Mad World

by Lori Majewski

  “OBSESSION”

  A common thread unites the majority of the artists in this book. They were their own creations: They made their own music and smeared on their own makeup. Were there behind-the-scenes machinations to which we will never be privy? Of course. But, by and large, they plotted their own careers. Something else they have in common: Many of the songs featured in these pages came about by accident, by sudden burst of inspiration or through unforeseen circumstances. They weren’t molded and manipulated by record company men. But as the eighties wore on and new wave’s accidental exposure to suburbia via MTV became less of a surprise, labels began seeking out and snapping up bands who could keep the party going. These last-gasp new wavers were watered-down, less weird, less pretentious, less unpredictable and more grateful, more suggestible, more generic—groups like Breathe, Boys Don’t Cry, Johnny Hates Jizz (as they were originally called. Perhaps), Curiosity Killed the Cat, Brother Beyond. Animotion came in with the first wavers but went out with the last-gaspers. Their name is wretched, their videos shoddy, their discography forgettable. But their sole hit, “Obsession,” was bombastic, ridiculous, blustery, and borderline porno—in other words, a new wave classic.

  JB: Though I have traveled this great nation far and wide, though I have ventured to strange and exotic territories, one thing never changes: There’s always a strip joint near the airport playing “Obsession.” And when it comes on, the girl on the pole wakes from her torpor, just a little, and even I am sufficiently moved to fork over a few crumpled-up bills. What does bad-eighties-movie sex sound like? Erotic thriller sex? It sounds like “Obsession.” Holly Knight co-wrote my all-time favorite American new wave pop song, “New Romance” by Spider (also performed by Lisa Hartman’s singer character Ciji on Knots Landing!). But “Obsession” is her Hall of Famer—and, also, her Hall of Shamer.

  LM: As a fan of the Power Station, I thought it’d be interesting to talk to Knight’s “Obsession” co-writer, Michael Des Barres. And he was as funny and creepy and dirty as I’d hoped he would be. I thought, Case closed. We have our chapter. Then I thought, Shouldn’t I be talking to the group that had the hit? For me, Animotion were an afterthought. They were no more and no less than a vehicle for a hit song. Nothing wrong or shameful about that. But, as it turns out, there was something wrong and shameful about the Animotion story. It is a tale of heartache, backstabbing, disloyalty, and despair—almost as melodramatic as obsession itself.

  MICHAEL DES BARRES: Every era produces classic songs that people lost their virginity to. I wrote one that stuck in people’s heads because the idea of it is, “Who do you want me to be to make you sleep with me?” Which is: “I’ll be anything you want—just fuck me,” which is a big human notion.

  I wrote the words to that song in L.A. six months into ’81. It’s tied in with my sobriety. The word that was being bandied around in these 12-step rooms was “obsession.” At the same time, there’s a movie I saw that made an enormous impression on me: The Collector. The brief narrative is a young, working-class boy cannot find a girlfriend. He wins the pools, which is the lottery in England, and buys a country house, where he collects butterflies. Then he decides to collect a lover. He kidnaps a girl, takes her back to the house, and keeps her in the cellar.

  Mike Chapman introduced me to Holly Knight, [who] had written “Better Be Good to Me” and “Love Is a Battlefield.” She said, “What have you got?” and I said, “You’re like a butterfly, a wild butterfly / I will collect you and capture you.” She had no idea what I was talking about, but she could write a hook. I knew it was a duet. The song came, and it came really fast—which is not an expression I particularly like. I sang it in one take, she sang it in one take, Chapman mixed it in an hour, and it made millions for all of us.

  [It was] in a [1983] movie called A Night in Heaven. It starred an eighties guy called Christopher Atkins, who played a male stripper. Some A&R dude heard it and decided to recut it with a band called Animotion.

  BILL WADHAMS: Halfway through the [recording of our debut] album, “Obsession” comes in, and it was nothing like the rest of the album. Everything else was written by me, and the sound I was going for was similar to early Police. Andy Summers came from a classical guitar background and so did I. One of my favorite bands was Steely Dan. Our A&R man at Polygram Records, Russ Regan, said, “I think you guys could be a Fleetwood Mac for the eighties.” Then our producer [John Ryan] went to London, and when he came back, he said, “Have you heard of Frankie Goes to Hollywood? Have you heard this song, ‘Relax’? Well, I’ve got this song called ‘Obsession,’ which I think could be a hit for you guys.” He played me Holly and Michael’s version over the phone. The male part is spoken. I said, “That’s kind of interesting, but could I sing it?”

