall humanist feeling.
Everyone pricks up
I don’t want to be the grandfather of the new wave by any means. “It is hard. I think Jim – Iggy Pop – is much better at it than me. their ears – if you’ll
“For me, I’m writing something that I’ve never really touched If he could be manoeuvred into that kind of situation he could excuse the expression
on before, which is a one-to-one situation. I mean an emotional produce some stunning social observations. – at the thought of this
situation between two people. Such a situation seems to take up “‘China Girl’ (by Pop and Bowie) is another track on the new Bowie record. But
this reminds me of one
at least five of the tracks on the album. The love situation, the album. Now that’s a committed piece of writing, it’s a very strong of the many faceless
emotional situation between two people seems to have escaped piece. Where, for instance, the subject matter of ‘Let’s Dance’ is funk records that come
me – or I’ve avoided it is probably nearer the truth – since nebulous. There is an undercurrent of commitment, but it’s not out and go nowhere.
I started writing. Usually, it’s been the man in isolation and all quite so straightforward…” He did this on ‘Young
Americans’ and again
that. Whether I’m becoming either one, comfortable or two, How do you feel about your legacy of songs in light of your on ‘Station To Station’
complacent with myself – I dunno which it is – but it is something present positive attitudes? Can you still sing them? much better, so why do
I can feel I can now get involved with as a writer.” “Oh quite easily, yes. No problem at all. I’ve started listening to it again? I think Bowie,
I suppose the obvious question to that is: is it a response to a lot of my old stuff, gone back to find out what I was writing then like all good legends,
should either disappear
your personal situation? and why. I guess they kind of stand up in their own place in time. or die or, at least become
“Very much so. Are you married? So you don’t have children? I don’t think of them, like, that’s a great old chestnut, sounding a recluse, give up and be
CORBIS/REDFERNS

I would never have thought it possible, but for me the one most good year after year, but they’re all interesting. remembered for what
enjoyable and hope-giving quality of my life over the past four of “With every song I’ve written I identify so much with the time he was good at.
Marc Almond
five years is my son. and place that it was written in. It’s hard for me to shake off the

N
NMME
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ORR II G
G II N
N AA LL SS 17
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TLFeBOOK
 David Bowie
particular year or particular trauma I was going through at the
time. It’s much easier for the audience to do that.”
The recurring statement through your ’70s interviews was
about trying to shake off that middle class ball and chain.
“I’m lumbered with that problem. I mean, I’ll have it for the rest
of my life. Ha ha.”
Succumbing to it?
“I think so, yeah. I think I’ve accepted that situation. There’s
no way I can make myself other than what I am. (Bowie pauses
and bursts out laughing) Now that’s a funny thing for me to say
isn’t it? (Laughter) What a ludicrous thing to say, David! But it is
somewhere in there, yes. One faces up to all these things. I’m armed
with all these things, my problems with my own background, my
own personal problems, or whatever. I’m not so detached from
myself any more. I feel in touch. (Mimes peace sign, laughing) Hey,
I feel in touch with myself!”
How do you think your 17-year-old self would feel if he were
confronted with your 36-year-old self?
“My 17-year-old self would think, er, especially regarding the
drift to where I’m presumably going, that self would probably
think, ‘Aw what a waste,’ ha ha ha, ‘It’s going to be really boring.’
Ha ha. And I’d say, ‘You wait ’til you’re 36! Ha ha. You won’t think
it’s quite so exciting just working in dark areas.’ Ha ha.”
Last year Lou Reed said he was quite prepared to write
rock’n’roll songs for adults. On ‘Scary Monsters’ you seemed to
be addressing the young still.
“Did it really feel like that? That’s interesting. You could probably
answer that better yourself, but I would imagine it seemed like that
because the instrumentation, the actual effects of the instruments
and quality of production…”
When you purged yourself of the Victoria incident (you’ll
recall the time Bowie arrived at Victoria Station in a Mercedes
limo with a theatrical flourish of outriders, salutes and loaded
statements), you were saying it was some people of Berlin’s far left
that swayed you. How did they approach you on the incident?
“The most illuminating conversation about that was with a
couple of guys who really took me to task about the things I said
about fascism in 1976, and they made me very aware of how much
thought one should put into what one does and says.
“They weren’t responsible for making me finish with that whole
drug period or anything, but they set me up and caught me on a
very bad day, you know, ha ha. (In a heavy Teutonic tone) ‘So
you still a Nazi, David?’ Oh dear! Crumbs! They gave me a
real ticking off and that really put me straight, I think.
“It really sorted that out in my mind about not being
quite so flippant or fragmented or stupid or stoned out of
my gourd to let myself get involved with those kinds of
just hideous reflections…
“I try to intellectualise
what I’m doing and that’s
a problem if you’ve just
done a gram of cocaine”
“My problem is that after I’ve written
something, or when I’ve started writing
something, I then try to intellectualise what
I’m doing, And that’s when the problems
usually begin! Especially when you try and
intellectualize when you’ve just done a gram of
cocaine, ha ha, and the offcoming statement is usually something
that one doesn’t want to refer back to a few years later.”
Are drugs completely out now?
“Oh absolutely! Drugs are no part of my writing or recording
or anything. It’s impossible to consider your life worthwhile, or
18 NME ORIGINALS
NME 16 APRIL 1983 PAGE 32
DAVID BOWIE
LET’S DANCE EMI
I
t would certainly be difficult to accuse David
Bowie of making an inauspicious return to the
musical arena. ‘Let’s Dance’ is easily this year’s
biggest single; every time it comes up it creates an
instant impression of sheer scale.
A single, quite literally, in several thousand;
and the taster for a new album which is the first
sustained new music from Bowie for two and a
half years. The crew assembled for this project
by Bowie and co-producer Nile Rodgers include
no-one who has ever worked with Bowie
before, which may go some way
towards explaining why ‘Let’s This
Dance’ is such a major break in Can it be that – at
continuity from the past. is some of the age of 36 – David Bowie has
A friend of mine who heard made a warm, soulful, useful
this record before I did told me the strongest, rock’n’roll album?
that he was rather disappointed
by it. “It’s got guitar solos all
simplest and least The natural authority that
he brings to everything he
over it,” he announced in the complicated music sings on this album make all
sort of tone that you might use the Big Important Voices – this
for telling somebody that there is a Bowie’s made means you, Tony Hadley – sound
large maggoty dog turd on their new overblown and hollow, risible in
jacket. Despite the expectation that the their mock-operatic fraudulence.
combination of Bowie and Rodgers would The second side’s ‘Ricochet’ breaks
result in the kind of immaculately deft angst-funk a lance against Thatcherism and Reaganomics,
that seems in vogue in certain quarters, the actual ending up with an Afro-jazz whirlpool before
result is something quite different: some of the it leads into the album’s only non-Bowie tune,
strongest, simplest and least complicated music ‘Criminal World’, which carries the characteristically
that Bowie has ever made. Bowie-like line “the boys are like baby-faced girls”
Rodgers has brought along the chic beat, and – needless to say – its opposite.
but not the Chic sound: his characteristic Strat-y With this album, Bowie seems to have
rhythm licks are transmuted into the massive slabs transcended the need to write endlessly about the
of carefully-placed guitar synth so familiar from dramas of being DAVID BOWIE and about all his
the single. Bowie’s primary instrumental foil is personal agonies. This album just goes straight
lead guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, a young Texan to the heart of it: it is warm, strong, inspiring and
who apparently believes that Albert King is God useful. Powerful, positive music that dances like a
and that the Lord should be praised regularly, dream and makes you feel ten feet tall. Who can
and the combination of Vaughan and Rodgers ask for anything more?
links together two different aspects of the black I hope this starts another (snicker) trend.
American musical tradition which has Utterly worth the wait, ‘Let’s Dance’ is irresistible.
nurtured Bowie so strongly over the You should be ashamed to say you do not love it.
last eight years. Charles Shaar Murray
the life of those around you worthwhile, if you’re just fractured like
that. I mean, God knows what would have happened to my son if
I was continually stoned over the last ten years. I probably wouldn’t
have him. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted me.”
He seems quite a sober character, from what you were saying at
the press conference about his love for maths.
“Yeah, he likes Madness, though. Loves them. I thought he was
going to start liking A Flock Of Seagulls, which worried me a
lot. But he saw them on television and fortunately decided
they weren’t for him. Ha ha.”
Seconds to go: panic!!! David Bowie is modifying
his reappraisal of his legacy, rightly claiming his past
work can be played as photojournalist snaps of the
mood and atmosphere of the time they were
written, when his publicist arrives to bring the
interview to a close.
“If you want to conjure up the
atmosphere of any particular period, well,
for me I can do it quite easily by putting on
one of those albums. If you put on ‘Station
To Station’ it couldn’t be from any other
period than when it was written.
“I don’t know how the songs feel onstage, not being an
Mid-30s Bowie
REDFERNS
audience for my own work. I don’t know if people can
braces himself
for the future
still treat them as contemporary pieces…”
TLFeBOOK
 C
is for ...

19
RETNA

NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 J is for Michael Jackson
THE BOY’S
OWN CLUB
George on… bitchiness
“I am a bitch, yeah. But I’m not a bitch for the sake of
being bitchy.
“I’m not nasty! I don’t think so anyway. I know I’m
not vindictive. I just have a laugh…
“I’m sure people slag me off! They always do.
I’ve caught people talking about me loads of
times. When Bow Wow Wow played St Albans
I heard a skinhead say to his mate, ‘Oh that
queer guy’s going to come on for the encore, he
looks a real state.’ And when you talk to some
girls they try to be real clever, they say, ‘Oh yes,
duckie,’ and I just rip them to shreds. It’s so obvious
to do that.
“Y’know, I’m not a queer, not that sort of queer
anyway. I’m as camp as you are, or as anyone is. I’m not
camp in a gay sense. Do you think I am?”
20 NME ORIGINALS
Join our Club: (l-r)
Jon Moss, Boy
George, Mikey
Craig, Roy Hay
NME 1 MAY 1982 PAGE 24
George on… his appearance
“Obviously I’m into myself, but I’m not walking
around just saying, ‘Oh everybody look at me,
Paul Morley meets a look at me.’ I wear make-up and dress this way
because it makes me look better. I’m not doing
boy called George – former it to get people to stare at me.
“People think that if you look like this
model, Bow Wow Wow you’re running away from something, and
that’s a load of rubbish. I’m not hiding.
singer and now founder of I really don’t think that there’s anything wrong
with wanting to make yourself look as good
a new musical experience, as possible. I’m not just a person who wears
make-up. There is a lot more that goes into it.
the Culture Club “I tell you, I really hate decadence. I hate risqué
people who go around with their tits hanging out,
or people who try to have sex in public. I hate people
who really think they’re risqué and daring.”
TLFeBOOK
 Culture Club C
George on… Steve Strange shut people down when you’ve
“I think Steve Strange could have been a lot more successful and got the gab like me. Unless
respected if he’d just been a bit human about it all. People look at they’re really insane, and then
Steve Strange and the general opinion is that he’s a prat, and they you just run away. Don’t stay
look at me and see that I wear make-up so they think I’m a prat as where you’re not wanted.”
well. When I’m interviewed I’m always asked, ‘Do you see yourself After smirking and lurking
in comparison to Steve Strange?’ What do you say? I don’t want on the inside and outside of
to be rude about him. As far as I’m concerned he’s doing what he this, that and the other for
wants to do and he’s enjoying it and it’s just nothing to do with the past few years George has
me. He’s there. He exists. So what?!” ended up in a position where
he will be smart, smack at the
George on… laughter centre of a lot of attention.
“I believe you’ve got to have a sense of humour. So many people He’s going to be a pop
involved in all of this don’t have a sense of humour. I don’t know star and he’s very capable of
how they can do what they do without laughing at themselves being good.
and saying it’s a real joke. I do it all the time. I go home and look NME 4 SEPTEMBER 1982 PAGE 42 With his customary “Did you steal
at myself in the mirror and laugh at myself. Sometimes I just go my blusher?”:
CULTURE CLUB cheerfulness he recalls a
George, Marilyn
home and cry. I look at myself and think, ‘You fucking wanker!’” DO YOU REALLY WANT brief time he spent as guest and friend, 1981
TO HURT ME singer with Bow Wow Wow.
“I’m just a peasant,” The Boy George tells me, “I’m really quite Virgin
“The first gig I did was at the Rainbow in front of loads of people
ordinary, but I can also be quite exciting as well.” Culture Club astound and it was brilliant. I’d never been on a stage in my life before then
me. They really are
There is something lonely and unromantic about The Boy very, very good indeed
and I really got turned on by it. Malcolm McLaren just gave me a
George: more than that there’s a peculiar strength that sneaks up and yet, while slop like hunger for it all. I hadn’t done anything ever apart from dress up
on you or into you, something arrogant and exasperating, and the pea-brained Haysi and walk around getting pissed. I’d had my pictures in the paper
ultimately a beautiful, unconditional directness. Fantayzee are rolling but I was getting bored with the whole thing. I mean Malcolm
in it, this group reach
George doesn’t ramble, he doesn’t soft soap and he doesn’t their third fine record
really just used me to keep Annabella… I didn’t realise that at the
make excuses. George says that he’s probably apologised for without a sniff of a hit. beginning. But I don’t suppose I’d have got my band together if it
something that he’s said or done just twice in his life. The Boy has Perhaps it’s the spectre hadn’t have been for Malcolm.
no time for stagey politeness, he’s incredibly impatient, and he’s of the controversial “I’d started the band before I met Malcolm but after a while I just
sedan chair waving
convinced that a lively blessed honesty is something of more than Boy George that keeps
couldn’t be bothered. Once they threw me out of Bow Wow Wow
passing importance. the public hemming I got really pissed off and, first of all, I just wanted revenge, and to
His fast and funny conversation bites into the backs of snivelling and hawing. True, on be exactly like them but better. Just rip them off. Then I decided
sycophants and bores. Every sentence The Boy George utters is the cover he’s pictured I had to do something of my own. Because I’m a good singer!”
doing that clumsy dance
framed by a disgusted snort or a delighted titter, or both. If he that our society’s “free-
George grins happily and serves up gallons of seedy, sordid Bow
doesn’t like you – and he’ll make up his mind straight away – you’ll er” children always feel Wow Wow gossip. He’s in his element. Yap, snap, titter, snort.
feel his snap. George is shamelessly common, yet he talks a rare, prone to, that is, elbows
formidable common sense. If you want to get anything done you out like a chicken and George on… scandal
the old arse pushed out
have to concentrate hard when you’re talking with him. As soon as waving around in some
“I’m not a scandalous person. I would never ever sell my sex life to
he spots the off-white lack of imagination of a fool he snaps. positive statement to the papers. Everyone I’ve ever loved I’ll love ’til I die! The people
I risk a snap. our undoubted African that I love, I wouldn’t talk about them explicitly because there’s no
What’s your favourite sexual position, George? heritage. But they’re a need. And most of the people I’ve been out with would be really
talented group; what
The restless eyes react first, and then… can I tell you?
embarrassed if it became known because they’re considered to
“Cuddling, with all my clothes on. Embracing, that’s my Danny Baker be really straight. Nobody’s perfectly straight, you know. What a
favourite sexual position. What’s yours?” boring way to be if you’re perfectly straight!”

George on… boredom

George has ended up in a position where he will “It’s boredom that makes me still want to go out to clubs. Who
be smack at the centre of attention. He’s going to wants to stay in? I go to bed sometimes and then get up to go out.
I go to bed and lie there and I think, ‘Hell I can’t stand it, I’ll get
be a pop star and he’s capable of being good up and go out. I’ll get drunk.’ I’m not going to get drunk to relieve
myself in some way; I’m going out to get drunk so I’ll fall asleep
when I get back home. I lead a really silly life!”

I’m turning the spotlight on you George.

George and the
“Well, come on then. Ask some questions.” boys on Top Of
How honest are you going to be in this interview? The Pops, 1982
“I don’t know. I might say something completely different in
two days time; which is why it doesn’t matter. I’ve got no illusions.
I know that I haven’t got a brilliant mind that needs to be poured
onto the pages.”
What did you want to be when you were a little boy?
“A little girl!!! That’s a joke, by the way. I’m not a transvestite.
Everyone thinks I am, but I’m not. I wear Y-fronts! I’m a man! I’m
quite manly, actually. I don’t think I’m as puffy as I’m made out to
be. I’m not a gay or anything like that.”
RETNA/DAVID JOHNSON/REDFERNS

What do you feel about people who are hostile because of your
appearance?
“I think it’s really stupid. But people don’t hassle me that much.
People don’t seem to want to hit me. I don’t know why! They sort
of look at me and say, ‘Is that a geezer or a woman?’ And then they
don’t bother hitting you, they’re like mesmerised. And you can

TLFeBOOK
 Culture Club
George on… money
“With the punk thing everyone was making impractical attacks
on being rich or having money, y’know, but they all wanted to
be rich. You have to be. I’ve got plenty of money, well, quite a lot.
I’m not a millionaire or a thousandaire or anything. But I’ve got
enough. I just want money so that I can be really irresponsible.”
George on… David Bowie
“He came down to Blitz, to get people for the ‘Ashes To Ashes’
video, and he sent this girl down to get people who looked ‘weird’
and I was one of them y’know, and she said, ‘DB wants to see you
upstairs!’ And I said, ‘Who’s that?’ And she whispered in my ear,
‘David Bowie.’ And I just went, ‘Oh yeah…’
“A lot of people want to be David Bowie. I don’t. I think he’s had
it really. I think he’s great, brilliant, but he’s just there like Harrods
or Frank Sinatra. I wasn’t asked to do the video. I’m pleased.
I wouldn’t have done it anyway.”
“I’m still really childish,” The Boy George tells me. “I’ve never
really grown up. I think that’s a good thing.”
Boy George’s group Culture Club release their first Virgin single
“I don’t want to be a boring pop star, I don’t want
next week: ‘White Boy’ is already causing a stir.
The Boy and his boys Jon Moss (drums/percussion), Roy Hay
(guitars/keyboards/piano) and Michael Craig (bass) have the best
look of a pop group since Japan or The Fire Engines or DAF or
Stimulin, and their sweetly spiced, correctly sexed sound spins new
shades and tints and blurs out into the current colour-motion.
George has not thought once about the general ‘rock’ barriers:
he’s not even reacting against them, like some of his predecessors.
The natural extension of the post-rock events is a… naturalness.
“We want to work at what we do, not analyse it, just get better.
Culture Club are real amateurs and that’s it for now. There are
things we want to learn… oh, fuck the music, I don’t want to talk
about music anyway.”
Is it a career, so to speak?
“Well, that remains to be seen. It is a career in the sense that I’ve
signed up for five years.”
No!!!
“I have! But I’m happy about it.”
It’s ludicrous!
“I’m capable!”
What were you doing five years ago?
“I was living in suburbia. Look at me now!”
So where will you be in five years? Back in suburbia?
“I won’t. I’ve got a lot of go ahead. I have! I mean,
listen, we didn’t get a record deal just by sending
photographs to Virgin. We actually did gigs and got
shouted at and called queers. I think it’s good how we’ve
done it. My little sister loves the record and that’s all I’m
interested in.”
George titters, and looks for something else to talk about.
George on… love and sex
“I fall in love all the time, 24 hours a day. I fall in love with
people for really silly reasons. I think it’s good and healthy to
be in love with people. I always go out with very nice people
and I love all of them. Not mentioning any names…”
What’s the type of person you’re likely to fall in
love with?
“The lorry driver’s mate… ’cos they’re oppressed.
I don’t go out with people just for the sake of having sex.
It’s too messy to have people like that in your life. They
always hang around you and never go away. People
never go at 3am after you’ve had sex with them. They
just won’t go away, will they? I used to do all that
years ago. I thought I was fulfilling some need in me
but I wasn’t. Now, I just can’t be bothered.”
Did you lose your virginity to a boy?
“No, I did not! I went off with loads of girls at school.
I used to be the person to go out with at school, because
I was such a poof. I did think I was David Bowie then.”
22 NME ORIGINALS
Jon wonders why
George is always
at the front in
band photos
to be a rock star and I never will be. What the hell
have I got to do with rock’n’roll?” Boy George
George on… Warhol, Einstein and Monroe
“I hate Andy Warhol. I really hate him. Malcolm’s much funnier.
Andy Warhol really takes himself seriously. It’s just terrible. He’s an
idiot. Like a big cheesecake on legs. I just think he’s so awful.”
Do you like Albert Einstein?
“I’ve never heard of him…”
He was a scientist…
“Oh, he’s on the cover of that M single isn’t he?”
He thought that the physical body was something of a handicap.
“He probably couldn’t get what he wanted. People always make
these big ideas up about things if they can’t get what they want.”
He had Monroe.
“So what? Marilyn Monroe was just a glorified transvestite.”
“I’ve stopped wearing as much make-up lately,” The Boy George
tells me. “I’m cutting down. It’s my natural look.”
The Boy George may be painted and powdered and intolerant
and cleverly unsettling, but he talks like a comedian.
“Do I? That’s great! Maybe that’s my true vocation in life…
actually, you print that and I’ll kill you; I’ll bomb your house.”
George, beneath the banter and the bitching – or because of it –
represents as much as anyone the new acceptance that the massive
cultural pressures, and complications mustn’t be allowed to
confuse and compromise.
Culture Club are up-to-date because they simply
get on with establishing a quality, a procedure, a
pattern that is unique to themselves but which loosely
corresponds with other actions and activities. It is
an attempt to recreate or recover a purity that can
develop into something unknown and delicious.
There is at the heart of Culture Club a necessary,
indefinable hardness.
“I don’t give a shit. I don’t want to be a
boring pop star, I don’t want to be a rock star
and I never will be. How could I? What the
hell have I got to do with rock’n’roll? I take
this seriously enough to want to do it, to
want to be a success, but if it fails I’m not
going to hide. Who gives a damn? I’m
just not desperate.”
The Boy George looks
LFI/REX/BRIAN ARIS
around warily to see if anyone
overheard him: and then he
laughs at himself.
TLFeBOOK
 C

NME 16 OCTOBER 1982 PAGE 16

When is a boy not

a boy? When’s he’s Boy
George of course. Here he talks
to Lynn Hanna about gender,
culture and fashion plus the
things that keep a boy
swinging…

THE
EVERYBODY
CULTURE
I
t’s George’s birthday – no biological landmark but a time
of transition for a boy about town with big ambitions.
Today is Tuesday, and Culture Club have a successful
single that’s just climbed the charts to Number Three.
This same week has seen the release of their first LP.
Tonight there’s a concert for London’s Capital Radio to
be broadcast from Camden Palace. And almost overnight Boy
George has become a bona fide pop star, a public figure with a
famous face.
The Boy’s full of beans, but not completely bowled over. He
looks back on a life that’s been crammed with fun, and turns
towards the future with a trace of trepidation. For a boy who has
always seemed accessible, unselfconscious and almost everywhere
at once – whether working in a clothes shop off Carnaby Street
or unostentatiously enjoying himself in the thick of London
nightlife – there’s an inkling of other considerations soon to be
confronted…
“The other day I went into a hamburger shop on Oxford Street.
I was dressed up and I forgot. I mean, I don’t feel there’s anything
to forget. I was hungry and I thought I’d better get something to
eat. These little kids got around me in a circle, poking me. It was
quite amusing, because they were going, ‘Are you the girl from
Culture Club?’ And I said, ‘Well, actually, I’m not a girl.’
“It’s great, all that, because you don’t deliberately set out to do
anything, and I really haven’t. I don’t think I look like a girl, I’m
just a bloke with bit of an ego problem, I suppose.”

NME ORIGINALS 23
TLFeBOOK
 Culture Club

George arrives at the Virgin offices immaculately attired, his

long hair falling in a profusion of plaits from under a high hat, his
face perfectly painted, the bone structure delicately shaded and his
eyes emphasised with discreet shades of lilac.
Spend a few minutes in his company and George’s appearance
and personality blend into a happy, lively, harmonious whole.
But when we walk through west London to look for some lunch,
strollers stop to gape and double-take.
The Boy is as bold as brass and has the cheek of the devil. When
a workman leaning from some scaffolding rudely attracts his
attention, not sure at the distance whether he’s ogling an object of
ridicule or arousal, George looks up sharply.
“Jump, wanker!” he shouts.
Boy George drinks tea and eats steak and baked potatoes.
He’s an anti-elitist who squashes pretension and pounces on
pomposity. George is shrewd and candid, occasionally spiteful
and well attuned to the sheer absurdity of his own situation. Warm
and witty, with one of those faces that explode into a smile, The
Boy’s no fool and you’ll occasionally catch him shooting you an
appraising look from under his long lashes. Just as Culture Club
are making some of the most logical and delightful pop of the
present, so George is all set to become one of the best of modern
music stars. Sane in the right places and humane where it matters
most, with sufficient self-respect not to take himself too seriously,
George is garrulous and fizzy – but not too dizzy.
Point him in the general direction of a question and he’s off on a
quicksilver catalogue of loves, hates, fears, desires and furies…

Origins Culture Club rock

the gay American
“It isn’t George and Culture Club, it’s Culture Club – and that’s footballer look,
how it’ll always be, I really like the band… well, personally there’s Washington 1983
a few things I dislike about them, because I’m a difficult
person to get on with. I’m very temperamental and
quite selfish in my opinions.
“There was that big thing in NME about how I wasn’t
in Bow Wow Wow any more and how I should get my
own band. I found Jon through Kirk Brandon from
Theatre Of Hate. Jon’s been in a hell of a lot of bands
and I knew I wasn’t capable of organising one. I met
Michael in a nightclub. We wanted a guitarist who was
just a competent guitar player, never heard of me, never
been to any of the clubs, just someone who was really
enthusiastic. I really liked Roy as soon as I met him. He
was quiet, didn’t have a big mouth.
“That’s how it started. No fairy story; basically like
a lot of bands. I wanted to get people who didn’t agree In the early days
with me. It’s quite good that we got people who weren’t George earned
some extra cash
involved in that cliquey rock’n’roll thing. I hate the sort as a scarecrow
of people who come up to you afterwards and say, ‘Hey,
man, the bass stack was a bit crackly.’ That artistic crap.

and if people come up to me and say, ‘Congratulations,’ I’ll just say,

Boy George drinks tea and eats steak and
baked potatoes. He’s an anti-elitist who squashes
pretension and pounces on pomposity
“I believe in doing what you’re good at. If you’re good at copying
pictures, you should do that; if you’re good at creating things, you
should create them. There’s no Flash Harrys in this band.”
The norm, fear and fashion
‘Fuck off.’ Not because I’m trying to be an anarchist little pop star,
but because I don’t think I’m someone special and I’m not doing it
for that reason. I don’t need people coming up to me and saying,
‘Now you’re OK, now you’re acceptable.’ I don’t want to ever see
those people, ever. And I don’t want them involved with my life.
“I’m not frightened of not being successful, I’m frightened of not
being successful as a person. I’d much rather that people think, ‘Oh,
he’s a happy person,’ rather than, ‘Wow, isn’t he clever?’ Because I’m
not. It’s all luck and what you make of it.
“The only nice thing is that if a housewife comes up to you
in the street and says, ‘I like your record.’ You feel much better
than if someone with a really sickly sneer on their face says,
‘Ooh, congratulations, it’s sooo good.’ You just really want to
RETNA/JUSTIN THOMAS/ANDRE CSILLAG

“I’m just a normal person. I’m not an Andy Warhol, I’m not a
concept. I’m just a normal Hello John from down the road.
“I’ve got beliefs, but I don’t mean that’s it and that’s all you should
believe from me. Confidence comes and goes, it’s a human thing.
“Last night I was so pissed off; I think that was the loneliest I’ve
ever felt. People are being nice to you because… I’m very cynical
punch them.
“I know why people hate me. The thing is, if you go to the Palace,
those people are very normal. I’m not saying they’re idiots because
they dress up or don’t dress up, but their reasons for doing it are
very silly. They really want to be normal and they actually fit into
that environment perfectly because they want so much to be like

24 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

everyone else. I suppose I’m the sort of person who
spends most of their time trying not to be like everyone
else, which is probably why I’m so ordinary. I feel so
natural in what I’m doing.
“It’s quite sad, that big fear of alienation. You get it at
school, because you’re taught not to have a personality,
it’s better for them if you don’t. I’m not saying I hate
school, but I think it could be done a bit better. I think
there’s a lot of things about this country that could be
done be better.
“It’s a fear of not being accepted by other people. I went through
that at school, but it hardened me up. It made me more secure
because I suddenly realised why people were doing it. I mean,
“I know why people hate me. I suppose I’m the
sort of person who spends most of their time
trying not to be like everyone else” Boy George
TLFeBOOK
Culture Club C
I look at people and think, ‘Idiot!’ But if I meet them I’m
prepared to back down. Unless people meet you on your
level, they’re never going to know what you’re like, are they?
They’re going to say, ‘I don’t like him because he wears
make-up.’ If they project their uprightness on you, that’s
their problem.
“Don’t picture me “‘White Boy’ is not about white people, it’s about
with no gender people who are shallow, see-through. Also, at the time
bender, fool!”: I started, there were a lot of cynical people around me,
Boy G meets Mr T who I don’t mix with any more. A lot of Bow Wow Wowites
and a lot of very trendy people. They were saying to me, ‘Ooh,
your band’s really white, you should be tribal.’ I just kept
saying, ‘We’re a rock band, we’re going to do all the things other
people don’t.’
“The song’s about this guy I knew who kept saying, ‘You’re really
white.’ I was supposed to be upset by that.”
Optimism
George hails the waiter with a friendly grin and a polite holler.
“I’m leaving the mushrooms. I didn’t think they’d be like that.
I’m optimistic.”
NME ORIGINALS 25

Gender
“All the other countries are really frightened about the LP cover,
because a lot of people just think I’m a girl. Of course I enjoy that,
I love it! It’s great because I’ve got a certain female element to my
character. But I’m not a poof. I’m effeminate in the way I look, but
I’m not an effeminate person. I don’t like effeminate people. It’s
like when you meet gay people and they say, ‘Oh, hello.’ That is put
on, because I’ve done it, put on a very camp voice. You do need gay
clubs, because if you’re gay and you walk up to someone in a club
and they’re not gay, they’re going to punch you in the teeth, aren’t
they, if you try and chat them up? But I don’t believe in the gay
identity, that you have to be noted and recognised as gay.
“In that album there’s a lot of references to gender. When we
first started I wasn’t aware of it, but when we did ‘White Boy’
everyone was saying, ‘Who’s the girl?’ That’s why I called myself
Boy George.
“I really like symbols, so I decided to use the sex symbols on the
cover. It’s a heterosexual symbol, but it doesn’t have to be.”
Instinct and aggression
“There is an element of you wants success, but you follow your
instincts really, don’t you? You want to have a hit because that’s the
whole idea of signing a record deal. But if you start worrying what
other people think, you’re useless to yourself.
“It’s best if you don’t lie to yourself. I don’t mind about lying to
other people – I do it all the time! If you can admit you’re a creep
to yourself, you’re halfway to solving your problems. I always do
what I feel is right at the time. Sometimes it isn’t, but it’s much
better to take the chance. I believe in acting how you feel, I’m very
like that.
“Of course I get annoyed, I’m a human being, I’m not a star.
It’s not all this, ‘Oh you can’t embarrass yourself.’ I’d just go up to
them and say, ‘Look, don’t fucking slag me off, ’cos if you do, I’ll
punch you.’ I’m always going to be like that. If they’re going to slag
me off, they’re going to get it back.”
“I’m not a poof. I don’t like
George and
his amazing
Technicolor
dreamcoat, 1983
MM 10 SEPTEMBER 1983 PAGE 22
CULTURE CLUB
KARMA CHAMELEON
Virgin
Boy, did we get Culture
Club all wrong. George
offered himself as bait,
invited ridicule and
promptly got it with a
vengeance. With what
one imagines to be
immense satisfaction,
he’s systematically and
painstakingly proceeded
to stuff our cynicism
down our beer-infested
throats and this should
justly be regarded as
a classic. As perfect an
exhibition of pure pop
as any of us are likely
to hear all year.
Colin Irwin
TLFeBOOK
Character and stardom
“Character’s something you have to create, you can’t get it by dressing
up. I like old women that you meet at bus stops. They’re characters,
it’s not someone who comes up to you and says, ‘I was a punk in ’76.’
Remember that old rigmarole? I hated all that, such a load of shit.
“I’ve got a snotty nose. Sorry. It’s very un, er, star-like, isn’t it?”
Culture Club at Camden Palace for Gary Crowley’s Capital
Birthday Party are shrill girlish screams and a shower of confetti.
Culture Club look good, but there’s no sly gloss or nasty attention
grabbing – two girl singers, one wearing glasses, have been chosen
for more enduring qualities than mere appearance.
Culture Club make a lovely music that’s clear and sheer and
sunny and there’s a pleasure taken in its communication that
defies distance. In the middle of this musical melée, George is a
warm, coquettish presence. Handing out posters, listening to small
requests or dedicating a song to his sister, he has the gracious glow
of a cherished but slightly snappish maiden aunt after two glasses of
Christmas sherry. Something about the easy joy of Culture Club’s
performance turns a half-hour recording into a short celebration.
Unity
“I’ve got five brothers and one sister. It’s a real Irish family.
“You don’t have to accept someone’s culture to like them. It’s like
being Irish, all this Catholic and Protestant thing. You don’t have
to dislike someone for being Protestant just because someone else
effeminate people. I don’t believe
in the gay identity” Boy George
does. That was the idea of using all the symbols together so that it
was like an everyman culture rather than one-sided.
“We’ve dropped the Star of David now, because I’ve no intention
of hurting people’s feelings, and it’s not a very good time for that
symbol. I’m not anti-Arab and I’m not anti-Jew, but I don’t like the
idea of provoking people, sticking things down their throat.”
Love, sex and marriage
“Of course I fancy people, but I don’t usually sleep with people
I fancy. I sleep with people I don’t fancy and then I really like them.
I don’t like people who are physically everything and psychologically
nothing. People who’ve just got their sexuality are pretty sad.
“I’m not a very sexy person. That’s one thing about people who
are into the band, it’s not like, ‘Woooaaar, I’d like to go to bed with
George.’ It’s more they like what I say and the idea of me. You are
what you give out to people.
“The whole idea of calling the album ‘Kissing To Be Clever’ is like
the kiss of death, the kiss of life. The whole of that album is like a
cynical love song. The best songs in the world are love songs. But
love applies to everyone. It doesn’t just apply to a few people in the
room with pink eyebrows and stilettos on. Everybody falls in love
and everybody wants somebody to love at the end of the day. I’ve
been in love with somebody for about a year now, but it’s a bit on
the rocks at the moment. I don’t play games with people. I don’t
not love them because they don’t love me. It upsets me, but I don’t
believe in acting a different way. I’m into relationships rather than
sexual encounters.
“I don’t believe in marriage. If you love someone you don’t have
to prove it. The thing is, I can go two ways on that subject, because if
you love someone you’re going to want to keep them forever, aren’t
you? You can’t be dogmatic about love, it’s such a heart-rending
thing. I’m sure I’d get married if I loved someone.”
REX FEATURES
Hypocrisy
“I’m like that – a hypocrite. An honest hypocrite, I hope.”
 D
is for ...

27
RETNA

NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Duran Duran

28 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Duran Duran D

A
s the straining cordon of policemen
splits under the frantic pressure
of budding femininity, the coach
swerves away from Glasgow Apollo
and speeds though the dark, wet
back streets.
Soon the last gang of pursuers stumble back into the
distance and a solitary figure keeps abreast of the coach,
running as if its life is at stake. The coach just clips through
an amber light and still the figure keeps coming, madly
ignoring the Green Cross Code.
“Pull up! Stop!” yells Roger Taylor and the coach jerks
twice and coasts to a halt. The automatic doors purr open
and young Mark Duffy, heaving with exhaustion and
excitement, staggers up the steps to rapturous applause. standards? Is it because
Shirt sleeves
“Please will you put ‘I was in your coach’?” he asks they wear make-up? Just why do
just seemed so
Nick Rhodes as the lipstick blond signs his programme. unnecessary they offend mature sensibilities?
“Please… otherwise my friends won’t believe me…” back in the ’80s And why do they sell so many
OK, although the incident’s true, you’ve read it many records? Only one way to find out…
times before. Duran Duran: pop stars, candyfloss gods Yours truly nipped up north of the border with the
to a new generation of gullible adolescents with more
pocket money than sense. If only the stupid sheep On the road express purpose of confronting Duran with their
own reputation and giving them a rare right of reply.
would scream and lend financial support to the Nick Rhodes provided the most apt preamble.
worthy likes of the Gang Of Four, the world would be in Scotland, Duran Duran “We are probably the only band that’s known
a better place. Well… er… wouldn’t it? as five individuals. We are five very different
I, for one, quite honestly doubt it and have caught a open their hearts to personalities as The Beatles were four.
fair amount of flak in the past for being stupid enough “There can be up to five contradictions at any
Steve Sutherland
REX FEATURES/TOM SHEEHAN

to say so. Here, at Maker Central, my rapturous review
of the ‘Rio’ album is still the subject of ridicule and
considered an unbalanced lapse of common sense.
But just why do the press find Duran Duran unacceptable?
Do they pose some threat to jealously guarded traditional
one point. I think this interview is important
because we’ve never ever been able to level our how
MM 13 NOVEMBER 1982 PAGE 24 we felt exactly about all those things… I think it’s really
interesting… about the reasons why…”
Appetite whetted? Here goes…

Wild boys: (l-r)

John Taylor, Roger
LFI/REX FEATURES

Taylor, Simon Le
Bon, Nick Rhodes
and Andy Taylor

NME ORIGINALS 29
TLFeBOOK
 Duran Duran
Duran Duran are all image and no content
Nick Rhodes: “Because we came over with a certain flamboyancy
in the initial stages, a lot of people thought we were irresponsible
and naive and didn’t deserve the success we seemed to be having.
“However, what they fail to realise is that John and I had been
working on the idea of crossing Chic and the Sex Pistols two and
half years before Duran Duran. We wanted to be striking like
I remember Roxy Music were the first time they were on the Old
Grey Whistle Test. I was what? Ten or 11, and everybody
at school the next day was talking about them. That’s the
way we wanted it to be, bright and powerful.
“I see no difference between us and Edwyn Collins of
Orange Juice wearing a pair Oxford bags with braces – it’s
all image. Take young Kevin Rowland – what a master of
image he is! Just because he wears an anorak and boxing
boots instead of a frilly shirt and a pair of leather trousers,
he’s a genius to certain political sectors of the music press.”
Andy Taylor: “How fuckin’ thick of the press to base
their whole concept of a band on image and not on music.”
Duran Duran are a sickly confectionery
John Taylor: “The sort of people we sell to do not question
our relevance to society and, until they feel we’re giving
them a raw deal, I don’t think we have to answer to anybody.
I don’t see why we should have to satisfy what I consider to
be petty semi-graduate university thinking.”
Nick Rhodes: “We never intended to be uncompromising.
We never intended on to be on Factory Records. We aren’t
looking for pity, we’re looking for hit songs. If we and all the
other bands weren’t there, it would be so drab. I think we’re a
“We never intended to be uncompromising, or
on Factory Records. We aren’t looking for pity,
we’re looking for hit songs” Nick Rhodes
catalyst for good environmental karma.”
Andy Taylor: “I don’t even know what catalyst means but that
sounds exactly perfect.”
Simon Le Bon: “I don’t see it that way at all. We have got
something to offer people – an ideology that comes over in the
songs. I’m trying to pick on something positive, give over a positive
attitude rather than a negative one.”
Duran Duran are self-obsessed careerists
Nick Rhodes: “I don’t think it’s a crime for a band to comprise five
very ambitious people who take a lot of care over their artistic values
and work hard to get through to as many people as possible.”
John Taylor: “We are careerists. I see music as my career, but
it’s also my dream and what I do best so I’m very lucky in that
respect. We have had to plan and too many people equate that
with being a calculating concern and not with being professionals
and perfectionists… or, at least, trying to be.”
Simon Le Bon: “What’s wrong with being a
careerist? On the other hand,
I agree with what Pete Townshend
said, that if you haven’t got an
axe to grind, then you should
be in the cabaret. We have got
something to say – just because
it’s not screaming in agony doesn’t
mean it’s not a statement.”
Duran Duran exploit the
fantasies of teenage girls
Simon Le Bon: “If you value money
more than communication, then
there’s a very large danger of that
30 NME ORIGINALS
“It’s hardly ‘Rio’
weather!”: Duran
on the road in
the UK, 1982
happening. But we’re in it to prove what can be done.”
John Taylor: “I’ve been a fan. I can relate to them on
that level and I don’t like it when people run it down.
I think a lot of people go through that period of fan
worship or whatever before they find themselves.”
Simon Le Bon: “I think it’s crazy. I feel like saying to them when
they’re standing outside the hotel in the rain, ‘C’mon, you’re gonna
catch a cold. Go home and have a cuppa tea.’”
John Taylor: “You are responsible for them. We have far greater
power over our audience than Paul Weller will ever have with his
because we really could stand onstage and say, ‘Go out and break the
walls of Babylon! Now!’And they would!”
Duran Duran are too damn perfect
Andy Taylor: “I forgot to send my dad a copy of ‘Rio’ when it came
out, I haven’t had enough time to house-train my dog properly so it
shits on the carpet…”
Nick Rhodes: “I lost my wallet the other day, I lost a camera a
month before and I lost a bag two months before that…”
Simon Le Bon: “Mistakes? I don’t talk about mistakes, I learn
from them.”
Duran Duran are arrogant little oiks
Nick Rhodes: “It’s not arrogance, it’s confidence!”
John Taylor: “As long as the five of us keep it together mentally,
there’s nobody to move where we can move. The Human League
may sell a lot of records, but they’ll never play Madison Square
NME 18 JULY 1981 PAGE 18
Garden. I think we will…”
Simon Le Bon: “I don’t know. I’m not a prophet, I’m a singer.”
DURAN DURAN
GIRLS ON FILM John Taylor: “If you look at most of our interviews, one after
EMI another is a justification of our own existence. We’ve always had to
SOMEBODY PLAY THEM leap to our defence.”
THE ISLEY BROTHERS!
This is an innocuous My strategem was, of necessity, the wrong tack; forcing
impersonation of a true
blue funk. SOMEBODY confrontations over my priorities, not theirs. It was, at best, a start to
PUNCH ME! This is so understanding that Duran Duran’s five-way fragmented philosophy
numbingly adequate it takes no heed of the traditional, ridiculous notion that pop should
could make you squeal be overtly rebellious and prone to expressing a liberal conscience.
with irritation. Duran
Duran look like such Duran Duran say pop shouldn’t have to be anything at all and,
Doodle Dandy partyline therefore, can be anything. I recognised this conclusion too late to
twits. Conclusion: tackle them on their terms. That comes next time. But it’s not too
something like, if the late for you to go back, tear off your blinkers, lay your preconceptions
TOM SHEEHAN
sap fits, bear it?
Ian Penman aside and listen to Duran Duran for what they are not for what your
puritanical expectations demand they should be.
TLFeBOOK
 Steve Sutherland
reports from Montserrat
where Duran Duran are
recording their
new album
MM 23 JULY 1983 PAGE 23

FANTASY
ISLAND
U
nder the sweltering threat of an imminent
hurricane, the West Indian island of
Montserrat is the last place you’d look for
the potentially biggest and undoubtedly best
band in the world.
Duran Duran have been recording in
Montserrat for five weeks, writing and recording new songs,
rehearsing for their two prestigious British shows at the Dominion
Theatre and Villa Park and testing the patience and know-how
of co-producers Alex Sadkin (Grace Jones) and Ian Little (Roxy
Music) to the limits of human endurance.
Nick is deathly white, Roger is bronzed but sluggish, Simon’s
casual and chipper, John’s brown but bored and Andy spends
much of his time studying form for the local crab races. Overleaf
you’ll find their musings on everything under the burning sun, but
before that, John wants to give you one or two words of advice:
“If you’re eating out, don’t touch the Mountain Chicken.”
Why not? “Nice island.
“It’s frog!” Let’s buy it!”

TLFeBOOK
 “‘Club Tropicana,
drinks are free…’
Sorry, got the
wrong band!”

Duran did some

modelling for
the Littlewoods
catalogue while
in Montserrat

John on Charles’n’Di
“I quite like the idea of meeting the chaps. I won’t be as
nervous as when I met David Bowie, though. I mean,
it’s nothing I’ve ever dreamt about doing but, now it’s
happening, I’m quite pleased about it.” Roger on stardom
“Nothing’s really changed. I feel exactly
Andy on his pals, the press the same as I felt three years ago. It’s such a gradual process and
“The critics tried to kill this band and, in not succeeding, it just I’m still with the same people I was with three years ago only in a
shows how powerless they are even though they hold themselves totally different station.”
in such high esteem. Basically people who like music have got
enough brains to judge for themselves. Nick on fans
“I can’t wait to see what the critics will say about our new album “In one magazine I seem to remember saying that I had a black cat
– it’ll get slagged to death and d’you know what I like about it? called Sebastian. The cat now gets more fan mail than me!”
Every time someone slags us, they’re insulting a lot of people who
will take it personally. Because we put up with so much stick from John on film
day one, all we ever did was do what we wanted to do.” “I haven’t got a burning desire to be an actor. It’s something I’d
quite like to do but, no, I can’t see myself being good at it. Then
Roger on travel again, Roger Moore’s got away with it for 20 years and, I mean,
“When you start out in a band, you think it would be great to make I can raise my bloody eyebrow like that!”
it and be able to sit around and drink champagne and you wouldn’t
have to work and you’d have lots of money but once you’ve tasted MM 19 MARCH 1983 PAGE 19 Simon and the bands that tie
success and worse, I think work becomes more important than “We’re still good mates, definitely – better than we’ve ever
DURAN DURAN
anything else. You tend to find yourself on holiday for a week and IS THERE SOMETHING been. We’re always together, we’ve never really had the kind of
you’re just itching to get back. You just become so accustomed to I SHOULD KNOW? relationship where we just got together to get down to work – the
EMI
work and success or whatever, you just have to keep going. It’s like fact is, we’ve been working all the time. We’ve haven’t stopped!
a drug, I suppose. The thing about Duran “The biggest holiday I’ve had was when I went to Sri Lanka
“When we came here it was, ‘Oh God! Montserrat!’ But it’s just Duran is that they always earlier this year for a month or so and that’s the longest I’ve spent
put out really infectious
like anywhere else. I mean, all we’ve done is record, play pool, swim pop records and you end away from the band since I joined. We’ve had to become very
and play table tennis – we could be in Birmingham or anywhere!” up going round singing tolerant of one another. We’ve had our personal differences, we’ve
them all the time. I had great big personal differences, but we still cope with them.”
Nick on the great escape really liked ‘Rio’, but this
is them at their most
“It was getting pretty hectic in London before we left. I mean, the unmemorable. Whether Roger on the future
daily papers were getting so persistent, I couldn’t go anywhere. you like or hate a Duran “I can see us going on at this rate for five years or whatever until we
I went to a restaurant one night and they were waiting outside! It Duran record, you get bored. I think if we were gonna start fragmenting and going
was getting a bit much. We’d have been prisoners if we’d stayed. can always recognise our own ways, we’d have started doing it by now. We’ll always
it as being them, but
“At that time, after the Rock And Pop Awards, I think there was this could have been keep going for new heights but, also, maintaining it is probably
a big burst. I mean, there was no other band to cover at that time anybody – it reminds harder than actually getting there. To me, to maintain it is one of
and the ironic thing is, until that stage, we’d never really had any me of The Beatles’ the ultimate things. David Bowie’s done it for the last ten years or
daily coverage, we’d always avoided it because a lot of it is nonsense. harmonies in the ’60s. whatever and, to me, that’s more important than somebody who
Marc Almond
So it was nice for us to get away and get some perspective.” just gets there, stays big for a year and then that’s it, they just go.”

