They continued to gig, growing in popularity in Northern England. “Basically, we just made the best out of the weird collection of junk that we had.” This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it led them to come up with a unique sound, as evidenced on the first song they ever wrote, “Electricity.” “That sounded terrible but at least it was a synth,” McCluskey says. Liking the experience, the duo played more gigs, eventually earning enough money to buy a cheap synthesizer from a mail order catalog. “We had aspirations to be more experimental and electronic, but we didn’t have any money so we would make weird machines that made weird noises,” McCluskey says.įinally, he says, “We decided to be brave and go onstage in a club in Liverpool called Eric’s” in October 1978.įor that show, they came up with the name Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, never imagining it would be something that would stick for decades more. Inspired, McCluskey bought a bass guitar and taught himself to play, then he and Humphreys (who had a natural talent with electronic equipment) started creating little bits of music together. I went to see them play that autumn, and I was blown away. “So when I heard Autobahn by Kraftwerk when I was sixteen, that was really exciting and interesting. “I was an opinionated, spiky teenager who was looking for something different, and I really didn’t like what I saw as the boring stereotypes of conventional and current musical genres,” he says. McCluskey was drawn specifically to synthesizer-based artists from an early age. By his own reckoning, their success has been “a remarkable, fabulous accident.” It’s certainly a career worth celebrating: since their 1978 formation, the band have sold 40 million albums thanks to international Top 20 hits such as “If You Leave,” “Electricity,” and “Enola Gay.”Ĭalling from his home near Liverpool, England, vocalist/bassist Andy McCluskey recounts how he and keyboardist Paul Humphreys went from being childhood friends to creating one of the most popular electronic bands of the past four decades. On April 22, iconic synth-pop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark will kick off an extensive North American tour as a belated celebration of their 40 th anniversary.
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