How the Second British Invasion took on the American charts and gained. By Paul Lester
In the UK, we had been on the vanguard of a model new age,” ABC frontman Martin Fry tells Basic Pop, reminiscing about that interval within the early-80s when his band and their British new pop and New Romantic friends – The Human League, Tradition Membership, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Bananarama, Thompson Twins, Delicate Cell – successfully invaded and colonised the US charts.
He wonders how bizarre they will need to have appeared to all of the REO Speedwagon, Foreigner and Journey followers. “In America,” he decides, “it will need to have appeared as if we’d come from outer area.”
Agency foundations
Britain may see new pop coming: in a means, it was the ultimate, full flowering of punk’s flamboyance and peacock attention-seeking. However the American music scene of the late-70s – when the scruffily hirsute, denim-clad likes of Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and Boston dominated the waves – hardly ready them for the pop onslaught from the UK.
If something, the Disco Sucks motion – exemplified by that fateful day in 1979 when legions of dance music haters gathered in a baseball stadium in Chicago for a ritual burning of disco information – recommended US audiences had been unlikely to have fallen for legions of glamorous maquillaged non-musicians (and that was simply the boys) preening over synthesizer beats and melodies. And but they had been nearly queuing as much as purchase our wares.
People had been probably considerably primed by David Bowie’s mid-70s forays with the Younger People album and its singles, the title observe and Fame, all apparent precursors of, and key influences on, Fry et al.
That mentioned, the ABC singer, regardless of loving his “plastic soul” part (“They need to train it in school”), argues that Bowie was nonetheless an excessive amount of of an esoteric, marginal artist at this level for Younger People to have impacted on the mainstream.
Extra more likely to have paved the best way for Blighty’s new music brigade had been the bands and singers, loosely categorised as “new wave” aka punk lite, who began having Stateside hits from early 1979 onwards – acts akin to The Police, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, The Pretenders and Squeeze.
Even Gary Numan had an sudden Prime 10 entry within the US Billboard Scorching 100 with Automobiles; sudden as a result of it was a synth-pop tune and, in any case, America was the land of the genuine blue-collar guitar rocker and the very last thing you’d have imagined them lapping up was Numan’s proto-electronic drone.
And but, becoming a member of Automobiles within the US charts that yr had been the equally artificial Pop Muziokay by M and Video Killed The Radio Star by Buggles, the latter the primary ever video performed on MTV, which launched on 1 August 1981, offering the proper platform for the brand new technology of videogenic Brits.
Dawning of a brand new period
Abruptly, it was all gravity-defying and/or asymmetrical hair, fey posing and neo-operatic crooning, filling the void simply as cool new American music was trying relatively skinny on the bottom: it’s in all probability no coincidence that, of the primary 10 movies performed on the fledgling TV station, six had been by UK acts.
Brit bands had grown used to producing arresting visuals for the likes of Prime Of The Pops and The Tube (whereas US ones typically prevented promos, save for the occasional performance-based quick).
Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Bowie, alternatively, rose to the problem of making epic, big-budget movies to match their widescreen sonics.
And but the music nonetheless sounded good “un-enhanced”. Fortunately, a Los Angeles radio station like KROQ-FM was at hand, changing into MTV’s aural counterpart, greeting with open arms the brand new music from throughout the pond.
What started as a trickle turned a gush, then a veritable waterfall: in 1983, 30 per cent of US document gross sales had been from British acts.
There was one chart, in mid-July, the place 20 of the Prime 40 singles, together with seven of the Prime 10, had been by UK artists – this beat the earlier document of 14, set in 1965 when The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits, The Dave Clark 5 and others turned avatars of the primary British Invasion (actually, two of the latter, The Kinks and The Hollies, had been a part of that 1983 Prime 40, with, respectively, Come Dancing and Cease In The Title Of Love).
The Police, then just about the largest band on the planet, had the best-selling single of 1983 on the Scorching 100 with Each Breath You Take, whereas in April 1984 40 per cent of the Prime 100 singles, and in Could, 1985 eight of the Prime 10, had been British.