32 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

‘Seven And The Ragged Tiger’
Andy: “This is probably the album we wanted to
make first time round but it takes a few to get it
right. I dunno what we do after that. We’ll have to
wait and see what everyone else is up to! This is the
first time we’ve made an album with a sort of blind
naivety – if it sounds good, that’ll do.”
Still in its formative stages, at present the third
Duran Duran album comprises eight new songs in
various states of disarray.
‘Union Of The Snake’ is, possibly, the next single;
a hard, heady funk track with a characteristically
infectious melody. ‘The Reflex’, likewise, is sharper
and more brutal than anything they’ve recorded before
– a terrace anthem enticed on to the dancefloor.
The title track, ‘Seven And The Ragged Tiger’, has
already taken up permanent residency in this hack’s
memory. With its Cockney Rebellish acoustic lilt and
rousing chorus, it could well prove to be the album’s
‘Save A Prayer’, a concert singalong favourite.
Simon: “It seems to me like the name of a kid’s book,
not so much the Famous Five more sort of piratey.
I find my subject matter is becoming increasingly more
childish. I’m looking at things I’m writing now and
they look even more childish than ‘Planet Earth’ did.
“People have often said to me, ‘Why don’t you write
songs which are easier to understand?’ I think it’s
because I like to write things which I don’t completely
understand myself.
“When we came here it was, ‘Oh God!
Montserrat!’ But it’s just like anywhere else –
we could be in Birmingham” Roger Taylor
“I’ve always liked poets like TS Eliot who are a little bit obscure
and that’s definitely part of my style, lyrically. Open interpretation
is very important. The best books I’ve ever read have always been
viewed differently by other people, they strike some very personal
note within you and it gets a reaction within you.”
From what little I’ve heard of ‘…Ragged Tiger’, ‘Is There
Something I Should Know?’ (not included on the album,
incidentally) was a mere indication of new ground being broken,
a signpost away from the cool concoctions of influences that
made up the first two albums towards the synthesis of a unique
and unmistakable dextrous rhythm play of Roger and John,
propelled by Andy’s brash but controlled guitars, embellished by
TLFeBOOK
D
The studio was
not up to the high
standards Duran
were used to
Nick does his best
to avoid getting
any semblance
of a suntan
Nick’s subtle synth patterns and crowned
by Simon’s progressively stronger and more
confident vocals, this is truly popular music,
music that encourages participation, a
celebration.
Nick: “This album, we’re going in with a
first album attitude: ‘Well, let’s think about
this. Exactly what do we want this to sound
like? Let’s not think a about the last album
at all, let’s think this is the first album’ which
I think is the most positive attitude you can
go in with to record your first, second, sixth
or 19th album.
“We thought: ‘This is a new album, let’s just do it how we want
to do it’ and that’s why I think we’re coming up with stuff that is as
original as the first album was at the time.”
They all agree that the sole shared notion they brought to
Montserrat was to make a dance album and, so far, they’re
succeeding spectacularly, although they reckon they have to
keep an eye on Alex Sadkin because his love of reggae slips out
occasionally and they don’t want to end up with ‘Duran Duran
In Dub’!
Due to be mixed in Sydney, Australia (“To give it the sharpness
of the city,” according to Roger) during late July and early August,
‘Seven And The Ragged Tiger’ should be in the shops sometime
in October.
John: “I think we’ve finally out-Chiced Chic after years of
plagiarism. This is the blackest a white band’s ever got.”
Duran fans can anticipate ecstasy without the slightest
trepidation; others had better prepare for the stunned
conversation.
Roger: “It’s reaching new heights all the time, not being satisfied
with your last album. I think as soon as you’re satisfied with the
album you’ve just recorded, it’s probably the end.”
NME ORIGINALS 33
 Duran Duran

They came in
search of paradise
and discovered… New
York. Steve Sutherland
hops aboard the glory ride to
congratulate Le Bon and the
boys on achieving their
ultimate ambition

I
““ t’s brilliant. I’ve made so many good friends in the
industry. I met Carly Simon; she’s writing a song for us.
Been out every night, ligging. Brilliant. Last night we
went to Liza Minelli’s birthday party – she’s in a show just
over the road. We sang her happy birthday and
she started crying and hugged us all. She’s just
like she is in the movies. She really likes us. We’re the
only new group she likes. I met Ronnie Wood, too, and
he knows all our names. I mean, imagine! One of the
Stones knowing all our names! And after Liza Minelli’s
we went to Eddie Murphy’s party at the Hard Rock and
then today I met Al Pacino. I mean… brilliant!”
Andy pauses for breath. I drop my suitcase. We’re in
the foyer of the Berkshire Place Hotel. I’ve been in New
York 20 minutes. I haven’t even checked in yet.
“Oh, by the way, Sticky,” Andy continues, “I’m a
millionaire now…”

Last July John told MM: “When we were starting, Nick

and I actually envisaged what stage we should be at each
year, worldwide. It wasn’t just sitting and dreaming, it was
Hammersmith in ’82, Wembley by ’83, Madison Square
Garden by ’84…”
Spot on schedule, America falls. Texas has just made them
honorary citizens, the deep South got down and boogied
and now these Madison Square Garden shows on March 19
and 21 are the first time ever that a band has debuted there
with two solo shows. They say the 20,060 tickets for the first Le Bon onstage at
show sold out in three hours. Madison Square
“It’s the dream,” says Andy. “It’s the dream you have when Garden, New
York, March 1984
you’re a kid. I think it’s the most prestigious gig in the world
– everyone’s played there who’s ever existed. I read about it in

DURANINDURAN
NEW YORK
MM 7 APRIL 1984 PAGE 12

34 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

Ian Hunter’s Diary Of A Rock’N’Roll Star when I was
11 and I’ve wanted to play there for the last 12 years.”
Backstage tonight is much like any other. Simon’s
playing Fighter Pilot, a video game, yelling out
his score while his father flaps over his son’s ailing
voice. All the parents except Andy’s are there, getting
bevvied up and singing English pub songs.
There’s vomit in the toilet so someone’s nervous,
although no-one’s letting on who.
While the band prepare, I nick one more beer and
make my way past the cops out front. The ceiling
looks like the spaceship in Close Encounters. Prince
Charles And The City Beat Band have just finished
their set – a thankless task in front of this crowd.
Nobody knows it yet but Ian Little, co-producer
of ‘…Ragged Tiger’ who’s supposed to be mixing
a recording of the show in a mobile, has just been
mugged for his pass and can’t get in because the
cops won’t believe him. No pass, no entry.
The intro tape starts and I feel sick and giddy.
The screaming’s so loud, I’m suffering vertigo, my hearing’s
impaired and my balance is going. It’s a cliché of course but over
here everything’s bigger if not better, screaming included.
The show itself is bolder than ever, tanked up and turned to the
audience’s taste. Simon dons a cap during ‘The Chauffeur’ and he
backflips from the horizontal onto his feet during the ‘Girls On
Film’ finale. Someone says at least it’s better than his dancing.
They still employ the video screen above the stage so that everyone
gets a fair eyeful, but this has developed along with the razzmatazz.
The filming’s damn near choreographed, the camerapersons are
aware of the onstage highlight every second of the show.
It’s irritating sometimes, the way Duran play with history.
We’ve seen this gross showmanship before. It’s old hat with no
humour, but to them it conveniently represents an escape from
dismal post-punk politico Puritanism. It was beginning to
depress me but I thought, what the hell? They do it so well, where’s
the harm? If Madison proved one thing though, it’s that Duran
are now unashamedly an American band working to American
standards. I can’t see the British love-affair lasting at this rate. This
over the top stuff doesn’t pass for fun where I come from, it passes
for insecurity. Still the show, as a show, is stunning.
Backstage after the show John is towelling himself down. Well,
I venture, you’ve done it.
What next?
“Uh… I dunno… Shea Stadium?”
Andy’s room
“Somebody must have slept here last night.”
Andy staggers back from the open door and surveys his living
room through a blinding headache and red eyes. It’s 4.30pm and
he’s just got up. It’s OK, though, he’s only just gone to bed.
“Uh… I dunno… eight… ten o’clock this morning… I dunno.
There were so many people here last night, when I got pissed off
I just closed the bedroom door and left them to it.”
He glances once again at the dismantled sofa, the body of
pillows of which are arranged in a vaguely human shape among
the overturned ashtrays, cigarette burns and half-empty bottles
that litter the carpet.
He picks up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with about a quarter-inch
TOMSHEEHAN
of fetid liquid in the bottom, makes to raise it to his lips, thinks
better of it and sets about opening a beer instead.
NEW YORK
Andy throws his
best rock god
pose at Madison
Square Garden
“It’s the dream you have when
NME 27 OCTOBER 1984 PAGE 26
DURAN DURAN
THE WILD BOYS
Parlophone
Duran Duran’s first
bad record – go on,
sneer. Let their desire
to visit faraway places
with strange sounding
names, dress up like
flaming fruits and date
models make up your
mind about their GREAT
pop singles, just because
they were never duplicit
enough to pretend that
they didn’t want to do it.
They have never
sounded more like a
respectable, masculinist
‘rock’ band, and they
have never sounded
worse. Le Bon’s voice
– never the strong prong
– is well to the fore,
sounding on the verge of
hysterical exhaustionand
their humourlessness
has started to grate.
Julie Burchill
TLFeBOOK
Duran Duran D
The air is rancid with stale fag smoke. We retire
to his bedroom where he idly flips a film on his
video and sets about reassembling his wardrobe.
Another day, another night in New York.
There’s no show tonight, so after last night’s
performance the band plus entourage plus
anybody who wants to be anybody this week in
NY had highlighted it down to the Limelight, a
church converted into a club riddled with a maze of
rooms. It’s all very would-be decadent: the owner
wears an eyepatch and upstairs in the library, the
champagne is free but they still play the Eagles.
It was a James Bond night – whether in honour
of JT nobody’s sure. Everybody got drunk and
when the place closed or everybody got bored – no-
one can remember – somebody suggested they all
pile back to Andy’s hotel room. Hence the mess…
Tomorrow the maid will refuse to clean this lot
up, the manager will agree and Andy will grab him
by the ear and insist it gets done. Today, though,
we talk and I wonder: is this really it – a hotel room
wrecked by folks you don’t know, forever wrecked by folks you
don’t know, forever waiting on room service?
“Well, if we toured like this for the next 10 years, I think we’d
become complete morons. I don’t think the human body or mind
is built to do that. We get crank calls so we’ve gotta have a secret
you’re a kid. The most prestigious
gig in the world” Andy Taylor
code to get through to our phones. I mean, it may sound stupid but
if someone’s gonna call you in the middle of the night and wind
you up saying: ‘I know where you’re staying. I hate your band…’
“It’s such an abnormal way of life. When I was at home last
Christmas, the first couple of mornings I woke up I thought I was
in a hotel. It takes a lot of time to adjust from being out on the
road leading a completely different method of life. I mean, I can’t
even have the old lady here because she’s four-and-a-half months
pregnant now so that’s even worse.”
He says he’s not too worried that sales in Blighty weren’t what
they should have been for ‘…Ragged Tiger’ – he claims it did half
a million in the first week alone so that can’t be too bad. I tell him
that many other pop people I meet don’t so much object to what
Duran sound like these days as what they stand for and the way
they go about things – their elitist attitude.
“People like stars in America,” he snorts. “It’s the American
way. Everyone’s a star in LA, you know.”
I attempt to articulate that I find it abnormal that folks hobnob
with other folks regardless of who they are just because they’re
famous but he doesn’t understand that he’s helping to build a new
hierarchy that needs to be smashed.
“Spandau Ballet aren’t playing Madison Square Garden. We
are. And that’s what we wanted.”
But is that so important?
He looks at me as if I’m stupid.
“Of course!”
NME ORIGINALS 35
 John and Nick
shield their eyes
from their shiny
polyester suits
Nick’s room
“I want two tickets for Andy Warhol, two for Francis Ford
Coppola…” Nick motions impatience with his eyebrows. “No,
that’s no good. How can I give Warhol restricted view seats? Look!
I want them here within half an hour. No! Half an hour!” He
slams the phone down.
“Sorry about that, chaps.”
He’s halfway across the lounge of his hotel suite when the phone
rings again. He passes his hand over his face, sighs, spins around
and walks back and answers it.
I check the room. Three Duran bootlegs lie on the sideboard:
‘Di’s Big Date’, ‘Religion’ and ‘Live ’83’. Andy looks like Feargal
Sharkey on the cover of one.
The bedroom door is ajar and I notice the phone by the bed’s
been torn from the wall. Nick explains that his girlfriend did it last
night. She can’t stand the calls anymore.
He puts down the phone. It rings again. The interview
never happens.
The limo
“John! John! I love you John!”
The limo, black with smoked windows and a bar and TV in
the back, pulls away from the crowd of battering hands.
“It had got to a point where everyone knew exactly what
each other was going to do.” Nick is explaining the tour so far.
“But last night, everyone was just going absolutely crazy and
getting into it.”
“John! John! I love you John!” A solitary girl has been chasing
the limo down the East 52nd Street and has caught it up at
the lights.
John tantalizes her by pressing a button and slightly lowering
the automatic windows. Nick sticks his head out of the skylight
and ducks it back in as the girl makes a lunge.
“Ha ha! The wind-up boys!”
The limo pulls off and Nick settles back into the Madison
post-mortem.
“I thought it was a thrill personally, I enjoyed it. We
were actually quite tense for the first time in ages.”
“I got worse,” John admits. “By the end, I was going
‘Oh God, I just wanna get off and say I’ve done it.’”
“John! I love you John!” The girl’s there again,
sobbing hysterically.
“This is starting to get a little bit embarrassing,”
says John. “Let’s lose this girl, shall we driver, because Simon Le Bon:
she’s gonna get herself killed in a minute. Let’s blast an inspiration
to both Hoddle
it down this bit.” and Waddle
36 NME ORIGINALS
Nick and Roger
tried out for
roles as extras
in Wall Street
Duran Duran are now unashamedly an American
band working to American standards, but I can’t
see the British love affair lasting at this rate
The limo duly accelerates and the girl falls to her knees with a
hideous wail.
“Oh God, I think she just died anyway,” John chuckles.
“Heart attack.”
Nick is no longer interested. “See that, Sticky,” he says, pointing
at the home of Q The Winged Serpent. “That’s the Chrysler
Building. I’m gonna buy that one day.”
The second show
Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t come to the second show. Or, at
least, nobody sees him. Warhol’s about though, as is Madonna
and the Chic crew. Tony Thompson and Nile Rodgers jam on
‘Girls On Film’, slipping in a bit of ‘Good Times’ for good measure.
The Bic lighters are all round the Garden for ‘New Moon On
Monday’, John attacks Simon with a tiger glove puppet, and the
show is relayed nationwide by radio. It’s just as well it’s not shown
on TV because someone’s nicked Simon’s chauffeur cap and
he’s fuming.
The band’s management had actually suggested that
they dedicate each song to a different city – “This one’s for
Detroit” and so on – but that seemed a trifle too tacky,
so Simon settles for: “We’re not just saying hello to you
in New York, we’re going out on a live broadcast to the
whole of bleedin’ America!”
The crowd cheers as the crowd should and the
band wave bye bye.
Tomorrow there’s a photo-session with
Harpers & Queen, then it’s on to the private
plane and another night, another city.
Duran’s world domination is well under
way but at what cost? It’s almost a matter
of fact beyond a cause for rejoicing.
I remember something Andy said:
“I’d rather pay the tax and live in
England than join that lot out there.
That’s the end, just living in a world of
stars. I’d rather go home and go out and
TOM SHEEHAN
get pissed with my brother-in-law.”
Even if he means it, it’s no longer on.
TLFeBOOK
 E
is for ...

NME ORIGINALS 37
TLFeBOOK
LFI
 Eurythmics

Crown of
MM 22 NOVEMBER 1986 PAGE 23

thorns
A
nnie Lennox grapples nervously with self-pitying way, but I come from the provinces and I didn’t
the little finger of her left hand. fit in. I didn’t belong. I didn’t know who I was…
She discreetly shifts into a more “It’s hard to carve your own path, but I did that…
threatening posture, lightly If it’s Wednesday it I went against the grain. I could have taken the so-
touches her crop of blonde called easy way out… I could have been a music
hair and stares at two freshly
packed suitcases on the floor in front of her.
must be Italy. Colin Irwin teacher or gotten married… it would have been
much less full of strife. It was really tough, but I
“I hate anger in me… I’m an angry person…”
But what are you so angry about?
joins Eurythmics on the feel I’ve emerged through that…”
Do you feel at ease with yourself now?
“I’m angry generally. The world is not a place
to be passive in. I didn’t ask to be born. You go
Milan leg of their world tour “No. NO! Do you know anybody who feels
at ease with themselves? Do you feel at ease with
through childhood and suddenly you’re hit with
adolescence and boy, that hits you!
and discovers fame and yourself? DO YOU?!? I don’t think many people
do. Life’s too dangerous to feel at ease. Life’s
“For me growing up wasn’t easy. It was full of
strife, full of… difficulty… finding out who I was. wealth isn’t all it’s cracked too… dangerous…”

That was very tough for me. I don’t mean this in a For the next two nights it’s Milan. They think
up to be Milan. It could be Barcelona or Lausanne or Detroit
or Newport Pagnell. It’s somewhere halfway round the
world and it’s part of a conspiracy that’s claiming a year of
their lives.
Why do they do it, these people? For fame? Wealth? Ego? The
craving for adulation? It screws you up and it spits you out, but
still they do it because they can’t contemplate not doing it.
“Obviously it’s not glamorous to tour,” says Annie with
such emphasis it’s clearly not obvious at all. “But at this
level it’s really at its best. Compared to going up the M1
in a Vauxhall estate having to lug your own equipment
in blizzards – and I’ve done all that. At this stage it’s much
easier because we’re in halfway decent hotels – that makes a
difference, it really does. Imagine not having a stable home for a
whole year. It gets a bit wearing living in orange and purple decor
for a year. But you pace yourself and on the one hand I quite enjoy

NME 21 APRIL 1984 PAGE 47

“This tickles!”:
Annie onstage at
the Ritz in New
York, April 1984

38 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 E

Fringe benefits:
Eurythmics
onstage in Milan,
November 1986

living out of a suitcase because it’s simple – everything’s in the
suitcase. And it’s convenient, I don’t have to make my bed, which I
hate. I don’t have to do laundry, though I do wash my own clothes
in the sink… I’m a touring laundrette here.”
Eurythmics explode into ‘Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)’
with more professionalism than conviction. Some aerodrome of
a building with the acoustics of a carpet factory and a sound that’s
so bad you initially wonder if Annie’s a ventriloquist… her mouth
“We fight all the time. It’s fiery
because we lived together.
It’s like writing songs with your
ex-wife” Dave Stewart
is moving but nothing comes out. Hours earlier their “people”
threaten to pull the gig so perturbed were they by the place; but,
of course, Italians tend to be a terribly excitable crowd and a last
minute cancellation wouldn’t have been entirely in the interests
of world peace.
So they soldier on – veterans of many a blizzard – and for
a while there we have little to do but admire the cut of their
matching leather and decide whether Dave Stewart should ever
be allowed into Europe again wearing that beard.
The show improves immeasurably as it wears on, but it’s
still rather less than wonderful, as they themselves graciously
CORBIS/JOE McFADDEN-LFI
Side’ (reggae). Otherwise the Italians appear to be thrilled by the
sudden entrance of Annie Lennox in her celebrated red bra and
the night is finally salvaged by the celebratory ‘Sisters Are Doing It
For Themselves’ (oddly enough Aretha wasn’t present, even in the
form of a hologram) and the entrancing new single, ‘Miracle Of
Love’, very possibly the best thing they’ve ever done.
But make no mistake, Eurythmics are in the major league now.
They make music for platinum discs; they make music for grown-
ups; they make music for HUGE STADIUMS LIKE THIS!!
“I like the bigger places… in a huge place there’s a very excited
atmosphere… it’s an event! So many people have come to see you
and I’m thrilled they’ve come. The only time I get the stadium
syndrome as you call it, is if the stage is so high I can’t see the
audience. I like to be able to touch people.”
MM 14 JANUARY 1984 PAGE 18
But once you get into stadiums, Annie, don’t you think you’re
in danger of losing touch?
EURYTHMICS
HERE COMES THE
“Maybe people think I go around the world in an incredibly
blasé kind of way… you’ve made a lot of money after all and
RAIN AGAIN you’re very famous, there’s a lot of fortune around you and it all
RCA
looks incredibly flash. You come in and it looks like hey, everyone
Quite possibly the around you is a minion, but it’s not the case. Everything is like
Eurythmics’ finest
moment to date. The
that for comfort. I thank God I can travel in this limousine and
pitting of crisp, icy stretch out and not be in a little car hunched up. Everything is for
strings against a steady my comfort so that when I get to the concert I’m able to do it.”
rhythm pulse sets up
a perfectly fraught
emotional vacuum.
At dinner that night a few drinks are taken. The chef stays on
Their prime trick is the late to cook pasta, the gay waiter serenades us with some operatic
matching of a show delicacy and, despite the imperfections of the evening’s work,
of strength against Dave and Annie begin to groove. Dave regales me with tales of the
eggshell fragility, a
pristine example of
garage bands he’s been signing up to conquer the world and the
vagaries of life as one of the world’s leading production wizards.

how to turn fearful

concede later – much later – on. There’s a burst of excitement vulnerability to your A girl forces a note into Dave’s hand suggesting some sort of
as a backdrop of passing clouds is beamed up for ‘Here Comes own advantage. romantic assignation. But he’s not tempted… he’s in love with a
Purchase or be damned.
The Rain Again’ and we are stopped in our tracks by the radical Adam Sweeting
Bananarama as he never tires of informing us. He’s a terrible old
re-workings of ‘Who’s That Girl’ (flamenco) and ‘Right By Your wind merchant that Dave Stewart…

NME ORIGINALS 39
TLFeBOOK
 Eurythmics

And as for Annie Lennox. Forthright, emotional, and very

probably volatile, she seems so different to Stewart you wonder
how they ever got together in the first place.
Annie launches into a bitter attack on critics in general, recalling
the time Julie Burchill suggested it would be best for everybody
if she would die painlessly in a plane crash. When she read that,
Annie had to suppress a very serious urge to do physical damage
to any journalist that crossed her path.
“It looks as though you’ve put yourself up on a pedestal and of
course somebody’s just going to have to smash it down. More in
England than any other country… I have to say that, and I’ve been
around the world several times. I knew that ‘Revenge’ would be Annie wears the
trousers on Top
hatcheted – there’s no way it wouldn’t be. I think there’s something Of The Pops
very sick about the English press. Of course, everyone’s going to
expect me to say that, so what’s new. Nothing personal…”
NME 20 JULY 1985 PAGE 16
Course not. ‘Astral Weeks’ affected me. I couldn’t believe it. I played it over and
EURYTHMICS over again. I used to lie awake at night thinking about it. It seemed
THERE MUST BE AN
Dave was walking through a street in London a while ago when ANGEL (PLAYING
so… random. It went off on tangents and suddenly it all came
a kid came up to him and said: “You Dave Stewart?” WITH MY HEART) together again. Incredible.”
“Yeah.” RCA Do you and Annie fall out much?
Not since ‘Right By “Oh yeah… all the time… every 15 minutes. It’s kind of…
Your Side’ has Annie fiery… because we lived together. It’s like writing songs with
Before Annie Lennox, girl singers Lennox let rip with such
joyful fervour. And
your ex-wife. But underneath it all we’re much stronger, so the

tended to be either cute or Stevie Wonder’s rented

harmonica solo nicely
argument will never last more than ten minutes whereas before it
would last three hours.”
raunchy. She had no role model pinpoints where this
groove is coming from
Have your arguments ever seriously threatened the future of
the group?
– the ecstatic uplift
for herself so she changed the rules (Playtex, cross my heart)
of Stevie and early
“No. We’ve already had the biggest break-up we can have…”
Are you kept together by fear of being apart?
Jackson 5. Yet, ‘Angel’’s “No. As soon as we do one thing we’re excited about the next.”
tune is unimpeachably
Eurythmic, an elegantly
“You’re crap!” sinuous and energizing Before Annie Lennox, girl singers tended to be either cute or
He laughs fondly at the memory. “England’s the only place in blue-eyed breeze that raunchy. She had no role model for herself, so she changed the
the world where that could happen. Wonderful. See, England’s got should waft from every rules. Now, perhaps, she’s a role model herself.
window from here until
some great things about it and some really terrible things. I love it “I see myself as a responsible human being and if I happen to
the Notting Hill Carnival
and I hate it. You’d never get a band like The Smiths coming from if this summer stands a be a role model well, that’s fine and dandy, but don’t expect me to
anywhere else. Or Madness. It’s so English and yet so appealing… chance of being fondly live up to it… I might change. You had the Siouxsies and I wasn’t
it’s a kind of black humour. I love it.” remembered. one of those. I wasn’t so underground or extreme that I could
Mat Snow
be aligned to the punk movement. I’ve always been an outsider.
Annie is talking about mortality. So how do I show people who I am? I thought about that quite
“Sometimes I’m surprised I’m walking around in this bag of seriously because I didn’t want to be perceived as something I
bones and I haven’t had every limb smashed, I’ve been in so wasn’t. I wasn’t a cutesy girl and I’m not… but I think I’m probably
many near-misses. And when my father died this year representative of a lot of other women of my generation… we’re a
and I saw cancer and what it does to people, I thought little bit more independent thinking, probably a bit more assertive,
about my own fragility and the fragility of the human probably a bit more career-orientated. Also I don’t feel that people
race and how we can so easily take it all for granted. As manipulate me.”
we do. We have to say, what next? Chernobyl? OK, I’ll But what do you think about Madonna?
drink the milk, I’ll drink the water. I’m very aware of all “Not a lot. Her songs don’t touch
these things, I think everybody is.” me. They have a sense of emptiness.
Do you believe in an afterlife? I don’t dance to Madonna records.
“I don’t believe in anything. At this point I don’t have any But I don’t want to put her down,
faith. But that doesn’t mean I’m a cynic. I just don’t that’s far too easy. I only felt anti-
want to put my thinking into a belief system, Madonna when she was on MTV rolling
it’s too easy. I just can’t say, ‘Oh yes, I around the floor in her wedding dress
accept the Koran or I accept the Bible…’ showing her thighs and garters… I felt
Oh yeah, it says in the Bible homosexuals that was really whorish…
aren’t allowed to exist. But it’s natural for “There’s only one woman I have deep
people to be gay. It’s natural for people to respect for in this industry and that’s
do all sorts of things…” Chrissie Hynde…”

Dave is talking about his favourite
artists… Van Morrison, Sex Pistols,
T.Rex, The Incredible String Band,
Barclay James Harvest, Ramones,
The Smiths…
“What I’d really like to do is make
an album of ten songs and every track
gives you goose pimples. If we can do
that then I really think we can say we’ve
achieved something. I’d like our records
to affect people the way Van Morrison’s
Eurythmics roll on. They’re here
for the duration. A million nights
at Wembley coming up. And when
they’re whiling away the odd hours
apart… Dave’s got several thousand
Dave and Annie production jobs to do and Annie – fresh
– the odd couple from a bit part in Revolution (“I thought
just got odder! the public slaughter of that film was
incredibly distasteful”) – is interested in
doing more movies.
That’s about it. Be yourself tonight.

40 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 F
is for ...

NME ORIGINALS 41
TLFeBOOK
LFI
 ink
PAnd
rky!
e
P
E
arl’s Court is Frankie’s kind of town.
Over at the salad bar a bronzed,
bearded Middle Eastern type
catches their attention. I look up
from my grub and they smile
knowingly at each other. “Yes he
is quite cute, isn’t he?”
Frankie is getting ready for the evening, the
cruising and the cowboys (he loves to see a guy
dressed in uniform), the scribbled indiscretions
on the toilet wall and his favourite bit, at 11 o’clock
when they all leave the pub and line up around the
block, taking it in turns to go cruising. There’s all sorts
of little games and codes that lie ahead, and when he gets
onto the tube and sees a guy carrying a motorcycle helmet
(a motorcycle helmet on the tube!) Frankie feels at home.
“It was really great last night. We had to go out and give out 20
invitations to act as extras in our video, so it was like going out
and being told to pick up 20 men,” smiles Paul.
A little history
What am I doing here? Someone who just stopped reading The
Picture Of Dorian Gray because it was “too faggy” who’d rather
listen to half an hour of Mary Whitehouse than two minutes of
Quentin Crisp, who’s never heard of homophobia, just “good
sense”. To wit, finding out the whys and wherefores behind
Liverpool post-punk S&M gay cabaret act Frankie Goes To
42 NME ORIGINALS
“Gizza NME front
cover”: Nasher, Mark,
Holly, Paul and Ped
32
BER 1983 PAGE
NME 5 NOVEM
In Frankie’s first fr
feature, Gavin M
ont cover
artin
ruise with
Hollywood. And also filling in a few details, sinking
into the environment they feel at home in, trying
to keep an open mind. And that’s all I’m keeping
open, mind.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood was formed
just over a year ago by Holly Johnson, one-time
takes a sleaze-c
guitarist with Big In Japan and solo artist on
r to Sodom
Liverpool independent label Eric’s. Fuelled on
e rpoo l’s an sw e anything from Bowie to Burroughs, Jean Genet
Liv to Lindsay Kemp, The Velvet Underground to
and Gomorrah T.Rex, Johnson set about presenting a scorching
leather-bound version of the lifestyle he and soon
to be recruited pal Paul Rutherford led.
They built up a steady live reputation, female duo
The Leatherpettes providing attraction for the heteros,
and were approached by a succession of A&R men whose
stock reaction was, “I loved it, but I don’t know what my
boss would think.” An appearance on The Tube however
brought response from the then emerging Morley/Horn ZTT
partnership and the group took the opportunity to work with
the famous producer immediately.
Blessed are the pop stars – they will get paid to
indulge their fantasies
Holly: “We used to know Paul Morley when he was in
Manchester and he was working for the NME. We used to hate
him, he was like this div from Manchester. He made people
TLFeBOOK
 Frankie Goes To Hollywood F
like Howard Devoto, created their whole standing as far as the him to emerge, all squelching and sucking, kept on course by
press were concerned. Made them out to be much bigger than a thundering pelvic thrust metronome beat. Its roots are in the
their capabilities, which was a shame because Howard Devoto disco of Summer, Sylvester and mid-’70s Whitfield, its head
was quite talented. Maybe now he’s doing the same thing with twisted and turned by McLaren’s plundering escapades but its
us in a way. I guess we fitted into his little fantasy, and he fitted heart is in a sleazy bordello, pining for the sweat and spunk in
into ours.” the backroom.
FGTH didn’t receive an advance from ZTT (“When you’re Holly: “It’s like these untamed creatures meet Trevor Horn and
working with someone like Trevor Horn you don’t mind making his stamp is all over it. Because it was our first single, and there’s
sacrifices”) and they’re down in London staying in the Columbia no ready-made market, we just had to have as much fun as we
Hotel on £5 a day expenses. Still they seem to have enough to get could when we were making it. We just thought – buzz – and then
some of that smoking stuff and both Paul and Holly are quite we’ll know when it’s right.
relaxed, interspersing conversation with slow, stoned giggles. “I always loved the sounds that Trevor got on his records, but
They start to tell me about the video they are ostensibly here to it seemed like something far beyond our reach because it was so
make with Bernard Rose (who directed UB40’s ‘Red Red Wine’). shiny and commercial. I always thought the content and people
Holly: “The basic idea is that there’s this virginal character, he did it with was rather weak until McLaren. But I still died when
MM 12 NOVEMBER 1983 PAGE 22
Frankie, and his girlfriend’s just left him. He’s never had sex and he phoned us up.
he’s walking down the street and gets lured into an orgy scene by FRANKIE GOES “I mean on ‘Relax’ Trevor interpreted the sound, of course. I
this character in black. It’s going to be a club scene, the sort of TO HOLLYWOOD mean, he’s a really strong guy, OK? It’s hard to really talk about
RELAX
clubs we like to go to. It’s interesting drawing a comparison with ZTT this. We’re aware of the situation, we’re a band produced by
the Soft Cell thing. Where they pantomimed it, we’re going to do Frankie seem to Trevor Horn and it’s shoved down our throats a bit. We were wary
it for real, OK? So it’s going to be Emperor Nero in this club, a huge wallow and finally get of being his puppets at first but as soon as we met him that all went
man who gets his whole body shaved for sexual kicks and feeds swallowed up by their out the window. He’s just a human being, he’s that little guy who’s
people to tigers and lions. We’re using the actual Esso tiger…” own silly schoolboy used to be in Buggles.”
beliefs that innuendoes
“Really strong images, like a Fellini film,” chips in Paul, and words like “suck” I think of the shallow, squirming sexuality presented by
inexplicably. and “come” are going to current pop – the vanity and preening of Wham! and Spandau
“For us it is just like getting someone else to pay for our titillate what they see as and wonder if maybe the sleazy pantomime of FGTH will knock
fantasies. We’re just having a party, it’s such wonderful imagery to our equally immature things up a bit, get someone to buckle down with it. Are they out
sense of good clean
use, though if you haven’t been in an Amsterdam leather bar you dirty fun. I suggest they on their own?
won’t quite understand. look to either Ian Dury “I think it’s becoming a trendy actually, after our Tube show
for honestly humorous you got quite a few like Fashion and even that Tracie girl giving it
vulgarity or Divine
I think of the shallow sexuality of for no holds barred
up front filth and stop
much sex and whip. I think it’s catching on. But with those people
it’s in a very superficial way because they haven’t got the bollocks
Wham! and Spandau and wonder sniggering like pimply
adolescents who’ve just
to go for it really. The gay/S&M angle is regarded as taboo but it’s
just people getting down, because it’s not long that we are here.
if FGTH will knock things up a bit caught a glimpse of their
neighbour’s knickers.
“I met this Irish guy in a pub once and he asked me was I into
M&S, it was really lovely. So sweet.”
Helen Fitzgerald

Into the lion’s den

“There’s lots of ideas behind the name, we Holly: “Child, the first time we turned up
twist it loads. It changes all the time. If you for a gig in London was in Cha Chas and
imagine it as this Hollywood Babylon on the we were put in a cage – a fuckin’ cage – and
other side of the planet that Frankie wants suspended over the dancefloor. They put a
to get to. He’s lived his whole life hearing mirror opposite us so people could see us
about it, seeing images of it filtered through from the bar. The support act was a guy in
movies and television – it’s where we’ve got a leopardskin toga who put skewers right
all our information about living and how to through his face and through his arms
communicate with people.” – lots of blood and stuff. We had to follow
But they seem intent on warping the dream that.”
factory. Compelled to a homoerotic outrage. Sounds like you were in your element.
“We really had to hit hard to get off the “To a degree, yes. But you know what
streets, child. To create a reaction, especially in most of the kids down there are like It’s
Liverpool because there’s so many bands. To all World’s End clothing, hipper than
stand out we had to give it loads, loads of sex thou attitudes and we were like these
because that was the easiest and quickest shocker screaming animals in a cage. The reaction
to get attention.” was really cool.”
But all that ancient Roman, Nero imagery Paul: “They’re such a cool audience
– isn’t it very decadent, very stupid? to handle. Spoilt, I suppose. They think
“It’s totally decadent but then that’s totally they’re it but we know we are. I’d like to
glamorous as well. Things haven’t really have seen them in the cage, that’s for sure.”
changed. The way people used to go and watch Sometimes they’ve been able to turn
gladiator fights and much blood and gore – they the tables and use the limelight to their
just go to the movies now. Is it a sign of a society advantage.
about to tumble? Well, it’s been tumbling for a Holly: “The time we played The Tube
long time. It grows really quickly again, I don’t Jools Holland was sitting around moping
REX FEATURES/JOHN STODDART/TIM JARVIS

think it will ever die, it’ll just reach a limbo.” all day. I think he’s sort of bitter because
he’s a real muso and he’s on the other
Another lump of sugar in a different side of the camera. Very sad. He needed
orifice cheering up so we bound the Leatherpettes
The track the video is promoting is ‘Relax’, in pink ribbon and gave them to him. He
the first ever FGTH release. A monster jam brought them to his hotel and showered
discosex workout. It’s Frankie as you’d expect So that’s where them with champagne, real champagne.”
Kylie got her look!

NME ORIGINALS 43
TLFeBOOK
 Frankie Goes To Hollywood

The future
Paul: “We’ve been thrown in at the deep end now, what we always
wanted but when it happens you realise you’re in deep water. It’s
funny to catch yourself in it, you just crack up. Fame sounds fun
but I don’t think anyone is ever prepared for it.”
Holly: “Ultimately it would be great to do a Frankie Goes To
Hollywood movie, with music an essential part of Hollywood,
obviously. We were amazed how much everyone picked up on
the sex attitude actually. It was just something we were exploring.
We’ve got an idea to do a Disneyland video, a real glamour video
for instance. We just want to have fun.
“I think the media will absorb what we’re doing eventually, the
way it absorbs everything. Then we can just change the theme of
our movie. It doesn’t have to be sex – we can shock them that it
isn’t that kind of thing.”

Definitions: 1 Sleaze
Holly: “When we do play live, our sound is going to be a lot rougher
than on record. Over the past few months we’ve come to the stage
where we believe we are a valuable musical force again whereas
before we thought we were a side show sex thing. Our music has
got a lot smoother, smoother with sleaze and class. What’s sleaze?
MM 9 JUNE 1984 PAGE 31
Go to Amsterdam, child, and you’ll definitely find out.”
Paul: “Sleaze is kind of like sex that is classy. Not crude.” FRANKIE GOES
Holly: “A good image of sleaze for me would be a 1930s TO HOLLYWOOD
TWO TRIBES
drinking bar with jazz musicians hanging round and black and ZTT

white prostitutes at the bar, that kind of scene.” Which goes the whole
hog in proving there
2 Normal sex is more to them
Holly: “I don’t know what normal sex is. I think all sex is normal than stolen Ian Dury
basslines. It’s not just
because it comes from people and people are normal. There’s that they’re suave,
not much that is socially acceptable if the bastions of society, the or a lovely shade of bars are quite tame, there they are totally overboard. Like
judges and Mary Whitehouse are deciding. They’re just people mauve, it’s the fact that Tom Of Finland who is a homoerotic illustrator, he paints
with extremely closed attitudes.” they’ve come into the brilliant images of guys in leather, uniforms, sailors and stuff.
garden Lord and these
Paul: “Being that closed is perverse. Not being able to face up to headaches are going His pictures are on the wall, the bar area is caged off and there’s
that honesty with yourself is perverse. She must have seen so much to last a long time. slings and jackboots hanging from the ceiling and a giant
porn, must have strange thoughts running around her head. Headaches of shame cock in a light rope from one side of the ceiling to the other
Holly: “She must have a huge guilt complex! Maybe she’s never unconfessed. This, and it’s coming at the knob. Then you go to the backroom and
therefore, is A GOOD
had an orgasm! Has Mary Whitehouse ever had the big O?” THING. Only when they there’s an orgy going on. I was really impressed by it, the freedom
feel inglorious will they of attitude.”
“Maybe she’s never had an turn over and die. Until
then black arrows hit the
It sounds vile. Where is the magic and thrill of sex taking place
in such unhygienic, graphically crude surrounds?
deck and Spandau Ballet
orgasm! Has Mary Whitehouse can stuff it. Kids open
your arms, the world has
“It adds a whole new kind of theatre and performance to it.
You almost have to be prepared to fuck in front of ten people. It’s
ever had the big O?” Holly a winner. The best dance
record ever!
fierce. Sex is a performance, especially when it’s with someone
that means a lot to you but even then you are patronising and
Mick Mercer
entertaining their existence. Any performance – onstage or

3 Decadence
But how far can you go, don’t you have a MM 28 JANUARY 1984 PAGE 3
NME 5 NOVEMBER 1983 PAGE 32
concept of decadence?
“Decadence is a dead weird word, OK?
It’s someone who is off the party rather than
on it. I looked it up in the dictionary and it
said a decaying era. I heard it in connection
with people who were wild and off the wall,
supposedly. I don’t really understand it as a
concept, it’s a real voyeur’s concept.”

4 Morals
Don’t you have any morals then?
“Morals? Things like the Ten
Commandments and all that. Oh yeah, but
that’s just a natural human weakness, maybe
it’s a strength. I’m trying not to give anyone a
hard time, aren’t you? That’s about the only
moral I’ve got.”
Don’t worry about the taste barrier, Holly,
just go right on through.
“Amsterdam was fab, I was totally
knocked out. Whereas in England the leather

44 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

Even Holly’s unique
rendition of ‘I’m A
Little Teapot’ couldn’t
stop Frankie-mania
“Sleaze is kind of like sex
that is classy. Not crude” Paul
in bed – has got to be from the heart or it doesn’t make it,
doesn’t cut it.”
Of course the harder and more often they come, the harder
they fall. Holly admits that the promiscuity that the gay scene
thrives on leads to the possibility of all sorts of horrible diseases.
“AIDS, yeah, there’s that danger. Children, don’t catch AIDS!
May they find a cure, that’s all I’ve got to say about it. You can look
at it as retribution, Armageddon’s round the corner. The second
coming. Hey! The second coming, that sounds fun. There’s lots
of theories; people say it’s the CIA and germ welfare. It depends
on the most entertaining one at the time.”
As a force in the world of pop and populist
entertainment I’m not putting too much faith
in Frankie Goes To Hollywood just yet. I
like their record but it’s hard to tell if they’ve
made it as puppets or real talents, as threats
or comic cuts. I’m suspicious of the arthouse
influences they draw from – a mixture of the
tart, the tawdry and the hard to trust, and whether
they’re going to use their sexuality preciously,
as an excuse for all sorts of tedious overblown
imagery (jackboots and inflatable penii). Maybe
they’ll try to do something really skillful, really
daring. It’s early days yet, but for two 23-year-olds
they sometimes seem easily impressed.
“I want big business, I get off on it. Like when
we were recording our single, the studio was
like this huge Greek dome and Chris Blackwell
walked in. He was like the emperor with a
beautiful white girl and a beautiful Jamaican girl
at either side. I kept thinking this is Chris Blackwell
or Crosse & Blackwell. This guy can actually go
and watch Grace Jones record. I got a real buzz off
that,” says Holly.
LFI
ALBUM
NME 5 NOVEMBER 1983 PAGE 32
FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD
WELCOME TO THE PLEASUREDOME
I
t is, of course, brilliant. And nothing more
so than the last glittering shards, the final
breaths taken in this pleasuredome.
After the echoes of ‘The Power Of Love’
have been borne away there is a concluding
shower of sparks from the wand, a teasing adios
from the carnival that wants never to stop – as
if the whole business is about to start up again.
Horn signals a keyboard cascade that sounds
like a seraphic fanfare for Christmas itself
to begin, and that voice intones the familiar
“Frankie say…” The sound gets louder, and a
crashing of gongs doubles the anticipation.
“Frankie say” sez the voice again, the pulse
quickens at its prompting.
Is this it? Do we at last discover what Frankie
really say?
The sound shatters like a crystal ball bursting.
“Frankie say – NO MORE”. There is your solution,
if you wanted one.
It begins with a taunting of suggestive false
starts: a doctored dive-bombing from the
strings, Johnson proclaiming “the world is
my oyster” and a chattering backdrop
from Whipsnade before ‘Welcome
To The Pleasuredome’ itself is It’s a
launched.
It’s a cinematic cinematic
phantasmagoria of light
and sound. And this is phantasmagoria
only the beginning. It’s
of light and sound.
the first side.
The second is Frankie And this is only
saying their peace: ‘Relax’,
‘War’, ‘Two Tribes’. I’m afraid the beginning
I can’t identify which mixes
these are for you, but ‘War’ is
here positioned around a text about
love and pride delivered in the talking head
manner of The Voice. Though angry names like
Che Guevara and George Jackson are passed on
in the flow the listener hardly registers the talk:
for the background is full of the dazzling pulse.
The enjoyable versions that fuel the third
side are served up cold. ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’,
an almost straight replay of ‘Born To Run’ and
a pretty, perky ‘Do You Know The Way To San
Jose’: they’re recorded with such fine skill and
Holly and Paul:
quite literally
as camp as a
Christmas tree
TLFeBOOK
Frankie Goes To Hollywood F
ZTT
judgement that they can’t be deemed pastiches.
But they are hollow vaults, strangely distant
interludes in the show, as if they were some
obligation to remember ‘real’ pop. It’s almost
a relief when the ‘genuine’ Frankie
return at the end of the side with
‘Wish You Were Here’.
Perhaps the amazing
accomplishment of the
entire circus is best shown
by the note on which we’re
ushered regretfully out of
the dome, ‘The Power Of
Love’. It’s something even
Garland might have been
embarrassed to sing. The
miracle is that camp is kept at
bay. But if it’s not camp it is kitsch.
Too kitsch to be pop? Perhaps. It
could be that what’s bewildering a biz made
sick by maverick success is that it doesn’t even
seem to be pop music! Morley has covered every
millimetre of the package with hints and itches,
suggestions to be spread through the enormous
public consumption which awaits the LP.
It’s the kind of extravaganza one needs a
ticket to now and then. By next week I’ll be
tired of it, but today this ‘play’ is funny, sharp,
gorgeous.
OK Paul, you win. Bang.
Richard Cook
The exit
What am I doing here? The club we’re in isn’t very
busy early in the evening and Paul and Holly are
disappointed. I’d come to see them at work in
their natural habitat but there isn’t much work
to be done. Gradually the place started to fill up
and Holly was enthuiastically telling me how
they’d contrived to have various, um, slogans
inscribed on the run out groove of their record.
The place was getting a bit clammy, all leering
brutes and young prancing gigolos.
I felt like telling Holly about a little bar
I know of which is actually in his beloved
Hollywood. There they have proper barstools,
a selection of fine beers and a single woman
can always be assured of being harassed.
At the bottom of their menu they have an
inscription too and it goes ‘Absolutely No
Faggots Admitted’. It was just an idea, but it
seemed much easier to get up and leave.
NME ORIGINALS 45
 Frankie Goes To Hollywood

NME 22 DECEMBER 1984 PAGE 53

Paul Du Noyer
goes to Atlanta as
the pleasuredome engulfs
the US. While Holly Johnson
pretends he’s Greta Garbo,
Paul Rutherford explains
the pride, passion and
pain of their 1984
success story

Y
“ ou can hang this on your knob, sir,” the hotel
porter said to me.
I can?
“Yes sir, you can.” He produced a short
length of cardboard with the word ‘Privacy’ on
it. “Place it outside the door, like this, and your
room will not be disturbed in the morning. Y’all have a good day,
now, and hope y’enjoy Atlanta, Georgia.”
Ah, I see… I slipped him his tip and shut the door with some
relief. The Frankies only got here an hour ago – and surely even they
need more than 60 minutes to corrupt the morals of an entire city.

Atlanta finds these Frankies two weeks deep inside their premier
tour of North America – their first tour anywhere, come to that.
Sell-out shows, sporadic fan hysteria, massive media interest,
satisfactory record sales: these are the payoffs to a cunningly
contrived invasion plan. Video age America seems like a changed
place, where the music market has grown almost as fickle and fad-
happy as Britain’s. They’ve embraced the Frankie scam, all this
painstaking pleasure-giving, like willing conspirators.
Holly fixes the
In the concert-hall lobbies, kids queue with the Yankee dollar NME snapper with
to put on those T-shirts. Tomorrow they’ll walk through the a friendly gaze
shopping malls, their adolescent chests chanting RELAX and

WAR and, most bizarrely, ARM THE UNEMPLOYED and it’s
all great fun and no-one’s any more sure what Frankie really says
or means than we were back in Britain, and here they care even
less. And three days after tomorrow, well, there’ll be Van Halen
in town, or someone, with a new T-shirt to sell.
Word is that FGTH’s label, ZTT, were reluctant to see
their little boys go on the road, fearing they couldn’t cut
it. A million cynics would see their point. As it turns out
though, the band has acquitted itself very well.
Pegged from the start as figments of Trevor Horn’s
imagination, a silk purse fashioned from a Scouse sow’s
Holly Johnson got to meet Andy Warhol in New York: this
seems to please him greatly.
And a few weeks previously, Frankie finally got to Hollywood.
They filmed a performance of ‘Relax’ for a brief scene in Brian
De Palma’s new movie Body Double. Again, it’s Holly who’s most
enchanted by dreams of the silver screen. But Paul Rutherford
found the experience “dead boring. Like making a video
where the biggest star is the other side of the camera”.
Not that’s he’s complaining. Rutherford, who’s perhaps the
most approachable Frankie and the most willing to perform
PR chore of spokesman, regards the whole circus with easy-
LFI/WIREIMAGE/JOE BANGAY

ear and hyped to the heavens – a process that reached going detachment.
its vinyl apotheosis in the flawed yet magnificent conceit “I just like getting to see the world. I suppose. Sound like a
of ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’ – the musicians of beauty queen, don’t I? I wanna travel and meet people!”
Frankie Goes To Hollywood treat this tour as a declaration of Holly, I’m sad to say, is not talking to the NME
independence. Look at us, say Frankie, we really exist. these days.

