“WE were never meant to be a band that had hits,” muses Andy McCluskey. “When Tony Wilson told us: ‘You’re the future of pop’, we said ‘Pardon?’ Nobody was more surprised than us when we were on Top of the Pops.”
Nearly 50 years after Andy and childhood pal Paul Humphreys started experimenting with old tape recorders and called themselves Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, the synth pop pioneers are on the road with their Summer of Hits tour.
Following last year’s success of the re-mastered Crush album, OMD are celebrating the crowd-pleasers, in captivating shows packed with hits.
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Andy McCluskey
Having seen them devote an entire concert to Architecture and Morality, I ask if set lists can be a tricky balance of album tracks, new material and pop bangers. Last year’s release of the re-mastered Crush album was a US success, and in 2023 OMD released a new album, the acclaimed Bauhaus Staircase, “which would’ve been Number 1 if it wasn’t for Taylor Swift,” smiles Andy.
“Every year is a 40th anniversary of something – this year’s it’s The Pacific Age (OMD’s seventh album).” he says. “People love the albums but we have to perform the hits too. This tour is about the hits.”
And what gems they are! Since debut single Electricity in 1979, OMD have led the way in British electronic music, selling 25 million singles and 15 million albums worldwide.
Their hits, including Enola Gay, Souvenir, Messages, Joan Of Arc, Locomotion, She’s Leaving and Tesla Girls, are a dreamy blend of haunting melancholy and upbeat synth pop. Seminal 1981 album Architecture and Morality established them as one of the UK’s most influential electro-pop acts, inspiring the likes of Depeche Mode, The Killers and Moby.
Back in the day, they were on Top of The Pops a whopping 29 times. “Our last appearance was the same day the Spice Girls’ first,” says Andy. “I finally got my 30th Top of the Pops in 2000 – thanks to Atomic Kitten.”
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OMD
Creating a girl group might not seem the most likely career move for a musician who started out emulating Kraftwerk, but when Andy founded Atomic Kitten in 1998 it was a vehicle for his pop songwriting. He wrote their biggest hit, Whole Again, in 2001, earning him an Ivor Novello Award nomination. “I love a good pop band and I had a blast with Atomic Kitten,” says Andy. “I’m still in touch with Kerry (Katona), I spoke to her the other week. She’s great fun.”
By the mid-90s, OMD had called it a day. “I was banging my head on the wall,” says Andy. “It was the age of Britpop and grunge, nothing was as unfashionable as an Eighties synth band. In 1996 we released Walking on the Milky Way and Radio 1 wouldn’t play it. Fifty per cent of British single sales were from Woolworths, but they only sold records on radio playlists. We had no chance.”
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A decade later, in 2006, Andy and Paul reunited, initially to appear on a German TV show. Thanks to the Eighties nostalgia vibe of the last two decades, they’ve enjoyed a resurgence as a hugely popular live act, while continuing to release new material and push boundaries.“Cultural fashion has a timeline,” says Andy. “In the 80s synths were the future. In the 90s it was Oasis, and I was thinking ‘How come the Beatles are the future again?’ I’ve been around long enough now to know that all pop culture eventually eats its own history.”
Andy and Paul were school pals, growing up on the Wirral in the 1970s, when they started carrying out weird musical experiments with old radio sets and tape recorders. It all started when Andy went to see Kraftwerk, in 1975: “I sat in seat Q36, that concert changed my life. I built a stereo from two record players and started raiding obscure German back catalogues.
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OMD
“Paul’s widowed mother worked six days a week so we had the house to ourselves. We used to pump everything – war noises off the TV, experimental soundwaves – through tape recorders. Even our mates said: ‘That’s not music’. We gave ourselves this preposterous name and only intended to do one gig. I was going to Leeds to do fine art and Paul was off to London to do an electronics degree.”
But their catchy electro-pop melodies fused with intelligent lyrics caught the ear of Factory Records supremo Tony Wilson, who released Electricity. “We were just trying to blag our way onto Granada Reports. We never planned it to become pop stars,” says Andy.
Late 70s Liverpool had a fertile music scene and young bands cut their teeth at Eric’s – where OMD first played, in October 1978. “Every other person around us was in a band,” says Andy. “Open mic Tuesdays at Eric’s were full of people who went on to be in bands like Teardrop Explodes, Echo and The Bunnymen, China Crisis, Siouxsie and the Banshees. They were all in this mad punk supergroup, Big in Japan.”
For fans like me (OMD was the first band I ever saw live), their beautifully catchy songs – about things pop acts don’t normally sing about, like oil refineries, religious martyrs, technology and the atomic bomb – take us back to wistful hours in bedrooms playing records.
“Songs that were part of your journey remain with you. They’re the pegs on which hang so many memories,” says Andy, who is so delightful I could talk to him all day. “When Paul and I got back together in 2006 we had people from a certain generation coming to see us, but also a new broader demographic: kids discovering us on a deep dive through Spotify.
“When we first started having hits we had imposter syndrome – 48 years later we’re still here, and still doing what we want to do.”
* OMD’s Summer of Hits tour is at York Museum Gardens on Thursday, July 9. Visit yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk
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