Breaking and getting into
This was the Second Invasion’s imperial part and well-established acts akin to Paul McCartney, Sure, Elton John and Phil Collins benefitted from the recognition of newbies akin to Wham!, Duran Duran and Tradition Membership.
Nevertheless it wasn’t all electro-pop and futurist chilly wave filling the charts and airwaves, nevertheless.
There have been the soul-inflected sounds of ABC, Spandau Ballet and Dexys Midnight Runners – who, in Martin Fry’s phrases, had been “taking coals to Newcastle” – and the Celtic rock of Massive Nation and Easy Minds.
Something was attainable: even a lapsed punk rocker like Billy Idol may reinvent himself as a curled-lip, leather-clad blond Elvis for the MTV technology.
However there was undeniably a cornucopia of keyboard-heavy music, notably US breakthrough synth-pop hits Don’t You Need Me by The Human League and Tainted Love by Delicate Cell, the latter spent a record-breaking 43 weeks on the Scorching 100.
Such Stateside success was the fruits of recent pop’s ambition for mainstream penetration. As Dave Rimmer famous in his guide, Like Punk By no means Occurred: Tradition Membership And The New Pop, making it in America was paramount.
“Breaking America was what everybody wished to do,” Rimmer wrote. “Not only for the cash, although that was most of it, but additionally as a result of when you made it in America then you definately… made it.”
Because the guide’s title suggests, Boy George’s brigade had been one of many period’s largest stars. George, in his 1995 autobiography Take It Like A Man, remembered one of many important manifestations of the group’s success being the sheer variety of lookalikes within the crowd each time they performed.
“The clones had been out in full power: ‘Boy mania’ had hit the States in an enormous means. Dreadlocked followers crammed the entrance rows of each gig and lobbies of each lodge.”
Additionally large had been Duran Duran, bassist John Taylor has recalled scenes of hysteria harking back to Beatlemania at a gig in Seattle in entrance of 18,000 screaming followers.
“It was like someone had given all the viewers medicine. We couldn’t hear the displays. We couldn’t hear ourselves play.”
From George to Annie Lennox – who appeared collectively on the duvet of Newsweek, in a narrative titled ‘Britain rocks America – once more’ – androgyny was out of the blue acceptable in a nation the place, as much as that time, Bruce Springsteen had supplied the template for the common male rock performer.
As Fry intimated earlier, among the new pop stars weren’t a lot androgynous as extraterrestrial.
A Flock Of Seagulls – who had big US hits with I Ran (So Far Away) and Wishing (If I Had A {Photograph} Of You) – spring to thoughts right here: former hairdresser and frontcreature Mike Rating’s alien hairstyle was weird even by the requirements of the day. For one transient shining interval, eccentricity and strangeness had been in.
“It had a life all its personal,” Rating says in the present day. He’s proper: his band, and hairdo, have had a tremendous cultural afterlife, incomes allusions and asides in Pulp Fiction, Household Guy, Mates, Austin Powers and The Wedding ceremony Singer.
“It’s The One,” he provides. “Folks say ‘the 80s’ they usually instantly consider the Flock Of Seagulls haircut. I used to be a loopy child, and I did a loopy haircut, however I’m so glad I did.”
House age love
A Flock Of Seagulls had been one of many first UK acts to recognise the potential of the American market: they came to visit to tour with Squeeze in 1982 and stayed.
“We had been there to open the gates and go: ‘Come on in’,” he tells Basic Pop. “Extra into sci-fi than songs about loving my child. Finally we got here up with a robust look and funky, completely different music and folks began to look our means.
“We weren’t a raincoat band, boring and darkish and dingy,” he provides, considering of Echo & The Bunnymen and their dark-rock ilk, neatly capturing the shift from post-punk to new pop.
“We didn’t need to be caught in a nook with a pint of Guinness; we wished to be vibrant, out dancing and having an excellent time.”
