 Greetings, welcome to our Classic Album Sundays event here at the British Library. I'm Colleen Cosmo Murphy, founder of Classic Album Sundays, and it's great to see that so many of you made it. Also, greetings to the viewers that are watching us from home as well. A special announcement, don't forget there's a really good Paul McCartney songwriting display that is in the British Library Entrance Hall. It's a great exhibition. I went to see it myself, some really, really cool things in there if you want to have a look. It's there until the 13th of March. And the British Library is also celebrating its season of sound. And tonight's guests have made an indelible mark in sound. Orchestral maneuvers in the dark formed in Merseyside in 1978, and they led the way as early pioneers of British electronic music, inspiring so many different synth pop bands over the decades. Think about Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Moby, LCD Sound System, the XX, Robin. And they've really been recognized not only for their kind of musical experimentation, but also their great pop sensibility, which has allowed them to sell millions of records worldwide. Their sounds has endured, and OMD are still making new music. In fact, they are going to work on a new album. Their last album was 2017's The Punishment of Luxury. And ahead of their performances at the Royal Albert Hall, which they're coming up on the 14th and 15th of March, will be joined by the band's founding members to take a look at one of the greatest albums of 1981, Architecture and Morality. So first we'll have a conversation with the band about the album to give us some context. After that, we will listen to the album in its entirety, uninterrupted, on this audiophile hi-fi, featuring these great loudspeakers from Downley Sound Labs. They sound fantastic. While we do listen to the album, I ask that you keep your phones off and to refrain from conversation, and just give yourself over to the music. Just turn yourself over to the album and give the album its full attention. If you're watching from home, we also encourage you to play the album using whichever formats available to you, whichever physical format or streaming option we can't broadcast the album due to copyright reasons. Once the replay finishes, just before 9 p.m., the viewers at home can rejoin us and you'll have the opportunity to ask the band your own questions. And for the viewers at home, there's going to be a little form underneath the video box that you can put your question on and we'll try to get to as many as possible. So without further ado, please give a warm welcome to Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphries. Hello. Hello, everyone. Well gone for making it. And he just made it himself. Well, thank you so much for joining us and I know that you have so much going on right now with a tour starting in the U.S. as well. So we really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us. When we look back at this album, I like to give it a little bit of context. And I want to take a look back to what Merseyside and Liverpool were like when you started the band in 1978. If you can give us a little bit of an idea of what the kind of music scene was like back then. When the city was bleak, I would say. The city was bleak anyway. But there was a very big, vibrant music scene, you know, and it all sort of centered around Erick's club in Liverpool, you know. Because I mean, the first time we played there, you basically are playing to all the other Liverpool bands. You know, they're all... Which is terrifying. Yeah, playing Tekko and the Bunny Man and Teardrop Explodes and China Crisis. And was there a lot of competition between the bands? Was there friendly rivalry or was there a lot of support? It was friendly rivalry because we were all in the same boat. We were all kids. Nobody knew the music, nobody had a record deal. And it was a case of, you know, you'd be playing there and everybody would be as far back from the stage as they could get. Nobody was uncool enough to come down the fence. And you just know they're all sitting there going, well, you know, they're all like, but they're shit compared to us. You just knew they were all saying that under their breaths, you know. But it was amazing. I mean, the month that we played, we played in October 1978. And the Bunny Man and the Teardrops, they played on other Thursdays in that same month. All the first gigs. Their first ever gigs. Wow, that's incredible. Now was Roger Eagle also DJing there as well? Was he one of the DJs? He was like the owner. He was the owner. But the music that was played there by the DJs was quite eclectic, as I heard. And it really kind of influenced a lot of different bands as well. They basically, they wouldn't play anything that was popular. Right. So they played a lot of old rock and roll and rock ability that you'd never heard of. A lot of kind of underground dub reggae. And then, yeah, being the summer of 78, we were in the club and Norman Killen played Warm Leatherette by the normal. And it was life changing for us. Yeah, Paul and I were like, what the hell? And so I went up and said, what is that? And that's the normal. Their English is on mute records. And so I came back to Paul and was like, literally, it was it was inspirational because it was like somebody's listening to what we're into and they've made a record. So it's like, it was a challenge. It was like, OK, maybe we should get out of my mom's back room. Which your mother was happy about. So, yeah, so that meant, OK, let's let's let's actually go and do a gig because they had this open door policy on Thursday night. But you were already into electronic music with craft work and knowing. I mean, how did you get into that? Because it wasn't it was quite simple, really. I had a record player that I built because I had an actual stereo record player, not the sort of mono down set actually, because I was a I'm a nerd. Right. So I welcome to my world. I was interested in electronics as a kid. So I built all our early instruments as well. And I built a stereo. So Andy used to go and take all this pocket money and go into Liverpool. Go to the German import section. Buy as much as he could. Come round to my house and we listen to it together. This is kind of a symbiotic relationship. I had the vinyl. He had the record down. And so we used to I mean, the thing was, I mean, his poor mom used to work six days a week. So she was working on a Saturday. So Saturdays. That's why we were at his house, because there was nobody that would annoy with the music. But from the night out, the neighbors that we used to really annoy. But that's wonderful. Now, your first single came out in factory in Manchester. Wasn't there a bit of a rivalry between the two cities with between Liverpool and Manchester? How was that viewed from your from the local it was difficult for us, because I mean, we were sort of a rural band. So we weren't like considered that the people from Liverpool didn't really consider. We were outside as even in Liverpool, right, the wrong side of the river. Yeah. And also, we we were horribly on cool looking. Yeah, I had a big white boy afro and I had really long hair and attempted the stuff that just wouldn't grow. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, I mean, I remember Peter Savill finally got hold of us when we were on factory and he just said, your music sounds like the future, but you look terrible. Cut your hair. So we style yourself. So we did. So we did. But yeah, I mean, though, the strange thing was that I mean, there was a record label in Liverpool called Zoo Records, it was run by Dave Balfe and Bill Drummond. But yeah, they refused to sign us. They didn't sign us. And so we I mean, the funny thing is, many of you will probably know this story, because we thought it was always apocryphal, but we found out it was true that we finally spoke to Lindsay Reed, who was married to Tony Wilson. And apparently, yeah, we we sent in a cassette because we met him, our second ever gig, we met him at the factory. And he used to present bands on the local news. And we thought we're trying to flag on, you know, and she gets in the car and she says, oh, what's what's what's all the cassettes in the bag? Love said, I'm taking into the tip. Get rid of your cassette, rubbish cassettes. The people want to get on the telly. It's all it's all. And she she leared to him and oh, well, Kesterman is in the dark. That's a stranger. Put it on. He said they played the club the other week. They're rubbish and not interested. Yeah, Tony didn't really like it. That's a hit. It was electricity. That's a hit. So sign them. Is what you said. So we went, all right, love, just for you. I'll sign it. That's how you got a record deal. That is a true story. We did believe it. Fished out of the bag on the way to the tip. We got a record. It's a true story. We didn't believe it, but Lindsay came to one of our shows recently. We said, look, you've got to tell me if this is true or not. I mean, yeah, I'm Tony was very good at rewriting history. So the next week when we met him, he goes, you guys are the future of Tony. Typical Tony. Little did we know we were on the way to the tip seven days earlier, but you know. He didn't tell you that. He didn't tell us that. Well, I want to just talk quickly about your second album because obviously it's a very pertinent track to what is happening today. The organization named after Ralph Hooter and Florian Schneider's first collective before they did crack work. I mean, do you find it number one that it's kind of important to pay tribute to the people that inspired you or the people that paved the way in electronic music? Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, even the last album we did on the Punishment to Luxury, we sort of tipped in our hat to Kraftwerk. We sort of went back to our roots on the last album. Yeah, I mean, no, we've never made it out of time. Listen, nobody creates in a vacuum. You find inspiration. And obviously, you know, Kraftwerk changed our lives. I mean, one of the things that we don't often mention enough, I think, is that the other band from Düsseldorf, Neu, were actually as influential because... That's very important. What we didn't realize was that unconsciously we were welding the two things together. We had Kraftwerk's melody and kind of ideological kind of simplicity, but we had Neu's kind of energy and emotion, and I think that the two... You know, if I look back now, it seems like a logical combination. We weren't doing it consciously, but I'm sure that that was an element. But I think also, I mean, if we had lots of money when we started out and we went to poor boys from working-class families, we could have bought synthesizers and probably would have sounded a lot more like Kraftwerk than actually we could because we didn't have the technology to be able to sound like Kraftwerk. So we had to use whatever we had, whatever I made, whatever we could buy from second-hand shops to try to create an electronic sound. But of course, it didn't sound at all like Kraftwerk. It sounded like OMD, so... Yeah, but it still had a polished sound. And do you think that people... Because the sonics are really great on your records. Do you think that people maybe had a misconception that you were actually a posh band, in a sense? Or did people understand that you had working-class roots? Because class being such an important thing here in Britain. I think with the incredibly pretentious name. I think a lot of people thought that maybe we were some kind of, like, you know, English lit students or something. No, it was just... I don't know how we ended up with getting such a clear vision. When we started out, when we were 16, I mean, it was very, very ambient. I mean, I had an upside-down bass guitar and he literally was cannibalising his aunt's radios for the circuit boards. For the parts, for resistors. None of their radios ever worked ever again. They wised up and they stopped lending them, didn't they? But basically, we were just making the weirdest ambient noises that just, you know... No wonder our mates thought it was crap. Yeah. And it was only when some friends from school were selling off a cheap Vox organ and an electric piano that that's when he started actually playing keyboards. And literally, you know, I was learning to play bass and he was learning to play keyboards as we were writing songs. And we wrote electricity when we were still 16. That's amazing. When we wrote electricity, I could barely play it. I mean, it took me eight. It's a really tough melody. Well, I think a lot of the bands... I still can't really do it. Have you seen this live? I think a lot of the bands that were your contemporaries at that time was the same thing anyway, so it was very inspirational in the sense that you didn't have to... Coming out of Prague Rock. And it was the punk sensibility as well, you know. You didn't have to play, you just had to have something to say. But you didn't want to be perceived as a punk band, did you, from the start? No, I mean, the thing is, we had actually found our alternative in 75 with the German music before punk kind of hit. We liked the punk ethos. As Paul said, it's like, you know, well, you're playing three chords and we're playing with one finger like that. It's like punk on synths, really. And the great thing was, though, that the new wave clubs gave us a place to play. Yeah. All the punk clubs opened up around the Northern Orleans. And, interestingly though, there weren't really any punk bands in Liverpool, were there? No, there wasn't. We were all pretentious. I mean, look at the names of the bands from Liverpool, all of us completely pretentious. Fabulous names. Let's talk about the song. It's not on this album, but on organization, Anola Gray, because I think it's with the Russian invasion into the Ukraine. I think this song may be more pertinent than ever. What inspired you to write this song? Sadly, things don't seem to change. I really genuinely thought I was never going to see another war in my lifetime in Europe, so I'm very... Hopefully not a nuclear one. But, yeah, hopefully not a nuclear one. He alluded to the fact that he's a geek, I'm a geek as well. He used to build model railway scenes. I mean, the whole back... We had to fit the music around your bloody railway thing that was like tunnels and trees. And I had to keep soaring bits off to give us more room. Yeah, and I had an entire air fleet hanging from my bedroom wall as I used to build airfix models. And so if you're interested in aeroplanes and I was always fascinated by the, well, morality in inverted commas of warfare, that people in a time of war, the moral compass is almost 180 inverted. It's like, you know, you're encouraged to go and kill people rather than not. And so I was just fascinated by the moral dilemma of one. If you're interested in aeroplanes and moral dilemmas of warfare, you come to an older game. I mean, and to the day he died, Colonel Paul Tibbetts, who flew the plane, believed that, you know, by killing 140,000 people, he saved 5 million. And he always believed it was the right thing to do. So that was... His moral certainty was remarkable. I don't think I could do it. I always see black and white. I see all the different sides of everything. But I haven't been in a war, so... Maybe that's what he had to do to convince himself and to not go crazy. But, you know, at least he did a nice thing. He named the plane after his lovely mom. She must have loved that, yeah. Thank you. Wonderful. That's it, you know? But also, you know, because we grew up in the 60s and 70s, and we, you know, it was very close to the Second World War, and our parents were in it. I mean, my dad was a prisoner of war. He was held in the black forest, forced to be a lumberjack for the Nazis, you know? And so my mom was a corporal in the army. So we grew up with war stories, you know? So we've always been kind of fascinated by war. That's why we have the Messerschmitt twins. That's