OMD interview: ‘We never wanted to be a pop group – our mates thought we were rubbish’
This summer, director Christopher Nolan smuggled weighty ideas and nuclear devastation into the mainstream with the almost $1 billion-grossing biopic Oppenheimer. But in 1980, two smartly-dressed Merseysiders got there first. Enola Gay, by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, sold over five million copies despite being an anti-war anthem named after the American B-29 Superfortress bomber which carried J. Robert Oppenheimer’s creation on its world-altering mission over Japan. Surely the song should have been a dead cert for the soundtrack?
“Ha!” laughs OMD singer Andy McCluskey. “No, we didn’t get the call...” Perhaps no wonder.
As he said last month during a live edition of Tim Burgess’s Twitter Listening Party: “I wrote a happy song about dropping atom bombs.”
OMD – with 25 million singles and 15 million albums sold – have made big hooks and bigger themes their trademark. In the 16 months after Enola Gay was a number eight smash in the UK, the duo who brought bank-clerk chic to the New Romantic circus had not one but two top five singles about Joan of Arc. As he said recently, McCluskey was “desperate to f––– with the music industry and even have them released under the same title”. (The second was eventually renamed Maid of Orleans.)
At the other end of their remarkable 45-year career, their ridiculously thrilling 14th album, Bauhaus Staircase, grapples with the present era of the evolution of Earth (Anthropocene), the extinction of mankind (Evolution of Species), totalitarian regimes’ hatred of art (the title track) and fat-cat leaders lining their pockets (Kleptocracy).
“We believe in democracy,” begins McCluskey, reassuringly, when asked if there was an inciting incident that inspired the latter. “But increasingly we’ve started to feel in this post-fact era that certain people have hijacked our democracy for their own ends. For me, the tipping point probably was [journalist Jamal] Khashoggi. He goes into an embassy and comes out a week later, dissected in bags. And everybody’s like: ‘Saudi Arabia, horror, horror!’ Then, six months later: ‘Anyway, Saudi Arabia, how many aeroplanes would you like to buy?’”
Over a lunchtime Chinese in west London, the 64-year-old singer and lyricist snorts blackly and throws his hands up. Sitting next to him, keyboard-playing and music-writing partner Paul Humphreys, 63, looks equally aghast.
“What worries both of us is,” continues McCluskey, “Paul’s a Man United fan and I’m a Liverpool fan. Both of our clubs are for sale. And we don’t want them to be bought by somebody whose politics and policies we’re unhappy with. I’m very unhappy with Jordan Henderson going to Saudi Arabia,” McCluskey says of the former Anfield favourite who, after a transfer deal worth £12 million-plus, now plays his football for Al-Ettifaq in the Saudi Pro League. “His legacy is destroyed,” the musician says witheringly. “He’s gone there to earn enough money for what? His great-grandchildren to be well off? He’s burnt his bridges.”
Cue Kleptocracy, a thrillingly propulsive synth-pop stomper that’ll have them bopping, angularly, in the aisles when OMD play next year’s arena-level European tour. And cue Evolution Of Species, a song with a scientific heft and melodic suss that evokes Chris Packham joining the Pet Shop Boys.
“But we’ve always done that – sugar-coated our dark ideas and dark subject matter,” says Humphreys. “Enola Gay seemed like a sweet pop song but it was about dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.”
With the pair of schoolfriends from The Wirral having reformed in 2006 after splitting in 1989, these electronic pioneers have now been together the second time round longer than they were in their first blush.
And whereas their remarkable early- and mid-1980s run of singles (Enola Gay, Souvenir, Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans, Locomotion, Talking Loud and Clear, Tesla Girls) will never be repeated, they’ve doubled down on making consistently great albums. English Electric (2013) and, particularly, 2017’s The Punishment of Luxury are up there with early-career triumphs Architecture & Morality (1981, an early hit for Factory Records) and Dazzle Ships (1983). Now Bauhaus Staircase maintains both that standard and that reputation for titles that are intriguing, wordy and, dare we say, verbose. Pretentious, nous?
“They are!” laughs McCluskey. “We’ll take that one on the chin! But, number one: writing cliched lyrics is anathema to us. That’s part of the rulebook. And two, the bottom line is, you have to understand: we had no aspiration to be a pop group. It was a hobby. And our mates thought that what we were doing was s–––.”
