Andy McCluskey is the lead singer and basis of the iconic group OMD and has given us the gifts of such tunes as Joan of Arc Electricity and Oligay, and of course the dopamine hit we are featuring today. If you lead in the magical Pretty in Pink, he's during Australia in fair But twenty twenty five and you can get you to get from Destroy All Lines dot com sounds like a synth to obside. Frankly, I'll see you there, Christy casters, please welcome and in mclusky from OMD.
Hi Andy, Hello, nice to talk to you. Thank you.
Oh gosh, it's such a thrill that you've agreed to be part.
Of this little mini snacksy series called Dopamine Hits, where I talk about the songs that are on my playlist. At the minute they start, I get a rush of great feelings. And of course if you leave is one of then minute that drumbeat kicks I feel alive. Can you tell me how this song cameded out?
Well, I mean it was. It was a remarkable piece of storyline. Actually, we were specifically asked by John Hughes to write a song for Pretty and Pink for the prom scene right at the end. He was very angliphile. He liked his English music. So we went down to Paramount Studios, we saw them filming it. They said exactly what they wanted. We went home and we wrote the song, and we came back to America with the song ready
to mix, and he said, bit of a problem. Actually we've changed the end of the movie and your lyrics don't work. We wrote a song called Goddess of Love, actually criticy. He couldn't use it. He said, does your start? Does your tour start for another two days? If you've got time, can you write me another one today? We've just flown into La ready to mix. So we wrote if You Leave in one day in the studio, totally from scratch, and we got really lucky. We got really
lucky with that one. But yeah, that was a really crazy story. We had to throw away the first song we wrote.
Okay, I've got so many questions with that process. Did you view rushes of the film so far to get the buy?
Not at all, No, because they were still filming it when we were writing the song. And the only thing that John said to us was it just has to be one twenty beats per minute because we filmed the people dancing at the prom to Don't You Forget About Me by Simple Minds, which was in the song the year before the Breakfast Club, So that is just same tempo.
That's it. So of course when we did finally see the edit, we were invited to the premiere at the Man's Chinese the or on Hollywood Boulevard, red carpet treatment, everything. It was amazing and we waited him. We waited it up. It comes on the screen and we're like, okay, we did one twenty beats a minute. Who edited this movie? Because nobody's dancing on the fricking beat? So the only paravity we were given, didn't I love?
I think this is interesting because I did read a little bit about Pretty in Pink and they had to change the ending.
Initially, Molly Ringwolve's character, who I believe is called Andy as well, but with an Ie, ends up with Ducky, who's the kind of you know, nerdy, good guy, and the audiences didn't like that, so they changed it that she ended up with you know, the broody, moody, rich guy Blaine. Hence the misfit of Goddess of Love.
I guess you're absolutely right. Yeah, this is it. The test audience, the teenage girl said no, no, Ducky's her friend. She should end up with the good looking guy. So they had to rework the ending. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what happened.
Wow. So when you're coming to Australia, how long has it been since you've been here? I've read ulternating stories it says one time, this is the first Australian tour. But I'm sure you've been here before.
No, no, you were just a baby last time we were there. It was thirty eight years ago. Scary huh.
Oh, you're very kind and very kind and wow, so this is going to be amazing.
What is it like to be, you know, living your whole amazing.
Life over on the other side of the world, and then you come to a place like Australia which feels so remote and far away, and yet we are all going to be there leaving in the audience knowing every single word to your tracks.
This is the amazing thing is that obviously, yes, I grew up in England. We have toured Australia twice before. In the mid eighties. But yeah, we're going to come
back having not played for thirty eight years. But we are blessed that so many of our songs are still played on the radio in Australia and as you say, the tracks like if you Leave in Inola Gay, everybody seems to know them and so it's these are great calling cards to have, you know, when you come visiting and you go, well, I've got this song and this song and this song and you know this one, people go come on in. So yeah, I mean we are
so excited. It's been way too long, so we can't wait to come back next year.
What's it like knowing that the skills that you have bring so much joy to millions of people still every day.
Do you know what again, I'll use the word it's a blessing. You've got to remember here. Paul Humphries and I were a pair of working class kids from the wrong side of the River Mersey in Liverpool and we were doing a hobby. We were inspired by German music.
It was just our hobby. We never thought we were ever going to make a living out of it, and then we just had a series of lucky things happened to us and the next thing, you know, after daring to do one gig with a stupid name like Orchestral Maneuvers in the dark, it was just a dare for one gig. Eighteen months later, we're having our first hit single and things just exploded. So it's it's amazing, But you know what, it wasn't everything we ever predicted or wanted.
But when people come up to me and say, I'm sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to say that this song you wrote means something to me because you know it was my first song at my wedding or I played it at my father's funeral or something. You know, you just realized something I did that the last three and a half minutes is indelibly in people's lives. It doesn't change the world, but it made a difference, and it's an amazing feeling.
