Comprising of Steve Hovington (vocals + bass), Paul Statham (guitar), Rick Holliday (keyboards), and Graham Boffey (drums), Mansfield quartet B-MOVIE are most often associated with being part of the Some Bizzare stable managed by futurist DJ Stevo Pearce which also included SOFT CELL and THE THE. They had all appeared on the ‘Some Bizarre Album’ compiled by Stevo which also showcased DEPECHE MODE and BLANCMANGE.
Phonogram Records wanted to sign B-MOVIE so Stevo insisted on a 2-for-1 deal which included SOFT CELL. But their trio of singles from that heady period ‘Remembrance Day’, ‘Marilyn Dreams’ and ‘Nowhere Girl’ failed to breakthrough into the UK Top40 while SOFT CELL hit No1 with ‘Tainted Love’ in 1981 and began an outstanding run of a five Top3 singles into 1982. Ultimately Phonogram and Stevo lost interest in B-MOVIE and an album they were working on was shelved.
A fragmented B-MOVIE led by Hovington and Statham signed to Sire Records and released the album ‘Forever Running’ in 1985 but by then, the magic that had sparked major label interest had fizzled out. B-MOVIE quietly disbanded but in 2004, the original quartet reformed. Despite releasing two new albums ‘The Age of Illusion’ and ‘Climate of Fear’, talk always returned to their Some Bizzare period with demand for its imperial trilogy of singles to be made available in the digital era.
Now in 2025, those three singles, their B-sides and tracks recorded between 1981-1982 for an intended long player have been digitised and restored to create the debut “that never was”. Titled ‘Hidden Treasures’, as well as featuring seven previously unreleased recordings plus ‘Remembrance Day’, ‘Marilyn Dreams’ and ‘Nowhere Girl’ on vinyl, the CD version contains 12” versions, B-sides and ‘Moles’ from the ‘Some Bizarre Album’.
Paul Statham chatted to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about the release of ‘Hidden Treasures’ and revisited this lost chapter of B-MOVIE…
How does it feel to get this excellent album that was recorded 43 years ago out finally? Were there a lot of hoops to jump through in the politics to get it to this point?
We had almost given up of ever getting the original 3 singles of ‘Remembrance Day’, ‘Marilyn Dreams’ and ‘Nowhere Girl’ on any streaming platform as the no one knew who owned them or if they still existed. It was thanks to the diligence of B-MOVIE manager and long-time fan Andy Woods, that he located them and got them returned to us.
It’s a little disconcerting listening back to how we were back then! We had lots of confidence that’s for sure! It’s of its time and we changed nothing and neither added or taken anything away, so it’s like a document or treasure we’ve found that was hidden away, hence the fitting title!
The ‘Hidden Treasures’ title definitely suits the circumstances that it is being released now, but did you have any working titles during its recording?
Normally it’s a song title that could work as an album title, ‘Beginning To Fade’ would have been appropriate!
Was there much tweaking needed on any of the ‘Hidden Treasures’ tracks or are they basically “sold as seen”?
Sold as seen. The initial master tapes were baked, transferred and we luckily had the stereo mixes of most tracks, I believe the song ‘Crowds’ was remixed though.
I’m assuming most of the ‘Hidden Treasures’ was produced by Mike Thorne, but did his commitments to SOFT CELL prompt getting Steve Brown in to produce ‘Nowhere Girl’? As someone who produced ABC’s first single and would later work with WHAM! and THE CULT, how did you choose him? How did his approaches differ from Mike in the studio?
No, Mike only produced ‘Remembrance Day’ and ‘Marilyn Dreams’, the rest were really demos for the band that Andy Dransfield recorded on 8 track at Studio Playground.
I worked again with Mike Thorne on the Peter Murphy album ‘Holy Smoke’ that Mike produced. That was a much longer and involved process as Peter and myself first spent 2 weeks at Mike’s New York studio then a month in England, so I know Mike’s process is very very meticulous, lots of tracking guitars / keyboards and really thinking it through.
The lovely Steve Brown was a funny, sweet man, who unfortunately passed away way too soon. He worked quickly and intuitively, making decisions on the fly and sticking with them. We only really had one day and a night to record Nowhere Girl after a 48-hour drive from Southern Spain where we had just finished our first European Tour. Very hectic, then straight out the studio at 5am to drive to play a Christmas Eve show at Retford Porterhouse! We had lots of energy back then!
As good as it was, ‘Marilyn Dreams’ was less immediate than ‘Remembrance Day’ or ‘Nowhere Girl’… so looking back, was it the best choice as the single between them? Can you remember what the thinking had been behind the decision?
Yes!! After ‘Remembrance Day’, London Records wanted Mike Thorne to produce ‘Nowhere Girl’ as the follow-up. We convinced him to do ‘Marilyn Dreams’ to the record companies’ horror. We were a little naïve but believed in the song. So, a Sliding Doors moment. On the one hand I’d have loved to have heard how Mike Thorne would have produced ‘Nowhere Girl’, but I sort of know. It would have been more electropop and following on from ‘Remembrance Day’ would have probably gone in the Top 40 and given us the hallowed Top Of The Pops… BUT, we would then never had had the magnificent ‘Nowhere Girl’ 12 inch that is surely the definitive version!
The jagged album opener ‘Citizen Kane’ comes over like a cross between THE TEARDROP EXPLODES and ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN, had that “psychedelic” Liverpool Eric’s scene been an influence on B-MOVIE?
It’s more the source of those 2 bands inspiration. We loved THE DOORS and PINK FLOYD as well as ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN, but our sound was also 4 people with diverse tastes and different levels of musicianship. We never followed a ‘plan’ to get to the top. We were considered very wilful individuals, and we played music for ourselves, often extending songs to 10 minutes long. A classic live performance would have been the Futurama Festival were we really jammed out but went down a storm!
‘Polar Opposites’ is included and it’s a great version although I think the John Peel session just edges it, which in your opinion is the definitive version? There have been several versions recorded, was it just a difficult one to nail down?
The John Peel session, 1000%!!
There are some strange guitar parts on this upcoming version that I wouldn’t have played, and it turns out it was Steve who went back in and played over the track. I’ve no idea why but it was 43 years ago!
‘Ice’ is feisty gem of song, can you remember how it come together and why did it not end up on any of the radio sessions you did at the time?
I think it came later, after the Peel Session and the Richard Skinner session. Again, it was us just playing in rehearsal over Steve’s bass line and lyric. We played it live and it always went down a storm
The arrangement of ‘All Fall Down’ is very different to the 1981 John Peel version?
Again, we played it however we felt it at the time. That was probably our downfall commercially as we had no manager invested in us who would ever come to rehearsals, or a bona fide game plan… Stevo was just involved with SOFT CELL, understandably so as they were No1 here and in America, but there was a window for us if we had focused more, partied less and perhaps listened to other people occasionally!
‘Crowds’ was less post-punk and perhaps more of a melodic electronically styled pop song and not dissimilar from say OMD or A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS, how was the band developing musically at this point?
The arrival of Mike Peden on bass was at the time a good idea. It turned out not to be so and signalled the end of the original line-up. We did on this occasion listen to people, just the wrong people with bad advice so we sacked Graham which to me was the biggest mistake we ever made by far! And this sort of fretless bass playing from Peden and a less driving sound that Steve has when he plays bass (he’s actually a top bass player as well as singer!), I’m not a fan of where we went around 1984 onwards
Based on what has been documented on the ‘Remembrance Days’, ‘Radio Days’ and ‘BBC Radio Sessions 1981-84’ CDs, the band were mightily prolific during this period, how would you describe the band’s attitude and drive at this point?
With Martin Smedley on bass and myself playing guitar and keyboards, we formed a B-MOVIE version 2. Steve, Martin and I were re-energised as Mart was a great player and had a real energy. Although we went through other band members like bloody SPINAL TAP. Seymour Stein signed us to Sire. We met Bill Siddons, THE DOORS old manager, as well as Rod Stewart’s manager Arnold Stiefel who told us the Sire album was not up to scratch, he would re-negotiate a new deal (which he was entirely capable of doing) but did we listen? Nope, we went with John Hartman who managed Ringo Starr cos he had a fridge full of beer and had pizzas delivered nightly as we crashed at his LA pad. Turned out it wasn’t even his house, Seymour went ballistic, yelling “that guy still thinks records are played at 78rpm!”…. yep, we failed to notice the gift horse, let alone its mouth.
Is the track listing and running order of ‘Hidden Treasures’ what was intended back in the day or a retrospective selection?
Retrospective. Steve and Andy have been very involved in this, thankfully. I’ve been a little busy of late working with SIMPLE MINDS and a new DARK FLOWERS album plus lots of other things so it’s really down to their tenacity that this album is seeing the light of day
The CD contains bonus tracks in the 12 inch versions and B-sides from the period plus ‘Moles’ from the ‘Some Bizzare Album’, was there any thought to releasing these as part of a double vinyl package or is this something you might be keeping in reserve for Record Store Day?
Ha ha well you never know! There is another album coming out, focusing on the Covid Years! That’s all I’m saying!
How close did what is now ‘Hidden Treasures’ come to being released as the debut B-MOVIE album back in the day, or was it more or less shelved after ‘Nowhere Girl’ failed to get into the Top40?
Shelved. The music industry can be very unforgiving in a short space of time. Stevo wound everyone up but seeing as both SOFT CELL and THE THE had leverage, it was always going to be us who suffered the fall out of his many physical and mental fights with industry bosses. I don’t blame him, they deserved it, and he was a genuine innovator with real passion, but ultimately we paid the price.
As 1982 progressed, there were the inevitable tensions and the band fragmented after the ‘Hidden Treasures’ recordings, are you able to talk about what happened?
As said earlier, influences turned our heads in thinking that a new drummer would somehow aid the new ‘muso’ sound that Mike Peden’s professional session player style required while Rick met Cindy Ecstasy and had SIX SED RED in his mind. I was never involved in the early songwriting so my own position was marginalised, this situation changed after a reset and Steve and myself collaborated on the Sire album ‘Forever Running’ on a lot of the songs,
But then financial reality kicked in and after a revolving door of band members, it was down to Steve and myself to finally admit it had run out of steam. Steve formed ONE and I went to work with Peter Murphy as initially his keyboard player and second guitarist but co-wrote ‘All Night Long’ and ‘Indigo Eyes’ which helped the parent album ‘Love Hysteria’ reach No1 in the Alternative Rock charts prior to the success of follow-up album ‘Deep’.
Most of these songs are previously unreleased and didn’t feature on what eventually became the official B-MOVIE debut album ‘Forever Running’ in 1985… do you think in hindsight you should have carried these songs over to that or did you just want a clean state, for better or worse?
