Our one source of energy…
Over the past 35 years Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark have written songs covering a vast and eclectic range of topics, creating both catchy and poignant melodies to go with them. These melodies often belie the serious issues which have been covered; ‘Enola Gay’ being the most well-known of this genre, however others such as ‘Genetic Engineering’ and ’88 Seconds In Greensboro’ have equally weighty topics. Other subjects would initially appear rather ‘strange’ to contemplate writing a song about e.g. telephone boxes in ‘Red Frame/White Light’ or an oil refinery as in ‘Stanlow’. Yet between them, Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey have somehow managed to produce in their writing and finished products some emotionally powerful songs, which have on the whole survived the test of time remaining fresh with the ability to still push the boundaries as to what sounds can be effectively used to create a ‘catchy pop tune’
Having decided to reform in 2005, we were treated to a number of well received tours over the intervening years. 2010 heralded the release of new material in the form of an excellent album entitled History of Modern as well as an energising promotional tour. Now, with their eagerly anticipated 12th album English Electric due out on 8th April this year I had the opportunity to put some questions to Andy McCluskey about, amongst other things, touring and whether “a bunch of fifty year olds” can actually push the boundaries and expand musical tastes and parameters with English Electric.
Andy McCluskey said of ‘Enola Gay’ being played at the Olympics: “I never believe anything is going to happen in the music industry until it happens.” Well unsurprisingly similar thoughts were passing through my head whilst waiting for him to call me… Luckily just like ‘Enola Gay’ being played during the opening ceremony of the Olympics last year, my phone did in fact ring!
What influences your decisions regarding the geographic regions and specifically venues you choose to play when you’re planning a tour?
In terms of where we play and venues also to be honest, it’s largely influenced by the promoter, because ultimately they are the people who are taking the risk.
We may want to play everywhere, we may have certain people around the world who want us to come and play here there and everywhere, but the reality of a concert is that some promoter has to take a chance on renting a venue, guaranteeing us some money, and hoping they can sell enough tickets, so when people throw their toys out of the pram because we’re not coming to their town or we haven’t played in Italy or we’ve not got to Australia… I understand their frustration. If I wanted to see my favourite band and they weren’t coming to England or to Liverpool, it would be frustrating, but there is a simple economic reality that we can only play where somebody thinks we can sell sufficient tickets to make it worth their while and then ultimately worth our while.
We have a problem with America, you know we played twice in 2011 and we lost money on both tours. People want us to come and play again, but we have to really balance the books so they are, I hate to say it, they are the overriding concerns because you know we can go out on the road and it costs depending on what we are carrying in terms of production and crew it costs anywhere between £10 and £25 thousand pounds a day. So I would love to play all sorts of places around the world but I can’t do it and lose that kind of money on a daily basis. We just can’t do it so that unfortunately is the reality of the decision making process.
Can you give an overview of the preparations you make prior to touring? If there are any!?
We just throw ourselves on the stage the day before and have a little rehearsal, say there, that’ll do!!
There’s several elements. There’s decisions about what songs we’re going to play, particularly when we have a new album we are now about to release our 12th album, so what songs do you play and what songs do you not play? And again there’s 90% of the audience want us to play the hits, that’s the reality of it, the other 10% rabidly want us to play all the B-sides and the album tracks and ‘Love and Violence’ and their favourites. I get it, you know, if I go to see Roxy Music I’d love them to play ‘The Bogus Man’ and ‘In Every Dream Home A Heartache’ and tracks like that, but most of the audience want to hear the singles. That’s what they have paid their money for, so, again it’s another one of those horrible compromises that you have to make which are based upon the reality of the situation. So there’s that decision to make.
And I guess there’s a compromise between the ones the four of you would like to play does that come in to it?
Well there are elements because we’re four different human beings with different tastes, although we are all in the same band. Yes there are different people who enjoy certain songs more than others to be honest, I’m not going to tell you which…
I guess the other important one is remembering all the words!!
