I wonder what it was like to be a small boy with big dreams on a wet weekend in Wigan?

My family were miners, everyone seemed to work in factories and things like that, any ambition I had didn't seem to have the remotest chance of being real. I really thought I would be a DJ, I thought what a great way to make a living, playing all the records that you like. I used to DJ at the youth club, spinning my current favourite record over and over again driving everyone crazy. We had no money, we were very poor, we didn't have a lot of comforts but we were happy. My mum and dad had four mouths to feed and only just managed to get by, although we did go for a holiday every year to Cornwall, but I just thought I was going to do something normal. I used to earn extra money as a paper boy and sometimes helped deliver bread on Saturdays for a local firm. I was quite entrepreneurial too; everyone seemed to have hedges in their gardens on the council estate, so I used to get 10 pence for cutting them. I'd work really hard all day to get something like 50 pence, and then I'd go and buy a record with that 50 pence to which my mum and dad thought I was absolutely potty. Then, of course, I'd take this record, my proud new possession, a '45' and take it to the youth club then play it repeatedly, wearing it out really. This way I felt in control of the music and escaped within it.

Was the local record shop like a TARDIS of dreams, a pleasure dome to escape into?

Totally! Thinking back it's amazing that there was a record shop in my local area Pemberton (a suburb of Wigan) back then, it's not there now and like a lot of High Streets it's become quite generic, but it was very exciting to go to that record shop and look at the Top Twenty, but most of the time there was one specific record you were just dying to get your hands on. The escapism through the music took me to a more glamorous place, just like losing yourself in a good book, I guess the grass always looks greener on the other side. I always wanted to be somewhere else other than that 'here and now'. I loved those early records and read every credit on the sleeves, in a way I was obsessed and later developed a real passion to get involved with anything and everything to do with records or music.

Was it a bit like, to quote Jarvis Cocker, that the music you were listening to was creating a soundtrack to the movie of your own life?

Definitely but I didn't realise it at the time of course. There was a bit of a nutter on our estate and we had a name for him, can't remember what, but he used to take it everywhere, a stereo that was so big he could hardly physically carry it, walking around playing it at full blast, and oh, the price of batteries!! He was a bit severe and people called him names, he may have been an oddball, but he literally carried the soundtrack to his life around with him, like some kind of ghetto blaster crucifix, so important was his music to him. I wasn't that bad at all but I was certainly in that direction. I was at the back of the school class with one of those awful mono transistor radios. I have one very early music memory when for games at school we'd often go running on what we called cross-country, I had my radio with me and 'Close To You' by The Carpenters came on, it was a big hit at the time and with the opening bars of the song, I remember how excited I was and thought, "Oh my God, my God, it's that record!!" So yes, songs like that and a lot of early Motown stuff are for me, very much the soundtrack to my early life.

Cliff Richard talks even now of some early Rock 'n' Roll records giving him goose bumps when he hears them; were there any tracks that affected you from those formative years when you started gaining your musical awareness that you have carried with you?

Oh God yeah!! 'Band Of Gold' by Freda Payne, 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' by Diana Ross and The Supremes, Motown stuff you see..... actually I just watched a Motown TV Special the other day and I was completely transfixed. In a way, tragically, there is so much information in the world today and analysts break everything down but I didn't want that to happen because I enjoyed the illusion of my memories. One of the amazing things about those early Motown records was the artwork, which have since become available on CD. One of their Chartbusters series of releases had this silver star graphic and on every line of that star was the name of a song and an artist, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson etc. So, yes, those early Motown hits were my goose bump tracks and amazingly, they still are!!

Your biographical notes state that one of your first public appearances in London was as a guest of 'Polly Perkins' singing "I've got the music in me" in the 1970's, what else did you have in you in the 1970's?

Oh you say that with such a twinkle in your eye you bad boy......"in me", I had a burning ambition, a real zest for life, just being in London was so exciting. I don't think at that point I really knew how important it was being here. I thought that this must be the place where it all happens... and it was !!

In that sense was Wigan a state of mind or a skin you had to shed?

Well I naively thought it was a skin I had to shed. I remember thinking at the time, I must not tell people I'm from Wigan. I deliberately tried to lose my accent. In early Limahl interviews, you'll notice I even sound a little bit London, a very clean accent, but of course we now live in a society that embraces accents and as audiences, we welcome the local touch. At that time I thought it would really affect my chances if I had a sort of 'Coronation Street' accent, which is basically what Wigan is. Yes I tried to shed that but I guess I just mistakenly thought Wigan didn't have anything to offer that would interest anybody. In retrospect, it was important growing up there because it gave me this burning desire to get out and see the wider world and be something different.

