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KajagoogooArticle from Electronic Soundmaker & Computer Music, January 1984 |
Life after Limahl
A human interest story about hard work, dreams come true and the dastardly deeds of hacks other than Will Mowat...
So let's get some idea of what they were doing. "It's not as if we were even bubbling under", says Jez. "We were gigging for two years. We were very ambitious and used to put on these futuristic extravaganza shows, like Ultravox and Numan; we did over-the-top visuals, coming on like spacemen sometimes, and all this in the local pubs. Nick, who was fronting, used to come on really outrageous. It was too much for people to grasp, and we got frustrated because they didn't seem to understand or appreciate all the hard work we put in for them." Stu: "It was a good experience for two years. In the end, we had collected so much gear that Jez had to borrow a three ton truck to get us around. It wasn't great gear, but there was a lot of it.
For instance, we had two of those HH concert systems whose passive crossovers we replaced with three-way actives with graphics. We were very keen to get a good sound." The sound engineer-cum-manager at that time was their present manager-cum-sound engineer, Paul Ryan, the "silent" fifth member of Kajagoogoo Two. "In those days we were doing gigs everywhere, anything to get us out of town: Retford, Coventry, Luton, Woburn, Watford, Windsor. The local music scene was the thing in everyone's lives — the Aural Exciters were really popular and we used to think, it was either them or us!"
Yet there was too much musicality to be commercial, and after a single which they made at Blackwing in its early 16-track days disappeared despite a year's deal with Pinnacle on Art Nouveau's own label, they arrived at a watershed in the life of the band. Stu: "We weren't getting anywhere, so we made a conscious decision to go for a more commercial sound." Jez: "We sat down and decided on a plan of action. Gigs weren't getting us anywhere, and so the last gig we did under the old name was the Mad Hatter at Luton." At a couple of places their ambition had proved too much for the publicans who would threaten to pull the plugs if they didn't leave immediately, half way through a set! At that period, end of 1981, Limahl was looking for a band to front, and as Art Nouveau were looking for a more successful formula, it seems inevitable that they should have met.
Jez: "The commercial aspect only really came once we got together with Limahl; it was a dodgy time with a name change and a new member. It was a big thing, in that we had been together for two years, and suddenly here's a guy from Wigan. Wigan!" Limahl it was who contributed the pop, commercial style. Nick, who had been fronting the band in his inimitable way, wanted to concentrate on his bass playing, and all these factors contributed to boost Limahl's and the band's hopes that things would at last begin to happen. Not a bit of it. Steve: "Paul, the manager, formed a package of photographs, 16-track demotape and biographies and went to all the record companies.
He got thrown out everywhere! And it was then we did the "final" two gigs, our first as Kajagoogoo. I say 'final' because it really was make or break. We put in all the money we had and assembled a show at the Embassy club in Mayfair; in fact we even borrowed money off Paul's mum." Jez: "It was the last thing we could possibly have done; we would have had to go back to Leighton, or moved to London and carried on somehow." So, the band pooled their resources, invited all the record companies, and put on the gig. Steve: "It went very well. But the usual thing happened, in that the decision-makers of the companies didn't come, and we thought 'oh no, we can't put on another show'!"
However, Kajagoogoo's star was in the ascendant, and there was no stopping progress. Paul Ryan began what is known as an 'ongoing dialogue' with David Ambrose and Terry Slater of EMI and had something going with CBS and Phonogram, at the same time as Limahl had independently met Nick Rhodes (keyboards player with EMI band Duran Duran) in a club and 'pestered him', as Jez put it. Rhodes' enthusiasm for the band coming at the time EMI were looking for a band proved an irresistible force. Stu: "They wanted a band, and we wanted to do it as quickly as possible. We did a 'final' final gig at the Embassy, but by then the contract had already been drafted. We stormed EMI's Bastille on July 14 1982 and signed."
The morning after: "Signing means starting again, really," says Stu. "The buzz only starts when the first single charts. We had thought of ourselves more as Virgin material, and even though EMI at the time was shedding well over a hundred bands, and despite being in the company of Duran Duran, Talk Talk, Thomas Dolby and the Undertones, we still had to cope with the stigma of being signed by the Big Dinosaur. We didn't care though, because we knew what we had to go through before our little bit of luck. The papers all thought we were assembled by the company, but they totally fabricate everything."
Steve: "The other aggravation was the Nick Rhodes association, which in a way caused us grave upset, as everyone was saying it was he who catapulted us to where we are by his connections. But they all forget the sheer bloody work we went through first. We had to work to put ourselves in the right place at the right time." Ever get the impression these chaps feel hard done by?
Anyway, there they were, signed and sore. The next thing to do was make the first single, and the album White Feathers. Steve: "We had the basis of Too Shy before we signed. It was our first session in a studio and the energy of the song, I think, came across well. But on the whole I was well disappointed with the overall production of the album. White Feathers was quite literally put down, mixed and dished out rather like an underbaked cake, they were in such a hurry to release it.
Rhodes was of course heavily involved with Duran Duran and he had set ideas about how we should sound; his mind wasn't entirely on our project, and he kept getting hassles from the Duran quarter, especially when Too Shy got to number one: "his band was Duran, yet we got there first! The competition was very petty." Jez: "We are a very live-sounding band. On the album the feel was slightly lost by over-perfection, and when I tell you that five of the tracks were mixed in one night, you could say to that extent we were manufactured. I think Big Apple, the latest single, is the first work we've done which reflects us as we are."