“It was our expression,” says Humphreys. “We were writing for ourselves.”
Unfortunately for the early OMD, they couldn’t help but write pop songs – and write them fast. From their 1980 self-titled debut onwards, they released three albums in 21 months. The third, Architecture & Morality, sold 3.5 million copies. Their delighted record label told them to repeat the formula. That way “you’ll be the next Genesis!” McCluskey and Humphreys shout in unison. “And we said, sod that!” says McCluskey.
In the flamboyant 1980s pop landscape, they were equally intent on not following the peacocking flock – OMD were sharply dressed and sharply creased. “Sorry, we’re a bit wrinkled now,” demurs McCluskey who, like his partner, is actually very well-preserved. “And today we’re wearing the customary rock’n’roll black t-shirts.”
Back then, though, their office-friendly attire was in stark contrast to that of peers such as Spandau Ballet and The Human League. Was that purposeful? Or was that just how they were as blokes?
“We decided that we wanted to have a non-image,” replies Humphreys. “It was an anti-image statement. Particularly in the early days, that was a boring bank clerk look.
“Let’s be honest, we took the look from Kraftwerk,” acknowledges McCluskey. “They were trying to be the antithesis in the 1970s of the Anglo-American rock look. When I saw them in ’75, there was no long hair, no flared denims, no lead guitar solos. It was short hair, jackets and ties, two guys playing electronic tea trays with knitting needles. I was like: this is incredible!”
It was a look later popularised by, amongst others, Franz Ferdinand. Frontman Alex Kapranos even had some of McCluskey’s “signature” dance moves. “Poor boy!” laughs the singer.
Did it bother him that his dancing has been the subject of countless wisecracks over the last four decades? (According to one critic, the singer “danced like someone at an office party who’d had one too many shandies”.)
“It still does,” he replies without rancour. “I absolutely loathe it being called ‘dad dancing’. It’s the way I dance. The funny thing was, Ian Curtis had that strange, jerky style in the beginning as well.” McCluskey shrugs. “It is what it is. As Paul says, I’ve spent 45 years overcompensating for his static performance!
“Part of it was trying to make people realise that synth music isn’t boring. You don’t have to stand still,” he elaborates. And for all the cleverness in the lyrical themes, “it’s not pseudo-intellectual. We’re not trying to be robots.”
“We’re onstage to entertain,” nods Humphrey.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s ability to do just that eventually resulted in a call from Hollywood. But when they finally made their American breakthrough with 1986’s If You Leave, from the film Pretty in Pink, shifting from artful synth-pop to John Hughes soundtrack-friendly radio smash, it was already too late. In fact, it was almost too late before they even began.
“It was a weird thing,” says Humphreys of their experiences writing for the Brat Pack classic that starred Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer, James Spader and Andrew McCarthy. “We spent a couple of months doing a song for the film – but then they reshot the end.”
“So,” chips in McCluskey, “they said to us: ‘Now the lyrics in your song don’t work. Can you write us another one? In one day?’”
An initial cut of the film had been shown to its target audience – teenage girls – “and they hated it!” recalls Humphreys. “Because the original ending was [Ringwald’s character] Andie ending up with [Cryer’s character] Duckie. And all the teen girls said: ‘No! He’s funny, he’s her friend, and she’s got to end up with a good-looking guy [McCarthy’s Blane]! Find a way to make that work!’”
In those more literal, binary, fairy-tale times, the ending was reshot, with Andie kissing Blane in the parking lot. But now the feeling and vibe of Goddess of Love was all wrong. A new song was required.
Surrounded by rented equipment, the duo sat down with a pen and paper and “actually did old-fashioned songwriting,” says McCluskey. “It was like Tin Pan Alley.”
The 24-hour achievement of the magisterial If You Leave is even more remarkable given the other key element of OMD’s brief: it had to be at the same tempo as Simple Minds’ Don’t You (Forget About Me). The other defining British Invasion song from a Hughes film (The Breakfast Club) was used on set when the prom dance scene was filmed.
