Listening to the Music the Machines Make - Inventing Electronic Pop 1978 to 1983: Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983

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Eccentric, driven, and unorthodox in their approach, Devo had publicly asserted that the only people they would consider producing their debut album would be David Bowie or Brian Eno, and were fortunate indeed when Iggy Pop professed to be much taken by the Ohio act’s avant-garde, experimental sounds after they managed to get a demo tape to him during the March 1977 US tour for The Idiot. Pop listened to the tape and loved it, something he would later recall for Jeff Winner’s documentary film Are We Not Devo?: ‘I felt like Columbus, I felt like I just discovered America, and it was Devo.’ The SPANDAU BALLET versus DURAN DURAN thing has been well documented, but what about SOFT CELL versus DEPECHE MODE? They were both on the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ but in 1981, SOFT CELL were rated higher than DEPECHE MODE, any thoughts? Everything seems to go on cycles but at the moment, in the last year or so, it feels like there’s been a return to a starkness, a certain simplicity of sound. I’m not denigrating it because I think it’s a very effective way of presenting sound. It feels there’s been a period where everything and the kitchen sink has gone into electronic music and its gradually being pared away to a point where the instruments and sounds are getting a bit of space to breathe. It feels like the same sort of sounds that I started responding to on ‘Top Of The Pops’ when we first saw DEPECHE MODE and SOFT CELL.

So he came up with this idea to do the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ and reached out to 12 bands; his hit rate was so great, he had DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL and BLANCMANGE on there, the three of them alone were enough to shape the new generation. The final stage of the narrative outlines the worldwide popularity of more than a few of the acts that emerged from that era. In 1980, no one would have thought bands such as Depeche Mode would be playing arena-sized venues anywhere – much less that they would still be doing so decades later. My idea for the book was to tell the stories of all the bands and releases of that synthpop generation who took music in a whole new direction. Because of what I do in my working life, I am very fortunate in that I have access to a lot of people who were the original protagonists in this story. So I thought I could get in touch with them and job done. I also have a shelf full of music autobiographies and I’m sure you have too! *laughs*I looked at all the records I wanted to talk about and at the beginning, there’s relatively few. But the important ones for me were THE NORMAL ‘TVOD’ / ‘Warm Leatherette’ and THE HUMAN LEAGUE ‘Being Boiled’. In fact, ‘Being Boiled’ was my key one and an early version of the book had the subtitle ‘From Being Boiled To Blue Monday’; I thought that sounded quite snappy and explained what the book covered. But then Daniel Miller said to me “You do know ‘TVOD’ / ‘Warm Leatherette’ came out before ‘Being Boiled’?” *laughs* ANDY BELL: SAVE THE DATE - ANDY BELL WILL BE IN CONVERSATION AT THE 'LISTENING TO THE MUSIC THE MACHINES MAKE' LONDON BOOK LAUNCH IN NOVEMBER Yes! Lots of terrible clothes, bad beards and long hair, it all seemed very soft and safe! Now when the electronic bands started coming through, they came with this aesthetic with the keyboards and it looked fantastic. But they also had this new look, they were smarter, had these interesting haircuts and they looked so different. For me, the thing that was most marked about their performances was the sound itself. It was something that I’d never heard before, those noises were SO new and SO modern!