It is truly extraordinary, isn't it. How do you choose where those dopamine hits go in the sett list?
You have to spread them out, But because you don't, you don't want, you know, you got to. You gotta give drop a few hits in first and then take
it on a journey. I mean, we are fortunate that we have quite a lot of hits, so it's not it's not like people are waiting for the hit or we're saving it for the encore, you know, So we will Yeah, you'll get you'll you'll you'll get some early ones and some middle ones, and all I'll say is my dancing still hasn't improved for the Maid of Orleans Joan of Arc So there will be a slow one immediate after that, but it'll still be a hit.
Listen enough for that negative self talk.
We live for that, Dad through a tea. Don't you worry about that now?
Speaking of.
Speaking of your the other member of the of the of the group, there is a third member called Winston. Who was he and is he coming on tour?
There was a third member? No, No, Winston is where Paul Humphries and I should be behind glass in the Museum of Liverpool and for those who don't know, For those who don't know, Winston is a tape recorder. When we were teenagers and we wanted to play our music, our friends thought it was well not music they were into like Genesis and the Eagles, and they didn't get what we were into. So we had to be a band and the rest of the band was the tape
recorder because nobody else wanted to play with us. We used to make a joke actually that if Lennon and McCartney had had a tape recorder in the sixties, then the other two wouldn't have been in the Beatles. So totally true.
They've become obsolete, much like Winston himself.
Yeah, but but yeah, Winston is actually definitely is in a museum. He was great to begin with, but we'd rather play with real people now that they want to play with us.
Nineteen eighty six was such a massive year. It was, you know, that the year I became a teenager, thirteen years old. But there were some unbelievable albums released that year. Graceland licensed to ill Over in America of Unbasted Boys Peter Gabriels So, which is still one of the greatest
albums of all time. Absolutely, I inhiled this music. Australia in the eighties, you know, without the Internet and without you know, any sort of global communications platform, we felt so far away and I've always said that, you know, if I could go back to any time, it would be eighties. In the UK. I you know, I spent all my pocket money on smash hits, you know, magazines
and the import ones very expensive. What was it like to be amid that amazing cut and thrust of culture and music in Britain in the eighties.
Of course, the crazy thing was that I can only look back now and go, oh wow. At the time, you were just doing it, you know, and very quickly our hobby became our job, and it became our normal. You know, I lived in a suitcase. I was traveling around the world. I was doing television and photographs of radio and concerts, and then back in the studio and boomber. It was just your feet never touched the ground. But
that became your normal, and I didn't. I mean, I finally left home and because previously I was being on top of the pops and then going home to my little box room that was like six foot by seven foot the room I grew up in. The bed took up half the room. But give me, mother, here, can you do me washing? I've got to go to Berlin tomorrow. You know, It's just it, but that was my that was my normal. It was nuts.
And what were the photo shoots like for smash Sheets magazine.
Well, do you know, do you know, I'll tell you a funny story. Right, one day in nineteen eighty four, we were doing a photo shoot four Smash Shits photographer studio called Eric Watson. We were being interviewed by the guy who was the deputy editor of Smash Shits, who said, this is going to be my last interview because I've got a band and we're going to release a record next month. And we said, oh, good luck. What's the
record called West End Girls? Neil Tennant Neil Kenny. Neil Tenner was interviewing us for Smash It in his last interview before he started the Pet Shop Boys. And then, just to make it even more surreal, I walked over to a light box that Eric had and I switched it on and went, oh, she's cute. Who's that? And he went, just some dancer from New York who thinks she can sing. Madonna just before she released her first single Donna. Yeah, So this was nineteen eighty four that
this was what it was like. Neil Tenner was interviewing us. We were looking at some photographs by this girl who was called Madonna, who we never heard of, but it was just a blur. Every day was just another day like.
That, unbelievable. God, I could talk to you forever.
Thank you so much for joining us, Andy McCluskey. If you want to go and see OMD, do not miss the meturing in February. It is going to be an absoluute vibe. Get you tickets from destroy alllines dot com.
They kickoff in February in Perth and in the how do I ever? Thank you so much?
Come to the gigs and say hello, well we cannot wait to play. It's basically we're bringing all the greatest sits down to Australia because we owe it to you because it's been way too long.
I love that. And you know, always whenever I go to a show and the new stuff comes out, I call it the city break because that's where you go to get your hot dog and chips and you drink. I love that.
You say, listen, you know the songs have been good to us. Don't mess around. Play them exactly how people remember them. Give them every song that was a hit, because that you know, we the songs have been good to us. We need to be good to the songs and treat the audience with respect. So come and see the gigs and we'll have a great party.
Amen and the Fussy, thank you so much for joining me, and you go off to bed with a couple of haul it's in the channel.
Thank you and I'll see you next year. Bye.