Well I’m still working on that as you probably know! Malcolm and I have to get fit. I mean it’s a very different gig really, Malcolm and I have to be physically fit and Paul and Martin, their concert is much more just specifically technical they have to play the right notes. There’s all the budgeting, there’s all getting the crew…
Have you used generally the same crew over the years or is it a different crew?
We have generally been quite conservative and stick to people that we know and like. They’re not always available, because of course when we’re not on the road they have to make a living by going out with other bands, sometimes those other bands’ tours clash with ours, so we’ve got a group of people from whom we choose one of each type of crew member we like. Ideally we’d use the same people all the time.
How has your preparation for touring changed over the years for the band do you think?
The technical side of it has altered greatly, in so much as the equipment that we utilise is very different now, particularly the keyboards, we no longer use the four track tape machine, we’ve got pro-tools running off laptops for the backing tracks and sequencers and things so.
That’s great because that’s much more efficient and also in the old days we’d make up a backing track go into rehearsal rooms or get down to production rehearsal rooms and somebody would go… “Oh the bass is too loud… the bottom end is not bassy enough, or it’s too bassy…” OK go back to the studio, re-record it, change it, you know, splice it back into the tape again. Whereas now on the pro-tools you go “OK what do you want me to do to it?”… So I’ll take some of the bottom end out and I’ll save it. “Is that how you want it?” Great sorted. Saved. The flexibility is wonderful.
The keyboards that Paul and Martin use are wonderful machines, but they’re very complicated so it’s slow to play. There’s an awful lot of programming goes in. We actually have our first rehearsal on 28th January, we’re going to spend five days working on the new songs, and Malcolm and I know that it’s going to be five days when we’re going to be twiddling our thumbs, because the keyboard boys will just be fiddling with their sounds.
I bet it’s been steep learning curves with all the technology has it… or maybe not so much for you!?
Well you know on stage I’m singing and playing the bass, that hasn’t changed an awful lot, (laughs)
…Nor’s the dancing!!
Well the dancing has actually been reeled in, from the way it was in the 90s. It got more exaggerated in the 90s than it was in the 80s. I have actually analysed myself, and I had a different style in the 80s to the one I had in the 90s and I’ve got a different style now.
From a casual observer I wouldn’t say it’s that obvious, maybe you’re just being very… err… I don’t know…
Well my left knee certainly knows it’s done far too much.
How is it?
At the moment its pretty good, but then that’s because I’ve had a rather lazy physical three months in the run up to the end of the year because I was concentrating on getting the album finished. Now I’ve started going back to the gym 3 days a week on Monday, today’s my day off, I’ll be going tomorrow night, also I’ll be cycling more and more. That is part of the problem, by the time I’ve got myself fit to tour my knee is already complaining. So I will be off to see my pet knee doctor for a cortisone injection at the end of March.
…getting back on track… With regards to riders, so in the early years you were asking I assume for more alcohol and junk food, is it more now coffee and fruit?!! Are there any specific riders you’ve asked for or, what’s the most outrageous or adventurous riders you as a band or other bands you have worked with have requested?
Erm…we’ve all heard the stories about, you know, ‘I want MM’s with the blue ones taken out, blah blah blah. We’ve never, never been silly or extravagant with riders. Basically the rider is usually put in by the caterers who you carry on tour and effectively it comes out of your money, it comes out of some of the money the promoters are giving you, so effectively you’re spending your own money, so there’s no point in being silly and extravagant and wasting stuff.
I wouldn’t say we have more or less alcohol actually, we have a few beers that usually go to guests or are left at the end of the night for the crew to put on their bus, a lot of water and just some snacks, but again you see, we very often have catering at the venue anyway, so we don’t really need the snacks. I will often eat things after I come off stage, sometimes after the sound check there isn’t a lot of time before the gig, so I don’t really want to have a heavy dinner less than 2 and a half – 3 hours before the gig, so I’m often starving when I come off stage…
Yeah I’m not surprised…
Yeah but, no there’s nothing… we did go through you know We went through a phase I think in the early years of just being decadent. Our one concession to rock and roll decadence was that we wanted a bottle of Champagne, just so that we could say “We get a bottle of Champagne every night”.