It was necessary to see the trio of Steve, Martin and myself as a new entity. We did a great Kid Jenson session with the 3 of us, I played guitar and keys, Mart played bass and saxophone and Steve sang brilliantly and for a time we felt re energised so again a radio session sounded much more brutal and punky than the eventual album which was watered down by the producer Stephen Stuart Short (again sadly passed away) and after that we all felt a little disillusioned
‘Hidden Treasures’ is equal to the debut albums by your contemporaries TALK TALK, BLANCMANGE and CHINA CRISIS; now this is imagining a “what if?” scenario but if ‘Nowhere Girl’ had been in the Top20 and the album had come out in Autumn 1982, what do think B-MOVIE’s career trajectory might have been?
That’s very kind of you, and yes I think we would have made a classic first album, it would have been spiky and experimental; but I still feel the band would have split after that album, just because we were growing as people and we needed to be able to express ourselves individually.
Do you have any particular favourite track or memory from ‘Hidden Treasures’?
Well, it was a very long time ago and I’ve made a lot of good memories post then. A lot of it I can’t really recall, we liked a drink and often would ferociously do that before recording. I loved the recording of ‘Remembrance Day’ at Scorpio Sound at the top of Tottenham Court Road with Mike Thorne. We spent a lot of time on the tracking of multiple guitar parts and we had Rick playing fantastic piano underneath the track. Also Steve and Graham laid down a fabulous beat and Mike supplied a producer sheen over everything which was extraordinary to what we had previously ever recorded. And I had my first McDonalds which is still there!!
B-MOVIE are playing shows to coincide with the release of ‘Hidden Treasures’, what can people expect, will you be performing the whole album plus the B-sides like ‘Institution Walls’ and ‘Scare Some Life Into Me’?
We have been playing those songs in the set anyway, way before this. We all have different tastes in the band, so we listen to each other when compiling a set list. I’m always pushing for new songs in the set and there will be a few, but overall we tend to look backwards and that is why the set is about 80% of the classic period, but we will be playing some surprise songs from ‘Hidden Treasures’ for sure!
Stevo was not a shy boy in really saying something about how much he hated “Fakkin’ BANANARAMA”, so I think it’s quite amusing that you and Rick ended up writing songs for them…
Ha, I had a ball with Keren and Sara. I think Rick had a song covered by them but I wrote 3 songs with them and those girls were mega fun, drank like mad with wicked senses of humour!
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its grateful thanks to Paul Statham
Additional thanks to Andy Woods at Astradyne Management
Having ended 2024 opening for popular American indie band VAMPIRE WEEKEND at London’s Brixton Academy plus their usual seasonal appearances at The Cavern in Liverpool, 2025 sees CHINA CRISIS busier than ever on the live circuit.
Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon started CHINA CRISIS in 1981; signing to Inevitable Records who launched the careers of WAH! And DEAD OR ALIVE, their debut single ‘African & White’ was championed by John Peel. CHINA CRISIS were picked up by Virgin Records and on the release their first album ‘Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, Some People Think It’s Fun To Entertain’ in 1982, the pair were opening for SIMPLE MINDS with the profile helping to achieve their Top20 breakthrough ‘Christian’.
The second CHINA CRISIS album ‘Working With Fire & Steel – Possible Pop Songs Volume 2’ produced by Mike Howlett spawned their biggest hit single ‘Wishful Thinking’ in 1984. But a fresh approach the following year saw their third album ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ produced by Walter Becker of STEELY DAN fame. With the subsequent tour featuring what is often considered the classic Chinas line-up of Daly and Lundon with Gazza Johnson on bass, the late Kevin Wilkinson on drums and Brian McNeill on keyboards, this most successful of the CHINA CRISIS long players celebrates its 40th Anniversary in 2025.
With show formats ranging from synthpop quartet to full 9 piece band, today the live nucleus includes keyboard player Jack Hymers and saxophonist Eric Animan; the pair were involved in the recent reworks collection ‘China Greatness’ issued on independent label Last Night From Glasgow. It took CHINA CRISIS back into the Top10 of the UK album chart for the first time since 1985.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK had a long entertaining chat with Gary Daly over a game of Vintage Synth Trumps about the workings of CHINA CRISIS through the years and much more…
The first card is a Roland SH-3a…
Oh gosh, I know nothing about that AT ALL! I didn’t know it existed!
It is a rare one, but I saw a synth that you used from the Roland family on your solo album ‘Gone From Here’, the RS-202 String Machine…
That belongs to my friend Chris Barlow from Manchester, he would have brought that to the session and known his way around it. It was great, we had David Berger who was the engineer and also the drummer in a band called OUTFIT, he’s Swiss-French and lives in Liverpool.
What we were trying to do was recreate the Bowie / Fripp / Eno thing. So David would be engineering and sort of messing the sound as we went along, then Chris who knew the equipment inside out and there was me trying to come up with the lines and melodies to the song. It was a lovely way of working, it was very productive because we knew what headspace we were in, so it was “let him get on with this, you get on with that and I get on with this”, it really does free you up if you work as a team with synthesizers.
You said a few years ago that one of the early influences on CHINA CRISIS was MAGAZINE and their keyboardist Dave Formula had a Roland RS-505 which superseded theRS-202…
I would have seen Dave playing it! I would have seen them a lot… I originally saw them at the De Montford Hall, then The Empire. It was always with John McGeoch on guitar, Barry Adamson on bass, I thought they were amazing, there was something about them. I’ve just got the MAGAZINE boxed set for Christmas.
I’d listened to a lot of prog rock and my favourite ones were the keyboard-based bands like YES… although they are not considered “a keyboard band”, I consider them a keyboard band because of Rick Wakeman. I liked ELP and even HAWKWIND as they were a bit sonically synthesized. So when I moved to new wave, that’s what helped because there was the likes of MAGAZINE who were a bit rocky and a bit proggy, but it was new enough for me to go “oh, that’s not what I’ve been listening to, it’s almost punk”.
Around that time, everyone was using synths differently. There was SIMPLE MINDS’ Mick MacNeil, Vini Reilly in THE DURUTTI COLUMN along his guitars, OMD, THE HUMAN LEAGUE, HEAVEN 17, all these people I suspect had no formal training and were all self-taught, inspired by KRAFTWERK and all of that. It became that we could do it as well.
It’s interesting to look back now that all these groups were lumped in together as “synthesizer bands” but who all sounded so different, which perhaps isn’t so much the case now… so you’ve mentioned John McGeoch, Dave Formula and Barry Adamson, so did you like VISAGE?
I did, I bought the records when they came out and I was so excited about it. But I was originally put off for a little bit by the New Romantic thing, I didn’t really like seeing members of MAGAZINE in there, I wanted them to be completely MAGAZINE…
So you wanted them to do another ‘Sweetheart Contact’! *laughs*
Oh my god, absolutely!
What about Midge Ure and Steve Strange’s involvement in VISAGE?
I wasn’t too keen on Midge Ure at the time, only because he seemed a gun for hire, I knew of SLIK and RICH KIDS so I was like “What the hell?”; Midge was a bit of a “Mexican flea”, jumping from one act to another… obviously Midge is amazing and the sound of VISAGE.
D’ya know what? We actually met Steve Strange about 12 years ago, we did this gig with him at the O2 and he had to share a dressing room with us! We had a few people in the band then who were quite badly behaved with various stimulants and what not! And that poor guy Steve is trying to recover from all manner of addictions and our band are bouncing off the walls before even going on stage! *laughs*
Steve seemed really lovely, I wish I’d met him before and it would have been nice to chat, we did a tribute gig to him in Port Talbot with all these friends of his after he’d passed. He was like one of those little figures, there he was in the video to ‘Ashes To Ashes’, that was an amazing song and put Bowie totally in the ball park of new wave. But the fact that Steve was there walking on the beach with him in that weird video effect, it made you think “oh, he’s not just a Blitz Kid”!
The thing is, in the North, we had a very negative view of that whole New Romantic thing, we thought “why would you do that in front of your music?” without realising you could do anything. We weren’t brought up in families like that where you were encouraged to be as individual as possible or to express yourself as much as you want, with synthesizers or without. Ours was big working class families, Eddie was one of 10, I was one of 8! EVERYONE went to work, the fact that me and Ed ditched our jobs at 17 was AN OUTRAGE because everyone went to work, but we stayed at home and tried to come up with these songs all that time.
Another card, this one is the Roland Jupiter 6…
Oh, that I don’t know! I’ve had two Jupiter 8s, one I owned twice in that I sold it and then bought it back and sold it!
The Korg Polysix was your first polyphonic synth but was it a bit of a revelation once you upgraded to a Jupiter 8?
The Jupiter 8 is my favourite synth, I would kill to have one of those again. Mark Phythian who mixed the last couple of CHINA CRISIS albums and my solo album, he was our tea boy during ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ and then goes on to win 3 Grammys! These are in his studio room at his terrace house in Liverpool where he’s got a Jupiter 8 but his isn’t working, it’s faulty… that instrument, the big thing about it was we could sequence it with the drum machine. So we could trigger it. You could imagine, all of a sudden, I was arpeggiating all the basslines in different kind of ways, it sounded very convincing, that we knew what we were doing but really, we weren’t! *laughs*
So was the sequencing at the start of the ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ song, was that done by triggering the Jupiter?
Possibly, it sounds like it would have… I think that wasn’t me sequencing that, the producer Mike Howlett did that later, triggering it via the gate through the desk, I think he might have done it like that.
You’d mentioned Mark Phythian and his Grammys, but you’ve had a habit of working with young producers who go onto big things, like Gil Norton who did half of your first album?
He was our original engineer who would have introduced us to the 8 track at Amazon Studios in Kirkby and then to the 16 track. Working with Gil was so enlightening and fantastic. For all our inexperience, Gil would set the desk up and he knew we’d been working with the Portastudio for a few years, so we knew about slowing tape down, speeding it up, turning it over, reversing it, what you could do with delays, how you could stereo them… so Gil would be more than happy to have us go in with the bare pickings of a tune like the 4 tracks of our Portastudio and spend the whole day coming up with stuff. That doesn’t happen like that, so he was happy to set it up and let us get on with it while he went to have a cup of tea. Then he’s come back in, see what we’d been doing and get it to tape.
With the Portastudio, because you only had 4 tracks, you had to make decisions about what to keep and what to lose and what to bounce. So when we got onto the 8 track and then the 16 track, we knew how to do that with Gil. The great thing with Gil was that he taught us; so if he said we should bounce this with that, then it freed up another 4 tracks. So that meant you had to commit to the sound you were making, because it was going to be there at the finished mix. So by the time you go to the end of your recording, there was very little that you had to do because you had been doing it as you went along.
It was funny how Gil became so successful, working with bands like THE PIXIES and FOO FIGHTERS, I was like, that’s not the Gil I knew, the Gil I knew was very unassuming and I don’t remember him wanting an amazing career, it was like he was happy just to be in Kirkby and doing what we were doing. The clientele that came in ranged from SAD CAFÉ to Ken Dodd to ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN, that was the centre of our universe really. We only went away because we were in a band and working with other producers, but I always thought Gil would stay there and become the chief guy.