why we have bunker soldiers. I mean, there's a kind of a theme going through a lot of our early stuff. So we're kind of getting out of all that war. We don't celebrate war, but we were fascinated by it. And yeah, we were born not long after the Second World War, which, you know, still kind of informed a lot of people's attitudes in the UK when we were kids. When you set about to record your third album as your follow-up to Organization, what would become architecture and morality? Did you have a certain kind of creative mission or any kind of thematic kind of concept that you were working to? What was in your head before you set foot into the studio with what you wanted to do? We were basically, I mean, our kind of whole reason for creating a band and being in the band was to always try to do something new and challenge ourselves and push musical boundaries. So we'd done the first album, which were songs we'd written from like the age of 16 to 19. It was kind of like Garage, Synth, Punk. Then the second album, I'm sure, was unconsciously influenced by Joy Division. It was a lot darker and more melancholy, apart from Inola Gay, although the subject matter was dark. And then when we got to architecture and morality, we were, again, we just wanted to change the sound again. That was our mission, to be different. Right, we've done that, we've done that. Now we're gonna do something else. And we didn't know where we were going, but we were just trying to always do something different. We had some new toys. We had a melaton, so we could play choirs and strings and things. Sounds that we hadn't had access to previously. That always influenced us, the technology, because the technology of synthesizers was advancing quite quickly in that time. And the synthesizers were getting cheaper and more interesting and more exciting. So we were kind of, we were getting a bit more money, so we kept buying new synths. And you're always inspired by new possibilities. It is great when you get a new toy out and you get all like, you hear the new sound and you go, oh, there's a song, that's gonna be a song. Would that inspire the lyrics and the themes as well, the actual sonics, the sounds you would get out of the melaton? The lyrics always came on top of the music. The music was written first, but I would always be researching or collecting ideas for lyrics. But I made a point, I never write down words that were going to be lyrics. I would just collect ideas and phrases and information. You know, when I did Enola Gay, when I did Joan of Arc, I went to the library, got books out and started making notes. No internet then? Yeah, no Wikipedia. I was just, you know, basically collecting information as though I was making notes to write an essay. And then we'd do some music and at some point I'd go, it merged the lyrics. Maybe I could sing that on that. Yeah. And then because you hadn't written the lyrics or got a melody or anything, then organically, the lyrics would come out of the music. I don't, just because we don't and I don't know how people do it, I have no idea how people write the words first and then put the music to it. We've never done that. It's always the other way around for us. Always the other way around. The lyric and the lead melody is quite often the last thing we write on the song. Really? Which is the thing that most people will do first. You know, get and that's the hook. But that's usually the last thing. Well, it's so interesting because you do, of course, everyone just said this about you and it's so evident in your music. You have one foot in, you know, Sonic and musical experimentation and the other foot is in crate pop songs. Although you do twist those conventional song structures anyways. We only do it because we don't know what we're actually doing. Well, I was wondering. We don't know what the conventional song structure is. That's funny, are you unlearning it? Or are you unlearning it? We never learned it. We never learned it. I mean, Stuart, who now plays drums for us is a, he actually went to music college and he analysed these things. He just was like, oh, do you know what? Do you know why that really works? It's because you've got just two notes in the court here and then you add the fifth when you go to the course and then the seventh and I'm like, it's like, really? Really? Oh, well, I had no idea we were doing that. It just felt right to us, you know. That's interesting. We're instinctive. Yeah, I mean, we never had a music lesson in our life. And we got kicked out of the recorder group in school with nine. So we didn't even learn to play recorder when we were kids. In fact, my mom had, she was quite proud of it actually. She had my report from the music teacher that said, Paul Humphries has no aptitude for music whatsoever. And she put it in a frame on a wall after my first top of the pot. Yeah, after you were successful. She wasn't very impressed by it to begin with. Exactly, yeah. I was in the doghouse to begin with. That's amazing. So you spent like a couple of months recording with Roger Manwearing as production. Richard Manwearing, yeah. And then you also had your own gramophone suite as well. So what were you doing in your own studio as opposed to the bigger studio manner? When we first signed a deal, it was a seven album deal. And the first advance was quite big and we thought we were shit. So we thought we would never get taken up for the other six albums after the first one. So we thought, let's spend the advance on a recording studio so that when we get dropped by the label, we'll have a business. That's a smart idea. We were budgeting for failure. Budgeting for failure, yeah. So we had this great studio, which was brilliant in a way because we had a place to work that was technically really good. And so we did the bulk of all the first four albums, wasn't it, in the gramophone suite. And then we get them to a certain stage and then we go into a professional studio to finish them. Either we would rerecord, which was usually traumatic because you're so used to your demo, the new record sound difference. Or what was usually better was we had a 16-track tape machine. And when you put it onto a 24-track tape machine, they kind of panned out and you'd get eight more tracks so you could overdub and change things and add them. That worked best when we could actually use our tape and embellish it rather than have to start again. But the thing was, because there's always been two of us in the writing process, even when we were kids, we used to have to write using a tape recorder because we couldn't do everything. We only had four hands. So we would put some drums or something on the tape recorder. No, completely. This is one of the things why OMD songs, again, we didn't know the rules. It was just the practicality. They're linear because we'd just lay down four minutes, the same all the way through. And we would go, and we'd go, oh, we'll do this and then we'll do that and then we'll drop it out and then we'll change the melody. But it's always like, you know what I'm saying? It's the same four chords all the way through. Messages is one sequence that's going all the way and we just change what's going on playing with it. So we always wrote on tape. I mean, the one time, actually, that his poor mother was too sick to go to work in the shop on Saturday. We were learning, we were writing Bunker Soldiers. And we just had this baseline on the tape which is, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then we'd wind it back again, da-da-da-da-da. And we were trained by, what should we do? And about five hours later, his mother came down and just went, it's a nice song, but do you know any others? Because it was just the same, wind the tape back, wind the tape back. She's very patient, my mom. Aw. But she lost her patience then. She lost her patience then. What was the mood like in the studio when you were recording that album? Are there any stories you could share? Well, it was great. Because we worked at the Manor Studios, which