Of course, new-wavers were eventually replaced as well: “America ruined new wave,” says Score, whose band hit it big with the MTV-fueled success of the “I Ran” single, only to come to represent the stylistic excesses of the ’80s decades later. “American bands, one afternoon they were rock bands and the next they were ‘new wave’ bands, crimping their hair — and that’s how it ended.”
“I grew up in a really gray place,” explains Oakey, “and new wave was the last sort of happy flowering of ‘Yay! We’re going to make big splashy records, we’re going to wear really bright clothes and make-up!’ ” Score recounts how when his band started, “the whole thing in Liverpool was very gothic, very dark punk, people wearing dark raincoats. Everyone looked the same, and we wanted to look different. We bleached our hair and put red shirts on. People would look at us and go, ‘What are you guys all about?’ We didn’t realize that it was part of a country-wide thing: people being a little bit happy, not so morbid!”
Eighties stars tend to have a bittersweet view of the ’90s. “I felt, when I moved to France in the early ’90s, that it was a turning point for me, creatively,” says Carlisle. “It was weird: I cut off all my hair, wore it really short, like I wanted to cut myself off from all that was. I went through a kind of identity crisis.” Oakey also laments the moment when, even at the top, he could see the precipice: “It was a pretty unhappy period. We were very aware that we weren’t as good as the chart statistics made us look, and that our producer was a pretty big part of our success. We couldn’t really play too well, and to a certain extent we didn’t even want to play really well; we kept thinking that we didn’t have the talent to justify being there.”
Self-depreciation aside, Oakey understands the cyclical appeal of ’80s music: optimism. “We absolutely loved punk, but we knew it was pretty hypocritical: a lot of pretty middle-class people who had rich parents, who weren’t having a hard time at all, complaining about unemployment, and we were just like, ‘C’mon mate, let’s just admit things are going good for us at the moment!’ "
THE HUMAN LEAGUE + BELINDA CARLISLE WITH ABC + A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS + NAKED EYES @ Regeneration Tour | Bank of America Pavilion, 290 Northern Ave, Boston | August 20 @ 7 pm | $25–$40 |www.livenation.com