I can remember we were playing in some absolute dump in Austin Texas, a corrugated iron club, and there was a knock on the door and in comes Sting, and we get talking to him and he looks on the dressing table and he goes “Bloody hell you’ve got Champagne on your rider you decadent bastards!” and he was taking the piss out of us, you know, and just at that moment there’s a following knock on the door and this bouncer puts his head in and goes “Ah, Mr Sting your limo’s here”. We just went “Yeah Champagne, fuck off limo!” (laughs). No we never, we will usually have, I think there’s we rotate it, We usually have I think a bottle of vodka, a bottle of gin or a bottle of rum, you know, one on a different night, no we don’t, we’re not particularly heavy drinkers in the dressing room.
So who in the band is renowned for being the practical joker?
Do you know what? We’re terribly dull on the road, the band tend not to be the jokers, I mean the biggest jokes are usually played by the crew on the band on the last night of the tour, I mean, there have been a myriad of those over the years that have been highly amusing and sometimes irritating, but I wouldn’t say that we’ve ever really bothered much with practical jokes. We sound terribly boring don’t we? No extravagant rider, no practical jokes. The Weir brothers used to be quite entertaining, that was usually for their rather mad and extreme behaviour rather than practical joking.
So what’s the most memorable one that’s been played then?
Because Malcolm is by the very nature of his job stationary he usually gets picked on so… there’s been some simple classics like when he goes off stage at the end of the last song and towels off before coming on for the encore, he will come on in the darkness and he will start to play his drums and he will hit the snare drum and somebody’s put a load of flour on it so that he’s covered in a cloud of flour.
My particular favourite was in the old days he had a round top stool, now he has more like a big bicycle seat, they would put an inch of raised black gaffer tape around the top of the stool, and they would mix black paint into cold rice pudding to make it look black and they’d fill the top of his stool with black rice pudding, cold rice pudding, so again he’d come out and sit on it and he couldn’t do anything about moving cause we’d start the song… (laughs)
and were you, were the rest of you party to this?
No, no, the crew don’t tell you anything (laughs) so we had no idea what had happened until we got off stage.
He covers it up very well then…
Well you know what? The show must go on.
What sorts of things do you as a band look for in a support act for OMD?
Primarily we like to have a band that we actually like their music and them as people, but of course you generally don’t know if you’re gonna like them as people until you’ve met them, and you don’t normally meet them until the first gig. Yes it’s the music really, I mean, there have been occasions when the promoters, you know they’ve been cut a deal with the record company to try to get a band on tour with another band and so we’ve been asked by promoters “Will you take such and such a band?” or the agents have said “Will you take such and such a band and we’ll reduce our commission or something”. It’s been nice; we’ve specifically asked China Crisis, we’ve specifically asked Mirrors. Gone are the days where you know, people are offering you money to come and support you, so ideally we usually choose somebody we like the music of. At the moment Paul and I are arguing about the support band on this tour…
I was just going to say is this one sorted for this tour or not
Mmm it actually isn’t, no we’ve got several candidates and we’re kind of umming and ahhing about the various credentials of them, but erm… it’ll have to be done soon.
So you’re sort of thinking of trying to get somebody to support the whole tour, or is it going to be different for UK and Europe?
At the moment it’s looking like we’re gonna have one band throughout the UK and we may go to local bands in the European countries.
So are there any rituals you go through prior to going on stage?
Yep.
Are you going to share any of them or not?
Erm… Well I can’t tell you about slaughtering the 47 virgins and drinking their blood!!!!… There are a few – I generally, actually Malcolm and I generally have a shower before we go on stage it kind of warms us up and loosens us up and we invariably have a shower when we come off stage. I am usually the last one out of the dressing room, that’s a ritual and I have a ritual with the other 3 where I shake each ones hand and say “Have a good one” and I go round in a clockwise direction, and nobody can break that circle as I shake each hand. If somebody comes across me or goes around I have to start again, that is a little sort of ritual and then the other 3 all have their own where they all shake hands together after I’ve shaken their hands, so there are some little traditions, yes.