was Richard Branson's place that he charged us full price for. Thanks Richard. On the label, but you still charge us full price. But it was a fantastic studio because it was like we were in our own world. I mean, two working-class kids going to a mansion house in Oxfordshire that had a swimming pool and a lake and a go-kart track. And you sat at this baronial table, the video from Made of Orleans, that's the dining room at the studio. And they had a full-sized snooker table and it was just like, people making breakfast for you. And do you want something else? We'd like something else. We'll bring it into the studio. It was unbelievable. It's a totally different way of life. But we did work hard. I mean, we worked really hard. And it was, yeah, it was an amazing experience. I mean, for us because, you know, Paul said we didn't think we were going to get past the first album. So to be making a third album and having already had hits, it was like, wow, you know, we're just making this up as we go along and people are actually buying it. Great, you know, results. But we didn't have to follow anybody's rules. You know, the record, the amazing thing is the record company just left us going on. Yeah, they said, we'll do what you do. We won't interfere. You know what you're doing. We trust you, you know. Yeah, we just phone up and say, right. We didn't trust ourselves, but they trusted us. That's really great. And we, because we made records in a kind of weird way, we didn't really want a producer. So we'd done some work in a manner and Richard Mannering was the house engineer. So we said, can we just go in with Richard who will make it sound good? But we'd be in control. But we will actually produce it. Well, because we, you know, I mean, things like made of all-e-on, the bass drum we made of all-e-on is not a drum kit. It's a gigantic big military. It's just going boom, boom. And Souvenir, it's a rotatom. It's just boom. And it's like, most producers are going, no, you can't do that. You can't do that. And we were like, well. Why not? There's nobody here to say, no, we're going to do that. Yeah, that's great. So it was really, really wonderful. It was an amazing, amazing place to be, you know, working class kids to be in this mansion. And we found it a really creative atmosphere. You know, we did such good work there. But we were full of ideas. You know, we had not emptied the barrel at all. You know, we just had all these ideas and we were so buzzing off the fact that, you know, we were allowed to do this. We were allowed to make records. It was our job to write songs and play them. Because we're off the back of Enola Gaby, you know, massive hit around Europe as well. So we knew we were on the right track. So we just thought, you know. So we, yeah, and we were just doing what the hell we felt like doing. I mean, you know, the title track, Architectural Morality, you know, we made it up in the studio and we just went, right, we're going to make some noises and then. Let's get a load of stones. Yeah, smash some stones and some bottles and things in the studio and just did it. It was just anything we wanted. And when we wrote Made of Orleans, it was, you know, it was too short. So we're like, we need to extend it. Well, maybe we could kind of create this sonic landscape and then the song will emerge out of it. And yeah, massive hit single, bigger selling song in Germany in 1982. And it starts with 30 seconds of distortion. Yeah. I mean, how we got played on the radio, I have no idea. We're definitely not going to play it now. It's incredible. I think a lot of DJs used to skip the intro. Did they? They kind of dropped the needle a bit further in. They only played the intro when we went in to do the interview. Is that what it was? Yeah. And then they were talking to us and I had the volume pulled out. I love the Sonics and Sealand. I mean, that one is my, my favorite song. And it reminds me, well, actually it was kind of another nod of the hat to Noi, wasn't it? Because they have a song of Sealand. That's right. But it really sounds like that kind of David Bowie low or another green world that has that kind of a feel to it. At the very end of that song, there is this kind of, it almost sounds like a train on a train track. Maybe going back to your train sets, but it's almost like a metallic kind of sound. What is that? Goodness knows what we use that. Don't remember. 40 years ago, we were making it up as we went along. I mean, this is, this is part of, you know, when we come to play songs that we haven't played for a long time, we have to go back and get the multi-tracks. Because we're looking at each other going, what did we make that sound with? I don't know. How do we do that? What is that sound? And so we actually have to sample them off the record to put them into the keyboards. So, I mean, Sealand was, there's a place in Southwest of the world, and it's called Sealand. And we'd done Standlow, which was on the other side, which is an all refinery. So Sealand, yeah, Noi song. And I like the kind of the fact that it was somewhere sort of that liminal kind of between the land and the sea. And also being a history buff and knowing that, you know, Bronze Age people used to, you know, put things into the water because it was, you know, where the gods lived, sort of between the land. So that was, we were trying to conjure that, I think. And we just created this, you know, we just, again, we just laid down a drum machine for a long time, then played the drum and that was it. And then we'd like, can we just do a bit of this and then we'll do a bit of that. And then I go, well, we've done that for three minutes. So let's do something else. And it's just, we just literally made it up as we went along. And it was, but it's a beautiful song. And we, I remember we did it with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra a few years ago. I remember going to the rehearsal, it was like a play through. And they got to the end and they did this unbelievable end on it and I was crying, beautiful. Yeah, it is, it is beautiful. Souvenir, as we should talk about, you wrote that one is one of your, one of your hits. I mean, funny enough, it was the, it was the first time that we started using choirs. And I owe it all to Dave Hughes, actually, who was in the band earlier and who was in the band Alec, I love you. Because that song wouldn't have existed without Dave because he started doing film music and he was working at studio down the road and he was recording a choir. And the choir was so good that they, he paid them for three hours, but they'd done it in two hours. So Dave said, you're not going home yet. So you're gonna sing long notes for me, all of you to do and sing several octaves of long notes as long as you can make them. And you've just recorded them. And then one early evening, I got knocked on the, I don't know why I was there by myself, but he knocked on the Grammophon Suite studio door and said, look, I've got all these tapes of these choirs and I know you can make loops of them so we can, you know, so they're endless. If you make the loops, I'll let you have a copy and you can use them and I'll take, we'll both have a copy of them if you make the loops. So we did the loops and then he went and I thought, yeah, these choirs sound really good. And so I just printed all these notes that lasted four minutes, just every track was a note. And then I just started blending these notes and then just souvenir appeared. You were basically, you were playing the mixing desk, weren't you? I was playing the mixing desk, yeah. That's an F, that's a G, that's a C. And he said, you don't know anything about music. There you are now. But you know what, it's all by ear. We do it all by ear. I mean, when we're writing together, you know, Paul's usually the one who's playing the melody and I'm sitting at the desk and he'll play a phrase and I go, I like that, but can you go, no. And I don't know what note is, I'm just hearing. Can you go, no, no, no. I like the third