So Gil co-produced the second “Entertainment” side of ‘Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms’, had that been the intention to keep it 8 track, because the impression I get from reading between the lines was that the more sophisticated “Difficult” first side and particularly the sessions produced by Steve Levine weren’t that smooth?
No, it wasn’t great at all… it was great working with Steve, he’s lovely guy but we felt like he was… what we heard coming out of the speakers, we weren’t entirely happy with really. He was sort of getting a bit too involved, he was playing us too many of his ideas and committing them to tape… we were like “What are you doing? That’s not your job! This is OUR track and this is OUR job!”
He was committed to recording the rest of the album, so me and Ed walked out a bit unawares that he’d been booked to the whole album and a contract had been signed, that’s money and people’s wages and everything! And we’re just going “Oh, we’ve tried a couple of weekends with him, we don’t like him, we’ll do it ourselves! See ya!”, Virgin must have thought “WHO THE F*CK ARE THESE KIDS? WALKING ON STEVE LEVINE, WALKING OUT ON PETE WALSH?” *laughs*
What happened was, we OK’ed him to mix what we’d done with him, so three tracks, one was a version of ‘No Ordinary Lover’ which we went “no, that’s not happening”! The other two ‘Seven Sports For All’ and ‘Feel To Be Driven Away’, we thought “oh they are quite good actually, he’s done a great job there”; and I think had he done it all, it most probably would have been a very successful record actually! *laughs*
Having said that, my experience of working with Pete Walsh and the three tracks he did (he did four but one didn’t make it), I thought he was the best on that record, he could have done it all, it would have been an incredible record. Oh, you want to see the track sheets for ‘Christian’, there’s nothing on it, there’s literally NOTHING on it, and that’s him! Pete, he knew! He was so great!
They’re all great these producers, honest to god, every one of them know their job… ok Steve overstepped it a little bit but only a little bit, they all of them kept exactly what we’d done of the demos and then elaborated on them or supplemented or replaced, but they all did it in such a way where they were like “whatever these guys played to the record company, they must have liked it, we’ve got to keep that ingredient”.
Even when Walter Becker was like “Gary, you can’t play… not the kind of playing I know”, he still made sure that he got every single thing I’d done on the demo onto the tracks before we worked with anybody else. They were all like that. With Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, even though by then we had Brian McNeill on keyboards, he wouldn’t have played on my demos for ‘Arizona Sky’ or the tracks off ‘What Price Paradise’. So when we went in, I would have done mine little bits and Brian would have recreated them. It’s a great thing that method of production, holding onto the essential thing. I suspect they didn’t do that with FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD*laughs*
The next card is a Roland SH-101…
Ah yes! I would have worked with that, I can’t quite remember on what, but we would have had one, although not for long. Gazza most probably would have had something to do with that. I didn’t like it when they started doing like faders and quality of the plastic casing felt a bit… it wasn’t as robust as the SH-09 or the Yamaha CS-10 which were solid little things that had a weightiness to them. The SH-101, that could almost be “oh, we did this on a 3D printer!” *laughs*
I remember in your second Smash Hits interview that you’d said you felt sort of obliged to keep up with the technology and were buying lots of equipment but then regretted it, did you ever feel the pressure as a band to keep up technologically?
No, because by the time Brian McNeill had taken over on keys, it was him who was in charge of whatever we needed and I just had what I had at home to do my demos on. Brian had a rack mount of DX-7s, about 9 or 10 of them, he would have used them on CHINA CRISIS for brass and this and that, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near that. Sequencers, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near them, anything that was digitally programmed, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.
If I worked on the DX-7 which I had and the DX-7 II, say I went into the algorithm, I didn’t know what I was doing so then I would say to Gazza to teach me how to save stuff, he understood it a bit more. I was one of those guys who when I got something out of the box, I discarded the manual whereas Gazza and Brian didn’t, they would sit and get their heads around it. I was always intuitive, as in I liked to get involved and hear it and feel it, as opposed to read how to do it. I’ve never read how to do anything, I left school and I wasn’t entered for any exams at all because my thing was not to open the book.
Another card, it’s the MicroMoog… did you ever own a Moog?
No, but Brian did, he’s got the proper Minimoogs. This was when they started making them more plastic. We did have a Moog in Amazon, it was the one Gary Numan used…
Oh, the Polymoog?
Yes, it was beautiful. It was in the studio and it wasn’t ours but when we went in, we always used that, it was fantastic. It was warm and rich, I saw Gary Numan with it and I was like “YEAH! THIS IS IT!”
What have you been listening to lately?
I’ve just been listening to some old live tapes, CHINA CRISIS live in the USA, OH MY GOD! F*CKING HELL! It’s such a rubbish recording, it even has all the tech credits at the end, y’know “A Star Systems production by Ray Skidberry, mix engineer Kevin Clark…”, but it sounds like dogsh*t! It hasn’t been mixed at all! But it’s always interesting hearing a little bit of them *laughs*
Something much better I’ve also been listening to is this ‘Shanghai’ 12 inch single by Albert Au released on EMI Hong Kong, the B-side of this is ‘Black Man Ray’ in Cantonese; it’s lovely y’know, in the middle he uses steel drums… we got it at the time, it’s so fun. Everywhere I go, if I come across a record shop, I always go in it… the other day at a gaff that had a café near where we were playing, I got the ‘Black Man Ray’ 12” for a fiver… ok, I HAVE obviously got it but you can never have too many copies of ‘Black Man Ray’ *laughs*
Next card is the Oberheim OB-Xa, was that a synth you worked with?
That’s the ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ era, I really don’t know how we ended up with it. It might have been something to do with SIMPLE MINDS and Mick MacNeil. I remember for the life of us that we couldn’t get to grips with it, not like we did with the Poly 6, the Jupiter 8, the SH09 and the Yamaha CS10, they were magic really, I completely got engrossed with them.
The Oberheim’s sounds were incredibly rich but it wasn’t completely user friendly, it didn’t have that arpeggio thing which the Jupiter8 had, which was gold for me… I wasn’t a musician as such so even up to ‘Arizona Sky’ and stuff, I was still using drum machine to trigger the arpeggiator and then use the echo unit to get that wondering motoring kind of sequencer effects.
The Oberheim would have been the melody line on ‘Bigger The Punch I’m Feeling’, Walker Becker would get me and Eddie to all the parts we’d done on the demos with all the sounds we’d used, then that would be it and Nick Magnus would be involved to bring in chords and getting sounds quickly. We weren’t like that at all, our approach was a lot more organic and painstaking. And then… it fell out the back of a van outside The Ritz in Manchester!! *roars of laughter*
That was in 1989, ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE to get the f*cking insurance on it!!! We were touring ‘Diary Of A Hollow Horse’, things were tight and management had sort of hinted “do you really need that? We don’t need it, could it fall out of the lorry!”… Hahahahaha! I WASN’T personally involved in that deviation but what a mental thing to do! Smash a synth to get the money! It shows you where we were at, mentally with each other, with the record company, with management, everything was just going *******!!!
But that’s the kind of band we were! You’ve got to remember me and Eddie were from Kirkby, we’d grown up in big families and all our friends, nobody had anything and you wouldn’t be completely light fingered but you’d by hook or by crook, you’d make stuff happen, do you know what I mean? Amazon Studios, me and Eddie would bunk in through the window in the night with our Portastudio and mic to record the piano! Out of necessity, you would!
You recently got back into the album charts with ‘China Greatness’, what was it like revisiting the back catalogue to select inclusions, particular the “lost” jewel ‘It’s Never Too Late’?
Once we saw people doing that orchestrations thing like OMD at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, people were coming up to us and saying “your music could be amazing like that” but we were like “yeah, it would but it’s never gonna happen!”. So we were of a mind and what happened was a guy Steve Hammonds who was in charge of all the CHINA CRISIS deluxe editions, I said to him “if I wanted to get hold of our masters, could you get them for us to work on?” and he got back to me and said “yes, tell us what do you want”.
So me and Eddie chose 7 songs each, we wanted ones we really liked and we had to include some of the singles. It took 3 days to send the files because they were so big and hi-res. I went through these with Dave Berger who worked on my solo album and you’ve got to remember I’ve not heard these since we recorded them and it WAS a moment. Then we gave Jack carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. We tried to use the strings from our 40th Anniversary concert because we’d recorded them but had to replace them because they were out of tune which always happens when it’s a live thing. So Eric transcribed the new brass parts that Jack had done. ‘China Greatness’ is literally all Jack’s and Mark Phythian’s work. We might have made a couple of suggestions but not much at all.
So had ‘It’s Never Too Late’ always been preying on your mind, that it was shelved for ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ and then when it finally came out, it was tucked away on the bonus 12” of ‘Black Man Ray’ so wasn’t really heard by many people, even fans?
That was just bad management really… I wrote that song on guitar and possibly one of the first songs I ever wrote on guitar because I couldn’t play guitar. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, I thought it was a little bit wet but it’s quite lovely really, I think it is a bit special in a pop way, it’s got that thing of what CHINA CRISIS had. We had all these lovely melodies and lines that would introduce the song like on ‘Wishful Thinking’, every one of our songs (almost) has an introductory line that catches your attention doesn’t it? Same with ‘It’s Never Too Late’.
Yes, it was us who made the decision to drop it, but someone should have took us to one side and said “That song is very much like the song we think will be the big single off the album, we should really keep hold of that because you are going to want a follow-up”! But we f*cking followed it up with ‘Hanna Hanna’ that was NOTHING like ‘Wishful Thinking’ and people were listening going “we don’t even know what group that is, you don’t sound like that other song, different singer, different everything!”
I remember ‘It’s Never Too Late’ was never even on the sleeve tracklisting or the label of the ‘Black Man Ray’ bonus 12”, there was just this sticker. I remember when I heard it, I thought it was a great song but to be fair, I can understand why it wasn’t included on the ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ album…
Yeah, because some of the songs already on the album like ‘Here Come A Raincloud’ and ‘The Soul Awakening’ were more what we wanted to be… ‘The Soul Awakening’ to me was like ‘Julie With…’ from ‘Before & After Science’ by Brian Eno, we were trying to be bit like that. ‘Here Come A Raincloud’ was beautiful, it was a reaction what was going on, the strikes, the miners, a lot of unemployment and stuff that wasn’t great. We were going home to that from our lovely lives in the Roosevelt Hotel in LA with Iggy Pop in the swimming pool, then all of a sudden in Kirkby, all the factories are closing down, the police are battling with miners, oh my god! So ‘Here Come A Raincloud’ when you hear it on the John Peel session, I’d written it on bass guitar…
That ties in nicely with my next question as there’s ‘The Complete Sessions 1982-1983’ which features CHINA CRISIS recordings for the John Peel show and released by Last Night From Glasgow… this isn’t doing down the album version but I actually feel the John Peel session recording of ‘Here Come A Raincloud’ is better, the overdriven drum machine just gives it that extra eerie tension which fits the lyrics…
Yeah…
…the John Peel version of ‘This Occupation’ is particularly interesting because it’s full-on synthpop! What’s the drum machine you are using?