And they haven’t changed over the years then?
Yeah, they have these traditions, we didn’t have them in the 80s, they only started more recently. We’ve only once gone on stage in the last 5 years without doing that tho’ and the gig wasn’t a bad gig. We played in Miami in the autumn of 2011, and we were in the dressing room and in fact, I think Malcolm was in the bathroom, and Paul turned to me and he said “Is that the intro tape?” and I went “Oh yeah” someone started the intro tape, (laughs) and we were all still in the dressing room not ready at all, we went screaming down the stairs. So yeah… but no… generally we are out of the dressing room and standing by the side of the stage before the lights go down.
So with regard to the History of Modern album you have said “I’m very happy with History of Modern considering it was a ‘cleaning of the decks’ a clearing of the decks album, and called it a ‘John the Baptist’ album… it’s the one that speaks of the one who will come after!” I’m intrigued by that, can you tell me a bit more?
I think that we were aware of the fact that when you haven’t worked for a long time and you suddenly sort of get back in the car and try to fire up the engine and start driving again it takes a little time to really hit your stride. We were happy with the collection of songs; I thought they were a very good collection of songs…
I did too.
Thank you… But we were also aware we are a band that you know …how can I put this?… we are one of the very few bands who because of our history, because of the intellectual content and commitment that we have had over the years, that there is a certain section of our audience who cherish that commitment to intelligence and endeavour to do something different…
Yeah, your speaking to one of them I’m afraid…
That’s OK. We are very glad and honoured to have people who took our music as seriously as we took it ourselves. But it is something of erm…frankly it’s a strange burden that most bands don’t have, that not only do you have to write a very good song, but it has to stand up to intellectual and historical context criticism…and in a sense it’s nice that we have that because we’ve created that for ourselves because of what we have done in the past, but I know why History of Modern didn’t tick everybody’s boxes, they weren’t listening to it as… As a collection of songs it was I think excellent. Was it Architecture & Morality or Dazzle Ships all over again? – No it wasn’t…
Yeah, but then you don’t want to do the same thing over again do you?
You know what I mean – was it pushing the boundaries? Was it expanding musical tastes and parameters? but then again can a bunch of fifty year olds actually do that?
And do you really want to do that though when you’re just trying to make a sort of an album that is a… comeback album? So you know, I think maybe people were expecting too much if they’re trying to keep comparing it with…
Well listen, the vast majority of people really liked that album because they were quite content with some really, really good songs in the styles of OMD. I mean if I have a criticism of History of Modern; it’s that it… By comparison I think English Electric is much more of a homogenised album because essentially, baring ‘Kissing The Machine’, all of the songs have been written and created in the last few years all together so they hold together as a body of work from a particular period and ‘Kissing The Machine’ has been completely re-worked by Paul.
I was wondering how that had been changed.
I think there’s going to be further news released about that either tomorrow or Monday just to clarify ‘Kissing The Machine’ is a complete re-working of the track, it’s not a re-mix or re-hash apart from the vocal melody and the synth melody everything else has been replaced.
I was going to say how much has been kept or is it just… the lyrics I guess?
Virtually none…The Lyrics, vocal melody and synth melody are the same, they’ve been redone but they are the same vocal melody and same synth melody, the same sound, cause we’ve got the same synth, but everything else has been completely re… well the whole thing has been completely re- recorded, but only two elements will remain the same as they were originally.
You’re bound to get loads of criticism over that aren’t you!!!?
We’ll have some people who’ll say it’s not as good as the original, I mean you can’t win – this is the one thing you realise you know, if you stick your head above the trench you get shot at!!!
Exactly. So how, was the process of writing English Electric compared to writing the other albums? How’s it been?