phrase, bring it to the second phrase and then it's completely off the top of our heads and we don't even know, I don't even know what note he's playing. It's just literally, you know, play that note, you know. It's always been intuitive. It's just, does it feel right? Does it sound right? And then with Souvenir, you know, when I'd done the choirs, there was so sort of dense in harmonics because of all the beautiful voices. But the tune just sang itself to me, really. I could hear the tune in the choir and so it was very easy to go, I could just hear it. Wonderful. And then it was done really quite quickly, done in a day. And a big hit. And then we have writing about Joan of Arc. I mean, you said you earlier, you were a history buff and I think there's always been some kind of intellectual element to a lot of your lyrics, I would say. I don't know if you... Pseudo-intellectual. Pseudo-intellectual cap. But thank you for dropping the Pseudo. Kind of. Why Joan of Arc? I mean, this is 550 years after she passed away. Well, we taught France, didn't we? Yeah, we were touring France and the support band said, oh, this is like the Joan of Arc tour you're playing in. So when I went back to the library and... I wrote Made of Orleans first. And those of you who have heard the original demo now with the horrible bass language... You can understand why I didn't think it was working at the time. So I decided to write and... I was determined I was going to have a song about Joan of Arc so I scrapped that, write another one. And in fact, the song Joan of Arc was written on the... I don't know, something like the 550th anniversary of the day she died. And I thought that was the one that was working and literally Paul and Malcolm came into the Gramophone Suite when we were packing up to go to the manor studio. We were talking about the songs that we were going to do. And yeah, I think you said what's happened to the 3-4 song. And I said, it's not working, that's why I've written the other one. And then Malcolm just went, well, if you let me play drums then I'll make it a hit. And he did and it was. Typical Malcolm. So, yeah, but typically as well it was like, again, the bass drum was played separately and then the snare drum was played separately then the floor tom was played separately and Malcolm came out, now how are you going to do that on stage? Yeah, exactly. And then the end. It was like all of that, you know. He somehow managed it. Yeah, it was just literally I was determined to have a song and we ended up with two. Why two songs about Joan of Arc? Well, because one wasn't working so I wrote the other one. But why her as a topic, I guess is the answer to the question. Do you know what? I think the more I read about her, the more I got fascinated by the difficulty of understanding because it's as if though she's mythical and also she's invested with all sorts of meaning dependent upon who you talk to. You know, there are feminists, there are nationalists, there are everybody comes in with their own agenda and will spin her because very little is really known about her definitively. So everybody can take her and spin the story to their own agenda. And so it's like the more I read the less I knew, which to me again was this grey area. I became fascinated by this kind of like, well, you know, she can be anybody I want her to be because even the historians write about her in a different way. And yeah, I mean, I'm trying to go back to when I was, you know, 21, 22 and get into my head. I was just enjoying being in this space where I was swimming in these currents of like, I want to write something about Joan of Arc and she did this, but I don't know. But again, I personalised it, you know, I wrote about as though it was somebody I knew. And so, you know, and then, you know, and you know, she did this and she did that, without me, I don't even know where the lyrics come from. They just come out and you go, that's working. And then people read into it stuff that, you know, you've pulled it out of your subconscious and you have no idea why you wrote those words. You have no idea. Subsequently, when people ask you questions about it, you know, you can't do an interview and say, well, so tell us about Joan of Arc. Well, it just seemed like a good idea. That's the end of the conversation, isn't it? You've got to come up with some kind of, like, you know, after the event legitimising of a creative process that you have no idea what you're actually doing. I mean, that's the thing I love about songwriting. You just, you know, you can go into the studio in the morning and in the evening, you've got something that wasn't there in the morning that you actually were. And if it's good, it's great. Nine times out of ten, you go home and go. That was a waste of time. Should have got the pub. Now, the album opens with the new Stone Age and that song sounds completely different than the rest of the album. It does sound a lot more... We wanted to shock people as well with that. Why did you want to shock people with the opening song? Well, to say that we were doing something different, I mean, that was our kind of... our ethos, our sort of remit was to each album to try to do something different. And it's me playing guitar on it, which is pretty shocking. Yeah. I mean, again, inspired by Brian Eno. I mean, it's kind of like scratchy. He used to call it ostrich guitar. She's like... I mean, when I'm on stage, you know, if you actually watch me playing guitar on stage the rare times I play it, it is tuned to an open E chord. I don't even have to use my fingers. I just borrow it. Just one finger. And so, you know, new Stone Age, it's just literally... It's F and A. And I have it cappowed on the F, tuned to E. So it's just... The right chords are F, F major. And then I A it. It's idiot-proof guitar play. Because when it comes to guitar play, I am an idiot, and it needs to be proof. So... I idiot-proofed the keyboards as well. I only give them three notes to play. Somebody should put a camera behind me one time on Forever Live and Die. I've got three lights. These are the notes you play. Every other note is switched off. I've deleted it. And I still play the wrong notes. Well, they're all the right notes, just not necessarily the right audio. But the other thing about New Stone Age was it was another song. It was a song that I was writing that didn't work. And then I had this idea, and I was impatient. I was in a hurry. And I went, all right, there's this song that's got a bass drum on it just going do, do, do, do. So I said, right. Switch off all the other channels, put it into record. Do, do, do, do, do. And then, so I wrote New Stone Age, and then as I stopped playing things and came out of record, these other channels... From the previous idea. So when you listen to New Stone Age, as you get to the end, it morphs into this completely out-of-tune other song. And that's why it sounds the way it does. Because that was on the stage. We all have to kind of morph into a new song. I know, because we've just done it as well. And Martin is always like, when do I come in with that? I said, it doesn't matter. Any time you feel like it after I've stopped singing, just because it all falls apart. But again, because we liked the fact that we were doing something kind of messed up and weird, we kept it and we just went, yeah, let it all fall apart. Let it morph into a completely different key that kind of goes churns and twists. We loved it. And it messed people's heads up. Because everybody who's like, oh, I love Enola Gay. What the hell is this record? Yeah, because it doesn't seem like the rest of the album. It doesn't... An opening song sometimes you think is how the album will mean to go on. And it sounds like... Nowadays, the record company would say first, but we were in this luxurious position to do whatever they wanted. And you sequence the album yourself? Always. We argue with each other, but we don't have to argue with anyone else. That's good. Do you remember any kind of decisions that you