“So our parameter was 120 beats per minute,” says McCluskey. Then, come the film’s LA premiere a few months later, “we got the limo to the Mann’s Chinese Theatre, walked down the red carpet and sat through the whole bloody movie. We waited and waited and waited and finally, our song comes on. And we looked at each other and said: ‘Who the hell edited this? Nobody is dancing on the beat at all. We could have done any tempo we wanted!’”
At least their US record label, A&M, was ecstatic. They’d built an entire marketing campaign around their English charges being in the latest surefire teen smash from Hughes. But there was a problem.
“It was ‘86 and we were starting to stumble by then,” says McCluskey. OMD had a couple more hits – Forever Live and Die (1986) and Dreaming (1988). “But then we imploded. Just as all the money we’d spent on tour support finally started to pay off, the band split up.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the final straws before the 1989 dissolution of the Humphreys/McCluskey partnership was another tour. But not just any tour: a 1988 American run supporting Depeche Mode, then at the peak of their powers and their debauchery.
“Oh my God!” exclaims McCluskey. “That tour was just powder city. The strangest thing I’ve ever seen in my life was one of their crew licking his glass eye, rolling it in the coke and popping it back in the socket! It was freaky!”
OMD, though, were spared such eye-watering excesses, not least by going their separate ways. “Yeah, we survived that,” says Humphreys. “We went into the 1990s and I had a child. That makes you grow up really quick.”
“You get to a point where you just go: I need to be sensible here. This is not very good behaviour,” says McCluskey. Still, he admits that “I’ve had to manage my drinking on and off over the years. And be careful. Someone once said to me: ‘You’re not very rock’n’roll, are you? You go to bed at 10 and you’re up at six.’ I’m like: ‘Yeah! My mantra is: nothing good happens after 10 o’clock unless I’m still on stage or in bed with the woman I love’.”
It’s perhaps little wonder that McCluskey is so sensible. As co-creator of Liverpool girl group Atomic Kitten, he had a ringside view as their early promise and hit-rate was subsumed in a flurry of tabloid interest and intrigue, much of it centred around Kerry Katona.
“To begin with, it was great fun,” he says of the band who had a Number One in 2001 with Whole Again. “Didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I thought I knew the music industry after 18, 19 years in our band. Had a blast putting the band together, writing the songs [with] the girls.
“A lot of people still don’t know that they were actually dropped before Whole Again was released. The label had spent about a million a half, two million quid. The first album had come out and charted at number 39. So the boss of Virgin said: I’m not spending any more money on this because we’re not getting it back.”
But after some horse-trading, a further budget of £25,000 was agreed for a campaign in support of one more single. “No posters, no nothing, cheap video. All the other videos had been 150 grand, 200 grand. So, 25 grand, three girls against the white screen with a good song, boom, Number One. And all of a sudden they weren’t dropped!”
He remains fond of Katona, who’s experienced more than a lifetime of paparazzi scrutiny. “I can remember saying to her: ‘I’m really sorry. I had no idea what I was throwing you into. I didn’t know this end of the music industry.’ And she just said: ‘Andy, it’s OK. You’ve given me a career. I can earn money to look after my kids, one way or another. All the problems I had, I had before I met you. I just don’t have enough self-love.’
“And I said: ‘Kerry, you don’t have enough self-love? Have you had therapy by any chance?’ She said: ‘Too f–––––– right I have!’”
For the sixtysomething strivers of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, late-career success – not to mention the out-and-out-brilliance of Bauhaus Staircase – is clearly its own therapy.
As Humphreys, who these days lives in France, puts it: “Let’s face it: we’re at a certain age where we don’t know when our last album is going to be. So every album has to be of a certain level, in case it’s your last one. We don’t want to have a duffer as our final offering. So it’s that added pressure.”
Reflecting on the scale of that success – on their last tour, they sold out two nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall – Wirral-based McCluskey pronounces himself more than happy with their lot.
“To be honest, it’s as big as I want to get. Obviously, I’m contradicting myself because we do festivals in the summer where we play to 10- or 15,000 people. But it’s remarkable that the band has come back in some ways as strong, if not stronger than we were in the early 1980s.”
“But we have put in a lot of work into our live show,” Humphreys points out. “We really kick ass. It’s a very dynamic show.”
“And I still do the beautiful dancing!” hoots McCluskey.
Bauhaus Staircase is out now. OMD tour the UK next March