AFOS may need epitomised the shock of the brand new, however truly their methodology of breaking the States concerned the tried-and-tested route of touring – plus some equally good old school robust musicianship and teenage enchantment.
“We had been the primary of the 80s bands that didn’t simply come right here to play the large cities,” Rating considers. “We obtained the bug for taking part in. We ended up staying for a yr. Having guitars helped People realise that we may rock, whereas the synths made us appear new.
“Oh, and the women favored the look, they wished to decorate up like us. We had been mainly boys in women clothes.”
Rating admits that the band needed to overcome preliminary suspicions. “It was bizarre as a result of after we first went on they usually noticed synthesizers on the entrance of the stage lots of people had been like: ‘What the hell is that this?’ and had been getting ready to boo. However by the top of the set they’d be yelling for extra.”
It was a case of, après AFOS, le déluge: by 1983, the hills had been alive with the sound of recent Brit music. “I’d say so, undoubtedly,” Rating agrees. “We made a whole lot of children have a look at what was popping out of England.”
It’s straightforward as 1–2–3
ABC first got here to the States on the again of the stratospheric success that they had loved with the Poison Arrow and The Look Of Love singles and The Lexicon Of Love album.
“We’d had a No.1 platinum album and out of the blue had been thrown into that enviornment,” Martin Fry remembers. Though it was like beginning over, the dedication was there. “It was,” he says, “time to beat America.”
ABC took their “tuxedos and sparkly Lexicon Of Love present” to the US, and instantly appealed to the hiperati – together with Andy Warhol, who confirmed the group around the Manufacturing facility in New York, and Stevie Marvel, who invited them to his radio station, KJLH, in Los Angeles.
However crucially they didn’t prohibit their dates to New York and LA, as a substitute slogging spherical locations like Texas and Phoenix, with combined outcomes.
“There was one present the place we had our 18-piece orchestra onstage with their sparkly tuxes on, and we may hear the sound of heavy metallic – that was the band occurring after us,” he shudders on the reminiscence.
“Different instances, there’d be individuals nonetheless enjoying pool behind the corridor whereas we performed. America was just like the sixteenth century after we arrived, culturally – it hadn’t had punk rock to pave the best way. It was the darkish ages. Bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd…”
However, Poison Arrow and The Look Of Love turned hits, establishing ABC as agency US favourites, which they remained for the remainder of the last decade – not like among the UK acts, they sustained their Stateside success, doing even higher with their third album, 1985’s How To Be A… Zillionaire!, with its attendant singles ((How To Be A) Millionaire, Be Close to Me) and cartoon picture, all the best way as much as 1987’s fourth album, Alphabet Metropolis, and its singles When Smokey Sings (a No.5 hit that earned ABC a letter of reward from the titular Mr Robinson in addition to a spot within the Motown museum in Detroit) and The Night time You Murdered Love. Fry was proper on the epicentre of the Second Invasion hurricane.
“America realised it had missed out on punk and so within the early-80s issues actually did change,” he asserts. “The Sundown Marquis [hotel] in LA was the watering gap of alternative.
“I noticed Prince within the foyer with Wendy [Melvoin] and Lisa [Coleman] whereas I used to be consuming my peanuts on the bar. And I met David Byrne [of Talking Heads]. One other time I used to be sitting in a jacuzzi with the fellows from Discuss Discuss. We nodded at one another: ‘Alright, mate, the way you doing?’
“Afterward, I keep in mind getting on the red-eye to New York and Paddy McAloon [Prefab Sprout] was on the identical aircraft. We began chatting about how excited we had been to be going there. I prefer to suppose that was the flight he obtained the concept to write down Hey Manhattan! (from 1988’s From Langley Park To Memphis).”
Fry remembers the early Second Invasion days being “sensational”. It was “a distinct kind of fame” to the one again residence. US followers of ABC took their passion to new artistic heights.