  ASTRID PLANE: When I heard “Obsession,” it knocked me over the head as a huge hit. I got a tingle up my spine, and I just knew we needed to record it. Though it wasn’t the direction that Bill was writing his songs in, I felt it would be well received, and I thought it was the direction we should be going in.

  WADHAMS: Our guitarist and keyboard player put a huge stamp on that song. We had just brought in a keyboard player named Greg Smith—Greg did the demos for the Thriller album—and he put in a whistling flute sound that wasn’t on [the original]. Then guitarist Don Kirkpatrick came in, and he was just absolutely blazing. He was just warming up his guitar, [but] the producer said, “That’s it. Done. Print it.” It was just one take from beginning to end.

  PLANE: The song was kind of spooky—that obsessive, driving thing that wouldn’t give up. My only reservation, and it sounds so silly now, was that lyric, “Who do you want me to be to make you sleep with me?” My fear was that it wouldn’t be played on the radio because of it being too racy. Being that the lyric could have been interpreted as very dark, we decided we wanted a more fun, kooky, colorful video. We got access to one of the Hollywood movie-costume places, and they gave me Cleopatra’s headpiece that Elizabeth Taylor had worn.

  “But by the time we got into the teens and still had a bullet, the phone was ringing off the hook. I said, ‘At this point, I don’t care who wrote it. We’re about to go on the ride of our life.’”

  WADHAMS: [Astrid] was the girlfriend of the bass player [Charles Ottavio], and I was about to get married to someone else. But various directors submitted their video treatments, and almost all of them said, “Bill and Astrid meet and they’re obsessed with each other.” I didn’t want that. I didn’t want my first song released and put on MTV to be “I love Astrid,” because I loved someone else. It’s not just that it creates some problem at home; it’s not how I want to represent myself in this band. I wanted to be my own person, more like Fleetwood Mac. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham… well, they were a pair, but by the time they really hit, they were already broken up. They’re not really singing love songs to each other.

  Then one director said, “Let’s make it like a Fellini movie. We’re going to take the line ‘Who do you want me to be’ and we’re going to bring in all these random characters.” They went down to Hollywood Costume Supply and started picking out Antony and Cleopatra, a samurai warrior, a spaceman. After the thing was shot, my youngest brother said to me, “I just saw the video, and I can’t tell whether it’s really cool or really stupid.”

  In the video I’m in a suit, and she’s got wild makeup and her hair is sticking off to the side. Stylistically, she was much more of a Cyndi Lauper, wild, wacky thing, and I wanted to be more Mr. Cool, like Bryan Ferry, Sting, Robert Palmer. Even through our first or second tour, we had a difficult time, [Astrid] and I. We were not at ease with each other.

  PLANE: We were these two very strong personalities with very different ideas about what should be happening. To me, there’s nothing more boring than a guy standing there playing guitar looking at his shoes. I want to see stuff happening. I feel like I had a better sense of the big picture, like what is interesting for the audience to see. They want to see us interacti
ng, and Bill wasn’t used to that. But over time, we got more comfortable. And, strangely, that tension between us actually seemed to work onstage.

  WADHAMS: It wasn’t until years later that I realized that that was kind of cool, that we were coming from two different places and there was a tension between us that created a bit of mystery.

  PLANE: There were a lot of politics going on as far as the timing of the release of the record. We wanted it to come out, and the record company was stalling, saying, “It’s right before Christmas. We really ought to wait until the new year.” Living in L.A. and having other friends in bands that had been signed and then shelved, I had this fear that they would just forget about it. So we really pushed. There used to be this thing called Battle of the Bands that they did on [L.A.’s] KROQ: They would play two songs, and the public would vote. Well, “Obsession” was up against “Relax,” and we were thinking, We don’t stand a chance. But actually, “Obsession” did beat “Relax”!