46 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

I’m in the hotel bar having this pleasant interview with Paul
Rutherford, when the singer glides into the room and sits at our
table. (Holly, I noted, doesn’t enter rooms anymore, he just sort
of materialises in them, dark glasses and huge coat draped over
his shoulders, very star-like. By his side, his ever-present friend, a
German chap by the name of Wolfgang.) I smile and say, “Would
you like to join in, Holly?”
Holly, however, appears to be playing Greta Garbo for the day.
Holly Johnson has never forgiven the NME for
what he believed were snidey anti-homosexual
comments in the cover story we ran in 1983
TLFeBOOK
Frankie Goes To Hollywood F
“Who’s it for?” he asks, which puzzles me, since I know he
knows damn well who it’s for.
The NME, I reply, all the same.
“Oh no,” he murmurs grandly, “I don’t talk to the NME.”
And with that, he sweeps out again, followed by Wolfgang.
It had been a brief and elegant performance. Initially, I guessed
it was a case of Holly rehearsing a routine he feels will be expected
of him if he ever becomes a Major International Star. But Paul
Rutherford tells me that Holly has never forgiven the NME for
what he believed were snidey anti-homosexual comments in the
Frankie cover story we ran in 1983 – the very feature, ironically,
which gave the group it’s first major publicity.
Gavin Martin, then, was the writer who’d queered my pitch,
so to speak.
“The article was a bit unnecessary,” shrugs Paul. “But then I’m
not proud enough that I have to bear grudges.”
Later, Holly will confide in Joe Stevens (who’s both NME
lensman and official Frankie tour photographer) that he’s also
sore about a recent NME piece which showed contrasting pictures
of him in his old Big In Japan days and as he is now, under the
headline Frankie: From Wallyhood To Hollywood.
The headline was one of mine, I’ll own up. But if he really is
to become the Major International Star of his dreams, then he’ll
find far worse things than dumb puns to contend with along the
way, I’m sure.
They’re a long way from home. Paul Rutherford sips at a drink,
draws on a cig and thinks of Liverpool.
“It made us strong as we are. It took these five scallies to do it,
to stand up and not be pretentious about it, to just do it. And to
laugh at it, and laugh at ourselves.
“Everyone mentions The Beatles to us,
especially in America. But we don’t bear
much resemblance at all, or to most bands
from Liverpool.
“Where you’re from does make you what
you are, but do you owe it to that place? It’s
like this whole thing of turning your back
on it, ‘Oh, you’ve moved to London now.’
I dunno, they lay on this really weird guilt
trip. I personally had a really hard time there.
I used to get kicked in the face at least twice
a night for being a puff and dressing
Frankie do
anything but relax weird, being a punk or whatever.
onstage in Chicago, I don’t particularly have fond memories
November 1984 of the place, although it’s great when
I go back.”
How does America see you? What’s the
media attention been like?
“A lot of them have their minds made up,
and they make it as difficult as possible for you
to explain yourself – though you shouldn’t
have to justify why you do anything. I think
’cos of the reputation we had in England they
want to talk about all the crap – Boy George,
the bitchiness, all the superficial things, the gay bit, all the crappy
bits that don’t play that big a part in our music.”
Perhaps after you’ve toured here, and around Britain, you’ll
start getting yourselves judged as a band, instead of always being
discussed as a ‘phenomenon’ or something.
“Yeah, that’s been the hard thing. I think everyone in England,
like our record label, has been treating us as a phenomenon.”
For a time you were never just Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
You were always, The Controversial Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
Did you enjoy it?
“Yiiisss! Loved it! Well, kind of. None of us felt controversial.
It was just us being ourselves. We never thought, ‘Let’s shock
everybody, let’s freak everybody out.’ It was just, ‘Let’s do it, be
ourselves.’ And it was just us being as honest as possible.
“There’s this thing, isn’t there, that an artist has to have this
mystique and weird pretentiousness about them. And they don’t.
NME ORIGINALS 47
Frankie Goes To Hollywood

ALBUM MM 25 OCTOBER 1986 PAGE 28

FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

LIVERPOOL ZTT

R
‘ elax’ was perhaps the least sexy record in
pop history. What could be more coldly,
hideously chaste than the ‘orgasm’ near
the end, that ludicrously amplified simulation of
ejaculation?
No, ‘Relax’ was driven by something far
Frankie went to
stronger than sensuality – by an idea of sex. Sex
Hollywood and
as threat, sex as shock, sex as subversion. Like
all they got was
striptease, ‘Relax’ was all about fear.
this lousy T-shirt
That pyrotechnic stretch from ‘Relax’ through
‘Two Tribes’ to ‘The Power Of Love’, from
Most people in bands are quite disobedience to schmaltz, still stands as one of
the superlative pop essays, a glorious charade.
thick, all they wanna do is play The combined brilliance of Morley and Horn
music. But they mask it with, ‘I like managed somehow to overcome the manifest
this painter, and that painter.’ It’s fallibility of their human software – for Frankie
just bullcrap. Just do it.” were sadly and severely unsexy, devoid of
charisma or presence, so small next to the MUSIC
If, as you say, you were only being and the GESTURES. “heaven”, “sailboats of
honest, did the massive reaction Back then, we could ignore all this in the ice on desert sands”, presumably to evoke the
take you by surprise? fracas. But the Frankie assault was meant to be grandeur of Frankie’s vision. Frankie would
“I wouldn’t say a surprise – it came as a shock! It was a jolt for apocalyptic in its perfection. How could there be convince us they’re possessed by a barbarian
a day after, let alone anything as ignominious insatiability: there seems to some kind of
everybody. I don’t think any of us has realised how successful as a follow-up? quest for a nebulous glory pagan
we’ve been, because it’s happened to us so fast. No-one’s had a Without that sense of turmoil existence of perpetual joy,
chance to sit back and think about it.” or event, there is only a pained
awareness that there is nothing
This idea perpetual motion.
At one point a Scouse
Given the fuss, all the moral outrage, did you ever think you’d
stepped over some line, gone too far? It’s being said you’re a tamer
intrinsically fascinating about of orgasm as voice muses “In the coming
Holly and the lads, nothing age of automation… man
group now than you used to be. voluptuous about his voice. insurrection, of sex might be forced to confront
“No, I don’t think we’ve censored ourselves at all. In fact, I see But the orgy must pick up himself with the true spiritual
it as being stronger in other ways. People say, ‘Oh, your image has where it left off. Back in as a radical kind of problems of living”.
really calmed down and yers don’t wear leather now.’ Well, leather
Frankie’s perfumed boudoir,
the air hangs heavy like a
misbehaviour, is so Frankie’s solution to
this quandary appears to
never ever freaked me out. dulling wine. very old hat be a mystical investment in
“I don’t think we’re any less hard or honest than we were. OK, Listening to this record I don’t pleasure. Like Prince, they are
so we don’t have transvestites and girls jumping around the stage, think of Nietzsche or Huysmans, saying “party up, before we all die!”
De Sade or Blake. ‘Warriors Of The Unlike Prince, though, they make the
but it’s still erotic what we do. I think we’re still the only band to do Wasteland’ is like Iron Maiden trampling their pleasure principle seem incredibly boring.
it like that. There’s still something a bit crude about it. It’s just that way through the backdrops of ‘Lexicon Of Love’, This idea of orgasm as insurrection, of sex
we have cotton on now – I’m sure someone’s kinky for cotton.” ‘Kill The Pain’ is like yobs trying on Dollar’s stage as a radical, apocalyptic kind of misbehaviour,
More than Paul Rutherford shaking his bum about, I think costumes and bursting them at the seams. is (honestly) so very old hat – as if were all still
The production is verbose rather than strait-laced in by Christian stuffed shirt mores and
what shook me most about the Frankie stage show was the vivacious. Stephen Lipson directs with all the morality! As if this kind of flagrancy can still get
opening, when the back projections show images of America, restraint of Cecil B DeMille, making choirs of anyone’s knickers in a twist! Prince can just about
Russia, the bomb and shots of napalmed Vietnamese children. massed angels dance about the mix. He’s Horn’s magic away the critical faculties for long enough
After the happy-happy rock’n’roll build-up to the show, it puts the protégé, (an) adept at taking the most wafer-thin to temporarily resurrect this obsolete mythology.
‘songs’ and hysterically exaggerating them. But Frankie can cast no such spell. I stayed
most eerie and chilling edge on the set The lyrics are the ripest gibberish, dotted painfully sober throughout.
to follow, illustrating the themes of with words like “sun”, “moon”, “oceans”, “hell”, Simon Reynolds
‘War’ and ‘Two Tribes’. But those
children belong so much to the
real world, it disturbed me that
their suffering might be used The day’s labours done, I returned to my hotel. The business
to give mere dramatic effect with Holly had left me somewhat troubled, so I sought that
to what is, after all, just a comfort of travellers the world over, namely the Gideon bible.
pop concert. How deep I opened a page at random, in the time-honoured fashion. If
does Frankie’s concern nothing else, I reasoned, it might give me a jokey intro to begin
really run? These aren’t
things to be played with.
“We use it because it’s “I don’t think we’ve censored ourselves. There’s still
very graphic, and hard, and
very direct. But we are something crude about it. It’s just we have cotton
definitely leftists.”
on now – I’m sure someone’s kinky for cotton” Paul

this article with. But what I got, and I swear it, was something
about Saul and his servant going into town “to seek the asses”.
LFI/REDFERNS/RETNA

Damn, I thought, no use. Nobody would believe that.

I closed my Bible with a sigh, hung the ‘Privacy’ sign on my
knob and had an early night.

TLFeBOOK
 G is for ...

JONES & MARILYN

GRACE
LFI/REX FEATURES

NME ORIGINALS 49
TLFeBOOK
 Gender benders

G
race Jones has the flu, some kind of virus
mixed with severe jet lag. Her voice
croaks and crackles when she laughs
– which she does a lot. No mask.
Chat chat chat. Grace Jones
wears a woolly hat.
Joe Stevens and I meet her in her favourite
restaurant; a Japanese one named the Chinya.
It is reached through the seedy lobby of the
Woodward Hotel, on 210 West 55th Street,
which is just around the corner from where
Grace lives.
Joe and I pore over drinks and menu. I’m
so nervous it takes me three attempts to get
my chopsticks together. A little Japanese guy
wanders merrily about the small restaurant with
a massive fishing rod over his left shoulder. This
helps us relax.
I sit fully prepared for manoeuvres. Will she use that
clipped, uncomprehending voice on me? Lash out? I get
deceived by ‘facts’ and ‘myths’! If she ever comes now, now…
How long have you lived in New York? I ask.
“Altogether about seven years, on and off. Two years there,
one year here, four years… I’ve been living here for four
years now.”
You were born in Jamaica, weren’t you?
Just days after she gave “Mmmm, Spanishtown. My folks moved to New
York. They lived upstate. Ever hear of Syracuse?
Russell Harty a slapping Syracuse University? It’s a big university. You ever
hear of Jim Brown? He played for Syracuse.”
And you attended?
on his TV chat show, Ian “Two years, studying drama, theatre.”
Did you ever work professionally?
Penman peers into the “About one year, on and off. I did a couple of
films, but… professional films but shitty parts.”
private life and Japanese What were they? Or would you rather not drag
it back out?
dinner of Grace Jones “Oh no! I don’t care! They’re shown once in a
while on television. They were basically parts for men.
I played a heroin carrier in this one movie. I carry a gun
under my wig and all this stuff. Also I play a singing detective
– I get a lot of offers to play singing detectives lately!”

NME 13 DECEMBER 1980 PAGE 27

Without her plush leather and dark sunglasses – she’s so nice!

Not at all ‘angular’ like you’d expect. Almost boyish, and a big
buoyant grin. An adaptable facial structure. Nothing is pointed or
painted. There are scratchy remnants of red nail polish. She shatters
the tense air of expectation. Her voice is loud, friendly and vaguely
familiar – London West Indian. She loves to laugh.
When did you leave London?
“Two days ago? One day? I only flew out ’cos I wasn’t feeling
good. I’d been filming for like three days, for Granada television,
before that I had the Russell Harty thing and before that I’d just
flown from Acapulco – I was up three nights catching flights.” Grace: sick of going to the hairdresser
So what you said on The Russell Harty Show about being up for
three nights was true? Singing detectives?
“Yeah, I was!” Voice crackles. “More than that!” Hearty laugh! Grace coughs and chokes on her increasing laughter. Did you
“I probably had about seven hours sleep in a week.” catch your virus in New York? I ask with concern.
What sort of person did you really find Harty to be? NME 5 JULY 1980 PAGE 21
“I didn’t get this one in New York… in Liverpool or some
“I don’t even remember him. I don’t have any recollection.” GRACE JONES place.” Blows nose fiercely. “This is the first time I’ve been out of
Did Russell talk to you afterwards? PRIVATE LIFE my house since I got back. I’ve just been sleeping.”
Island
“No, he split right away I think. I went back to my dressing room. How’s your baby? Joe asks.
By the time I got dressed and got my stuff out and went to – what Two sides: two extremes. “Sick! On top of it all I come back and he’s sick too. I think
‘Private Life’ is mental
contempt from hard
he was fine when we left Mexico. I went straight to London from
I sit fully prepared for manouvres. physical love, ‘She’s
Lost Control’ is despair
Acapulco with about four stops in between and he and nanny
came back, and are both sick. She probably gave it to him.”
Will she use that uncomprehending on despair – a starved
and stunned and
What’s his name?
shaken song, sunk
voice on me? Will she lash out? low in sexuality and
melancholy.
Shakespeare and
Dunbar put on a toughly
svelte and swell-headed
do you call it? – his hospitality room or something, he was gone. display, a perpetual
Everybody else was too…” on-day. Fingers and toes
The waitress arrives. in sympathy with every
sharkswim flick of Jones’
“Yeah yeah yeah… I’ll have some… I’ll order some soup.” contemptuous plastic
Untranscribable (soup) name. “Would you like some soup? It’s a vocals.
really nice soup with mushrooms and…” It is a simply up to date
Grace turns round to place her order and the waitress has gone. thing, and you ought to
love it to death. 12-inch
“Well! I like the way she comes and then disappears! She says next week. Crying
what would you like, you go to order and she’s gone…” Full of Grace:
tonight. Ian Penman
Ms Jones came
She giggles. in all shapes
and sizes

50 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 G
“Paulo or Apollo or Paul. I don’t know; any one of the three you
like. We still haven’t decided – so we’ll let him decide.”
The soups arrive and my first tape ends.
I discover to my horror two large pink shrimps floating in my
soup. What is this dish Stevens has persuaded me to eat? It’s got
shrimps! You know I don’t like shrimps!
“You don’t eat shrimps?” Grace asks in somewhat maternal
tones.
I don’t like seafood.
“You don’t like seafood? Oh wow! How can you not like
seafood? Do you swim?”
Yeah. From a very early age.
“And you don’t like seafood?”
How – I screw up my face – do the two go together?
“I dunno! I mean, the sea smells like seafood. You don’t like the
smell? The taste?”
I hate it all. It makes me sick. You love seafood presumably?
“Yeah, my favourite. I like steak tartare though, too.”
Grace has started on her second dish.
“Would you like to taste this? It’s really lovely – clams with
cucumber…”

I decline. This is a really culinary interview, I observe, wiping

my mouth.
“You’ll probably hear me crunching all the way through it! Oh
well… I have some real home-made chicken at home that I’ll have
later – with rice and vegetables.”
I screw my face up again – how do you keep so trim?
“I think every time I tour I lose about ten pounds. It takes me
the rest of the year to make it back up.”
Who cuts your hair?
“Jean Paul (Goude, Grace’s artist husband) does sometimes, but
only when I have the patience. He cuts it hair by hair – I could be
sitting there for five hours. I do it sometimes – I do it the exact
opposite from what he does. I take the scissors and I just go chop!
chop! chop! in about five minutes and it’s cut. There are holes and
things, and then either Jean Paul touches it up or he paints it in.
“I used to have lots of wigs, about 35 – every colour, every
length. I got sick of going to the hairdresser.”
Now that’s a sentence I like
URBANIMAGE-ADRIAN BOOT/REDFERNS/GREG GORMAN

We walked her back to the apartment block. Didn’t we want to

come up for a minute?
There (A)Paul(o) padded about under the baby grand piano
and the coffee table, came to rest at our knees and stared me
out something rotten. I felt indicted, but apparently it signified
instant affection.
And then we were gone.
And now Grace Jones is in Nassau, recording a new LP.

NME ORIGINALS 51
TLFeBOOK
 Peter Robinson
was always a shy,
retiring boy

Prince or showgirl?
Paul Morley tussles with
Marilyn on a soft sofa and

hot
wonders if the seduction
of pop has a more
explicit meaning
NME 24 DECEMBER 1983 PAGE 38

Some like it
Marilyn on what he is
You could go far.
Marilyn on complication
It’s very fashionable at the moment to hate Marilyn. Can you
“I could go nowhere… as long as I go out for dinner with Diana understand why?
Ross then I’ll be happy.” “Yeah… because when you don’t understand something and it’s
What do you mind? new, you’re frightened of it. It’s like AIDS for instance. People do not
“People buying me grapes when I want bananas.” want to discuss AIDS, but it’s there.”
You’re as contagious as AIDS?
Marilyn on being nice “I don’t think of myself as a disease. I’m just a person who sings
Have you got a grudge against the world? on a few records.”
“I don’t think so. The world’s a big place and there’s a lot of
people in it. Everyone’s free to do exactly what they want, as long Marilyn on showbusiness
as they don’t hurt anyone. When you hurt other people… like that “I want to get an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony… that’s my new
guy that wrote that thing about me in The Sunday People, well, it goal. I’ll probably fail miserably, but at least I will have tried.”
didn’t hurt me, but it was just so twisted.” They’re quite conventional aims, aren’t they?
Don’t you relish that kind of attention? “Are they? Who on earth would dream of having those things?”
“I just think it’s sad because it makes me realise that there are Isn’t it the usual type of fantasy?
freaks in the world and I don’t want there to be freaks in the world. “I’ve never met anyone who wanted those things. How weird.”
I want everyone to be nice and give flowers to each other.” MM 5 NOVEMBER 1983 PAGE 32
What do you think most people dream of?
Some people would say, “Oh Marilyn, you’re so nasty for MARILYN “Washing machine… new car. . .”
making us listen to that record.” CALLING YOUR
“Switch off the radio.” NAME Marilyn on the floor
Mercury
“Oh Marilyn, you’re so nasty for making us look at your Are you telling me more lies?
Well, if nothing
photographs.” else, George’s “Oh, no it’s probably just another
“Turn over the page.” pal proves he’s contradiction… life’s full of them you know!”
not just another Oh, fuck you Marilyn!
Marilyn on his memories pretty face, “Oh, I wish you would…”
although, under
“I’ve tried all the drugs there are, I’ve been to all the different the pressure of Marilyn slips and slides, races away, directly
nightclubs, and discos, and through all the scenes, all the different doing so, ‘Calling challenges the interviewer’s right to ask such
aspects of music, and I’ve come up with my own version, the Your Name’ questions. The questions are beneath him.
version that suits me. And it is a new thing, because it’s a new comes on more Or above him. He couldn’t care less. Once
like an attempt to
blend, it’s my blend. It’s like a food mixer; depending on what you establish credentials he’s made his points he finds a new game
put in the drink what comes out will always be different. It always rather than a bona to play…
depends what you put in and what you take out… and that’s what fide song. Pleasantly “Actually, I’m wondering if Paul Morley’s
I am.” Monkeeish and cheekily gay? We all have our weaknesses.”
Culture Clubbish, it fulfils
A food mixer? its function. An exercise So this is your technique…
“Kind of.” “You’recertainlyoneofthemostinteresting
RETNA/REX FEATURES

in sucking in cheeks and Marilyn had to

playing safe. That’s all. borrow Morley’s interviewers I’ve ever been with…”
Marilyn on the bitch Steve Sutherland pants after the The photographer leaves the room. Was
“I try not to be bitchy about anyone.” ‘interview’ I careful? Who’s to say.

52 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 JILL FURMANOVSKY-WWW.ROCKARCHIVE.COM

TLFeBOOK
is fo
H r ..

NME ORIGINALS
.

53
 The Human League

NME 12 JULY 1980 PAGE 48

Charles Shaar
Murray joins
The Human League on the
road and, behind the serious
façade, discovers four overgrown
ten-year-olds arguing over their
Empire Strikes Back
sticker books

T
“ HE HUMAN ADVENTURE IS JUST
BEGINNING”. The first slide appears on the top
left-hand screen. It is rapidly followed by another:
“A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR
AWAY”. And another: “IT BEGINS WHERE
EVERYTHING ELSE ENDS”. At the back of the
stage, lan Marsh activates the tape machine, the rhythm track rolls
and once again The Human League grapple uneasily with their
machines and commence another performance.
In Sheffield Top Rank a capacity audience welcomes them
with that combination of warm encouragement and ferociously
critical scrutiny which hallmarks the hometown audience. In
Derby a small but enthusiastic crowd of clean-cut youth who seem
to know them primarily from Top Of The Pops cheer them to the
(digital) echo. In Hammersmith Palais, a legion of glam rockers of
a demented dandyism unseen since the heyday of Eno-phase Roxy
Music acclaim them as champions.

BOILING
POINT
Dotted hither and yon are youth units with the beginnings of
Philip Oakey haircuts: cropped on one side, elegantly flowing on
the other. Philip, however, has been cultivating his for two years
and therefore has something of a head start on them.
Philip Oakey is the vocalist for The Human League, an
aggregation of young men from Sheffield who have logically and
diligently followed up a series of perverse cultural preoccupations
and ended up constructing pop music exclusively through the
use of throats, lungs, synthesizers, sequencers and tapes, while
embellishing said music with slides and projectors. transformation. Do you realise what agony it is for this man to
Philip Oakey clutches his microphone stand and turns his head shave? He has extremely sensitive skin and active stubble as well as
slowly from side to side. The long portion of his hair sweeps over his extremely greasy hair. Philip is, however, prepared to suffer for his
shoulder in slow motion. He is attempting to watch the slide show, art. On the top of a bus in Sheffield he is merely a tall bloke with
since he has been informed that Adrian Wright, the member of the a very silly haircut. Onstage, he is a friendly emissary from some
band responsible for the visual aids, is currently incorporating a wonderland of cultural deviance.
photograph of Oakey into his slideshow. Oakey’s stage role has emerged as a result of a disability. He
“I wish I had wing mirrors on my mic stand,” he will declare declares himself unable to play a synthesizer and sing at the
with more than a hint of wistfulness, “or video monitors! Then same time. Though he takes his turn at the keyboards along with
I could stand perfectly still and not move at all.” the others in the studio he leaves lan Marsh and Martyn Ware
He cuts an impressive figure in performance, does Philip, which to operate the devices while Adrian Wright makes sure that the
is a tribute to the painstaking care that he puts into his nightly projectors know who’s boss.

54 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

The Human League have been called many things in their
time, some of them favourable. When their first single ‘Being
Boiled’ was released by Fast Product, Johnny Rotten commented,
simply, “trendy hippies”. Since then they’ve been accused of being
pretentious, insufficiently serious, overly serious; they’ve been
called glam rock revivalists, “a dodgy psychedelic band”, phoney
futurists (ouch!), a mere rock band who cannot come to terms
with their instruments and all sorts of other things.
Since their original policy platform called for use of orthodox
rock/pop forms and structures coupled with synthesizer textures
and techniques, it would be fair to say that they have fulfilled this
brief almost perfectly. Their combination of the grandiose and
the silly, the trivial and the significant, the trashy and the classic is
as perverse and unusual as anything else in its immediate cultural
vicinity. Their blending of childish glee and adult scepticism is
alarmingly appealing.
In addition to Oakey – a man who specialises in saying
preposterous things with the polite fervour of one who means
them – the League comprises Martyn Ware, a bluff, sensible,
bearded sort of person who delights in reminding all and sundry
that he quit a five-and-a-half-grand a year job in computers
“for this!”; lan Marsh, a small dapper fellow who spends much
of his time eschewing verbal communication while grinning
mischievously at some private and esoteric joke; and Adrian
Wright. Adrian is picked on mercilessly at all times, though
slightly less virulently when he isn’t there. An obsessive devotee
of the Ramones, Adrian has followed Da Brudders through entire
tours – “When I first met Joey,” recalls Philip, “he said, ‘Oh, you’re
the guy who sings on Adrian’s album’” – and still corresponds
fervently with Johnny Ramone, trading Alien bubblegum cards
for John Wayne movie stills. Adrian, too, has known pain and
LFI
The Human League H
sorrow: recently his collection of Star Wars toys outgrew his
corridor and he had nowhere else to put them.
It would be unfair to pick on Adrian for being an overgrown
ten-year-oId: all of The Human League are overgrown ten-year-
olds. In the van en route from Sheffield to Derby a ludicrous
scene ensued when it was discovered that out of three copies of
an Empire Strikes Back comic purchased by the band, one copy
had lost its set of free transfers. Instead of utilising the economic
advantage that they have over other ten-year-olds and simply
purchasing one more copy, the band proceeded to squabble for
five minutes over the existing transfers. It was not a pretty sight.
To console himself, Oakey leafed through a prized recent
acquisition: a model directory. Not the glossy soft-porn ones
sold in newsagents, but the genuine article as circulated by model
agencies to bona fide clients. Models fascinate Philip: he follows
them from ad to ad and transformation to transformation.
lt is the transformations that fascinate him rather than the
models themselves, the techniques they use for modifying their
appearances to suit each assignment. Sometimes they portray
‘real people’; these roles fascinate Oakey most of all. He is himself,
however, reluctant to be photographed in his untransformed
state, thereby depriving others of the chance to see ‘before’ and
‘after’ pictures.
Martyn is in the middle of an explanation of the origin of the
group’s name: “We got it from this science-fiction game called
Star Force. There were all these scenarios in the back for various
wars in the future, and one of these for a stage round about 2180
where there were two main empires: The Pansentient Hegemony
and The Human League. The Human League were centred
around Earth and the scenario was called ‘The Rise Of The
Human League’. So we stole it.”
We discuss their stage set-up and what they’d like to do with
it next. A brief conflagration breaks out when a disagreement is
reached over the use of film and videos as well as stills and slides.
“This hits on a pretty central problem,” says Philip. “Everybody
In at the deep end:
else thinks we should play live and I don’t at all.”
The Human League
(l-r) Ware, Oakey, So why do you play live?
Marsh and Wright “I think it’s useful sometimes for getting songs licked into
shape when you start out.”
The Human League’s combination of the the trashy
and the classic and their blending of childish glee
and adult scepticism is alarmingly appealing
Martyn: “When people see us live, they realise that we are an
entirely different kettle of fish from all the groups who get rather
superficially categorised with us. Also, it influences a lot of people,
and people are only going to remember you for a long time if they
see you in the flesh.”
Philip: ‘To me a live show is what you do because you can’t
get on TV.”
Martyn: “No, that’s something entirely different. TV is a far
more effective means of promoting something, but a live show
is an entirely different thing. I’d rather do two solid weeks of TV
than two solid weeks of touring.”
Ian intervenes: “It’s different for other groups at least they’re
leaping about. We’re not very moveable.”
Martyn: “Action Man – fully posable!”
When the League first got going, their initial imperative was to
begin making tapes. Performing was an afterthought.
“Even before we thought of performing,” asserts Martyn, “we
were sticking things down on tape. Tape has always been essential
to our mode of composition and operation. It’s essential.”
Phillip: “Other groups get together with two guitars and a
drummer and a singer and they’ll thrash out a song and learn to
play it. The first thing we do when we get anything we like is put it
down on tape and then we see about adding to it.”
NME ORIGINALS 55
TLFeBOOK
 The Human League

The League was an outgrowth of a previous band called The

Future, which was Ian, Martyn and a person called Addy who is
now in ClockDVA.
“Instrumentals, basically,” recollects Marsh. “We wrote off to
record companies in London saying, ‘We are going to be huge and
you should sign us. We are going to be in London for two days and
you can make appointments to see us and our demo tapes.’ We
went round loads of people like CBS and Island. Virgin was on the
list but we opted out of seeing them because we were having such
a good time round at Island. They all thought we were total crap
and said, ‘Keep in touch, boys’. Then we got rid of Addy and, for
reasons best known to ourselves, we got Philip in.”
The Future lasted from June until October of ’77 and never
ventured into live performance. Philip had never sung. But…
Philip: “I was at school with Martyn and I’d been watching
with increased admiration as all these things happened to The
Future with them trotting off to London to see record companies,
which seemed a fairly insane thing to do. Everybody used to laugh
at them except me. Then they had a bust-up with Addy and I…”
Ian: “…I remember sitting in Martyn’s room thinking, ‘We
need another keyboard player.’ We never thought about getting a
singer. We weren’t specifically looking for another musician, just
someone with the right attitude. I didn’t know Philip at all. I’d just
met him a couple of times and thought he was totally obnoxious.
I thought he was an A1 git.”
“I don’t know how you got this impression!” protests Oakey.
“Well, you insulted me several times when you didn’t know
me at all. We met in a club once during the heyday of punk when
I was looking fairly absurd in a pair of women’s tights as a top just
dragged over me head and ripped… and a 13 amp plug round me
neck and a baked bean can on me head. You came up to me and
said, ‘What happens if I plug this in? Does yer head light up?’”
“I’m always very polite to people,” Oakey splutters. “The only The League
survey the
time I remember meeting you was when we both went
post-industrial
for the same job a the computer place and you wasteland, 1980
came in dressed totally in black with gloves and
an umbrella on a sunny day. I didn’t mean to
insult you, I’m really sorry about that.”
“’S’alright Phil,” replies Marsh pleasantly.
“I’ll never forgive you. You used to come to “I spent hours working on that office.
rehearsals and do absolutely nothing, and then I japanned the furniture and had an
you showed up with this saxophone that you artist letter the sign, and then I sat around
couldn’t play…” inside in me pinstripe waiting for cases.”
“But it cost me £165!” Martyn explains: “lan’s the quiet one
“And then you finally wrote your first lyric, who sits in the corner not talking, but he
which was ‘Being Boiled’. You came in and sang, was the one who packed in his job with
‘Listen to the voice of Buddha/Saying stop your computers and ran away to Cornwall to
sericulture’ and I thought you were completely be a fisherman. Then he set himself up as a
fuckin’ crackers! We wouldn’t let him (Philip has French polisher by reading one book. Then
now been moved into the third person) play our he ruined this oak table that belonged to his girlfriend’s parents…”
synthesizers because we were too busy playing them ourselves.” The highlight of lan Marsh’s career, however, was his entry into the
Philip: “I felt at a vast disadvantage until I conned money out of astrology business. “I started a business called Aurora Astrological
me dad to buy a synthesizer. I still can’t play it…” Analysis. I’d figured that there were 55 million people in Britain and
Martyn: “And it’s broken!” if they all gave me a quid I could retire. So how could I get everybody
to give me a quid? I decided that people would pay a quid for a

“Other groups get together with two guitars and
they’ll thrash out a song. The first thing we do is put
it down on tape and then add to it” Phil Oakey
They commenced rehearsals in Devonshire Lane (a must for
all visitors to Sheffield) and Adrian became involved when Addy
Newton came and removed all the doors – “I thought what’s this
prat doing taking my door away?” – including lan’s pride and joy:
genuine personalised horoscope but not making them personalised
at all, just wording the ad very carefully, getting a solicitor to check
it all out and just having the dozen very basic standardised ones.
I think I made about 30 quid.”
Back in real life, the League consider their future.
“I don’t think we’re really interested in rock as a career. What we
really want to do is to get into films, and I think that between the
four of us we have the ideas and the contacts to do something, but
we need some money. To make money we have to sell albums and to
sell albums we have to sell singles so here we are.”
And back onstage, the last shots of Gary Glitter and stills from
CHRIS HORLER/IDOLS

his ‘detective door’. Land Of The Giants are replaced by three more slides, from different
“He had an office in 1930 with ‘I Marsh Private Investigator’ films and TV shows. They all spell out the same thing. They say…
lettered on the door…” “THE END”

56 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 H

League two:
(l-r) Phil, Adrian,
Joanne, Suzanne,
Ian and Jo

TRUE, DARE, NME 3 OCTOBER 1981 PAGE 28

KISS OR PROMISE
L
ife, states Phil Oakey, settling into an armchair
in the tacky splendour of a seedy hotel
lounge, “has been a constant series of
disappointments to me ever since
I joined this group.
“Let’s be honest, I thought we’d
do it with our first single. I thought ‘Being Boiled’
would be Number One. Then ‘The Dignity Of
Labour’ came out and I thought, well, I know it’s a
bit unusual, but it might just get to Number One.”
“Then you got us,” Suzanne says from the other
side of the table. “And you got to Number 12, then
Number Three, twice. What more could you want?”
We knew we were going to be a top group two years
ago,” continues Philip, ignoring this interruption.
“Definitely. We’d got all the names trademarked so
people couldn’t rush out and make T-shirts because we
were going to be so popular, instantly. Then we just sat
around and waited for people to buy the records.”
“And they didn’t,” says Suzanne.
LFI
This time around, the Indian summer of 1981 has
Phil ladles on seen a bright British electro-pop explosion. Already
the Max Factor and stirring up the stagnant charts is the serene teen-
pop of Depeche Mode and the electro-glide of
Soft Cell. Still waiting on the sidelines are Pete
Joanne and Suzanne tell Shelley’s fresh surge of homosapien love, the
smoother electro-glide of Thomas Leer’s
Lynn Hanna how they made ‘Four Movements’, the sensual, cerebral
dancefloor funk celebration and stimulation
The Human League an electro- that is the very wonderful Heaven 17.
Pushing to the top of the chart pile, setting
pop success. And everybody the scene with ‘The Sound Of The Crowd’
for the insinuating success of ‘Love Action’
bitches behind one is the hopeful hit-machine of the regenerated
Human League.
another’s back… And all this after the old League split up last
year into the BEF/Heaven 17 formation and Phil
Oakey and Adrian Wright were left holding the name,
the slides and the haircut.

NME ORIGINALS 57
TLFeBOOK
 The Human League

“I thought then we might easily blow it completely,” admits Phil

“I agreed with everyone else. I thought we were the ones without
the talent as well. But it’s possible to have too much talent. And
worse, it’s possible to have too much talent and think you have
even more talent that that.
“I think if we’ve got anything, it’s the fact that we can spot the
things that we’re bad at. We’ve always needed someone like lan
Burden; ‘The Sound Of The Crowd’ is his song. I’m quite good on
words and tunes, but we’ve never had anyone who was really good
at rhythms and basslines.
“Jo Callis fits in anywhere he possibly can – if you don’t stop
him. He’s the world’s most energetic human being. The problem
is to shut him up really. He doesn’t stop from when he wakes up to
when he goes to sleep, which is about five in the morning. He can
do anything. He’s the best keyboard player in the group, which is
quite good when you consider he’s not a keyboard player. No-one
who can play with two hands has ever been in our studio before.
He’s great is Jo. I’m glad he’s not here.
“It would be really nice if we needed anything to have someone
in the group who could do it. I think we’ve just about got it, now,
one of everything.”

Now we are six

I catch up with Jo Callis and Ian Burden in the civilised setting
of a Chelsea pub, opposite the small studio where the rest of The
Human League are supervising the mixing of a backing track for a
forthcoming TV slot. Jo is small, pale, bouncy and ferret-faced with
an endearing habit of punctuating his conversation by chuckling
happily to himself. In stark contrast, lan is tall, dark, slowmoving
and soft-spoken. By coincidence, both spent their childhood
moving round the country with fathers who were in the RAF.
Ian, whose girlfriend shared a house with Phil Oakey in
Sheffield, joined the League in the week that Phil and Adrian spent
recruiting new members between the old group splitting and
setting out on a European tour to fulfil contractual obligations.
Jo, who finally ended up in Edinburgh, has followed a more
circuitous route through The Rezillos, Shake and early Scottish
pop-funk exponents Boots For Dancing.
Jo’s own League connection came through a common
manager in Fast Product’s boss Bob Last and was strengthened
by a keen shared interest in ’60s childhood esoterica with League
slide supremo Adrian Wright.
“When I met him, the first thing he did was open up his wallet
and show me two Thunderbirds bubblegum cards with the words
of this song he’d written. Three years later we finished it.”
Jo’s past pop connections and lan’s rhythm sensibilities have
consolidated the League’s new commercialism and both now form
an integral part of the complicated songwriting permutations.
“You’re talking to the Nile and Rodgers of The Human League
here,” asserts Jo jovially.
“Listening to the old Human League was like listening to
electronic music, but now when I hear a Human League record,
it sounds like a pop record that just happens to have all been done
on synthesizers and electronically.
“I think what’s good about The Human League compared to
Depeche Mode or Soft Cell, is that they’re just electronic bands
who are fashionable at the moment. With The Human League,
obviously there is the fashion and image thing, but I think that
at any stage in their development, they’ve never been dependent
on any current trend. In many respects it’s taken all these other
groups three years to catch up with them.”
How do you all get on as a group?
“It’s horrendous, like a love/hate relationship. This is definitely
LFI/JILL FURMANOVSKY-WWW.ROCKARCHIVE.COM
Top of the League
on Top Of The Pops,
December 1981
By now the story of how Phil Oakey recruited Joanne and
Suzanne in a Sheffield disco is already semi-legendary in the
hallowed annals of The Human League history.
“He wanted a tall black singer and he got two short white girls
who couldn’t sing,” explains Suzanne.
Pausing only to take a month off school where both were
studying for four A-levels each, the girls set off on tour and
embarked on a pop career.
“Don’t ask me what my exam results were, please,” groans
Joanne. “They were highly disappointing.”
Were they previous fans of The Human League, I wonder?
“Well, we’d bought tickets to go and see them in Doncaster,
I mean, we’d got ‘Travelogue’ and the singles on tape.”
Ask what they feel they add to the group and Joanne replies
MM 1 AUGUST 1981 PAGE 10
frankly, “Glamour. Definitely glamour; stuff that gives it a more
saleable quality. We’re here to sell it.”
THE HUMAN
LEAGUE On the other hand both are lively, forthright 18-year-olds
LOVE ACTION with a dry, canny Yorkshire wit, a sharp sense of humour and
(I BELIEVE IN LOVE) pronounced opinions on what they like in pop.
Virgin
“When we went on tour, we didn’t know anything about the
Oooh! The way they
get excited when they
music business, we were still at school. We’ve been learning,
aren’t. Is Sal Solo ever picking up tips, listening to what people say. It’s no good jumping
sad? Because he is in at the deep end and saying, ‘I think this should go on the
always bad, real BAD! record’ when you don’t know anything about it. But if we’ve got
Why aren’t The Human
League lop-sided like
an opinion, we’re not pushed out.”
Oakey’s hair cut? What was your idea in getting girls in, Phil?
How about more acute “I think women are going to take over almost everything by
observations about guys the end of the century. I don’t think it’s a man’s world any more.
and gals? How about
stringing more than two
For a little while it will be, but it’s just about finished, don’t you
words together. The think so?”

the strangest combination of people I’ve ever worked with. It’s “Human” League?! Bring Joanne and Suzanne were originally ardent Gary Numan
like people have been picked up on the way, ending up with this back the Daleks, Doctor, fans who both dressed alike in black, although they’ve since
let’s converse with
bizarre conclusion. Well, it’s not the conclusion, maybe in two Kraftwerk’s computers!
developed their own stage style, mainly through shopping in
years Suzanne will be the lead singer or something.” Don’t cry on their second-hand stores.
“Everyone’s different,” adds lan. “No little alliances ever form.” shoulders; you’ll “We’re trying to be individual in the way we dress and dance,”
“Part of The Human League concept is that no one knows smudge the lipstick says Joanne. “You want people to know what you are.”
on their circuits.
what anyone else is doing at any given point in time,” says Jo. “It’s Neil Rowland
Joanne stops suddenly.
that random element that adds the vital spark.” “Am I sounding like Steve Strange?

58 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 The Human League H
“Everybody says you should dance the same, but we won’t. If
we stood there and did a routine, it wouldn’t be being ourselves.”
“I think it works that anyone can do what they want really,” says
Suzanne. “If anyone comes in and says, ‘I want to play keyboards
today’ no-one turns round and says, ‘Oh no, you can’t, that’s not
your role in the group.’”
“Everyone’s supposed to be an individual,” states Joanne.
“That’s what this group is, a set of individuals.”

We are family
The Human League are an exotic and incongruous spectacle in
the tawdry afternoon emptiness of the Bayswater hotel. The girls
glow in black, red and gold clothes, colourful paint and powder,
bright tights and precariously high heels.
In their midst Phil Oakey reclines in an armchair, resplendent
in bronze face-powder and black eye-liner, the haircut scraped
severely back from his forehead and wearing a dark, wide-lapelled
suit that seems to have a split in the seat of the trousers. Adrian
Wright stands out by virtue of the ordinariness of his appearance,
sombre jacket, faded jeans, pointed suede shoes and a calm,
cynical manner that contrasts with the loud mayhem created by
the other three members of the group who the hotel porter views
from time to time with some consternation.
We rejoin the scene as Adrian and Joanne return to the circle
around the coffee table after posing for a photo-session.
“You’ve combed your hair, Adrian,” cries Philip immediately
in wheedling and irritating tones.
Adrian refuses to fall for the bait.
“No, I haven’t,’ he replies evenly.
“You have. I can tell,” crows Philip.
Adrian appeals to Joanne. “Did I comb me hair?”
“No, he didn’t,” she states seriously.

“I think women are going to take over almost

everything by the end of the century. I don’t
think it’s a man’s world any more” Phil Oakey
Phil Oakey: always Philip is already closely questioning Suzanne.
asked for a “short
back and side” at
“Look at that hair. Does it look combed?”
the hairdresser “It must have been the photos. We were doing steamy shower
shots,” says Adrian, slyly.
Philip bitches back. “In your leather jacket and jeans?”
It’s gratifying to see that the girls give as good as they get in the
confusing cut and thrust of The Human League’s conversation
and the complex internecine system of point-scoring where
disagreement is de rigeur.
Philip is at pains to point out, several times, the split lip he
alleges he suffered at the hands of Suzanne only this morning on
the train from Sheffield, although beneath the puce sheen of his
lipstick no scar is visible.
“I hadn’t done anything,” he complains in an aggrieved voice.
“You did,” says Joanne. “You tried to push her through
a window.”
“That was after. At some stage I thought, ‘I’ve got to fight back.’”
“I decided that last December when she hit me the first time,”
Adrian observes with morose Yorkshire satisfaction to no-one in
particular.
“Ooh, Adrian,” pouts Suzanne reproachfully.
“It’s a good job me and Adrian are nice and quiet to calm these
two down,” Joanne confides.
“You quiet, don’t give me your innocent look,” cries Suzanne.
Joanne smiles serenely.
The same problems arise at many points during the afternoon’s
discussion. While Philip or Adrian are expounding pet theories,
the girls will make covert winding-up gestures or pull bored
faces behind the boys’ backs, gazing at the ceiling with feigned
innocence whenever a suspicious glance flickers their way.

NME ORIGINALS 59
TLFeBOOK
 The Human League

NME 17 OCTOBER 1981 PAGE 41

THE HUMAN LEAGUE

DARE! Virgin

P
hil Oakey is a post-Iggy crooner of romantic
agony who possesses a tough streak of
intellectual scepticism.
‘Dare!’ is the second intoxicating intervention
to be produced out of the great split, and already
it’s the first Human League greatest hits collection.
It is the first coherent projection of persecuted
lover Oakey’s staggeringly twisted personality –
I mean that in the queasiest possible way.
The Human League, presumably because
Phil Oakey and Bobby Last took charge of
the proceedings, have begun to deal
seriously with the themes and issues
of popular fiction, song, film and The
soap opera – love, an intensity
of desire, an examination of
League are
comfort, beauty and jealousy. Abba locked into
Fundamentally, there’s
Ramones, Iggy,
been an artful redefinition of
the quite devious potentials of
middle of the road music. As the Can, Zappa,
League theory no doubt had it
they are Abba locked into Ramones,
Kraftwerk
Iggy, Can, Zappa, Kraftwerk. A
confection energised by intimate reflection.
The use of electronics becomes all but
irrelevant. The Human League just produce their
music to interfere with the daily details of the ’80s
family. The Human League signify that deliciously
serious, sincerely disposable MOR music can
possess style, quality and sophistication.
I like the idea of the Human League selling
hundreds of thousands of copies of their product.
So does Bob Last.
I like the idea of The Human
League knocking Genesis off
the Number One place in the
LP charts. Why? Choice and
change, lust and longing.
The Human League could be
the first pop group broken in by
punk and who are in touch with
the deeper elements of art rituals,
pop skills, political illusion and love
codes who have burst into the mainstream.
Surprise! ‘Dare!’ is some kind of revenge, and
in many ways it challenges the very conventions
of pop music and the essence of innovation.
What is it all for? I think that ‘Dare!’ is one of the
great popular music LPs. It’s both ‘pleasant’ and
it’s a ‘challenge’. I’ll keep it forever: truth and lie
combined I’ll always hold dear.
Paul Morley
The League stop
arguing long
enough for a
quick photoshoot
“It’s difficult to tell what difference it made. Probably a great
deal. He’s brilliant at what he does.”
“He’s a master of his equipment,” adds Adrian.
“And a lot of the old Human League records did sound like a lot
of blokes in an eight-track studio in Sheffield.”
“It’s his attitude,” says Philip. “A lot of people I’ve worked with
won’t take any little dodges to get around something and make
it easier. If something could be played by hand, they’d say, ‘Keep
doing it, you’ll do it eventually,’ and you’d end up wasting six
hours, whereas Martin just feeds it through the computer. At
every stage, he always goes for the easiest way of getting the best
idea down.”
Despite the fact the League fight shy of revealing future plans
for fear of encouraging grandiose ideas that may then fall flat, at
some stage they plan to release an instrumental LP and, of course,
more of their colour-coded pop records.

Like any group who’ve transcended a cult following, The

Human League have incurred some wrath in Sheffield, it seems, “Abba are good at writing songs.
from faithful followers who are now forced to share a private
appreciation with a wider public.
I’d rather be compared to Abba
Suzanne: “The only reason they think we’ve gone commercial
is because there’s two girls joining and it’s, ‘They’ve gone like
than Buck’s Fizz” Adrian Wright
Bucks Fizz,’ that’s what they’re saying.”
Adrian: “But even our commercial songs don’t sound as
if they’re selling out, they still sound like us. It’s not as if we’ve “Red for poseurs,” says Suzanne.
become The Archies all of a sudden.” “For Spandy types,” Joanne explains.
Suzanne: “No, but we’re in the same league as them now.” “And blue for Abba fans,” finishes Philip
Adrian: “No, we’re not. We’re just bracketed that way.” The Human League are determined not to succumb to the
Philip: “I hope we are.” temptation of talking about Heaven 17 – “It’s like when you
Adrian: “I’d rather be like Abba.” fall out with a boyfriend and you slate him to everyone because
Joanne: “What’s the difference?” MM 28 NOVEMBER 1981 PAGE 14
you’ve been so close,” says Joanne. “It’s really trivial. It shouldn’t
Adrian: “There’s a lot of difference. Abba are very good at happen.”
writing songs. There’s hit records and there’s wonderful hit THE HUMAN However, it’s obvious that comparisons rankle.
LEAGUE
records. I’d rather be compared with Abba.” DON’T YOU WANT ME “There’s the swing against us, which at the moment is being
Joanne: “(Dreamily and pursuing a private train of thought) Virgin shown in Heaven 17 reviews,” asserts Philip. “There’s this thing
Buck’s Fizz are nice people.” He found her as a about how we’re not divergent and that we’re only writing pop
waitress in a cocktail bar,
Philip: “We went out to dinner with a couple of them in songs which makes us less worthy. That annoys me. We’re writing
turned her around and
Sheffield last week. They were really nice.” made her into a star. She pop songs because we want to and at the moment we can shelve
Joanne: “Just like us.” didn’t want to know him everything else. I don’t think we’re selling out because that’s part
Philip: “Well, they weren’t just like us. They were really nice. any more. He couldn’t of what we want to do. At the moment it makes a lot of sense to
believe she didn’t want
Just like me.” write the best pop songs we can.
him any more. She
explained that it was “When we were doing the album, we considered everything as
We have the technology simply time she stood on a single, because that’s the sort of LP we like, the Blondie LPs and
Although Philip will attribute the commercial disappointments of her own two feet. Like Michael Jackson. I’ll buy an album with five singles on it because
a synthesized Sonny &
the old League to the fact that the group had a pariah, an unlucky those are the ones I want to hear.
Cher it underlines The
symbol – “It was Martyn. He breaks lightbulbs by walking near Human League’s arrival “In the long term, so long as you’re writing good songs, you’ve
them and synthesizers and hi-fis. He’s got the jinx. Pity really, ’cos as purveyors of perfect got it made. It doesn’t matter what you look like, someone will sing
he’s very talented” – one of the factors in the new League’s success pop singles. Number them somewhere, someone will want to hear them. I think that’s
One at Christmas?
is undoubtedly their collaboration with Martin Rushent and the really what it’s all about.”
Colin Irwin
hi-tech opportunities of his rural Berkshire studios. And who could argue with that?
LFI

60 NME ORIGINALS

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Ifor ...
REDFERNS

NME ORIGINALS 61
TLFeBOOK
 The Other
Side Of
Silence
NME 6 NOVEMBER 1982 PAGE 25

When the music’s

W
hat, then, is time? David and the
other Japan
“If you don’t ask,
I know. If I have to over… what happens in blokes: Steve,
Richard and Mick
explain, I do not
know.” the silence after sound? David “It was a bad caricature. When I was
There seems to about 13 or 14 I didn’t like myself very much. I
want to be a uniting of perfection of thought Sylvian talks and talks to Paul didn’t like the idea that I was shy and introverted.
and feeling with perfection of form, resulting I disliked my childhood intensely, but from as
in a subjectivity that takes you beyond the Morley… about his childhood, far back as I can remember I hated not being
ordinary self towards a confrontation with the independent. People were saying to me that I would
ideal self… so? pop, suicide and the future never do well in music because I was too shy… that
“So? Fear not to be young, precocious, hurry on, I couldn’t even go onstage to sing because I couldn’t
if there is somewhere you can hurry on…” beyond Japan even face talking to people. Which was true, I couldn’t.
But I wanted independence.
Do you remember the last time? “So I built, like, not an alter ego. I exaggerated a tiny part
“Yes, this now seems to be the right time. The last time of myself. I turned it into a gross caricature and wore certain
obviously wasn’t. But I did enjoy the conversation, even types of clothes that I could hide behind. I lived the part totally.
though I could tell you were a little hostile.” I believed that if I lived the part long enough, I would
Then no-one gave you a piece of chance. become it. I saw it as like a salvation. But eventually I hated
“Oh no, if you make mistakes around here it’s difficult this caricature so much I was forced to come to terms with
to ever escape. I know the first album is rubbish, that all myself and find a way to control myself.”
the hype that went with it was just wrong, but we were just How do you see this exaggeration now?
five boys, naive and trying to get something together.” “It’s difficult to pinpoint. When I started in the music
When did you develop a self-consciousness about business – oh, disgusting phrase – when I first started
what you were actually doing, a feeling towards what making music I was doing it for all the wrong reasons, the
could have been done? wrong reasons being to have fame, to boost the ego. I’m not
“After ‘Life In Tokyo’ I was in New York for about a that type of person at all. So I stood back from it, and as
month, and it was a real depression, looking back on what much as I was allowed, slipped away.”
I’d done and disliking everything. From the appearance Everything that motivated you to make pop music
of the band to the people we’d worked with to the music you’ve had to shake away: those rampant desires, myths
itself. Just horrible. absorbed as a teenager.
“We talked about splitting, although we were getting “You have to lose all those things to function smoothly.
on together fine. I started writing songs in a new way, on You have to lose the desire for people to look at you in a
keyboards, which made a whole difference. Something certain way. So that when you say write a lyric you have to
as simple as that changed things around, everything lose the desire to put in something about yourself which
sounded more mature, and there was a great change in you only want people to see but that isn’t true. You strive
approach and attitude.” towards a strange purity that is probably impossible, a kind
David Sylvian:
What was it about the adopted appearance that of carefulness that hopefully achieves the opposite effect – a
“Suicide?
you hated? There’s always radical… bravery.”
tomorrow!”

62 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 The Ultimate Pop Idol I
MM 30 OCTOBER 1982 PAGE 33

NME 13 MARCH 1982 PAGE 21

JAPAN
GHOSTS
Virgin

Somewhat ashamed of
being attached to an
outmoded gimmick,
Japan have been
recently attempting
to pass the parcel, as
it were, by singing lots
of songs about Red
China. This one is about
‘Ghosts’ of no particular
persuasion; you know
what it sounds like.
David Sylvian has a
bellyache and so we
all have to hear about
it. Jayne Mansfield
once suggested to her
manager that they bottle
the Mansfield urine and
sell it to her star-struck
fans. Well, David Sylvian
bottles bellyaches and
(sometimes) idiots buy
them. Men shouldn’t
read books – knowledge
makes them miserable…
Julie Burchill

In a lot of your songs the word ‘life’ appears.

“Because it represents so many different things. Ways of life,
patterns of life. That’s what the word represents; the way people
live their lives, the attitudes they adopt to their life, and it suggests
the learning, or what is involved in unlearning all these things
that are forced upon you from childhood – so that you can really
begin to learn. To me the learning is what is important. There’s
something vital there, and a reason for it that spins around inside
my mind. A reason for learning, and learning justifies life.”
He not busy being born is busy dying.
“Someone asked me in an interview if I’d ever considered
suicide, and I did at a very young age. For some reason I came to
the conclusion that if I didn’t do it today there’s always tomorrow.
You know? It’s as if you’ve already done it, and everything else is
beyond it, some kind of bonus or something.”
It’s interesting that you should be asked about suicide. The
introvert, the melancholy boy, is seen to
be suicidal, when it’s obvious once you’ve The overcoat always
skipped about a bit that the quiet life can be stayed on – even for
Top Of The Pops
a manifestation of a seizing excitement.
“People always ask me about ‘depression’.
I never feel depressed. Or I say to them,
‘I enjoy my depressions.’”
Do Japan have a great justification for
their existence?
REDFERNS
“You have to lose the desire for people to look at
you in a certain way. You strive towards a purity
that is probably impossible – a radical bravery”
“Me. My state of mind. Maybe I’m making records for myself.
And then it turns into that something we’re wondering about
which is where all the complications enter into it.”
It seems now that you’re treading water, dismayed with the
clutter of the pop context, apprehensive of what to do next.
“That’s true, I’m meandering. I’m not even sure about wanting
to continue with music. I’ve started painting recently and that
has led to discovery of new shapes and forms, seeing things in a
different way, and that’s exciting.
“In one way, I feel I can move away from
music easily, but in a way I’m apprehensive
about throwing away this slight public
position because of the potential that’s
involved to take chances in my life and
possibly communicate something that is
unusual if only in the context. I just feel I’m
here for a reason.”

“Me.” What’s the time?

You? “I’m not wearing a watch.”