Well it was more like the old days when we spent time together in the studio bouncing ideas off each other’s heads, and working together, you know Paul spent a lot more time in Liverpool. He’d come to my house on Monday, we’d go into my studio every day, we’d come home and you know have something to eat. He was living in my spare room in my attic, the self-contained apartment at the top of my house, and it was great, much more so than History of Modern, You know Paul was… Paul has been more involved in this album, which I think is also going to be something that people will be able to hear.
Ah right. That’s good. So… ‘Metroland’ is due to be the next single… it’s a longish single is it?
No, there’ll be an edit; there’s a four minute edit. The full track is 7 and a half minutes long.
So how did that come to be the first single?
Everybody loves it! And also it’s a statement, it’s very minimal, very electronic, you know, it’s not ‘If You Want It’, you know ‘Dresden’ is the logical pop song, we just decided that we wanted to make more of a statement of intent. I think ‘Metroland’ says more about what’s on the album than ‘Dresden’ does. ‘Dresden’ would be like the ‘Enola Gay’ on Organisation kind of like the only possible single on it kind of thing.
So what’s the statement you’re hoping this will achieve?
Well, possibly in the same way that we’ve released ‘Decimal’ early that it’s just letting people know that there’s an overriding feeling on this which is that its more minimal, more electronic, more intellectual, if you like, a lot more conceptual stuff on it and I’ve already been quoted as saying that you know that there’s an overriding kind of view that the future that we anticipated has not arrived.
You’ve also mentioned ….I think you’ve said “The overarching feel tends to be a sense of loss, of melancholia…” Was this the original intention for the feel of English Electric or did it just evolve within the process of writing the songs?
In terms of the feel and the lyrics you often don’t normally start out knowing exactly how an album is going to feel. It does tend to take on a life of its own; you know it’s an accumulation of just however it turned out. The one thing is you start on the journey but you don’t know exactly where it’s going to take you. I think it does reflect, intellectually it reflects a lot of the thoughts that have been going on, I mean Paul and I have been asking ourselves about the passage of time, how things have changed in our lives, how things have changed in the world, how we’ve gone from you know, we grew up in the post war euphoria of ‘science is going to make everything right’ and we’ve all realised it hasn’t quite turned out that way and also as well it’s been an incredibly difficult year for me the last two years… and I think that’s reflected in a lot of the lyrics.
So anyway I think you’ve previously mentioned about ‘The Great White Silence’ and ‘Thank You’ they’ve obviously not made it onto the album…
‘The Great White Silence’ will be an extra track somewhere a B-side or an iTunes track or something like that. And probably there will be two other tracks that will be appearing that will be ‘No Man’s Land’ and a song called ‘Artillery’. ‘Thank You’ is not going to be heard this time round.
So there might be another time round then?
You never know… People seem to think we’re treating this as our last ever album.
Yeah, well things can be read that way can’t they so…
Well you never know -I mean we intended to stop after ‘Architecture and Morality’, that’s what ‘Of All the Things We’ve Made’ was supposed to be an epitaph, that was in 1981…so umm…
I’m glad you didn’t.
So am I… I have to say that ultimately we write music for ourselves, it’s our own conversation with ourselves, and its often quite cathartic but I think the songs that are often the most emotionally cathartic often register with other people… It’s one of the great delights that I find is my ultimate bonus when somebody takes the time to say, “What you did was important to me, it helped me”.
For me, just going slightly off track, some of it… it’s the raw emotion that comes through and that just touches you doesn’t it?
I hope it does because I’m endeavouring to convey it. I mean, I think that that’s one of the things we quite quickly chose to do. We didn’t want to be sort of robot voices, singing about electronics and the future. Ours was an emotional response even to the intellectual things and the theories we were expounding and writing about, but there’s a couple of extremely raw songs on this album. I think a lot of people will understand the sentiments of songs like ‘Final Song’ and ‘Night Café’ probably.
I look forward to hearing them then. I was surfing around trying to find out stuff about you that I wasn’t aware of and came up against you’ve been an Ivor Novello award nominated songwriter in the past-Is that right?
Indeed I’ve been nominated for 3 and I haven’t won any of them!!! (laughs)
So what were they for?