That’s a Roland TR808 triggering the bass synth, it was us trying to get a bit A CERTAIN RATIO and ABC, it was all getting a bit funky and we were quite keen on doing that because we loved Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’ and that kind of thing… the fact were doing it all with synths was what we were involved with, that was just a natural thing to happen. But lots of people were making a racket then like CABARET VOLTAIRE and all these people, I can remember listening to all that thinking they were great with the solidity of what they were doing, it was forceful and solid with great sounds, but they lacked songs and melody.
We were so involved with melody and when we were out on the road, we would have mixtapes that would have everyone on it, songs like ‘Wichita Lineman’ to THE BEE GEES to Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick, all these great songs… we didn’t have any snobbery in our band, there’s so much music out there.
You sent me a photo of your Boss Doctor Rhythm drum machine, was that a bit of a revelation when you got that?
Yeah, ‘African & White’, we wrote that around that drum machine. We didn’t know how to programme it so we were just hitting stuff and pressing play. One morning we pressed play and it did this “tsk-tsk-tsk, tsk-tsk” and straight away I picked up the bass and did that “boom-boom-boom-boom, boom”, its f*cking Motown, all the music we’d grown up with! Then Eddie did that echoing guitar sound, although he never replicates that live and I don’t sing it the octave down with the high octave… I often think, we should be trying to do it to see if people will respond. It’s difficult because music mutates over time, especially live.
Talking of live, 2025 sees the 40th Anniversary of ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’…
What, Walter Becker’s debut solo album? *laughs*
What are you favourite memories of making this record?
I must admit, the actual making of it, I had such a lovely time and my roles had changed so much. What you have to remember is we’d done two albums, we’d had chart success, Top10, we’d lived and toured, stuff like that… so we were really not wanting to see each other again. Eddie and Gazza were working together, I was working on my own. That only lasted a few weeks but it would have felt like a long time. But we’d written ‘Black Man Ray’, ‘Bigger The Punch I’m Feeling’ and stuff, y’know…
Once Walter was involved, I was neither here nor there… I was resigned to the fact that I was in “a band” now, it’s not me and Eddie anymore with Gazza, Kevin and Walter being this incredible rhythm section, making what me and Ed had done really sound amazing. But at the same time, I was still “this isn’t how I’d have it” but I was happy to go along with it. That’s why it’s not my favourite CHINA CRISIS album, it’s like my third favourite but I’m not even sure it’s that! *laughs*
But it was such a happy time for us because Kevin rejoined the band, Walter so lovely and really enjoyed being with us… I think we reminded him of STEELY DAN when they had Skunk Baxter and all these people in, having success with ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ so he slotted right in.
I had such a great time singing for him, he thought my lyrics were genius and he’s actually in print saying that, he thought ‘Black Man Ray’ was like THE BEATLES… I was just stoned all the time and he was very happy for me to be like that. We’d sing in the evening and it was very meticulous, lots of tracking and lots of takes but I was just having a laugh. So when he was telling me to do things and repeatedly do it, I was like yeah, not a problem. And when they were comping and all that, I could have a smoke and then come back in *laughs*
It really was a great time for us, so I have very fond memories of the album even though I don’t think it’s the best album. I can see WHY people think it’s the best album because it’s got that sonic thing to it, a cohesion that makes it. But I’m of a mind that if you really want to hear CHINA CRISIS and US playing and US performing, then that’s ‘Working With Fire & Steel’. That’s because that is me and Ed, Gazza and Kev have just joined us, there’s no session keyboard players, everything you hear is me with a bit of Ed. But I do think ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ is like Walter’s solo album but we were the writers for it and he used our band but with his ideas *laughs*
With the Flaunt The Imperfection’ tour, it was like you were finally enjoying playing live for first time because I’d seen you at the London Lyceum in 1983 and you weren’t very good then…
Yeah, there was no stage presence and no stage craft in 1983, because we weren’t particularly interested in that. I certainly didn’t want to stand up in front of people, there was a lot of pressure on us to become a band. Everyone else was enjoying being in a band but I wanted be at home with my Portastudio and Jupiter 8, I was generally the only one who ever turned up for albums with a finished demo. I might get Eddie or Gazza round to do a bit but mostly everyone was happy to just elevate the band thing.
My favourite CHINA CRISIS album is ‘Working With Fire & Steel’, I do like ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ but it is music of its time which was more Americanised, more FM radio-friendly with more live playing… but the album of yours which despite its highlights that I’ve never got on with as a whole is ‘What Price Paradise’…
What happened with ‘What Price Paradise’ was we got a residential rehearsal place and then made the songs. Y’know, I can’t stand the sound of that album… quintessentially the drums were the wrong sound and they were used for all of it. I was like, you can’t fix it if you’ve used it for all of it! Again, we got into a position where it’s moving at such a pace, it wasn’t me and Eddie anymore and more so once we’d got to ‘What Price Paradise’.
Of course, Brian McNeill had joined as the keyboard player and happy to be involved. So even though I would arrive with ‘Arizona Sky’, it would be completely redone sonic wise. I was resigned to it being “this is the band” and not being about my little demo as great as that sounds… I feel the band went a bit “blokey” on ‘What Price Paradise’…
I’d never thought of it like that before but it makes sense and I’ll try and use an analogy… it’s like those two NEW ORDER albums without Gillian Gilbert, they’re a bit rock and not that good yet when she’s back on ‘Music Complete’, some of the old magic reappears. You know yourself that it’s often the chemistry of the people you have that makes a band successful rather than musicianship or contribution… I seem to remember from reading the deluxe reissue booklet notes you weren’t that keen on the live drummer you had for the ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ tour?
Oh Traxie O’Toole, he went on to do quite well actually and ended up playing for Steve Hackett who was in GENESIS. But for us, he was f*cking shocking man! He just couldn’t help himself, he paid no attention to what Kevin had done or was on the tracks, but he couldn’t restrain himself, he’d be doing proper jazz fills and stuff inappropriately, in the wrong place in the wrong song *laughs*
He sounds like the live drummer that DEPECHE MODE have now! *laughs*
Yeah!
OK, next card is an Octave Cat… you had one and it was supposed to be an ARP Odyssey copy but with knobs instead of sliders, was it ever any good?
Oh yeah! It felt a bit cheapskate, it just wasn’t made very well. We used it on a memorable occasion when we were playing Kirklands in Liverpool 1981 for the release of ‘African & White. We did three Mondays as a kind of residency, first Monday hardly anyone come, second Monday f*cking mobbed, third Monday hardly anyone come. It was me, Ed and Dave Reilly on drums while we had backing tracks on the Portastudio. At one of the gigs I remember, I played a topline on the Cat and managed to detune the oscillator! I couldn’t f*cking get it back so I had to turn the volume off and mimed to look like I was doing something with the actual music everyone was hearing! *laughs*
So not a great synth?
No, I think we gave it away! It didn’t make an appearance on any record! You sort of fall in love with what you are working with which is why guitarists have their favourite guitars. Keyboards have their particular sound.
So there’s a 10th anniversary reissue of ‘Autumn In The Neighbourhood’ as a vinyl LP coming as well which will see it more widely available?
The only reason it’s happening is to get it in the shops so that people around the world can get it. I won’t be keen to make it available for too long, I do like having ownership of that record and I want to retain that really. A lot of those songs originally were me starting my solo album. I convinced Ed that we should send them round to a few people to get a reaction and they all thought it was CHINA CRISIS. I knew nobody was interested in me doing a solo record so that was it. I want the album to get the credit it deserves, the fans absolutely loved it but otherwise, it was like nobody knows about it. Why hasn’t it been reviewed, why hasn’t Mark Phythian won a Grammy for the mix, y’know?
A bouncy little ditty called ‘Everyone You Know’ came from those sessions and was given away free as part of the original Pledge Music crowdfunding campaign, it wasn’t on the CD but was an added bonus on the first vinyl issue of the album, will it remain?
It wasn’t on the original CD because I felt the approach we took on ‘Everyone You Know’ was a bit too poptastic and I was like “Ooooh! Who’s that?” *laughs*
It’s a great song, a Gary and Eddie one because that’s his riff, although I played it. He had that in another tune but he did nothing with it so I started playing it and then the next thing you know, I wrote a song and showed it to Ed, he absolutely loved it.
I made a bit of a mistake, when we put it on the first vinyl, it didn’t seem to fit into the running order. The end of ‘Autumn’ with ‘Wonderful New World’ just seemed correct as its about loss but you’ve got to look forward, it’s beautiful… and then it goes “BANG!” into ‘Everyone You Know’, it’s not f*cking right! So we might think of about maybe changing that running order for this edition. It will be a great one live though, it would suit the CHINA CRISIS synthpop quartet format but it’s a bit of a one that…
2025 also sees you opening for SIMPLE MINDS somewhere in summertime, that’s going to be a nice reunion as they were important early champions of CHINA CRISIS weren’t they? You supported them on the ‘New Gold Dream’ tour…
I’d never seen anything like it. We’d toured with ORANGE JUICE and played little gigs with ALTERED IMAGES and stuff, but when we were with SIMPLE MINDS, they were the hottest f*cking band in the country! Every gig was mobbed, it all had an atmosphere and then the whole place would go mental when they opened with ‘New Gold Dream’! I can imagine for me and Ed, we’re stood there, a couple of nice boys with their nice songs looking at the whole theatre jumping, it was SO electric, it was like F*CKING HELL MAN!
They were so kind to us, they took us on their bus, we stayed in the same hotels and in the US, they were the same… they didn’t have to, they could have insisted we buy onto the tour and we do our own transport. It did help that Bruce Findlay, their manager was about to start managing CHINA CRISIS so he would have told them that we were going to be part of the Schoolhouse Management set-up. But they were like us, working class lads who taught themselves everything they know and we were learning just being with them, experiencing what it was like. They were so self-assured, they’d been doing it for a good while so they were ready and they were great.
It’s a shame about what happened to that line-up of SIMPLE MINDS, oh my god! Mick MacNeil, I’ve never heard a keyboard player like him, the fact that it was all on the Jupiter8 was like WOW! And Derek Forbes, those basslines and Charlie was just like, he was so handsome and his sound was so great, y’know. I originally saw them supporting MAGAZINE at The Empire and then on their own at Eric’s. So me and Ed would have seen them and bought ‘Life In A Day’ and ‘Real To Real Cacophony’. I remember the first song I wrote, I tried to do something like the ‘Life In A Day’ title song.
In 2025, it’s like CHINA CRISIS are playing live everywhere, in the US, Canada, Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, plus dates opening for SIMPLE MINDS and SQUEEZE, how does it feel to be almost busier than back in the day?