made? I think New Stone Age actually went first because it was so different to everything else. There's nowhere else to put it. We'll sequence the rest of it together. We put it together as a journey. It's a whole album to be played. We wanted a flow to it. The other thing is that we didn't used to sit in the studio and just try to write hit singles. And then the songs that weren't good enough to be hit singles were the album tracks. We would like, oh, this one's sounding like a single. That's great. That's going to be poppy. But we would consciously do something like this is never going to be a single. But we're having fun. There's lots of different styles and textures. They're not all songs better or worse songs. It was just like when we'd finished them, we'd go, that one might be a single, that one might be a single because they're catchy and melodic. And the rest weren't intended to be singles. And that's fine. They're not failed singles. They were always intended to be some songs for the album. Do you have a favorite song on the album, each of you? I mean, Sealand is great. But beginning in the end, I love, actually. And I love playing it just recently. We did it. Played it down the front. We all, we came down on, with little since, down the front of the show on the last tour. And all four of us in a row and very craft-working. And I played beginning in the end and it was just beautiful. I loved it. The funny thing is, actually, the song that, because Paul and I are very different, very different people. Very different mentalities, musically and everything. It's probably why we work. Mostly. Mostly. But the one song that isn't on this album that was written for this album then went on to the Dazzle Ship's album, the song that we both agree is actually our favorite ever album. Oh, yeah, your song is the romance of the telescope. That was a B-side. And then went on to the Dazzle Ship's album. So I think that would be my favorite song from the Architecture and Morality period. Although I have to say, I love navigation. I listened to it recently. It's a belting song. With your dog barking in the background. One of the old tapes from his mother's backroom, the camera and the dog was barking. I remember first time we went to Greece and Alex and George picked us up. They were the record company and they were also Maddow and Defant. So as soon as they were getting there, they were like, oh, we'll sign this, sign that. And then Alex goes, what are the lyrics to navigation? They put on the cassette and I'm like, because I can't work out what you're singing. And I said, I'm really sorry, Alex. There are no lyrics. I never finished the lyrics. The phonetics. The scatting. It's just a scat vocal. It's just like, one, one, one is all and two, two far away, three, three is all that is all. We usually do that to get the tune and then replace them with lyrics. But this was like, we needed a B-side. We've got this, it's not finished, have it. But I love. I love that it does that. One of my favourite OMD moments is I'm being completely egotistical now, but you wrote it, so it's all right. I can say that I like what you did. It's when it drops and it comes back in with the melody. I'm like, yeah, it's a beautiful moment. Something you made is just touching your own soul. And every time I hear that, I don't listen to it every day, but I just go, oh, that talks. That still talks to me. It still talks to me. Well, that kind of brings me to my final question before we listen to the album. When you look back 40 years to this album, and you're apart from it now, but you're still playing it, but you can take a look back to your 21-year-old selves and have perspective. How do you feel about the album now? I'm incredibly proud of it, personally. I still think it works. I still think. Sonically, production techniques have come on a long way since then, and it's a bit rough around the edges, but that's part of its charm, really. I mean, Richard Mannering managed to make a good-sounding record out of Aunt Madness. So that worked. It's still one of my favourite, if not the favourite record that we've ever made. I'm happy with it. When Colleen plays it, we're going to leave the stage because we will sit here going, God, I wish we could remix it. I mean, listen. Yeah, I mean, listen. You've probably heard the story before, standing on stage atop of the Pops about to do Joan of Arc, and it starts with boom, cha-cha, and I'm standing. It's number five in the chart, and I'm going, God, that bass drum sounds shit. I really wish I could change the sound of that bass drum. And it's in the top five. We always think we could change it, but no, this... It takes about six to nine months after you've made an album. You can be objective about it. You're not just listening to it going, oh, God, I wish I could change that. You stand back and you forget all the pain, and it's just like, oh, yeah. Now I see the overview, and I'm... Yeah, I mean, we're very proud of this. Well, let's give a hand to Aunt Jane Mann. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Fantastic. Well, I'm going to put this album on. I asked that you make sure your phones are turned off and please refrain from talking. If you are going to make any comments on the music, just whisper. Don't project like an American. And... Listen, you won't hear yourselves anyway. Look at the size of these speakers. Exactly, exactly. We will see you later for some more questions. Thank you for coming out in a tube strike and making that happen. Appreciate it. Thank you. And thank you for your questions. Thank you. I've got a good job. But seriously, what did you think about the kick drumming, Joan of all? Too loud, right? A bit boxy, I thought. So we have time for some questions. Who would like to start? OK, very eager gentleman right there. Architect from Alte. That was a book. Yeah, Martha Ladly who was Peter Savile's girlfriend who was in Martha and Muffins, the keyboard player. She said to me, I'm reading this book called Morality and Architecture. It's a great name for an album. Why don't you do it? OK, thanks very much. As you do. We just moved the words around. And... Yeah, the name of the band... I mean, you know, we've gone back to the warm leatherette. And I used to go to Eric's all the time to see bands. And so we decided, OK, we're going to dare to go on stage. Just wants to do a gig as the two of us do in our songs. Just say we've done it. And so we knocked really sheepishly on the duck as you were talking about Roger Eagle. Roger Eagle was about nine feet tall. He was really scary. And we were like, we're going to knock on the door and we're going to hope Roger isn't in the office. He's going to repeat. Paul and Andy, we were in the aid and we were like, could we do a gig on Thursday night just like the two of us with the tape recorder playing our electronic songs? And they went, yeah, yeah, sure, what you called him in? Oh. I don't know. We haven't got a name. We thought we'd tell us to fuck off. So we went home and literally went to my bedroom and wore what I used to write things down. And an idea for a song title was orchestral manoeuvres. And I thought, right, it's two of us playing songs our mates not even sure about in a punk club with the tape recorder. We just want a name that's different. So we just chose a preposterously different name. The sort of name that no band should ever be called. Yeah. I mean, we kind of got lucky that we chose that one because the name below orchestral manoeuvres in the dark was Margaret Thatcher's Afterbirth. It could have been worse. It's hard to believe, but it could have been worse. MTA beats. That's really good. That is a true story. Oh my gosh. Another question. There's a gentleman right there. Up here. Oh, I guess that one. You're on. Hi. Just a couple of things. Can you tell us a bit about Gravity Never Failed and when it failed to be on the album? Because I think it was meant to be or it was going to be wasn't early on. And secondly, hearing you speak early on and you mentioned