Paul and I were nominated for ‘If You Leave’ actually, for international sales, but we were beaten by something else – but I can’t remember what it was now…and I got two nominations for ‘Whole Again’…and I won neither!!! I was up for international sales again, and that I lost out to Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, because that was even bigger than ‘Whole Again’.
I always seem to be in categories which are specifically monitored so I can’t really complain cause it’s not like I can say the panel was bent judged against me. The other one was Biggest Selling Record of the Year, again it was the second one, because that Hearsay track beat it, so there you go, anyway it was written by Betty Boo so I got to talk to her… The Ivor Novellos are an incredible award ceremony, they are more so than any of the other things. They are a celebration of the songwriters art, so there’s less music industry politics involved in it and I’ve always enjoyed going to the Ivors, it’s a fabulous, fabulous thing… To be in the room with so many other incredible song writers is just a complete honour, to look around the room and go oh my God there’s Benny and Bjorn… There’s you know Blur, there’s U2, there’s so and so, there’s bloody hell there’s Paul McCartney and Elton John and I got to meet Steve Harley for the first time in person in my life at the Ivor Novellos – He was my hero as a kid.
So it must have been quite a proud time when you’re nominated for these -so which was the better thing for you The Ivor Novellos or having Enola Gay played at the Olympics?
‘Enola Gay’!!!
Why would you say that?
It’s just a buzz to think that 20% of the people on the planet have just heard your song right there and then and, live. It was incredible; you know I never believe anything is going to happen in the music industry until it happens. I had been asked if I would sanction it and I said yes and I thought they’re never going to use it, even though I know Danny Boyle is a fan, I just thought they’ll never use it and the fact that they actually used it sort of pretty much right up at the front of the whole music section and it wasn’t just in the 80s synth-pop section was really cool. I mean my phone just exploded (laughs), the number of people who texted me and called me you know…
So… erm… it hasn’t caused any consternation between you and Paul that it was that one that was played?
No. I think he’s written some beautiful songs, I think ‘Enola Gay’ was just up tempo and extremely catchy and a lot of people already knew it anyway so it was a logical choice, but no, had it been ‘Souvenir’ I would have been very happy for Paul in the same way I’m sure he’s happy for me, and listen I might have written it but it’s an Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark song.
Yeah, although erm the topic of it was a bit erm… not suspect but dodgy I suppose for something like this?
Not suspect but dodgy, yeah, yeah, I won’t throw the bacon at him I’ll throw the pork instead!!! I was wondering whether they would use any of the lyrics and unsurprisingly they didn’t. I did wonder if the Japanese had known what it was about whether they would have you know decided not to march in. It was erm…yeah I mean again interesting lyrical choice, but then to be honest Danny Boyle, there were a few interesting songs in there that were quite interesting choices if you knew what the song was about and this is always one of the interesting things about how things get absorbed into general culture, is that at the time people might go “Oh, that’s a radically different song”, or “Ooh that lyric, ooh are they allowed to say that on the radio?” and then after a period of time when the specific cultural context is no longer remembered, then it just falls into ‘is it a tune?’ category and that’s in the same way as ‘Tainted Love’ and ‘Come on Eileen’ and ‘Baby Love’ and you know, ‘I want to hold Your Hand’, nobody knows anymore about what people thought about them when they first heard them on the radio. If you play it at a party people just go ‘JUNE’ and get up and dance so…
So can you describe a typical day in the life of Andy McCluskey?
It’s entirely dependent upon which section of my life I’m involved in. I mean at the moment I’m very much wearing my ‘pop star as business man’ hat. I spend the whole day wading through over 100 emails, lots of phone calls, “Yes we’re going to do that, no I don’t want it that colour – can we change this? What does Paul think about that? How much publishing are we going to give up on this?” Talking to lawyers, talking to managers. Agreeing to do different interviews and setting up schedules.
