ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARKAndy McCluskey’s
collaborations over
the years include
Gary Barlow, Ian
Broudie and
Karl BartosAfter ending OMD, Andy McCluskey became a pop mogul – he helped
put Atomic Kitten together and co-wrote their 2000 debut album Right
Now, featuring smash single Whole Again. “Three good-looking young
women, two of whom could sing well, and hey presto, my only No.1
single,” he laughs. “That fi rst Atomic Kitten album is a fantastic set of
slightly weird and wonderful millennial pop.” The relationship soured
when Andy presented the second album’s songs. “I said, ‘These are new,
different and fresh’, but the label told me: ‘No, we’ve got a format. We
want Whole Again, Whole Again and more fucking Whole Again. If you
don’t write it, somebody else will.’”
Somebody else did, but Andy relishes how Whole Again has become
current terrace chant “Southgate you’re the one, you still turn me on” sung
by England fans. “That just amazes me, it’s brilliant,” gushes McCluskey.
“Once you put a song out, who knows where it’s going to end up?”
Andy tried to repeat the formula with new girlband Genie
Queen, whose line-up included then-unknown model Abbey
Clancy. “Genie Queen were even better than Atomic Kitten,”
he insists. “The girlband ship had sailed, so nobody
wanted to sign them, but I really recommend
hunting their music down. Nobody
believes me, but Abbey
Clancy is an amazing singer.
Those girls could sing their
socks off. I should have bitten
the bullet and released Genie
Queen independently, because
they were brilliant. And, of course,
Abbey could dance – it’s no
surprise to me that she won Strictly
Come Dancing!”
WHOLE LOTTA LOVE
electronic groups was the fact that all
the other bands hated us even more
than we hated each other. And that
went double for the rock press.”
Despite the success of Architecture
& Morality, Dindisc folded, leaving
OMD to be swallowed up by Virgin.
“We still thought of OMD as a
conceptual art piece in the guise of
a two-piece band,” explains Andy.
“Whatever we did, people bought
more of it. We didn’t really have a
working relationship with Virgin. They
asked us, ‘How do you two work?’
and we explained, ‘You leave us
alone. We’ll phone you up, tell you
which studio and engineer we want,
you’ll pay for it and it’ll sell millions.’
Virgin went, ‘OK, fi ne.’ And then we
made Dazzle Ships.”GETTING POLITICAL
One of the ultimate examples of a
mega-selling band making a genius,
yet wildly uncommercial album,
1983’s Dazzle Ships saw OMD
sample Communist radio stations the duo found on
shortwave radio and write songs about genetic
engineering. Andy recalls: “Friends had been saying
to me, ‘You’re a political guy, so why are you singing
songs about dead Catholic saints and being so
dreamy?’ My reaction was, ‘OK! Right! That’s it, it’s
time to get more political.’” Paul believes Dazzle Ships
is the perfect example of straddling OMD’s pop and
art sides. “Becoming pop stars was an unfortunate
by-product,” he states. “We wanted to be the opposite
of New Romantic, so we thought, ‘Let’s look like boring
bank clerks.’ But when we did gigs, the fi rst few rows
of fans would dress as boringly as we did. Musically,
we were pushing boundaries as far as we could. At
one Virgin meeting, the head of A&R asked
us, ‘Come on guys, are you Stockhausen or
ABBA?’ Andy and I said together, ‘Can’t
we be both?’”
Dazzle Ships’ lead single Genetic
Engineering literally vanished off the radio.
When it was fi rst played on Radio 1, Andy
and Paul listened in horror as the song
disappeared off air, because its bass drum
was too booming for the BBC’s compressors
to cope with. “We looked at each other and
said, ‘Oh, we’re fucked!’” says Andy. “And we were.
The bass drum crashing out was after the song’s intro
consisted of a toy piano and typewriter, don’t forget.
When Dazzle Ships came out, the public went