Mad World Read online

  Editor: DAVID CASHION

  Designer: EVAN GAFNEY

  Managing Editor: DAVID BLATTY

  Production Manager: ERIN VANDEVEER

  Photo Research: MEG HANDLER

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013945690

  ISBN: 978-1-4197-1097-1

  Text copyright © 2014 Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein

  Foreword copyright © 2014 Nick Rhodes

  Afterword copyright © 2014 Moby

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  Published in 2014 by Abrams Image, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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  To John: “Your love is life, for love is land” (LM)

  To Julius Bernstein, 1931–2013 (JB)

  Foreword by Nick Rhodes

  Introduction

  Adam and the Ants: “Kings of the Wild Frontier”

  Gary Numan: “Cars”

  Duran Duran: “Girls on Film”

  New Order: “Blue Monday”

  ABC: “Poison Arrow”

  Devo: “Whip It”

  Echo and the Bunnymen: “The Killing Moon”

  Spandau Ballet: “True”

  The Human League: “Being Boiled”

  Heaven 17: “Temptation”

  Dexys Midnight Runners: “Come On Eileen”

  Bow Wow Wow: “I Want Candy”

  The Waitresses: “I Know What Boys Like”

  The Normal: “Warm Leatherette”

  Kajagoogoo: “Too Shy”

  Thomas Dolby: “She Blinded Me with Science”

  The Psychedelic Furs: “Love My Way”

  Depeche Mode: “New Life”

  Yaz: “Only You”

  Kim Wilde: “Kids in America”

  Howard Jones: “New Song”

  Berlin: “The Metro”

  A Flock of Seagulls: “I Ran”

  Modern English: “I Melt with You”

  Soft Cell: “Tainted Love”

  A-ha: “Take On Me”

  Joy Division: “Love Will Tear Us Apart”

  The Smiths: “How Soon Is Now?”

  Tears for Fears: “Mad World”

  Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: “If You Leave”

  Ultravox: “Vienna”

  INXS: “Original Sin”

  Thompson Twins: “Hold Me Now”

  Simple Minds: “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”

  Animotion: “Obsession”

  Band Aid: “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

  Afterword by Moby

  Acknowledgments

  he seventies were a remarkable time for modern music, producing an enormous diversity of artists across multiple genres. Rock was split into subcategories: progressive, glam, heavy metal, hard rock, and art rock. During the decade, strangely, these sounds co-habited the same airwaves alongside disco, reggae, electro, funk, and punk. By the late seventies, hip-hop and rap had begun to emerge. There were no rules, but somehow, having a unique identity was a requirement, and even the performers following a trend invariably carved out their own personalities. Everything was handmade: analog, no computers, and no digital vocal tuning.

  My favored stick of rock was glam, where Bowie, T. Rex, Roxy Music, Sparks, and Cockney Rebel provided the soundtrack to my youth. Each had an individually captivating sound, and together they told the story I wanted to hear through those times in Britain. Other kids at school were lost in a haze of Pink Floyd and Genesis, or were queuing endlessly to secure Led Zeppelin tickets. We were all members of different factions, but wherever you belonged, the music was inspirational. It was an important voice in our culture, a way for our generation to express its singularity.

  In 1976, suddenly everything else seemed “last summer.” Punk exploded, blazing through much of the musical landscape that had come beforehand. It transformed the way we were. It was a revelation, an unprecedented surge of energy, but it also burned out fast. It was from these ashes that the music of the next decade was to rise. Bands like the Police, the Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees had already established their own sound and were able to drive smoothly into the eighties. Adam and the Ants remodeled and made the transition. Generation X did not—though Billy Idol had resurfaced as a solo artist by 1981.

  In the afterglow of punk, there were unexpected outcomes. Being in a band now seemed startlingly possible; the obstacles had been removed. Everything was more accessible. Indie record labels were thriving. Small venues were springing up in every town. The music press was actively searching for the next sound. There were even opportunities to get played on late-night radio. Attitude and ideas had overthrown musical virtuosity. Just a few years earlier, when superstars were untouchable, none of this would have been attainable.

