A Flock Of Seagulls - Gabbiani nell’era spaziale

The Eighties, pop music, celebrity. And makeup, catwalks, teen magazines, posters on the bedroom wall… It's August 1st, 1981, when MTV is born, the famous TV channel that would go on to have a revolutionary impact on how artists and songs were promoted, as well as an enormous hold on the masses not just from a purely musical standpoint, but in broader socio-cultural terms too. The very first act to appear on the fledgling channel are the Buggles: their "Video Killed The Radio Star" opens the proceedings with the chorus that would come to symbolize the decade, as well as providing an extraordinarily prophetic title for what was about to happen across the entire record industry, where the rise of the sound-image would cement the triumph of the new video clip format. Thanks to it, sales would suddenly spike for bands that later became quite popular but had previously struggled even to get airplay on the radio. Pat Benatar herself (second in the lineup with "You Better Run"), Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow, Culture Club, Abc and many others besides would soon acknowledge that part of their fortune was down to the heavy rotation of their singles on screen, where appeal, costumes and the look of the artists themselves inevitably began to play a starring role too.

I just ran

A few months of fine-tuning for the network, between new programming and revamped distribution strategies for the market, and so 1982 becomes the perfect year and A Flock Of Seagulls the perfect band: they have the right video clip in hand and a one-of-a-kind image, built around a hairstyle too outlandish and original to go unnoticed. "And to think that hairstyle was born by accident," Mike Score chuckles today. "I was trying to copy Ziggy Stardust's swept-back cut. Before a gig I was combing my hair and Frank (Maudsley, the band's original bassist) accidentally put his hand on my head — when he lifted it, I saw he'd flattened the middle part, and I loved the effect!" Two distinctive wings swept upward on the sides and a long, pointed blond fringe that really does look like a seagull in shape, while the band's name comes from the Stranglers song "Toiler On The Sea" (included on their album "Black And White"), in which Hugh Cornwell repeatedly shouts "a flock of seagulls! A flock of seagulls!" at the end. Truth be told, today very little remains of that illustrious hairdo, but it's still endlessly referenced, parodied and paid homage to, in films (most notably Pulp Fiction), sitcoms ("Friends", for instance) and TV commercials (the most famous being the Pepsi ad). On top of all this, the band also happened to come up with about as fashionable a pop song as you could ask for, so the moment finally arrives to launch them into orbit. It's 1982, MTV puts the video for "I Ran" into heavy rotation, and the track becomes a hit everywhere: it reaches the Top Ten in the United States (where, due to tensions with Iran, the title is tweaked to "I Ran (So Far Away)") and hits number one in Australia, powered by a killer chorus and a relentless rhythm. The video itself is also a little gem: directed by Toni Van Den Ende, it's set in a room entirely lined with mirrors and aluminum foil, where the band members, their instruments and even the cameras used to film it are endlessly multiplied by the constant interplay of reflections, all as a tribute to the famous cover of "No Pussyfooting", the 1973 album by the duo Fripp/Eno. With "I Ran (So Far Away)", A Flock Of Seagulls gave the decade one of its most iconic jingles, crafting an instant classic of the kind where just one is enough to sum up the vices and virtues of the entire pop side of the decade — like "Fade To Grey" by Visage, say, or "You Spin Me Round" by Dead or Alive, or "Smalltown Boy" by Bronski Beat, just to name a few acts often dismissed as one-hit wonders or, more simply, flashes in the pan, but who in fact have more to their name than that. As with A Flock Of Seagulls themselves, for whom riding that wave with dignity for a good five years wasn't enough to shake off the irritating label. A career that ended just as abruptly as it began, the band both benefiting from and later falling victim to the very image that had done so much to grant them their moment of glory. "People would look at us and laugh…" Mike adds, "...but we were making serious music!" And really, who could blame him? You only need to take a small step back to find some notable singles and a near-flawless debut album.

Here come the aliens

Liverpool, 1979. Michael "Mike" Score (vocals and keyboards) is a hair-stylist; he and Francis Lee "Frank" Maudsley (bass) work together at Mike's beauty salon. In the evenings they pull down the shutters and end up jamming in the back room together with Alister "Ali" Score (drums), Mike's older brother. A Flock Of Seagulls come together a few months later, when guitarist Paul Reynolds joins the three of them, and the whole band starts playing local dance clubs in search of a record deal: it's Bill Nelson, a musical jack-of-all-trades, who offers them one, releasing their first EP, "Telecommunication", on his own label, Cocteau Records. It contains the singles "It's Not Me Talking" and "Telecommunication", which fail in their first assault on the charts but nonetheless become two minor cult hits within the wave circuit, both shaped by strongly dark atmospheres and electro-dance rhythms, fitting for a Liverpool scene that, in those days, was also seeing the first steps of bands of the caliber of Omd, Teardrop Explodes, Echo and The Bunnymen and China Crisis — and the compositional style of Score and co. couldn't help but be shaped by it in turn.

