A 1980s Childhood (5 page)

A final, emotional farewell concert was held at Wembley Stadium on 28 June 1986 where 73,000 fans witnessed the duo perform for the very last time.

In 1982 a trio of Norwegian musicians formed a band called A-ha and left Norway for London to see if they could make a career for themselves in the music business. Morten Harket, the front man, Magne Furuholmen, the keyboard player, and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, the guitarist, ended up at the studio of musician and producer John Ratcliff, reputedly enticed by the prospect of his Space Invaders arcade machine; they ultimately ended up hiring Ratcliff and his manager, Terry Slater, to manage their own band.

Two years later, A-ha debuted with their first single,
Take on Me
, which reached number two in the UK charts and number one in the US. The accompanying music video, now considered to be one of the best music videos of all time, helped to boost the popularity of the song and featured a young woman drawn into a fantasy comic-book adventure with lead singer Morten. For some reason, A-ha never really made it big in America and are considered as something of a one-hit wonder there, with
Take on Me
being the only one of their songs to make it into the top ten. But in the UK it was a very different story as their very next single,
The Sun Always Shines on T.V.
from their debut album Hunting High and Low, made it straight to number one.

The next four singles from A-ha all made it into the UK top ten and in 1987 the band reached the peak of their career when they wrote the theme tune for the next Bond film,
The Living Daylights
. One more top-ten track followed with
Stay on These Roads
, but then their popularity began to wane and the chart positions began to drop off. The band continued to perform together right up until 2010 when they announced that they would split.

Some people know Martin Kemp as that bloke who snogged his own mother on
EastEnders
; others know him as the sofa salesman from the SCS television adverts; but I prefer to remember him as the bass guitarist from the New Romantic band Spandau Ballet.

Martin was actually a relatively late addition to the band which had already been started in 1976 by his brother Gary and school friend Steve Norman. By the time Martin joined, the band comprised Gary and Steve on guitars, Tony Hadley as lead singer and John Keeble on the drums.

After signing with Chrysalis Records, the band released their debut single
To Cut a Long Story Short
, which shot to number five in the UK charts in 1980 and catapulted the fashion-conscious quintet to immediate stardom. This success was followed by more hits, such as
The Freeze
,
Musclebound
and the Gold-certified album
Journeys to Glory
, which became one of the defining albums of the early eighties New Romantic movement.

Known as much for their distinctive dress sense as for their iconic music, Tony Hadley once described how his grandfather had refused to travel in the same train carriage as him to show his disapproval of the singer’s bizarre outfit. At the time Hadley was wearing ballet slippers, white socks, wraparound Iranian, Cossack-type trousers, tight at the ankles and baggy with a flap up the front, a silk shirt with Greek imprints, make-up and a headband. I sympathise with his grandfather entirely.

In 1983 Spandau Ballet made it to number one with
True
which was closely followed by the anthemic single
Gold
, arguably marking the high point in their musical career. The band continued to churn out singles right through to the end of the eighties, when the band split up and legal proceedings began between band members following a row over royalties. The dust settled eventually and after twenty years apart, the band reunited in 2009 to make a welcome comeback, this time dressing a little more sensibly.

The first I heard of the Beastie Boys was in 1986 when my dad read out an article from the newspaper expressing outrage at the sudden spate of thefts of VW badges from the front of cars all over the country. The thieves were stealing the VW badges so that they could wear them around their necks as a fashion accessory, just like their heroes, the Beastie Boys, who had started the trend earlier that year. The situation became so serious that Volkswagen reportedly began offering free replacement badges to all of its customers, and, spotting a marketing opportunity, even provided free badges to Beastie Boys fans. The newspaper article piqued my interest in the band and it wasn’t long before I had my hands on the Beastie Boys’ debut album Licensed to Ill.

Having started out as a hardcore punk band in the late 1970s, the Beastie Boys didn’t actually make the transition to their more familiar hip-hop style until 1984, which meant that their music had a unique sound to it, combining elements of both genres. Consequently, their first album included tracks like
Fight For Your Right
,
which was very much a punk track, and
Paul Revere
, which was more of a hip-hop track; and then bridging the two different styles completely were tracks like
No Sleep Till Brooklyn
that incorporated the hard guitars of punk and the rap and drum loops of hip hop.

The debut album was a huge success, particularly in the USA where it reached the number one spot in the charts. In 1989 the boys released their second album Paul’s Boutique, which was artistically more mature and less commercially focused. More albums followed in the 1990s and 2000s, and by 2010 the Beastie Boys had sold 40 million albums worldwide.

Pint-sized, pop prodigy Prince is, without a doubt, one of the most prolific artists in the history of pop music having released hundreds of songs under his own name and under various pseudonyms, as well as writing songs which have been recorded by other artists such as Sinéad O’Connor, The Bangles and Chaka Khan. In addition to his published catalogue of work, he famously has a private vault of unreleased works which is said to include hundreds more songs and over fifty fully produced music videos that have never seen the light of day.

