Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

They Need Your Love So Bad!

by

Jon Young

Andy McCluskey laughs at the memory of The Song that changed the fortunes of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. "We were nervous when 'If You Leave' came out, because we were on the same label as Simple Minds and people were saying it would do for us what '(Don't You) Forget About Me' did for them. We didn't wanna hear that! We didn't even wanna think it!"

However, the parallel held up. Just as Jim Kerr's boys made their commercial breakthrough with a song from John Hughes's The Breakfast Club, OMD (as we'll call them from here on) came up winners last summer with a tune created for another Hughes flick, Pretty In Pink. And like Simple Minds, OMD aren't 100 percent crazy about their hit.

"It's not totally an OMD song," observes cheerful Paul Humphreys, who shares command of the band with McCluskey. "We would never have writ ten it that way without the specifications of the movie." Pressed, he admits he finds the tune "simplistic."

Of course, they're not complaining much. "If You Leave" is superior radio fodder, if not the greatest OMD opus ever, and it brought McCluskey and Humphreys mainstream exposure in the States, something they'd been struggling to achieve for over five years. No longer restricted to the import bins and college radio, they’ve become acceptable fare for MTV and middle-of-the-road FM.

OMD are happy to go with the flow, too. Both Andy (dark-haired and gabby) and Paul (fair-haired and soft-spoken) readily admit they’d like their new LP, The Pacific Age, to be a smasheroo. And they may get their wish. It’s a bright, easy-onthe-ears LP, full of pretty pop like “(Forever) Live And Die,” funky pop like “Stay (The Black Rose And The Universal Wheel),” bittersweet pop like “Shame,” and driving pop like “Goddess Of Love.” Once a fussy little synthesizer duo with obscurist tendencies, OMD has blossomed into a meaty, beaty six-piece band that’s just plain fun to hear.

As McCluskey and Humphreys tell it, during an interview at the A&M bunker in New York, more than the grooves have changed. Flash back to ’81 and let these good-natured guys spin you an uplifting tale of disillusionment and renewal...

“After Architecture And Morality, our third LP, sold millions in Europe, we thought everything we did would be loved,” recalls Humphreys. “But we were just two boys from Liverpool who’d been lulled into a false sense of security.”

Adds McCluskey, “Back when we started, we didn’t take the music industry all that seriously. We were pleasantly surprised every time we recorded something and people bought it. Then the third album was bigger than we ever imagined it would be and people started saying to us, ‘Now you’ve got the formula. You’re gonna make a lot of money!’

“We thought to ourselves, ‘Is this really what it’s all about? Is this really what we wanted?’ Once you start to put yourself on the spot with questions like that, it can really shake up your mental framework.

“We went through a two-year period of not knowing what we were gonna do or why, and our next album, Dazzle Ships, was a product of that. It was a very mixed record: four really weird pieces, throwaway pop, and moody deep stuff. It didn’t go in any particular direction.”

Guess what? Dazzle Ships sank like a stone. Notes McCluskey, “It was despised by almost everybody, which caused us to grind to a complete halt.”

What to do? Slink away? Or fight back like real men? “I don’t know why we continued, but we did,” he remembers. “We thought about splitting up, then realized that we made music because we enjoyed it. Now that we’d made something people didn’t wanna buy, were we gonna let that stop us? No!”

The regimen for rejuvenation began with a change of scene. Leaving the home studio in Liverpool where they’d previously recorded, OMD bought their first Fairlight and went off to record in the Caribbean. The outcome was Junk Culture, which aimed at the dancefloor crowd and found the boys enjoying themselves as never before.

Says McCluskey, “Before, I think we’d taken to heart some'of the criticism of our earlier albums, which said we were shirking our responsibilities by not addressing the problems of the world. [Humphreys bursts out laughing.] Then we began to realize there’s nothing wrong with pop music. It’s a very valid medium in itself. Even if it doesn’t change the world, it has importance.”

Now Professor McCluskey is picking up a head of steam. “Popular media like fashion, art, pop music, and TV reflect their environment, and that in itself is a reason for being. None of ’em will deal hammer blows to change the world, but in throwing up a mirror to what’s going on, they do change your perceptions.”

Here comes the really heavy stuff. “And even if they don’t, they’re a crystallization in time of an idea. As you go forward, you can look back and use them for marking points that outline attitudes. Popular media aren’t trivial, aren’t trash—they’re junk culture. Transient of their own nature, but in no way unimportant.”

And you thought we were talking about simple entertainment.