  WADHAMS: When it hit the charts, every week it was jumping almost 10 points. At first, I was like, Shit! I am going to be a part of a hit song, but I didn’t write it. But by the time we got into the teens and still had a bullet, the phone was ringing off the hook. I said, “At this point, I don’t care who wrote it. We’re about to go on the ride of our life.”

  PLANE: The fans started going crazy. We played one underage club in L.A., and we were in the dressing room getting ready. My boyfriend at the time, the bass player, had already taken to wearing makeup. He was putting the powder on and the foundation, little bit of blush, eyeliner. Then, all of a sudden, Bill and the guitar player are like, “OK, give us that eyeliner. We want some of that.” That was a turning point. We went onstage and the fans were grabbing jewelry off us. One girl shredded the tights off of my legs!

  MIXTAPE: 5 More Last-Gasp New Wave Songs 1. “Shattered Dreams,” Johnny Hates Jazz 2. “How Can I Fall,” Breathe 3. “(I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight,” Cutting Crew 4. “Your Love,” The Outfield 5. “Two of Hearts,” Stacey Q

  “We went onstage and the fans were grabbing jewelry off us. One girl shredded the tights off of my legs!”

  WADHAMS: But Animotion had some inherent problems. You had the Animotion that really was, and the Animotion that was on “Obsession.” That song is so different from my writing. Our original drummer didn’t play on the track; it was done by Fairlight drums. Our original bass player did not play on “Obsession”; it was done by a session player. It started with firing our original drummer, firing a keyboard player who was a great guy and great keyboard player, but he didn’t play on “Obsession.” We just wanted Greg, the session guy who’d played with Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, to be in the band.

  PLANE: There was also a problem with John Ryan. He did a great job on “Obsession,” but his methods were cutthroat as far as getting what he wanted, bringing in outside players and pretty much running the show without asking our input. John would try to drive wedges between all of the band members. He would tell me, “Oh, you don’t need Bill. You’re the star.” As a band, we agreed we weren’t going to work with John Ryan again, but when the [recording] started, people started caving.

  The other problem was that we hadn’t written “Obsession” ourselves. The record company felt it was fair game for every songwriter in town to pitch songs for our [second] record. So here we were, having to compete with all the top songwriters to get songs on our own record.

  WADHAMS: Once again, the producer comes in with another Holly Knight song, which was “I Engineer.” The record company says, “That’s the one we’ll put out first, because she’s the hit writer.” “I Engineer” came out, and it looked like we were on our way to another hit. Then one of the in-house promotion people [at Polygram] said, “Your record’s gonna die. We’ve been given a priority of making this band Level 42 a hit in the U.S.” So the second album tanked. Then our A&R man left, and this new guy came in, Bob Skoro. Our first meeting with him, he said, “I don’t like your first two albums. I don’t like your live performance. I like ‘Obsession,’ but I don’t like anything else.” I thought, We’re screwed.

  PLANE: It was still that same old problem of “What musical direction are we gonna go in and who’s gonna have a say in it?” The songs that they were going to be putting on our third record, I was horrified. The record we were making didn’t represent us, [and the bass player and I] were at very bad relations with Bill.

  WADHAMS: We hired new managers, and they said, “We think you should replace Astrid and her boyfriend, the bass player. We think you could get a stronger woman. Polygram London doesn’t like Animotion because Astrid upset them when she was there for interviews. They didn’t like her character. You guys are never gonna make money as a five-, six-piece band. Cut it down to size, bring in a stronger woman, and the record company will get behind you again.” After some deliberation, we met with Astrid and Charles. We said, “The band is breaking up, and we’re taking the name.”

  PLANE: I will never forget it. We’ve never really talked about it in depth because it was so painful, so awful, so ugly.

  WADHAMS: We felt bad about it, but we went back to [our managers] right afterward, practically shaking. We said, “The deed is done.” They said, “Cool. Matter of fact, we’ve already told Polygram that this is happening, and we told them that you guys were going to get someone to replace her—like Cynthia Rhodes.” They were managing Richard Marx, and Cynthia Rhodes was Richard Marx’s fiancée.