Thinking about your bouquet of talents, acting, performing, singing, songwriting, they all sort of morph into this hybrid brand Limahl. So I want to ask you, what is Limahl? Is it you, is it an act or is it a lifestyle?

It's an extension of me.... up north in the 'Working Men's Clubs' you'd be referred to as 'the act' or 'the turn', sometimes in my professional dealings I'll still refer to 'the act' or 'the artist'! There is of course, an element of acting in a performance, but it's acting in a sincere way trying to do something that works creatively, emotionally and connects with an audience. In that sense there's an act, yes.

So, let me put you on the spot, so to speak and say as a lot of your songs are to do with love one way or another, do you peddle cheap dreams when your singing about love or is there some thing you find to believe in every time you revisit the same songs?

Love is possibly a cheap dream isn't it, sold to us via Hollywood movies in which every love story has a happy ending whereas in reality, two out of three marriages end in divorce. I have experienced great love, finding love, losing love, passionate love, un passionate love. I think I can very much speak from experience. I pride myself on being a great agony aunt to friends giving advice over the phone, over coffee, whatever and then of course when you have to apply it to yourself you can't, which is hilarious really. I think love is something that when it first happens to you, you never really forget it it. That sudden overpowering feeling that someone is actually more important than yourself. I have experienced that so I think when I sing about love, I guess I'm selling the idea..... there's a little bit of marketing in singing a love song but it's also helping people to hark back to maybe when they were in love. It's always valid to sing of love because there is always a new generation experiencing that and I hope the songs help people to not lose touch with that. It's the rule of life isn't it... love.

I remember being very struck by a deliciously cryptic sleeve note on 'Colour All My Days' thanking an unspecified someone for "a sweet sensation" oo-er!! Also it was the album you created with Giorgio Moroder on which you wrote by way of a sleeve note and I quote "Music to me is entertainment, a little glitter in our lives, a spark of colour in our days. Oh how sweet the feeling..... A song can take you to places you've never been, places you long to go and places we know, so, so well. See you there......" To which you may well add, "pretentious, moi?" Anyway the point is, do you think it perhaps more honest instead of singing about love to sing instead of sensuality?

Boy, that's nearly 20 years ago, Looking back at some of my early sleeve notes I just feel slightly embarrassed by them, because I think they were important to me at the time, but no one else could have really given a fuck. I was being typically melodramatic I suppose. Anyway I do think sensuality and love are inextricably linked and the interpretation that is brought to bear on anything that I sing is, as ever down to the individual listener.

Yes that's true, how receptive any person is to a song is going to depend on the experiences of love and life that they themselves bring to bear in their interpretation of the song words. With that in mind, let's look at the hit you had at that time, the first single you made with Giorgio Moroder, 'The Neverending Story'. It is perhaps one of the archetypal songs about optimism, dream fulfilment, eternal hope, everlasting love and I wonder is it still part of your dream now when you sing it, or has it become, crudely, simply a Limahl vehicle. I think what I'm getting at is the distinction between an artist and singer?

Same sort of answer as before really, i think that being an artist and a singer are again, inextricably linked. 'Neverending Story' was one of those great creative accidents that one just stumbles upon. It's really weird, you can put so much passion into writing a song, into the instrumentation, into the teamwork of writers, engineers and producer and in the process of doing it all you can get very close to the work, like a work of art. Then you're too close and you've really got to stand back to take a proper look at it and 'Neverending Story', well, it was a great learning curve in this respect, because I just flew to Munich - Germany, recorded the song and left. I had no involvement in the writing of the song and I sang it purely from a professional singer's perspective in that I was there to deliver a vocal. I had a busy schedule, I kind of flew into Germany with a hangover, a bit nervous about meeting Monsieur Giorgio Moroder, when I got back I listened to it on my ghetto-blaster at my flat and I thought "oh this is not as good as the other Giorgio Moroder songs that I like". But my then manager Billy Gaff, somehow recognised something and raved about it and, of course, the rest is history. That taught me that I can meet someone that I hardly know and write a song or record a song with them and then leave. It doesn't always have to be the long emotional process of getting the idea in some inspired location or feeling it in your heart. It can sometimes be a little bit like a factory, yet everything gels. My heart was in that performance, of course, and all my previous years in the theatre and performing were brought to bear in that recording session. So to come back to your question, elements of being a 'singer' and elements of being an 'artist' are both required if one is to lend maximum colour, credibility and believability to the song in hand.