I don’t have any guilty pleasures. I love music equally across the genres and, although my tastes are definitely weighted towards electronic artists, at any one time I’m just as likely to be listening to Buddy Holly as I am to Orbital! This is why I wanted to talk about this in the context of 1978-1983 because thanks to some of the business choices that Richard Branson has made over the years which have upset people, the Virgin name has been tarnished as far as their contribution to music is concerned. Meanwhile history has seen Daniel Miller come out smelling of roses. An interesting thing about Virgin in 1980 was that they were close to bankruptcy. Such was the band’s enthusiasm for ‘My Sex’ that they used it as the B-side on the debut Ultravox! single ‘Dangerous Rhythm’ when it was released in February 1977 to a broadly enthusiastic critical reception. Sounds archly proclaimed the release as their ‘Debut Single & Eno Production of the Week’, noting that the ‘Rich emetic bass, precise Ringo drums, synthesiser cascades and Eno’s hand in the production make this the best and most confident debut single since ‘Anarchy’.’ The media’s insistence on allocating swathes of praise to Eno, however, was a situation which would increasingly irritate the band over the course of the Ultravox! album project, given that they had decided against using the bulk of their co-producer’s work on the finished record. That said, even Warren Cann would later concede that Eno’s name ‘did help bring about some attention that might not otherwise have been paid to us concerning that first album, but it had never been our intention to do that’. I always listen to The Synthesizer Show, Vince’s radio show with Reed Hays, for pleasure of course because it can be very entertaining, but also so I can talk about it in the Erasure newsletter. I try to keep up with Martyn’s podcast Electronically Yours but he does so many of them that I’m always a few episodes behind!Such lukewarm reactions from the music press would become the norm for Ultravox!, whose long-running battle with the way the media portrayed them was then still in its infancy. Nevertheless, when it came to Ha! Ha! Ha!, the band themselves could understand some of the negativity that was thrown their way. The album had been made during a difficult time for Ultravox!, whose debut had failed to live up to their own expectations and who, as a result, had channelled the anger and frustration they were experiencing into the new songs. While the speedy writing and recording process added an urgency and a spontaneity to the finished record, by the time it hit the record shops Ultravox! were already impatient to be developing their sound further. Listening To The Music The Machines Make’ is published by Ominbus Press, available from the usual bookshops and online retailers, except North America where the book will be on sale from 26th January 2023 This is a very exciting piece of news for me personally and I have been waiting for absolutely ages to be able share it with you: it feels incredible to come out and actually say it but I have only gone and written a book! The first thing I should say is that it's not an Erasure book, it's a book about the electronic pop music revolution from the end of the seventies to the start of the eighties, but I am beyond thrilled that Vince and Andy are both involved. Drawing on years of research and with exclusive input from key figures – including Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure), Martyn Ware (The Human League, Heaven 17), Dave Ball (Soft Cell), John Foxx (Ultravox), Daniel Miller (The Normal, Mute Records) and Rusty Egan (Visage) – Richard Evans tells the stories of the movement’s underground pioneers and its superstars: from Devo, The Normal, Telex and Cabaret Voltaire to Gary Numan, OMD, Duran Duran and Depeche Mode.

With this book, you opted to reference archive material rather than talk to the stars of the period in the present day? Punk would, of course, continue in one form or another for some years to come – in fact there are those who would go so far as to say that it never really died at all – but by 1978 much of the original spirit of revolution was already spent, and a myriad of commercial punk bands had swept in to fill the vacuum the movement had unexpectedly left behind. Midge Ure, speaking as one who had fallen for punk’s early promise, but by 1978 was eager to move on to new things, would later note, ‘Punk had become high-street fashion, so the ones who had instigated the look, who were in at its very conception, didn’t want to be punks any more. Their little sisters were doing that now.’

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The perception that the steering hand of Island Records was somehow manipulating Ultravox! to the label’s own ends would feed the media’s perceptions of what the band were trying to achieve for quite some time. Their earnest pretentiousness and studied art-school aesthetic certainly set Ultravox! apart from most of the acts around them at that time, and it wasn’t until the emergence of punk, which finally gave them a context in which their alternative sounds and approach could be fully accepted on their own merit, that Ultravox! could start to find their feet and emerge as the pioneering entity they most certainly were. That’s true, I think A-HA are a really important band and yes, they are not in the scope of the book but if they could have been, I would have been delighted to include them because their canon is quite ambitious and wide-ranging. So, I’m going to throw a controversial question at you, in the context of 1978-1983, which is the most important record label out of Virgin and Mute? *laughs due to pause*

SL: We, electro music fans, are already very excited about your upcoming book. And what are you reading right now when you have a little “me time”? From the gritty and experimental to the camp and theatrical, this book charts the careers and impact of electronic pop’s earliest innovators and luminaries, from Devo, The Normal, Telex and Cabaret Voltaire to Soft Cell, Gary Numan, OMD, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode.

As it turned out that was the easy part. Then I had to write an actual book! What was the writing process for the book?