’80s Mania hits the Astor Theatre tonight with a quadruple bill featuring Paul Young, Go West, Nik Kershaw and Canadian band Cutting Crew.
The public’s love of the decade that brought day-glo socks and mullet hair-cuts seems to be never ending with many artists from the period finding an ever appreciative audience.
“I hope it’s because the songs have stood the test of time.” said Peter Cox of Go West. “You do wonder about parents who have indoctrinated their children with the music that grew up with, as the kids are growing up. I wonder if Social Services might have something to say about it.” Cox joked.
Bandmate Richard Drummie said he was at a loss to why the decade continues to spur fascination for such a wide audience.
‘All I do is hope people hear our songs and that they like them.” Drummie said.
“It’s great, we’re often playing to a cross section of age groups.” Cox said, noting that younger audiences seem to be open to hearing music from different decades.
Cox said the reunion nostalgic tours that team up a number of artists from the same era are popular with audiences.
“If they can come along and see three or four, or five or a dozen acts from that era, Martin [Fry] from ABC… he says it’s like a live jukebox.”
Drummie said he enjoys the camaraderie of the ’80s focused shows.
“We recently played a show with Nick Heyward, Nik Kershaw, ABC, Billy Ocean, Bananarama and Tom Bailey from the Thompson Twins. It was a great show and we all get on, but we’re all going out there trying to be the best though.”
“We want people to go home and say Go West was the best!”, Drummie said.
Australia has been a regular destination for the band over the few years and Cox declared it’s always one of his favourite places to visit.
“I’m sure interviewees say this all the time, but it genuinely is one of my favourite places to visit. I remember The Astor Theatre really well – we had a great day last time when we came with Tony Hadley.”
Despite recording their biggest hits over 30 years ago, the band say they still love playing the tunes.
This time round the band are performing together with Nik Kershaw. Cox said the audience will be treated to a few surprises during the show.
Looking back on their career Cox said with the benefit of hindsight that he wished the band had taken a different view when making their second album.
“We were reacting to how we realised we’d been promoted. This image of us as a pop band that was created for us. It’s not the image like Boy George or one of those stronger image related acts had, but none the less we were marked as a pop band – and we didn’t really feel ourselves that that is what we were.
Even today it’s hard not to say the name Go West and think of two guys wearing singlets, Cox said it’s hard for a band to shake off that imagery.
“You don’t realise that image is going to stay with you forever and ever!” Cox said. “Musically though we’re much more versatile than the label ‘pop band’ gives a person the impression who we might be.”
Drumie said the band have always taken their time in making new music.
“We’re a pair of control freaks!” said Drummie.
On their most recent set of EPs the duo have re-recorded some of their biggest hits. It’s a move that many artists from Suzanne Vega to Blondie have employed in recent years.
Drummie said the process if of recreating their best known work was quite weird.
“It’s weird to be honest, the motivation to be honest is financial.” Drummie shared. “The idea is you go and rerecord it and then you own the master. It would really be better if we could just agree with the people who own the copyright…but it doesn’t work that way.”
“It’s pretty odd. We’ve rerecorded ‘King of Wishful Thinking’, ‘Call Me’ and ‘We Close Our Eyes’. Its meant to be that when you hear it you don;t realise its a new version ,it’s quite a laboured pass time. In a scientific way, its kind of fun going back and listening to it and wondering ‘I wonder that that sound is?’
Drummie is full of praise for Cox’s vocal abilities in being able to recreate a vocal he first recorded in the early 1980’s.
“It was pretty acrobatic back then, on things like ‘We Close Our Eyes’ and ‘Call Me’ especially, I was pretty amazed at his ability, because you can’t change the key, people will notice.”
’80s Mania is at The Astor Theatre tonight, The show is sold out.