Bruce Springsteen performing at a concert in East Germany in 1988, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
(Courtesy of Bundesarchiv, Uhlemann, Thomas/Wikimedia Commons)

Having released his debut single
Soft and Wet
in 1978, it wasn’t until the 1980s that Prince really became popular, beginning with chart successes in America before most of us in the UK had even heard of him. His first foray into the UK charts, with the memorable songs
1999
and
Little Red Corvette
, resulted in a lukewarm response initially, and the two singles only made it into the charts at positions 25 and 54 respectively. It wasn’t until several years later, when his popularity and credibility were firmly established, that these songs were re-released and achieved the more rewarding positions of numbers 10 and 2 in the charts.

Prince’s first big hit in the UK came in 1984 with
When Doves Cry
from the Purple Rain album, reaching number four in the charts; this was quickly followed by
Purple Rain
, which made it to number eight. The flamboyant and eccentric pop star went on to release hit after hit throughout the eighties, racking up numerous top-ten singles and producing six studio albums, five of which went platinum, with his recording success continuing into the next decade and beyond.

If I had to pick just one band that summed up the eighties for me, Huey Lewis and the News would probably be my first choice. There’s something so uplifting and fun about their upbeat, pop-rock sound that just seems to sit perfectly with all my favourite memories of my 1980s childhood. However, I’m heavily biased in my opinion because Huey Lewis and the News wrote the soundtrack to my favourite film of all time,
Back to the Future
, and as well as writing the soundtrack, entitled
Back in Time
, their other hit record
The Power of Love
was also featured in the film.

While everyone knows that Ray Parker Jr wrote the theme song to the film
Ghostbusters
, few people realise that the song was actually a direct copy of the Huey Lewis hit
I Want a New Drug
, which sounds laughably similar. In fact, Huey Lewis had originally been asked to write the theme song for
Ghostbusters
but had declined due to his work on
Back to the Future
; his song
I Want a New Drug
was added to the film as a temporary measure during production until Ray Parker Jr concocted his own version of the song. Of course, Huey Lewis wasn’t amused at this turn of events and sued Ray Parker Jr for plagiarism, eventually reaching an undisclosed out-of-court settlement.

Shortly after their success with
Back to the Future
, the band went on to release three more hit songs in quick succession:
Stuck with You
,
Hip to be Square
and
Jacob’s Ladder
. Two of the songs reached number one in the US charts but achieved more modest results in the UK.

The band’s iconic sound became so representative of the 1980s that in the early 1990s its popularity faded and their last major success came in 1991 with
Couple Days Off
.

One of the kids in my class at school became obsessed by Guns N’ Roses for a while, in particular the song
Sweet Child o’ Mine
, which he would sing over and over again as he stood on his imaginary stage and played his air guitar. Now, it is a great song and many consider it to be one of the best rock songs of all time, but not many people know that it started life as a bit of a joke, when lead guitarist Slash was messing around in a warm-up session and played the now-famous guitar riff while making faces at drummer Steven Adler. Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin asked Slash to play the riff again and a jam session began which inspired lead singer Axl Rose to write some lyrics based on his girlfriend. While the band treated the song flippantly and thought of it as more of a filler track, it became a huge success and made it to number one in the US charts and the UK Rock Chart.

Guns N’ Roses formed in 1985 in Los Angeles, California, and their debut studio album Appetite for Destruction was released in 1987, including the tracks
Welcome to the Jungle
,
Paradise City
and, of course,
Sweet Child o’ Mine
. No one realised it then, but this album was going to become one of the bestselling albums of all time with sales of around 28 million by the time the album was twenty years old, making it eighteen times platinum certified.

Their second album was released just one year later, entitled G N’ R Lies, and was really more of an EP containing just eight tracks; it was the last album to feature the original band line-up before the drummer, Steven Adler, was fired for having become unable to perform adequately due to his cocaine and heroin addiction; he was replaced by Matt Sorum. New member Dizzy Reed also joined around this time as full-time keyboardist and the band went on to release their albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II in the early 1990s. Further albums followed and further changes were made to the line-up until, by the mid-1990s, Axl Rose was the only original band member left.

My wife’s favourite ever song is the 1983 classic from The Police,
Every Breath You Take
, which was the band’s fifth number one hit in the UK. Despite superficially sounding like a gentle love song, the lyrics are about a sinister stalker who obsesses over his previous lover, watching ‘every breath you take; every move you make’. Apparently Sting, who wrote the song, is disconcerted by the number of people who think the song is an upbeat and positive love song, claiming that some people have even played it at their wedding, oblivious to its dark and ugly significance. I, too, am slightly bewildered that my wife has chosen this song as her favourite, especially since she is perfectly aware of the real meaning behind the lyrics.

The Police originally formed in 1977, the year I was born, and were one of the first new wave bands to become commercially successful. Their musical style contained jazz, punk and even reggae influences which was a unique and highly unusual combination at the time. One of the band’s first songs was
Roxanne
which appeared on their debut album Outlandos d’Amour, and it was this song that resulted in the band landing a contract with A&M Records and brought them widespread public recognition. A second album in 1979, Regatta de Blanc, won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance and included the number one hits
Walking on the Moon
and
Message in a Bottle
.