one of my favourite lyrics of all yours is the more we know, the more we know, the less we learn. And I heard you mention that actually when you were talking earlier about Joan of Arc. Yeah. So are the two related? With She's Leaving, did the lyrics come after you had been talking about or learning about Joan of Arc? Is there any link there? I don't know. She's Leaving is not related to the Joan of Arc or the songwriting process. But yeah, I think very much, you know, my sense of creativity is a celebration of the fact that it's like I quite like not knowing where I'm going. I quite like not, you know. I mean, in real life, it's rubbish. You want certainty. But when you're being creative, it's quite nice to just swim in this pool and see what happens. But, yeah. Gravity never fails. I mean, that was, we went into the manner to record because of the success of In Old Again, we didn't have a second single off the album, we were looking for another single and we actually had a song that was originally called Georgia. That was the original song called Georgia and it was the drums. And it was, when we recorded it, we just went, it's okay, but it's not a hit single, so we wouldn't release. So we held it back and then it did eventually get released and we changed the title. Is that related to She's Leaving? Yeah, yeah. Different why She's Leaving has only been released as a single in the Benelux and not elsewhere. Yeah, well, it's his fault. I don't mind, I'm from the Netherlands. There was a conversation with the record company who said, wow, you know, we've had three singles. Three hit singles. We think there's another one on the album, She's Leaving is a great song, that could be a single, that could be a hit. And I distinctly remember saying, you're not prostituting our art by releasing four singles off one album. I'm pretty sure that's what you said. I could slap my two-year-old self sometimes. So because Joan of Arc wasn't released as a single on the rest of the world, because the rest of the world worked more slowly, so they were still working souvenir and then inter-made, we thought well, alright, we'll let the Benelux have it. And it wasn't a bloody hit. But no, I was a pretentious, precious little bugger. There have been times when he wanted to slap me too. I think we'll take a question from one of our viewers at home. Yeah, we've got a lot of questions coming in from the online audience, which is great, from all over the place. I was going to ask, have you guys thought about doing a pin-up calendar? Maybe 40 years ago, but not now. That one's from Stefanie Titio and Guernsey. One of the OMG Women's Guild, of course. Yeah, the bra throwers. The bra throwers, yes. So you've answered that one. Thanks, Stef. And here's one from Matthew T. So it's about, would you, if you had the technology you have today back then, how would the textures of the album or the figure? We'll be a completely different band, probably. I mean, this is what I was alluding to before, because as kids we wanted to be craft work, but technically we couldn't be craft work. And that's why we had the sound that we had, because we were kind of limited by our technology. So I'm not sure. We probably would have sounded an awful lot more like craft work, because as kids we idolized them. We wanted to be craft work as a 15-year-old I did. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing because we started out with a fan-based guitar, his auntie's cannibalized radios, then little plinky pianos and things, and synths from my mother's catalogue. And now, you know, it's in the box. It's all in a Mac computer. And you've got all of these soft synths that come up. And there's a lot of purists who are like, well, you're not using analog synths. It's like, because they go out of tune, I don't want to plug them in, I don't want to midi them. And every time I want to recall the song when it's in the computer I just go, it comes straight back up. I don't have to wire up. Spend three hours looking at my notes going, okay, VCF. No, I'm sure it doesn't sound the same. So, yeah, I mean I love the modern technology, and for the most part, for me, the greatest thing is the live technology is more reliable. We still have screw ups, but it's more reliable than the old tapes and the analogs. I mean, it's, we never could have imagined never could have imagined what we'd have access to. It's fantastic what we can do now. The gentleman up there in the red. Over here for this one then you. You talked about your creative process and it's really interesting to hear you talk about being able to use VSTs and having everything inside a Mac. How do you deal with that kind of tyranny of choice where, you know, you go to lay down a bass drum and you've got a choice of 4,000. How do you create sort of limits to help you not have to spend all day trying to find one sound? He's up there poor, if you can't see. Over here. Absolutely blind. Where are you? He is going to have to, he's going to have to give up his vanity and wear glasses on stage. I can only just see him as well. Is anybody out there? Yeah. The tyranny of choice is a phrase that we use. We had to learn, didn't we? You get to this point where you've got all of these possibilities and it's too much. One of the things that we really made into an ethos a few years ago was more is not always better and when we were younger we were working with a 24 or 16 track tape. We had to make editorial decisions. You couldn't just go, well we'll have these four-blade shrubs and we've got six high-hat patterns and different chords. The chords could be on this organ or that organ. We'll decide later. We'll decide later. So we have consciously now decided to say, right delete, commit, stop, use that, get rid of that. And it's hard like, I'm deleting something I can't go back. But actually it forces you to go forward and limit your options because electricity if you look at the multi-track of electricity it's 11 tracks and five of them are drums three of them are white noise. It's so simple. We had no options then. It was just whatever we had. One of my other favourite phrases is it's like a lot of times when you've got too many options, you just pour it all in and you go, well it's not sounding right but I'll just add more of this and I'll polish this and I'll add more varnish to it. It's like, my mantra is you don't need a million quids worth of varnish if you don't start with a turd. Don't polish it. It ain't going to get any better. Bin it off and do something else. I use that expression all the time. It's a good expression. When we did the Punishment to Luxury we just finished doing Dazzleships live and we were trying to play all these songs and we had to go back to the multi-tracks and we were looking at the songs on Dazzleships and they were so incredibly simple that when we were doing Punishment to Luxury we were going well, you know we used to have hardly anything in it but this is definitely more and so with Punishment to Luxury we really stripped back, didn't we, and just deleted so much stuff to just left what was important and deleted everything else. You have to be ruthless. Absolutely ruthless. Not easy, but you have to. We'll get to you after. Hi. Is there any song you've heard that you really wish I'd written that? One Leatherette. Outer Barn. Most of the Beatles catalogue publishing is about that. You're just thinking financially now. Yeah and I still I mean dancing on my own, the album version not the single version by Robin I wish I'd written that. Talking about stripped down 12 tracks in it. Yeah very rarely do I hear something that, speaking personally now but very rarely do I hear something where I just go wow. One of the reasons I think why we started making music was because it was like certainly again, speaking personally, most music I didn't like when I was a kid. On one hand I could count David Bowie, Roxy Music, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Noy Velvet Underground, one hand and one finger. And I thought the rest was