They even made little puppets of the frontman – “voodoo dolls”, he jokes, miniature effigies of their hero in gold lame – which they might maintain up throughout gigs, so they may “watch” the present. “I believed, ‘That’s unusual’,” Fry seems to be again and laughs.
Combating for ascendancy
For Mike Rating, life on the highway within the US concerned the same old debauchery: “Nothing I can say an excessive amount of about with out embarrassing someone,” he admits.
AFOS supported everybody from The Psychedelic Furs, The Go-Go’s and The Police to Duran Duran and The Human League. Again then, the sensation among the many Brits was aggressive.
“We thought they had been a bit snooty, a bit elitist,” he says of the Oakey-fronted Sheffield electronicists. “I’ve met them since they usually’re very nice individuals, however on the time they appeared upon us nearly as an American band as a result of we had guitars and had been on the sting of rock’n’roll. Once you’re combating for fulfillment, all people is the enemy,” he explains.
“However when you’ve been profitable, they’re not a menace and you may develop into buddies. Boy George is among the nicest individuals you’ll ever meet, and so is Tom Bailey [of Thompson Twins]. I’ve met Martin Fry [on the retro-80s circuit] and he’s a fantastic man – there’s no bickering or nonsense.”
On the top of their US fame, AFOS had been promoting a whole bunch of 1000’s of copies of their single Wishing (If I Had A {Photograph} Of You) and Rating was being assailed not simply by children however stars as unlikely as Eddie Van Halen of metallic monsters Van Halen.
They did one tour, with The Fixx – one other UK act who fared nicely within the States – to enviornment crowds, culminating in dates on the prestigious Madison Sq. Backyard.
A number of many years later, it’s nonetheless the identical, with cultural props from Quentin Tarantino and Seth MacFarlane and audiences nonetheless flocking to see Flock.
“Loopy, isn’t it?” Rating says with a Scouse chuckle.“Once we first got here to America and had been profitable, we thought: ‘We’re going to occasion for 2 years like this’. Now 30-plus years on, we glance again and surprise: ‘What did we do this made us what we’re in the present day?’
“I’d say it’s good songs, good instances, and folks that loved our music carrying on doing so. They didn’t depart us behind and go on to one thing else. I’m delighted.”
Lasting legacy
As for the repercussions of that Second Invasion and its slew of “Limey haircut bands”, as Anglophobe critics used to dismiss them, Martin Fry believes they can’t be overstated. “Britain’s stamp was there,” he attests.
“You’ll be able to see it in the best way Springsteen modified his act within the mid-80s, or the music of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince. They had been influenced by issues popping out of Europe. Prince was into synths and Gary Numan, and Michael obtained the concept of the cavalry jacket from Adam Ant.
“Steve Barron directed the video for Billie Jean, having carried out the one for Don’t You Need Me: take into consideration that, and the individuals they had been working with.”
It’s additionally a matter of document that the then-nascent hip-hop was in thrall to the synthesized sounds emanating from Europe and Britain.
Then it turned a two-way affair: The Human League labored with Prince’s previous crew of Jam & Lewis whereas ABC connected, circa Zillionaire!, with Keith LeBlanc and Doug Wimbish, who performed on these seminal early Grandmaster Flash 12-inches.
The British Invasion bands might have been, by the late-80s, usurped by the hair metallic hordes though Fry takes some credit score for the passing on of the glam baton from his personal ostentatious peer group to Motley Crue, Poison, Bon Jovi and the remaining in addition to by the brand new dour rockers (R.E.M., Husker Du, Sonic Youth).
And there was pop aplenty from the likes of Debbie Gibson, Tiffany and New Youngsters On the Block, even when it lacked any of the irony or subversive qualities of the Brit girls and boys.
Nonetheless, it was enjoyable whereas it lasted. There was a niche within the US marketplace for polymorphously perverse pansexual aliens, and it was briefly crammed by Oakey, Lennox, Almond and Co.
Or as Fry places it: “Lunacy and violence and nice pop music. They’re each technology’s birthright.”