Their most accessible LP to date, 1984’s Junk Culture also sowed the seeds for OMD’s later chart success in the U.S. Previously signed to Epic, where they’d had no luck at all, the band relocated to A&M just in time to encounter a more receptive radio climate. Explains (as usual) McCluskey, “The first time we came over to tour in 1980, we were a weird underground cult band. You’d never have expected to hear us on the radio next to Journey and Foreigner. Now whatever people might say about Culture Club or Wham! or Duran Duran, they kicked open a lot of doors for British pop and created a new audience.”

While denying any jealousy that others got to the big time first, he does concede, “We’d been here in ’80 and died trying, so we felt a bit like the suicide troops who hit the beaches and got wiped out paving the way for the heavy artillery.”

Back then, though, they didn’t have the greatest attitude. “When we did well in Europe, we didn’t care about America much,” notes McCluskey. “We didn’t like coming here for low-budget tours. We wanted to go home and write.”

Crush, produced by Stephen Hague, made further inroads, setting the stage for The Song. McCluskey recalls how “If You Leave” came into being: “John Hughes had apparently liked our music for some time, and he’d used Tesla Girls’ [from Junk Culture] in Weird Science. While we were in L.A. in July, ’85, he invited us down to the studio on the last day of shooting Pretty In Pink, and asked us to come up with a track for the film.

“Using a script for guidance, we wrote the song that October. We were really pleased with it, ’cause it matched the storyline very closely, only to discover after we got back to the States that they’d shot a new ending for the movie, making what we’d done irrelevant. We then had three days to write and record a new song. It was quite a pressure situation.” (The rejected track became “Goddess Of Love” on The Pacific Age.)

When it came time to record the allimportant album to follow the breakthrough hit, OMD kept one thing in mind, says McCluskey. “For years people have been telling us that we have more energy onstage than on vinyl, and we thought it was time to capture some of that in the studio. Paul and I wrote the tunes the same way as before—using a Fairlight, drum machine, and Emulator. But then we handed over the songs to our band for their input and recorded quickly. It was important to us to use real live drums by our drummer [Malcolm Holmes] and fit everything else around that, rather than set everything to a click track. Instead of using sequencers, we played all the instruments by hand, to get a manual feel.

“The production of Crush had been a little too subdued for my taste. We worked with Stephen Hague again on The Pacific Age, but the situation was different. Last year, I had some problems with him, wasn’t too sure about our relationship, although I appreciated some of the work he did. Crush was the first proper band album he’d ever done, and he was a little paranoid perhaps, trying to take too much control. Now, he’s mellowed. He’s more confident, having produced the Pet Shop Boys. He was able to relax and lay off a little bit this time.”

As noted, The Pacific Age is brimful of fine rockin’ pop that oughta satisfy old fans and hold the interest of those who know OMD mainly from “If You Leave.” Though pleased as a whole with the LP, they’re especially proud of “Southern,” which combines a soaring dance track with actual excerpts from speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King. What could have been an ill-advised novelty turns out to be a surprisingly moving experience. If “Southern” doesn’t stir your spirit, you’ve got a hard heart indeed.

McCluskey brightens at praise for “Southern,” recalling, “I was on a holiday in Monterey last year and I found a shop that sold cassettes of speeches, where I bought one of Dr. King’s. We didn’t know that much about him—we were just eight years old when he died— but it was so gripping to hear him speak that we went on and learned more. We treated the project very carefully, because we didn’t want it to be a gimmick. We wanted it to be a celebration of what he said and did. When we sent a demo of the song to the King Foundation for publishing clearance, we were anxious about the reaction, but they approved it.”

The voice track, he explains, is a composite of speeches “from ’55 right up to ’68, largely in chronological order. The last part is from ’68, just before he died.”

Why call the LP The Pacific Age? Sez McCluskey, “It’s a phrase that refers to the rise of countries like Japan and China, but in true OMD fashion, the song has a vague, personal viewpoint. It’s about someone who’s undergoing changes— who may not even be aware of them and can’t do anything about them. It seemed to make sense as an album title.” Pausing, he adds, “We feel this is a period of change for us.”

Yes, these once-haughty British pop stars would now like Americans to find a home in their hearts for OMD. As McCluskey admits, “We’re very nervous about The Pacific Age because we’ve allowed ourselves to be hopeful for the first time. If things don’t turn out the way we have our fingers crossed, we’ll be much more disappointed than we were previously, when we said, ‘Americans don’t bother with us, so we won’t worry about them.’”

He snickers. “I’ve despised America long enough. I like coming here now, and ...” McCluskey sees the tape run out, flashes a grin, and says, “And there’s a lot of money to be made here!”