A 1980s Childhood (4 page)

My mum loved this song and bought the vinyl record so that she could dance around the living room to it, making a refreshing change from her usual Julio Iglesias records. I remember once, on a family day out, we stopped off for lunch at a quaint rural pub in the heart of the Dorset countryside. The pub seemed to be frequented solely by farmers and ruddy-faced old men who eyed us suspiciously as we took our seats. While we waited for our food to be served, my brothers and I decided to liven up the deathly dull atmosphere of the pub by using our pocket money to play
The Only Way is Up
on the jukebox. The silence of the little pub was shattered by the opening horn blast of the song, much to the amusement of me and my brothers. In fact, we found it so amusing that we decided to sacrifice more of our pocket money to play it again and again, much to the disgruntlement of the muttering locals.

There’s a common misconception that Musical Youth’s number one hit in 1982,
Pass the Dutchie
, is a song about cannabis, when in fact the song is about extreme poverty; the ‘dutchie’ in the lyrics refers to a type of pot used for cooking. It’s an easy mistake to make though because the song
Pass the Dutchie
is actually a cover version of a song released just one year earlier called
Pass the Koutchie
by the Mighty Diamonds, which was indeed a song all about cannabis. But in 1982 I was only 5 years old and had no idea what dutchies, koutchies or cannabis were anyway and so I would innocently copy what I heard, imitating the musicians by adopting a kind of fake Jamaican accent as I sang:

I say: Pass the Dutchie on the left-hand side,

Pass the Dutchie on the left-hand side,

It a gonna burn, give me music make me jump and prance,

It a go done, give me the music make me rock in the dance …

Musical Youth followed up their hit single with
Youth of Today
, which reached number thirteen in the UK Singles Chart, and just a few months later their song
Never Gonna Give You Up
climbed to number six in the charts. But things went downhill from there and despite having some minor successes with their later songs, the band split up and went their separate ways in 1985.

Nicknamed ‘the prettiest boys in rock’, Duran Duran were one of the most successful and iconic bands of the 1980s and, according to many women at the time, one of the most beautiful bands as well. The line-up of five sharply dressed, fashionably coiffed young men changed throughout the eighties, but at the time of their first album in 1981 the band comprised front man Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes on the keyboard, John Taylor on the bass, Andy Taylor on the guitar and Roger Taylor on the drums. The three Taylors, incidentally, were completely unrelated.

Their first major hit single was
Girls on Film
whose accompanying music video was deliberately provocative, featuring topless women mud wrestling; its intention was to become a sensation that would get people talking about the band. The video was heavily censored and edited in most cases but was shown in its entirety in some of the newer nightclubs that had video screens. The band’s highly polished image and daringly provocative music videos made them ideal material for the new music video channel MTV, which helped them gain enormous publicity and turned them into a worldwide success. Throughout the eighties they churned out one hit after another, achieving twelve top-ten hits in the UK in the eighties alone.

The band’s next major success was
Hungry Like the Wolf
, released in 1982, which is considered by many to be one of the greatest new wave songs ever recorded; in the same year they reached number two in the charts with
Save a Prayer
and number nine with
Rio
. Their first number one came in 1983 with
Is There Something I Should Know?
This was quickly followed by another number one hit,
The Reflex
, in 1984 and shortly after that was
The Wild Boys
, which made it to number two.

Perhaps their most notable success came in 1985 after John Taylor, the bassist, approached James Bond producer Cubby Broccoli at a party and reportedly asked, somewhat drunkenly, ‘When are you going to get someone
decent
to do one of your theme songs?’ Surprisingly, instead of being hurled out of the nearest window, the band was offered the opportunity to work with John Barry to create the theme song for the next Bond film,
A View to a Kill
. The eponymously titled song became a worldwide hit, reaching number one in the US and number two in the UK, as well as making the top ten in various other countries.

In total, the boys achieved fourteen top-ten (UK) singles, released thirteen studio albums, sold over 100 million records and broke the hearts of millions of teenage girls.

For a while in the 1980s, I became a huge Michael Jackson fan, to the point where I started wearing Michael Jackson pin badges, bought a baseball cap at Blackpool Pleasure Beach that said ‘Bad’ on it and even asked my mum for some bits of white tape so that I could put them on my fingers, just like my hero. Of course, I looked like a right muppet and my brothers didn’t hesitate to tell me so, especially when I combined all this with my usual outfit at the time of a pair of blue checked trousers and a burgundy cardigan. Eventually, I started to become self-conscious in my pink and black ‘Bad’ baseball cap, so I used a marker pen to alter the first letter so that it now said ‘Rad’, which was way cooler.

My obsession with Michael Jackson started when I was given my first ever vinyl record, the 1982 Thriller album, which featured a very young-looking Jacko reclining on one elbow in a brilliant white suit and black shirt. I needed a record player to play it on and since my older brother had recently been given one of the new Sony tower hi-fis for his birthday, I inherited his old record player that was mounted in a big wooden cabinet, with ample space below to store my one and only record. Since I only had the one record in my collection, that’s all I played, over and over again, and it wasn’t long before I knew the lyrics of all the songs:
Wanna Be Startin’ Something
,
Baby Be Mine
,
The Girl is Mine
,
Thriller
,
Beat It
,
Billie Jean
,
Human Nature
,
P.Y.T.
(Pretty Young Thing)
and
The Lady in my Life
.