NME ORIGINALS 63
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is for ...

NME ORIGINALS 65
TLFeBOOK
LFI
 Michael Jackson

T
he voice wafting in from the West Coast was as
feather soft as a child’s. It was Michael Jackson,
calling with the ground rules for our interview.
CBS International had already cautioned me
against asking questions comparing the Jacksons
to similar family entertainment empires with
lots of white teeth and television specials… say, of the Mormon
persuasion… say, from Utah.
Sure I’d caved in, and I won’t ask him what he thinks of
Baudelaire or Afghanistan either. Anything else? Yeah. I was told
to expect a personal call from Michael, and here he was – live in
Bell Telephone mono – with a pip of a condition.
He wanted me to ask my questions to his sister. Then she’d
repeat the questions to him. He said it had to do with “something
I believe in”.
Oh. You mean I drop off the questions and pick up
the tape later, but I’m not there during the actual
interview?
No, he said, I could be there and he’d
answer me.
Hmm, I thought on, this round-robin
twist is a new one me. What can he
Michael Jackson:
possibly be afraid of?
Sure, I said at last, whatever makes
“black Sinatra for the ’90s”,
you feel comfortable.
Weird.
or just looking for an escape to
Scheduling an interview with heaven? Steve Demorest gets to
Michael Jackson is a tricky business,
especially just after he’s been misquoted talk to him – via his
by a major American trade publication.
Only a good deal of polite patience all 13-year-old sister, Janet
round the globe had pulled this one off.
They say The Jacksons have sold more
records than anyone except The Beatles, but it

MM 1 MARCH 1980 PAGE 28

was always Michael who had the most charisma. In 1970, when he
was precocious 11-year-old mini-Super Fly, strutting and spinning
and singing with a sophistication beyond his years, Michael had
a natural cool that girls ten years his senior couldn’t find in their
own boyfriends.
In 1979, the family’s ‘Destiny’ album went double platinum,
and they claim to turn away 10,000 people every night they pack
one of America’s huge stadiums. Michael, however, is over three
million in sales with ‘Off The Wall’ all by himself.
Now 21, Michael has become downright handsome. You catch
him on camera coming out of an eerie smoke flanked by green
lasers, with his black spangled body-suit sparkling like modern
chain-mail, and suddenly the little urchin of old is a full-grown
prince. The stage presence is fabulous and you understand why
they’re beginning to call him the “black Sinatra for the ’90s”.
Our grey Cadillac dreadnought has climbed out of Hollywood,
floated over the hills, and glided down into the flats of San
Fernando Valley.
Not far from the bustle of Encino we pull up to open iron gate,
ring the intercom for the inhabitants to clear the Doberman
out of the yard, and then swing into the driveway of a
sprawling one-storey house. There’s a Rolls and a couple
of Mercedes scattered about, but the tan camper parked
under the basketball hoops lends a family touch. This is very
comfortable upper-middle class spread alright, but certainly not
the overwrought palace they could afford if they wanted.
Thirteen-year-old Janet – herself a child-star on the TV sitcom
Good Times – answers the door like a dutiful youngest child, small
golden beads clacking at the ends of her thin Bo Derek braids.
There are no parents about, no manager and no bodyguard. In
fact, myself and Shirley Brooks from CBS (who politely retires to
the den to watch The Rockford Files for the next two hours) are the
nearest excuses for grown-ups in sight.
Jacko: “The best
Now 21, Michael has become
singer in the
world just now”
downright handsome. The little
urchin of old is a full-grown prince

66 NME ORIGINALS

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 Michael Jackson J

NME 11 OCTOBER 1980 PAGE 39

MICHAEL JACKSON
OFF THE WALL Epic

T
his week, Michael Jackson’s ‘Off The Wall’
album notches up one solid year in the
NME Top 30. No black music record has
ever done this before.
Obviously ‘Off The Wall’ has been sustained in
the charts by CBS’ policy of systematically culling
it for singles. No less than five have dropped off it
Michael relaxes to dominate the airwaves in their subtly pervasive
at home and fashion, and all but one of them Top Tenners
(below) it’s Janet – and there’s more where they came from.
the interpreter ‘Off The Wall’ is a collection of highly polished
good-idea-for-a songs. It has the production
skills – the polish – of Quincy Jones and
it’s got Michael Jackson. Apart from of the classiest intros to any record
anything else, his current status At 22 in years. It’s by far the best song
shows he never lost his magic in on the album and, significantly,
the eyes of a whole generation Michael Jackson wrote it himself and
who first got turned on by ‘I
Want You Back’ and have stuck
Jackson’s the co-produced.
The measured, vulnerable
by him whenever the going singer we always vocal style of ‘Rock With You’
got at all passable ever since. is equally masterful. And yet
But even more than that, hoped he another lick hits you straight
there’s his performance. To my between the eyes on ‘Working
ears, this album marks the first would be Day And Night’, with its urgent
time since those teeny bop days that vocal group chorus (all Jackson
Jackson has sounded comfortable. At himself). As Graham Lock pointed out in
22 he’s the singer we always hoped he would be. his original review, “probably the best singer in the
Listen to him on ‘Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough’, world just now in terms of style and technique.”
wailing in that strange, crying voice punctuated It’s that style and technique that have made
by short ecstatic sighs and sharp whoops ‘Off The Wall’ a platinum seller, and which will
– the sound of a man in complete control. The continue to sell Michael Jackson’s records for
whirlpool of strings at the beginning is also one years to come. Phil McNeill

And heeeeeeere’s Michael! Quietly padding into the carpeted
hall to shake hands, the charismatic Michael Jackson appears to
be simply a nice, sweet, rather low-key youth. He’s wearing an
orange knit pullover shirt, dark slacks and large, gleaming black
shoes that give the impression of a puppy or a colt not yet fully
grown into his feet.
Michael reminds me I’ve agreed to operate with his sister
acting as our interpreter and the three of us adjourn into the
unpretentious, bright yellow and lime living room. I’ve already
decided to open with the blandest possible questions so he’ll have
time to check on my humanity, but Michael doesn’t know that.
He’s cracking his knuckles while I set up the tape machine, until
Janet – sitting between us – chastises him mildly. He smiles and
relaxes. Throughout our talk she’ll reach over to pluck at his hair
or brush his arm reassuringly.
So, let’s start with Quincy Jones. Everybody loves his production
of ‘Off The Wall’. Quincy remembers meeting Michael at Sammy
Davis’ house when the boy was ten, and Michael’s first recollection
of Quincy dates from backstage at a Muhammad Ali benefit, but
their ‘real’ meeting came when they worked together on The Wiz
in 1978.
Er, I’d like to know how Michael decided that Quincy would
be the best producer for his album.
“How did you decide to have Quincy?” Janet echoes.
Michael smiles. Good start.
“One day I called Quincy up to ask if he could suggest some
great people who might want to do my album. It was the first
time that I fully wrote and produced my songs, and I was
looking for somebody who would give me that freedom, plus
somebody who’s unlimited musically. Quincy calls me ‘Smelly’
RETNA/LFI/WIREIMAGE
“One of my favourite pastimes is
MM 22 FEBRUARY 1983 PAGE 22
MICHAEL
JACKSON
BEAT IT
Epic
Jackson should stick to
the doe-eyed smoothie
crooning he’s so adept
at. This foray into rock
just doesn’t ring true. A
cut from the ‘Thriller’ LP,
“It sounded so phoney – like I was trying to hint to that – but I
wasn’t, I didn’t even think of that. But Quincy does jazz, he does
movie scores, rock’n’roll, funk, pop – he’s all colours, and that’s
the kind of people I like to work with; I went over to his house just
about every other day, and we just put it together.”
Did Quincy have a lot of good ideas for Michael?
“Did Quincy have good ideas for you?” Janet whispers.
“There’s a great coincidence that happened on that album. You
know the Paul McCartney song I did, ‘Girlfriend’? The first time I
met Paul McCartney was on the Queen Mary and then I met him
being with children. Talking to
them, playing with them”
again at a party he threw at Harold Lloyd’s estate here in LA. Him
and Linda came up to me and said, ‘We wrote you a song’, and
they started singing ‘Girlfriend, da-da-dee-dee-dee’. And I said,
‘Oh, I really like it, when can we get together?’ So he gave me his
Scotland number and the number in London, but we never got
together on the whole thing. The next I noticed it he had the song
on his ‘London Town’ album. Then one day I went to Quincy’s
house and he said, ‘You know what’s a great song for you? This
McCartney song called ‘Girlfriend’.’ I just flipped out.”
Is Michael really working day and night, like he wrote in his
song? Janet passes the question along.

and he said, ‘Well, Smelly, Why don’t you let me do it?’ I said,
‘That’s a great idea!’”
Michael laughs as though he still can’t believe he’d been so
ingenious.
it’ll probably be a huge
dancefloor success but
not my cup of tea.
Helen Fitzgerald
“‘Working Day And Night’ is a very autobiographical in a lot of
ways though I did stretch the point to playing the part like I was
married to this person but she’s got me moving. But it’s not work
like slavery. I love it, or I couldn’t have survived it this long.”

NME ORIGINALS 67
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 Michael Jackson

MM 4 DECEMBER 1982 PAGE 22

MICHAEL JACKSON
THRILLER Epic

A
s one who didn’t spend all his mythical
youth tucked away in some sweaty local
disco until it was hip to come out (like
round about now), it was only three years ago that
the charms of sweet soul music hit home.
When I arrived at the late-’70s, convinced that Michael always
no-one could hold a light to Holland-Dozier- did look a lot
Holland or match Otis’ voice, Michael Jackson was younger than his
decent enough to release ‘Off The Wall’. ‘OTW’ contemporaries
sold me down the (groove) line and ‘Thriller’
nearly knocked me off it. the main reasons why I do what I
This is not a good LP. Utilising the do. Children are more than adults.
talents of Quincy Jones and Rod
taste, but all reeking They know everything that people
Temperton on production and
songwriting, plus the usual galaxy
He has of that West Coast complacency are trying to find out – they know
of musicians that take half a lyric the skill, but it’s we’ve come to expect from LA.
Unlike Marvin Gaye, who
so many secrets – but it’s hard for
sheet to fully list. (Michael, or them to get it out. I can recognise
Mick as I like to call him, even wasted here. Just can take the crassest lyric
that and learn from it. Grown-ups
puts in a quick apology to in the world and turn it into
anyone he’s overlooked.) wait for the singles something truly special and are really nothing but children who
sensuous, Jackson seems to
There are two songs worthy
of mention. The opening ‘Wanna
that will follow this have lost his talent for turning
have lost all that real magic by not
noticing and digging and finding
Be Startin’ Somethin’’, written by B movie dross into gold.
The one other nugget, like the out. I believe in that deeply.
Mick, is an uptempo electro-funk
song, sung in Jackson’s familiar, hurried aforementioned ‘Wanna Be…’, is “That’s why I’ve never taken
breathless voice which lends undoubted ‘Billie Jean’, written by Mick again. It works drugs or had alcohol. I’ve tasted champagne, but I don’t drink it.
excitement to the song. It’s a great opener and is because it has a great bassline, simple drums
When people do toasts, I just pick up the glass. Because I enjoy
followed by… nothing special. Discounting the and a cool vocal from Mick that gives the song
twee duet with McCartney which turns up here, impressive space. nature too much – like her.”
the one adjective that sums up most of this album He has the skill, but it’s wasted here. Just wait He points to Janet, who smiles.
is bland. Bland as in ‘Baby Be Mine’ or the last for the singles that will now follow on from this “Plus I’m crazy for birds and animals and puppies. And I love
three songs on the LP, all done in the best possible particular B movie. Paolo Hewitt
exotic things. I’ve had llamas, peacocks, a rhea – which is the second
largest bird in the world – a macaw, pheasants, racoons, chickens…
“Long” is right. Michael began entertaining locally in Gary, everything. Now I’m gonna get a fawn. And a flamingo. I don’t
Indiana when he was six years old, and after 15 years he’s probably think I want a cougar, but I want a chimpanzee – they’re so sweet.
the most durable child star since Shirley Temple. Groomed in Ooooooh, I have such a good time with the animals.”
the spotlight, this guy grew up on magic. Performers don’t come His voice wavers and his hand squeezes his brow tighter.
any more natural than Michael Jackson. Is most of his stage work Omigod… I think this lamb is so overcome he’s really on the verge
pretty spontaneous? of weeping.
“I’ll tell you the honest-to-God truth,” he says, forgetting to What can I say now?
wait for Janet. “I never knew what I was doing in the early days
– I just did it. My dancing just comes about spontaneously. Some
things I’ve done for years until people have marked them as my “Nothing can harm me when
style, but it’s all spontaneous reactions.
“A lot of people can’t deal with the fact that you’re another I’m onstage – nothing. That’s really
person onstage. They’ll come up to me and say, ‘Do that spin that
you do on TV.’ It’s so hard. I don’t really go out to clubs and discos
me. That’s what I’m here to do”
at all. Sometimes you think you’re going to sneak into a movie and
nobody’s going to see you, but as soon as you hit the door the pen MM 12 NOVEMBER 1983 PAGE 22

and paper and pictures are there.”

MICHAEL
There’s one place that he does go, though. The only place he JACKSON
enjoys is Studio 54 in New York. THRILLER
Epic
“It’s so theatrical and dramatic,” he says. “People come
there as characters and it’s like going to a play. I think that’s the Hi! This is Michael
Jackson here and I want
psychological reason for the whole disco craze: you get to be that
you all to go out and
dream you want to be and you just go crazy with the lights and the buy my single so I can
music, and you’re in another world. It’s very escapist. make even more money,
“I don’t get involved. I just get up high in the balcony and look retire to the desert and
open my new commune,
down on all the craziness and get ideas. It’s important to know
The Community of
what an audience wants.” Macrobiotic Brotherly
A parrot in another room is squawking, “Michael! Michael!” Love.
Janet is a spectator now, sitting quietly. I wonder if most of Yet another single
from the album – what
Michael’s friends are entertainers, and he agrees.
with remixes, re-releases
“Most of the time you understand easier. Tatum (O’Neal) will and extended disco
Silence settles in the room. Janet reaches over and gently pats her
older brother’s arm.
Michael, don’t you think it’s possible to appreciate escapism a
little too much?
“No, I don’t. There’s a reason why God made the sunset red
or purple or green. It’s beautiful to look at – it’s a minute of joy.
Escapism and wonder is influence. It makes you feel good, and that
allows you to do things. Like when I’m 40,000 feet in the air in a
Jumbo Jet at night and it’s dawn. Everybody on the plane is asleep,
and here I am in the cockpit with the pilots because they let me come
up there with them. It’s just incredible seeing a sunrise and being up
there with it. Pilots tell me, ‘I wish there were no such thing as having
to go down and re-load with fuel. I wish I could stay up here forever.
Forever’. And I totally understand what they mean. When I’m into
40,000 people, it’s so easy. Nothing clan harm me when I’m onstage
REX FEATURES/REDFERNS

call me up and say, ‘Hey, you wanna go somewhere?’ Or when versions he’s got enough – nothing. That’s really me. That’s what I’m here to do.”
Stevie (Wonder) wants to go out he’ll call me up. to keep going well into That’s it alright. Raised on wonder and nurtured in the dreams
’85. This is unhealthy and
“One of my favourite pastimes is being with children – talking of millions of fans, this guy is escaping all the way to heaven and he
inane. Helen Fitzgerald
to them, playing with them, wattlin’ in the grass. They’re one of doesn’t want to come down.

68 NME ORIGINALS

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is for ...

NME ORIGINALS 69
TLFeBOOK
 Kraftwerk

Werk of
MM 23 MAY 1981 PAGE 27

KRAFTWERK
POCKET CALCULATOR
The Kraftsmen: EMI
(l-r) Ralf, Florian,
Wolfgang, Karl Oh, far out man! Play
a tune on a pocket
calculator to, like, really

genius
emphasise the mess
that we’re all in. I mean,
it’s such a cool concept,
those pigs are really
going to have to take
notice now, I mean, just,
wow! The implications
are, like, Earth-
shattering. Yeah… pass
the Casio and pass out.
Paulo Hewitt

Kraftwerk live at the Free Trade

Hall, Manchester MM 20 JUNE 1981 PAGE 29

I
t’s the first night of Kraftwerk’s British tour, and a
MM 9 MAY 1981 PAGE 21
packed Free Trade Hall is a testament to how popular
they have become since their last visit. The audience is KRAFTWERK
a colourful mixture of futurist types, Bowie freaks and COMPUTER WORLD EMI

traditionally heavy music followers, including a large

number of denim-clad fans with AC/DC embroideries.
Surprised? Just wait ’til you see Kraftwerk in action. A huge
black curtain falls away to reveal four Germans behind their
synthesizers in stark black suits. Behind them is a glittering
control panel full of digital wizardry. Above each member is a
screen which shows different films to accompany each song.
I
t’s almost exactly three years since Kraftwerk
released their last album, the coolly majestic
‘Man Machine’. In the interim their unique
sound has been plagiarized and popularized by
a cast of thousands including the Cliff Richard of
new electronics, Gary Numan, robotic bores like
Telex and new age funsters Buggles.
How refreshing it is then to be reminded just
how shallow these plastic imitators sound up

I could have sworn that a boy against the genuine article. As the album’s title
cut establishes, nobody has yet matched the rich
tones and classic purity of this music. the same quality as those on ‘…Machine’. In
on crutches was dancing towards Their approach is so devious, so
subtle. Superficially they purvey
their place the group appear to have
opted for a more one-dimensional
the end. It really was that good a frightening barren landscape Didn’t style of European disco which,
as bleak as their song titles but running the entire album, adds
their humanity finds expression you guess that a new dance sensibility and a
in the controlled rhythms of
each piece which is invariably
Kraftwerk were just distinct continuity.
Ironically this new phase
a bunch of wacky
WWW.KRAFTWERK.TECHNOPOP.COM.BR/DAVE WILLIS-IDOLS/SHOOTING STARS-IDOLS

You can’t help but notice the apparent ease with which they blessed by a haunting melody. will no doubt open them to
control their instruments. The sound is close to perfection with Consequently Kraftwerk accusations of stealing ideas
flowing rhythms and synth drums which can be Germans looking from their largely anaemic
cold but successors.
almost tear out your Adam’s apple. elegant, for a party? So let’s remember how all
The set showcases their greatest hits and stark but this began. So what if the closing
most of the new album, ‘Computer World’, poignant. Their track ‘It’s More Fun To Compute’ is
medium is ruthlessly positively innocuous compared to some of their
with Ralf and Florian taking turns to sing in
mechanical, their spirit is earlier material. You can dance to it and the new
German and English. ‘Showroom Dummies’ warm and glowing. They commerciality is itself a fresh direction within
is a fitting finale with 2,000 Mancunian make the modern world which they maintain credibility.
voices adding a memorable contrast to Ralf’s seem empty yet beautiful This is Kraftwerk’s first pop album. Didn’t you
– no mean task. guess that beneath those showroom dummy
German vocals.
Unfortunately, what’s exteriors was a bunch of wacky Germans looking
I could have sworn that a boy on crutches lacking on this long for a party? Well, it looks like they found one.
was making dancing movements towards the Kraftwerk put an awaited work are songs of Ian Pye
early model of
end. It really was that good. Frank Worrall the iPod through
its paces

70 NME ORIGINALS

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 L
is for ...
PICTORIAL PRESS

NME ORIGINALS 71
TLFeBOOK

FEED
THE
WORLD
N
ine o’clock on the last Thursday night in
October. The BBC news bulletin is
making its way through the usual
round of miners’ pickets,
superpower troubles and royal
hairstyles when suddenly
we cut straight into a report from our African
correspondent, Michael Buerk. His report and
accompanying film shows a scene of total
devastation in the northern regions of Ethiopia,
wondered what might happen public
where thousands of people are dying every day
due to a complete lack of food and water. The
if he asked a few mates to make think anything in showbusiness, and they start to
camera proceeds slowly through the huge crowds
of mothers and babies, focusing in on the sunken
a record… Barry McIlheney
eyes filled with flies, the hideously swollen stomachs
of a people condemned to die of starvation, the
sickening lack of flesh on a million bare bones.
Almost before Buerk’s report is over, viewers throughout
the land are jamming the BBC
switchboard, many of them barely
able to speak through their tears of
sheer helplessness and despair, and
all of them asking that one basic
question. What on earth can we do
to stop this suffering?
In a house just outside London,
the singer with one of Britain’s top
pop groups of the late-’70s is sitting
watching the BBC news and feeling
rather sick. Bob Geldof, the Dublin-
72 NME ORIGINALS
Bob’s mates: back row (l-r), Phil Collins, Bob Geldof, Steve
Norman, Chris Cross, John Taylor, Paul Young, Tony Hadley,
Glenn Gregory, Simon Le Bon, Simon Crowe, Keren Woodward,
Martin Kemp, Jody Watley. Middle Row: Bono, Paul Weller,
James Taylor, Peter Blake, George Michael, Midge Ure, Martin
Ware, John Keeble, Gary Kemp, Roger Taylor, Marilyn, Sarah
Dallin, Siobhan Fahey, Francis Rossi. Front: Robert ‘Kool’ Bell,
Dennis Thomas, Andy Taylor, Jon Moss, Sting, Rick Parfitt,
Nick Rhodes, Johnny Fingers, Peter Briquette
MM 8 DECEMBER 1984 PAGE 24
Bob kept Phil
awake by prodding
him in the back
with his guitar
When Bob
Geldof saw reports
born frontman with The Boomtown Rats, is
of the Ethiopian famine he now something of a minor figure in the fickle
world of pop, but both he and his increasingly
wife Paula Yates are the sort of people
who know just about everyone who is
what they and their friends could do to
help ease the suffering out there in Africa.
Bob thinks, well, I might as well try and
talks to the man behind do something with a few of my old cronies,
and if we’re lucky we might even get close to
Band Aid around £60,000 which would help feed the world
at Christmas.
“I started to think, well, I know a hell of a lot of people,
I might be able to get something organised,” he says. “Let’s
give old Midge a ring and see what he has to say.”
It was a phonecall that was to lead to the most remarkable
gathering of pop stars the world has ever seen.
“So… Midge immediately said that he was really mad to do
something. I then rang Sting and he said, ‘Yeah, count me in,’ and
then Le Bon, he just immediately said, ‘Tell me the date and we’ll
clear the diary.’ The same day I was passing by this antique shop
Rossi and Parfitt
and who is standing there but Gary Kemp, just about to go off on
had a quick break tour to Japan. He said he was mad for it as well and to wait ten days
to listen to the ’til they got back.
football scores
TLFeBOOK

The stars made
sure they were
wearing their
finest jumpers
“So I thought well, fair enough, most of my mates are keen to
do this thing, because that’s the way you look at it, they’re just your
mates, and then it suddenly hit me. I thought, ‘Christ, we have got
the real top boys here, all the big names in pop are suddenly ready
and willing to do this… Duran, Spandau, Sting, Ultravox.’ I knew
then that that we were off, and I just decided to go for all the rest of
the faces and started to ring up everyone, asking them to do it.”
And best of all, nobody turned you down.
“Yeah. Some did. Three, to be precise. Presumably they were
much too important to give up a Sunday morning of their lives to
save another human being…”
Having rounded up the bulk of the troops for an early morning
recording session, Geldof was faced with the rather pressing
problem of having something for them to sing.
“It was lucky in a way, because I had already written this song,
which I had provisionally called ‘It’s My World’, and I knew it
would be suitable if I just changed the words a bit and called it ‘Do
They Know It’s Christmas?’ Midge, reliable as ever, sent down
BRAIN ARIS
this tune which is the sort of Christmassy bit at the end of it and he
married the two together. I was still trying to work a lot of things
Boy Paul and Boy
George: doing
their bit for charity
Sting, Bono and
Simon Le Bon
share a joke
“I started to think I might be able
to get something organised. Let’s
give old Midge Ure a ring…”
MM 8 DECEMBER 1984 PAGE 26
BAND AID
DO THEY KNOW
IT’S CHRISTMAS?
Mercury
Inevitably the record
is an anti-climax, even
though Geldof’s sense
of universal melodrama
is perfectly suited to
this kind of epic musical
manifesto. Midge Ure’s
large-screen production
matches Geldof’s lyric,
which occasionally
threatens to turn
righteous pleading into
pompous indignation.
On the other hand, I’m
sure it’s impossible to
write flippantly about
something as dreadful
as the Ethiopian famine.
Allan Jones
TLFeBOOK
L
out behind the scenes, so it was really left to Midge to look after
the song. It just could not have happened without Midge.”
As part of his work behind the scenes, Geldof set out to try and
increase the slice of the money which normally goes to the artist,
and which in this case would go straight towards food for the
people of Ethiopia.
“Normally, as I said, you would be expecting to come out with
about £70,000 from a record that sells around a half a million
copies. So we started looking at ways whereby we could eliminate
all the usual collection of percentages which is where most of the
money actually goes. By carefully looking at the exact distribution
of every penny, we reckoned we could bump it up to nearly 50p a
record if everyone was to waive their normal cut.
“Even with this, I reckoned that there had to be some way of
getting at the retailers, who are the people who take the largest
slice. Everybody was saying no, they would never do it and anyway,
there are about 7,000, you would never get round them all. So I
thought, well, there must be some sort of retailers’ organisation,
which I managed to locate and they gave me the names of the
managing directors of the big six high street chains.
“I just rang them up, put it to them, and they said, ‘Yeah, go
ahead, we are with you on this one.’ That was it.”
On the day itself, Geldof took a back seat in the proceedings,
opting instead for supervisory role, looking out for any possible
clash of egos.
“Right up until the last minute me and Midge were sort of
panicking that nobody would turn up. Then they all started to just
drift in, one after the other, this collection of massively successful
pop stars. You had all these really weird meetings between people
who would normally never ever speak to one another. Like Weller,
Parfitt from Quo, Marilyn and Jon Moss from Culture Club all
sitting round a table having this really earnest discussion.”
Geldof is now trying to back off a little from the Band Aid fund,
leaving its organisation to the structure which has been set up in
the last few days to make sure that every single penny finds its way
into food for the starving millions. His final words on the matter
show, however, that he is far from past caring about the tragedy.
“I think that what annoys me the most is the attitude of some
governments that they shouldn’t get too deeply involved, as the
regime out there is run by Marxist-Leninists. A three-month-old
baby is not a Marxist-Leninist and the only person who should
be able to give life or death to that child is God. Anything else is
simply criminal.”
Just before talking to Bob Geldof, I rang up a worker at Oxfam
to try and get some clear picture of the tragedy that is Ethiopia.
He couldn’t really say just how many people have died since
you started reading this interview, but it was certainly quite a
few hundred. Just think about that for a moment and dig deep,
brothers and sisters, dig deep.
NME ORIGINALS 73
 Something about Eurythmics

MM 20 JULY 1985 PAGE 25

LIVE AID
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

W
The toilet queue
here are the words? Where are at Wembley
the words to describe it all? Stadium was
Strings of superlatives absolutely huge
are useless. No It was the
dictionary, this time
around, can help biggest rock event the
to articulate the shattering emotional impact
of the happenings inside Wembley Stadium world has ever seen. We
on the day that brought us Live Aid.
This was the day when you finally knew recall all the thrills and spills,
you’d been right to believe in rock’n’roll
despite its faults and foibles, the day when
the power of music, its potential, its worth
the backstage dramas. At
and its humanity, was conclusively proven. Wembley: Barry McIlheney Status Quo are suddenly with us, darting all over
the place, and you can hardly hear them: the singing
Fifteen minutes before noon, and the
anticipation is building to fever pitch as the
and Carol Clerk and clapping of the crowd is drowning out everything
bar the bassline. An inspired choice of opening act
helicopters keep on coming, each one laden with (hasn’t everybody got a soft spot for the Quo somewhere?)
an unknown cargo of superstars. and an unforgettable start to the concert, particularly since
Each minute feels ten times the length of the one it’s that most appropriate song.
before it and then, at last, the video screens flicker to life By the time we actually realise what hit us, Status Quo have
and the crowd are yelling their heads off, at the sharpening disappeared and The Style Council have taken their place. There’s
CORBIS/REX FEATURES/PICTORIAL PRESS

images of Chas’n’Di on walkabout backstage.
The rumpus grows as the groovesome twosome emerge in the
Royal Box with Geldof and assorted other musos; grows as a line
of Guardsmen in uniforms and busbies take position onstage
and deliver a trumpet fanfare; explodes with the opening bars of
‘Rockin’ All Over The World’.
a little time to breathe now, several moments to keep that hysteria
in check as a smooth ‘You’re The Best Thing’ fills the stadium.
Hereafter, the tempos rise steadily, hitting top gear with a wonderfully
infectious ‘Walls Come Tumbling Down’. Good grief, even Weller
looks carried away with it all, ditching the guitar for a gangly jive
round the stage! The new haircut, by the way, is a cracker.

74 NME ORIGINALS

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 L
The grand finale of
Live Aid, Wembley
Stadium, 10pm
July 15 1985

The royal couple

themselves (and
Charles and Diana)
at Wembley

Bob accosts decidedly stirring about these songs,

Townshend and especially ‘Vienna’ and ‘Dancing With
McCartney for
more money
Tears In My Eyes’ whose newly topical
connotations are obvious.
This pleasant surprise leads immediately
into another, Spandau Ballet troop on and
And so to The Boomtown Rats and a truly breathtaking THE GLOBAL they are excellent.
JUKEBOX
welcome from the crowd. God knows, Geldof deserves it. What he Elvis Costello’s appearance also creates something of a stir, not
doesn’t deserve is a gremlin in the sound that wipes out his vocals The global nature of because of what’s on his back but because of what’s on his chin. A
on ‘Rat Trap’, but he can be consoled that ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ Live Aid was never far beard. This is the object of great initial fascination, but it’s short-lived
from the surface at
provided one of the most enduring memories of the day. because Elvis, just one man with his guitar, is about to devastate the
Wembley. The most
Adam Ant’s ‘Vive Le Rock’, on the other hand, was not to physical evidence of whole of Wembley with a simple but electrifying ballad.
be among the great musical highlights of Live Aid, although he this came, of course, “I want you to help me sing this old Northern English folk song,”
from Phil Collins who he appeals, and we do, every voice raised as he leads us through The
played his London
Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’.
This was the day when the set with Sting around
15.20 GMT, and was The aftertaste is bittersweet: eyes are misty and hearts are uplifted.

power of music, its worth and its then whisked off by

Noel Edmonds to a
And now, we’re distracted. There’s an upheaval in the middle of the
crowd, they’ve spotted Sting in the artists’ enclosure and they’re
helicopter which flew
humanity, was conclusively proven him to Heathrow.
He then flew to New
waving at him, surging in his general direction in the vague hope
that he might acknowledge every hopeful, upturned face This
York on Concorde, kind of behaviour has been a regular feature of the day. Until now,
arriving at around 3pm the unlikely threesome of George, Andrew and Francis Rossi had
American time. Tireless
wins the Most Athletic Dancer award hands down, twisting, created the biggest ripples – next, of course, to Chas’n’Di.
Phil then went straight
twirling, high-kicking, dropping to his knees before our eyes in a to Philly where did his Meanwhile, stagefront, the security gents are hosing gallons of
determined effort to put everything into it. own set and drummed water over thousands of sticky, clamouring bodies. And it’s time for
Onwards, onwards, ever onwards… and Ultravox are in for both Robert Plant Nik Kershaw, a mellow tunesmith with songs like ‘Wouldn’t It Be
and Eric Clapton. He
the middle of confounding our narrow MM expectations. We Good’, ideal for this time of the afternoon when the skies are blue
then went to bed and
reckoned, you see, that the chaps might prove slightly low-key slept for three months. and the sun’s already two hours past its peak. This is a relatively
(well, bloody dull, actually), but in the event, there’s something tranquil period of the day, and the mood continues with Sade.

NME ORIGINALS 75
TLFeBOOK
 Live Aid

Sting and Phil Collins, performing MONEY

separately and together, turn out to be MAKES THE
one of the huge attractions of Live Aid, an WORLD GO
enormously popular combination and, as a ROUND
consequence, strictly compulsive viewing. The final sum of
It occurs to us at this point that, today money raised by Live
you’re prepared to give everybody the Aid is expected to
benefit of any doubt. Wee Phil, for instance, be near £50 million.
Considering that
may not invite the Maker to his parties any Geldof’s personal
more, but you have to hand it to him: this estimate was around
stadium business with Sting £10 million, this
is worth a hundred ligs at the The Quo get the day represents a staggering
off to a rockin’ start success for the Live Aid
Hippodrome. Few people have and (below) Midge operation. A figure of
captured the imagination of the makes himself useful £50 million would also
multitudes so resoundingly. be twice the annual
The havoc as this pair finally sum given to famine
relief in Africa by the
disappear is compounded sun and, despite all the advance British Government.
by a new rustling among the warnings, this first visible manifestation Ticket sales from
star-spotting masses. They’ve of the two nations under such a mighty Wembley alone totalled
zoomed in on Tony Hadley in groove still brings a tingle to the spine. nearly £2 million with
Philadelphia, Australia
the stands and this passes the Yeah, even if it is only Bryan Adams. and European legs still
time until Howard Jones. This next band hail from the Republic to be calculated. Stories
‘Hide And Seek’ is short and Of Ireland. Playing now for London, of individual generosity
sweet, and Howard immediately Philadelphia and the world, please are legion, including
a Newcastle couple
vacates the stage to make way for welcome – U2. who gave their entire
Bryan Ferry. Wembley just explodes in a great life savings which they
One thing Bryan should not do is dance. Bryan dancing is like cacophony of sound, Bono runs on to the stage and you know that had been planning to
the bride’s dad at the wedding reception disco – self-conscious, he knows that he about to talk to the world. London, Philly, Sydney, use as a deposit for
their new house. The
clumsy, but above all interested in conveying the idea of having Buenos Aires, this song is not a rebel song, this song is announced BBC telethon raised
a good time. Bryan singing is, of course, another matter, and the in an accent and manner closer to Paisley than Joyce, this song is more than £2 million,
sensitive reading of ‘Jealous Guy’, scores yet another hit with the called ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’. And even this great song is as no doubt boosted by
resolutely impulsive A-team from the Maker. nothing compared to a quite stunning ‘Bad’, prefaced by the proud on-camera appeals
from Saint Bob and his
We’re waiting for Paul declaration of just where these four four-letter words!
Young and we know before we
even see him that it’s sure to be For U2 not just two, but more young men come from. Yes we know
that it’s not a competition but that city’s
another knee-trembler.
“I’d like to take you back to
than a billion hearts must surely most famous sons surely gave the finest
performance of the day so far.
last year.” Paul Young is singing
“It’s Christmas time…” and
beat as one. Phew! According to the man himself, the
original idea was to finish off with
it’s one verse only from that ‘Pride’, but these things rarely go
hit single. Sublime to sublime: according to plan with U2 in this
he introduces special guest Alison Moyet, kisses her, and they’re sort of environment, and ‘Bad’ somehow became ‘Ruby Tuesday’,
dancing on ‘That’s The Way Love Is’. ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, and ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ all rolled into
one while Bono took the bravest plunge of the day and disappeared
Hello Philadelphia. Five o’clock on the dot, and the giant into his audience. He re-emerged 30 seconds later for a very private
screens at either side of the Wembley stage suddenly beam over yet incredibly public smooch around the pit with the lady of his It’s onlly 11.35am
the first live pictures from the John F Kennedy stadium in the choice and then left the stage to a deafening roar. Holy communion and Fifi Trixibelle
is already looking
city of brotherly love. God, it looks hot. More than 90,000 of our of the best possible kind and 15 unforgettable minutes when not just a bit tired
American cousins are positively sweltering under a fierce mid-day two, but more than a billion hearts must surely beat as one. Phew!

George Michael Bono won the

reaches out to the Live Aid Best
Wembley crowd Mullet contest
hands down

76 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Live Aid L
Santana on satellite offered the
best excuse of the day for the tiring
Wembley veterans to take a quick and
well deserved breather. Indeed, even
the sight of Chrissie Hynde and The
Pretenders with a rousing ‘Back On
The Chain Gang’ couldn’t quite revive
the troops. No, instead we just stretched
our legs and waited for… The Who.
Or rather, waited for Roger Daltrey
to swing the mic around the stage like
a madman and Pete Townshend to do
the windmill and the famous skips
in the air. They did all this, no more
and no less, and that is why 72,000
people at Wembley sang along to the
incongruities of ‘My Generation’
and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.
Hadders and co They all looked very old up there
give their very and the sound left a lot to be
own Royal wave desired. Who cares?
And if The Who’s performance
was possibly the most frustrating
It needed something special just a little bit special to follow fusion between old and young
that. And something preferably that would conjure up the sense of in every sense, then the one-off
history involved in the whole thing to take over from Bono’s brief alliance of Elton John and George
but memorable evocation of the ghosts from a distant decade. Michael was the undoubted father
Who better then than The Beach Boys, complete with Brian and son act of the entire day. Porge,
Wilson, out of the sandbox and hidden away in the corner, and as we like to call him, looked like
staring out at us from the stadium across the ocean. some shady country singer after
Dire Straits nipped across the road from their 114-night stint one too many nights on the liquor,
at the Arena to entertain the punters and the ever-growing list of but he sang like an absolute beauty.
celebs. Today even they seemed to play a vital role and managed to The inherent drama of ‘Don’t Let
even move the feet of some people (blush!) who normally wouldn’t The Sun Go Down On Me’ might
have them anywhere near the house. make it sound good even when
No sign of Tears For Fears, so time for the second break of your Uncle Sammy takes the mike
the day, and very welcome it was too before a simply brilliant down at your local but it has surely
and wonderfully OTT performance from Freddie Mercury and never been given the poignancy
Queen. It might only have been 15 minutes in a 16-hour project, and grace which George Michael
bestowed upon it tonight. A bit of a
prat at times, but let’s be honest: this
Live Aid was an unforgettable, boy is one hell of a chanter.
Not unlike his old man Elton in
historic and – in purely pop fact, who looks like a cross between

terms – spectacular occasion
but boy did our Fred go for it in some style, reviving the
flagging souls down at the very front with his customary
strong-arm tactics, and sealing a place in the history books
during ‘Radio Ga Ga’, when more people in one big field
punched their fists into the air than at any time since, oh,
probably Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup in the very
same place nearly 20 years ago.
Scotland’s Simple Minds are wowing America with
their collection of old and new material and are playing
tonight before their new-found audience in Philadelphia.
The global village looks towards the stage at Wembley
and one of the great communicators of our time looks back.
The European Man is here in all his immaculate style, thin,
tanned and singing the opening verse of ‘TVC 15’.
CORBIS/REX FEATURES/PENNIE SMITH/BARRY PLUMMER
Tommy Cooper and a Cossack warrior and who beats out the great
crashing rhythm of the seminal ‘Bennie And The Jets’ with the
enthusiasm of a two-year old.
And that was it really, apart from two minutes of rare
emotion from Mercury and May and the final scenes which
would only be cheapened by trying to distil them into mere
words on a piece of paper. Suffice to say that even the most
hardened cynics in the press box had a lump in the throat
and that for three minutes on the stage at Wembley it all
seemed so blindingly simple. Millions of people will die in
the African desert unless we supply them with food. Every
major pop star in the world played music for 20 minutes to
try to do just that. And all the time the governments of the
world and the EEC sit on top of tons and tons of urgent
supplies because of some stupid, heartbreaking and
obscene logic that says that’s the way things are.
On Saturday at Wembley Stadium, Philadelphia and
all around the world, more than one billion people were

David Bowie looks like a man who knows precisely
the scale and importance of the event he is so closely
involved in and he gives a performance that is suitably
epic for all the world to enjoy and yet intimate enough
for the individual to privately reel back the years to
the soulboy days of ‘Rebel Rebel’ or the apocalyptic
heartbreak of ‘Heroes’, as close to the perfect anthem
for this extraordinary event as the Quo’s opening
blast all those hours ago.
presented with a different approach and they might just
do something about it because they will remember it was
David Bowie onstage along with Paul McCartney along
with Bono along with your very own favourite pop star
and if that’s the only way of doing it, then so be it. In all its
dramas, its mixed emotions and its sheer sense of wonder
Freddie: winner
of vest in show
Live Aid 1985 was an unforgettable, historic and – in
at Live Aid purely pop terms – spectacular occasion. For better or
for worse, we shall never know the like again.

NME ORIGINALS 77
TLFeBOOK
Live Aid

Mick: “Ooh, Keef.

You’re looking a
bit foxy tonight!”

TED MICO REFLECTS

ON 16 HOURS IN
FRONT OF THE TELLY
Brunette asset:
Madonna and

I
t was billed as the greatest music event of all time, and for the UDO LINDBERG (inset) US host
first time in pop’s ignoble history, the reality fulfilled and READING A Jack Nicholson
even surpassed its promise. The wicked world of pop and the STATEMENT
ON BEHALF OF
brutal and corrupt world of televised entertainment combined for GERMAN ROCK
the benefit of something other than just themselves! MUSICIANS
But before this star-studded show of altruism had even begun, It was announced that
“Although it is great
another film report from Ethiopia by Michael Buerk was screened; that over 30-50 million
95 per cent of the world’s
showing us pictures we didn’t want to see, and telling us facts we dollars are being televisions were switched
didn’t want to hear. More money was needed to sustain lives. raised for Africa, it is to Live Aid (the other five
Within 30 seconds of these harrowing scenes, a picture of the but a small token of per cent were probably watching Brookside), and not one of them
repayment for the years
Earth appeared, Charles and Di arrived at Wembley to a royal of colonial exploitation.
could understand a word of the interview between London and one
salute, and Status Quo literally started rocking all over the world. The only real help of Concorde’s engines pretending to be Phil Collins, who was by
The contradictions were as vast as the event itself. But it worked. will be the immediate now winging his way to Philadelphia, courtesy of British Airways.
I was just one in a billion, a passive viewer of the largest ever withdrawal of all The Philadelphia audience demanded an extra hosing down after
military and economic
media extravaganza, designed to aid people from an equally great interests on the part of
Madonna pirouetted about the stage raising the blood pressure with
disaster. Both were compulsive viewing, with mind-boggling Europe, Japan, USA and navel concealed and hair dyed brunette just for the occasion. Does
pieces of technical wizardry used to capture frenzied excitement, the Eastern Bloc. It is a this mean people will stop calling her a dumb blonde?
or a moment of heart-wrenching despair. Between the famous perverse tragedy that Phil Collins arrived and looked in the same gruesome state he
we allow the spending
names at Wembley, Band Aid equivalents from distant countries of 1,000 billion dollars
was in at Wembley. The Wright brothers have a lot to answer for.
(‘We Are The Rest’?) were aired live from Austria to Australia. for murderous weapons
Bowie curtailed his set by one number in order to introduce
an impromptu video of yet more children eviscerated by war and
when with only a small
part of this amount 95 per cent of the world was
we could feed the
emaciated by drought. There are no
more overpowering images than
entire world. The
governments in
watching (the other five per cent
the sight of a child starving to death.
Yet television has also made us more
Washington and
the Kremlin are sick were probably watching Brookside)
in their heads. We
immune to such a painful reality, and from the country
though the video brought a lump to which has instigated
the throat, it was never as moving two terrible wars The massed stadium was suddenly thrown into hysteria as Mick
as seeing Billy Connolly wiping his appeal to all people Jagger and Tina Turner laced their cut-and-thrust vocals with
who still close
face clear of tears. That drove the nail their eyes to this
bump’n’grind and some striptease.
home, and I dissolved… schizophrenic Flanked by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, Bob Dylan looked
Supersonic world. Stop the incapable of recalling his own name, let alone his former greatness.
Phil Collins and wars in the Third
(below) sluggish
A dreadful, interminable version of ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’ was
World. Stop the
Bob Dylan crime of military
mercifully terminated by Lionel Richie, ushering in the second
build-up. We Grand Finale of the day.
cannot forget the Ostensibly similar to the Wembley finale, the JFK farewell was
purpose behind
TOM SHEEHAN/REX FEATURES

this event. If
this should turn
out to be only a huge
rock’n’roll celebration
carried out on the backs
of dying children - we
can forget it. We must
rise up against such
world insanities.”
infused with a pride that stems from saving a planet while still
preserving – even justifying – the American way of life.
The transmission ended not with a bang, but a whisper. Sixteen
hours after Michael Buerk’s opening report the whisper was one of
chronic guilt. Where the hell were we when Ethiopia pleaded for
help to avert this tragedy over a
decade ago?
It must never be forgotten that
we are responsible for this tragedy
in the first place and it is we who
must make sure that Live Aid
never has to happen again.

TLFeBOOK
 M
is for ...

79
RETNA

NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Madonna

NME 17 NOVEMBER 1984 PAGE 56

MADONNA Madonna
LIKE A VIRGIN Sire
isn’t a musician

W and doesn’t wish to

atching a talent as genuine
and grounded as that of Cyndi
Lauper pull off those pop be a singer (though
Partonisms necessitated by the nature of
today’s marketplace is painful enough for she may be able
anyone who’d reached puberty when ‘Parallel
Lines’ came out. But Madonna isn’t a musician to act)
and doesn’t wish to be a singer (though she’s There are many terms one could
apparently a talented choreographer and may well apply to what Madonna is putting out but conviction is not
turn out able to act). Like countless numbers of average fellow one of them, and that’s perhaps the biggest problem. When all
country folk, she’s just earning her way as a saleswoman. the coy, fey, cutesey toot-sy isms holding you back are emanating
Only what Madonna peddles is pure, undiluted Cosmo from your very self rather than being imposed upon you,
consumerism – the kind which so often turns out to hinge you’re just gonna have troubles. And, whether the root cause is
psychologically on inner self-loathing. It’s pretty damn explicit inadmissible inner insecurities or admissible outer good looks
on ‘Like A Virgin’, too. Every pseudo-felt vocal throb; every (or both), all anyone else is likely to do is reciprocate in the mode
pseudo-coy vocal tug or shrug; every shred of post-Cervenka, you use to communicate.
post-Lauper assimilated couture; every hee hee arch-’female’ I’m not saying producer Nile Rodgers should be exculpated
sentiment herein is meant to convey irony, modernism, from assisting in such a worthless enterprise as this. Just that even
worldliness. Unfortunately, a striptease which tries to cover ass a really leonine roar cannot necessarily a coward make, much less
while selling it is bound to confound itself on very basic terms. a decorative photo a real Madonna deliver. Cynthia Rose

80 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

MM 10 NOVEMBER 1984 PAGE 31
MADONNA
LIKE A VIRGIN
Sire
The sugar-sweet tones
of Madonna will always
need a great song and a
fat production to really
hit home, and here
she is lucky enough to
be blessed with one
of these two crucial
components, courtesy
of the genius of Nile
Rodgers. The song isn’t
exactly all that bad, just
permanently crippled
by its rather unfortunate
title. Some of my best
friends are virgins.
Barry McIlherney
MM 23 FEBRUARY 1985 PAGE 26
MADONNA
MATERIAL GIRL
Sire
Bouncy stuff from the
world’s least virginal
female singer. “I am a
material girl”, confesses
Madonna, who is
glimpsed on the sleeve
clutching a blue satin
sheet about her naked
personage. Rrrrrr. The
music, meanwhile (if
anyone’s still interested),
is catchy enough, with a
purposeful throb in its
step. However, what is
the strange ringing noise
that comes jabbing so
prominently out of the
LFI/REX FEATURES
mix? Curious. Hit,
of course.
Adam Sweeting
Madonna M
NME 13 DECEMBER 1986 PAGE 26
It’s been
a bad year for
Madonna – her film flops,
her marriage fails. What’s
happened to the sass and suss
that brought her stardom? John
McCready looks at the fall of
a goddess with a heart
of tinsel
W
e live in a world which has
sold its grubby soul to a devil
called celebrity.
Nothing matters except
listening to stars, looking at
them, buying, selling or making
them. They seem to live such wonderful lives that the real world
just pales by comparison. Being a milkman, a dentist or a shop
assistant is simply second best. The message is irresistible. Day
in, day out the noise just won’t stop. If you’re not somebody, you
are nobody – a milkman, a dentist, a shop assistant.
Madonna Louise Ciccone was born 28 years ago in Rochester,
Michigan. Then, in the glow of Marilyn and Elvis, the noise was
in some ways louder, clearer and more persuasive than it is today.
Of course, the tales have grown tall in the telling but Madonna
seemed destined to become something more or less than a shop
assistant. The received rags to riches story sees Madonna dancing
in the street to the Motor City beat. It sees her turned upside
down by the death of her mother and her father’s subsequent
remarriage to a woman she didn’t like. It sees her twisted in the
traditional way by a Catholic education which leaves the vested
virgin with a fetish of crucifixes. At 18, a splinter of ambition
stuck in her shoulder and the noise ringing louder in her ears,
Madonna heads for The City Of Dreams.
She wanted stardom – “I came to New York for fame and
fortune” – because its noise was irresistible and because the
Sean Penn’s crap
tie spelt the end
for his marriage
to Madonna
NME ORIGINALS 81
TLFeBOOK
 MM 12 JULY 1986 PAGE 27

MADONNA
TRUE BLUE Sire

Q
uestion: what’s the difference between
Madonna and Maradona?
Answer: Madonna used her head.
Every girl’s role model, every lad’s fave uppity
vixen, Madonna earned our affection for scheming
to the top. Pretty and pushy, she turned ruthless
careerism into an S&M fairytale and even jolly crap
like ‘Holiday’ was forgivable because anyone with
so much drive for success as to milk those clichés
so brazenly deserved all the attention she got.
But now she’s there, at the summit of
pop achievement, her rise and rise
resisting our basic instincts, does
she still burn to screw with our ‘True Blue’ The World Go Round’,
senses and make her mark?
Certainly the signs are
is a series of shamelessly derivative of ‘We
Are The World’ in the hope they
Madonna liked
crucifixes, but ominous – the navel’s gone screen tests as make Live Aid: The Film.
preferred Chupa from the videos and ‘True Blue’ But I like her best still
Chups lollypops is “dedicated to my husband, if she’s casing for smouldering with that precious
the coolest guy in the world”. streak of independence.
alternative was the usual, the Frumpy or what? every film in the ‘Where’s The Party?’ is hedonist
everyday. But for the time But then, we should remember
that Madonna’s main objective has
next year tantrum. Best, though, is ‘Papa
Don’t Preach’ with its risqué double
being, a material girl on the always been the major money and now entendre, the word “baby” examined
make would have to make her videos are all mini movies or actual movie and brought to fruition within the song.
do with a part-time job at extracts and her songs are all scenarios because This Madonna is unmarried, young enough to be at
Madonna’s an actress. ‘True Blue’ is really a whole school, pregnant and proud and keeping it and on
Dunkin’ Donuts.
series of screen tests as if she’s casing for every film Top Of The Pops.
And then there were the boyfriends. Graffiti artists, amateur opportunity in the next 12 months. So ‘True Blue’ still calls enough of the shots
musicians, painters and DJs. Men as stepping stones to the She can simper in ‘Jimmy, Jimmy’ should they to convince us Madonna’s not a mere Pennpal
limelight. Most of them worked at Dunkin’ Donuts too. But decide on yet another West Side Story remake, she just yet. She still has too many egos unsatisfied.
can come over all Mother Teresa on ‘Love Makes Steve Sutherland
Madonna was different. Everybody told her so. Turning her
considerable energies to music, she discovered that the quickest
and hippest route to the loot was via the dancefloor. In 1983, Sire those holy fools who swim in its fizzy waters feel like saints, angels,
Records told Madonna her days at Dunkin’ Donuts were over. invincible stars.
She was signed for $5,000, two white mice, a catapult and a packet By the time a drug called ‘Like A Virgin’ was available on
of Swizzles. Madonna, always a star in her head now had the prescription, Madonna must have felt that way too. ‘Like A Virgin’
opportunity to turn her Detroit daydreams into reality. was a perfect way, a swirl of dance rhythms and candied choruses.
The marketing man believed her music, a stolen strip from It was magical. It sold to boys and girls alike. Lots of them. Our
synthesized dance-pop, could be knocked into shape. Visually, pennies piled high and Madonna exchanged them for star-bright
confidence and self-belief. But Madonna was deceived. Like most of

Before Sean Penn poisoned her
champagne, Madonna married
pop. There can be no divorce
MM 21 JUNE 1986 PAGE 27
no manipulation would be necessary. Madonna had been using MADONNA
her body and her sexuality for as long as she cared to remember. PAPA DON’T PREACH
Sexually, she exploited herself. The marketing man applauded her Sire
self-created image, not because they were capitalist perverts, but Is she or isn’t she?
because Madonna was modern and liberated. And if you believe Conscientious feminist
or consciously obliging
that, you’ll believe anything. sex symbol? Or both?
The celebrities squeezed up. There was room for one more on Determinedly resilient
top. Madonna had made it. The rest is recent history; pages and and unbearably
pages of words like these, crucifixes and belly-buttons in excelsis. predictable, this latest
attempt at recognising
But there would be other things too. Terrible films like Shanghai some sort of female
Surprise and terrible husbands like Sean Penn. Terrible songs like stubbornness finds
‘True Blue’. Petulance and paranoia. her refuting her own
Madonna is clever enough to know that pop fame can’t last father’s authority and
insisting on having the
forever. It’s the clichéd candle burning at both ends, blowing in baby she so carelessly
the wind. With movies and marriages and career control, she was conceived. Odious
trying to make it last a little longer. It just couldn’t be. Not even a dancefloor nonsense
star who declared herself “the luckiest by far” could change that. from an overwhelmingly
mediocre talent.
the beautiful pop people, she believed she could moved mountains
when all she could shift were units. And whatever came next could
be no more than second best.
Madonna does not need telling this. Hence the movies and the
marriage that went with them. Madonna knows that lines on your
face – the same lines that in pop tell the world you can think of
nothing better to do – mean character and maturity at the movies.
Film stars die when they are lowered into the ground. Pop stars like
Madonna, real pop stars who light up the world of glorious seconds,
die when their little bag of glamorous tricks has been seen and heard
just once too often.
There are those who say Madonna is making mistakes and
precipitating her own downfall. That will happen anyway. Before
Sean Penn poisoned her champagne, Madonna married pop, for
better or worse. There can be no divorce. She will fall because that’s
the way it goes.
Pop has its rules, and they cannot be changed. Not even for stars
as bright as Madonna.
These days the whirly wheel of fame and fortune spins so fast, 15
minutes seems like seconds. Madonna’s three LPs are the short span
of a complete ’80s pop career – the climb, the wave from the summit
and the long way down. The ‘True Blue’ single and its charmless
video seems like a very painful goodbye. What was once seamless
pastiche has become hollow parody. It’s as if Madonna is waving to
us from a big car on the road to Hollywood.
LFI/CORBIS

Pop can be so magical. It can be spinning euphoria, a drug, a Will Smith

God knows we wish her luck, although she needs it less
handful of glitter on a grey pavement. Little wonder that it makes than most.