So I have spent my whole day today from 8am until 6pm when I bailed out and had a sit down. No I lie, actually 7pm. I went and had a sit down and actually fell asleep at 7pm watching Time Team. So I did 11 hours sat in my kitchen with my laptop and my phone. On tour it’s completely different – I will sleep as much as I can, I will go to the odd museum and I will save my energy for the stage. Christmas time I had my ‘pop star’ hat off and had my ‘Dad’ hat on and I was being parent to my two youngest kids and doing that, so it’s all different. There’s days when I’m down at the super market and washing the car just like anybody else’s day… and then there’s other days, that’s the amazing thing… I could be on stage in front of 20,000 at Rewind, and then the next day I’m at Sainsbury’s…
Down with a bump!
Not down with a bump, I can go easily between the two it doesn’t bother me at all – That’s just the way my life is – Its nice I love all the variety, I think more than anything else it’s the variety I really enjoy, I love traveling as well. I’ve always loved traveling that’s been one of the great bonuses as well. As well as people telling me the music has meant something to them, but the traveling has been a great bonus.
The actual process of travelling, is that enjoyable or is it the…?
No, that’s generally bloody horrible, particularly airports and airplanes I’m not a huge fan of long- haul flights at all. It was great to play in America again, it was great to be back in New York, I mean, the song ‘Night Café’ was really inspired by me – I flew into New York all on my own for two days before we played Toronto back 2 years ago, and it was the first time I’d been in New York in 19 years.
So did you make the most of it? Or was it jet lag…
No cause I literally had one day and it was -11 degrees (laughs)… But really my head just exploded into thoughts about being in New York in the past and how I felt, you know I was actually sitting in a restaurant up on the Upper West side in the darkness and I was just thinking about Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting, and that’s where the inspiration for the song came from. There’s actually reference to 8 other Hopper paintings in the lyrics, but I bet nobody fuck spots them all!!!
You never know there’s going to be someone trying to spot them…
Mmm it’ll be like a little treasure hunt for people.
A little forum… forum… err…
Yeah, I’m sure that’ll be a thread on the Forum, somebody will be going ‘No, no, that’s not a title’.
You’ve just got the world wide publishing deal with BMG, how you think that will affect OMD as a band and the record sales.
I hope it’s going to be very positive for us and for them. We did everything independently last time and we signed 13 different deals, we actually signed to BMG for publishing of History of Modern, but the record distribution side of it was 13 separate deals with 13 different distribution companies…
That must have been a nightmare to manage wasn’t it?
Tell me about it, yeah, so this is different. Basically the record industry has been looking for the last 10 years for a new model, a new business model. This is the new business model; this is major record company, but not acting as a major record company. This is major record company acting as intellectual property owner, who don’t have a great big office block with 300 people in it, to pay the overheads of. They have an office with a small group of people in, and they sign you for a short term and they employ independent people to work on that project for as long as they need to and then the contract terminates, so they don’t have the massive overheads and they just take on each project as it comes and they design a bespoke budget and marketing plan for each artist and each album as it comes.
It’s a new concept and we’re very excited to be one of the guinea pigs. Ideally it’s going to combine the best of both worlds, we have the size of the weight and the clout of a major record company and the money they can put up front to guarantee all of these, you know distribution and marketing deals and promotion companies, but individually, territory by territory they say “Well, these are the people that we would like to work with, what do you think?” And we go “Yes we like them, we worked with them on the last album, actually we’ve got some really great radio promotion people can we work with them instead?” And so they will tailor-make a custom deal for you in each territory. Instead of when I was signed to Virgin, or when OMD from day one were signed to Virgin and just because Virgin in London like the album and like you and think they are going to sell lots, it doesn’t mean that Virgin in Italy want to even release the bloody thing, and that’s the dilemma of being on a label across the whole world is you never could control what territory by territory people wanted to do, so this is an opportunity to hopefully strike a balance between the best of both worlds.
So hopefully the marketing will be a bit more specific?
We shall see. You have to realise though Kathryn that the music industry has changed. We are not The Killers, or Coldplay, or Rihanna, we don’t sell millions, we don’t expect to, we can’t make a video that costs £200,000, we can’t employ people who can get us onto every TV show and ‘A’ listed every radio show…
Would you want that though?
