The pioneers of British synth pop celebrate their 40th anniversary in top form
Together with The Human League, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (abbreviated as OMD) put the first synth pop stones at the end of the 70s, a genre that began to emerge in post punk Britain. A couple of years later, synthesizers were already common currency in any pop production. Formed in 1978 in Meols, a coastal town near Liverpool, OMD was the idea of two teenagers named Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys , who fleetingly dominated the worldwide sales charts with hits such as Electricity , Enola Gay or Joan Of Arc . On Saturday, October 19, the English band arrives in La Riviera on their 40th anniversary tour , which coincides with the launch of the Souvenir compilation . The Singles 1979-2019 . A show for which McCluskey (Wirral, Cheshire, 1959) promises "all the great classics and some hidden songs of our discography".
They usually quote Kraftwerk and Neu! like his first influences ... Yes, but we also really liked David Bowie, Roxy Music, Brian Eno, The Velvet Underground and that sort of thing. Basically, the rest did not interest us too much. Compared to those names, the rest of the artists had a very limited talent. Maybe not consciously, but see every Thursday night the broadcast of Top Of The Pops , with bands like T-Rex or Slade and all that glam scene, when we were only 12 years old, surely it also influenced us in some way. Weren't they attracted to punk, which had just exploded in 1977? Yes, we liked it. The best thing about punk is that it decentralized the London music industry for a few years. Any city in the provinces of England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales had its punk club. And all those rooms kept a policy of open doors to the new sounds, which did not necessarily have to be punk. There was a club in Liverpool called Eric's that we used to go to often to see the coolest bands of the moment: The Clash, Devo, XTC, The Cure ... Also, every Thursday they invited new groups to play. We debuted there in 1978. Without that club we wouldn't exist. What were your goals then? We didn't have any goals. Really! Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark was something that came up when Paul and I were 16 years old and began to play strange noises in our rooms. I had a pretty squeaky bass and Paul made his own synthesizers, a kind of machines that made weird sounds, because he couldn't afford to buy a keyboard. Little by little we acquired more equipment, until one day we set out to give a concert. We went to talk to the guy who was wearing Eric's, thinking that by telling him that we made electronic music he would reject us. But he said yes! He asked us: "What is the name of the group?" And we didn't even have a name! So we had to find one quickly. Actually, OMD did not convince us too much, but how it was only going to be for a show, because it gave us the same. And here we continue 40 years later. In 1978, electronic music was not the most common ... It was something really alternative. And besides, there was no internet. There were very few people in England who followed a path similar to ours. For example, we didn't even know The Human League or The Normal in the summer of 1978, when we decided to give that concert. We could not imagine that two years later electronic pop was going to be dominating the world. And less than they were going to last 40 years in active. After that first show, the owner of Eric's told us: "Hey, it's very good what you do. I know an uncle in Manchester who has a club called The Factory. Do you want to meet him?" So there we went. We appeared in front of its owner, Tony Wilson, whom we knew because he was also a presenter of Granada Television, and we gave him a tape. A short time later he called us because he just formed a record label, Factory Records, and he wanted to publish our first single ... Electricity ... Exactly. Some time later we learned that we had been very lucky, because Tony Wilson had not liked the cassette at all. He had left it lying in a bag inside his car with the rest of the proposals rejected. One night his wife took a random tape from that bag and there was our song Electricity . She put it in the car player and when she finished she told her husband: "This is great. It's a hit." And from that moment she began to act as our protector. If it had not been because that night he put his hand in that bag, took that cassette and put it on the equipment, we would have given two concerts and everything would have ended there. Yes, a couple of times. I loved Joy Division, among other things because Ian Curtis danced in a way as strange as mine. We were very fans of him. We once had our discussions, because we didn't want to play after them. The nights at The Factory were crazy and, sometimes, between groups and groups there were fire-eaters. Nobody wanted to go out last, after the fire-fighting had acted, because you found yourself on the stage soaked in liquid parana and if someone thought of throwing a match, there was a very serious risk of everything exploding. What is your relationship with Enola Gay ? It's a worldwide known hit, but it has also been able to eclipse part of his career. I don't think he has eclipsed the rest of our discography. For example, in the case of Spain we had a good number of successes during the first 80. I even believe that Souvenir reached higher in the sales lists. We are still very proud of Enola Gay because it opened a lot of doors and was our first international hit. The truth is that its theme, which is about the first plane to launch an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, is still a bit strange for a pop song. But this is what we wanted from the beginning: to make new music and lyrics other than the cliches that sounded on the radio. Do you think Enola Gay's anti-war message is still valid? Because current wars are usually economic and more subtle and difficult to unmask. It's true. Nowadays nations can inflict much greater damage without the need to use a single bomb. The cold war is probably not over, it has only been made digital. Ask Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. Are you aware of the influence that OMD has exerted on bands like Depeche Mode and later? Depeche Mode have recognized on many occasions that our first singles were the ones that pushed them to form the group . In fact, Vince Clarke, one of its founders, has recently remixed a theme of ours as Almost . But yes, of course I see our things on LCD Soundsystem, The XX, Mark Ronson or even The Killers.Data of interest:
What: OMD. When: Saturday, October 19, from 8 p.m. Where: in La Riviera (Paseo de la Virgen del Puerto, s / n. Madrid). Sold out. Info: www.omd.uk.com.
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