82 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 N is for ...

SOFT CELL
REDFERFNS

NME ORIGINALS 83
TLFeBOOK
 “Say hello…”:
David Ball and
Marc Almond
of Soft Cell

Sleeping
Chris Bohn
joins Soft Cell at the
Top Of The Pops studio

Partners and hears why they like

hanging about in ‘adult’
shops and writing songs
about “sex and trash”

B
““ ring on the carnival people!” barks the
authoritative voice of a stage manageress, who is
NME 12 AUGUST 1981 PAGE 28
trying to instill a sense of urgency into the final
dress rehearsal before a rare live Top Of The Pops
broadcast, now only three hours away.
In the coffee bar outside the studio nobody
responds. Well, going by the gaudy array of costumes, she could pioneer John (Ultra) Foxx, through popularisers Numan and
be calling anyone, be they the Dollar drum majorettes, the OMD to former pupils Soft Cell.
cosmopolitan-clothed Funkapolitan or even the assembled cast of Soft Cell have absorbed their lessons well. ‘Tainted Love’ – once
the BBC’s next prestige production Nancy Astor, what with their a Northern disco hit for Marc Bolan’s wife Gloria Jones – is one
showy Victorian evening dress. of the most assured and stunning syn-ful dance singles released
As it happens, she’s paging the obvious: the train of mardi gras this year. In its combination of streamline software simplicity
extras brought along to illustrate Modern Romance’s ridiculous and sensual throb it reinforces NY heroes Suicide’s experiments
and opportunistic ‘Everybody Salsa’. Evidently the producer’s in emotion-tugging electronics without repeating them directly,
limited idea of “good television” overrules quality control. as they had done previously with the earlier ‘Memorabilia’.
MM 1 AUGUST 1981 PAGE 10
Aware of TOTP’s visual limitations, John Foxx – looking They’ve taken the whole thing a step further on the 12-inch
like a stylish cross between Rhett Butler and Beau Brummell SOFT CELL version, which effortlessly merges with the B-side version of The
TAINTED LOVE
– has assembled his own props. “Meet my drummer,” he says, Phonogram
Supremes’ ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ via an extremely inventive,
introducing the majestic bust he’s carrying under his arm. His melodic burn down. Little touches like that contribute to ‘Tainted
Soft Cell are bouncing
TV group is fleshed out by human sculptures Eddie Maelov, on the sprays shooting Love’’s transcendence of genre prejudices. They elevate it, and by
resplendent in Noel Coward lounge suit, and Sunshine Patterson, out from our basic implication the whole electro-bop, above the fickle clutches of the
in elegant evening gown. doubt. Don’t take them fad fiends and place it in the public arena where it belongs.
for granted, don’t
“He’s here to remake The Great Gatsby,” John joshes Eddie. Nobody should be surprised, hurt or disappointed that Soft
underestimate them
“And Sunshine’s, eh, late for the wedding,” Eddie kids his partner. because of the sound – it Cell are sitting pretty at the top of the BBC charts.
Meanwhile a bunch of office boys have strayed onto the set – oh has nothing to do with
my God it’s OMD after a colour supplement primer in American nonsensicals like Duran
Duran or Depeche Mode
preppiness.
– it has real anguish.
Sitting in the middle of this fanciful costume ball, this week’s But. If Kraftwerk could
Number one unit Soft Cell appear to be Cinderellas – and that’s be silly sometimes,
despite singer Marc Almond’s wristloads of bracelets and studs and make duck noises like
Cyril Fletcher, or even
the brassy gold necklaces dangled around his neck. Bemused by
yodel… well, Soft Cell
their chart bedfellows. Soft Cell scan this evening’s roll call. have humour too. This
“John Foxx, Gary Numan, Teardrop Explodes, Orchestral is two man synthesized
Manoeuvres, us – it’ll be dry ice a go-go tonight,” predicts Marc bliss contorting feeling
to how it is in reality, a
with a giggle and a groan.
revelation in itself. It has
Actually, Numan couldn’t make it but he has sent his video. a natural subsidence to
So, apart from The Human League, who weren’t invited although a natural floor. Follow it
down and stay with it. Marc caps a
‘Love Action’ had yo-yoed up to a Number Three, tonight’s TOTP memorable
Neil Roberts
is a valuable survey of the ever evolving electro-disco beat – from Top Of The Pops
performance

84 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

MM 28 NOVEMBER 1981 PAGE 16
A lone, Latin-tinged trumpet sounds through the corridors and
seeps all off-key into Soft Cell’s dressing room. The duo makes an
odd couple. “It wasn’t planned that way,” they assure me.
Singer Marc Almond, from Southport, is small, effervescent
and giggly; musician David Ball, from Blackpool, is tall, laconic,
almost morose and more conscientiously artisan than artist.
Unsurprisingly Marc dominates the conversation.
“There,” he sighs. “I’ve gone and hogged the interview again.”
Marc plays frontman with relish – all Liberace gestures and
varying voice pitches while David is the natural straightman who
is still wondering what all the fuss is about. What with the former’s
flutterings and the latter’s refusal to participate in the creation
of the Soft Cell myth, the duo were at first dismissed as flightly
futurists prepared to ride whatever bandwagon was available.
The first one to happen along was the ‘Some Bizzare Album’
compilation put together by East End futurist DJ and lovable
pest Stevo. When it came out, the Some Bizzare boys were seen
as poor relations to the more stylish publicists of the Spandau
Ballet/Rusty Egan set. Stood up against Spandau svengali Steve
PENNIE SMITH/REDFERNS
Dagger, or even Blue Rondo’s Chris Sullivan, Stevo appeared as
little more than a court jester.
However, as Spandau and Blue Rondo’s attempts to stay ahead
have resulted in increasingly absurd fads, the unforced emergence
Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret N
of one-time Bizzare groups Depeche Mode and Soft Cell sets
the whole operation in a far better light. Compare, for instance,
Spandau Ballet’s degeneration from kitschy visionaries into hack
funk plagiarists with Soft Cell’s rise from trashy aesthetes to
dancehall favourites and decide for yourselves who’s created the
New Soul Version. Suddenly it becomes apparent that Stevo was
closer to the pulse than the rest.
Marc Almond is all Liberace gestures and varying
voice pitches, while David Ball is the natural
straightman wondering what all the fuss is about
“Stevo has been knocked an awful lot,” states Marc. “He’s
been called all sorts of things. Paul Morley said, which was really
untrue, that ‘Some Bizzare…’ was a nice sort of home for all these
little groups that nobody wanted. Well, I admire Stevo for going
out to be untrendy, for turning down groups who were already
well known and who were prepared to be on the album, accepting
the ‘futurist’ tag and all.”
NME ORIGINALS 85
TLFeBOOK
 Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
Soft Cell emerged from the twin backgrounds of
Leeds Art College and Northern soul. Though first and
foremost soulboys, they didn’t meet on the dancefloor
but in a classroom at the aforementioned college where
Marc was studying performance art on the same course,
coincidentally, as Indian rubber man Fad Gadget and
David was just “fiddling about with synthesizers”.
Their performance training isn’t immediately apparent
from their TOTP ‘Tainted Love’ show – David does the
standing still quite well, while Marc twitches engagingly
through a clumsy set of extravagant gestures barely in
sync with the rods – but it was a valuable grounding.
“It instilled in us the need to be independent,” recalls
Marc, “because the course we were doing consisted of
being put into a big studio with all these facilities and then
being told: ‘Right whatever you do, go ahead and do it. It’s
all up to you and you’ve got three years to make something
out of it.’”
Marc performed, David produced the soundtrack.
What they did then isn’t relevant now, says David. Marc,
more helpfully, expands.
“It’s getting to the stage where we’ve said what
needs to be said about going out and having
fun… and then come the tears” Marc Almond
“For me, my performance art background is only important
because it gave me the confidence to get out there onstage. It was
just, like, exercising myself in getting up onstage and not caring if
I make a fool of myself. After that, it’s just a case of looking back on
things you did three years ago and feeling a little red faced about
them, if only because your ideas improve a lot in the meantime.”
More telling is their apprenticeship in Northern teen disco – not
the sophisticated clubs where the DJ plays a never-ending stream
of jazz funk imports from New York that nobody recognises or
indeed would bother taking home with them. Their roots in a
poppier dance, in the tunes that occasionally make the charts;
‘Tainted Love’ is their tribute to the teen dance.
“We both like Northern soul, ’60s music and the 12-inch record,”
explains Marc. “We thought we would try to being that ’60s sound
and style of song into the ’80s, but the problem was to how to do a
12-inch of ‘Tainted Love’ without doing the boring, very standard
thing of stripping it all down to the bass and drums and re-editing
NME 30 JANUARY 1982 PAGE 15
the sound, which is putting me off 12-inches in a way.
“Then we had the idea of doing an instrumental bit in the middle SOFT CELL
SAY HELLO
and going into another song at the end, almost like a medley tribute
WAVE GOODBYE
to where we come from, those songs that made an impression on Phonogram
us. It was originally just going to include a few bars of ‘Where Did Soft Cell are just the
Our Love Go’ but we liked the way it turned out and included the coddest thing. If they
whole song. ever market a video of
their stage act it’ll just
“And we even had a slightly tongue-in-cheek drum break in the
have to be packaged
middle – that’s the crashing of dustbin lids and syn-drums.” by Birds Eye. “I tried to
Before talking to Soft Cell, it was easy to think that the radical make it work”, breathes
leap in quality from the earlier ‘Memorabilia’’s Suicide-made- Marc Almond. “You
in a cocktail dress and
painless to the distinctive torch reading of ‘Tainted Love’ was more
me in a suit”. Oh no,
down to producer Mike Thorne than the duo. The wonderful segue, suits aren’t Marc at all.
for instance, is a disco producer’s trademark. However, it becomes When he snakes his way
apparent that it was the duo who went in with the ideas and Thorne across the stage during
Top Of The Pops I shall
made them work. It wasn’t the production of ‘Memorabilia’ that
expect nothing less
was at fault, but the song itself. The duo still quite like it, though than footless tights, a
they acknowledge the sound improvements of their hit. leather off-the-shoulder
“We had liked Mike Thorne’s production of Wire,” says Marc, blouson top and picture
hat. A cocktail dress?
“and anyway he is a less obvious choice of producer than Daniel
Probably not. I mean
Miller (the Mute man who produced ‘Memorabilia’) for electronic a fellow doesn’t want
music, we’re very pleased the way things have turned with Mike to get a reputation for
and we’re going to New York soon to record a new single and LP being a fruit, does he?
Danny Baker
with him.”
86 NME ORIGINALS
TLFeBOOK
Marc Almond’s
performance art
degree was put
to good use
‘Tainted Love’ could mark
the beginning of the end of
their longstanding love affair
with disco. Being a Friday night
DJ at Leeds Warehouse, Marc
Almond is fully aware of all
its trends and innovations, its
emotions and fluctuations. But
these days its appeal is wearing thin.
“You can’t go on forever on the dancefloor,” admits Marc
ruefully. “There is still some great disco coming out, but it’s
coming to wear a little thin on me. I hate this new Latin music,
though the real Latin music is great. I mean, how can people who
have no roots in Puerto Rico bring out this kind of music?”
Disillusioned with the dancefloor, where do you turn to from
here, Marc?
“To the bedroom, I think,” he giggles. “It’s getting to the stage
where we’ve said what needs to be said about that, about going out
and having fun… and then come the tears.
“Our writing is getting more personal, a bit deeper and a lot
sadder. It’s about reaching into the stuff and writing things that
you have to feel about.”
Soft Cell are one of the few units who have a genuine claim on
the new cabaret, even if there is as much Batley Variety Club as
the Berlin kind. Their entertainment is effusively emotional in
the showbiz tradition, ridiculously expressive, mildly satirical/
comical and hilariously self-indulgent. And in the best tradition
of Northern variety it’s also a little grubby. For reasons known
only to themselves, they’ve taken to having publicity shots done
in sex shops with peculiar props.
David: “We like people to think that there is something shady or
seedy in our backgrounds that nobody knows anything about.”
Have you?
“We’re not saying!”
“We’re not interested in being clean and goody-goody,”
explains Marc. “ We like writing songs about sex and trash. We
did that consciously to get a dirtier image really. The LP will be
called ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’.”
“We got one song from a News Of The World headline ‘Sex
Dwarf Lures 100 Disco Dollies To A Life Of Vice’,” he laughs. “We
felt it just had to be put down and immortalised.”
To the people who have to sell them Soft Cell are depressingly
difficult to pin down.
“People tell us that we’re directionless,” admits Marc. “Well,
if I had a plan and knew what I would be doing in three years
I wouldn’t bother. It’s more exciting to be directionless – this it
REDFERNS/REX FEATURES
the perfection that we’re aiming towards. We want to be aware
of everything – people’s feelings, the media, trivia, deepness,
everything! And if that’s being dilettante and directionless than
I am dilettante and directionless… and glad!”
 O is for ...

RS
TEARS FOR FEA
RETNATOM SHEEHAN

NME ORIGINALS 87
TLFeBOOK
 The Outsiders

HISTO RY O F
HE A DAC HES Paul Colbert

T
he story so far. In
deepest darkest
Bath, Roland pursues a primal
Orzabal and Curt
Smith have met scream as
at the age of 13.
Sharing a sense of humour and he confronts
(we guess) similar problems, they
become friends over the years and Tears For Fears
eventually form a synth-based band,
MM 30 OCTOBER 1982 PAGE 10
calling it Tears For Fears.
They write a song entitled ‘Suffer The
Children’. Four months later they pen another, ‘Pale
Shelter’. Tapes are applied to the ears of several record companies
and Phonogram is the fastest to react.
Within a brisk feature by MM’s own Steve ‘Stick Boy’ Sutherland,
Tears For Fears reveal a driving force – an urge to pursue Primal
Screaming, a method of exorcising the neuroses (fears) collected Roland and Curt:
during childhood by emphasising the emotions (tears) of the you don’t have
mature man. Music, they say, is a means of accessing this idea to to be mad in this
the public and of getting themselves to Los Angeles where Primal world but it helps
Scream Therapy has its finest exponents.
Almost a year later another song has been written and released.
‘Mad World’ does better than its predecessors, astonishingly so. Its “I can’t really explain it,” opens Roland. “The things
leap into the chart surprises fans, record company, even the band. behind that are very scientific, they probably wouldn’t
What, we wonder, has been happening while we were away? interest you.”
The news is sad. Sitting across the room from Tears For Fears They would.
this morning I suffer the same stomach plunging sensation that “But I don’t want to talk about it.”
afflicted Luke Skywalker when he tackled the Death Star over the Hoping for a softer landing, I switch to the history lesson.
weekend. The defences are up, shields are in place and both Roland Had it always been a two piece? Did the name Graduate mean
and Curt are showing the first signs of an artistic team whose anything?
dreams have been brutalized by a money-orientated business. Roland: “No.”
It’s not that they’ve lost sight of the targets so confidently Curt: “Don’t talk about that.”
expressed in that earlier interview, but they seem frightened of Roland: “Before we were in Tears For Fears we were in a band
called History Of Headaches. The trouble with that band was
there was only one person in it and that person was the total
Roland and Curt are showing consciousness of the whole band and that amounted to nothing.
It amounted to a baked bean which we ate and because we ate the
signs of an artistic team whose MM 18 SEPTEMBER 1982 PAGE 14
baked bean the total consciousness of the whole world threw us

dreams have been brutalized TEARS FOR

FEARS
MAD WORLD
Mercury
A roving mind rarely
expressing them in public. They bounce around from silence or lights on the obvious
refusal to understand a question to painstaking explanations of the answer to any problem.
way they work. Tears For Fears let their
brainboxes roam far
Beginning on safe ground I ask about ‘Mad World’.
and wide to arrive at
“We didn’t expect it to get this far,” says Roland. “I thought this solution. A marriage
it might get to Number 50 through sheer impetus on the back of of pulsing bass drum
the other two singles.” rhythms and low bass
notes are a pillow for
What’s the song about?
the verse but they get
“Well, what do you get from it? People say they like the lyrics, shoved off the edge of
which is the first time they’ve said that about anything we’ve done.” the bed when a piano
“It’s for people to take it the way they want,” stresses Curt. swathes in for the chorus.
Investigate. It’s unusual
There’s one particular, fascinating line about “the dreams in
enough to be worth it.
which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had”. That’s a strong image, Paul Colbert
what are the thoughts behind it?
out of the band so we formed Tears For Fears and Tears For Fears
is our answer to the History Of Headaches.”
Sod the history, let’s try the future.
Roland: “The nicest thing that could happen would be for us to
be in a position where we could release more unsafe material, and
it would chart. The next single will be a ‘safe’ single.”
Isn’t there the danger that a more commercial 45 might not
have the appeal of the unusual and infectious ‘Mad World’?
“It’s not our decision. This is the businessman talking to you
now, not the artist, but we are… all for it… as it were.”
Curt: “We would like to re-release ‘Pale Shelter’ at some time.
We’ve re-recorded it and it’s come out as it should’ve done, with as
much depth as ‘Mad World’.”
Have you seen yourself changing at all?
Roland: “Yeah, we’ve changed an awful lot in our attitude
towards the music business. We used to be ‘artists’ you know,
innocent and naive, now we realise that the music business is a
career and is geared towards success.”

88 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 The Outsiders O

NME 6 APRIL 1985 PAGE 17

TEARS FOR
FEARS
EVERYBODY WANTS
TO RULE THE WORLD
Mercury

Curtsie and Rolobabs

serve up a rolling
manifesto marginally
more palatable than
the maudlin moodiness
that has become their
trademark. They might
never make another
‘Change’, but at least
this is one soggy step
up from the abysmally
dire ‘Shout’.
Adrian Thrills

Do you hate yourself for changing?

“Yeah, but at least we’re successful with a song we really like. It’s
pointless doing anything good if no one knows who you are.”
Curt: “That first interview changed our attitude towards
the press.”
Roland: “We realised there’s no point in being honest.” MM 12 MARCH 1983 PAGE 27

That’s terrible. Don’t you think you’re guilty for not persevering? TEARS FOR FEARS
Roland: “Well, that’s the way I am. I don’t like to struggle
THE HURTING Mercury
against things like that because they’re bigger than me.”
So you haven’t discarded any of those original ideas?

T
hey say children and old men are much the
Curt: “No. Everything we said then is true now.” same. Certainly Tears For Fears’ obsessively
Roland: “But we’re not going to talk about it.” self-centred lack of enthusiasm for life
is strikingly reminiscent of John Lennon’s self-
So if you prefer to explain those theories and beliefs in the
imposed premature senility.
songs, is there any sign they’re getting through? What’s people’s Both, in adopting personal experience as a
reaction to you? microcosm of the cruel machinations of the ‘Mad
Curt: “They all like us for different reasons. We had someone World’, intend to pour protest from the heart into
other hearts. Both, in contemplating their own
say, ‘We love your songs. We taped your Peel session and every
pampered misery, deny the very existence of
time we hear ‘The Hurting’ we cry. ‘That’s nice. I think a lot of the happiness they imply they seek and,
people are interested in what we’re writing about. hence, deny themselves the chance
“But I don’t…” to (re)discover any reasons to be
cheerful other than finding a Tears For The TFF formula
Yes I know, you don’t want to talk about it.
sympathetic ear into which to
unburden their uncertainty.
Fears translate – to translate childhood
traumas into adult romance
The story as it was. In deepest darkest Bath, Roland Orzabal So what, we should ask childhood traumas with Freudian fanaticism
and Curt Smith have met at the age of 13. The repressions and ourselves, do Tears For Fears – is ludicrously laboured but,
anxieties that afflict them over the next handful of adolescent have to offer other than the into adult romance crucially, their lyrical lethargy
inherently arrogant assumption is salvaged by what really sells
years will be forgotten and submerged from day to day but make a that in musically parading their with Freudian them; their structural invention.
forceful re-appearance in their songs. They will sing about losing emotional scars, they speak for fanaticism ‘Mad World’ was a
that part of themselves, and they will sing in order to do it. all of us? Unlike Lennon’s ‘Walls And magnificent single, so marvellously
Bridges’ LP, TFF’s pop primal therapy textured, so bubbling with little
Roland: “We met via a mutual friend. We seemed to get on
tends to luxuriate in the attention it attracts, inducements to succumb to its charms.
because we had the same sense of humour.” sounds ironically happy to wallow inspirationally More than emotion recollected with
Curt: “Mine was different.” instead of seeking exorcism. tranquillity, ‘The Hurting’ is the innocent past
What else did you share? TFF simply feel sorry for themselves. That needlessly impregnated with meaning.
said, it doesn’t do to examine TFF’s motives too The success of ‘The Hurting’ lies in its lack
Roland: “I’m not going to tell you.”
deeply. All they’re saying is, “Mummy, you’re not of friction, in its safety and, for all their claims
Curt: “It’s a bit heavy isn’t it?” watching me,” making a fuss about confronting that coping with relationships has been warped
Roland: “I could tell you the psychological symbolism behind the mature realisation that their sensibilities have beyond their ken, TFF have contrived an assured
the relationship if you like.” been moulded without their consent to disguise masterpiece of seduction.
their reluctance to quit the cosy irresponsibility Don’t grow up too soon boys.
Carry on.
RETNA

immaturity affords. Steve Sutherland

“No, I’m not going to…”

NME ORIGINALS 89
TLFeBOOK
TLFeBOOK
 P
is for ...

NME ORIGINALS 91
TLFeBOOK
 Half a million dirty
minds can’t be wrong
about this man
T
his fellow sitting across the table from me
in an uptown Manhattan Holiday Inn
room may be a Prince but he ain’t
no Charlie.
On the other hand, this 20-
year-old Prince is just as much a
lad with the ladies as is our prospective monarch;
in the musicality of his speaking voice, which is
much lower in tone than the high pitch you’d
expect from listening to his records, there is a
slur that comes from lack of sleep.
“I haven’t been to sleep for a couple of nights…
well, I’ve been to bed, but not for sleeping,” he
adds, meaningfully.
“Ho-ho-ho!” I spontaneously chuckle with
disrespectful satire, miming macho rib-nudging.
Such lack of awe for the Big Willie talk that is such
an essential part of Prince’s everyday mood and music
obviously pisses him off a bit. But, really, what does he
expect? Still, not a bad lad when all’s said and done…
Prince has flown in to New York from his hometown
of Minneapolis, Minnesota, for this interview. This
is just the beginning of a lot of mileage he’s going to be
putting under his belt. This week he also jets to Europe
for a series of dates that includes one London show, at
the Lyceum.
In the jargon of the trade, Prince is “working” his
‘Dirty Mind’ album, released at the end of last year. Like
his first two Warners LPs, ‘For You’ and ‘Prince’, ‘Dirty
Mind’ was produced, arranged, written and almost
entirely performed by Prince alone.
In America, ‘Dirty Mind’ is an “underground” hit
– which means that via word of mouth and exceptionally
favourable press coverage it has notched up a more than
92 NME ORIGINALS
healthy half-million sales. Radio play has been virtually
NME 6 JUNE 1981 PAGE 16
nil, this being due to much of the subject matter of the
LP, which contains the kind of lyrics that might have
A new sex symbol come out of a few heavy sessions of Freudian dream
analysis. Among other topics, the album deals with
in America who writes songs oral sex, troilism and incest. It also concerns itself
with direct political matters, however; ‘Dirty
Mind’ climaxes with the song ‘Partyup’, and
about oral sex and incest, this an atmosphere of militant defiance that insists,
“You’re gonna have to fight your own damn war/
is the Prince the ladies die for. ’Cos we don’t wanna fight no more”.
Chris Salewicz listens to There is a weird mist about the body music made
by the green-eyed, sensually slack-jawed Prince,
his trashy talk as there is also about the multi-instrumentalist
himself. An academic analysis of his intensely
immediate sounds indicate their origins lie in areas as
far apart (and as close together) as pre-disco Philly, Eddie
Cochran’s primal rock’n’roll rhythm, The Beatles and
the inevitable Jimi Hendrix, who seems to have provided
much of the spiritual source material for the notoriously
lascivious, wild spectacular which Prince enacts every
time he steps out onstage. Yet the hypnotic accessibility of
this compound belies a mysterious, vinegary cold within
the cool of its core.
Whatever, Prince dislikes suggestions that he is
redefining R&B. Or that his first two, less cohesive LPs
were an interpretation of disco in rock terms.
“To me, disco was always very contrived music. It was
all completely planned out for when the musicians were
recording it in the studios. Basically, what I do is just go
in and play.
“It’s easy for me to work in the studio, because I have
Prince was always
very fond of his
no worries or doubts after what the other musician’s
guitar collection
TLFeBOOK
 Prince P
going to play because that other musician is almost always me!
All the other musicians on the record are me. Disco music was
filled with breaks that a studio musician would just play and fill
up when his moment came. But I don’t do that at all – I just play
along with the other guy.”
Prince’s voice, which lies in a region occupied by Michael NME 14 NOVEMBER 1981 PAGE 27

Jackson and Smokey Robinson, also has its curious edge. Too PRINCE
much that of a beautiful young boy, it is like the silky new-castrato CONTROVERSY WEA
of a choirboy beneath whose starched, spotless surplice is a body
crawling with crabs.

P
rince has an urge in him which sometimes
Maybe that’s what Prince is about – the twin sides of human comes out as a nightingale, sometimes a
vulgar pierrot and then occasionally just
nature. “Sin and salvation,” says the man who dedicates to God
a babyish gurgle. Here is a minstrel who sings
‘Dirty Mind’, a record that promises “incest is everything it’s meant of his bedtime succour – a modern prince, mark
to be”. you – and may have the captives seduced, only to
Such a subdued, low-key character offstage that one feels it dash the accomplishment away; straddled o’er an
earthquake of rocky showtime guff and peacock
certainly must be his alter-ego that takes over in performance,
proud of Mr Reagan to boot.
Prince all the same remains always a natural communicator. He I’m still frightened of Prince – allured by the
waxes warm and cold, though – just like his two-edged music. promise, alarmed by the chintzy crud of his
But it’s his prerogative; he’s very much of his own man, working live routine, partially assuaged by this
new ‘Controversy’. Prince’s value
on his terms in a similar manner to that insisted on by other of
continues to lie in the merger he Sex is structural power of the
black America’s genuine musical artists like Marvin Gaye and
Stevie Wonder.
affects – implicit rather than
explicit – of categories usually
his shrine music – thud and skim, shudder
and tightening – has as much
He dislikes being considered a prodigy: “I don’t even know taken for granted as token and that’s where in common with Kraftwerk as
dualities (love/sex, rock/soul) with the more obvious Hendrix
what the word really means,” he shrugs. “I’m just a person.” Prince’s confusing
or as irreconcilable opposites and harmony funk lineage.
Prince also bristles uncomfortably at PR descriptions of his (pleasures/politics, gaiety/ Sex is his shrine and that’s
fluency with 27 separate instruments. acuity). We will get nowhere charm works where Prince’s confusing
“That came about because that was the exact number of quickly searching Prince’s practice
for principles of judgement: he is not
best charm works best. ‘Do Me Baby’
recalls the likes of Imagination in
instruments I played on the first album. But actually there are a
uniformly lovable or loyal. its slippery slipstream, but is so much
lot of instruments which if you can play you can also play another ‘Controversy’ is packaged as a collection better. Prince comes complete with a
six related ones.” of quibbles and queries unified under a vaguely dischord, jettisoning the elaborate arrangement
“conceptual” close sign. And I like it. I obsessively and shivering in a silent afterglow. It’s Smokey
like two of the eight inclusions (‘Do Me Baby’ Robinson singing obscene moonbeams – lust
“I haven’t been to bed for a and ‘Annie Christian’) and, all in all, it’s a more
elaborately an easily realised music than last
imploring love and the strains on the pillow aren’t
the tracks of our tears.

couple nights… well, I’ve been year’s ‘Dirty Mind’. Prince can get really expansive
with his voice (how the abstract gospel intro
Does he want to do much more than put his
tongue in our cheeks? I’m not sure that I’d vote for
shifts into a sexy, smoky falsetto stutter in ‘Private him if he did. Prince is ultimately conservative, but
to bed, but not for sleeping” Joy’) – and his constructive appliance of synth
techniques assures that the sheer aesthetic and
temporarily valorous; that’s funk?
Ian Penman

The black and white front cover shot on ‘Dirty Mind’ is an
exact representation of the persona Prince presents onstage – the
army surplus flasher’s mac (which he is wearing in the Holiday
Inn at this very moment: “It’s the only coat I’ve got”), the dark
jockstrap-like underpants. The photograph has been cropped at
pubis level, missing out of the bare thighs and leg-warmers that
complete Prince’s androgynous stagewear.
This image is far from the soft-focus colour job of the horseman
astride his winged white steed that graced the rear of ‘Prince’.
Pretty dodgy stuff – enough to make a strong man weep.
It was his need to extend that autonomy he’d already gained in
production and arrangement terms that led to Prince breaking
with his Minneapolis-based management following the release of
‘Prince’, and signing a deal with the former managers of Little Feat.
“I think I’ve always been the same. But when you’re in the
hands of other people they can package it in a way that is more…
uhhh… acceptable. All along I’ve had the same sort of ideas that
came out on this record. It’s just that my former management had
other thoughts about it all.” His voice curls downwards.
“The songs on ‘Dirty Mind’ were just some demo tapes that
I recorded and took to LA to play to my new management. Even
they weren’t too happy with them. We also had long talks about
what I felt was me getting closer to my real image, and at first they
thought that I’d gone off the deep end and had lost my mind.
Warners basically thought the same, I think.
“But once I told them that this was the way it was, then they
knew they had no choice and they’d have to try it, because they
weren’t going to get another record out of me otherwise.
“I know that I’m a lot happier than I was. Because I’m getting
away with what I want to do. With the other two albums I feel
I was being forced to suppress part of myself – though also
REPFOTO
MM 19 NOVEMBER 1983 PAGE 26
PRINCE
LITTLE RED CORVETTE
WEA
He looks a bit like Little
Richard, but I don’t like
the poster, with his bum
hanging out and all that.
I thought this was going
to chart in England a
while back and then it
charted in the States so
they’ve put it out again
here. There’s lots of little
tricks and gimmicks on
it, and when you do that
it doesn’t usually work,
but this one does.
Great record.
This grabbing of greater control of his own destiny was
probably inevitable, considering the production and arrangement
autonomy Prince already had.
“I just turned down all the producers that Warners suggested
to me for the first album. Even when they finally agreed to let me
produce myself they insisted I had to work with what they said
was an Executive Producer, who was really just an engineer. And
that caused a whole lot of other problems, because he was versed
in short-cuts and I didn’t want to take any – though (laughs) that
was why it took five months to make.
“The recording’s become a little easier these days. I used to be
a perfectionist – too much of one. Those ragged edges tend to be
a bit truer.”
Prince is the third youngest in a family of four brothers and four
sisters. They are not all of the same blood: “There was a lot of
illegitimacy – different fathers, different mothers.”
Prince’s father, who obviously christened him as he did because
he knew he’d need to learn how to fight, was an Italian-Philipino
leader of a Midwest pro jazz band. He left his son’s black mother
when the boy was seven.
“That’s when I first started playing music,” he says. “He left the
piano behind when he left us behind. I wasn’t allowed to touch it
when he still lived with us.”
Around the age of nine, Prince stated spending much of his
out-of-school hours in his mother’s bedroom, poring over her
substantial porn collection. “She had a lotta interesting stuff.
Certainly that affected my attitude towards my sexuality.”
His mother’s choice of replacement for his father also affected
him. At the age of 12 Prince moved out of the family home and into
that of one of his sisters. “It’s very difficult having a step-father –

Francis Rossi
I was younger.” basic resentment all the way around. Nobody belongs to anybody.”

NME ORIGINALS 93
TLFeBOOK
 Prince

NME 20 NOVEMBER 1982 PAGE 33

PRINCE
1999 WEA

D
ear Mixed-Up of Minnesota.
Well, don’t you have problems?
Being the sole son and heir of Barry
White and Jimi Hendrix is no easy burden for a
young boy to bear – but when the only people
who like you are the people who get their records
free… well, then comes the hour when the
record company, in one last mad gasp of magpie
marketing, puts out the “Specially-Priced Two
Record Set” and almost audibly screams, “Come
and buy it, you bastards! It may stink, but at
least it’s free!”
You saw, you conquered, you
came; that used to be your Your I still remember your
preoccupation, Prince, you
pup! You were the Reeperbahn
problem, first communiqué – ‘I Wanna
Be Your Lover’ – with some
of rock; but now as you and Prince, is affection. You were the
your countrymen sit and carnal castrati incarnate,
contemplate your cold sores in commercial post- there was a gurgling, glorious
“Oh my God!
I forgot to put my
the USAH (After Herpes) I detect exuberance about you, all
a more chaste worldview, full coital triste on a those sweet soaring runs
trousers on for
the shoot. Again”
of partying and vague romantic
sadness rather than blow by blow
cosmic scale and that nifty backcombed
backchat – you were out of the
cornporn. Yet even this can have its closet and in your element, being
complications; you use partying, like many of just what you always wanted to be… prepared to make a few mistakes and end up starting a war that
your nasty nationality, as a carwash for the brain a girl group! But now your songs sound like they don’t have to go out and fight.
– having fun to hide from fear, most graphically in an interminable string of Fame B-sides – and “I just think the people should have a little more to say in some
the title track. The end of the world – don’t worry considering how Fame A-sides sound, that’s
of these foreign matters. I don’t want to have to go out and die for
your pretty little head about it, Prince, leave the some insult.
social comment to Grandmaster Flash and revel in Your problem, Prince, is commercial post-coital their mistakes.
your role of pretty boys’ pin-up. triste on a cosmic scale. “Thank God we got a better President now,” Prince continues,
I also notice that you have one song – ‘Little Red The antidote? Get thee to a nunnery, or at rather startlingly, “with bigger balls” – the reader may note the
Corvette’ – which implies that you want the world least to Donna Summer’s songwriter. Few things
recurrent sexual imagery – “than Carter. I think Reagan’s a lot
to know that you are a regular guy and not just a are such bets chartwise as a Bible-bashing black,
sex freak, a regular guy who sings love songs to Born Again. Sex is no manifesto, no saviour and better. Just for the power he represents, if nothing else. Because
lumps of metal when he wants to show that he is certainly no shock. As my colleague Confucius that also means as far as other countries are concerned.
as capable of having fun as the next guy; though likes to say, “Nothing sadder than a flasher who “He also has a big mouth, which is probably a good thing. His
falling in love with a lump of metal is a rather no one notices.”
mouth is his one big asset.”
recherché way of having fun and far from normal. Julie Burchill
Perhaps this is Prince’s Minneapolis background coming out.
Who else has Minnesota turned up? Only Prince, Bob Dylan,
During this time, up until when he graduated from high school Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey. Which is at least a
at 17, Prince played in a succession of high school bands, notably healthy bit of yin and yang. (More like Cheech And Chong – Ed.)
one called Champagne. Prince says he still lives in the city in which he was born
“It was all Top 40 stuff. The audiences didn’t want to know the precisely because it is so isolated. Ask Prince about his musical
songs I was writing for the group. They’d just cover their faces… influences and he’ll go all coy on you. You don’t hear anyone, he’ll
largely because of the lyrics. I remember I had this song called claim, if your home is in Minnesota. All the radio stations play is
‘Machine’ that was about this girl that reminded me of a machine. C&W music, he says. In fact, he genuinely doesn’t appear to have
It was very explicit about her, urrhhh… parts. People seemed to heard, or even heard of, a large percentage of acts with whom one
find it very hard to take.” might assume he would be familiar.
It was also this spell of living with his sister that was to inspire the “Listening to the radio there,” he insists, “really turned me off
“incest is all it’s meant to be” line. a lot of things that were supposedly going on. If they did pick up
“I write everything from experience. ‘Dirty Mind’ was written on something they’d just play it to death and you’d end up totally
totally from experience …” disliking it. So I missed out on a lot of groups.”
So he’s experienced incest? There was an amount of deliberate choice operating here.
“How come you ask twice?” “When I started doing my own records I really didn’t want to
MM 15 JANUARY 1983 PAGE 19
(Chuckles) listen to anybody, because I figured I should just disregard what
Oh well, one often hears it’s far more common than is popularly PRINCE AND THE anybody else might be doing. I can only be a product of my time…
imagined… REVOLUTION unless I cut myself off totally… though that,” he adds, purposely
1999
WEA
enigmatic, “is soon to come.”
The perspective on the apparently obsessive sexuality of ‘Dirty Forsaking the reputation
From what’s he going to cut himself off?
Mind’ is shifted by the non-specific politics of ‘Partyup’: “I was he built being suss “The world.”
in a lot of different situations when I was coming up to make that enough to make disco’s What does he intend to do?
record. A lot of anger came up through the songs. It was kind of a implicit sexual innuendo “Just write music, and things like that. Hang around in my
explicit, Prince no longer
rough time. There were a few anti-draft demonstrations going on head. And just make records. I don’t think I’ll perform anymore.
takes ’owt to the limit,
that I was involved in that spurred me to write ‘Partyup’. but, rather, exploits a I don’t want to do this too much longer.”
“Really, that song is just about people who’d rather have a good lucrative rock cross-over Is it stopping being fun?
time than go and shoot up one another. That’s all – it’s pretty and fashionable bomb “It’s still fun. But I get bored real fast. Yeah, it’s still fun. But
paranoia. Boring.
basic. I just seem to read about a lot of politicians who’re all going I can’t see it going on for too much longer in the same fashion.”
Steve Sutherland
to die soon and I guess they want to go out heavy, because they’re And so Prince heads for that last plane to Minnesota.

94 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 P

The Royal Variety Show

Five years waiting
for two hours of bliss.
Steve Sutherland comes over
all emotional at Prince’s
Wembley concert. Will he
ever be the same again?
MM 23 AUGUST 1986 PAGE 22

T
he week was sheer hell. How to hang on to two
Prince tickets until Thursday? Keep them in the
office and they’ll walk, such was their rarity,
such was the envy of friends and foes alike.
Keep them in the wallet and I might get
mugged, some other dude sweating and
screaming in my seats. Keep them in the flat and fire or
theft or some act of God might deny me the big one.
Thursday. An age away. And what if I managed to
secure those little perforated pieces of pure gold from
all the pitfalls and He cancelled the last night. What
if He were shot or, worse, just didn’t play on a whim?
But Thursday came as Thursdays do and we made
it to Wembley without a fatal head-on or a busted
big-end and the perspiration and panic set in. What if
the hype did its horrible thing, what if the expectation
of a litany of delights forced every critical faculty into
overdrive and unleashed the adrenalised cynicism that
can often render spiteful disappointment.
Anyway, 8.20. A disembodied American voice
asked if we’d welcome Prince And The Revolution
and we decided yes, we would. I could hear the snake-
charming raga of ‘Around The World In A Day’ but

“We got our

tops mixed
up!”: Prince and
guitarist Wendy,
Wembley 1986
REPFOTO

NME ORIGINALS 95
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 Prince

MM 12 APRIL 1986 PAGE 28

PRINCE AND THE

REVOLUTION
PARADE Paisley Park

Prince thought
the light shined
out of his arse
– and it really did!
I could see nothing. The bloody
curtains remained closed for
one whole agonising verse until
a James Brown soul squall rent them asunder and there He stood
in studded bell-bottoms and Cuban heels, hair a greased-back ’30s
Bolero crest, lips a fruity Shirley Temple pout, hips a pendulous
Elvis thrust, smile sweet and wicked under dem rollin’ Fats Waller
eyes. Oh the eyes, big and bad as moons, Bambi and Valentino, no
woman was safe. And the navel, the navel glistened, gorgeous and
thin. We screamed.
‘Around The World…’ watched an intricate metamorphosis
into ‘Christopher Tracy’s Parade’ and The Revolution achieved
with elegant ease what others appear to find impossible: exquisite
efficiency without sterility, synchronisation with joy. And what
was He doing during these intense opening manoeuvres – tracks
dismissed on record by the purists as the great man’s psychedelic
sell-out? He was hamming it up on the Hammond like Little
Richard, all cute cocky grins and sugary snarls.
A brutally boisterous ‘New Position’ lubricated the innuendo
and melted into ‘I Wonder U’ and His chest was revealed in one
ecstatic flounce. We screamed and screamed again.
And then I wept. Copiously. The lights fell low, the band backed
off and suddenly, vulnerable amid the razzmatazz, Prince sang ‘Do
Me Baby’ from the ‘Controversy’ album. He sang like I’ve never
heard anyone sing before, He sang about love and lust, about their
relationship, about the politics of plonking. He sang as a victim
and achieved coy command. This man was fawning for Chissakes,
standing there actually pleading with us to adore Him, knowing,
with all the wily power of His feminine charms, that He had us
trapped right where He wanted us, suckered in our pity. It was all
too much for this hetero Anglo Saxon boy and, boy, did I weep. But
I nearly gagged at what He did to us next, cocking a snook at our
broken hearts, He swaggered into ‘How Much Is That Doggy In
The Window?’ like some wanton, uncaring tart, then wrapped it
up into a harsh and chinky ‘When Doves Cry’.
Seated at the piano, He made eyes at the girls showering him
with bouquets before he preened through a cock-teasingly slow
first verse of ‘Little Red Corvette’.
And then there was ‘Head’, the naughty fellatio celebration
banned by the radio off the ‘Dirty Mind’ album. Lying astride
the mic stand, fucking perfectly in time to the humping beat, He
did a little mock-macho rap, we giggled along and it wasn’t cheap.
Not once. This was great theatre, great athleticism, great comedy
T
hey used to say the genius of Hendrix was
that his guitar acted as an extension of his
total being, that he agonised and fantasised
through that axe. Well, the same applies to Prince
– everything he treats has a Midas touch, a litmus
feel for the most effective groove, an intuitive trust
at the erogenous zones where the physical and
spiritual collide in orgasm.
I believe Prince is currently pop’s greatest
operator, a wizard, a true star. He’s
calculating and innocent – one eye
tearful, coy, expressing hurt,
the other cocked, laughing, Prince is Mayfield, Marc Bolan
coquettish, showing off. And,
of course, sex is his sacred
pop’s greatest and Jayne Mansfield licking off
their fingers after something
plaything. He’s Freudian beyond operator, a true good and dirty. ‘Mountains’
fault and fabrication and there’s is delightfully daft cosmic
a shocking intelligence working star and ‘Parade’ vaudeville. And then there’s
us up into a lather inside these the finale, this LP’s ‘Purple
songs. They’re amoral in that is a soft-porn Rain’, ‘Sometimes It Snows In
lust and love, pleasure and pain,
are indistinguishable, immoral in
paradise April’, an acrobatic ballad that
employs the simple sentimentality
that he’s aware of the dandy outrage of country music to express deep
of it all, and boldly hedonistic in that Prince loss so poetically, so personally – it’s
advocates all experience enriches life. indecent when his vocal spirals into luscious grief,
So ‘Parade’ is a soft-porn paradise, a sensual celebrating the sadness to the very last sob.
sacrament, supposedly the soundtrack to our I’ve heard tell that, while I’ve been under this
doe-eyed hero’s next exhibition of narcissism on spell, lesser mortals have been saying dull things
film. The first side’s well weird, nursery rhyme songs about revivalism and Beatles fetish. But when
subjected to sensory overload. Prince luxuriates all’s said and done you’ll realise ‘Parade’ eclipses
in submitting himself to his senses. Side two, if everything else you’ve heard this year.
anything, is more illicit, more abandoned to delight. Seriously, Godlike.
‘Kiss’, of course, is perfection – Bo Diddley, Curtis Steve Sutherland
sacred when He grabbed a guitar and deliciously screwed it,
licking the machine heads as He casually sat on the lip of the stage
and coaxed little flurries of loving jazz moons from the strings.
I would have cried again but I was rescued by the sheer cool
velocity of the svelte ‘Kiss’. ‘1999’ belonged to the crowd, Prince
prancing, us baying.
Encore time and the only real doubt raised by His visit. Can it
be that He, like any other mortal American, is stricken with such
a paucity of discernment that he can’t see that hauling Ronnie
Wood and Sting onstage for a spirited run-through of ‘Miss You’
is a decision lacking in all things hip? Some say He’s a muso and
lacks that vital taste but I think He’s beyond all that. I think He
doesn’t deign to worry about who’s supposed to be who probably
just lonely up there above the clouds.
This is the uniqueness of Prince – He feels no shame. He
NME 1 MARCH 1986 PAGE 17
brings on uncluttered naivety, an obscene enthusiasm to the
PRINCE AND THE most overwrought emotion and feels no embarrassment in laying
REVOLUTION it bare by laying it on thick. The clichés peel back to the core of
KISS
Paisley Park
their impact under His caress like layers off an onion, the spell of
His sob choking me at the beauty of witnessing someone doing
OK, I submit: this is
brilliant. After the something better than anyone else ever has.
momentary aberration After that it was inconceivable that He could give and I could
of ‘Around The World take anymore, I was so blissed out by the sorrow, so exhausted
In A Day’, ‘Kiss’ is back
by the brilliance, but ‘Purple Rain’ pumped me erect for one last
to roots, and not just
Prince’s roots, but the gasping climax. There He was, tearing out the shattering guitar
roots of those roots. solo with the abandoned exuberance of Hendrix, there He was,
The song calls all the singing soul from his soul because He doesn’t know any other way
way back to Sly Stone’s
and being quite cheekily vaudeville too, referring to Himself as
deconstructions, a
sparse, stinging and “your little friend”, sending Himself up and taking us higher.
– yes! – sly funk workout Two hours in the company of this ultimate showman, this
in which the spaces say complete performer, this song and dance man, and all the desperate
as much as the paces.
faith I’d maintained in fickle pop made perfect sense. I had a star in
REPFOTO

Andy Gill
all performed with the greatest delicacy. It was almost as if it was my eyes and a memory, forever, of heaven in my head.

96 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Qis for ...