  Technology was advancing fast, and the synthesizer was finally affordable, resulting in a stream of artists who integrated electronics into their organic sound. Gary Numan, Ultravox, and Japan were among those bridging the decades. The Human League became one of Britain’s first purely electronic acts, and Joy Division fused punk, synths, and beats to pioneer the way for all that was to follow. Through the blurred edges of this period, a new wave of band
s had been gestating and plotting their grand entrance. Those who materialized included U2, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, Tears for Fears, the Smiths, and Duran Duran. While we each had entirely distinctive sounds and outlooks, there was a common thread: We had all experienced the U.K. during the seventies, under the same gray skies, enduring political turbulence and social unrest. We were different reflections of similar views, reactionaries to our surroundings. Some chose to express the darkness, others looked toward the light. In Duran Duran’s case, we attempted to strike a balance between the two. We wanted to lift people’s spirits, rather than fight misery with misery. If you limit yourself to grainy black and white, you can create some beautiful imagery, but sometimes we simply wanted to use full, widescreen technicolor.

  Although for a period of two years I was principally transfixed by punk, it was in 1977 that I properly discovered electronic music via Kraftwerk, who proved to be a lasting inspiration. Later that year, I also heard the song “I Feel Love,” by Donna Summer, and this had a profound influence on how I perceived music from that point on. Additionally, it led me toward a greater appreciation of disco; Chic were now filed next to the Clash in my album collection. These elements, merged with many other stylistic references, formed the basic blueprint for Duran Duran: the raw energy of punk, disco rhythms, electro pulses, and the panache of glam rock, which was already deeply embedded in our consciousness. It was a band’s manifesto that ultimately defined their characteristics and set them apart from their contemporaries. Broadly speaking, the artists who came up through this period took their influences from the same pool of musical predecessors. Yet there is no doubt that if all the members of those bands gathered together, opinions about the merits of those performers would vary enormously. That said, I am supremely confident that there would be one exception: We would unanimously agree upon David Bowie being the common pivotal influence on all of our collective musical styles.

  Elsewhere in the world, Australia spawned INXS, who could have comfortably fit in with the British bands. However, in the United States, the musical DNA had metamorphosed in different ways. The Velvet Underground arguably invented alternative music. The Stooges and New York Dolls sowed the early seeds for a new wave. Patti Smith, the Ramones, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the B-52s, Television, Blondie, and Talking Heads were seminal artists evolving through the mid-seventies CBGB scene, the latter two acts going on to produce some of the most significant albums of the early eighties.

  Despite inroads made by the New York scene and a few other isolated bands, such as Devo, America still had a national propensity to gravitate toward traditional rock music. It looked unlikely that any international artists were going to break the radio blockade in the eighties, but change was on its way over the airwaves. Several alternative stations began to surface, WLIR in Long Island and KROQ in Los Angeles being among the first. They developed a contemporary audio language in stark contrast to the old guard, showcasing the brave and the new. This provided a platform for aspiring U.K. bands who had ventured to U.S. shores for the first time with a dream to break it big. As the radio format grew exponentially, a second transmutation occurred, this time within cable television: the launch of MTV, a 24-hour music-television channel. These factors greatly contributed to a seismic change. A second British Invasion was well underway in America, and the combined force of its new sounds broke down the doors.

  In today’s music world, there are very different factors crafting the careers of aspiring musicians. These are a reflection of our times and social attitudes. If there were no reality TV, and the Internet had not become a central portal in our lives, then music would have advanced in different ways. In my opinion, while reality TV creates opportunities for some, it takes away chances from others. Commercial radio has increasingly narrow playlists, and what is broadcast to the listening audience is in many ways more conservative and formulaic. The few remaining major record labels now spend markedly less time and money on artist development. Through massive exposure on TV, acts are rapidly thrust into the spotlight, frequently unprepared, and then usually exploited to within a breath of survival. The fallout of this evolution has established a culture wherein the public has a short attention span, with artists becoming more ephemeral, finding it harder to sustain a career.

  But the way we consume music now is probably the greatest change of all. Everything is available everywhere, 24 hours a day, online. There are ceaseless choices, from every conceivable period and genre. The difficulty becomes making a decision …

  Of course, there have been some other spectacular developments too, like the ability to create a song in your bedroom with a basic computer program, then instantly broadcast it online to a potentially immense audience. This kind of freedom opened a Pandora’s box for the digital generation and has undoubtedly produced some notable artists pushing musical boundaries, particularly within the urban and electronic dance-music genres.