I think we’re good at it now, which I don’t think we ever were back then… I mean, if we could have the classic band of Kevin, Gazza and Brain now, we’d be unreal.
We started CHINA CRISIS so we didn’t have to get a job, the jobs they wanted us to have were on an industrial estate or in a factory if you know what I mean. I feel like after 40 years that we’ve made it our job so we are very workman-like, we’re professional about it and we make sure we turn up at the right time, we make sure everybody goes home relatively happy, that kind of thing.
I do love getting to play for people who may never have seen us before. Last year we played Singapore for like only the second time and there’s families there who can’t believe they’ve finally got to see you, their kids listen to your music in the car and on holidays, they’ve come with mum and dad; that’s a really lovely thing, that’s the positive in that we can still do it and still enjoy it. Even when I’m annoyed, I have a laugh, I let the audience know that I’m having to work tonight but guess what? Let’s have a laugh, you have to enjoy your work.
When you’re a creative person, I feel you do need a bit of space, don’t be that person who’s an entertainer for a bit, be another person who plans to go into a studio and plans to get the songs recorded. With it being self-produced and stuff, the amount of energy and effort, you don’t appreciate it when you’re younger but I can tell you ‘Autumn In The Neighbourhood’ was a gargantuan f*cking task of just getting everybody available and everybody paid, all the bills met, keeping the quality control up etc, the level of teamwork you have to inspire in people… you haven’t really got the time and energy for that if you’re out the door every other few days entertaining people. The pro plus is you get to experience it all with everybody and everybody loves it so much including yourselves. We’re a great band at the moment, everybody’s happy and focussed and mostly sober. The only downside is I do feel it encroaches on the creativity being so busy.
It’s funny isn’t it when you’ve achieved so much, even though I don’t think it was a lot… if it was a school report, I would say it was “fair to middling, could have tried harder”. People respond to the hits so much and you’re lucky to have them, but actually it’s a lot of the other songs that I properly enjoy, I really do. Over the last 20 years, me and Ed have not stopped, we’re now in a position where you don’t ever have to stop… if you don’t want to, you can literally carry on. People have connected with us in such a way, they’re quite happy for you to still to keep coming and be around. We were so privileged to be indulged by our families when we were 17-18. And then we were 18-19 when we got signed.
Finally, is there a synth favourite of all time?
That would be the Jupiter 8, that IS ‘Working With Fire & Steel’… the Korg Polysix is ‘Difficult Shapes…’, the DX-7 is ‘Flaunt..’ and Roland D50 was ‘What Price Paradise’, I lose track after that! *laughs*
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Gary Daly
CHINA CRISIS will be performing ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ for its 40th Anniversary throughout 2025 – for information on these and other 2025 live dates in the UK and internationally, please go to https://linktr.ee/chinacrisismusic
Named after the 1958 electro acoustic composition by Edgard Varèse, London quartet POEME ELECTRONIQUE are best known for releasing just one single ‘The Echoes Fade’ on Carrere Records back in 1982.
Comprising of Julie Ruler (vocals), Sharon Abbott (vocals), Dave Hewson (synthesizers) and Les Hewson (bass), the sub-7 minute single was championed by John Peel and became a much sought after collector’s item when there came retrospective demand for what was now being called “minimal synth” and “coldwave”.
This interest prompted Marc Schaffer of Anna Logue Records to track down and contact Dave Hewson in 2007 who by now has disbanded POEME ELECTRONIQUE and quietly having as a successful career as a composer, arranger and producer for television and film; one of his best known productions was ‘Anyone Can Fall In Love’, the vocal version of the ‘Eastenders’ theme by Anita Dobson.
The end result of the link up with Anna Logue Records was a 7” reissue of ‘The Echoes Fade’ in gently remixed form and more significantly in 2009, a double album set of previously unreleased POEME ELECTRONIQUE material recorded back in the day. The union also led to the formation of TWINS NATALIA and the album ‘The Destiny Room’ which reunited Hewson in the studio with Julie Ruler and Sharon Abbott to music that has been co-written with Schaffer.
Dave Hewson spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about synths, POEME ELECTRONIQUE, TWINS NATALIA and much more…
You studied at Trinity College of Music, how did you becoming interested in using synthesizers?
I was given an amazing opportunity as a teenager while still studying at school, to be given a scholarship to be able to go to the Royal College of Music’s electronic music studio once a week, where I was given tuition in electronic music composition with Lawrence, Cassidy and Tristan Carey. Prior to this, I had to started to experiment with Musique Concrete techniques, as I had been gifted a small Phillips tape machine.
The early compositions that I created in the early late 60s and early 70s were made using tape editing and loop techniques. To the credit of our local education authority, they maybe could foresee a future for me in the world of electronic music creation.
I also experimented with various tape speeds, reversed, sounds, all the kinds of things you would expect from the Radiophonic Workshop, which was a source of fascination and inspiration for me. I had written and a lot of classical compositions that I never saw being able to being performed, so I worked out, that if I had a machine to produce my music, I could create record and make my own compositions from scratch. It didn’t stop me writing a great deal of piano and orchestral music, but I loved the experimentation involved with tapes combined with the electronics.
I was also very inspired as a teenager when I heard ‘Visage’ by Luciano Berio for the first time, and some of the concrete compositions by Pierre Schaffer, listening to some of the early music I created in the early 70s, l can now I can see how strong that influence was. My interest was also enhanced after discovering the amazing work by Wendy Carlos and Tomita.
What sorts of synths became available to you to use there and was there a college hierarchy as to their use?
They had several EMS VCS3s, and some external EMS modules filters and sequences etc. I was encouraged to learn how to use the VCS and it proved to be invaluable. Once you’ve got used to the matrix system, it seems very simple. It is a fantastic synthesizer and I’m so pleased to see that it is being reborn by some manufacturers in various forms.
What was the first synth you got?
My parents gifted me an EMS AKS in 1970, this opened up a whole new sonic world for me, and this was the very start of my personal electronic journey.
Electronic pop was becoming the future of music by 1980 so how did POEME ELECTRONIQUE come into being and who were your role models as far as that musical direction?
In the late 70s, my brother Les asked me if I would be interested in playing keyboards with his band, a lively and very active punk rock band called STAGESTRUCK. They were very influenced by bands like THE TUBES and SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES. It soon became a seven piece line-up and we played regularly in South London. It had a very large fan base and following, I soon started to write material for the band.
We had a single on Trident Records called ‘Smoke’ and it was recorded at Trident Studios in London. It did not do very well. In fact it was banned by the BBC; it was an anti-smoking song, so I don’t really think they got the message or understood. The band split and I decided to form POEME ELECTRONIQUE with my two cousins Sharon and Julie, and with my brother. The girls had been the backing vocalists in STAGESTRUCK, but now Sharon and Julie were to form the very core part In this new venture.
My brother played bass guitar on many of the tracks that we created. We then started to produce songs in a very small 4 track recording studio, just in a tiny room in our home in South London. I guess our main influence then would’ve come from SOFT CELL, EURYTHMICS, THE HUMAN LEAGUE, YAZOO and Nina Hagen.
What was the creative dynamic between the four of you?
We had a very set way of producing our material. Sharon would constantly supply me with lyrics and I would use these as the inspiration for my electronic songs. This was never difficult, as she was brilliant at painting an immediate picture of how the track should form itself, so the title and the lyrics would often give the direction.
I would arrange the whole track produce and create the vocal line to fit Sharon’s lyrics, adjusting where I would need to, and Julie would sing the backing vocals. Sharon would sing the lead, and on some tracks my brother Les would play bass guitar. I tend to work very much on my own being a producer and creator at all levels, singing a guide for the lead line, and for the backing vocals. Occasionally, if the song felt right, I would also add some backing vocals myself, and also some vocoder additions, as in the Poeme song ‘Theories’.
The portastudios that came on the market at the time were a revelation, but which was your tape machine of choice and how was it to use?
We used a TEAC 4 track reel-to-reel machine, the A3340S. It had simul-sync, so we were able to bounce tracks to form layers. I would make a stereo mix, and then leave two tracks just for the vocals.
How did you choose ‘The Echoes Fade’ to be your debut single?
I think we chose ‘The Echoes Fade’ because it seemed to sum up completely what POEME ELECTRONIQUE was about – lyrics by Sharon that were very poetic in nature, and the addition of my electronic synthesises and drum machines. “poeme electronique” – “electronic poem”
How did the deal with Carrere Records to release ‘The Echoes Fade’ come about because at the time, they were mostly known for Euro disco pop like Sheila B Devotion, Amii Stewart and Patrick Hernandez?
To our amazement ‘The Echoes Fade’ was championed by the record company executive Freddie Canon who was the chief of A&R at Carrere Records in London at that time. Our then-manager Barry Dunning (he managed the group MUD in the 60s) played our 4 track version of the song to Freddie, he wanted to release it just as it was, completely unaltered, so that’s exactly what happened, we were totally amazed. Freddie had a great ability to spot the unusual and different.
The length of the song worked against us from the start, as most radio stations did not play it, because it did not fit into the required timeslot of a three minute pop record, and I guess that was always going to be a problem. The only person who liked our record and played it on his show, was the late great John Peel. This meant so much to us of course. We had created several songs ready to go, but because of the lack of interest in POEME ELECTRONIQUE poem, it was all buried amongst all of the many tracks that we had started to produce.
Freddie Cannon did not lose interest in us and really believed in the track, and so he sought a more commercial approach, which for us would be to create an album that later became known as ‘Danse Electronique’ by ELECTRO PHONIQUE. It was an album of electronic covers of hits from the period so on that disc is SOFT CELL – THE HUMAN LEAGUE – KRAFTWERK etc, a few copies still turn up on eBay.
As for ‘The Echoes Fade’, to our amazement, it will often sell for many pounds – crazy, so l guess at that time, Poeme was not to be. It did not stop me writing songs however and in the period after the single, we must’ve created over 50 tracks, they were tucked away for years.
Was it a disappointment that ‘The Echoes Fade’ b/w ‘Voice’ came out in a plain black sleeve and not a picture bag as had become the norm at the time, or was it intentional to allow the music to stand out on its own?
It’s a great shame that it came out with just a plain black sleeve and I’m sure a picture bag would’ve made it even more collectible. I guess it’s because we were so naive at that time, it did not occur to us that it would matter, I think we were just so grateful and thrilled to have a song released. Now that we have the brilliant Steve Lippert to design our sleeves – it’s made up for that I guess.
How was the public reaction to ‘The Echoes Fade’, was there excitement in the band?
Public reaction was difficult to judge, I think we were all very enthusiastic and made a couple of home-made videos to try and promote the single. Sharon is an extraordinary performer, a pure natural in every sense. Julie also bought magic to her backing vocals with her life performances.