The band gets the chance to open for Squeeze's American tour, and then comes an even bigger deal, with Jive Records, and in 1982 their debut full-length arrives, the self-titled A Flock Of Seagulls. It's a fairly ambitious concept album, telling the story of an alien invasion of Earth starting right from the striking cover art: a closed room, a TV switched on with (of course) seagulls flying across the screen, while outside the window UFOs can clearly be seen, already arrived for the invasion. The storyline unfolds sequentially across a tracklist that never lets up, moving between technology and science fiction, romance and digital beats.

It naturally opens with "I Ran (So Far Away)", presented here in its full-length version: a long keyboard intro mimics the cry of seagulls while an increasingly urgent electronic groove builds to an explosive peak, crowned by Paul Reynolds' closing solo — a constant throughout the album, a captivating example of futurist pop in which the synthesizers are never pushed to excess, precisely so as not to steal the spotlight from the talented guitarist. Some critics singled him out as the band's real winning weapon, rightly calling him one of the most underrated musicians of the era. His look, too, is instantly recognizable: he always wears a pair of large dark glasses with a distinctive white frame, and he'd started out playing with Cindysbeentrippin before joining the Flock at just seventeen. So it's his guitar that drives "Space Age Love Song", the second single and one of the band's most beloved songs, which eases off the tempo here in favor of increasingly tender atmospheres, while Score's voice turns airy and dreamlike: the result is a pseudo-ballad with a dreamy quality that closely recalls the Psychedelic Furs of their "Heaven" period. We're deep in new wave territory here, and the whole album offers a thorough, comprehensive cross-section of it, between Kraftwerk-esque pulses — their very first song, "Telecommunication", is reprised here, close to some of the experimental leanings of later-period Omd (the "Dazzle Ships" and "Radio Waves" era) — and post-punk aggression ("Standing In The Doorway" and "You Can Run" are its finest expressions).

Notable is "Modern Love Is Automatic", steeped in gothic tones: an icy gust of wind through the speakers introduces brisk keyboards and drumming, while a disillusioned Score laments the loss of feeling in the modern age. "Messages", on the other hand, is a small electro-dance masterpiece, closely echoing the wave sound beloved of early Spandau Ballet on "Journeys To Glory" ("Reformation" or "To Cut A Long Story Short") and the self-titled debut of Duran Duran ("Planet Earth" or "Friends Of Mine"). Rounding things off are "Don't Ask Me", "Man Made" (which confirms the aliens' triumph over humanity and closes the concept), and the instrumental "DNA", which earned the band a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. It's curious to note how many bands at the heart of this scene featured an instrumental track on their debut album: Le Bon and co. did it with "Tel Aviv", Spandau Ballet with "Age Of Blows", and the same path was followed by Visage ("Moon Over Moscow"), Gary Numan ("Airlane"), Ultravox in the Ure era ("Astradyne") and Depeche Mode ("Big Muff"), among the most famous. Mere coincidence, or artistic quirk? Or perhaps an attempt to distance themselves from a certain snobbish critical faction that would, some time later, coin the term "new romantic" for them (borrowed from the line, by way of Duran Duran, "Some new romantic looking for the T.V. sound")?

At the time of its release, though, A Flock Of Seagulls immediately won over a large following; some illustrious opinions (Phil Spector) went so far as to call it downright "phenomenal", while others simply appreciated it as a solid, on-trend commercial product. On one point, though, critics and audiences agree unanimously: this successful debut is a minor classic that goes well beyond mere "I Ran (So Far Away)" — which nonetheless remains, without question, the high point in the career of a band that would never again hit those heights, except with "Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)", a brand new single that would pave the way for their second album, Listen.

The last flight

In 1982 the band is riding a wave of great popularity, and anticipation builds for their second studio effort, which at least initially seems to live up to expectations: the new single "Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)" is released in November and in England becomes an even bigger hit than "I Ran (So Far Away)", which curiously had failed to crack the Top Ten at home. "Wishing" manages it instead, capturing A Flock Of Seagulls still at their very best: it's immediate synth-pop, but with a lavish arrangement, built on a hypnotic keyboard riff with an uptempo cadence, while the lyrics mournfully lament the distance from a beloved. It instantly becomes another of the band's signature songs and probably the track most beloved by their fans, but it will remain the only true hit spawned by the second album Listen, which nonetheless achieves fair commercial success. The album comes out a few months later, in May 1983, and, as with its predecessor, is entrusted to the care of Mike Howlett, former bassist of Gong, now a full-time producer already at work with Martha and the Muffins, OMD, Gang Of Four and Blancmange. This time Howlett shifts the emphasis entirely onto electronic instrumentation, resulting in a sound perfectly in step with the times, though one that can't quite disguise a certain step backward for the band in terms of inspiration and clarity, while also pushing Reynolds's guitar virtuosity into the background, as he gradually fades from the spotlight in favor of increasingly dominant synthesizers.