  Personally, I always embrace progress and have little time for nostalgia, but it is important to put everything in context and to appreciate the best things that every period has to offer. Each band has their own story. We were lucky enough to grow up during an era when invention, experimentation, style, and innovation were applauded. It was a culture where the predilection was for standing out from the crowd rather than fitting in. Artists were musically adventurous, less driven by commerce, and their main objective was to create extraordinary music. If you happened upon commercial success, fame was a byproduct, rather than a priority. Idiosyncratic and eccentric songs often mingled in the mainstream charts. The public was open-minded, and there was a true appreciation for the currency of ideas and imagination.

  One thing that remains as true today as it was in the eighties: While those in their teens and early 20s have a limited musical vocabulary, they remain the key source for change in music. Possibly it’s a youthful energy, a swagger, a blinkered belief that they are right. Or perhaps it’s something truly intuitive that they have learned from closely studying a microcosm of eclectic songs from the past and present. For us, when we started Duran Duran, we were absolutely convinced we were right. Our sound was going to be the future. Maybe that is true of all young artists. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will.

  NR, London, 2013

  “New York to East California,

  there’s a new wave coming I warn you”

  Kim Wilde, “Kids in America”

  “Just don’t call it ‘new wave.’”

  Mute Records supremo Daniel Miller to this book’s authors

  WHAT IS NEW WAVE? In the U.K., home to the majority of the artists featured in this book, new wave was initially code adopted by journalists and disc jockeys eager to be perceived as cool but too nervous to actually use the word “punk” with all its threatening implications.

  In America, new wave was an umbrella the size of a circus tent. It covered synth pop, ska, goth, alternative rock, bubblegum, Eurodance, industrial, new romantic, blue-eyed U.K. soul, and electronic dance music. It was a Tower of Babel populated by American bands who wanted to be British, British bands who wanted to be German, and German bands who wanted to be robots. It was an insane asylum whose patients were predominantly ambiguous, untouchable males with sucked-in cheeks, 3-D makeup, and wedding-cake hair.

  Perhaps America was overzealous in applying the term to anyone who didn’t look or sound like George Thorogood and the Destroyers, but one thing united these two great nations: the shared understanding that the music produced between 1978 and 1985 marked the last golden age of pop.

  This wasn’t the first time that music was changed by maverick interlopers from another genre. David Bowie and Marc Bolan had both shrugged off the grubby vestiges of hippiedom and tumbled headfirst into glam. But it was the last time it would happen on a scale this massive and this weird. The biggest names who made the greatest hits were a generation of punks who turned themselves into international pop stars.

  There are many c
ompelling reasons why the punk proletariat seized the means of production and began poufing up their hair and slapping on the mascara. Here are a few:

  1. Boredom and snobbery Once the initial shock value wore off, punk quickly decayed into a shout-y, guitar-banging dead end for its original practitioners. While there was an up-and-coming generation of bands in love with the prospect of forever being stuck in a shout-y, guitar-banging dead end (here’s to you, Sham 69 and U.K. Subs), the first batch of British punks, most of whom were affiliated with London art schools, wanted to do everything they could to disassociate themselves with that unwashed mob.

  2. Disco didn’t suck. Not in the U.K., anyway, where black dance music had always been venerated and gay audiences had always been tastemakers. There, the summer of ’77 wasn’t just “God Save the Queen” and “White Riot,” it was “I Feel Love” and “Staying Alive” too. As onetime punk rockers like ABC, Duran Duran, and INXS proved, disco and punk did not make strange bedfellows.

  3. The British music papers You know how Fox News keeps its geriatric constituency in a constant state of paranoia and outrage by making sure every single day is the Worst Day Ever? (See: The War on Christmas! The New Black Panther Party! Death Panels!) The British music press operated in a similar manner. Only, to maintain a competitive edge, they went all out to make sure each week was the Best Week Ever. Punk was a massive shot in the arm for these papers; they had a revolution to write about, and all the main parties were easily accessible. Once the bloom faded from that rose, the papers had to find the next big thing. So every week there’d be a new trend—mod! psychobilly! cowpunk!—and a fresh crop of stars in the making. If this manic approach shone a spotlight on people who had no business listening to music, let alone making it, it also set the stage for 2 Tone, the ascendancy of electronic music, and the rise of Britain’s new breed of pop groups. In addition, it created a generation of artists to whom good reviews and music-press credibility still mattered. They wanted to look good, achieve fame, make money, and still be respected. And they saw this as an attainable goal because of …