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CHAPTER 1 - The way we were... It was as far back as 1987 when we were at our lowest ebb... We had spent nearly a year playing around making the second album "Dress for Excess".. had put an ironic single out called "Success", produced by Stock Aitken and Waterman which was a big mistake when I look back... it was meant to be a hard electro disco and we ended up with Kylie's old knickers... AAgh, and the video was terrible... and I have to accept full responsibility, it was my idea we could spend a week by the sea poncing about... what happened to that futuristic group that would only be filmed at night?... the new sex pistols from a futureworld?... this sci-fi sex gang... we looked like a bunch of hooligans on a package holiday... We had gone mad.....But why was it going wrong?... I guess I could say too much success too soon... but thats over simplifying the story... You see we were never this contrived monster... remember I had set out to create a group to be in that was a combination of everything I loved about rock and roll... It was Ziggy, Elvis, the Pistols, Movies like Performance, Blade Runner, the Stones - yet we modeled ourselves on cult groups like the Cramps and the New York Dolls... this wasn't designed to top the charts and appeal to little kids and house wives in shopping malls... we weren't George Michael or the Spice Girls... But that dangerous, outrageous monster we created had gone to number 1 all over Europe and we found ourselves this huge phenomena... And of course you think... coer... this is easy... I want more of this!... I love being a big success and You forget who you are and you want to be Huge... Thats the big mistake, we were huge because we were the fashionable moment, we became cartoon outrage instead of a real threat....... and there was no way the madness that was Sigue Sigue Sputnik could live up to that. We'd gone from Love Missile and saying fuck you - to Stock Aitken and Waterman with that single Success, dancing at the thrill of it all, and saying lets all be friends with DJs, isn't this business such fun.. Yet I still stand by the work we did - Sputnik created something that was completely new, a futuristic rock and roll band. A group where television was just as relevant as a guitar solo and I believe the test of time will show that... there's still no one else like it....... But it was doomed, we couldn't sustain this pretend bastardized version of Sputnik......... and there was another factor too... In the bad old days back in 1987, the media pretty much controlled the game..... They created fashion... and whether it was the group you liked, the clothes you just bought, the movie you liked and everything you liked about your life..they could then tell you a few weeks later that it was now old fashioned , that you needed to buy a new one.. because thats how the game works... they want your money. In those days there was this huge money eating machine between the groups who made music and the people who wanted to buy it... Record companies decide if you can be in the game... radio tells you what to listen to and what to like... the music papers sell you the new every week... it was all a big game to keep you spending your money to stay fashionable... Of course groups came up through the underground , but ultimately, we all want our records in the shops and we all had to play the game to get on TV and on radio and in the papers to get in the big shops...and when you are having your fifteen minutes of fame it's really great... you feel you have the mandate of the people who voted you in by buying your records and putting you in the charts.....that you can suddenly do and say anything...just look at politicians! So in music, unless you can transcend to that level to become an institution, the Durans and Eltons... suddenly you are unfashionable... often in England especially the crime is success... as soon as you make it, the people who last week told you you were great and new and exciting tell you you never were and that they always hated you and they won't play your records or write about you... and worse will write and destroy everything you ever stood for... Oh how I wish our first record had stayed at number 30 in the charts instead of rising to the top... In 1986 Sputnik was the most talked about rock band anywhere... In the 60's and 70's record companies believed in developing acts long term, but from the 80's it was all about short term...and so... by 1988... they wanted us dead. EMI pulled the
lifeline of support away from us and suddenly you feel alone and no one will
talk to you... radio and the papers are no longer your friend... they have
someone new to sell...the media had that power then... and for a while you
believe them...
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