The album still yields a few decent moments, including the drumming on the second single "Nightmares", the more robotic "The Traveller" and "('It's Not Me') Talking", dug up from their first EP, while the rest of the tracklist ("Transfer Affection", "Electrics", "Over The Border") drifts into ill-judged electro experiments and melodic clichés worthy of a photo-romance magazine, with the exception of the elegant, apocalyptic "The Fall", which alongside "Wishing" is the only truly memorable track: the seagull Score, here taking its last flap of the wings, keeps mournfully asking "Is this the fall?". The answer is yes, not least because, despite the title, Listen will find fewer and fewer aficionados willing to give an ear to a band that within a couple of years has completely lost the verve of its best days along with any creative ambition, ending up trapped in an image that is now passé and a parody of itself.

The English band's stock is thus on the decline, and clear proof of this comes with the sales flop that greets the release of The Story Of A Young Heart in 1984: only the first single, "The More You Live, The More You Love", achieves moderate success, thanks to a chorus as catchy as it is nostalgic for times gone by. New producer Steve Lovell tries to forge a smoother sound that makes the synths less overbearing than on the previous LP, but overall the album drifts toward a sterile, inconclusive brand of Euro-pop.

By now Score's singing also sounds monotonous, and it fails to give any real personality to the other two singles, "Never Again (The Dancer)" and "Remember David", which indeed leave no trace of themselves on the charts.

At this point Reynolds leaves, but the Flock decide to carry on as a trio for the promotional tour of the United States anyway: the band still enjoys enormous popularity thanks to the lingering impact of their first two albums, and the tour proves a success, as shown by four consecutive sold-out nights in Philadelphia. In an attempt to revive their fortunes, the band then relocates to Philadelphia itself, though after a short while Frank Maudsley grows homesick and returns to England, while following some friction Ali leaves for Boston, where he finds work at a computer company and starts playing with a hard-rock band.

Even with the lineup split and scattered, A Flock Of Seagulls nevertheless set to work on a new album with a famously troubled genesis, with Maudsley trying to act as a go-between for the two brothers from Britain: the result will be a flop on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Dream Come True comes out in 1986 and is a soul-leaning album, more in line with American tastes than with the band's traditional habits. To promote it, a double video is released that captures in quick succession the two singles "Who's That Girl (She's Got It)" and "Heartbeat Like A Drum": it's the last time the three of them are seen together, not least because a new, bitter dispute over which tracks to include in the setlist leads to the band's breakup, this time for good. At this point Mike Score takes ownership of the "A Flock Of Seagulls" name, keeps performing live with other musicians, and with an entirely new line-up releases the single "Magic" in 1989: it won't even make the charts.

The single will later be reused on The Light At The End Of The World, which comes out six years later, in 1995. It's the fifth and final studio album to bear the band's name. The singles are the same "Magic", plus "Burning Up" and "Rainfall", ambitious yet clumsy attempts to update the sound to 1990s trends. The result is a bizarre grunge-wave fusion, partly a consequence of the fact that some of the songs had been written six or seven years earlier. Here too the reception is nightmarish: critics call the album "boring and embarrassing"; as for the public, very few will even notice its release.

Better, then, to make the most of the name and settle into a steady routine of concerts and revival shows: the band reunites in its original lineup for the first time in 2003, for the TV series Bands Reunited, where A Flock Of Seagulls naturally perform "I Ran (So Far Away)" and "Space Age Love Song"; the following year they set off for a few live shows in the United States, after which they split up again, only to re-record together "This Used To Be My Playground", a Madonna cover featured on "The World's Greatest 80's Tribute To Madonna" in 2006, a tribute compilation in which many of the era's sensation-artists pay homage to the American pop star.

Today Paul Reynolds continues to perform with a few minor jazz bands in England, while Mike Score has embarked on a solo career that in 2014 produced his first album, "Zeebratta", a new project steeped in electronic and ambient music. A few years later, on 6 July 2018, A Flock Of Seagulls surprisingly reunite in their original four-piece lineup and release their sixth album, Ascension, which features eleven old songs re-recorded with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra alongside a new, previously unreleased title track, "Ascension". The reception from both audiences and critics is fairly positive, and they seem to catch a taste for it, since just twelve months later, in July 2019, Inflight (The Extended Essentials) comes out, relaunching the band's biggest hits in extended versions. Meanwhile Score works on a second solo record, "Space Boy", which however remains on stand-by and has yet to see the light of day, while in August 2021 a new, again orchestrally-tinged album by the band arrives, String Theory, recorded between Trieste and Ljubljana this time alongside the Slovenian Symphonic Film Orchestra and promoted on YouTube with the video for "Say You Love Me". So, slowly but surely, something is moving, and finally we arrive at the summer of 2024 when, thirty years on from the last album The Light At The End Of The World, the single "Some Dreams" heralds the unexpected arrival of a new album of original material, slated for 2025.

Ride the wave of great music

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