  We had another meeting with the record company, and Skoro said, “You gotta go with Cynthia Rhodes. If we put Cynthia Rhodes in front of this band, we can’t lose.” Immediately, we looked at each other and said, “We’re going to be sidemen to Cynthia Rhodes!” I actually liked Cynthia a lot. If we’d been able to choose, we might’ve chosen Cynthia, but we were sort of forced to choose her.

  PLANE: It was a very terrible time. On the one hand, we had our hit, we were famous. But on the other, we had no say in our career, and we were making a record, but it wasn’t a record that I wanted to be on. And the way that Bill was being manipulated by the management company, it pierced a big hole in the dream of what it was to be a pop star. You were nothing. You were an item that was going to be on a shelf to be sold, and if they felt like you weren’t sales-worthy, then [they’d] toss you in the trash.

  WADHAMS: Sadly, we wanted to be the Fleetwood Mac of the eighties, but at a certain point, we realized we were the Monkees.

  THAT WAS THEN

  BUT THIS IS NOW

  Wadhams left Animotion before the release of their third album. Led by Cynthia Rhodes—a.k.a. Penny from Dirty Dancing—Animotion had one more Top 10 hit, 1989’s deplorable “Room to Move.” In 2001, Wadhams convinced Plane to join him in reviving Animotion for sporadic live dates with eighties package tours and appearances at nightclub nostalgia nights. Wadhams currently makes his living as a graphic artist. Plane, who married and then divorced bassist Charles Ottavio, is a vocal coach. Des Barres achieved notoriety as the villain Murdoc on TV’s MacGyver and as the Power Station’s concert tour and Live Aid fill-in for Robert Palmer. He still receives sizable royalty checks from “Obsession.”

  WADHAMS: A radio station here in Portland called me and said, “Would you appear at an eighties night at this club? We’ll give you a thousand dollars to show up and sign some autographs.” I called Astrid and said, “Would you like to fly to Portland and maybe we’ll lip-synch ‘Obsession’?” We’ve been playing together ever since.

  We wouldn’t be able to do this if it weren’t for “Obsession.” It’s like a muscle car that sits in the garage, and everything about it is shiny.

  I go on YouTube and see Michael Des Barres performing at SXSW, and he prefaces “Obsession” by saying, “This is a song that I wrote that made me a bloody fortune.” The year that “Obsession” [was a hit for Animotion], each member of the band made about $50,000; the next year, just about nothing. Whether it’s fair or not, it doesn’t matter because I do
n’t know that Michael Des Barres ever sang a song that was an international hit. I wonder whether he would trade having been the singer of the hit song for the money, if he would’ve been able to walk out on stage, sing “Obsession,” and have people go, “That’s the voice, that’s the hit that we love.”

  DES BARRES: I’ve never had to struggle since. When I got the first check, I remember looking at [my ex-wife] Pamela and our baby, and we just sank to our knees. It’s put my kid through college, [supported] two wives, and more besides. One song enters the lexicon of American consciousness, and it will take care of you for the rest of your life.

  PLANE: We are still in debt to the record company to this day.

  “DO THEY KNOW IT’S CHRISTMAS?”

  On October 24, 1984, the BBC’s African correspondent Michael Buerk presented a six o’ clock news report on the famines devastating Ethiopia. Bob Geldof, the voluble, charismatic frontman of the Irish post-punk band the Boomtown Rats, was part of the viewing audience. Geldof’s recording career was sputtering to a halt, but his new incarnation as a rabble-rousing agent of change was just beginning. Buerk’s report motivated Geldof to recruit Ultravox singer Midge Ure to assist in rounding up every available British pop star for the purposes of making a fundraising record to aid Africa. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” quickly grew bigger than the sum of its parts—and its parts were pretty huge: Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Bono, George Michael, Sting, Boy George, and Paul Weller, to name a very few. It evolved beyond a song and became a means by which the nation could ease its conscience. It also altered the face of what pop music had become. After Band Aid and Live Aid, the world looked and sounded a little different. There was less flaunting of wealth and less overt escapism. There was less exhibitionism, less makeup, and less fun. In retrospect, it seems “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” brought down the curtain on the new wave era. It was a wake-up call that the delirious five-year party was drawing to a close.