I had some sort of weird epiphany over the weekend. I was sitting at a café with my wife looking over Sydney’s stunning harbour talking about the Escape Club album John and I have just finished recording. Just as I was saying that I hope people like our new songs, we spotted Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet drifting past like an apparition wearing a pair of very dodgy three-quarter length shorts with white socks and shoes that would have had the Fashion Police pulling him over back in the day when he was a fully paid-up member of the force.

It was a big weekend for me; Short Stack, a band that I have signed to my label were headlining at the Sydney Opera House that night, the biggest gig of their lives and the crowning moment of the three year journey we’ve had together. The Opera House steps were already filling with screaming teenage fans and I knew it was going to be a big night. On top of that, I’d just heard that the Escape Club are booked for a few 80’s revival gigs in the USA in August, one of them in Vegas.

I loved the Eighties so have no problem being wheeled out to remember them. The decade seemed to last a lifetime for me, probably in the way that these fleeting years are lasting for the guys in Short Stack. I’m happy to play the old songs and bring back memories of what is for many of us a mythical time. The new tours and album will come as well but in the meantime, we’re happy to indulge ourselves.

Spandau were playing with Tears for Fears the same night that I was with the youth at the Opera House and by all accounts put on a great show so I should forgive Martin for his questionable trouser decision that morning, you’ve got to give us more mature rockers a bit of leeway.

In the Eighties I fell in love a few times, joined a band, was unemployed more often than not, was scared of AIDS and what the Russians might do, hated Margaret and Ronnie, loved London, discovered America, played the Psychedelic Furs’ Mirror Moves and the Cure’s Head on the Door to death, met life-long friends, was free and blissfully unaware most of the time, thinking it would all last forever.

How was it for you?

We used to laugh so much that it hurt. I would often find myself rolling on the floor, convulsed with gut-wrenching hysterics. And it was rarely about anything that hilarious now that I look on it from a distance, nothing that would provoke more than a titter these days; a badly chosen word or a well-timed fart. It was just the wonderful free laughter that comes with being young and with your brothers, brimming with belief and heading for glory in the back of an old Transit Van. It was around about the time that we agreed that we’d never grow beards, except as a joke and never, even in extremis, suffer the indignity of being in a Rock and Roll band over the unthinkable age of 40.
I’m still proud to announce that more than two days’ growth of facial hair has never once festooned my upper lip or chin. I know that one or two of my associates may have affected the occasional goatee but goatees have a jazz cool that may have been allowed back in the day. Moustaches carried and still do, the death penalty.
I wonder though how my younger self would view the news that I’m sitting here today typing this, almost at the completion of a new Escape Club album and looking forward with some trepidation to going back on the road for the first time in fifteen years. With lip-curling distain I would think but then in those days we never really did see very far beyond our own generation’s mirror.
When we parted in the Nineties to go on our separate journeys I found it hard for a while to listen to any of our music without being filled by the emotion of too many crowded and sometime suppressed memories. It was a hard decision fuelled by finance and lawyers, a nasty jolt into the ‘real’ world and some of the worst days of our lives. John and I managed to survive and then thankfully flourish in the Music Industry as Writers and Producers and Johnny and Milan went on to start successful businesses. Family life took over and I suppose we all grew up because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you get older.
Now it’s 2010 and finishing a new album and thinking of a tour suddenly seems like the right thing to be doing. We realised there are a lot of people out there who aren’t being catered to by the conventional Music Industry, who grew up as we did, obsessed by music and hungry to hear new things that speak to us. The new album hopefully does that, it feels right to be coming out with more solid, mature songs but still with the E.C. sound. We’re separated by a planet these days, John and I both live in Australia and the other two guys are in the U.K.. We’ve spoken to them about joining us but they both have family commitments and have been away from music for a while so it’s the two of us for now but with acknowledgement that the past still walks with us.
All bands develop their own history and language and ours is no different, it’s a language that’s hard to translate and can only really make sense when all of its authors are together. I think we all miss each other more than we admit and when we eventually met a few years ago for a meal, it wasn’t long before the memories came back. “Do you remember when we were recording a demo at EMI?” We all started talking at once, remembering that three of us were in the control room when the head guy, can’t remember his name but a very Grande Fromage, came in unexpectedly and was doing the usual Royalty meets the surfs kind of thing, ‘ hello, nice to meet you, so pleased you signed to us,’ that kind of bullshit. The other band member, who should probably remain nameless walked in just as he was announcing, ‘ my cousin’s in the music business too, you may have heard of her, Helen Terry’
“Helen Terry,?” we all join in remembering what our newly-arrived band member said as if it were yesterday. “Big fat bag of wind.” The laughter comes back and I find myself gasping for air like I used to as we remember the pathetic back-peddling, “ Oh, did I say Helen Terry, no, no I meant er, Alison Moyet.” We didn’t stay signed to EMI for very long.

I seem to have wound up in a bizarre parallel Universe where Simon Cowell is a T.V. star and I’m living in Australia. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’ve got anything against Simon, or Australia for that matter; it’s just that I sometimes look around and ask myself, ‘how did I get here?’

I realised with a jump last night that an explanation can simply be boiled down to Auto-tune, a plug-in that was invented in the late Nineties as a method for tuning the vocal tracks of recordings. A harmless and useful tool in the right hands but on the dark side it can easily be used for evil. And it has been many times - enter Paris Hilton singing.

Here’s a thought: Without Auto-tune or it’s recent sneaky usurper Melodyne, ‘Idol ‘couldn’t exist. To take things further, without Idol and all it’s spin-offs and imitators, the airwaves and T.V. would be less clogged and record companies would have more to spend on signing new acts.

It’s not Simon’s fault, he’s just a smart cookie who knows how to make piles of money, and very ,very occasionally I’ll admit that they manage to find true talent. I can see how his personality is infectiously perfect for T.V. I genuinely like the guy, even when, back in the Nineties as pop producers, we used to make records for him, he always had that twinkle in his eye when he told us that our songs were crap or that we weren’t using the right Swedish snare drum sound that Britney’s producers were using. Back then he used to smoke menthol cigarettes and call everybody ‘darling’ but I guess times have changed and now the newly photo-shopped Simon sits on the panel and rips into the poor wannabe kids who try to impress him with their piteous attempts at Mariah – style vocal acrobatics. Of course as the dollars roll in, style wins over substance and some unfortunate record producer will be left to pick up the pieces after the winner’s announced, the fireworks have faded and everyone’s gone home. Hours will be spent painstakingly tuning the over-ambitious caterwaul of someone who up until a month ago could only be heard wailing in the shower. Sadly, I have first-hand experience of this, which brings me to how I ended up in Australia .

There are many right reasons for moving to Australia, the obvious one being that it’s as close as you can get to Paradise without all that tedious sucking up to God. From a professional point of view, it has many very talented musicians, artists, singers, all of whom are largely ignored by the Australian media for reasons best known to itself. It’s a perfect place to find and develop new talent for overseas, which I’m managing thankfully with the outstanding Short Stack. What brought me here however, I’m ashamed and squirm with embarrassment to admit was a reality T.V. show which sunk to unparalleled depths of amateurishness that looked bad even on Australian T.V. It made Australian Idol shine in comparison and trust me, that’s saying something. I sat on the panel, made the records and paid the price in the ensuing years but at least it got me into God’s own country, of which I’m now a proud citizen. It’s a long way to come from the heady days of The Escape Club but I think I’ve managed to claw back a little bit of dignity, at least in my own mind so I can now sleep at night without waking up screaming.