Steve: "The commercial aspect was pleasing to an extent, don't get me wrong. Ooh To Be Ah, the second single, was brilliant but almost too clever for its own good. Stu had ideas for arpeggiation and the basic idea is a chant, a rap. But we didn't get the jungle chanting we wanted, because we were already feeling a certain pressure on us to make sure we played safe."
Kajagoogoo, but perhaps not Limahl, resented this huge split between public images and private realities. It was down to Limahl's image. Acting, as he did as the band's mouthpiece at interviews, he gave what the others came to see as a false impression.
Steve: "He's not into the technicalities of the music, where we would go to a concert, he'd go to the theatre to see a show. It all came to a head; we put our opinions across and his very words were: 'We've got a problem, because I want to do out-and-out pop. He's more of a businessman than we are, and he couldn't see why we wanted to change direction and rock the boat."
So Kajagoogoo and Limahl parted ways in September. For the first time in almost two years, the band were back where they had been, personnel-wise, and they now look to the future with some wonder. "We're all looking for a more authentic sound with plenty of ambience and good playing. At the same time we want more control by doing our own engineering with Colin Thurston." Big Apple demonstrates this new approach of Kajagoogoo. They gave the song a live feel which previous products lacked, even though it meant leaving in imperfections. Stu: "This change in direction will affect our commerciality, but for the better. At first we may confuse our friends, but there will still be hits like Too Shy to keep everyone happy. The important thing is: no more compromises!"
The band are currently putting down ideas onto eight track for the next album, which will be recorded at Farmyard and released in May. They are also keying themselves up for the world tour which they see as an exercise in rehabilitation, "to prove we can still cut it," as Steve put it. In fact, they see the album and the tour as inseparable. Steve: "I regard the upcoming album as the first to truly represent the band, since White Feathers was composed mainly of songs hanging over from our Art Nouveau days. The new one will have some sort of continuity running through it, the most significant factor being the live feel we get on stage. We're going to try and do what we want to do and keep it as commercial as possible." And I have a feeling that's going to be mighty difficult to do since the market at which the band is aimed is notoriously fickle. But their new assertiveness may well be what will win the day.
Talk turned to hardware, and to their plans to set up a studio. Their desire for a greater degree of control over their musical output had led them to seek premises where they can rehearse and subsequently record without the pressure of time on their collective heels. The studio project may well wait until the third Kajagoogoo album, but there are other reasons for wanting one. Steve: "We're all keen to get into film music and even jingles. Combining the heard and the seen is the ultimate sort of experience a musician can have. My personal taste is avant-garde, and the general feeling is that we want to find another outlet for our musicality which would otherwise get in the way of the necessary commerciality in Kajagoogoo. There's a lot to be said for bull-headed commercialism because it cuts out all the frills; sure, we all wish we could play as technically wonderfully as the session guys we meet around — but where has it got them? Talent isn't everything."
I was surprised at the uncomplicated nature of their gear but this is in keeping with the new direction: Ooh To Be Ah! sounded very complicated, but it was done in the studio. Steve has three or four guitars going through two Session 75 combos, via a handful of effects: very simple, but effective. Nick has an old Wal and a second-hand Musicman going into a Trace Elliot bass stack. And a Chapman Stick is on its way.
Nothing complicated here! Just lock him away for six months with the Stick and he'll get the hang of it. Jez's kit takes a little more explanation. It's a large Simmons kit which is connected up in parallel to one of those bright orange Music Computer Systems drum machines; he has accessed the various sounds in it and can trigger them by striking the pad. He feels frustrated by having only 14 sounds to trigger at anyone time without pulling printed circuit boards out and swapping cards around but life has been made easier by the makers, who designed a new programme for him enabling him to change sound patches between songs at the touch of a button; and new sounds are on the way, recorded by Jez and burnt into chips by MCS.
But speaking as a keyboards player, it was Stu's rig that most surprised me. The most unusual component is the Roland Jupiter 8. Why? Because it hasn't given one moment's bother since it was born a couple of years ago! No overheating, no tuning drift, and the colours haven't faded, either. The rest of the rig comprises a Yamaha Electric Grand, a PPG Wave 2:2 with Waveterm, and the ARP Odyssey. "In Art Nouveau I had a Crumar Multiman and an ARP Axxe. Then suddenly the JP-8 came along. Each time a new keyboard arrives it knocks you for six, but you soon get the hang of it. The Waveterm is no exception; so long as you treat it as a means to an end, it doesn't worry you. And the Odyssey is the ideal monophonic synth — it gives you a leadline sound the polyphonics cannot get." Again no vast array of hardware; just the basic tools necessary for modern music.
Now, you may be asking, why did we do an article on Kajagoogoo? Well, one of the answers is that as musicians, we wanted to put the record straight about other musicians. All you have to do is ask, and you get an answer, and it seemed high time that we got some answers from this problematic band. I, for one, will be listening to Kajagoogoo with fresh interest in the future, if that doesn't sound too patronising; and so, I hope, gentle reader, will you! Now, where's my Limahl single?
Kaja Who's-Who (Kajagoogoo) |
Colin Thurston - Record Producer (Colin Thurston) |
Interview by Will Mowat
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