Michael Jackson in 1984 attempting to prove that 4 inches of white sock and a single sparkly glove can look cool.
(Public Domain)

Michael Jackson’s musical career is nothing short of astounding, with an unsurpassed track record of thirteen Grammy Awards, twenty-six American Music Awards and dozens of other music awards to make him the most awarded artist in the history of popular music. His album Thriller became the bestselling album of all time with 110 million copies sold and, in total, he is estimated to have sold over 750 million records worldwide.

Not only was Michael Jackson a talented musician and singer, he was also a fantastic dancer and entertainer with a unique style of dancing that included the famous Moonwalk and crotch-grabbing moves that have since been much copied and parodied. I never tried the crotch-grabbing move personally but I do remember shuffling around on the lino floor in the kitchen trying in vain to do the Moonwalk.

There is no shying away from the fact that Michael Jackson led a very mysterious and eccentric personal life that was plagued by controversy and allegations, but I prefer to remember Michael for the music he brought us and the fashion sense he taught me.

I will always remember Christmas 1985 as the year my brother was given the number one hit single
Rock Me Amadeus
by Falco. Having excitedly opened his gift first thing in the morning, he immediately put the new record on, turned the volume up loud and my brothers and I danced to it, singing along with the catchy and somewhat repetitive chorus:

Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus

Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus

Amadeus Amadeus, oh oh oh Amadeus.

As soon as the song finished, he put it straight back on so that we could hear it again and this time we worked on improving our Austrian-accented rap technique as we tried to copy whatever it was that Falco was saying in between the choruses. Due to Falco’s strong Austrian accent and rapid-fire rap technique, we struggled to make out most of the lyrics and so we kept playing the record over and over again, trying to piece together the little bits that we could understand. Of course, it wasn’t long before my parents had had enough of the song and threatened to take the record away if we didn’t stop playing it. We never did figure out all the lyrics but realised that the song was something about the life story of the classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Rock Me Amadeus
was such a catchy and anthemic song that it topped the charts in dozens of countries around the world and became the first single by an Austrian ever to reach number one in the UK charts. Many people think of Falco as being a one-hit wonder of the eighties, but in actual fact he made dozens of records and was hugely popular in his home country where he had eighteen top-ten hits, including five number ones.

In 1982 a relatively unknown avant-garde instrumental group called Art Nouveau placed an advert in
Melody Maker
, the music newspaper:

Good looking, talented singer/songwriter/frontman, looking for musicians to form what should be a successful band, influences: Japan, Yazoo, Soft Cell … no Des O’Connor fans.

As a result of the advert, the band auditioned and selected Christopher Hamill, who went under the stage name Limahl (an anagram of his surname), and the band changed their name to Kajagoogoo. Shortly afterwards, the newly formed band were spotted by Nick Rhodes, the keyboard player from Duran Duran, who co-produced their first single
Too Shy
with EMI Records.

The single was released in January 1983 and rocketed to the top of the charts where it spent two weeks at number one; it turned the mullet-headed band into a household name virtually overnight. Kajagoogoo had further success with their follow-up singles
Ooh to be Ah
and
Hang on Now
, but barely a year after their first single was released, tensions within the band resulted in Limahl being fired and replaced by Nick Beggs as front man. Another hit single,
Big Apple
, was released in 1984, which reached number eight in the UK charts, but after this the band’s popularity declined and their subsequent singles failed to repeat their earlier success.

Freshly fired Limahl decided to use the opportunity to attempt a solo career and sang the theme song to the film
The
NeverEnding Story
; it became hugely successful and reached number four in the UK charts. Sadly for him, this was his one and only solo success and poor old Limahl and his famous mullet disappeared into relative obscurity.

Having met each other at school in the 1970s, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley formed a band called Wham! and, while still just teenagers, released their first record
Wham Rap!
in 1982. The record made it into the top ten in the UK charts, while their next record,
Young Guns (Go for It!)
, climbed even higher to achieve a number three position. Over the course of just four years, between 1982 and 1986, the boys released eleven singles, four of which made it to number one in the charts and the remainder making it into the top ten.

Their first number one hit was the unforgettably catchy
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
, with a music video that featured Michael and Ridgeley prancing around the stage, dancing like drunken uncles at a wedding party, wearing baggy white t-shirts with the slogan ‘Choose LIFE’ printed on them. The backing singers, who included the soon-to-be-famous-in-their-own-right Pepsi and Shirlie, all wore white t-shirts with ‘GO-GO’ written on them.

By this time, the boys had become enormously successful, especially with teenage girls who found the combination of espadrilles, rolled-up jacket sleeves and bouffant hair too heady a look to resist. Their antics of placing shuttlecocks down the front of their shorts during concerts helped them to gain publicity and notoriety, and just one year after their debut, Wham! was already rivalling Duran Duran and Culture Club for the title of Britain’s biggest pop act.

Their next song
Freedom
also reached number one in the charts and was closely followed by
Everything She Wants
and
Last Christmas
. In 1985 and 1986, Wham! released three more hits which all made it to number one:
I’m Your Man
,
The Edge of Heaven
and
Where Did Your Heart Go?
before deciding to quit while they were ahead having sold 25 million records together.