IT B E/Y OU A ND I
WHY SHOUL D ODE
RE PEO PLE/SO ” – D EPE CH E M
“PEOPLE A ALO N G/SO AWFULLY?
SHOULD GET
VEIGUE/DULLE-IDOLS

NME ORIGINALS 97
TLFeBOOK
 Mode in Essex:
(l-r) Vince, Martin,
Andy and Dave

G
od , what a year it’s been. Not half over simple two-minute gems, that stand quiff and earrings
yet and every week they’re coming above the ever-growing pile of synth-pop fad followers.
MM 9 MAY 1982 PAGE 13
– great new bands bragging, Suss enough to play by the rules, but brilliant enough
bruising, begging for attention. to break ’em.
It’s getting so I can’t tell me Steve Sutherland
Scars from me Spandaus, but Scramble
listen to this and listen good. ventures into deepest, Take my advice – name-drop Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode, far from being yet another like crazy, turn on your radio and wait. Watch
seven-day wonder, are damn near the most
perfect pop group these two lucky lug ’oles
darkest Essex to meet them storm up the charts, sit back and feel smug
as your friends all scramble to follow your lead.
have sampled all season. A couple of cracking
tracks – one a narcissistic boppin’ beauty of a
Mute men and purveyors Be the first one on your block to sport a DM
T-shirt and allow yourself a snicker as hoards of
single called ‘Dreaming Of Me’ that nudged
the charts; the other a moody, melodic pseudo-
of perfect pop music, nouveau new romantics and grubby electronic
garage bands put down their icy frowns and bid
mechanical outing on the ‘Some Bizzare Album’
aptly titled ‘Photographic’ – were enough to put me Depeche Mode to get the drop of Mode magic.
They’ll be lucky – I had trouble.
on the scent. Prior to partaking in the Mute Night Silent
Several scorching live dates confirmed it. This band Night extravaganza at the Lyceum Ballroom in
has a full set of knowing but naive, intense and yet idiotically London, huffing and puffed from endless games of tag

98 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 The Big Question Q

Quickly, quickly. Back to basics. Depeche Mode were formed

The four Mode music-makers
effortlessly enhance their reputation
as an “awkward” interview
and run-outs, bloated by a batch of greasy McDonald’s, slightly
upset by a skimpy soundcheck and surrounded by a gaggle of
giggling girlfriends, the four Mode music-makers crammed
into the support band’s dressing room and effortlessly enhanced
their reputation as an “awkward” interview. Its not that they’re
in any way stand-offish – they blush and bluster their way
through my clumsy enquiries and clueless evasion, never once
suggesting the smug, self satisfied smokescreen that Spandau
build around discussions. It’s no rehearsed conspiracy – they
just feel that they have little to say other than what their
music offers.
An example: halfway through the proceedings I realise lead
synther Martin Gore has remained stony silent throughout.
I ask why and beanpole, carrot-quiffed bass synth player Andrew
Fletcher tells me he has strong views on music.
“Have you?” I ask.
He shrugs.
I persevere: “Why don’t you ask him a question, Andy?”
REDFERNS
MM 12 SEPTEMBER 1981 PAGE 23
DEPECHE MODE
JUST CAN’T GET
ENOUGH
Mute
I can, you will. Catchy,
disposable. Percussion
and synths and
repetition. Modes and
Rockers. Product for an
all-too-easily satisfied
market, and empty
reverberation before
the final silence.
“nine or ten months ago” as a three-piece, two-guitar-and-synth-
outfit, who, according to songwriter, rhythm synth player, old
man at 21 and chief spokesperson Vince Clarke, “just about played
live but under a different name – we won’t go into that now”.
“Oh go on, be a devil,” I urge.
“No,” he replies.
The next step was to audition a vocalist – enter snappy dresser
David Gahan – and then, suddenly, the big swap as the Basildon
boys packed up string-picking for good and plumped for total
electronics “because we simply like the sound of synthesizers”.
The change made little difference to their musical outlook –
“Some numbers we did with guitars we still do now,” claims Vince
– but the drastic upheaval of image worked wonders.
Suddenly finding gigs far easier to come by, they earned
themselves something of a residency at Canning Town’s
Bridge House supporting Fad Gadget, and it was, here in these
inauspicious surroundings, that they were discovered by ‘Uncle’
Daniel Miller, the maestro behind Britain’s zaniest electronic label
Mute Records.
It was love at first sight; Daniel took the boys under his wing
and produced the aforementioned fab single ‘Dreaming Of Me’
without inking any contract. Now, after suitably encouraging
sales, he’s produced their magnificent follow-up ‘New Life’ and
formally signed them up.
“Daniel’s helped us a lot,” says Vince, laughing off my suggestion

“OK. Have you got your Lurex pants on?” that the Mute man sounds something of a Svengali figure.
Patrick Humphries
“No.” “He’s been really good.”

NME ORIGINALS 99
TLFeBOOK
 The Big Question

MM 23 OCTOBER 1982 PAGE 27

MM 25 SEPTEMBER 1982 PAGE 16

DEPECHE MODE
A BROKEN FRAME Mute

W
hat a difference a year makes. The
Depeche Mode of ’81’s ‘Speak And
Spell’ seduced their way into our
hearts and into the charts with unblemished
innocence; the synthesized soul brothers of
cartoon punks, the Ramones.
The role and execution were essentially simple:
perfect pop with no pretensions. Such (ac)cute
timing could scarcely be dismissed as contrived,
such sublime straightforwardness blossomed
beyond all critical sniping.
But, though in many ways
ambitious and bold, ‘A Broken
Frame’ – as its name suggests Now ugly compared to the
– marks the end of a beautiful
dream. Now Vince Clarke’s
Vince Clarke’s wry ‘Boys Say Go’ but ‘A Broken
Frame’ is closer to ‘Speak and
(selfishly?) split the market, split the market, Spell’ than its tricky veneer
‘A Broken Frame’ sounds sadly might suggest.
naked, rudely deprived of the ‘A Broken Frame’ The lyrics have matured
formula’s novelty. from wide-eyed fun to wild-
Whereas past pilferings sounds sadly eyed frustration, but the weary
were overlooked as springboards
towards an emerging identity, the
naked words of ‘Leave In Silence’, just
like the glib ones of ‘Just Can’t Get
larcenies of ‘A Broken Frame’ sound Enough’, are words and nothing more.
like puerile infatuations papering over In attempting the balance that Yazoo get
anonymity. What it also illustrates is that growing away with, the new Depeche Mode overstep the
up in public is much the same as it was in the ’60s mark. Vince is adept at conjuring musical moods
– that once established as a commercial viability, and Alf’s voice is earthy and human enough to con
pressure, pride or self-opinionation invariably us there’s emotion behind their candyfloss, but
pushes a band beyond compounding their the Mode remain essentially vacuous.
But why, I wondered, with far bigger and more influential labels capabilities and fuels daft aspirations to art. ‘Shouldn’t Have Done That’, the album’s most
hot on their trail, did they choose Mute? To be fair, the one factor in favour of Depeche ambitious departure, proves beyond doubt that
Mode’s commercial decline, the sole grace that Depeche attempting to twist pin-up appeal into
“Well, we trusted Daniel,” admits Dave.
saves ‘A Broken Frame’ from embarrassment, nursery neurosis is like asking the Banshees to
“We went to see various majors and we were impressed at is that their increasing complexity sounds play ‘Little Deuce Coupe’. The boys’ pluck should
first with what they’d got to offer but it was the same every time, less the result of exterior persuasion than an be applauded and we should be grateful that they
y’know. Daniel seemed a lot more honest. Anything that a major understandable, natural development. refuse to tread water.
It may lack Vince’s gossamer sleight of hand, But the plain fact is, they’re drowning.
can do, Daniel can do.”
the ponderous ‘Monument’ may sound positively Steve Sutherland
So all’s hunky dory at Mute. The Some Bizzare connection
rankles, however. Spotted by the opportunist Bizzare founder Stevo
supporting Soft Cell at Crocs, he approached them to contribute to Perilous
his compilation and they naively agreed – a decision which they So what’s in a name?
now unanimously regret. Depeche Mode means something like ‘fast fashion’ in French;
“We didn’t play the Bizzare evening here at the Lyceum,” a keen reflection of the current scene with its constantly shifting
elaborates Dave. “We were never even approached to play it. It was styles but also, perhaps, a perilous prediction that synthy-pop,
only when we were advertised that we knew anything about it. We like mod, punk and 2 Tone before it, is subject to the fickle whims
had no intention of doing it at all.” of fashion?
Why not? “No, we just found it in a magazine and like the sound of it,”
“We’re not bizarre,” claims Vince. “It’s the whole sort of thing claims Dave. “There was no reason why we chose it. We didn’t
about being a futurist band and all that crap. There isn’t a futurist even know what it meant up until…”
scene really is there? It’s only a name.” “We still don’t,” quips Andy.
So how would you describe yourselves? Vince writes his irresistibly catchy songs this way too. A
“A dancy pop band,” says Dave. heavyweight talent searching out lightweight commercial sounds
and then thinking up cute lyrics to suit, he miraculously turns
out the sort of precious little trash classics that Phil Oakey would
NME 24 MARCH 1984 PAGE 23
give his whole fringe to come up with; the sort that Gazza Numan
DEPECHE MODE could have created if he’d only cracked a smile.
PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE Their only peers, in fact, are early Orchestral Manoeuvres In
Mute
The Dark.
Another plea to the
world along the lines of
“You’re the first person to mention that,” says Vince semi-
Timmy Thomas’ ‘Why sarcastically. “It doesn’t sound nothing like it to us. Orchestral
Can’t We Live Together?’, Manoeuvres use flowing keyboards and poppy tunes, I suppose,
which compensates but we like differing things y’know – lots of music, no one
with sincerity for what
it lacks in verbal grace.
particular thing. I mean, most of our songs are danceable, the
‘People Are People’ beat is very important and as long as people can dance to it, it’s
marks time before all right.
Depeche Mode’s next “You know, if you wanna put us anywhere,” he adds, “I think
The Mode on Top Great Leap Forward.
there’s a market for pop music and always will be. That’s the
REDFERNS

Of The (Synth) Mat Snow

Pops, July 1981 bracket we fit into.”

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 R
is for ...

101
RETNA

NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Run-DMC & The Hip-Hop Revolution

R
un-DMC’s third album, ‘Raising Hell’ is rap’s
ultimate culture shock, street music honed into
a commodity, a mixed-up motherfucker that’s
sponsored by a shoe corporation.
And Run-DMC have never come closer to
the precipice. Nearing the end of a phenomenal
national tour which will culminate in a triumphant return to
Madison Square Garden to perform in front of 40,000 sneakers
and black America’s most enthusiastic live crowd.
Selling records faster than Flash can cut, Run-DMC have taken
hip-hop culture to the edge of an unimaginable crossover.
They appear regularly on MTV smashing through the tattered
remnants of cable racism and, in a moment of wise-guy acumen,
they’ve hired the help of slumbering rock giants Aerosmith and
recorded a new version of their signature tune ‘Walk This Way’.
To make sure MTV keeps them on permanent show, Run-
DMC’s management has dug Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Steven
Tyler out of a morgue of drug problems, marriage breakdowns,
rock binges and nights spent wrecking increasingly cheaper hotel
rooms in order to play a vital part in Run-DMC’s bid to win the
hearts and pockets of white America.
‘Raising Hell’ – even the title of their album sounds like a Spinal
Tap victory tour – has all the right references to rock and enough
calculated ingredients to appeal to white radio stations throughout
America. The album has already been christened “the ‘Thriller’
of rap”, a crossover certainty that carefully manages, through
shrewdness and a street-hard beat, to remain loyal to rap’s original
audience of fly-girls, homeboys and Hollis Crews.
Jason Mizell, whose alter-ego Jam Master Jay has provided
Run-DMC with breaks for over five years, originally introduced
them to hard rock by using AC/DC and Aerosmith albums as
part of his scratch repertoire.
After Michael Jackson’s successful collaboration with Van
Halen, it became common for enterprising black performers
to hook up with monster rockers. Aerosmith became Run- Beatboxing
DMC’s slightly soiled invitation card to the MTV video party. clever: (l-r) Run,
Unbelievably, the formula is still working. Americans, it seems, Jam Master Jay
are still conned by the false harmony of a good old racial and DMC
collusion: yoboys kicking ass with a couple of feather-cuts.

WALK THIS WAY,

NME 10 JULY 1986 PAGE 26

SUCKERS
The Jam Master sees the video of ‘Walk This Way’ as “just good
fun”. “Aerosmith and us are in separate practise rooms. They’re
makin’ a lot of noise, so we turn the speakers up to blast them
out, then they try to blast us out, screaming ‘Walk This
Way’. Then Aerosmith crash through the walls and we
end up playing together onstage.”
In the battle to be seen on MTV, Aerosmith
are Run-DMC’s passport through the racial
checkpoints. And in the bid to widen their
appeal still further, the Adidas sneaker acts as a
commercial emblem that can unlock the safe of
corporate sponsorship.
Darryl McDaniels (DMC) speaks with a
forked tongue. His impression of ‘Raising Hell’’s
opening track ‘My Adidas’, comes with the gushing
honesty of a street kid and the manipulative sales
talk of a door-to-door huckster:
“Adidas is the best style ever. I like to sport them
that’s why I bought them. They’ve got all the colours and
they look good on your feet, they make the best suits and
the best jackets. We started wearing Adidas back in 1978 when
they first brought out the shell-toe style, the front looks like a sea
shell. Adidas is the best, it kicks Fila on the ass.”
New York’s In the most effective marketing campaign since the
Saatchis sold blue-rinse Conservatism to the working-
Run-DMC are class, a clapped-out rock band and a pair of German
training shoes have provided the platform for black
crossing hip-hop and music’s most fearsome beat.
If you think three rappers acting tough and
hard rock and crossing chanting about their favourite brand of sneakers
is nothing more than hip-hop name tagging or
over in the process. Stuart commodity fetishism in a beat-box style, then
the story of Adidas has passed you by. There’s
intrigue in the rhythm of every good song.
Cosgrove keeps his feet Adidas is no ordinary company, it’s the
commercial outcome of two brothers locked
(Adidas shell-toes, natch) in serious battle. The company’s origins date
back to 1924 and the small German town of
movin’ and his Herzogenaurach, near Nuremberg, where two
brothers, Adi and Rudolf Dassler, pioneered the family’s
ears open shoe business. In 1948 the brothers acrimoniously split to
form the two giants of modern sportswear: Puma, originally

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 Run-DMC & The Hip-Hop Revolution R
Despite British radio, ‘My Adidas’ may prove to be as significant
to the career of Run-DMC as their involvement in the hip-hop
movie Krush Groove, a sub-standard film that ironically explored
a war between two brothers, Joseph Simmons (Run) fighting his
brother Russell for musical integrity and the hand of Sheila E.
Run is the one who most regrets the outcome of the film. In the
dressing room of a sports amphitheatre in Philadelphia, he sneers
at the mention of it and pretends to sleep through the interview.
It’s obvious Run’s shut-eye is a big put on, but I go along with the
ruse, preferring to speak to the more amiable Jam Master Jay.
“When we started Krush Groove it was a good story but they
Run-DMC couldn’t started changing it and made it soft, put Hollywood on it.”
even thread their
shoelaces, let Run-DMC have an immediate opportunity to rescue their
alone tie them battered male pride, a second movie, Tougher Than Leather, is
already in pre-production.
NME 30 AUGUST 1986 PAGE 14
“Hollywood is exactly what it won’t be,” says Jay. “It’ll be Hollis-
DMC points an imaginary gun RUN-DMC
WALK THIS WAY
wood, a movie from Hollis in Queens. We have total control. We

to my head and, without the London

Run-DMC have joined

hire the director and we can fire him when we want.”
And what of the influences? Buñuel’s early surrealist period?
slightest remorse, pulls the trigger forces with Aerosmith’s
Joe Perry and Steve Tyler.
“In Tougher Than Leather people will be getting shot in the
face, it’ll be a cross between 48 Hrs and First Blood. In the story
‘Walk This Way’ is the someone kills our friend. Y’see, the promoters of our show are
fusion of two US cultures
– one white, tight, actually drug dealers, as we walk into the room they shoot at us.
owned by Rudolf, and a new company, Adidas which derived its stodgy and stultified; the When the police arrive drugs have been planted on Run. We say
name from the other brother, Adi Dassler. other robust, moving, to the cops, ‘Yoboys, we don’t take drugs, we don’t carry guns,’ but
Each year Puma and Adidas engage in an endorsement war willing and black. It’s the cops start interrogating us. The movie is about clearing the
the ‘Ebony And Ivory’ of
trying to attract major sports stars to advertise their shoes. aggressive street-beat. good name of Run-DMC.”
Maradona and Becker wear Puma, while Muhammad Ali, Ed Not many bands can DMC jumps to his feet in the first real gesture of animated
Moses and Run-DMC wear Adidas. span the crossover gap, enthusiasm. He points an imaginary gun at my head adopting the
The sneaker wars are more intense than anything rap could but these Adidas freaks same crouched stance they use on Miami Vice. He screams like a
have reined the strong
contrive. Adidas have airlifted enough shoes to keep Run-DMC points of the rock beast, man possessed – “Who killed him? Who killed my friend?” – then
rocking ’til they retire. American radio is playing ‘My Adidas’ on to make taut their hell- without the slightest remorse pulls the trigger. I try to maintain a
the hour every hour, but its British release this week will challenge raising mix. A must. certain dignity as my brains splatter across the back wall. Run,
Radio 1’s ruling on music that endorses a commercial product. Lucy O’Brien obviously exhausted, sleeps through my death.
LISA HAUN/DAVID CORIO

NME ORIGINALS 103

TLFeBOOK

E scape
from New York
MM 8 FEBRAUARY 1986 PAGE 12
T
he word is out – electro is dead, long live
rap! Or to put it another way, hip-hop
has gained a second breath, a chill label has burst upon the
breath of fresh air courtesy of rap’s
second generation. Great British Public via a
This time round things are
going to be different. The beat isn’t going to be distribution deal with CBS.
smothered by an avalanche of media hype about
breakdancing and graffiti. This time the beat will Frank Owen endured a torrent too far with their comic grotesque, it’s that
be epic and conspicuous and will move mountains,
cities, whole continents. The localised New York of invective from the label’s
mood will be the basis of a global reverberation that
will dissolve the distinction between hardcore, heavy
metal and hip-hop – an unholy alliance of the pure and
the primal that will crack pavements and once and for all
divorce black music from its soul roots.
So says Rick Rubin, Ringmaster General of the Def Jam circus,
the hottest hip-hop label around and now party to a big money
worldwide distribution agreement with CBS that takes the one
time New York independent into the marketplaces of the world.
The grosser-than-gross heavy metal rap of The Beastie
Boys has been chosen to spearhead Def Jam’s mission to
convert this country to the new style of rap. The Beasties’
reputation precedes them, and I was surprised to find
them still holed up in the Chelsea Holiday Inn despite
rumours they’d been kicked out for freebasing in their
rooms. Encountering their previous singles like ‘Cookie
Puss’ and the sheer force, rampant hammer-rock rap and
obsessive misogyny of their latest effort ‘She’s On It’, I had
them pegged as a bunch of hardcore hip-hop bigots.
So come on Beastie Boys, talk dirty to me. I can take it.
“What we are trying to do is cross The Young Ones and
Benny Hill. So imagine the definitive Beastie Boys video.
We’d have the girl in the David Lee Roth video in a bikini
with big tits and a big ass. She’d have a big bottle of OE and
we’d smash the bottle in her face so we could steal her crack
money.”
And on it goes…
“Have you heard about this thing called death metal?
Slayer are death metal and they are going to be on Def Jam.
It’s like they all sing about it’s raining blood and the priest is
fucking a nun while he cuts a virgin’s head off with a pick-
axe. It’s disgusting and Rick Rubin just loves it.”
104 NME ORIGINALS
Simply Beastly:
(l-r) Mike D, MCA
and Ad-Rock
New York’s
superhip Def Jam
Perhaps you prefer this description of an NME
journalist who gave the band a bad review.
“That guy was retarded. He dressed nice
but beyond that he was a ball-slapping, dick-
sucking homo.”
The Beastie Boys’ hardcore roots are
showing. And like many of their hardcore
contemporaries, it’s not that the Beasties go
they don’t go for enough. But, thankfully,
after a while they started to make a little sense,
especially when they talked about the connections
best known act, the between rap and hardcore.
“When we did ‘Cookie Puss’ it wasn’t meant to be
Beastie Boys a spoof on rap. It was meant to be a spoof on people who
called rap electro; Malcolm McLaren and all those people
who went to graffiti openings. Hardcore and rap are identical.
“Except hip-hop guys wear funny hats and punk guys have
funny hair. Except those peace-punk homos like the Dead
Kennedys and Crass and those faggots who go on about how
fucked things really are, as if people didn’t know.”
Yet at the same time they cite The Clash as a massive
influence. Isn’t there a big contradiction here, given The
Clash’s own attempts at combining politics and pop?
“The Clash weren’t singing about politics. To me it was
like they were just homeboys drinking together. They
were saying what’s fucked up in their lives, not somebody
else’s. It’s not on the level of ‘the government’s fucked up’,
because that is so distant. People in New York are going
nuts because they’re smoking crack… that’s what we’re
singing about. We’re talking about being social not
political. We’re talking about ‘Cooling on the corner with
40 of OE/Because me and MCA are close with Mike D’.
That’s what we’re singing about.”
I finish by asking them now their heavy metal/
hip-hop crossover is going to fit in in Britain.
“It is going to work because the music we’re making
is ill. The way I figure it is that England is going to get
real ill by the end of the decade, what with all this
unemployment. When you all get hooked on crack
that’s when we’re gonna clean up. Or maybe we’ll get
Where did Goldie
CORBIS/LFI
hair extensions and an eye patch and get Marilyn to
Lookin Chain
get all their fuck us. Then we’d probably be Number One.”
ideas from?
TLFeBOOK
 S
is for ...

105
CORBIS

NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Spandau Ballet

Five young men

from Islington make
a short story shorter about
the ballet-hoo surrounding
the group most likely to –
Spandau Ballet.
Words Paul Rambali
NME 29 NOVEMBER 1980 PAGE 33

T
om Wolfe would know what to make of it. The
renowned contemporary historian who is also
something of a dandy in his own right would know
exactly where to place Spandau Ballet and all their
friends, followers and fanciers.
What would he call it when a gang of workaday
teenagers reject the uniforms of their class and gather at night in
London clubs in all their outrageous finery to celebrate fashion Spandau Ballet:
without limit and style without manifesto? What would he call it? stopping traffic
The nocturnal underground? Irreverent chic? The multicoloured in New York, 1981
diamante-flecked supercharged dandies?

There are no more than a few hundred of them, if that. They
recover by day and live by night. Splintered off from the London
soul scene in the mid-’70s, propelled by the artificial energy behind
almost every youth cult since the early-’60s they have discarded and
moved on from as many clubs as they have guises: Chuagarama’s
(which later became the Roxy), Billy’s, The Blitz, Hell, St Moritz.
Style was the password, the premise and the promise. If you had
it you were everywhere, if you didn’t you were nowhere.
By the time magazines like Harpers & Queen had discovered the
Blitz kids, the real kids were somewhere else, ever more extravagant,
decadent, surreal, bizarre and fantastic in their pursuit of style.
If the clothes are too loud, they declare, then you’re too old.
Steve Dagger is 23. His father works in Soho’s Berwick Street
market, and Steve can bark and barter with the best of them; it’s a
facility that he claims came in handy when it came to negotiating
a deal as manager of his friends Spandau Ballet, the figureheads of
the new dandyism.
He wears a mid-length leather coat, white ruffled shirt, black
velvet breeches tucked into white knee length socks and black
pumps. His hair is immaculately cut and swept across his forehead.
He waves the latest of several cans of pils around him in amazement
at the supremely kitsch décor of the Kilt club.
The moose-heads and muskets that line the halls of the imitation
hunting lodge discotheque entirely suit the look he is sporting of an
Edwardian fop. His accent is unexpected: working class London
broader than the Holloway Road.
“I cant believe this place!” he exclaims. “Normally it’s full of
Arabs on their way to Regines, but Sullivan has done it again! All
this tartan you see here tonight has been brewing for weeks, and
he’s perfectly pulled it all together. It fits this place perfectly! It’s a
knack, a gift he has. Look at it it’s great!”
Chris Sullivan, a young Welshman who came to London
after he left school, is on the floor upstairs, greeting his friends in
his ebullient Welsh manner, relieving the groups who steadily
trickle in of their £2 a head. He has rented the Kilt club on an
otherwise slack night to stage the main event in the Spandau Ballet
social calendar – a party. Dress is invariably fancy and tonight
tartan is optional.
TALKING
Sullivan is wearing a baggy blue suit with a large, muted
red check and a geometric kipper tie. Through the door comes
a flow of tartan, ruffles, brooches, kilts and not a few more
outlandish specimens of vanguard couture. Sullivan knows them
all. He used to run the St Moritz with Perry Haines of i-D, the
fashion magazine that Terry Jones, former art director of Vogue
and Donna and designer of the first Public Image album sleeve,
started in order to plug high fashion into street fashion. Word has
it that Chris Sullivan could stand in any club doorway in London
and pretty soon a couple hundred people would be clamouring
to get in.
A gang of workaday teenagers gather in London
clubs in all their outrageous finery to celebrate
fashion without limit and style without manifesto
Downstairs in the Kilt, the DJ is having trouble finding his feet,
a few motley couples are shuffling theirs to records by Marlene
Deitrich and Frank Sinatra. Robert Elms decides to take over
the console, spinning James Brown’s ‘Night Train’, The Fatback
Band’s ‘Wicky Wacky’ and records by Hamilton Bohannon and
Funkadelic. Suddenly the dancefloor is packed and throbbing.
For every art or fashion student down here tonight there are
at least five dance enthusiasts. The soul scene in London, a small
offshoot of which spawned Spandau Ballet, has always been about
clothes, clubs and dancing, and that doesn’t mean tonic suits at

106 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

THREADS
Dingwalls when The Q-Tips are playing. The people who followed
Chris Sullivan from Billy’s to the St Moritz are not all that different
from the people who drive Ford Escorts with their radio tuned to
Robbie Vincent’s Radio London soul show of a Saturday morning.
Making the scene and staying on it, whether your scene is
clothes, or funk or just social, is the primary design. Rock’n’roll
hardly offers a more valid alternative. Ask any girl. They know.
When Steve Dagger was fixing Spandau’s record deal, he used
to test a record company’s suss by asking if they knew what a soul
boy was. Of course they knew what a soul boy was; a soul boy was
a Dexys fan with a woolly hat and an overnight bag, wasn’t it?
Sure, Steve would reply, ordering another free drink as he
recalled the 48-hour funking expeditions he and Spandau and
their friends made to Bournemouth clubs where there wasn’t a
woolly hat in sight.
The Fatback Band’s ‘Wicky Wacky’ has pulled everybody on
to the floor; Rusty Egan is there, and so is Kristos. Egan’s high-
tech disco at the so-called Bowie nights at Billy’s first drew media
attention to the scene, a media which immediately dubbed it a
glam-rock revival and went away laughing.
Kristos is a 17-year-old veteran of the nocturnal underground
who wears a beret and a goatee, the image of Tony Hancock in
The Artist, and has a band with the improbable and unforgettable
name of Blue Rondo A La Turk! Robert Elms, having warmed
things up, is out the floor too, putting a five-degree spin on the
theme on the night with the tartan-less kilt, the coolest item of
dress on show.
Elms, a 22-year-old graduate of the London School Of
Economics, has been writing about Spandau Ballet, the clubs,
CORBIS
the scene and the scenemakers, for The Face, the magazine that
NME 1 NOVEMBER 1980 PAGE 22
SPANDAU
BALLET
TO CUT A LONG
STORY SHORT
Reformation
Innovative they are not,
yet the Ballet Corp have
managed to collect
sufficient Devo and
Bowie table droppings
to seamlessly piece
together a predictably
austere but nonetheless
rather catchy electro-
anthem of self
glorification.
Roy Carr
TLFeBOOK
Spandau Ballet S
looks set to capitalise on the success of Spandau Ballet with its
emphasis on the thrill and flash of youth and style. It was Elms who
thought up the name Spandau Ballet, long before anyone had even
conceived of the group, during one of the gang’s yearly excursions.
“We were in Berlin that year. We always go away somewhere
or other, the year after that it was New York, then St Tropez. Next
year were going to Ibiza, there’s supposed to be this amazing club
there and the group are going to play it. Anyway, we were in Berlin
and we saw the prison, and I just thought, what do they do for
entertainment? Ballet? Spandau Ballet.”
Spandau Ballet sprung themselves on their friends one Saturday
morning at a rehearsal studio near where they live in Islington
about this time last year. They told everybody it was a party,
drinks were free and everybody came. To date, they have played
fewer than a dozen gigs, or rather parties, one at Blitz, two at the
Scala cinema, one on the HMS Belfast, a few at a club in St Tropez
and recently one at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham.
That these scattered appearances, combined with a few reports
in the Evening Standard, a few more in the fashion glossies, and
a half-hour London Weekend Television documentary about the
scene have won them a lucrative record deal is one of the biggest
snubs the long-suffering rock fan with his cherished notions
of musical validity and paying one’s dues has had since the Sex
Pistols sent the whole thing spinning some three years back.
Somehow, Spandau Ballet have managed to antagonise people
who have only ever heard their name or seen a photograph. These
people imagine that a group who have gone as far as they have,
apparently just on the strength of their clothes and their photos, a
group who look so downright pretentious, can’t possibly have any
musical worth – as if musical worth counted for anything other
than a pension.
Spandau Ballet didn’t go begging at the door of the rock press;
they didn’t play the Marquee week in week out; and because of that,
the conservative rock establishment is deeply suspicious. It hasn’t
won our endorsement, they say, so it must be a hype. But if Malcolm
McLaren was pulling the strings, they’d all be applauding!
NME ORIGINALS 107
 Spandau Ballet

There is no-one pulling the strings behind Spandau

ballet, although these are a few hairdressers trying to
jerk them off, as a colleague quaintly put it. Plenty of
clothes designers are going to ride on their coat-tails.
But Spandau Ballet themselves never even applied to
go to art school! Aged between 18 and 20, most of them
left school at 16 and went into the print trade. Gary
Kemp, who writes their songs and plays guitar and
synthesizer, stayed on but failed his A-levels. None of
them particularly likes rock music, which is why they
didn’t do the things a rock band is supposed to do.
They’re into dance music, parties and clothes, not
especially in that order, and rock’n’roll in all its grey,
earnest, high-handed importance hates them for it.
“People says clothes are superficial and decadent,”
explains Steve Dagger. “But what’s more decadent Spandau
than music? All you can do with music is consume it. McBallet using
“You can make a statement with the clothes you their guitars as
wear. You can’t express anything with the records bagpipes, 1980
you might buy, but you can express yourself with the
clothes you chose… turn yourself into a piece of art, if
you want to see it in those terms. in Regent Street the other day and
“In a way I suppose we challenge the Jimmy Pursey working there it was, after we’d all finished wearing it, the
class stereotype – and the rock press love that working class little wing collars… I think it’s very flattering
image. There are channels which one must go through. And really, and it’s what London’s always been about.
if one doesn’t… then watch out. But I’ll tell you what really How can anyone go on nostalgically about mods
amazes me… good luck to Bow Wow Wow, but people don’t and yet can’t relate to what we’re about…”
consider that a hype at all, or they do, but they go along with Gary shakes his head slowly in disbelief.
it because Malcolm McLaren does hypes. He’s OK. He’s one Martin Kemp, his younger brother who
of the establishment, but when someone comes along from plays bass and is wearing an attenuated version of
the Gene Vincent Blue Cap look, takes up the slack.
“What everybody gets wrong about this whole thing is that
“It’s not expensive. We were on they stand back and say, ‘Cor, we couldn’t afford to do that!’ That
is absolute crap. We were on the dole for, like, six months and we
the dole for, like, six months and still had style.

we still had style” Martin Kemp “It’s not like you need an expensive modern shirt that’s never
been seen before. You take the best things from the past and you
got it sussed. As soon as you want to get rid of looking scruffy,
looking down at yourself, then you got it, you got it straight away.
completely outside, it challenges the way the world is set up for It’s an attitude. When you don’t put on your old jeans and then
the rock press and the agents and the record companies and the change to go out at night. You wake up in the morning with style.
publicists, and they go, ‘Hang on, you can’t do that…’ You don’t, like, just get style at six o’clock, after you have a bath.
“I don’t know how successful Vivienne Westwood’s going to A bath don’t spark off style. D’you know what I mean? It’s just an
be now. She’ll probably do alright because she’s a 35-year-old attitude which so many kids have.”
fashion designer with press agents and shops in Kensington. But “It’s wanting to make the most of yourself,” says Gary, snatching
NME 4 JULY 1981 PAGE 17
her approximation of the clothes is well out of date. That’s Billy’s. the thread back from his brother. “Bryan Ferry on Round Table
All that diamante and gold that Bow Wow Wow wear was in Billy’s. SPANDAU the other day said our single was very uplifting, and he also said
She’s taken that, copied it and got it wrong.” BALLET something we’ve been saying for ages about the greyness and all
CHANT NO 1
“Bow Wow Wow is completely conceived and contrived by an (I DON’T NEED
the music to commit suicide to that’s around at the moment.
old shark,” asserts Gary. “With what we’re doing, there’s no-one THIS PRESSURE ON) It’s so depressing. Why make yourself depressed? If you’ve got
over the age of 23 involved. Everybody doing it – running the clubs, Reformation
nothing to say, like all these bands are telling us we’ve got, then
playing the records, dressing up, making the music, making the Move to the groove! why make yourself feel even worse.
clothes – none of them are over 23. Dip like a dervish! Feel “All these people saying, ‘You can’t wear those clothes, they’re
the chant and glow like
“The rock press don’t mind some old shark like McLaren a lover in the land of a
ridiculous,’ they are just denying the imagination. It’s saying
manufacturing something to make some money out of the kids, thousand dances! With because you come from a poor background you’re not allowed to
and yet they slag us off, us, the actual ‘kids’ in inverted commas. cold sweat in their swing look good, or you’ve supposed to look like a certain thing. Why be
I just don’t understand it. and motion in their art, depressed? Being young is about having a good time, looking good,
Spandau Ballet turn
“The group was the last thing to come along – all the clubs and it loose and return to
going out at night, getting drunk, dancing, sex, everything!”
all that was already there. The group was simply what brought it to the singles arena with Martin has the last word: “They always write about it and
the fore. If it wasn’t for the group, the whole scene would have gone a dazzling dancefloor say ‘poseurs’ right? The people that dress well are the poseurs,
exactly as it had done in the ’70s and something else would have stormer as demonic as but they’re having a brilliant time, they’re having a party time,
anything else we’re likely
happened next year and the media would have ignored it. to contort ourselves to
they don’t mind getting down to it. They don’t stand up at the
“I know we’re going to be what breaks it all open, and some this summer. Spandau bar, passing comment, they’re too busy passing out! Those people
people are going to get rich. But that happens a lot. In all the clubs have taken the spirit who say poseurs are just voyeurs!”
there’s been fashion photographers taking pictures since it started of ’75 – Kool, Fatback Like Roxy Music before them, Spandau Ballet have come out
and (especially) Brass
– six months later you see the clothes in the Paris fashion shows. Construction – and
of nowhere, fast. Right now, they’re going somewhere even faster.
“Loads of looks… the diamante look with the pill-box hat, the slammed it straight What’s more, they could seize the imagination of a lot of kids who
toy soldier look at Billy’s and all the padded shoulders. Loads of into the heart of 1981. aren’t all that interested in what the NME puts on its cover each
PETER ANDERSON

them. Everything we’ve ever started in those clubs has been in the Dare to dance and feel week, because they’re brash, loud, young and fun.
the chant!
fashion magazines six months later. I didn’t think the Edwardian Adrian Thrills
Clothes alone are very important. Without them we’d have
look would go into the shops, and yet I walked into Stanley Adams nothing to take off.

108 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

A SOLAR ECLIPSE
ON THE
SOCIAL CALENDAR
A
shady Glaswegian side street: not the ideal
place for a leisurely stroll at closing time
unless one is heading somewhere
special… somewhere like the
Ultratech.
The Ultratech is one of
Scotland’s slickest new nightspots. It could be
overlooked were it not for the façade of mirror-
This is soul! This is style!
like metal that marks its secluded doorway.
Out in the street another grey day is creeping
This is success!
to a close. But inside, the club is already cooking,
the dancefloor bristling with the body heat of This is Spandau!
Glasgow’s young night-owls. Tonight they have
turned out in force for that solar eclipse of the Adrian Thrills encounters
social calendar – a live Spandau Ballet show.
The Ultratech is an ideal Spandau venue,
entirely in keeping with their intention of supporting
the club scene rather than the concert hall. The place
itself is an eye-opener, featuring a superb lightshow and
a series of wall-to-wall mirrors and reflecting pillars that
make it seem twice its actual size.
The crowd are a predictably mixed bunch: the curious and the
converted, although some of the latter – the fluffy High Street
JILL FURMANOVSKY-WWW.ROCKARCHIVE.COM
futurist brigade – have got it all wrong, posing the night away in
the shadows with po-faces and Topshop trimmings.
The ones who know are acting fast and flash, pumping it up
out on the floor to the zap of ZE and the sensual, uplifting swing
of soul music. Now this is the way to start a Monday morning!
I down my pils and head for the dancefloor.
Welcome to the working week.
S
Suits you! (L-r)
Gary, Tony, John,
Steve and Martin
Surveying the scene a little later, shortly before the Spandau
set, the group’s perceptive young manager Steve Dagger finds
it hard to contain his fascination with the audience they
have attracted.
“The other night, when we played in Edinburgh,
it was unbelievable! The front three rows were all
teenage girls. When the group came on it was a
case of the screaming ab-dabs! Martin had a
chain swiped from around his neck and Tony
had his shoelaces pinched! Can you believe that!
“To a lot of these kids, especially the younger
ones, stuff like ‘Chant No 1’ and all the ZE stuff
is probably the first music you could loosely call
‘soul’ that they’ve heard.”
With the magnificent ‘Chant…’ single planted
Gary Kemp firmly at the top of this week’s NME chart, Number
One by name and nature, Spandau have confirmed
their growing musical maturity and once again
perplexed their band of puritanical critics. In the space
of four singles since signing to Chrysalis nine months ago,
Spandau have moved on from the deceptive electronic beginnings
NME 1 AUGUST 1981 PAGE 25
of their ‘Long Story’ debut to the masterful Brit-funk jazz-punch
of their current chart-topper. A revolt into soul?
“The thing is that soul music will always be the best music
for a club scene,” continues the fast-talking Dagger in his beefy
Cockney brogue. “It was the music of the ’70s in the clubs and it
still is now. But it has never really been done properly in England.
Most of the stuff is still coming out of New York. And as for a
white group doing it – making the real dance music – I’m not sure
if it can be done without falling into all the obvious traps.”
NME ORIGINALS 109
TLFeBOOK
 Spandau Ballet

Spandau, with the assistance of the humanly possible. They look good,
Beggar & Co horns, have at least made move well and play with a barely-
a start. And they have done so without disguised love and enthusiasm for
attracting too much flak from the inverted their chosen genre.
racists of the soul scene, ever suspicious of Group founder and songwriter
white boys on funk. Gary Kemp switches back and forth
“It would have been annoying if people between guitar and synth, brother
had come in with that sort of prejudice,” Martin pumps his bass and Steve
affirms Dagger. “But we’re not trying to be Norman, originally the second
like a black group. Tony doesn’t sing with guitarist, now concentrates on
a black voice and I think it would be silly providing additional percussion.
Martin and Gary
of him to try. There’s still a large European Kemp (AKA Steve Their confidence has grown
element in there too.” from EastEnders noticeably since their London
Back in the heat of the Ultratech oven, the and Ronnie Kray) Sundown date of a few months
five Spandau boys are now onstage. Though back and vocalist Tony Hadley
they are more ragged live than on record, now injects far more pace and passion into his operatic phrasing.
the crisp, rigorous drumming of John Keeble is a reliable anchor To complement the musical shift towards a more soulful way
and they never fall apart musically. The other three instrumental of thinking, The Clothes – easily as important as The Music – are
members use the discotheque’s makeshift stage as well as is also a-changing. The ostentatious frills and blanket drapery of
last year has been replaced by a far sharper cut: Steve and Tony
sport short Spanish jackets onstage while Gary wears the baggy
The clothes – easily as important as the music – pants of a dashing navy chalkstripe suit designed for him by Blue
Rondo’s Chris Sullivan – the jacket of the selfsame suit was swiped
are changing. The ostentatious frills and drapery of from him by an over-eager fan during the group’s recent one-off
booking in Ibiza.
last year has been replaced by a far sharper cut The crucial Clothes Pose, however, has been widely
misrepresented according to their manager.

MM 10 APRIL 1982 PAGE 30

NME 23 APRIL 1983 PAGE 16

SPANDAU
BALLET
TRUE
Chrysalis

“This is the sound of my

soul”, confesses Tony
Hadley on a
concentrated drama
that is more fascist
architecture than music,
which reflects about
right I say for a pop
kid who contrives his
image on the model
of a Fortnum & Mason
sales assistant. His
dancing partners and
he repeat the line, “this
much is true” 31 times
in the course of this
record and I don’t
believe them once.
The Hadley continues
his inward search “with
a thrill in my head and
a pill on my tongue,
dissolve the nerves that
have just begun, listening
to Marvin all night long”.
You know, actually
listening to Marvin.
A hit.
Penny Reel

110 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

The T-shirt
company got
Tony Hadley’s
order mixed up
“There were always two sides to the original Blitz
scene. There was the high posey end which tended to
get in all the colour supplements. Then there were the
other half, who were a very basic bunch of real boozers.
A lot of people missed the essential humour of what
was going on in that people would spend ages getting
ready to go out, putting on all these classical clothes,
and then go out and get them absolutely wrecked!”
Gary Kemp is 21. His mood is one of typical good
humour when we meet up again a couple of days later
in the loft above the band’s London Bridge rehearsal
studio. It is only the middle of the afternoon, but
Kemp still looks the part of the soul boy, decked out in
a royal blue bowling shirt and a pair of white trousers
tucked neatly into his knee-boots.
His manner is energetic, although the brash
Cockney front and seemingly boundless self-
confidence belies a faint trace of nerves, usually a
good sign.
The group have done a few interviews lately in the
week rock papers and in the past six months have
declined to talk to both Ian Penman and Paul Du
Noyer on this paper. The reason, according to Kemp,
is that they were fed up with having to continually
justify themselves as people.
“We’d do interviews and find ourselves sitting there,
representing the attitude of the majority of working class kids but
having to justify our whole lifestyle to someone who was saying
that it was wrong. And that really irritated me.
“No-one asks a heavy metal group why they have long hair, no-
STEVE RAPPORT/PENNIE SMITH/JILL FURMANOVSKY-WWW.ROCKARCHIVE.COM
one asks a rasta why he has dreadlocks, but we were continually
having to justify not so much our music, but our dress, where we
lived, where we got our clothes, our whole way of life! It just got to
the stage where we didn’t need it anymore.”
The attitude which so many supposedly open-minded rock
writers found offensive is, according to Kemp, the pursuit of
style, working class flash and the good life. Kids who were into
acquisition and sharp clothes just didn’t fit in with the treasured
rock myth of street culture.
“It’s just a whole attitude I got into when I was about 12. I wasn’t
aware of, say, the whole jazz-funk thing then obviously, but you’d
see the gangs of kids a bit older than you walking around with
girls and they’d all have a certain type of clothes.
Spandau Ballet S
“When you see that, you just know that you’ve got to have those
clothes as well. At that time, it was something like a Ben Sherman
shirt, Prince of Wales check trousers and brogue shoes. Then
came the Rupert trousers and then the Oxford bags and so on.
“If you go through all that, like I did, you inherit an attitude
that you find really hard to shake off. The kids that got into a rut
were the ones that drifted the other way through their middle
class education, began to adopt some of the middle class clichés
and attitudes and fell into the rock scene.”
It was during his schooldays that Kemp and his mates first
became what could loosely be called soul boys. They would
frequent local disco pubs or late night dance clubs like Ilford’s
famed Lacy Lady, Charing Cross’ Global Village or Wardour
Street’s Crackers. The dress was sharp, veering towards the more
avant-garde extremes of mohair and vinyl later taken up by punk.
The music was funk, a soundtrack of soul provided by DJs like
Chris Hill and George Power. An average night’s listening – circa
1975 – would encompass a strictly dance-orientated diet of Kool
& The Gang, Fatback, The Ohio Players and War plus, often
preferably, some more obscure import soul fare.
“It was a great scene,” reflects Kemp. “It was very mixed, boys
and girls, whereas the rock scene always tended to be very male. It
was just a lot smarter. If you were into rock music you’d know all
about the bands by reading the rock papers every week. Rock
music was something you were always looking
up to. But the soul boy thing was a much larger
package. It was a whole attitude to life.
“The soul clubs always had a very friendly
atmosphere, because soul music has always been
a very uplifting music and not drab to listen to. It
tends to trigger off the better emotions in people.”
Kemp is refreshingly frank about the snobbery
and elitism inherent in the soul scene.
“The great thing about the funk that the soul
boys listened to was that only a few people could
get into it and understand it. The media weren’t
interested. The media were totally immersed in
rock, so the kids had the music to themselves.”
Soul boy Kemp and his Islington pals – a loose
association of friends known as the Angel Boys,
most of whom are now either in Spandau, Blue
Rondo or the more surreptitious Animal Nightlife
– represented the more extreme, high-living
contingent among London’s funkateers.
As such, they were always liable to become
bored with some of the more staid, unchanging
aspects of the capital’s funk scene and there were
two critical points when they stepped outside of
the soul spectrum: with punk in 1976 and with
the electronic/glam nights at Billy’s club in Soho’s
Dean Street in 1978. Kemp was initially inspired
“No-one asks a heavy metal group why they have
long hair, or Rastas why they have dreadlocks but
we continually have to justify our dress” Gary Kemp
and attached by the alternatives thrown up by punk, although he
became quickly disillusioned as it became hopelessly wound up
with more mainstream rock tendencies.
“Yeah! Punk was very exciting at the time because it was the
antithesis of what had been going on and the clothes were much
more daring. But after a while it just got to the stage of people
going to watch bands.”
By 1978, the Angel Boys, long disillusioned with punk and
again getting tired of the growing conservatism – both musically
and sartorially – on the soul scene were in need of some new
stimulus. They found it in the electro-disco nights at Billy’s.
NME ORIGINALS 111
TLFeBOOK
 Spandau Ballet
“It was back to the feeling that you were doing something
different to most kids. The reason that electronic music was played
was basically just to prove that we were a different scene.”
Although a few of the participants probably realised it at the
time, Billy’s marked the start of a club-to-club procession that has
so far lasted three years and is showing little indication of sagging.
From the electronic nights at Billy’s, through Bowie at the Blitz,
suits and swing at the St Moritz, ’70s soul at Le Kilt and the harder,
more contemporary funk of Le Beat Route, things have now
seemingly come full circle back to electro-funk at the Egan-Strange
“ icture angular glimpses of sharp youth
establishment Club For Heroes – or the Pub For Ear’oles as Spandau
affectionately term the plush Baker Street basement palace.
Spandau Ballet made their first appearance one Saturday
morning towards the end of 1979 in a Holloway Road rehearsal
studio, an event which was quickly followed by two Christmas
party appearances – one at Steve Strange’s Blitz do and another at
Chris Sullivan’s Mayhem Warehouse hoedown in Battersea.
After first attempting – unsuccessfully – to master the jazz-
funk genre that has always been their first love, the group switched
the emphasis of their sound towards a more Euro-influenced,
electronic groove.
“The thing about European music was that it was getting away
from what was happening on the soul scene,” explains Kemp.
“None of us was ever great
record buyers, we were more
into the lifestyle” Gary Kemp
“But the problems with the electronic music at Billy’s and Blitz
was that people were beginning to worship it solely for the music.
Originally, the music was there as a soundtrack. None of us was
ever great record buyers, we were more into the lifestyle.
“The other drawback with the music was that a lot of hard,
harsh electronic stuff tended to be a bit depressing. After Billy’s we
wanted to get back to soul again because that was genuinely the
music that most of us were into.”
Stage appearances were kept few and far between, initially
because Steve Dagger genuinely feared that it might be physically
dangerous for the group to appear live regularly.
“People always went on to us about not playing very often, but
jazz-funk groups don’t play very often because the type of audience
that they would attract would be the sort of kids who danced and
went to clubs and were the performers themselves. And we wanted
to relate to the same sort of audience in the same sort of way.”
112 NME ORIGINALS
MM 28 FEBRUARY 1981 PAGE 22
SPANDAU BALLET
JOURNEYS TO GLORY Chrysalis
P
cutting strident shapes through the
curling grey of 3am. Hear the soaring joy of
immaculate rhythms, the sublime glow of music
for heroes driving straight to the heart of the
dance. Follow the stirring vision and the
rousing sound on the path towards
journeys to glory.”
Robert Elms, inveterate pseudo
and Spandau Ballet’s tireless
Hadley about as
threatening as a muzzled
publicist (in effect) might sounds like poodle, more like upwardly
have added the following to mobile couples who join the
his unintentionally hilarious some club singer Young Conservatives “for the
inscription on the inner sleeve social life” than knee-to-the-
of their first album: “Salute as trying to do a Bowie groin Nazis.
the trumpets sound in burning impersonation If there’s one thing that
tribute, raise high the flag of comes low on their list of
onward marching Viking youth, sing priorities it’s the actual music
out as the Fatherland strives inexorably to accompany their wet dreams.
towards the triumph of the will… tomorrow The essential criteria? Firstly, it must be
belongs to me!” danceable, because standing around looking
A few weeks ago a friend whispered in my at each other all night can get awfully boring;
ear that “this Spandau Ballet thing could be secondly, it must be innocuous, sincere, anything
dangerous if it caught on”, a statement which
would doubtless make Elms, manager Steve
too arresting or exciting will divert attention away
from the all-important fashion.
Dagger and the rest of the dutiful crew overjoyed.
You see, they’d dearly love you to think a new
Spandau Ballet fit the bill perfectly, delivering
white, corpuscular disco pop as cleanly as a
movement of profound significance is stirring, surgeon’s sterilised scalpel, spotless and safe. It’s
a new dawn is breaking where style is elevated difficult to hate this record, it’s just so reasonable.
to icon status and moral values and concerns are Never exciting or irritating, it’s just there.
blown aside. They would be better off without vocalist
Fascist overtones? Remember those British Tony Hadley, whose insipid vocal interrupts
Movement stickers urging the release of Rudolf rudely like some club singer trying to do a Bowie
Hess from Spandau jail? Just what’s needed impersonation, technically perfect but soulless.
for adding that hint of danger, that sense of Spandau Ballet are nothing more than a
momentous import. bundle of fancy rags without a peg to hang them
The whole thing would be dangerous if it on. Superficial music for superficial people with
wasn’t for the fact that it’s so laughable. The superficial concerns.
Spandau, ex-Blitz glitter clique are actually Lynden Barber
With last autumn’s changes in clubland and the move from
Hell to Le Kilt, the musical emphasis on both the dancefloor and
the Spandau rehearsal room went back to funky modes. Suddenly
it was all change and back to 1975 with The Fatback Band and
James Brown on the turntable and Kemp in the studio composing
the dancefloor scorcher ‘Glow’.
Originally producer Richard Burgess was set to get in the Earth
“Hey, that sounds
Wind & Fire horns from the States, but a chance meeting between
like a great title
for a song!” Spandau and Light Of The World/Beggar & Co at Top Of The
Pops set the seal on a musical alliance between the Ballet and the
Beggars that has already delivered ‘Chant…’ and now promises
even greater things.
“The mid-’70s soul they were playing at Le Kilt was great at
the time, but it was becoming too much of a straight fashion.
Everyone was going on about 1975 soul, but we were still thinking
that people should be listening to some newer stuff as well. But
what was happening in the clubs themselves was far more relevant
than the actual type of musical being played.
“It’s true, though, that the music creates the atmosphere. And
soul, whatever else you want to say about it, is the most uplifting
emotional sound that there is. The beat and the sound and
everything is simply pure emotion. It’s there in the word as soon
as they say it – soul!”
And however much the purists might wince at the idea, there is
plenty of soul in Spandau Ballet. You can feel it in their music, in
their clothes, in their attitude, in their clubs and in their lifestyle.
PETER ANDERSON
They lead by example where punk preached – a positive antidote
to depressing times. A clothes-pose and dance-stance with a finger
on the pulse of the moment.
TLFeBOOK
 T
is for ...