mostly crap and so it was like I didn't think we could do it better but it was a bit disincentive. But yeah, sometimes you just yeah, you do. Not often but when you hear it, you are green with envy. I wish I'd done that. I think we should do one more online one. Sure. Here's a forward looking question it's about the new album Bauhaus Staircase. This question comes from Helga Santamair in Bavaria. The new album Bauhaus Staircase will it be released later this year? It's looking like early next year. Looking like early next year. Well the dilemma we have because of COVID is everything is just out of sequence and we're trying to catch up with things we promise to do. Touring and stuff. This year we're busy doing a lot of gigs. We're finally going to go to America to do the tour that we did in the UK over two years ago. The souvenir celebration tour. It's just we it's coming out. It's mostly written. It's just down to Paul to stop moving house and having children. It's not wrong. Paul's in his court now. He's the mixer. Early next year. Early next year. Question over here. Do you have a question? Yes. I'm going to come over. Okay. Obviously I'm from the Pretty in Pink era. And I've only seen you guys once in Dallas which was amazing. And this is my favorite album. And I was supposed to have tickets here to see it. I went to Cambridge and frowl there but Ailesbury but Codeness that up. So the one that sticks out in my mind always is Georgia. And I wonder where you get your samples to do it. It just it boggles my mind. They were short way we had a short wave radio. And we used to architecture and we used to to kind of record our shortwave radio every night and we used to kind of just we had tons of tape didn't we we just used to kind of because it's random what you find and we just used to scan the channels in fact radio waves on dousal ships is is that radio scanning it's the digital it's trying to find a station you know but but the the chorus of the song georgia is basically it's a classic kind of like i'd written the verse and we had this chord change and we had this course it's like we didn't know what to do in the gunny ideas now i'm going to use the gunny and is right get the radio out let's sample the stuff off the radio cut up the tapes and throw it in and see what i'm amazingly it's like yeah that'll do that's the chorus um so but it works and it's actually in key which is and of course and of course it's about the cold war and it's about the soviet union and that seems to be sadly current at the moment but yeah but that's um that that yeah georgia was was was was is it it is it was intentionally a kind of geopolitical sorry dancing in the ruins of the western world it was a kind of a prequel to dousal ships thank you really thank you hi thank you um you both say you're quite different from each other yeah over the years was would you say there's something you've each learned from the other that's perhaps changed how you are sort of from back when you were younger to how you are now makes sense i mean i think we're always learning from each other i mean i think in songwriting terms i mean i mean i think because we both couldn't play you know just pure musical terms now because we could you never taught me to play keyboards and you haven't learned bass that hasn't changed that's not changed um yeah but you know we think we learned we're screwed here she's asked a question we've never had a bloody answer I'm hopeful yeah i think damn you woman i think we we kind of we learned to to write songs together and we kind of learned each as we as we both individually learned how to write songs i think we were teaching each other how how to go through that process because no one taught us so we both had to kind of learn it individually and and kind of guide each other through it really i have learned from paul how to be a slightly better engineer i've learned i've learned what i've learned what things i learned what a compressor does it took me about 40 years but i think i think in some respects we kind of we kind of leave the demarcation actually it's like that's a paul job you know it's like when it when it comes to mixing it's like i just get on with it you start making it sound sonically right i've done you know we you know we're called the butcher and the surgeon you know it's like i will chop it all up and then he'll stitch it back together going to make it sound but then i will go back in and say right it all sounds lovely but you've lost the field let me screw it up for you again and then i pull it back and then we yeah we were in his studio yesterday arguing about bass drums actually there was three bass drums that was the problem there were three bass drums yeah should have been one but no i i i think i think we have learned stuff but i i think sometimes it's quite good to not actually think about it too much and just just you know let it know that the other person brings something that you don't have yeah andy the you secretly miffed that paul sang your biggest uk hit and paul provocative question there and paul can you remember the two songs that kept it off number one i mean the thing is andy wrote whole again so he got to number one so i remember going around to paul's house in the early 90s uh because actually you're not factually completely correct is it you i had to go to his house to ask him about some keyboard sample or something and sailing on seven seas had just got to number three but what was that andy said congratulations on getting to number three but i'm glad you haven't got any higher than souvenir so so um true story listen innalegated all the bloody groundwork he was just climbing he was he was standing on the back of a giant song i think we have time for one more question right here oh okay i think it's it's probably fair to say that architecture morality amongst the general public is kind of considered to be this sort of seminal album of yours but i wondered sort of how you think of it in the context of the rest of your output like do you think of it as this album that really sums up your sound or is it like just another album or is there one that gets overlooked in favour of architecture morality good question that was a good question um i mean i think it's probably one of our favourites because i think i think it does work in in in its entirety you know as it's a complete album every song works you know with each other it's it has a unity the album which perhaps some of the other albums don't have but uh but yeah i mean there are other works i mean people do concentrate on architecture morality but i'm very proud of the first album i'm proud of dazzleships i'm proud of the punishment of luxury you know what i would say about architecture morality i mean there's only nine songs on it if i listen to it and i don't listen to our stuff very often but if i listen to it i just go that's a good song that's a good song that would there's no there's no song on the album that i don't go yeah we could have done better there's bits not quite right about so in terms of it it's it's it's nine a star songs as far as i'm concerned we we we got it right i don't know how we got it right but i'm i'm very proud of all of those you some of you will know that there are other albums where we look back and go we just didn't have time and maybe we could have done better than that song and that song but yeah no we're proud of it i think it's a great place to to leave it tonight thank you sorry we can't do more questions we can talk forever but yeah thanks to all of you thank you thank you thank you are you all coming to the albert hall in a couple of weeks time we're still learning bunker soldiers and pretending to see and we won't mention pretending to see the future because we haven't played it for 40 years and i can't remember the words at the end but uh i will do by the time we get there so yeah seven seven songs from the first album that sounds amazing so thank you so we've got to go and rehearse thank you for watching thank you thank you so much