Well… Yes I think we’ve done a great album and I want the bloody world to hear it, but the reality is, we can’t do it, you know I thought that the videos for ‘If You Want It’ and ‘Sister Marie Says’, and ‘History of Modern (Part I)’ were extremely good for the budgets. Were they great… well ‘History of Modern’ was a great video by Bo, anyway that’s a separate issue, but the other two were exceptionally good videos for £5,000, but were they great videos?… maybe not, but you know the video for ‘Walking on the Milky Way’ cost £250,000, you know, so it cost 50 times more than the video for ‘Sister Marie Says’, that’s something we just can’t expect to have anymore. But people complain, “Why haven’t you done this?” and “Why aren’t you doing that?” and “You’re not on the radio” and “I couldn’t buy it in such and such…”. It’s like well I’m sorry, I wish we were everywhere and I wish we sold millions and I wish we were on the radio all the time, but it’s just the way it is you know.
So just going back to English Electric, and going back to something you mentioned previously calling it a “definitive statement” there has been loads of discussion that this could be your final album if that was the case would you think it would be the end to OMD touring?… or do you not want to say?
I don’t know. When I say it’s a definitive statement, both Paul and I believe it’s an incredibly strong statement, this is a very strong album; I don’t think we’re deluding ourselves. I would never say it’s better than Dazzle Ships or Architecture & Morality but I think it stands on its own two feet next to them. It’s been a very hard album to make for a number of reasons, I think both Paul and I feel this album has been torn out and I think we’re feeling exhausted and raw at the moment… so maybe at the end of the year we’ll go “That was great, we loved it lets do it again” or maybe we’ll go “Phew couldn’t do that again”.
The passage of time diminishes the pain doesn’t it? Or so they say…
I’m not a woman I’ve never given birth to a human, but I’ve given birth to albums and they are painful but with the passage of time you’re usually glad that you’ve done it.
I also just have to ask the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra… is it likely to happen again or… I know there’s been talk…
I hope so. We tried to make it happen this year, for various reasons we couldn’t, but the RLPO definitely want to work with us again and we definitely want to work with them. Actually the problem was venue, we were trying to get it to happen this year but there was a problem with the venue but both parties want to make it happen. I would say that whatever happens with full OMD touring and whatever happens with OMD making records in the future I would say that the chances of us in the next two years of doing something else with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra are very high. I enjoyed it…
I’ll have to ask you one last question, cause you’ve been fantastically patient with me. One of my daughters was wondering what is your favourite OMD track? I know it probably changes over time.
Well I think even though the new album is very raw, there’s two tracks on this album, which currently because they’re brand new, so I haven’t heard them for 30 years, 20 years or 10 years, I think there are two tracks on this album which I will hold close to my heart for years and years to come. ‘Final Song’, ‘Final Song’ is absolutely beautiful and totally heart rendering I think…
Sounds quite a personal one?
It is. And strangely enough the one song that is sort of unheralded, nobody’s talking about yet because they haven’t heard the album. But Paul and I and management and the English label all just think it’s the best song on the album, one called ‘Our System’ and its very unusual and very beautiful, that’s all I’ll say and it’s about the difference and the contrast between, the beauty and affection of the instruments that we send into space, like the interplanetary probes, because the Voyager probes have now left our system, they’ve gone out into broader space. So it’s contrasting that perfection with the imperfections of the humans here on the planet.
Right. So just something fairly bog standard, nothing very deep or meaningful, quite fluffy…?
The usual OMD bog standard (laughs) Right now I would touch on those which of course is horrible for me to say. …Well I think it’s common knowledge that ‘Romance of the Telescope’ has always been my favourite song, but I found myself listening to some of our old albums recently and I’ve become a huge fan of ‘2nd Thought’ – another bloody miserable song.
Note: This interview was conducted prior to the announcements regarding ‘Metroland’ and ‘Kissing The Machine’.
This interview originally featured on the Messages website.