After that, POEME ELECTRONIQUE went silent but then Anna Logue Records got in contact to reissue ‘The Echoes Fade’ b/w ‘Voice’ in 2007, this time with a picture bag… you opted to remix the two tracks, but what rules did you impose on yourself for that process?
I was so excited and thrilled when Anna Logue records got in touch with us, and was amazed that there was an interest in our music. The track is based on a version that I had created just after the original, this version being tucked away for many years. It was created on 16 track tape, so I took 90% of those elements and then just added a few updates, vocals from Sharon and Julie are the originals from that time.
Why had POEME ELECTRONIQUE been put into hiatus?
After I gave up teaching full-time, music composing was the only source of my income. I guess any projects that I couldn’t see being able to sustain me financially were very much put on hold. I was determined to create as much music as I could, and that I hoped that would pay.
I have Marc Schaffer to thank for the renewed interest, and that l might be able to work on Poeme again. I had become able to support myself financially through my television music etc, so this gave me more time to work on Poeme and other projects.
How did the TV soundtrack work come about?
My composition teacher, Richard Arnell introduced me to students at the London International Film School, where I would compose music for free for the students’ films. This was really helpful, and a great teaching tool for me. I learnt a great deal about writing to picture. Gradually I started to be involved in more commercial projects, one of the students at the school called Laurence Posner produced a film on ‘The Prisoner’ TV series and asked me if I would write the music.
Things developed from there and I was also asked as a keyboard player to perform on a number of artists’ productions, including Amii Stewart’s remixes of ‘Knock On Wood’ which I also produced.
You worked on TECHNO TWINS’ 1982 album ‘Technostalgia’, what was that like for you?
I was at college with Bev Sage, one half of TECHNO TWINS, and met her again several years later when we recorded ‘Smoke’ at Trident Studios, she was in a band called FAMOUS NAMES. They were there, recording their single at the same time as us.
She asked me if I would be interested in writing some songs for her, and so the majority of the material that they released as TECHNO TWINS was created in my little 4 track studio in South London. I enjoyed the work on ‘Technostalgia’, I created the cover version of the only successful single they released ‘Falling In Love Again’ with my MS-20 synthesizer, my little Boss DR55 drum machine, and my 4 track.
When ‘The Echoes Fade’ double album collection came out on Anna Logue Records in late 2009, it included 14 previously unreleased tracks from 1980-1983; had there been any interest from other labels back then? Had you considered self-releasing the material or was that impossible at the time?
I think that our material at that time was considered to be too off the wall, and releasing ourselves was beyond us I guess.
What was your approach to the final sound for this 2009 release? How far could you take the mix?
We wanted to keep the material as close to the original as possible, and many of the tracks are just stereo mixes of the four track masters. The most important thing for me was to capture Sharon’s original vocals and Julie’s backing vocals, I did use some noise reduction to clean up the analog tapes, and replace some of the drum sounds with a like-for-like. There was a lot of post-production and editing.
Unlike a lot of “minimal synth” or “coldwave” of that period, POEME ELECTRONIQUE were very song based and had tunes, where did this classic songwriting influence come from?
I think it was Sharon’s lyrics that inspired a much more song-based approach to the writing. A good example is ‘It’s In The Atmosphere’ which has a cinematic feel, I think the melodic influences must’ve come from my classical training.
What are your favourite POEME ELECTRONIQUE tracks from this period?
I find it difficult to choose, I love all of the songs that we created, each song had a particular story to tell, ‘Dilemma’ is a good example, and also ‘Atoman’ maybe predicting the future that we are now all living in.
The union with Anna Logue Records led to new POEME ELECTRONIQUE tracks and the formation of a sister band TWINS NATALIA, what has it been like to compose and construct synthpop songs again in the modern era?
This was very inspiring, and also gave us an opportunity to explore a new outlet. Marc Schaffer providing the original track ideas, which I would take forward into full blown productions, creating and the lead melody, and backing vocals which Sharon and Julie sang, Sharon would provide the lyrics. I would perform all of the synth and drum machine parts, we did not involve any other musicians. The production was computer based, using virtual synths.
Are there any differences with how you approach TWINS NATALIA compared with POEME ELECTRONIQUE, is there something you would do with one that you maybe wouldn’t do with the other?
I suppose we could regard TWINS NATALIA as the new POEME ELECTRONIQUE, but I think the TWINS NATALIA concept is much grander and more developed from a production point of view, but the essence of Poeme is very clear to hear l feel.
How did you end up doing the lead vocal on ‘I Avoid Strangers’?
I have never really considered myself to be a good singer in any way, but somehow, when I listen to the track, my voice seem to work, so I gave it a try and I think it’s not half bad.
How do you now look back on ‘The Destiny Room’ album?
I am very proud of what we achieved on that album. Some of the songs are epic in nature, ‘Set Love Free’ is a good example, it gave me a chance to explore so many areas of production, Sharon and Julie performed amazing vocals.
Your synth soloing style appears to have a very prog influence, please discuss?
I never plan my synth solos, they come straight off the top of my head, and I improvise and play in the way that reflects just how I’m feeling, allowing the track to inspire the twists and turns of the solo. Having worked on the track for a long time, the chord sequences are embedded in my head, so I kind of know what’s coming next, in every bar. I think as far as the prog influences concerned, if I were a guitarist, it would be very similar.
What would you say has been your favourite synth of all time?
I guess it would have to be the VCS3, not ideal in for solos or chords, but just in terms of an absolute “sound house” of inspiration I don’t think you could get better. The other since synth that was an enormous influence on me was my CS80, just so expressive, it features very heavily on the Poeme album, particularly on ‘It’s In The Atmosphere’. My CS80 kept breaking down so very sadly, I had to let it go. I wish I’d kept it.
Did you keep your original synths or are they long gone? Where do you stand on the VST versus hardware debate?
When I sold my house in Sussex, the studio had to go, alongside racks and racks of synthesizers, my Emulator 2, my Jupiter 6, my CS80 etc. They have all now been replaced by virtual versions. For me, it’s just a means to an end and in the back of my head, I don’t feel as if I’ve lost my beloved analog synths. Now l have a collection of virtual synths far greater than I had. In the analog world, I wouldn’t have the room from those keyboard instruments now, that’s for sure.
You’ve kept the music of POEME ELECTRONIQUE and TWINS NATALIA largely off streaming services and more or less exclusively on Bandcamp, has this been a deliberate strategy or will that change in the future with any possible reissues?
I want to try and make all the material available. Getting vinyl prepared and ready can take a while, but I have so much material in the pipeline. I am keen to get that out to the people who want to listen to my music. Bandcamp is an immediate and speedy vehicle for just that.
What about the necessary evil of social media, how do find navigating that?
We live in a world now where Pandora’s Box is well and truly open, and we can’t avoid social media. I tend to play it fairly low-key, but will always respond to people who are interested to see what I’m trying to achieve with my music.
So will there be any new POEME ELECTRONIQUE and TWINS NATALIA albums, what are you up to at the moment?
My plan is to make available a large number of POEME ELECTRONIQUE tracks that never ever saw the light of day. Some of these were recorded, but a large number never ever made it onto tape, so it would be an exciting project to remake those with new technology. I think these will be initially on Bandcamp, but I’m sure that they will also come up as a vinyl release, as the second Poeme album called ‘Fashion For All Sexes’.
There are also new and exciting tracks in the pipeline from TWINS NATALIA, most recently a collaboration with the wonderful performer and singer Kriistal Ann. I am also exploring the use of AI for lead vocal lines, using my vocal as a guide. I am also planning a solo synth album of dark minimal tracks.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Dave Hewson
Special thanks to Marc Schaffer at Anna Logue Records
The albums ‘The Echoes Fade’ by POEME ELECTRONIQUE and ‘The Destiny Room’ by TWINS NATALIA are available digitally from https://davehewson.bandcamp.com/
HEAVEN 17 are making a documentary and their audience will feature as its stars.
Celebrating 45 years of HEAVEN 17, this upcoming film will be directed by the BAFTA-nominated James Strong and go behind-the-scenes with Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware on their ‘Sound With Vision’ tour while also interviewing fans from around the world.
Formed after the split of THE HUMAN LEAGUE Mk1 in 1980, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh recruited their friend Glenn Gregory to front a new pop project HEAVEN 17 named after a fictional band mentioned in the dystopian novel and film ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Their 1981 debut long player ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ gained much acclaim. After a few near Top40 misses with the singles ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, ‘Play To Win’ and ‘Let Me Go’, HEAVEN 17 finally had two Top5 hits ‘Temptation’ and ‘Come Live With Me’ in 1983.
Despite this success and with the parent album ‘The Luxury Gap’ certified platinum, HEAVEN 17 remained a studio only concern. The following albums ‘How Men Are’, ‘Pleasure One’ and ‘Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho’ were unable to replicate their sales impact. However after a hiatus of several years, Messrs Gregory, Marsh and Ware released a comeback album ‘Bigger Than America’ and sprang an even bigger surprise by opening for ERASURE on their ‘Cowboy’ UK arena tour in 1997.
Beginning a new phase, there was even a live album ‘How Live Is’ but following the album ‘Before/After’ in 2005, Marsh bid farewell leaving Gregory and Ware to develop HEAVEN 17 as a performing entity over the past 25 years with engaging shows that have brought the remaining duo closer to their loyal followers.
In his eighth interview with ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK, Martyn Ware chatted about the concept of ‘Sound With Vision’ and the ever changing notion of fandom.
What is the idea behind this ‘Sound With Vision’ tour?
Essentially, a friend of ours James Strong runs a production company called Strong Pictures and is also a successful writer/director/producer who has won Emmys, he did ‘Mr Bates vs. The Post Office’, and ‘Broadchurch’, he worked with Glenn who did the soundtracks for his series ‘Liar’ and ‘Vigil’ with Berenice Scott.
He saw us perform at Shepherd’s Bush Empire and was struck by the unusual connection between the stage and the audience and between Glenn, myself and the band. It’s a warm experience, you’ve been, you’ve seen it, we make an effort to communicate and empathise that a lot of this audience are coming out as a relief from the existential nightmare that we’re all in, to understand that people want you to break that fourth wall. It gives them the sense that every gig they come to is a unique experience.
So James has seen us play loads but he was struck by how it had grown over time and how we have got loads of diehard fans… it is really nice to come onto stage and see lots of people who you are familiar with because it gives you a sense of confidence, it’s like having a home crowd at a football game.
In the background, James and Glenn had been mulling over the idea of doing some kind of documentary film about HEAVEN 17. For ages we thought it was a good idea but to be honest, does the world need another documentary backstage with the band and the great and good, lots of concert footage and a few jeopardy moments?
Then Glenn rang me with an idea… why don’t we make the hook of the next tour about a documentary celebrating that connection with the audience and our fans. When we were doing VIP meet ‘n’ greets before the shows on the last tour, there were all these people who came up to us going “I’ve been to see you 30 times” and we didn’t know who these people were, we didn’t recognise them from the audience or anything. We knew there were an obsessive hardcore following us like a football team, but this was new revelation for us and much more widespread than we thought.
