"Musicianship is terribly outdated"

They give great quotes, do Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Real juicy ones. In fact, the things they say cause nearly as much heartburn as the way they look. Or the way they sound. Or the fact that EMI Records have seen fit to give them a huge lump of loot to do what they want with; which is probably the worst of all.

No, while bands all over the world have been playing gigs in dirty pubs and smelly clubs, saving for vans and PAs, hoping for the big break, like a third-on-the-bill to Marillion or something, these boys have given that a big, perfectly made-up sneer and gone their own way to the pot of gold. They've got there first, too.

Navigator on the route was Tony James — bass-player of sorts, ex-Generation X (read; Billy Idol's punk band before New York super-stardom), and all-round smart bloke. He took a long, shrewd look at the state of the Pop business quite a few years ago and decided then that he had to do something that would make everyone sit up and take notice. And he has.

He did it by recruiting people who looked like they should be in a space-age Rock 'n Roll band and acted like they were already megastars. He really didn't care whether they could play, or sing, or whatever.

"We were selling tee-shirts about two years before the band was together."

Of course, the band took a while to come together — two years, in fact, from the first plans of Tony and the stealing of the name from a Russian street gang. Singer Martin Degville's Kensington fashion shop started selling tee-shirts then, and that's financed a lot of the gear and the expenses since.

In those two years Neal X, the tall blond-quiffed guitarist with a white 1952 Gibson semi-acoustic decorated with the hammer and sickle emblems, joined, as did the two Simmons-equipped drummers Ray Mayhew and Chris Kavahagh. Neal had played before, but, he confesses, he was mostly interested in the posing. The drummers were new to the percussion business, too. Sometimes later they acquired the onstage aid of Yana, who mixes the sound live onstage with the aid of a Portastudio, a Roland Space Echo, and a selection of sound effects. Oh, and there's the road crew as well. The usual sort of roadies, you know — very tall girls in high heels.

"We never know from one gig to the next what's going to happen. We could do any of our songs for twenty minutes or two."

While they were rehearsing endless Elvis Presley and Eddie Cochran cover versions, they were also building a rehearsal room in their West London HQ. True to form, they built the floor from car tyres topped with doors found on local skips and used similarly discarded carpeting for the padding on walls and ceiling. Even more true to form, they finished one wall in mirrors and the opposite one in pink vinyl.

"We're not really interested in making records. Seven inches of plastic is a stupid way to get your ideas over."

Suddenly, the big breakthrough in the sound came when two things happened. First, Tony forsake the bass for a Sequential Pro-One monosynth which gave a robotic, high-tech edge to the rockabilly flash. Then they recorded some stuff on to a Tascam 144 Portastudio and started mixing it with the aid of an old Roland Space Echo.

"It's not important to be able to play an instrument at all. That's a lie."

As the echo was used more and more, it swamped the vocals, drowned out the guitar and fed back in its own right. Rather than start again, the Sputniks decided they liked it. They incorporated the echo in their sound and interspersed chunks of heavily edited, virtually unrecognisable guitar and voice.

"We couldn't have existed until now. Our sound could only have happened as a consequence of someone messing around with a Portastudio and an echo unit"

But of course the sound isn't everything. The visuals were just as important, and the video which accompanied the first demoed song, Shoot It Up (Love Missile F1-11) was a fast, rough mix of cuts from all their favourite films smashed together in a melee of loud images. Now the only think to do is become stars. Easy. Of course, there's more to being next year's idols than music or video, and to that end they enlisted the aid of a press agent, Magenta DeVine, whose experience with one of the rock world's biggest PR agencies swung heavily in their favour. She was a friend of Tony's and a few of the right words in her ear got her on the phone to press contacts all over the music world's incestuous corridors.

"It's much easier to teach someone to play the drums than it is to teach them to be thin"

The Sigue look is of course, instantly identifiable and that, more than anything, got them noticed around the parties they continually gatecrashed. Going to well-known music business hangouts as a band, dressed to kill, got them offers of studio time before A&R men had even heard a note.

"I played the guitar a bit before I joined but I was much better on the tennis racket and mirror. I didn't know many chords but I had all the poses off"

And then when the gigs finally started the groundwork paid off. All the friends and the tipped-off contacts came down, the customers at Kensington Market arrived to find out what the name on their tee-shirt really meant, and almost before the A&R men could get their chequebooks out the offers were rising.

"It's a piece of piss, drumming. Once you can keep a beat that's it, really. All that flashy stuff that Rock drummers do is a waste of time, anybody can do it"

EMI got the signatures on the bit of paper eventually, for a sum of money somewhere between vast and huge. Now, they've just got to hit the same heights as their heels...

"The only thing that could play our basslines is a Roland guitar synth. A keyboard would look stupid. For God's sake, how can anyone stand on stage playing a normal synthesizer?"