NME ORIGINALS 113

TLFeBOOK
LFI
 The Tube

NME 13 NOVEMBER 1982 PAGE 10

So what’s the
verdict on Channel 4’s
The Tube? A disaster or
success? Adrian Thrills spends
a day on the set, amid the
chaos and celebrations

A
cameraman zooms in on a lone figure standing
nervously in front of the Perspex tunnel which
leads into Tyne Tees Television’s Studio Five.
The former Squeeze keyboard player Jools
Holland gazes through the early evening drizzle
and begins to quack busily into the lens.
“Right! Pay very close attention indeed. Walk to your television
set and turn it up. It is November 5 and we’re just about to go down

G
in the annals of television history with a live rock show… from now

O IN
on you’re going to be watching the fantastic Tube!”

G
With those words, the cathode ray tube’s latest contribution to
the country’s pop culture last week lifted itself off the launching

…
pad and into our living rooms. It will be with us every Friday night

T HE
for the next 20 weeks, beaming almost two hours of live music and

UP
chatter to an audience of over ten million.
These are still early days, but the possibilities of The Tube are

clearly enormous. Rather than push the programme as Channel
4’s answer to the increasingly staid tandem of Top Of The Pops and
Whistle Test served up by the BBC, the Tube team are aiming to
recapture and update the spirit and excitement of the legendary
’60s pop show Ready Steady Go!.
The Tube is an ambitious project and it already has a lot going
for it. Firstly, its producers have secured themselves a prestigious
prime-time viewing slot. Secondly, they possess an infectious
enthusiasm essential to the presentation of televised pop. Thirdly,
the whole show is transmitted live from a Newcastle studio, perhaps
the biggest plus factor of the lot.
Last Friday’s programme – in reality more of a
glorified pilot show – emphasised all these advantages.
It also revealed a number of potentially fatal flaws, but
more of those later. Right now, it is coming up to 5.15pm
on Channel 4 – time to go down to the Tube station.
The show
Each episode of The Tube is hosted by a team of three
presenters. Two of them are ‘name’ hosts – Jools Holland
and Bob Geldof’s girlfriend, Paula Yates (described in
her Tyne Tees biog as a “pop personality”, whatever that
may be).
Alongside these two each week will be one of the five
‘unknown’ rookies plucked painstakingly from a list of
over 3,000 applicants. For the opening show, it is a Scottish
Associates and Simple Minds fan called Muriel Gray, who
got the job after answering an advert in NME.
The centrepiece of the first programme is a 30-minute
live set from The Jam, a performance accompanied by
a Muriel Gray interview with Paul Weller in the band’s
dressing room. It transpires that Weller had originally
intended breaking the news of the impending parting of the
TU
band live on the air but shelved such plans once rumours
of their split began circulating a few weeks ago.
Also in the studio are Sheffield’s Heaven 17,
augmented for the night by the Beggar & Co horns,
and snotty Sunderland brats The Toy Dolls, who enjoy
the distinction of becoming the first live rock band to
appear on the new channel when the cameras pan to
them straight from Holland’s jumpy intro.
The rest of the show consists of an incredibly smug
Yates interview with Policeman Sting, an equally
stilted chat between Holland and Pete Townshend, a
torturous film feature on the LA music scene, video
clips from Duran Duran and Glasgow’s highly-
promising Set The Tone, a couple of magazine-
style featurettes and some caustic interjections by
Sheffield poet Mark Miwurdz.
Most of the pieces are crammed into the first
Paula, Kim Wilde
and the height 45 minutes of the show, rendering it no more than
of Geordie a series of fragments thrown together with little
fashion in 1983

114 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 The Tube T
Paula practises
her interview
technique with
co-presenter Jools

to the twin stages and the second section of the show. Once
the bands arrived, things began to buzz the way a live pop
programme should.

The bands
The Tube suffered badly from the rigidity of its format, but the
opening night was saved by the performance of the two main
studio groups, Heaven 17 and The Jam. The only mystery is why
one of them, ideally Heaven 17, wasn’t invited to open the show,
thus involving the studio audience, surely the real soul of such a
programme, right from the outset.
Instead, Messrs Marsh, Ware, Gregory and their brass-bossing
cohorts from Beggars enter the fray somewhere around half-
time. They skip and flit through three songs, ‘The Height Of
The Fighting’, ‘Who Will Stop The Rain’ and the current single
‘Let Me Go!’, and the audience respond accordingly. Though not
playing live in the strictest sense – their synthesized sound coming
from the customary set of backing tapes employed in their club

BE
PAs – the group give the show its first real surge of adrenalin.
“The Tyne Tees people have been great to work with,” observes
Martyn Ware in the dressing room later. “They might lack a
bit technically, but they more than make up for that with their
enthusiasm.”
But it was The Jam who gave Tube One its crowning moments
with a fiery set that was occasionally ragged but never unexciting.
Paul Weller’s output over the last couple of years has been erratic to
say the least, but here were The Jam sticking to what they know best,
Paula Yates belting out eight superb songs with a taut, nervous commitment
loving the rarely captured on a televised pop programme… ‘Ghosts’, ‘In
camera in Tyne
Tees’ Studio 5 The Crowd’, ‘Town Called Malice’, ‘Modern World’, ‘Move On
Up’, ‘The Great Depression’, ‘Precious’ and the forthcoming final
single ‘Beat Surrender’.
The cameramen actually run out of time somewhere around
The possibilities are enormous. The Tube team here, but the band play on, to the delight of the studio audience,
aims to recapture the spirit and excitement of the with their blistering covers of Edwin Starr’s ‘War’ and Ray Davies’
‘David Watts’ before returning to their dressing room.
legendary ’60s pop show Ready Steady Go! Weller later attributed the sheer intensity of the performance
partly to nerves, although a burning desire to make the band’s last
live TV appearance one of their most memorable no doubt also
came into it.
cohesion and none of the pace and unpredictability one might So what did they make of the programme overall?
expect from a live broadcast. “I think that the show will be good as long as they can keep
The two featurettes, a dreary piece on modzines and an getting the interesting live acts on it,” opines Weller. “It would
over-long item on African dance, seem particularly dense and be great if they could have a set from an English group like us
tedious for all their touted topicality. The absence, too, of a alongside an American band like Shalamar or something.”
single challenging, stimulating interview was also disappointing “Most of the pop shows that you get on TV never last,” adds
KEVIN CUMMINGS-IDOLS/REX

– Muriel Gray’s chat with Weller was probably the best, if only for
its bluntness; while Paula’s probing of Sting was embarrassing in
its trite sexual innuendo.
And so The Tube began with a whimper rather than a bang,
although the pace did eventually quicken as the focus switched
drummer Buckler. “But this one stands a better chance than
most. Most of the problems that you get with pop on TV are
basically because the television people just don’t understand the
bands that they are putting on. At least this lot seem to know
better than most.”

NME ORIGINALS 115

TLFeBOOK
 The Tube

The presenters
Producers of The Tube Malcolm Gerrie and
Paul Corley defend the much-criticised
selection of Paula Yates and Jools Holland
as the ‘name’ presenters of the new show on
the grounds of their professionalism and
previous television experience.
Nevertheless, the air of showbiz smugness
and petty ego-gratification from Holland
and Yates is one of the more unwelcome
aspects of The Tube, particularly as
they’re actually as nervous as the relatively
inexperienced Muriel Gray.
Paula Yates is particularly nauseating.
Her main concern lies in projecting her
own personality at the expense of the
show, continually flashing flesh or drawing
attention to the fact that she is a few months
pregnant by touting the show as a small step
for fat women. Gladioli all over:
The Smiths on The
The five ‘unknowns’ – Muriel Gray, Tube, March 1984
Michael Cremona, Gary James,
Mike Everitt and Nick Laird-Clowes
– might lack the bland confidence of Achtung mulllet!
Yates and Holland, but in the context U2 live on The was to propose a series of eight 30-minute
Tube, March 1983
of a live pop programme surely their magazine shows. The programmers turned
far greater enthusiasm for the music him down. Instead they suggested a series
more than compensates for any of 20 105-minute music shows, and the
absence of slick professionalism? concept of The Tube was born.
Muriel, a 24-year-old exhibition “We wanted to make a show that would
designer at an Edinburgh museum convey the energy that teenagers and
who made her television debut on young people have still got,” he says. “If
Friday’s show, begs to differ and anyone says to me that the kids – sorry,
defends the appointment of two but I can’t think of another word for them
‘name’ hosts. She was also clearly – are depressed and they just sit on their
unhappy with her Jam interview, arses moaning about what a shit Maggie
feeling that first-night nerves got the Thatcher is, I’ll show you someone who
better of both her and Weller, although hasn’t spoken to as many kids as I have.
she was to compensate in part with her “The emphasis of a lot of youth
introduction of the band later on as programmes falls too heavily on things like unemployment and
“those masters of wit and repartee”. abortion. The way some of them go on, you’d think that every
“I didn’t think the interview was very successful,” she says. “Most 16-year-old girl in Britain was going to have an abortion before
Jam fans are probably pretty disappointed and it is probably my she was 20.
fault that things weren’t better. Paul is a very committed person and “One of the biggest criticisms we’ve had to face is that we’ll
somehow I couldn’t get him to talk about the things that concern never get to have a live atmosphere in a TV studio, but you saw
him. Maybe if I’d been more professional like Paula and Jools I’d what it was like when The Jam were onstage. We’ve got one
have been able to handle it better.” programme in the series when we’re probably going to have The
Clash, U2 and the Sex Gang Children in the same studio. What’s
“There’s nothing else really. Whistle Test is boring the atmosphere going to be like then?
“After the show, Pete Townshend was saying that rock music
and Top Of The Pops is only any good as a and live TV were two of the riskiest things to try and combine but
that it was the sheer tension of the thing that made it work. Now,
comedy show” Tube presenter Muriel Gray after seeing The Jam, he wants to do the show.
“Now, I’m not knocking Top Of The Pops, but you just don’t
get that tension when you have a load of bands miming their one
song in front of a bunch of Equity people in a half-empty studio.”
The interview apart, how did she feel the first show went?
“It’s hard for me to be objective, but I think the show was really The series
exciting. The Jam were great onstage, and it’s that sort of thing that Like it or not – and most of its detractors to date are just those who
proves that this show has the potential to be really great. When you failed at the presenter’s auditions – The Tube is going to be a crucial
look at the competition, there’s nothing else really. Whistle Test is part of the British pop platform over the next five months.
boring and Top Of The Pops is only any good as a comedy show.” On the evidence of last week’s opening slot, The Tube’s
massive potential still remains unfulfilled, but the programme
The producer shows all the signs of improving during the coming weeks. If the
The man behind The Tube is a bluff, amiable Tyne Tees producer presentation, particularly of the magazine section of the show,
by the name of Malcolm Gerrie. At 32, he has already produced can be given more pace and punch, The Tube will be on the point
the acclaimed Alright Now and Razzmatazz shows, both of which of becoming the first pop show really worth watching in years.
boasted a heavy bias towards music, and he remains a man with The next five months on Channel 4 should make mighty
very definite ideas on televised pop. interesting viewing. The Tube team might not totally transform
When he approached the Channel 4 programme controllers the face of televised pop in the UK, but it should be good fun
REDFERNS

on behalf of Tyne Tees with his assistant Paul Corley, the idea watching them try.

116 NME ORIGINALS

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 U
is for ...
BRIAN ARIS

NME ORIGINALS 117

TLFeBOOK
 MM 2 AUGUST 1980 PAGE 14

Penny Kiley meets

Ultravox, uncovers
a smile on the face of the
robots and discovers
that synthesizers are just
rock’n’roll hardware

A
picture of a group: a TV screen, on it men
wearing high-buttoned black shirts and
serious expressions. The music: slow
drumbeats, a sparse backing, solemnity.
A close-up of a face on the screen, deadpan.
There was a song on the first Ultravox
album called ‘My Sex’. This sounds rather like it but the words
are wrong. You realise where a certain pop star got his ideas from.
The voice continues, cold, relentless. The mouth twitches a little
but reaches the end of the song impassive. There are cackles of
laughter in the background. The face looks toward the camera,
reproachful. “This is art,” says that robot. This is Ultravox.
Ultravox went to Germany to make an album. Conny Plank’s
famous studio is a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Ultravox
got bored. The result is a collection of videos, which include a lot
of studio fooling, proof that Ultravox have a sense of humour.
Other interesting and surprising facts about the band: Ultravox
are one Scotsman (Midge Ure: vocals, guitars, and synthesizers),
one Canadian (Warren Cann: drums, electronic percussion,
and vocals), one Yorkshireman (Billy Currie: synthesizers,
piano, violin, and viola) and one Londoner (Chris Cross: bass,
synthesizers, and vocals). Ultravox are not John Foxx.
Ultravox frequent Blitz, where the trendiest young people in
town go, as the Twentieth Century Box TV programme (theme
tune by John Foxx) repeatedly insisted, Midge Ure is the trendiest.
Ultravox get upset when critics accuse them of being
passionless. Ultravox are not a synthesizer band.
There are some days (many of late) when you turn on the radio
and every record sounds like Hawkwind. And there are some days
when you turn on the radio and every record begins with a bleep
or a bubble. Not just the plastic Top 30, three minutes at a time

VIEN N A
118
’Tache
entertainment:
Ultravox singer
Midge Ure

NME ORIGINALS
CAL LING
TLFeBOOK
 Ultravox U
and expensive matching video, but groups which want us to take
them seriously, groups it is necessary to admire in order to stay up
to date. It seems shallow but I feel I’m drowning. Is it a conspiracy
or is it just me? Some days I’m just allergic to synthesizers.
And then along come poor, unfashionable Ultravox, always in
the wrong place at the wrong time, and make an album which
doesn’t disagree with me at all. The reason is simple, they claim
with disarming logic. They are not a synthesizer band.
But what of my nightmare vision of a world taken over by
musicians in bleak industrial suits and robot haircuts, and
punters with dyed red hair and baggy trousers? Are Ultravox
denying responsibility? They are.
I went to meet Ultravox hoping for a beginner’s guide to
electronic rock and ten reasons why I shouldn’t feel hostile to it.
This is what I got.
Me: “Why do I hate synthesizers and not hate Ultravox?”
Billy: “Because we’re a rock band. We use the technology but
we don’t let it push us around.”
On the plethora of modern electronic pop bands: The ’Vox on the
Billy: “People buy synthesizers for instant effects.” (Chris box in 1980
sneers: “Noises and bleeps.”)

“We use whichever instrument we think is

necessary to get the sound we want, whether
it’s a guitar, bagpipes or whatever” Midge Ure Ultravox: (l-r)
Warren, Midge,
Chris and Billy
Midge: “Bands like that are basically cashing in.” The album cover, though
On the hip electronic garage bands: easily misconstrued as the expected robot clichés, is intended to
Warren: “The press were initially very put off by the serious convey a romantic image, associated with black and white stills
young man arty type of thing, but they seem to be coming to photography of “an era when style was at its peak”, as Midge says.
terms with it now because the bands themselves have decided The past, whether ’20s, ’30s or ’40s, is important both musically
to offset that a bit, introducing things like comic strip humour and in terms of atmosphere, as shown particularly in the song
and quirkiness. It gives them reference points; they don’t feel like which gives the album its name.
they’re left out in the cold, they’re invited in to have a little laugh. Midge: “It was obvious that ‘Vienna’ was such a strong track, it
That, I think, is a bit of a cop out.” epitomises the feel of the album.”
On Gary Numan: Billy admits: “It’s a definite piece of music from that particular
“He’s got to watch what he’s doing now.” period, ’30s European music.”
On John Foxx: Midge: “Some of the lyrics are very tongue in cheek.”
“Most of the stuff Foxx does is totally passionless.” Warren: “It’s fun with lyrics like that, because after a point you
On… are synthesizers the future of rock’n’roll? start picking lyrics that are almost banal, and if you use the right
Midge: “I think synthesizers are a strong part of it, just the way MM 12 SEPTEMBER 1981 PAGE 23 ones something clicks and it works.”
that guitar effects are and PAs are. It’s developed, synthesizers are ULTRAVOX Romance is often banal after all, and a cliché can be a kind
here to stay, but guitars will always be there, drums will always be VIENNA of emotional shorthand usefully evocative, and that’s how these
there, pianos will always be there.” Chrysalis
things work.
Though the last point is reassuring, none of this is doing much A group who’ve already The approach to songwriting has changed since the departure
to remove my suspicions. Perhaps I should have interviewed The reached the skids ’73 of Foxx, a dominant lyricist. Lyrics and music are more integrated
– an Epic Year stage.
Human League instead. Because Ultravox, it is fast becoming From the extremely
now, resulting in songs that are documentary rather than
clear, don’t belong in this area. They are, pure and simple, a rock stylised (ie, precipitously narrative, the mood set through fragments, evocative rather than
band who happen to use synthesizers – not a synthesizer band. clichéd) Peter Saville explicit – and sometimes too enigmatic.
Their past year of obscurity, since parting with erstwhile (arty) direction to ‘New Europeans’ should not have amused me as it did.
the extremely silly
record company and erstwhile vocalist, has allowed a few (ie ditto) maudlin
Warren: “We knew we were setting ourselves up for a slagging
misconceptions to grow up. One of the most pervasive is that of Ultravox humming and with that title and we did try a few alternatives.”
a masterplan on the part of John Foxx to convert Ultravox into a humming, ‘Vienna’ is an Chris: “It’s our feeling about Europe in the last 20 years.”
synthesizer band. unbearably po-faced Warren: “When we started we never looked towards America,
trek. I’m a sucker for
Billy makes the point that it was he who bought the band’s first Viennese mythology and
the whole thing didn’t interest us at all. Alright, I’m from that side
synthesizer, back in 1977, when there were far from fashionable. history (my Mastermind of the world but I left because I wanted to get away from it.”
“The difference is,” says Billy, “that we keep the human things subject!) but there Midge: “‘Vienna’ is what the next album from ‘Systems Of
as well, it’s like 50/50.” isn’t any in ‘Vienna’. If Romance’ should’ve sounded like. It’s a natural progression for
you see what I mean.
Midge emphasises: “There’s a lot more raunchy rock guitar In its place? A load of
Ultravox and John Foxx has gone off at a tangent.”
on ‘Vienna’ than on any of the other albums. We use whichever extremely portentous Billy: “He’s doing what he wanted Ultravox to do, which isn’t
instrument we think is necessary to get the effect and sound that nonsense: “A man in the what we wanted to do which is why we split up.”
we want, whether it’s a guitar, bagpipes or whatever, it doesn’t dark in a picture frame/So So, Midge is happy with his new band, the rest of Ultravox
mystic and soulful”, etc
matter as long as we get the desired effect.” etc. Young brats like this
are happy with their new singer, and everyone is happy with their
Warren adds: “That’s one reason we released ‘Sleepwalk’ as need a good klimt round new album. John Foxx is (presumably) happy. Ultravox fans
a single, to show you can bang your head against the wall with the earhole. should be happy, because they’ve got a new album to listen to.
a synthesizer as much as you can with a guitar. The housewife Ian Penman I’m happy because I’ve forgotten to worry about whether I should
RETNA/LFI

audience will still hear it and tap their feet.” like synthesizers.

NME ORIGINALS 119

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 Visage
TOP OF THE
FOPS NME 13 DECEMBER 1980 PAGE 11
O
n a winter’s day in London, in the
grounds of an old people’s home,
a man is posing for the camera.
It could be the ghost of Lord
Byron, but that old poet aristo
used to dress up like an 18th
century Greek shepherd while today’s man looks dandyism. Quite a change
more Bavarian – Busby Berkeley Bavarian, that is.
It’s Steve Strange, and he’s only spent an hour for the man who used to
and a half getting ready: he doesn’t have a huge quiff
any more and that cuts down on his preparations to front The Moors Murderers.
meet the day and the mirrors in a thousand eyes.
Spandau Ballet are in the charts. The new
dandyism has arrived. More and more people
are dressing up and fancily romancing, while Beau
Brummel’s own country rots to the silly Billy beat of
‘punk monetarism’ and economic cuts.
Steve Strange is no longer famous for being famous or for
being the glorified doorman of Blitz and Hell where, before those
niteries closed, the clientele used to go to pose and – ornateness
of costume permitting – dance. Steve can now be famous because
he’s the vocalist in a band called Visage who’ve just released an
album of the same name.
Ever since he moved to London from Newport, Steve has always
wanted to be in a band. He remembers being in the dole queue
at the same time as a lot of today’s stars, and inevitably be hung
around the Pistols and Siouxsie. His real passion, though, was for
Generation X, the punks with a touch of glam.
After doing some artwork at the request of Billy Idol, the poseur’s
apprentice ran into a spot of bother. He joined a band called The
Moors Murderers, an event which he now – sitting in the spacious
Chelsea basement of Visage’s publicist – bitterly regrets.
“I was singing the songs and didn’t even know what they were
about. I was led on by the guy with the money upfront. One day
he got a load of photographers in and – bam! – it was all over the
papers, I thought: ‘What the fuck have I done?’ I got out fast.”
After The Moors Murderers, Steve joined The Photons. “We
wore very colourful two-piece suits with Cuban heels. It was a very
sharp image, but nothing to do with the ’60s thing.” Steve left: he
didn’t like the bassist – as a player or a person. The Photons faded,
Vince the drummer joining The Psychedelic Furs.
“People shouldn’t be knocked
for having a good time, if it’s all
about style and being romantic”
122 NME ORIGINALS
He’s Steve
Strange, the Busby
Berkeley of the new
All that clubbing
made Steve
Strange literally
‘Fade To Grey’
Paul Tickell puts the
new glitterati into By late-’78 Strange had started hanging out with
drummer Rusty Egan, whose band The Rich Kids
perspective were then on the point of splitting. “We started a weekly
Bowie night at Billy’s. The idea was to be an alternative to
disco even though we only had a handful of suitable records
– The Human League, The Normal, Kraftwerk and, of course,
Bowie and Roxy.”
To fill the gap the two nightclubbers started to make their own
tapes in the studio time which The Rich Kids still had set aside.
Producer Martin Rushent engineered several tracks which have
now surfaced on the Visage album.
By now Egan and Strange had moved out to Blitz and Hell
to master the ceremonies and dictate the sounds. They kept up
the studio work and the project transfigured itself into a band
– Visage, who signed with Polydor in May this year.
Strange isn’t worried that the germ of Visage’s album is quite
old. He thinks that the timing is absolutely right for what it’s trying
to put across: the album is both a gloss on the high glossiness of
Blitz and a manifesto for Strange’s next gaudy cellar The People’s
Palace, which will open in spring next year.
Strange quotes from ‘Visage’ the title track: “‘New styles/New
shapes/New moulds’. It’s about why we closed down Blitz and Hell;
they were becoming stale. You’ve got to have a constant change of
music, fashion and venue.”
Until the People’s Palace throws open its doors the London
glitterati are all dressed up with nowhere to go. “There’s not much
at the moment, even though we’re going to start using the Venue
in Victoria for one night a week. I get people ringing me up all the
From Newport to time asking me what’s going on.
new romantic:
the many Visages
“It may sound immodest but me and Rusty have played a hell
of a part over the last two years in the nightlife of a lot of kids…
of Steve Strange
CORBIS/REX FEATURES
kids are people who work nine to five and then go out and live
their fantasies. They’re glad to be dressed up and escaping work.
I don’t think people should be knocked for having a good time,
if it’s all about style and being romantic.”
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is for ...
BRIAN ARIS

NME ORIGINALS 123

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124 NME ORIGINALS

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 Wham! W
swimming and wrote songs. Andy, on other hand, didn’t want to
know, refused to find work, any work, just to earn a little cash to
make up some of his time instead of moping all day long.
Andy wasn’t convinced. He could see George’s point, but why
work at some crap job he’d hate the minute he started? What was
the point? Thanks, but no thanks. There was more to it than that.
He’d rather stay in bed. Keep warm. Hide from his parents. At
least that way he could ignore the world.
So they sat there, in the kitchen, a painstaking silence between
them, both fumbling mentally for some mutual ground and a
common resolve. Then Andy smiled. He looked at George and he
smiled, and in that one second, both friends knew everything was
alright again. They’d survive.
“Mind you,” says George Michael now. “If we hadn’t spent our
time like that, ‘Wham Rap’ would never have happened.”

Humour, it was their sense of humour that attracted George and

Andy to each other at their school in Bushey.
“When we first met,” Andy recalls, “I used to go round Yog’s
house and we used to make these tapes from the radio stations.
We used to incorporate the agony hour and they’re hysterical.
They’re like Monty Python tapes.”
Both boys came from middle class backgrounds and
subsequently had a lot of pressure put upon them to succeed
academically. From the age of 12, though, both ignored their
parents’ wishes. Instead, they fooled around a lot, discovered girls
and alcohol.
“There was a summer of five or six parties,” says Andy, “from
the end of school to the beginning of school with everyone getting
totally wrecked and it was really good.”
In 1978 they became soul boys. At 15 punk meant nothing to
them. Discos and clubs were far more attractive propositions.
Until, that is, McFadden & Whitehead released ‘Ain’t No Stopping
Us Now’.
“That was the record,” says George, “that slowed everything
down and we thought, ‘Fucking hell this is getting a bit dodgy.’”
Young guns: As soul moved into jazz-funk resulting in serious overtones,
George Michael
George and Andy – apart from the odd record like Stacy
and Andrew
Ridgeley in 1983 Lattishaw’s ‘Jump To The Beat’ – put away their baggy trousers
and formed a ska group called The Executives.

TEEN DREAMS
RUE
COME T
“It was the next thing that was really good and energetic,”
comments Andy.
Backed by local musicians, George and Andy were the two
NME 18 JUNE 1983 PAGE 6
front vocalists who wrote the material.
“We had some quite good ska numbers actually,” says George.

T
hey sat in the kitchen, the pair of them,
sullen and miserable, unable to
communicate with each other.
The best of friends, but tonight
there was a gap between them,
something they had never
experienced before and it frightened them.
George knew what depressed Andy.
Unemployment. He could clearly see the
effects upon his friend’s usual ebullient
nature. He felt sympathy for his friend, but he
also felt confused by his refusal to fight.
Granted, the dole was no fun in any book
you might care to mention. Hours of tedium,
lack of funds, loss of vision all contributed to
wearing your spirits down. But why couldn’t Andy
at least make a token effort to face up to it.
REX FEATURES
A sense of
humour? Clubs, parties
and late nights? Five months
to write ‘Bad Boys’? What is
with these Wham! guys?
Paolo Hewitt checks for
George and Andy’s
disco dilemmas
“The arrangements were really poor because they were the
first songs we’d written. But a couple of them could have
been really big hits. If someone had been clever enough
to pick us up, organise us properly, we could have had
some really big hits.
“We had a manager who took a demo that hadn’t
really been mixed to all the record companies. One
of the stories from that, which is quite ironic, is that
our repertoire which was on the tape, included a
version of ‘Can’t Get Used To Losing You’.
“After the deal had fallen through I saw in a
magazine, months afterwards, that it was coming
out on the new Beat album. I thought, ‘Fucking hell,
I can’t believe it.’ I was really pissed off.
“When Dave Wakeling sings it, he sings it so much
like Andy Williams that you get the impression that he
was an Andy Williams fan, in which case it might have

George had. He was a part-time DJ by night, and a been a coincidence. But it was ironic that when were in the
part-time cinema attendant by day. In between, he went Top Five with ‘Bad Boys’ they were there also there with that.”

NME ORIGINALS 125

TLFeBOOK
 Wham!

In February of 1982 George and Andy had put together a tape of

three of their songs. To be exact, they’d put together a tape which
contained about ten seconds each of ‘Wham Rap!’, ‘Come On’ and
‘Club Tropicana’. It was more an advertising jingle than a proper
demo tape.
After hawking it around the usual record companies, a new
company called Innervisions picked them up, and in March that
year signed them. Months later, ‘Wham Rap!’ was released – a half-
serious, half-joke look at unemployment. Instead of propagating
one viewpoint (dole = bad, or dole = good), ‘Wham Rap!’ put the
case for both points.
“There are two very strong standpoints in it,” says George. “One
was the chorus which said, basically, don’t put me down because
I haven’t got a job. It’s not my fault I haven’t got a job and it doesn’t
matter anyway, as long as I’m being constructive with my time. The
other half said in the verses isn’t it marvellous to be on the dole and NME 23 JULY 1983 PAGE 16

made out that it’s hip; cool soul guys, got no money but you’re still WHAM!
really cool. Which is all a load of bollocks because there’s very few CLUB TROPICANA
Innervision
people like that about.”
The record did nothing. Zilch. It nearly killed them. Like so Oh no! More soul boys
go soft. If Linx are
many artists, they blamed their record company for not promoting anything to go by, when
them well enough. No build-up, no hit. they start singing songs
As winter approached, they issued ‘Young Guns (Go For It!)’, in that holiday mood
the follow up. Wham! A hit! it’s time to carve the
headstone.
Tongues still planted firmly in their collective cheek, ‘Young There’s always been
Guns’ amusingly examined young relationships and the troubles an element to each
they can bring. A great dance record, Wham! appeared on Top Of Wham! single. ‘Wham
The Pops with an exhilarating dance routine that caught the eye Rap!’ got full marks
for spirit and negative
and the imagination. numbers for political
George and Andy, along with Shirley and Dee on dance and vision. ‘Young Guns’ had
song routines, had established themselves with a vigour and energy guts but was patently a
that beautifully captured their obsession with youth topics. classic in the closet, with
George asking his mate
Five months later, after working solidly on their debut LP, the precisely what he was
third single ‘Bad Boys’ was put out. Most people felt that it was a doing with a girl when he
poor parody of the first two songs; that they’d run out of ideas. could be having fun with
Rumours circling claimed George had dried up while accusations him, while ‘Bad Boys’,
as Julie Burchill pointed
of contrivance with image and song filled the air. out, poses the question ,
When their debut LP ‘Fantastic’ is released a lot of people will “Just what was a 19-year-
choke on their words. old doing living with
It’s a stunning vindication of George and Andy’s ability to Mumsie and Dadikins
anyway?” What they
produce a black based music that covers a various shifts in style all had was the musical
but loses none of its identity. ‘Fantastic’ is a powerful, confident clout and the macho
debut that will shatter a few illusions and create a few more. It will shout, some hardcore
establish George Michael as a great singer and Andy Ridgeley as the content that the young
grits could go for.
perfect foil to his songwriting talents. Now what happens?
The lads make a buck
A nice sunny day in west London, Andy in his normal good or two and we’re back
mood, George a little more serious, a little more concerned. We in the cocktail lined
lands of sophistication
talk about Wham! Are they contrived? with ‘Club Tropicana’.
“What can you do?” sighs George. “What can you tell people? Palm trees on the cover,
We’re both young. We’ve written about what you go through when delicately chopping
you’re young. When we get accused of things like that you’d think guitars and a voice
that’s like an overdose
we were both 30 or something.” of Bird’s Angel Delight.
With ‘Bad Boys’, although it’s become the best seller George What are they trying to
knew it would be, both admit that their critics might have a point. do, make peace with the
“I think there’s more energy to ‘Bad Boys’ than there is to ‘Young mater and pater? If so
you’ve done it boys – my
Guns’. We wanted to take the energy we had on ‘Wham Rap!’ neighbours loved it.
and the commerciality of ‘Young Guns’ and put them together. Bad boys go rotten,
I personally don’t like ‘Bad Boys’ as much as I wanted to, but I knew pop dreams go pap.
it would sell really well.” Conclusive proof that
pop corrupts and pure
Like all their songs, ‘…Boys’ was concocted in the studio over a pop is pure corruption.
long period of time. It’s an expensive process because, more likely Don Watson
than not, George will scrap a day’s work rather than keep it.
“Anyone who susses the records knows we’re
not serious. The sexism in ‘Young Guns’ was
all fucking tongue in cheek” George Michael
‘Wham Rap!’ was
rhyming slang
for George and
Andrew’s clothes
“It happens all the time,” George admits nonchalantly. “That’s
why ‘Bad Boys’ took months and months because I was under such
pressure personally to follow up ‘Young Guns’ and not disappoint
people. At the same time I didn’t want to make another ‘Young
Guns’. I just got totally confused and through that confusion I had
to write parts for all the various things I hadn’t done yet.
“That’s what happened with the album, and that’s why I kept
fighting and fighting, doing different things and then wiping
them out completely and starting all over again.”
To George’s painstaking approach, which meant staying up 48
hours on the last days of recording to have the LP finished in time,
Andy acts a vital catalyst, offering advice, support and opinion.
On his own admission he’s “not as good a songwriter as George”.
But he is the main part in Wham!’s lyrical technique of taking
a subject matter, pertinent to youth, and blowing it out of all
proportion. The sexism of ‘Young Guns’ for instance, or the line
in ‘Bad Boys’, “I’m handsome, tall and strong” has stuck in many
people’s minds.
“I can’t believe that anyone would take that line seriously,” says
George in disbelief.
“Some people’s sense of humour,” offers Andy, “isn’t the same
as ours and they won’t get it. Simple as that. You can’t expect
everyone to get the joke. Most people will and that’s the purpose
of exaggerating it, to make it that much clearer. But there’s always
be someone who doesn’t get the fucking joke.”
“A line like that is saying it totally straight and thinking, ‘What
a wanker!’” says George. “I think anyone who susses the records
at all knows that’s not a serious line. That sexism in ‘Young Guns’
was all fucking tongue in cheek. People didn’t get it.” He shrugs
his shoulders.
As long as people like his music, the lyrics are secondary in
many ways. Although he won’t insult his or Andy’s intelligence by
writing clichéd disco lines.
“We’ve tried to stress it so many people,” Andy interrupts, “that
we don’t to be a UB40 or that kind of left field band. We want
to make pop records; we want to be a successful band and make
records that people enjoy, and not essentially for the lyric. What it
boils down to is popular tunes are the tunes that everybody finds
easy to hum along to.”
The next single, ‘Club Tropicana’ follows a similar method.
REX FEATURES

Using the press hysteria about Le Beat Route last summer, it

inflates the myth of a perfect club.

126 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Wham! W
“I don’t think anyone is going to see it,” George remarks,
“because I don’t think it means anything to anyone but us. It was
written about Le Beat Route and at the time the press were making
so many things out of clubs, as though a club was suddenly a
paradise when it’s just another way of spending an evening,
probably the best way of spending it, but it’s not that brilliant. MM 12 JULY 1986 PAGE 28

“So I thought I’d make one about Le Beat Route and that WHAM!
is what that line about ‘brush shoulders with the stars’ was all THE FINAL Epic
about. Everyone was saying you can go to Le Beat Route and see
Spandau! Steve Strange! So we made out that you could get a

W
hatever else, there are some things
suntan free there, there was a beach there and your drinks were they can’t take away from Wham!
They may have made real prats of
free. Everything was in this club.”
themselves in the meantime, but Wham! Still gave
With the release of ‘Club Tropicana’, Wham! will also be us ‘Wham Rap!’ and ‘Young Guns (Go For It!)’,
undertaking a new skin. Dee and Shirley will be absent. anthems of a sort for youthful optimism and both
“I think that ‘Bad Boys’ is definitely the last thing that they’ll go brilliant, brilliant singles.
Odd now to imagine it, but ‘Young Guns’ in
on Top Of The Pops and do because one, they’ve got other things
particular seemed to signify a bold new dream
that they want to do, and two, because people have got to see us as for the pop ethos, with it’s stirring brashness
less of a dance troupe and more as a band. I think it matters.” and admirable arrogance in the face of
Why? A dance troupe is more interesting than a band. adversity while intelligently doffing
the cap to the new exciting black
“Because,” George explains, “we’re being seen by so many
raps coming out of New York. Have You may ‘Wake Me Up Before
people on a visual level. We’re like a very young version of Bucks
Fizz. Two blokes and two girls who worked well visually only we
pride in the dole queue was the
message and it hit a nerve that
well have You Go-Go’, for example, had
wit and originality and the
were very young. When we did ‘Young Guns’ everybody said it touched all our hearts. loathed them, but mawkish ‘Last Christmas’
Which is exactly why such astutely integrated the
was so different and that’s why it sold so quickly afterwards. But they will still have
scorn was heaped upon George traditions of Motown into
when you do something different it gets boring twice as quickly.” and Andy when they dumped Michael’s unerring ear for
Later on in the year Wham! will undertake their debut tour. the incorrigible sense of fun soundtracked compelling choruses.
They speak with enthusiasm of their ideas to have a 15-piece and adventure in favour of ‘Club
Tropicana’ and fake suntans and
your youth The key to the whole thing
and the track that doomed Andrew
accompany them, how a DJ (current hot tip Capital’s busy Gary
contrived videos and shuttlecocks Ridgeley is, of course, ‘Careless
Crowley) will open the show with an hour of disco, and then after down the shorts. Whisper’. Crushingly sentimental, it
the group has played, keep spinning so the show becomes more On this double album compilation the corpse nevertheless oozed class, gave George Michael
of a disco event, and how unseen Wham! videos will be shown is barely cold but the marketing clean-up goes on. instant respect as a songwriter and set him firmly
Nobody’s saying George and Andrew should have on the path to being the new Paul McCartney.
throughout the evening.
spent their lives re-making dole queue raps, but It must have been ‘Careless Whisper’ and the
Also on the horizon is a solo offering from George Michael the ruthlessness with which they set about selling reaction to it that convinced George that he had
which will be released later this year. It’s a song that has been themselves as pop pin-ups was damn offensive. a deeper role to play than bouncing up and down
written for years, a soul ballad that wouldn’t suit Wham! in their Listening back over the 15 tracks it is possible alongside the vacuous Ridgeley.
now to make a balanced judgement on their worth I suspect that in future years Wham! nostalgia
present format.
as a pure pop song, and while their sound was will reach unforeseen heights… you may very
“It’s probably going to be bigger,” asserts George, “than always alarmingly thin and Michael’s voice too weak well have loathed them, but they will still have
anything we’ve ever done before. The thing is, I just love the idea to successfully carry off something as vigorous as been responsible for the soundtrack to your youth
of being able to keep the identity of the band consistent singles ‘I’m Your Man’. Wham! were a cut above the norm. and that is more important than music alone.
It was their unyielding gift for self-promotion that Cheers, boys.
wise. We’ve got plans for the single that comes out as the first 1984
was so obnoxious, not necessarily their records. Colin Irwin
Wham! single, and it will be a really stark contrast to my single.”

A nice sunny day in west London. We order more drinks and

“We don’t want to be a left field band. We talk about parents, money and success.
want to make pop records; we want to make “I haven’t had hassles from my mum for years, since I was about
14,” admits George. “But I’ve had hassles with my dad, and it only
records that people enjoy” Andrew Ridgeley stopped when he realised I had a financial future, because he’s a very
financial person. He thought that I wasn’t capable of supporting
myself because he never had any belief that I was talented.”
Is money important to you, George?
“It’s not at all, actually. I was talking to someone about our deal,
George Michael we’ve got a terrible one, and I was saying I could get really stubborn
just about keeps with the record company over finance. I’m doing it because I hate
the boys in the
barracks, 1983 the idea of the record company ripping us off but I don’t really give
a shit about the money. As long as I’m comfortable.
“Like, Andrew enjoys luxury a lot more than I do. It matters to
him that the places we stay in, he notices all the trimming.”
“I think,” says Andy, aghast, “I ought to enlarge on this
otherwise people might get the wrong impression.”
“But look at your car, Andy! Look at the car. Listen to this. Tell
him what you’re going to have done to your car. Have you got the
guts?” taunts George with a smile.
“Actually I had one of the wheels sprayed gold,” Andy says a
little ashamedly,” and it doesn’t look too good… I was going to
have the wheels sprayed gold and have AJR monogrammed on
one side.”
“You see what I mean? That is fairly indicative of Andrew.”
And both George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley start laughing.
A sense of humour. A common bond that has moulded their
friendship and produced an exciting vigorous band with music
to boot.

NME ORIGINALS 127

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Wham!

THE BIGGER THEY

THE HARDER THEY
T
hey’ve only been here an afternoon, but already in The Sun in which she intimated that her current beau Martin
their hotel room shows evidence of vigorous Kemp of Spandau was rather livelier in the sack than him.
use of room service. Beyond a clutter of Wham! evidently enjoy their success so avidly you feel a
silver teapots, bottles of Perrier and the MM 17 NOVEMBER 1984 PAGE 24 cad for not sharing that joy… at 21 George is well on the
odd discarded jacket, a TV flickers way to becoming a millionaire and there’s little doubt
quietly in the corner. It is showing in his mind that their next single, ‘Last Christmas’,
The Tube, but George and Andrew show desultory
interest, attracted only by the new Duran Duran In an historic encounter, will make it four Number Ones in a row.
As expected, George is the dominant
video (they’re keen to see how to spend a quarter character during the interview – articulate,
of a million pounds and they’re impressed!), Paul Colin Irwin confronts effervescent, opinionated and extraordinarily
Weller’s new hairdo and energetic lady dancer animated – but far from being the surly stooge
that Andrew takes a shine to. Wham! on such burning issues other interrogators have portrayed, Andrew
Initially at least they are perfect hosts, instantly Ridgeley is Mr Courtesy, offering beer and
friendly and attentive. Spirits are clearly high as as sexism, wallyism and taking smoked salmon sandwiches, and not above
well they might be… George Michael and Andrew putting George down with a savage one-liner if
Ridgeley have just enjoyed their third consecutive your shirt off in public he thinks his cohort is getting too pompous.
Number One single, ‘Freedom’, even leapfrogging They bicker amiably – “Are we going to have
Culture Club and holding Duran Duran at bay to do it. a sauna then?” demands Andrew as George, who
George tells with obvious relish that they’ve sold two and obviously feels the cold, whacks up the heating – and a
a half million records in the last 12 weeks, and that takes no lot of myths about Wham! start to crumble.
account of their new album, the modestly titled ‘Make It Big’, Whatever, George and Andrew give the Maker a torrid old
which is trampling over all the competition as we speak. Andrew time of it and… well, I know I shouldn’t say this, but… I liked the
even gallantly laughs off Whammette Shirley’s recent revelation pair of them immensely.

TLFeBOOK
 Wham! W

COME,
BITE So you’re on for four Number Ones on the trot.
George: “Well, the Christmas single is so commercial…” NME 26 MAY 1984 PAGE 16

The competition is also much hotter. WHAM!

G: “Oh yeah, all the novelty records. But I think we’re ahead WAKE ME UP BEFORE
YOU GO-GO
of all the other major artists simply because ours is the only Epic
track which isn’t included on an album. The Frankie single Slightly older
Some furious blushing
and the Culture Club singles are both on their albums. But the guns going for it
over here. On the eve, no
on their US tour,
momentum we’ve got, coupled with the strength of the song and less, of the last general
September 1985
the fact it’s a Christmas song… it’s called ‘Last Christmas’, sleigh election, I sat down at
this very typewriter
bells and the lot!” Serious music critics hailed ‘Young Guns’ as a breakthrough,
and penned a strong,
Dear God! overtly favourable piece now those people wouldn’t give you the time of the day.
G: “Oh, I love Christmas records. Along with ‘Careless on George and Andy. G: “Those people are arseholes. There wasn’t anything serious
Whisper’ I think it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever written.” And have regretted it about ‘Wham Rap!’. We tried to tell them at the time but they
ever since. No good
Andrew: “It’s actually my favourite of all the songs you’ve wouldn’t listen.”
crying over not nailing
written, it’s an ultimate pop song. It’s got humour, which ‘Careless them for their now so A: “You won’t find in any of our interviews that we said the song
Whisper’ didn’t have.” obvious shallowness. had any incredible social message. The only message was ‘enjoy
Did you feel a particular satisfaction that it was Culture Club ‘Wake Me Up...’ is the what you do’.”
pits, a kind of Wham!
you stopped from getting to Number One? Your own conceptions haven’t changed since then?
ape Showaddywaddy on
A: “No. Unfortunately we don’t think ‘War Song’ was up to the dancefloor of some A: “No, they’ve become truer.”
their previous standard. It was a bit of a hollow victory really. If kind of Teds reunion ball. G: “We wrote ‘Careless Whisper’ and ‘Club Tropicana’ a year
they’d have done something of the quality of ‘Karma Chameleon’ A blatantly designed before we wrote ‘Wham Rap!’ so nothing’s changed. We wanted
kiddywink anthem.
that would have been different.” to be pop stars. We wanted to be mainstream.”
Paolo Hewitt
Did it hurt when people turned against you?
G: “Our bank balances got a lot larger.”
“What’s sexist about taking my Bank balances aren’t everything.
G: “No, but they do console you. I honestly think we’re making
shirt off? Maybe 50-year-old better records now. There was something definitely in ‘Wham
stockbrokers fancy us” George Rap!’ and ‘Young Guns’ which we can’t recapture, a certain
naivety… but you either struggle along trying to sound alive and
fresh when you’re not, or you get on with writing better songs and
MM 8 DECEMBER 1984 PAGE 26 more commercial songs.”
You got a bit of stick for the ‘Careless Whisper’ video… WHAM! Doesn’t it embarrass you the things that get printed about you
G: “Why?” LAST CHRISTMAS in the national press?
Epic
Because it portrayed the macho man bit, having it off with two G: “We play their game and they play ours. They don’t actually
women and all that… I don’t think Wham! are get very involved in our lives.”
quite the despicable
G: “If I was in a situation with one woman and I was drawn But playing their game is part and parcel of why you don’t have
mercenary crones
away by another woman simply because I was tempted and lost they’re usually made out the respect you feel you merit.
the first woman through that, I wouldn’t feel I’ve been sexist. But to be, though now that G: “But it doesn’t matter to us… we’ll be respected eventually.
you put it on film in a situation you’ve seen a thousand times they’ve made it official We’re starting to get grudging respect with three Number Ones.
that they’re not going
before and suddenly you’re sexist.” People are having to admit we’re writing well-crafted pop songs.
to talk to us any more, I
You get accused of sexism a lot though. suppose we can say what The music press should leave us alone, they should forget about
G: “Yeah, all the time. Sexism generally is part of the way the we like about them. ‘Last us. Melody Maker more than any of the other papers is guilty of
media treats pop stars and portrays them. You could go out of Christmas’, meanwhile, prostitution. It started at the end of last year. At the time Duran
isn’t the mega-monster
your way to avoid it and I can’t be bothered because I know I’m Duran were much bigger than us and Melody Maker didn’t really
that was promised
not sexist and pop is all about sex. I know I’m not sexist personally and described during know how big we would be this year. We knew, but Melody Maker
but I don’t have enough wish to tell the world that I’m not to make the Maker’s recent didn’t and slagged us like crazy, we were being slagged for things
a stand on it and let it detract from my career to do it. Because I encounter with the duo. and Duran weren’t when they were doing exactly the same.”
It’s slickly contrived,
know that it would detract from my career.” How long can you last?
with George swooning
But you do seem to play it quite vigorously. Always posing calamitously and G: “Primarily our success rests on my songwriting ability. I’m
with your shirt off... Andrew doing whatever 21 and we’ve had three of the last five Number One records. There’s
G: “And what’s sexist about that? What’s sexist about taking it is he does when he’s no reason, other than me becoming screwed up for some reason or
not being tetchy with
my shirt off? I’m not differentiating between who should look getting very bored that we shouldn’t be able to progress.”
the hired help and the
at that picture and decide whether they fancy me or don’t fancy hapless press, but the A: “A stroke could do it.”
me. Maybe 50 year-old stockbrokers fancy us. It’s not our choice. song takes a worryingly G: “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t progress. I’ve only
We’re just taking our shirts off. There’s nothing sexist about sex. long time to lodge itself really been songwriting for three years. So as long as I don’t cock
RETNA/CORBIS

in the imagination.
You don’t see pictures of us whipping women. We don’t abuse up along the way I should be writing better songs.”
Allan Jones
women in any way.” Amen.

TLFeBOOK
130 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 X
is for ...

SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK

PETER ANDERSON

NME ORIGINALS 131

TLFeBOOK
 STARRY -EY ED
& LAU G H IN G
Y
ou find yourself reading about
them…
It’s been a long day, and it isn’t
over yet.
The two juiciest members
of Sigue Sigue Sputnik
– pronounced Sic Sic Spitnack, trivia tarts – have
just ballsed up their first live television interview.
The conspiracy boys, the coming linguists, the
heroes of excess have just been knobbled down
into the cobblestones of ordinariness by a nice girl
at The Tube.
The men who’ve threatened to poison a nation
with sado-pretence, disturbance and a revolutionary
type of wealth were given three minutes to advertise
their terror-spunk and flaming gall. Nothing much
happened; they were reduced to a standard smug-up of giggle
and tiny spite, like Bauhaus on Blue Peter. Anyone watching must
have thought, now here’s a group who will dare to pull their tongue
out at Norris McWhirter. Hoorah!
It’s been a long day, and it isn’t over yet. I refuse to let Sigue Sigue
Sputnik – pronounced Splish Splish Phut Phut, fight fans – get away
with being so… sweet and nervous. The two juices, Flash Tony
James and Ravaging Martin Degville, will boast that there can
be no end on earth to the triple-S delight, that they have the skills
of Lew Grade, Sony, Orson Welles, Colonel Tom Parker, Ferrari,
Little Richard, Howard Hughes, Richard Nixon, Walt Disney,
Bob Guccione, Stanley Kubrick, Bruce Forsyth, Noel Coward,
Roy Liechtenstein, Jack The Ripper, Beau Brummel and Norman
Mailer smashed together, so what can they expect? Charity?
?? N MN EM EO ROIRGIIGNIANLASL S
132
Sigue Sigue
Sputnik: Martin
(left) and Tony
are pretty in pink
Sigue Sigue Don’t be just another stuttering item on just
another edition of The Tube if you want it to be
Sputnik – a promise written: this is Sigue Sigue Sputnik – pronounced
the way they want it to be – and there’s never been
anything like it. Of course, all this depends on
of terror-spunk and flaming how seriously you’re taking all this lather. The
group do not take it seriously at all, because
gall – fall headlong into a the whole point is that whatever happens they
will have the last laugh – isn’t this so? That
Tube embarrassment. is, though, if anyone anywhere is laughing:
really laughing.
Paul Morley hangs around It’s been a long day, and it isn’t over yet. Flash
Tony isn’t laughing. Does this mean he does take
for the last laugh it all seriously? Is he kidding me? Is he just playing
the game, acting out how you’re meant to be when
NME 8 MARCH 1986 PAGE 30 you look silly on The Tube? Behind the pissed-off face, is
he laughing last? How do you feel, Tony?
“Terrible…” he quietly admits.
What about you, Martin?
“I was trying desperately hard to be clever. When you try
too hard, it never works.”
It’s harder doing something for real than promising the
world to yourself in interviews. For the moment, Flash Tony
has lost the rude sparkle in his dazzling blue eyes. He stutters,
“It’s learning how to do it… I think we’re going to be brilliant.
The only way to practise live TV is to do it…”
“I felt gushing,” Martin gushes. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?
Oh, I really don’t care… we’ve learnt a lot today… I now know
what you have to do to… you really need to prepare… you have
to take complete control.”
TLFeBOOK
 X Certificate X
We find ourselves walking along a corridor towards The Tube
interview. Flash Tony and Marty Degville beam with confidence,
lapping up the world and its fortunes, charging along in their red
stilettos as if they were hover-boots. What can stop them?
I find myself listening to Flash Tony James: “This is it. There’s
no stopping us. We can win in any arena. I can see no limit to
earning money… it’s all going absolutely how we want it. There
we are, signed to EMI. That’s great, those initials, they just seem to
sum up the music industry for me. What a way to start. Sending
in our lawyer… ‘Whatever Spandau Ballet got, whatever Sade
got, we want twice as much…’ all on the back of a video we made
ourselves with two video recorders! We want to wind everybody
up. Everybody. For the sheer glee of it. People are so scared about
music. I’m not. We get so much venom from other groups slagging
us off when they can’t possibly even have heard us… what fun!”
He laughs, of course.
I find myself thinking: Flash Tony, he’s a little old fashioned
really, out of a gaping groping Nik Cohn novel from 1969 when “We’d like to see
anyone be as smart,
times were simpler and rock’n’roll was a steady signal and you
thin and good
could never have imagined Phil Collins, Gary Davies and Norman looking as us”
Tebbit forming a supergroup to only make compact discs.
going to live out such a fantasy, and then we’re going to completely
ignore the old rock cycle… there is no limit… and you know we
“There we are, signed to EMI. We told our lawyer, became a really big group before we even made a record…”

‘Whatever Spandau Ballet got, whatever Sade
got, we want twice as much’” Tony James
I find myself interviewing Flash and Ravage in a public house
opposite the Tyne Tees studio. Flash isn’t too happy about the
venue for the interview: who is?
“Oh dear, we adjourned to the pub to get the interview done…”
Well, you’ve spent too much time in a Melody Maker world:
that’s part of your problem anyway, the toy town world that
you’ve easily conquered because Go West are apparently the best
new group of the moment and the alternative are Biscuits from
Liverpool singing songs about Fred Titmus and Nerys Hughes
like it was a real laugh or something. You’ve had it easy, Flash: now
show me something.
“We’ll show everybody that no-one’s gone anywhere near
showing off what can be done within rock’n’roll, what can
be done next… we’ll go beyond this toy town world, out into
finance, leisure, five real stars actually being the directors of a
multi-national company? I think we have the intelligence and the
ability to deal with the bigger world of rock… we want to be out
and about among those tough bastards…”
Do you pride yourself on being comfortable elitists; so superior,
so sure?
“Absolutely. The opposite of punk. Not everyone can do what
we’re doing. Not anyone can do what we’re going to do, or, anyone
can do it but we’d like to see them try. We’d like to see anyone be
as smart, thin and good looking as us.”
We weren’t all born with such a vision, I say, thinking for a
moment I’m talking to The Runaways or what…
“Yeah, it’s a shit isn’t it? It’s a shit for the fat uglies… isn’t life
tragic…”
What do you believe in, Tony?
“Alright… for a start, there’s nothing in the Virgin Megastore
that I would cross the road for… so I believe in… making this
exciting in every detail, even the details that you cannot see.”
This is obviously why the boy pop writers suck your cocks, but
in this day and age, after all we’ve been through this past 30 years,
it doesn’t half sound boring…
“But it doesn’t have to be boring. Just because people time and
time again get their success and then mess it up doesn’t mean we
have to. The ideas of rock’n’roll can be taken and applied to other
RETNA/REX FEATURES
NME 22 FEBRUARY 1986 PAGE 8
SIGUE SIGUE
SPUTNIK
LOVE MISSILE F1-11
Parlophone
The fact that Sigue Sigue
Sputnik have already
blown it shouldn’t put
you off. But blown it they
have. See, when you go
for the hype you don’t
tell anyone about it. You
just do it. And then brag.
You learn from the recent
Eighth Wonder fiasco
and the way they were
totally mismanaged.
The Great British Public
may be gullible but
they weren’t, in this
instance, stupid, because
as everyone knows the
people who pay for the
hype in the end are… the
Great British Public. And
quite why they should
pay for a song that lacks
melody and makes that
That was funny, in this little village. But now you’ve made a
record, and all you can do is add to the statistics of rock.
“But we’re such a big group already…”
Not bigger than Go West.
“No, but we’re bigger in all the other ways.”
Whatever that means. We all laugh.
Have the triple-S wonder driven a diamond dagger up the
nation’s backside this week, or are they just another funny name
for the DJs to giggle with? In one way they are the perfect group for
this lengthening moment, a brattish symbol of the violent greed
that separates Aaron Spelling from the churning of whingeing
mob, a small exploding sign of a time when accelerating
helicopters replace Saturday afternoon horse racing. They knew,
supremely, that the smashing fist hitting the splashing flesh in a
Rocky or two was gripping the civilised world. They saw that it’s
the slash, click sizzzz, the super-sensual touch and fit of the 30-
second commercial that’s the start of persuasion: that the video,
in this desolate post A-Ha age, pumps up more information for
the enclosed consumer than the sound of the single. Plant a mad
haircut on top of all that! And it may seem obvious now but they
thought of it first and I’ll be sending Cliff Richard along to sing
‘Congratulations’.
So… pause for the academic part. More than just a well thought
out plan teasing us hopeless theoreticians? More than just being
good for the industry, as some of my friends would say? More than
just a new centre spread in the glossy magazines? Hands up those
who hope it is. Let’s find Martin to see what he thinks. He’s standing
in front of a monitor that’s transmitting the reverend Kerr.
“I don’t think I’ll ever end up in a situation like Jim Kerr. I’m
looking for new possibilities in success. I want to be successful and
yet never out of touch with things. I don’t want to be someone
who’s made into a pop icon and then doesn’t know how to save
himself. I don’t want to become David Bowie or Mick Jagger.”
What do you think is wrong with them?
“They’ve manipulated an awful lot of people and they’ve
become clichés of themselves.”
Why are you so concerned about them cheating people when
you’re only concerned about yourself?
“I am concerned about myself… because with my ability I think
I can offer people hope… because I don’t want to live off the success
people give me. That’s why I wouldn’t cheat people. The public
make you into a pop icon and I don’t think I could turn round and
say, ‘Well, thanks for all the money, fuck you and goodbye.’”

most dumb of equations

areas. The actual bottom line of going into a studio and making – missile equals macho Remember that in five years time when Martin Degville is
a record is pretty boring, but that should be just part of it, the power – is beyond me. the fifth richest man in Britain and making a bid to take over
Paolo Hewitt
beginning. We are going to be the tabloids’ wildest dreams, we’re Guinness. And don’t forget to laugh.

NME ORIGINALS 133

TLFeBOOK
 Y
is for ...

ERS
DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNN

134 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
Dexys share a
joke with the
NME snapper,
Birmingham 1980

Overnight Bag
Sensations NME 14 JUNE 1980 PAGE 28

Kevin Rowland began to formulate Dexys Midnight Runners

as an idea, a vision and a masterplan in January 1978.
Gavin Now that may sound terribly pretentious and self-serious, but
it is the impression one gathers when talking to Rowland. He isn’t
Martin travels to the sort of person who wants to be taken lightly and as a result he
ranks as the most uncompromising musician I’ve encountered.
Birmingham to speak By now, Kevin’s much vaunted arrogance and insularity are
well known. But what worries me is his all-too-obvious paranoia.
to Dexys Midnight Runners, He’s so afraid that anything he says is going to be taken down and
used in evidence against him, that he sits and pontificates like he
and finds out over a cup was Solomon or something – all concepts, theories and nebulous
ideals. Maybe he just feels this is what is expected of a performer
of tea that it might just be talking to the rock press…
Anyway, if while reading this you see the carpet slipping from

Kevin Rowland’s last MM 12 JANUARY 1980 PAGE 17

under his feet, remember it’s Rowland himself doing the pulling.
He might sound as if he’s just had the tablets of stone handed
DEXYS down to him from Mount Sinai, but really he’s just as mixed up
ever interview MIDNIGHT
RUNNERS as you or me.
THERE, THERE, MY DEAR At 26, Kevin is the eldest member of the group. He is also
EMI
the group’s spokesman and strategist, guitarist and vocalist. He
A smash, a veritable believes Dexys Midnight Runners are going to change the face of

B
smash but it won’t
irmingham is the miserably mangled product rock’n’roll.
make Number One like
of 20 years’ unwary architectural endeavours. you know what. Great In 1977 he emerged at the head of one of that year’s many
It’s a town filled with subways, precincts and fun with an irresistible independent thrash outfits, The Killjoys. The group also included
multi-levelled monstrosities. Everywhere rhythm and delicious Al Archer. They released one record, ‘Johnny Won’t Get To
brass riffs. Powerhouse
catacombs of screaming traffic go under, over Heaven’, a wry little send up of the image Malcy was constructing
rhythm section, great
and around pedestrian bystanders. vocals. The sheer for Johnny and the Pistols. The group soon fell apart however.
The eight guys who comprise Dexys Midnight Runners exuberance is almost “When The Killjoys started I was really interested in punk.
live in this town. Singularly and collectively they’re a sullen, contagious. Having I read about it and I thought it was the greatest thing that had
built up the pressure
suspicious and reserved bunch. They dress in austere anti-style, happened in ages. But then I got disillusioned.”
and excitement with
straightforward, sensible and workmanlike. ruthless skill the band, Unable to reconcile his own creative desires with those of the
Their expressions are tight-lipped and impenetrable, as we set inexplicably, sneak in rest of the band, Rowland retreated to a rich, untapped vein of
off on a guided tour of Brum and some of the haunts they frequent. a quiet interlude so heartwarming music from the ’60s. Rasping brass, shimmering
that they can carry on
We stop at a café in Digbeth where I drink tea and wonder how organ and alluring passionate vocals.
trucking again. They
REDFERNS/DAVID CORIO

the natives play pinball without any flippers on the machine. shouldn’t have bothered “Al and me talked about the group after The Killjoys split up.
Just back from a 40-date UK tour and with ‘Geno’ at Number but that’s a small beef. We’d listened to lots of Geno, Otis Reading, Aretha Franklin, Sam
One in the charts, Dexys have to start getting used to the fact that Great record. & Dave, Cliff Bennett and loads of other people. We just wanted
Martyn Sutton
they’re hot property. Everywhere we go people stop and talk. to form our own band and go out and do it.”

NME ORIGINALS 135

TLFeBOOK
 Young Soul Rebels

Dexys came together between January and July 1978, thieving

gear, trespassing into warehouses in order to practise and spending
most of their spare time in cafes talking about themselves.
They finally emerged after much changing of drummers and
keyboardists with their present line-up: Kevin Rowland (guitarist/
vocals), Al Archer (guitar/vocals), Pete Williams (bass), Groak
(drums), Steve Spooner (alto sax), JB (tenor sax), Big Jimmy
Patterson (trombone).
When we spoke, Kevin was talking optimistically about
achieving an “equilibrium”, but just a few days later keyboardist
Andy Leek quit the band because he “couldn’t stand the fame.” His
replacement is Pete Saunders who played on ‘Dance Stance’.
Dungaree-era
Dexys on Top Of
We’re in another café at the other side of town. I’m drinking a The Pops, 1983
cup of (much better) tea. All are present and correct around
either side of a bench. Space Invaders machines make
minor explosions, pinball machines (proper ones)
click and chime up the scores, occasionally Abba
wafts out of the jukebox. “But we aren’t going to say them, we
Al and Kevin sit directly opposite me, tenor saxist aren’t going to make promises on what we’re going to
and brass arranger JB plonks himself beside me. For do. When we do speak out about these things it won’t be
the most pasty Al and Kevin do the talking, though in the music press because all those people are already
sometimes JB will add a relevant comment, dredging converted, they already are anti-Nazi or whatever.
up a trick adamant slur. Kevin has fine, sharper I intend to use whatever position I get to say what I want
features – a crooked nose and a pointed chin. His face to say. But I think it’s more useful to say it in the Daily
is of dark pigment, there might be Italian or Romany Star, the Daily Mirror or The Sun because that’s what
blood somewhere in his family. people really read, the real people.”
We’ve been talking for about five minutes after lots of I keep hearing an undercurrent of Johnny Rotten in Kevin
guarded statements and sentences, when Rowland breaks into his Rowland (the last rock record he liked was ‘Anarchy In The UK’,
stride to deliver this. He’s talking about my trade: though he refuses to believe me when I say ‘Dance Stance’ and
‘Geno’ are the best two opening vinyl slabs from any band since
‘Anarchy…’ and ‘God Save The Queen’). From whatever vantage
“This might be the last interview point he was peering, the boy definitely did look at Johnny, but he
soon turned the other way; he has no admiration for the sound
we do. We’re totally disillusioned business sense of bands like The Fall and Public Image.

with the press” Kevin Rowland “I don’t think they have. Have they? I don’t know, I never read
their interviews. Perhaps I should. But it sounds pretty much like
rock and roll to me, what they do, it’s got its roots in rock. The
Sex Pistols were a real Chuck Berry band like the Stones. Anyway,
“I think they’ve built up this black and white world where Public Image are signed to Virgin – that’s a big capitalist label.”
everyone hates Nazis, likes Joe Strummer, eats brown rice, rebels Ouch! But you record for EMI.
against their parents, takes speed and doesn’t smoke dope. They “The reason we signed with EMI was because they’ve got
totally believe in it, they’re engrossed by it. The most depressing absolutely no image and our group’s got a very strong image.
thing is that now bands have come along and geared themselves to We’ve got total control at EMI. We could have had our own
it. Bands have responded to the press and the press are loving it. label but there seemed to be no point. We signed for an advance
NME 26 JUNE 1982 PAGE 25
“The thing is, this world isn’t so black and white. It’s a lot more of £10,000 and we had to hustle for that, they asked for specific
complicated than the press see it. They don’t do nearly enough, they DEXYS breakdowns of how the money would be spent. We lost £4,000 on
don’t live in the right places and they don’t do the right things. They MIDNIGHT the tour and even before it began we had incurred loads of bills.”
RUNNERS
should have a lot more people going round researching to find out COME ON EILEEN
‘Geno’ got to Number One just because it’s as crisp and clear as
what is really happening. Mercury
an icebreaker, not just because it’s an affectionate salutation to the
“This might be the last interview we do actually.” Ever since I claimed their most underrated musician Kevin Rowland ever had the pleasure
Why? LP was the greatest thing to see (three times, actually). Dexys put it over in a way that makes
in all of the world I’ve
“We’re just totally disillusioned with the press. We’ve never been secretly avoiding
you believe their love, their respect, is very real indeed. Obviously
really been represented properly. If we’re not represented this time Dexys Midnight Runners they are starting to influence others.
it’ll be the last one.” for fear that I might be “I’d like to see the charts filled with soul, loads of feeling
Maybe Dexys are being standoffish, but maybe they’re just being confronted with the lie, everywhere. I mean other people can have their musical choice
but this single comes as a
strong – and God knows, that is a very valuable commodity. shock. ‘Come On Eileen’
and exist but soul hasn’t been around at all. I just think, I really
I ramble out a question asking them how much loyalty they owe is good enough to give believe in my heart that rock and roll music is a spent creative
to these kids, noting how groups with lots of members seem to them another Number force, totally.”
attract many youngsters who can identify with a crowd of jostling One record. It’s spry and
merry, cobbled together
bodies onstage. with fine-plucked
I left Dexys feeling that they were a bunch of weirdos, but when
“Yeah, from our point of view they certainly do. But before we mandolins, sawn fiddles I thought about it for a while they began to appear a lot less weird
go any further I want to say this: we’re not going to start fucking and tack piano and still and a lot more sensible. I certainly wouldn’t worry too much
preaching about what we’re going to do. We’re not going to be like retains that ‘Geno’ style about not being able to comprehend the totality of the group. I’d
Northern soul refrain
The Clash or any of those other arseholes that say, ‘We’re going to for the chorus. Here is
much prefer to listen to their records or see them onstage, because
do this for the kids, we’ve gotta responsibility to the kids’ or ‘We’re the liveliest and freshest that’s where they work out: with sass, with swing and with soul.
going to get a place for bands to rehearse and give all our money back sound on a Britsh 45 this Ah yes, soul. It’s what we’re talking about! S-O-U-L. Soul! Soul?
to the kids’. We’re not going to say anything like that and then turn week. Folky rather than It’s impossible to define. I find it in music that Kevin Rowland
funky. Why does that last
around six months’ time and not do them. We’ve got really strong sentence worry me?
finds redundant. It’s a universal quality that applies to all great
plans on what we want to do, much much more sincere and much music. I hear it in Public Image, I hear it in Joy Division and bless
REDFERNS

Danny Baker
more useful than anything The Clash have even talked about. my cotton socks if I don’t hear it in Dexys.

136 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 NME ORIGINALS 137
TLFeBOOK

STATE OF THE ART
Q
uestion: if Horn is the heart of The Art Of
Noise, who are the noise, ears, brain,
neck, elbows, legs and big toes?
Answer: JJ Jeczalik, Gary
Langan and Ann Dudley,
the production team who
worked with Trevor Horn
on Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Duck Rock’. Zang! Zang! Zang! go
The Art Of Noise were responsible for the
opening shot in the Zang Tumb Tuum label’s Lynden Barber’s art-strings as
campaign of action: a voluptuous and frequently
vociferous offering that simultaneously a) he meets pop cryptographers
avoided the single/12-inch single/album format,
b) instituted a re-ordering of sound quite unlike
any other, and c) reached Number One in the US
The Art Of Noise
dance charts.
In England some would call it a crock of crap,
but me, I liked it. Several months after its inception,
‘Into Battle’ after its recent sibling ‘Beatbox’ stand as
two of the most appealing visionary records of the past six
months. A bom-bom dance beat fabricated from the human
voice, car ignition motors performing paradiddles, blown-across
milk bottles (a sonata of sour cream?) and the scarcely-noticed
incidents of domestic life became part of pop, the fabric of a new
rock’n’roll… or you could point to the funk and say it was soul.
138N MN EM EO ROIRGIIGNIANLASL S
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TLFeBOOK
i
Z
s for ...
MM 19 MAY 1984 PAGE 34
Who cares? What the music is doesn’t matter so much as
what the music isn’t. There is always a joy to be had from
the uncovering of the new, the glimpse of the unseen,
and while The Art Of Noise, like most developments
in popular music, do not spring from nothing, it’s
their fresh way of dealing with materials, ideas
and even clichés we already know backwards
from some other context that gives them their
dynamic thrust.
TAON toy with sounds, toss them back and
forth across the studio, indulge themselves in
the wonders of studio technology for the pure
sake of discovery. It’s a music that takes itself
seriously and wears a smile at the same time,
wandering through the blurred border regions
between parody and tribute to throw forward an
intriguing sense of ambiguity.
Albert Goldman had an astute insight into the
workings of innovation in pop culture when he wrote the
following about the early Sun period Elvis Presley: “During
these years he used his talent to create a music that was essentially
playful and parodistic. Approaching the pop song in this spirit, he
established the basic aesthetic for rock’n’roll. Rock is not simply
an amalgam of blues, country, pop, etc. This is to define it by its
sources and substances instead of its soul.

“The important thing is to recognise that the root of rock is the
put-on and the take-off.”
In Sarm West, the west London recording studio owned by
Trevor Horn and his wife/business partner Jill Sinclair, appointed
press handler Paul Morley leans forward to consider the words.
To ensure objectivity he hasn’t been told who wrote them or who
they are about. He’s simply been asked if they could fruitfully be
applied to the TAON.
“Yeah, I’d certainly agree with the put-on and the take-off bit.
That’s been a very important element of what we do in this blue
building. Parody… you see, people always accuse what we do of
being serious. The people who accuse you of being intellectual are
usually the ones who are taking you seriously and don’t see what
you’re trying to do is put-on and take-off.”
This is not to be the usual ‘band interview’, as the presence
of Morley obviously signifies. Jeczalik turns up towards the end
but by then the most interesting ground’s already been covered.
Far from reflecting some awkwardness or casual perversity, the
TAON’s “anonymous” image is deliberately planned. The style
of their photographs (no faces shown, often no bodies shown)
mirrors a profile kept carefully in the shadows.
Morley, former pet enfant terrible on the NME and now a
member of the ZTT board, assumes the role of thinker, schemer.
If Horn is the heart of The Art Of Noise, Morley’s the dreamer. As
a writer whose prose finally degenerated into a tediously obscure
form of self-indulgence, it’s interesting to find that in person
he’s lucid and direct. He virtually interviews himself, gabbling
through his ideas at a furious number of words per minute.
The Art Of Noise came together during the time when
McLaren wasn’t in the studio for the recording of ‘Duck Rock’,
he explains. Horn, Fairlight operator Jeczalik, engineer Langan
and classically-trained musician Dudley would mess around in
the studio, come up with odd combinations of sound.
“And then, because we wanted to develop the unit, the fifth
part became… not necessarily me, but the record label, in a
way, they became the frame so that the TAON didn’t become an
anonymous, nonsensical thing. Instead of McLaren it was ZTT
who gave it shape and content.
“I hated the stereotypical notion of the pop group, and what
we’ve tried to do with everything we’ve signed – though it wasn’t
so obvious with Frankie – was a unit of communication that
wasn’t ‘the pop group’ or ‘the rock group’, because it seemed the
very format was stifling the amount of creativity or invention that
could come through. So TAON was set up as a kind of innovative
idea to the group.
“At the moment there’s a demand for the instant hit and we
wanted to try and generate the kind of patience there used to be
once upon a time where a record label was interested enough in
the music of the group – as banal as that sounds – to encourage
them to find out themselves.”
Morley speaks of “dredging up” the European tradition and
applying it to “a pop context”. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising;
the style of ZTT’s sleevenotes is obviously inspired by the Italian
futurist manifestos, and I’ve always suspected he’d defend the
more outrageous excesses of his pickled prose with
Propaganda:
ZTT’s Teutonic
street preachers
REX FEATURES/TIM JARVIS
Zang Tumb Tuum Z
TAON white out
and (below)
Queen of Noise
Anne Dudley
references to the absurdism and desire to shock of the Dadaists.
An inkling that turns out to be not so far from the truth.
The European-ness of ZTT’s Propaganda is obvious, the
Teutonic flavour of their ‘Dr Mabuse’ underlined by the echoes of
German expressionism in the video. But what about TAON?
“In a way, they are raiding the 20th Century, in terms of it
being an incredible century in terms of what’s happened, in terms
of discovery, and combat, the fury of the century, the tension of it.
“Rock groups seem to borrow from within a very
specific era, so it just gets weaker until it disappears
in a puff of Howard Jones” Paul Morley
Rock groups just seem to borrow from within a very specific era
for their stuff, so it gets weaker and weaker until it just disappears
into a puff of Howard Jones.”
What comes across with great strength from TAON is the
sense of breeziness, of curiosity. Some of the greatest music arises
not from a pre-planned scheme or genius-like vision but from
the natural instinct of inquisitiveness. Modern studio technology
possesses a mind-boggling capacity for creation if put into the
hands of those who hunger for exploration, invention and fun.
“That’s the point,” says Morley. “There’s no need to go in with
any plan, it just comes up. It’s an accidental music. I agree with
you. I can’t understand how when you review the singles you get
90 singles, why 89 are so awful… because that beautiful room in
there (he points towards the studio) is gorgeous.
“Anyone who has any dedication to what they do, any creative
MM 27 OCTOBER 1984 PAGE 26
energy, can not go into a room like that and come out with some
THE ART
OF NOISE awful record. I don’t know what happens. TAON records sound
CLOSE (TO THE EDIT) like they’ve been made in that kind of room, whereas you hear
ZTT
Howard Jones or Nik Kershaw or the Thompson Twins, it sounds
Twelve bar blues taken like it was made in a mental hospital or something. It’s almost as
to its illogical extreme. if they’re scared of that room.”
Good farting noises
on it. I’m sure it’ll be
Hearing such wonderfully wicked vitriol, I could almost
a hit, but what does it forgive Morley for making Haircut 100 respectable. I’ve always
mean? It also wins the felt that Morley’s sloppily defined new-pop ethic helped pave the
award for the most way for the new-MOR, in the same way that Callaghan’s social-
pretentious sleevenotes
of the week, if not the
service-cutting Labour government softened people up for the
century. Trevor Horn is Tory onslaught. Those who sow should reap, you might say.
an excellent producer Me? OK, I forgive. Bitching between writers is like a couple
but there’s something arguing over who didn’t put the cat out in front of their friends.
about the karma of ZTT
And quite frankly, that was then but this is now.
which annoys me. This
pretentious veil they The final word goes to Morley: “Our idea is that we want to
wrap themselves in – I circulate and manipulate but based on inspiration, based on
don’t think they need it. something with imagination. I don’t know why. The ’70s was
Helen Terry
dominated by ageing hippies, maybe I’m just an ageing punk.”
NME ORIGINALS 139
TLFeBOOK
 From ABC to the Thompson Twins – not forgetting Kid
Creole & The Coconuts – here are the remaining
31 singles that soundtracked a decade of dancing

The Associates
prepare to deliver
NME 8 MAY 1982 PAGE 12
their budget
statement
ABC
THE LOOK OF LOVE
Vertigo

Make no mistake, The

Golden Age Of Pop, long
thought to be extinct
(especially by old men
who want you to believe
their youth was better
than yours) is getting a
recall. From its opening
crescendo – the sax wail,
the gorgeous vocals, NME 22 AUGUST 1981 PAGE 27 MM 7 NOVEMBER 1981 PAGE 14
the impeccable string
ALTERED BLUE RONDO
arrangement and the
IMAGES A LA TURK
raw-boned soulful
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME AND MR SANCHEZ
message it emotes – Epic Diable Noir
‘The Look Of Love’ has a
power and a momentum Light and dizzy, dubby So the Young Turks
which reminds me why dance tune spread too finally make their vinyl
I started listening to thinly over a 12-inch. debut. After months of
music in the first place. Nevertheless, the rumour about style and
ABC are bringing it all glinting guitars and trouser widths, here they
back, the electric feeling Clare’s airy warble make are. A fiery Latin opus
that comes when you a mix that still sparkles which throbs along and
first lose your virginity to with a fresh and childish passes the time happily.
pop music. Listen to that charm. On the B-side Easily as good as the last
closing coda – everyone Altered Images’ eerie Kid Creole single.
pulling together to reach innocence and menthol Nostradamus
a collective climax, a clarity nake a fragile Sutherland predicts
summer celebration delight of ‘So We Go this’ll be Number One
that comes from only Whispering’. A record in a month. Could
the best performances. that’s only slightly be – I’d just prefer
REX FEATURES/REDFERNS

ABC ready for

Make no mistake ‘The marred by a sly and something there with
another night at
Look Of Love’ is a great, mannered ‘Jeepster’ more substance and less
School Disco
great record. on the end. reliance on fashion.
Gavin Martin Lynn Hanna Patrick Humphries

140N MN EM EO ROIRGIIGNIANLASL S
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TLFeBOOK
MM 20 FEBRUARY 1982 PAGE 12
THE ASSOCIATES
PARTY FEARS TWO
Associates
Sometimes what you
hear when the pin hits
the plastic is so much
more than mere words
and music that it makes
you wonder why the
other millions all bother.
The Associates have
been doing this for
more than a year now,
painstakingly, intuitively
constructing vinyl
works which know no
cultural nor reverential
bounds. I call them
“works” because that’s
what they are – unique
masterpieces perfectly
flawed between
idiosyncracy and
expectation.
‘Party Fears Two’ is
a paean to the pleasure
and pitfalls of booze and
their most cunning stab
yet at perverting our pop
charts for good.
The motif sounds
like Motown nostalgia
meets Holiday ’82 and
the lyrics begin how they
mean to go on: “I’ll have
a shower/And then phone
my brother up”.
The diary of a jock star
still in his pants? Need
I say more? OK – buy!
Steve Sutherland
MM 3 APRIL 1982 PAGE 27
BANANARAMA
& FUN BOY
THREE
REALLY SAYING
SOMETHING
Deram
Funboys, j’accuse:
you only enlisted the
Bananaramas ’cos
you wanted to see
’em peeling off their
pyjamas, right?
They’re nice looking
girls, and you don’t
make any bones about
the fact that two thirds
of you hadn’t heard
them when you invited
them to sing on your
last record.
Yup, the Fun Boy
Three’s radical mask
sure has slipped some.
Physical appearances
must be the sole
cause for hire, ’cos it’s
becoming increasingly
obvious that the
Bananas CANNOT
SING FOR TOFFEE.
Three voices get
boring without a hint
of harmony, whatever
the quality of the vocal
chords (and here it’s
low, so low); this version
of a song by Motown’s
Velvelettes suffers
accordingly. Great tune,
gels, but remember, it
ain’t what you do, it’s the
way that you do it.
Lynden Barber
Bananarama:
Can’t sing for
toffee, apparently
TLFeBOOK
NME 12 JULY 1980 PAGE 23
BOW WOW
WOW
C30 C60 C90 GO
EMI
Malcolm McLaren
returns with all his
situationist instincts
intact, sticking a knife
in the music industry
where it hurts the most.
And the biggest joke of
all is – it’s a great record,
and would be even
if it was about stamp
collecting.
‘C30 C60 C90 Go’ is,
of course, a hymn of
praise to the economical
joys of home-taping:
the singer runs riot
through lines like “A
bip bam boogie an’
a boogarooga/My
cassette’s just like a
bazooka!” while her
ex-Ants back-up thrash
out an arrangement so
minimal it barely exists,
being in the main no
more than breathless
jungle percussion. It
works magnificently,
thanks to the sheer spirit
of a fanaticism which
seems to have gripped
everyone involved.
An instant classic, but
of course; and all that
remains to be seen is
whether we’ll be allowed
to hear it.
It would, of course,
be absurd to recommend
that you actually buy this
record – and yet illegal to
suggest that you obtain
it by any other means…
And talking of the
Sex Pistols, which we
weren’t…
Paul Du Noyer
Bow Wow Wow
go wild in a
photographers’
studio
NME 16 JANUARY 1982 PAGE 17
BOW WOW
WOW
GO WILD IN THE
COUNTRY
RCA
Meanwhile, back at
Ambridge, the simple
village folk wonder
about the roots of the
mysterious stranger with
the ginger afro who has
moved into Rhubarb
Cottage. Bow Wow Wow
get back to the land via
a tow-rope to Ipi Tombi.
At muck-spreading time
the villagers call at the
cottage and request
copies of Bow Wow Wow
records to melt down
and put to work.
Of course, anyone
who puts the word wild
in their title is invariably
too tame to live – look at
the scurvied HM hordes
of Generation X. No, don’t
look at them like that!
Now they’re coming over!
If ever there was a
pretty little thing who
should have made it big
was Annabella, but now
I fear it is too late for her
to follow my superior
suggestions for career
opportunities – two
years ago I advised her
to audition for Grange
Hill, where ethnic cuties
are always welcome.
Along with the public
information films they
show in school advising
kids not to get into old
men’s cars, they should
have shown Annabella a
film advising her not to
let an old man get into
her career.
Julie Burchill
NME 19 MAY 1984 PAGE 22
BRONSKI BEAT
SMALLTOWN BOY
London
Poignancy is a
dangerous game for
pop to flirt with: that
particular, painful
enjoyment, and acid
pleasure. Most of
the manufactured
heartbreak in pop is
kind of empty nostalgia.
Real poignancy is rare:
bitter consequences to
playing the game, or the
sting of being cruel to be
kind. ‘Smalltown Boy’,
a song about leaving
home, constructs a
poignancy that can
almost be touched.
The sound of
the record is tactile,
synthetic but cushioned,
somehow warm
– a humanised, youthful
translation of Moroder.
The singing, a choirboy’s
falsetto, matches exactly
the quavering strength
that the song seems
to stand in. There are
beautiful melodies to
spare. Miraculously,
it takes nine minutes
to run its course and
there are no discomix
longeurs in the telling.
It gathers speed as a
motive gathers certainty,
turning and running
away. A courageous
and understanding
piece of music – and
something irresistibly,
helplessly young.
Richard Cook
NME 30 AUGUST 1986 PAGE 14
CAMEO
WORD UP
Club
Larry Blackman and
Co stroll in with huge
moustaches, a glance
back to The Gap Band,
and those characteristic
funk moans that curdle
into a wonderful honky
tonk sneer. Exercising
their usual skill, the
urban warriors here are
driving, lascivious and
rhythmically hard.
Lucy O’Brien
NME ORIGINALS 141
 80 Singles From The ’80s
Dollar: makers
of “the best
record Abba
never made”
MM 10 NOVEMBER 1984 PAGE ??
DEAD OR ALIVE
YOU SPIN ME ROUND
(LIKE A RECORD)
Epic
One of the biggest
difficulties with
reviewing records in
the privacy of your own
bedroom is the fact
that you tend to miss
out on the dancefloor
atmosphere so essential
to quite a few of the
week’s new releases.
It would be so much
better if we could all get
kitted out for the night
with flashing lights, a
giveaway leotard, half
naked waiters, and a
truly massive sound
system. None of this,
however, applies to
Dead Or Alive’s new
single, which would
REX FEATURES/REDFERNS
have severe difficulty
in getting the average
human being out of bed
in the morning.
Barry McIiheney
142 NME ORIGINALS
MM 1 JUNE 1985 PAGE 27
FINE YOUNG
CANNIBALS
JOHNNY COME
HOME
London
It was their supremely
confident Tube video
that first carried the Fine
Young Cannibals into
view. London won the
race and ‘Johnny Come
Home’ is just wonderful.
It’s close, in essence, to
the 2 Tone ska-gala of
The Beat – remember
that Andy Cox and
David Steel were guitar
and bass behind that
band. New boy Roland
Gift has a voice that
evokes a reaction
and there’s real soul
to be mined here,
but one aligned to a
contemporary British
standpoint. FYC are
immediately important.
Johnny – come on home,
won’t you?
Martin Aston
TLFeBOOK
NME 7 NOVEMBER 1981 PAGE 21
DOLLAR
MIRROR MIRROR
WEA
The positive pop fan’s
answer to Buck’s Fizz,
Dollar make records
which fulfil their
functions with ease.
Trevor Horn’s production
does much the same for
the smart blonde duo
as Martin Rushent has
done for Altered Images.
‘Mirror Mirror’ is the best
record Abba never made.
Gavin Martin
MM 30 OCTOBER 1982 PAGE 23
A FLOCK OF
SEAGULLS
WISHING (IF I HAD
A PHOTOGRAPH
OF YOU)
Jive
If I was 14 and madly
in love I’d sit at home
and play it all day and
cry my eyes out. Pure
melancholia for the
lovelorn. Sad lyrics
and sweet melody in
an electro-pop vein
combine to produce a
great pop song.
Caroline Harper
NME 15 OCTOBER 1983 PAGE 15
GRANDMASTER
& MELLE MEL
WHITE LINES (DON’T
DON’T DO IT)
Sugarhill/PRT
‘The Message’ cast a
shadow over modern soul
that it’s still not come to
terms with. The sad thing
is that Flash was as much
at a loss as everyone else
as to how it should be
followed up. This – with
a backing track as dull
as dishwater – is a drug
Roland Gift
of FIne Young song. It’s no ‘King Heroin’,
Cannibals: it’s… Grandmaster Trash
soul miner and The Spurious Jive!
Gavin Martin
NME 30 OCTOBER 1982 PAGE 23
GRANDMASTER
FLASH & THE
FURIOUS FIVE
THE MESSAGE
Sugarhill
‘The Message’ is one
of the most mesmeric
records you’re likely to
hear. Ever.
‘The Message’ is
part of a great tradition
in black music which
thrives on alertness and
prides itself on morality
and strength. As an
incisive contemporary
overview on the inner-
city malaise it is without
parallel and combines
the breakdancing teams
presently setting New
York alight to make a
truly potent upheaval
of the soul tradition.
And when you compare
the sass and conviction
of this to any of our
homegrown pork pie and
pint punk poets or so-
called mobile, energetic
new pop groups you get
the impression some
people aren’t telling the
truth. Get ‘The Message’?
Gavin Martin
NME 4 MAY 1985 PAGE 17
PAUL
HARDCASTLE
19
Chrysalis
Some of last year’s very
best vinyl moments – ‘No
Sell Out’, ‘Strike’, the
Ronnie Raygun/Patrick
Allen bits of Frankie
– were those that spliced
up real voices with The
Funk. Britfunk vet Paul
Hardcastle’s new record
is the latest of that
sequence.
Over a sprightly
synth bass, a variety
of voxes – combatants
and commemorates
– spell out with terrifying
economy some of the
obscenities that were
and are the American
experience of Vietnam.
It’s a brilliant exercise
in soundscaping and a
jarring, lest we forget,
anti-war statement. You
should hear it.
Danny Kelly
MM 10 OCTOBER 1981 PAGE 23 NME 26 JUNE 1982 PAGE 25 NME 15 JANUARY 1983 PAGE 15

HAIRCUT ONE HAYSI HAYSI

HUNDRED FANTAYZEE FANTAYZEE
FAVOURITE SHIRTS JOHN WAYNE IS SHINY SHINY
(BOY MEETS GIRL) BIG LEGGY Regard

Arista Regard
HF are smart because
Incorporating touches The single of the trite they’re Number One
of salsa and rap into poster campaign. Two in countries whose
one gloriously cohesive and a half modern teenagers can still afford
whole, the Haircuts day hippies – white, to buy records. Smart
deliver a dancefloor dreadlocks, big brimmed because they appeal
beauty of furious hats, odd clothes in straight over our heads
frenetic funk, belied by curtain patterns, no to Eurokids who come
the singer’s innocent socks – try to foist to London in search of
vocals. There’s some another “amalgam of artful dreadies while we
great horn work around dance influences” onto look to gaunt German
the middle followed by a us. The song should technicians to conjure
steamy sax solo. be free and crazy the real post-EEC
Just another example but actually sounds Europa. They’re even
of how rock’s main winsome and windy. smart enough for Clive
centre has been totally (Note for fanzines: when Langer, who is clearly
destroyed leaving space interviewing Haysi quite happy to move
for everything to come Fantayzee ask them from the melancholy
through. Which is why what the title means. ‘Shipbuilding’ to this
Heaven 17 never
this will make the old How did it come about? nonsense nursery
liked to miss
guard throw up their Was there ever another ditty. ‘Battle Hymns For
an episode of
hands in despair. mix? Stuff like that…) Children Singing’, the
Grange Hill
Paolo Hewitt Danny Baker title of a forthcoming LP,
signifies the dawn of the
post-McLaren age.
Barney Hoskyns

NME 28 FEBRUARY 1981 PAGE 19

HEAVEN 17
MM 9 APRIL 1983 PAGE 22
(WE DON’T NEED
THIS) FASCIST HEAVEN 17
GROOVE THANG TEMPTATION
Virgin Virgin

If Euro-funk activism is Just when you thought

to have any meaning,
then its exponents (DAF,
ACR) must be prepared
to point the finger as
uncompromisingly as
they kick ass – Heaven
17 do both with a
vengeance. That’s
a mite surprising,
considering they’re
basically ex-Human
Leaguers Ian Marsh
and Martyn Ware, plus
vocalist Glenn Gregory.
But where the League
got lost in a fantasy
world of ’50s science
fiction movies and ’60s
trash aesthetics, Heaven
17 have absorbed the
grittier language and
spunk of funk. It’s a
language suited to this
part poker-faced, part-
serious call to arms (roll
call in the disco). The
message, simply put, is:
it’s their party, dance if
you don’t want it and
sing: “WE DON’T NEED
Haysi Fantayzee THIS FASCIST GROOVE
put the fun back THANG” Fabulous.
in pop in 1982 Chris Bohn
‘Penthouse And
Pavement’ was a fluke…
Heaven 17 are back.
And lets hope they
stop farting around
with aberrations like
that absurd ‘Music Of
Quality And Distinction’
project, which threatens
to turn them into the
’80s equivalent of Lou
Reizner. On this 12-inch
“special dance mix” there
are three tracks – two
of them (‘Temptation’
and ‘We Live So Fast’)
demon, and one (‘Who’ll
Stop The Rain’) dodgy.
‘Temptation’ throbs with
exhilarating ferocity,
with guest singer
Carol Kenyon wailing
furiously above the 17
production machine
to deliver the coup de
grace. It doesn’t have the
political overtones that
made radio producers go
running to Bucks Fizz but
should be sufficient to
send them back into the
front line.
Colin Irwin

NME ORIGINALS 143

TLFeBOOK
 Something about Eurythmics

NME 12 MARCH 1983 PAGE 17 NME 20 NOVEMBER 1982 PAGE 27

NEW ORDER MALCOM

BLUE MONDAY
Factory
A doctor writes; over
ze years a silly story
has grown up about
Sweden being the
suicide capital of the
world. Zis is obviously a
fib since such countries
as Japan, Austria and
Hungary consistently
Kid Creole and score much higher in the
his lovely bunch self-immolation stakes.
of Coconuts Ze story obviously stems
from a sad episode that
happened on a Swedish
campus in the ’50s; a
record from America,
a black blues record
called ‘Blue Monday’,
was a big hit at this
particular university
– and one weekend, six
students of assorted
sexes killed themselves
while playing this record
in their separate rooms.
‘Blue Monday’ – they
obviously felt alienated
as all hell and just
couldn’t face another
week of alone-ness. They
also had had broken
hearts recently. This is
all true. And this isn’t
it – it’s a bit like Harold
Robbins writing a book
called War And Peace.
‘Blue Monday Mark 2’ is a
moody Papist chant, for
all you litlle Damiens out
King: hair today, there who like that sort
gone tomorrow of thing.
Julie Burchill
McCLAREN AND
THE WORLD’S
FAMOUS
SUPREME TEAM
BUFFALO GALS
Charisma
In which Talcy and
producer Trevor Horn
merge the blueprints
of rap tracks like Flash’s
‘Wheels Of Steel’, Soul
Sonic Force’s ‘Planet
Rock’ and The Disco
Four’s ‘Barnyard Rock’
to come up with a
bewildering debut
disc that is impossible
to take seriously but
even harder to ignore
completely.
“Take your honey
by the hands and
promenade the hall”,
he intones deadpan
over the scratch and cut
backbone of the song
before an unidentified
rapper intervenes to
inject some real spunk
into the track.
A preview of the
man’s forthcoming
album of rehashed folk
dances from around
the world, ‘Buffalo
Gals’ is the week’s most
gimmicky single but
also one of its funniest.
We await the sight of
Malcolm demonstrating
the square dance on
Top Of The Pops with
baited breath.
Adrian Thrills

NME 28 APRIL 1984 PAGE 20

KING
MM 4 OCTOBER 1980 PAGE 19
MM 24 APRIL 1982 PAGE 23 LOVE & PRIDE
CBS
ORCHESTRAL
KID CREOLE Guess who I saw the MANOEUVRES
AND THE other night? Perry IN THE DARK
COCONUTS Haines, architect of new ENOLA GAY
I’M A WONDERFULL youth fashion mobility
Dindisc

THING – and there he was

ZE
The human interface
propping up the bar, between electronics
“An intimate midnight looking for all the world and pop. Wry, oddly
delight,” opines August like an ex-Groundhogs touching, Orchestral
Darnell’s tailor, P roadie. Well, everybody’s Manoeuvres stride
REX FEATURES/REDFERNS/LFI/CORBIS/URBAN IMAGE

Hewitt Esq. For you, got a right to express forward with confidence
but not for me, pal. their individuality!! and a sure sense of
Suave Latinos smooth This is the group Perry their own identity.
round dancefloors has been hawking The melody’s soft,
and fail to convince around town for the reassuring, carried
me that there’s any past few years. It’s by the synthesizer
heart beneath the gormless, ascetic, over stream and Andy
flash clothes. Music for busy London club-goers’ McCluskey’s effectively OMD: jumper-
mannequins. dance music. downbeat vocal. wearers of the
Patrick Humphries Gavin Martin Allan Jones year, 1980

144 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
MM 25 FEBRUARY 1984 PAGE 22
SCRITTI POLITTI
WOOD BEEZ (PRAY
LIKE ARETHA FRANKLIN)
Virgin
Signed by Virgin for
a sum that probably
caused an outbreak of
severe heart tremors at
the local branch of the
Nat West when he tried
to cash his advance,
Green returns to active
duty with an elaborate
conceit bordering on
a grand folly. This is
the kind of modern
funk David Bowie
probably thought he
was delivering on ‘Let’s
Dance’. Ignore its more
sweeping pretensions,
though and be seduced
by its sway, its audacity
and ironic charm.
I fear it will only
exasperate the chaps
at Broadcasting House,
however, so its chances
of enlivening the
nation’s airwaves may be
dangerously restricted.
Allan Jones
MM 24 MAY 1986 PAGE 31
PET SHOP BOYS
OPPORTUNITIES
(LET’S MAKE LOTS OF
MONEY)
Parlophone
This is the story of two
kids on a pop YTS course,
who search for cash to
fill their colostomy bag,
but finish their scheming
with more effluence
than affluence. The duo
now have a Number One
in the States to match
lines like, “I’ve got the
brains, you’ve got the
looks/ Let’s make lots of
money”. If you can’t fake
sincerity then use fake
sincerity and try to make
corrupt strategy a virtue
to behold.
There’s no need to
go back to the drawing
board. The cracking
and groaning you can
hear throughout the
record is the sound of
Neil Tennant flogging a
dead horse, followed by
a pathetic sigh of dismay.
Ted Mico
NME 13 APRIL 1985 PAGE 17 NME 12 NOVEMBER 1983 PAGE 20
SIMPLE MINDS THOMPSON
DON’T YOU FORGET TWINS
ABOUT ME HOLD ME NOW
Virgin Arista
The band that all but Thompson Twins… how
disappeared in the NME did it happen? Can we
readers’ poll return with blame Sadkin? Sadkin
a swirling rock anthem. is beginning to pull out
But where they once of the Twins’ playroom –
painted a misty canvas of he’s credited on the label,
European romanticism, but not on the sleeve,
Simple Minds now which means someone
conjure up an image of forgot he turned up.
heads bobbing in an With or without him the
American stadium. Twins pull out two of the
This single is taken nine stops available to
from the film soundtrack them. Are they capable of
of The Breakfast Club. pulling out all the stops?
When one considers If I knew what that meant
that the core of the I would tell you. This is
group – Kerr, Burchill, certainly the first Twins
Forbes and McNeill bit that hasn’t made me
– have been together for scream in fright – don’t
eight years, it is hardly the Twins scare you? Oh
surprising that singer you’re lucky. With this
and musicians strike single, not only is Sadkin
up a rare empathy in disappearing but also the
their performance, the music. There’s not much
soaring voice gliding left: the music disappears
Sade: forehead nimbly through the until all that’s remaining
and shoulders cloudily-hewn rock mix. is the cartoon, the locks,
above the rest Adrian Thrills the pigtail, the peaked
hat. A pop joke. Or would
it be satire?
Paul Morley
MM 15 SEPTEMBER 1984 PAGE 27
SADE
MM 6 JUNE 1981 PAGE 24
SMOOTH OPERATOR
THE Epic
PSYCHEDELIC The feline latin pulse is
FURS very nice, and so is the
PRETTY IN PINK greasy introductory
CBS
saxophone. Sade also Thompson Twins:
Successfully picking the sings quite a bit better hoping the
lock to your mind, the than pop stars are ginger mullet will
Furs tumble in and leave supposed to, and fits have a comeback
their muddy boot prints herself aptly into an
everywhere. No matter arrangement featuring
how hard you scrub swishing strings. As the
those marks just won’t five-and-a-half minutes
go away. of ‘Smooth Operator’
‘Pretty In Pink’ drift to a close, the
haunts; floating on band kick into a piece
long after the turntable called ‘Red Eye’, which
has rumbled to a halt, provides scope for
whether it be the terse what I believe jazzers
but amiable chorus, might term “a blow”
the cross patch of tinkly (Piano, sax, percussion
and dirty six strings, etc). This lot are too
or the big splashes of pop-minded to be really
sound from the Steve driven by demons and
Lillywhite production. their playing is stodgy.
Something sticks. However, they have
The inspiration is time on their side, as the
’60s, the execution saying goes. Sade and
’80s, and from all the co certainly aren’t bad
contrasts comes a people to have around
in this age of plastic food Simple Minds:
cool, neatly rounded
and music to match. we didn’t forget
rock song.
Adam Sweeting about them
Paul Colbert
NME ORIGINALS 145
TLFeBOOK
 OMETHING
W YOU ’RES
“YOU KNO D YOU LOOK LIKE
SPECIAL AN BEST”
E
YOU’RE TH , ‘RIO’
N
DURAN DURA
Boys on film: John Taylor
and the editor pose for
TOM SHEEHAN

photographer Tom Sheehan,

Montserrat, summer 1983

EDITORIAL 25th Floor, King’s Reach Tower, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LS EDITOR Steve Sutherland ART EDITOR Jimmy Young (020 7261 7379) PICTURE EDITOR Monica
Chouhan (020 7261 5245) CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Nathaniel Cramp (020 7261 7613) EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Elizabeth Curran (020 7261 6036) EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS Susan
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