We started thinking about our friends in this 80s and electronic scene, how there is a kind of zeitgeist at the moment for people of a certain age and their offspring who have no interest as to “when” the music was made. We started moving into a situation where 10-20% of the audience are new. So we thought we’d celebrate this by making a documentary that is as much about the fans as it is about the band, a little bit like Louis Theroux… so whatever, even if you are looking at it from the outside wondering what the hell is going on, it’s still going to be entertaining.
So how will your fans take part in the documentary, will there be a filming booth at each show which people can queue up for to volunteer their comments?
We haven’t figured that out yet, but that’s one way of looking at it. I think it will be quite nice to see them in their homes…
SPARKS did that for an MTV featurette…
Anyone who has an interest will get on it, we want as many people from as many different countries. Like there’s an 80s nostalgia thing going on in America… incidentally next year, we are doing an 80s cruise with Gary Numan in the Caribbean.
Photo by Richard Price
I was wondering if this fan relationship is a relatively recent phenomenon because of social media but also because HEAVEN 17 didn’t tour back in the day, so you were sort of detached from your fanbase until the 1997 ERASURE tour which even then, it is likely people were almost treating you as a new act?
That’s absolutely quite perceptive of you may I say Chi; I think it’s true and we weren’t confident that it wasn’t just a bunch of weirdos out there… one fan Sumo who has been to 250 shows now, when I first met him, he brought this scrapbook and rather than keeping it as a memento, he gave it to me… this was like a different level of fandom that I wasn’t particular familiar with. I mean, I’ve never seen an act more than a dozen times at most.
But it was something we always wanted to happen, we always liked to build some kind of artistic conceit, a cinematic universe if you will, where everything is connected artistically and there is a deeper meaning to most of the stuff we do. The thought that there were people out there then (it’s all weird kind of time travel stuff this!), the fact that we only started performing live in 1997, so this is 28 years ago! This was 17 years after we formed ironically, so we have had an unusual career in that respect. So people didn’t get a chance to thank us I suppose.
One thing I noticed researching old CDs and all that, HEAVEN 17 were one of the first acts to have an email contact address in the booklet, so how did people respond to you?
We’ve always tried to allow contact, we’re in a fortunate position where we are not Taylor Swift and don’t get half a million emails! There’s a definite intention from both Glenn and myself , and Ian when he was in the band, that we wanted to be an open as possible with the fans and have as much contact. In fact, it was even more important when we didn’t perform live so we had the HEAVEN 17 Plan fan club which Lindsay, Glenn’s wife used to run.
We’ve tried to encourage as much contact as possible with the fans. But it was a bit of a dichotomy because we liked the idea of people on videos, you’re almost like an actor and a fantasy thing, then one day Robert De Niro says “you can email me if you want”… of course, I’m exaggerating it to make a point but you know what I mean?
An interesting flip of this contact, and this is something Neil Arthur of BLANCMANGE said to me, is that you are more accessible so people start approaching you about weird stuff, telling you their record is scratched and asking what you’re going to do about it… how have you dealt with the more intrusive side of being more open to your fanbase on social media?
I have to say it’s only a tiny amount, maybe 5% or less. But if we have a tour or a record coming, the most common annoying things are messages like “what time are you coming onstage?”, I sometimes respond and sometimes I don’t.
Then there’s people having issues with Ticketmaster or the venues themselves. But because I’m a point of contact and Glenn is in the background not having to deal with it, if something goes wrong and there’s a mistake in the publicity, Muggins here has to deal with it, they don’t contact the venue or the promoter… so I’ve had to back off on all that stuff. But it’s a rare thing.
Another thing about this approachability on social media, it means the artist has to regularly do postings but now there’s this trend for reels… CHINA CRISIS used to be quite mousey and quiet on socials but have taken to these filmed promo reels quite well but poor TEARS FOR FEARS look like they’re in one of those hostage videos! How do you feel about doing this kind of shortform in-person publicity?
We have PR for this ‘Sound With Vision’ tour which the promoter is paying for, they’re doing it properly and have got us on TV. This is no small thing getting on BBC1 at peak time but I have to say their research is sh*t because it’s always “WHAT AN AMAZING COMEBACK” when we we’ve been doing it for more than 27 years! But the great thing is they go “Oooh! ‘Temptation’”, “Ooooh ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, you should put that out again”, like that’s an original thought, I don’t get one of those emails every day! *laughs*
We do make an effort, it’s building and building ad building until hopefully this tour will sell out, it takes a long time this to do that stuff. But I do think it’s good to be out of the public eye for a while so that you don’t bore people to death, so my view is to keep it until when you need it.
I know what you mean about researchers who are getting younger, did not grow up with this music and not getting things right… but do you make allowances for this?
No, I’m very unforgiving, I think it’s easier to research than ever before, I think it’s laziness… it’s not the game it used to be, I was talking to someone the other day that the notion of journalism is going to sh*t basically!
Yes I agree, but I suppose a young BBC intern isn’t going to know who HEAVEN 17 are, but what annoys me much more are these so-called electronic music media outlets who see it as their specialism but don’t have a clue or do the research…
Well, they can’t all be you Chi but I’m harsher on the BBC and the major radio stations who literally can’t be arsed!
HEAVEN 17 have done the VIP package thing and everyone does that now, but the notion of it has been flipped by Ticketmaster who have been selling tickets as “VIP” which get nothing more than a lanyard, a poster and a bar nearer the seat… I know of people who bought these packages who really did think they were going to meet Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift… so this rise in concert elitism through VIP, what do you think?
Well, we thought about the VIP thing for a while before we started doing it but we regard it as a valuable tool to help support the costs of the tour. Fundamentally, there’s me and Glenn, then everybody else on the stage, all the staff, the drivers, front of house engineer and lighting etc all have to be paid. We only get paid at the end on the bottom line after. Fortunately the last few tours have done really well. But when we did the tours with the full band in 2010-2013, we looked at the figures after the tours, me and Glenn made zero money, we barely broke even. We were mugs for quite a while and I know we are not stupid business wise, but things are expensive and things have got more expensive now.
We were approached to tour America a long time ago and asked our manager to do an illustration of what it would earn us and it was like peanuts, but everyone else would have got paid. So that went back and forth every 3-4 years, the offer went up a little bit more each time and eventually we did it. When we got there, it ended up being more expensive than what our management had projected and we ended up losing money. Then we were asked again so we started asking ABC, THOMPSON TWINS, OMD and almost to a man, they said “Oh, we’re not doing it for the money, we’re doing it because we want to do it!” but me and Glenn aren’t really in that situation, we’re not poverty stricken but…
The whole live thing is getting more polarised all the time, we did the support for CULTURE CLUB with Tony Hadley on a UK arena tour last year, we had a great time, the O2 was sold out at £100 a ticket or more. Very nicely, the promoters SJM gave us a nice bonus at the end which wasn’t part of the contract, so they must have made an absolute killing! But in the mid-range, there’s not much killing going on and at the bottom, it’s almost like pay-to-play a lot of the time.
I don’t think fans really understand the economics and this is one thing that really p*sses me off about social media, we announce a big tour and put an effort into it and you just get a load of people going “why aren’t you coming to Stourbridge?” or “why aren’t you going to Skegness?”. We go where the promoters tell us to go, the tours are designed by them, not us! So the routines, the places available of a particular size that are hard to find now these days and the areas of the country that are covered are determined by the promoters, NOT by the band!
Of course, if you are a huge band, you can go “I don’t want to play in Tucson, I don’t want to play in Springfield”, you have more power to determine that but as a mid-range act, it’s difficult… it’s a point some people don’t get.
What do you hope the ‘Sound With Vision’ tour and documentary will achieve for you ultimately?
Firstly I think it’s an interesting idea and I can’t recollect anybody else doing it, the closest was probably the SPARKS one which was a little bit of an inspiration although that was still super focussed on the band. I really liked the KING CRIMSON one, that made me laugh a lot. The premise that the band is this all powerful entity that must be worshipped is the exact opposite of how we feel about the world. If people come to the gigs, there will be a good chance people will get filmed if they want to get filmed and there will be specific people that we talk to who we will visit in their world.
It will hopefully be a feature length documentary that will be shown on Sky Arts or Netflix or whatever, who knows? It’s really about fandom, that’s the larger issue. Boomers I suppose, are the fans of that kind of 80s music largely all over the world and a lot of people think it’s the happiest time they’ve ever had, not just because they were young but because it was an extraordinary decade in music. So that audience has grown older, a lot of them have got a bit more affluent and they want to relive their youth, which is perfectly reasonable and I suppose we are in a certain respect. But they don’t want it to be patronising and feel like a nostalgia trip, they want to feel like they are living in the present when they experience that stuff.
So this is a new phenomenon, it’s not just us. It’s all the 80s acts that we love who I’m sure have similar fanbases. The rise of this kind of VIP thing is important element to it as well because when I was growing up and seeing loads of gigs, I was an obsessive music fan and the thought back then that you could actually meet these demi-gods who were on stage would have been amazing!
Were there any artists you would have paid VIP for had it been available?
Oh yeah! Bowie and Roxy, but you were never going to get to people of that ilk! There are people who take that properly seriously, Thomas Dolby,Martin Fry and Howard Jones for example and it helps support the band, it’s money going into the general tour pot. The mid-range of tours are not making a lot of money but it does provide employment and gives enjoyment for a lot of people. It’s only when you get to the £100 ticket level and beyond that serious money is made.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Martyn Ware
HEAVEN 17 ‘Sound With Vision’ tour includes:
London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire (6th November), Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion (7th November), Norwich Waterfront (8th November), Oxford O2 Academy 1 (10th November), Leeds O2 Academy (12th November), Glasgow Barrowland (13th November), Sheffield Octagon (14th November), Liverpool O2 Academy 1 (15th November), Newcastle Boiler Shop (17th November), Birmingham O2 Institute 1 (19th November), Bristol O2 Academy 1 (20th November), Bournemouth O2 Academy (21st November), Manchester O2 Ritz (22nd November)
No5 in ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK’s ALBUMS OF 2023, John Foxx’s ‘The Arcades Project’ was a beautiful instrumental suite based around the piano.
In the aural lineage of ‘Transluscence’, ‘Drift Music’ and ‘Nighthawks’, ‘The Arcades Project’ can be seen as a John Foxx’s tribute to his late collaborator Harold Budd. It was inspired by Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Arcades Project’ which gathered new ideas emerging from Paris in the 19th and early 20th century,
However, the new John Foxx solo piano album ‘Wherever You Are’ is a much more reflective personal work about the “mostly good, generous, bright people” he has met through his life. It was recorded at home in the weeks following a rare live performance in October 2023 as part of BBC’s Radio 3 ’Night Tracks’ event presented by Hannah Peel in London.