It seems to me in dramatic terms that the story that song embodies are some of the most epic dramatic themes that there are; eternal life, mysticism... such a powerful song for so many people.

I give credit to Keith Forsey for that, because as a lyricist he had such a proscriptive brief, in that he had to distil the story of a whole book into that 4 minute song. Now twenty or so years later, I, as a songwriter who has sometimes really struggled to get work recognised, have really come to value that song as a simple embodiment of the complex agenda of that movie. And I believe he stayed true to the book. He captured it very well; it's a perfect lyric for a romantic movie theme song.

So are you a singer or an artist?

I don't think you can have one without the other. I've seen performers on stage who are absolutely cold, and I've seen performers who are absolutely magnetic. You take inspiration from the latter. I have always prided myself on being a great communicator. I have the kind of voice that some critics have raved about and others not, but you can't please everyone, that's just the way it is, so you get on with it.

Let's go back to the period just pre 'Too Shy', your initial advert in the 'Melody Maker', your influences cited at that time being 'Soft Cell', 'Japan', 'Yazoo'; all bands which were part of an emerging post-punk scene, all very much associated with electronic music, all arguably very dysfunctional romantics. What drew you to those acts at that time, you've already stated that the real big influences in your life were Motown?

They were in fashion and I was a fashion victim; if there was anything new, I had to have it and that whole synth thing that really started with the Human League and Soft Cell, just mesmerised me. Both of those performers, and I used the word earlier, were magnetic. A guy like Phil Oakey with lopsided hair and red lipstick, his influences were obviously the 70's which we'd all lived through and grown up with, and, of course, the androgyny of Bowie and Bolan. Other influences were the dark eyeliner and very melodramatic gestures of Marc Almond backed by synthesisers, the sounds of which excited me as much as the performers excited me. I thought that this was also more likely to be accessible to me, I mean although the artists legacies would undoubtedly live on, Motown was 16 years earlier and was gone.

The first fantastically futuristic name for 'Kajagoogoo' when you were living and rehearsing in Leighton Buzzard in the early days was 'Art Nouveau' which managed to sound brazenly optimistic, a name then that captured the pretentious spirit of the times peut-etre, but which actually refers to a design style of a load of flamboyant crusty old antiques, how apt it has become n'est-ce pas? Are you an antique or was it a simple case of style over content?

They already had that name, so don't blame moi! With my education as well, I had no idea what it meant. I mean you had Classics Nouveaux, Spandau Ballet etc, so it didn't feel wrong. If I was honest I think I liked that name, they'd already had an indie single out "Monochromatic". I think it was just a play on words, besides you can imagine at some point, a group of musicians once sat around a room and come up with The Rolling Stones or The Beatles. So I think Art Nouveau meaning new art was possibly something they wanted to achieve, and in a way we did. Anyway, antiques are an acquired taste aren't they?

Thinking about the 1980's, one was aware of a much different 'spirit of the age' I always remember that decade as being incredibly colourful, not just in terms of fashion or the blurring of gender identities, but there was a real sense that one could transform one's live through their own efforts. What's your take on that, was it a myth?

At that time I think my life was seemingly in blinkers like on a horse, and I didn't perceive much that was going on in the big world around me, I just had this youthful, driving ambition musically to succeed. Fame appealed and it all seemed so close. When I started working at the Embassy Club and started meeting all these people that are on TV and you read about, you realise that they are just human like you and me. So the idea then of becoming successful doesn't seem so strange because I was seeing them nightly at work. What those early 80's were about was young hopeful dreams and you know, one thing about me was I was unable to sit around and do nothing. I had to be busy, busy, busy!! Right from my early years, I was cutting hedges or delivering bread on a Saturday. I also used to sell hospital bingo cards for charity and I would get paid for taking them around the estate. I remember my mum and dad poking fun at me saying "Eee, he'll always make money doin' summat, our Chris" so consequently, I arrived in London and didn't really wait for things to happen to me. I worked, I was writing songs, saved my money, I was doing demos. I put the ad in and found the band, got people interested in us and really went for it. That's what that whole period was about for me. Is that wrong, I don't know. It wasn't wrong for me. Perhaps it's like the unpopular guy at school who never gets asked to the party's who manages to become successful. So yes, I guess through my own efforts I did transform my life.

[Seite 1] [Seite 2]

© 2005 limahl.com