“I rediscovered the creative power of boredom in lockdown” – ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK | INTERVIEW

November 1981 saw Liverpudlian synthpop supremos Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark release what has proven to be their most popular album, Architecture & Morality. An anniversary to toast, agree OMD vocalist Andy McCluskey and Buzz’s Carl Marsh ahead of a Motorpoint Arena Cardiff date.

“You want the euphoria, singing along, people up dancing, but you also want them to hear the melancholy.”

Andy McCluskey, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

So how have you stayed so positive and happy through all this craziness?

I rediscovered the creative power of boredom – so there will be a new Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark album! We went into lockdown straight off the back of 75 concerts around America, Europe and the UK. But after a few months, I wanted to write some bloody songs, so we got a programming room. Our crew have struggled because they’ve been the sort of people that fall through the cracks, not being furloughed. They’re all self-employed. The government has ignored them completely. Before Christmas, we were able to give the crew some money, and more than just the money I think they felt that somebody cares, has made an effort. [Touring] is a chain of command: one weak link, and it’s not a good gig. You see four people on stage but there are dozens of others who make that happen.

Do you often look back and think about the legacy that you as a band have created?

We seem to be going through a series of 40th anniversaries at the moment – this tour is celebrating Architecture & Morality’s anniversary. We’re made aware of our back catalogue not just by our fans, but other bands – other musicians who go, “oh my god, you’re so influential, you changed this, I saw you do this, this is why we started!” We’re in this kind of postmodern era where popular culture is eating its own history, and there’s a lot of younger bands who namecheck us and really want to sound like [1983 LP] Dazzle Ships. It’s incredible!

We remember the pretentious little schmucks we were. We were lucky as well: the whole punk and new wave thing detonated the music industry for a few years, every city had its own club that was encouraging local bands, so the A&R man had to leave London to go to the provinces. And so we were allowed to do something crazy, and it was actually allowed to become pop music. We built our own studio, wrote the songs and didn’t go in with a producer: the A&R man was just given the tape and I said, “there’s the first album.”

I can’t imagine you guys being pretentious, especially coming from Liverpool!

We were very down to earth: we didn’t take ourselves seriously but we did take our music seriously. It started out as a hobby, we didn’t want to be pop stars – this was just trying to do experimental weird music – we started the band to do a one-off gig. And then people said, ‘oh, can you do another one?’, do singles… well this is great, we’re going to do this on our own terms. We were going to change the world by writing songs. Pretty naive, but if we hadn’t thought it we couldn’t have done what we did.

And at such a young age – 19.

Well, we were both 16 when we wrote [debut OMD single] Electricity.

Who influenced you to write something like that at that age?

I had a very limited palette of things I was interested in. I liked Kraftwerk and Neu!, Brian Eno, Roxy Music and David Bowie. Years later I became friendly with a couple of guys from Kraftwerk and was at Wolfgang Flür’s apartment – I mean, for me this was amazing. When I went to see them in 1975 it was like the first day of the rest of my life. Electricity was just a punky sped-up version of [Kraftwerk’s] Radioactivity…

When you put pen to paper, do you generally crack on with what you want to write or are there clear influences? I’m not accusing you of plagiarism!

Nobody works in a vacuum, but we were on our own journey of invention. We weren’t sitting down going “we need a hit single, let’s do something crazy,” but I was going to write songs about things people don’t sing about. And we were trying to do something different every time – different from what we’d done and different from everybody else.

Are there OMD songs you’ve fallen out of love with and back again over the years?

We aren’t one of those bands that’ll go, “oh I’m so bored of my biggest hit. I’m going to slow it down and fuck it up.” I never in a million years thought I’d still be doing this 42 years after the band started; we’ve been blessed to have had a successful connection with people, and they’ve paid money to come and see you. These songs have been good to us, we’ll be good to them – treat them with reverence and play them the way people want to hear them. There’s a couple of songs I look back on now, from the mid-80s when we were chasing our tails in circles, and album tracks I could have done better with more time, but we’re not going to play anything we’re not proud of.

Obviously, on this tour, we’re going to be playing all of Architecture & Morality: it’s sold about four million copies so everybody coming to the gig’s probably got it. But there’s a couple of tracks on it, like The Beginning And The End, where we take it right down for a second and Stuart [Kershaw, drummer] comes down off the drums and plays the guitar. You want the euphoria, you want the singing along, people up dancing, but you also want people to hear the melancholy.

After everything, do you still feel like you’ve got something to prove?

Coming back and reminding people of what we did, and also the three albums we’ve released since we reformed has in many ways contemporise us – people have seen we’re not just going through the motions, we’re not a pastiche. Without sounding bigheaded, [OMD co-founder] Paul Humphreys and I would rank [latest album] The Punishment Of Luxury right up against Architecture… and Dazzle Ships. But we spent three years working on it – the magic doesn’t happen in a day.

It sounds like you’re more in tune with who you are as a band now – you split between 1996 and 2006.

There was a time there in the 90s when grunge and Britpop were around and we were considered to be an out-of-date synthpop band, but we’re now we’re in this kind of postmodern era. If you’re considered iconic within the genre, people go, “yeah, that’s good, you’ve done some classics, carry on.”

The penny dropped for me about five years ago: I went out on stage and didn’t have stage fright. I always used to absolutely brick it before I went on stage – I had a chip on my shoulder, I was fighting everybody, the press, the audience. I was quite angry and intense. And that’s when I suddenly thought – these people have come to see you because they like what you do, and they trust you to be brilliant because they’ve seen you before, so chill! Enjoy your moments. All that work you did and you’re now in a position where you can say, I’m not going to retire. I’m going to smell the roses on stage.

Although I must admit, I might be a bit worried when we get to Cardiff because we haven’t played there for about 14 years – no, 12, with Simple Minds. Very remiss of us. We can’t get the routing right. A few times we’ve played Bristol and my friends from Wales have had to come over the bloody bridge again. But now we’re really looking forward to coming over there. My friend Ani Glass, who’s a great Welsh singer – who wins awards for her albums! – will be there to see me.

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Motorpoint Arena Cardiff, Wed 10 Nov. Tickets: £45. Info: 029 2022 4488 / here

words CARL MARSH