An album that says “simply, thanks. Wherever you are”, John Foxx spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about the inspirations behind his wonderful ivory adventures…
Moody tracks with piano have been part of your music since ULTRAVOX! as with ‘My Sex’ and ‘Just For A Moment’, so which works with a piano aesthetic first attracted your ears?
Well, hearing a friend play a piece by Satie on the old lecture theatre piano, at art school. That was the turning point. I immediately felt I’d encountered a true, pure beauty. This was in the mid 1960s and Satie wasn’t at all well-known or well regarded then. Before that, I’d been impressed by a late-night TV series in the early 1960’s – ‘Play Bach’, by the Jacques Loussier Trio. They had a regular spot on late night TV.
From that and a few other pieces, I felt there must be something further, and I needed to hear it – a purer, less complicated sort of solo piano. It was so tantalising. A few more hints of this came from unexpected places – on the popular music front, there was ‘Cast Your Fate to the Wind’ by Vince Guaraldi, for instance. But hearing Satie made everything else fall away. That was really it.
Around the same time, my aunt gave me her old upright piano, which happened to be a reasonably good one. I was around sixteen years old. That’s when I began trying to make pieces of my own. A year or so later, at Manchester art school, my girlfriend had a copy of Satie pieces by Aldo Ciccolini – the album with the Picasso drawing of Satie on the cover. So I was able to hear more of his work. I began to wonder what form something like that might take in a modern context. A few years later, Brian Eno originated the idea of ambient music, which created a suitable context then along came ‘The Pearl’ – such a unique combination of talents – Harold Budd, quiet piano visionary, Dan Lanois, the Capability Brown of sonic landscaping, and Brian Eno, avant conceptualist. That record was really revolutionary for me – it brought Satie into the next century.
Who are your favourite piano composers?
Erik Satie, Harold Budd, some sections of Keith Jarrett’s solo concerts. After that, a few individual pieces – some Chopin Nocturnes and Debussy pieces – ‘Clair de Lune’, etc, a few slower solo pieces such as Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise’. I also some of Arvo Part’s compositions – ‘Spiegel Im Spiegel’, ‘Fur Alina’ etc.
After ‘Metamatic’, piano made a notable return on ‘The Garden’ with ‘Europe After The Rain’ and ‘Walk Away’ but then kind of disappeared?
I had a grand piano in The Garden studio, so that was very convenient. After that, electronics took over again – there was also a period when I didn’t have an acoustic piano at home. That’s really the key – you need to be able to play whenever the mood strikes.
You did three albums with the late Harold Budd, the first pair ‘Translucence / Drift Music’ in 2003, so why have your own solo piano works taken longer to be forthcoming?
I was so completely focussed on making the work with Harold as good as possible that it took me some time to realise I hadn’t actually done a piano record of my own.
When working with Harold Budd, how would you describe your role? Did you contribute piano parts or did you leave that aspect entirely to him?
Well, I was default producer, organised the studio in a friend’s house, brought the piano over and set up recording equipment. When Harold arrived, we discussed his music – where we might take it, etc. I also recorded everything. I played around half of the piano pieces on those albums – sometimes Harold and I would swap piano chords then I’d improvise, other times I’d invent a piano piece from scratch. Other tracks were entirely his composition and playing.
Harold had the first and last word. The basic approach originated from him, a philosophy of simplicity, directness, finding the most beautiful notes, giving them space to develop, making use of the reverb and harmonic fields. We’d record as soon as it felt right. It all went very quickly and easily. The entire album was a delight to work on. Harold never played anything more than twice and mostly just once. He was so unassuming – simply came in and played, then we’d listen back and get on with the next piece.
Afterwards, I compiled what I felt were the most representative tracks and sent them off to him. He was fine with it all, so we ended up with two records, ‘Translucence’ – the piano, and ‘Drift Music’ – the more radically treated pieces. The idea of ‘Drift Music’ was complete abstraction – take reverb, echo and all sonic treatments as far as we possibly could.
By the way – It’s interesting how this has been taken even further now, by some characters on YouTube slowing those tracks down radically. I like that, and I’m absolutely sure Harold would, too. But all that’s just the technical side. The more central thing is the reason we do all this in the first place.
For my part, (and I feel this may also have some relevance to the way Harold works), it’s an attempt to capture a few small but valuable things from our passing lives. A glimpse of someone, a fleeting thought when you’re sitting on a bus looking out of the window at the city passing by, a moment of stillness and wonder, that sensation of imagining we recognise someone who vanishes in a crowd, the brief, long light at the end of a day. Nothing grand, significant or dramatic – just the opposite – and not resolved in any way, yet so recognisable when evoked musically. These small things are easily lost or overlooked, but they form a sort of undercurrent in our lives. They’re part of its fabric.
As I grow older, I begin to realise the so-called important times can often leave us unmoved, while a few odd, unexpected things will get through the defences. Some moments last forever. Music is such a great trigger, it’s capable of evoking something of the way these small things can affect us. Also, recording itself is such a strange and mysterious activity. You take a moment that would otherwise be lost forever and enable it to live forever. Isn’t that downright weird? Not to say magical?
And this can give a recorded moment vast significance. Something like using a microscope to see all the complexity inside a drop of water, or realising that a face in Cinema close-up is twenty feet high and transmitting fleeting expressions as subtle as changing weather. These recorded moments can be closely examined and re-experienced an infinite number of times, and through being captured in this way, they’ve become something quite new.
‘The Arcades Project’ was billed as your first solo piano album, how would you describe your approach? How was it different from your instrumental ambient works like the ‘Cathedral Oceans’ trilogy or ‘London Overgrown’?
‘Arcades’ is a lot simpler and absolutely direct. One instrument. All improvised. Occasionally, a discreet synth part. ‘London Overgrown’ and ‘Cathedral Oceans’ involved improvising over long delays then building multiple tracks. ‘Cathedral Oceans’ was intended as a technological continuity of ancient chant, through singing into huge, notional electronic spaces and harmonising with returning, reflected voices. Both had an entirely different premise from ‘Arcades’.
You have said that “Around dawn is the best time to play piano”, were most of the pieces improvised or was there some degree of notation beforehand, even if it was just to sketch a basic structure?
Very little was ever written down – the only time I ever saw Harold use any sort of notation was on ‘Spoken Roses’ – he referred to some brief notes he’d made, then he did two takes, one after the other, both good, before choosing one as the master. It was a revelation to hear that piece unfolding live. Truly gorgeous. Everything else sprang from a basic chord or two, then a note or two over that, then you were off – take it any way you feel. A few very basic, but vital rules – maximum beauty, minimal notes. Brevity, simplicity, joy.
In what ways does your new piano album ‘Wherever You Are’ differ in concept from ‘The Arcades Project’, it appears more personal?
Yes, I think it is.
I see Harold Budd and Conny Plank among the many photos on the front cover artwork of ‘Wherever You Are’?
Well, they’re both significant. Satie’s there too, on the inside cover. It all goes back to him.
How important is the visual presentation of these piano works to the music it contains?
I guess the imagery acts as a sort of entry point. Indicates the kind of emotional tone you can expect to encounter.
What types of piano have you been using?
A Yamaha grand, 6ft 2inches. Great fun getting it through the front door a few years ago, when I swapped it for the previous one, which was a few inches shorter. Occasionally I get access to other pianos. A Steinway or a Kawaii, and I can sometimes use a combination of sustain from an acoustic piano and play over that using Pianoteq.
In terms of recording, piano is known not to be easy to lay down and there was a time particularly when there was a lot of Roland CP70 electric baby grand piano direct input and then treated afterwards, what set-up did you use to record your pieces at home?
Simple as possible. A couple of decent mics placed inside the lid, an old Alesis mixer and an antique reverb unit. I’d begun to use some newer software reverbs, but the overall sound of the antique thing is richer, more interesting. Occasionally I’ve just used one mic, and that can be more solid an image, letting the reverbs do the stereo. You always have to move the mics around very patiently until it all feels cohesive. That’s the most important bit, really. You simply have to listen.
Photo by Brian Griffin
Although ‘The Arcades Project’ and ‘Wherever You Are’ are piano-based works, there are a lot of effects and occasional synthesizer, had you considered producing more something much barer and more minimal?
By the way, there’s no synth on ‘Wherever You Are’. It’s all piano and reverbs. I think the way I record is already fairly simple and minimal – single takes of an improvised piano piece, made mostly by reacting to the piano’s open string harmonics. You see, my basic premise is – there’s an aspect of the piano that has been completely overlooked, yet it’s what makes the piano completely unique. This is the harmonic field produced by the sympathetic vibration of all its strings.
By simply holding down the sustain pedal, you allow all the strings to make this wonderful, moving, harmonic field. No other instrument can produce an effect like that – perhaps the nearest might be a sitar – but that doesn’t have anywhere near the number of strings. A piano has over two hundred, so they produces an incredibly rich and complex sound, and I think this is the unique signature of the modern piano.
Yet no-one seems to have noticed it. No music I know of has ever been composed or recorded with this in mind – it’s simply never been investigated properly – so that’s what I’ve been doing with these recordings. The reverbs I use are designed to extend those harmonics, that combination creates a changing bed of sound for me to improvise over.
The origins of this go way back to 1977, recording the first minute and a half or so of the intro to ‘A Distant Smile’, with ULTRAVOX! I got Billy to play a few piano chords, having had the idea of getting him to hold down the sustain pedal in order to allow all the piano strings to vibrate sympathetically, then recording these until they died away, some time later. Then I asked Steve Lillywhite to take off the initial impact of the notes being hit, by fading in just the sustained sound afterwards.
In this way, we quickly built up several layers that make a beautiful bed of moving, sympathetic harmonics from the two hundred or so strings. You can hear these under the track’s beginning. I was tremendously excited by the beauty and potential of the sound this produced. It was obvious there was so much more to explore here, but also frustrating, because I couldn’t do that – we were in the middle of making a rock album to a strict deadline. So I had to stow the idea away for later use.
Have you any favourite pieces from ‘Wherever You Are’?
The first track, ‘When She Walked In With The Dawn’, because that’s when I got the sound just right, which triggered me to write and record all the other tracks.
With the piano, have you found your forte, as it were, at this stage of your creativity or is there something else you would like to try, say with artificial intelligence for example?
I do feel I’ve got a unique territory I can explore now – and that’s always a great feeling – your own territory, another adventure opens up. I like the simplicity and the entirely hands-on nature of it.
You set up the sound, than simply sit down and record – and that’s it, no overdubs or other complications, an entirely human response to what a piano and an old reverb unit gives you. It acts as a great release from all the other stuff I’m involved in. It’s the opposite of AI – and even of synths or multitrack recording. Much as I love all that, it’s just wonderful to take a step sideways.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to John Foxx
Additional thanks to Steve Malins at Random Management
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