AFUXKOF
SEAGULLS
Songs for Our Gull-ible Age
by Barry Alfonso
Unexpected flying objects seem attracted to
Mike Score, a Flock of Seagulls’ lead
vocalist/keyboardist. Here comes one now —
a fat black bumblebee sweeps past Score’s
head, almost brushing the curtain of golden
hair which veils half of his face. Everyone at
the table by the Hollywood hotel pool starts
to duck, but there are no further divebomb
ing missions.
Score has seen a lot more than large bees
descend from the sky. On this hot and
smoggyjuly afternoon we’ve been discussing
the UFO he and brother Ali (the Flock’s
drummer) sighted in their native England
several years ago. Don’t tell them that the ob
ject was a surveillance plane or swamp gas —
they know it was a spacecraft.
“We were driving back from a pub when
we suddenly saw this'flash," he says in serious
tones. “This thing kind of skips across the sky,
and everytime it skipped there was another
flash of light.” His hand makes a rippling mo
tion in the air to illustrate. “There was no
build-up of noise like a jet would’ve made.
We’ve been told there are sightings of saucers
in that area all the time_”
Mike Score and his fellow Gulls have had
ample chance to tell Americans about this
Close Encounter. The band spent the better
pan of last year diligently touring the States,
bringing their spacey-but-danceable techno
rock to large and small audiences. And, in
classic show biz fashion, the hard work paid
off: a Flock of Seagulls is now among the
brightest of the rising New Music stars.
“I Ran" and “Space Age Love Song” as
cended high on the U.S. singles chans in '82,
defying any expectations that the Flock was
too odd for American tastes. This summer,
they did it again with “Wishing (If I Had A
Photograph of You),” like the band’s previous
hits a pulsating, moody track with a mysteri
ous lyric. A gold album and a Grammy (they
won for “Best Rock Instrumental") came to
the group within a year of their first LP re
lease on Arista.
Score is aware that his group is frequently
compared to the Human League, Duran Du
ran, Soft Cell and a host of other U.K. outfits
who base their sounds around synthesizers.
He’s quick to point out the difference be
tween the Flock and the rest of the pack.
“There are a lot of bands preaching doom and
despondency. They tell people to follow a
particular line. But we're not trying to say
what people should do or expound our
thoughts on the universe. We’d rather hide
our ideas in a song and let someone find the
little jewel.”
The Flock came together in Liverpool at the
end of 1979, after Mike Score (then earning
his way as a hairdresser) had served as bassist
with other groups. Switching to keyboards, he
formed his new band around brother Ali on
drums and Frank Maudsley on bass. After
many unsuccessful candidates, Paul Reynolds
was chosen for the guitarist’s slot. The com
bination of Mike’s synthesizer and Paul’s
guitar styles, placed on top of a solid rhythm
section, came to define the band’s sound.
The way Score tells it, the Flock was some
AMPERSAND
Sept./Oct. 83, page 17
The Gulls (clockwise, starting from
bottom): Paul Reynolds. Mike Score
and bis silly hairdo, Frank Mauds ley,
Ali Score.
what on the outside of the hip British music
circles at the start. During the band’s early pe
riod, the since-faded New Romantic move
ment was the chic development in U.K. rock.
In contrast to its foppish exponents (includ
ing Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet), a Flock
of Seagulls played with an aggressive edge.
‘We'd go out and play with a New Romantic
band,” says Score, ‘ and we’d let loose with
this horrendously powerful sound and they’d
come up with this wimpy little-thin-White-Boy
sound. We'd seem really outrageous, because
it wasn’t a fashionable thing back then."
If the Flock’s energized approach disturbed
the New Romantics’ sense of cool, it poised
the group for success across the Atlantic.
American rock fanciers are a lighter-hearted
lot than their British counterparts. Morose,
brooding bands such as Echo and the Bun
nymen and New Order do well in the U.K.
but have never found equal favor here.
"There’s a lot of British bands that wouldn’t
have done anything in America if we hadn’t
come here and toured as much as we did,”
Score feels. “We won over a lot of people by
playing live and that served as an advertise
ment for new English bands. Duran Duran
tried for a year to break in the States, but they
couldn't until we had an album in the Top
Ten here.”
There are a few dark undercurrents in
the Flock’s songs. Even a group as
technologically-inclined as they recognizes
the dangers of science out of control — "Man
Made," from their debut LP A Flock, of Sea
gulls, is a warning about the misuse of the
machine. The same applies to advances in
music, says Score: “If you can use technology
creatively, it’s good — if it uses you, it’s bad.”
Hand-in-hand with - the band’s interest in
musical advancements is a love for science
fiction, especially in films. While their fixation
on extraterrestrial phenomena might’ve been
too bizarre for the public in the past, the cur
rent mass appetite for outer-space movie
epics makes the Flock’s songs quite in step
with the times. “Everybody wants to believe
in flying saucers nowadays,” says Score.
“When they go to a science fiction film, they
want to escape into it, to let it saturate them.
It’s the same thing when they hear our
music.”
Score’s lyrics often personify (and
eroticize) his cosmic themes. I mention to
him that “I Ran,” “Space Age Love Song” and
"Wishing” all depict goddess-like women who
visit male earthlings, only to prove elusive in
the end. “I find it easy to sing about that,” he
acknowledges. “The woman in those songs is
a dream woman, always in the mind but
never in the flesh. You always want the one
you can’t get, I guess.”
Does the band worry that such private fan
tasies might be lost on the public? “That
doesn’t concern me at all,” Score responds.
“I’m sure we've done songs that have com
pletely different meanings to the people who
listen to them than they do to us. That’s why
we don’t put lyric sheets in our albums — if
you actually put the words down, maybe it’ll
ruin someone’s ideas of what the songs are
about. You’ve got to make people feel things,
not just put it all out on a plate for them.”
Right now, a Flock of Seagulls is perceived
as primarily a dance band, but Score doesn't
guarantee they’ll stay that way. “We’re getting
more into atmospheric stuff with Listen (their
latest album). We’re still developing — I think
it takes a band five to ten years to develop a
special way of playing and recording. Record
companies want you to do your hits over and
over again. Sometimes, you have to forget
about success to progress musically.”
MICHAEL PARE
CONT FROM PG. 10
acting hurdles of off-Broadway, summer
stock, commercials and soap operas. "It was a
good experience,” he allows. "1 learned how
to hit my mark and get to make-up and ward
robe on time.”
Along the way, Pare tix>k a breather and got
married. ‘‘I met my wife Lisa when my
brother Terrance, who writes romance
novels, took her out on a blind date. We’ve
been married two years." Lisa, a law student,
studies and works as an assistant in the Los
Angeles D.A.'s office. “We’ll stay in California
until she finishes school,” Pare confides.
"Then hopefully move to upstate New York.”
Not, apparently, if the Hollywood powers
that-be have anything to say about it. In the
midst of his stint on Greatest American Hero,
Pare was singled out by director/writer Martin
Davidson to star in Eddie and the Cruisers. “It
was a big gamble,” Pare says, “for both of us. I
really felt the pressure, but in the end, being
able to get up on stage and let loose, it all tell
together. 1 loved it.” Pares involvement in
two rock-oriented pictures (Streets of Eire
concerns the kidnapping of a rock and roll
singer, played by Diane Lane, in some doomv,
unspecified future, and features a perfor
mance by rockabilly purists the Blasters)
raises questions of Pare’s own interest in
modern sounds. “I wish 1 could sing like
Frank Sinatra," he responds, answering sev
eral questions at the same time. “Music’s
okay, but I never go out to concerts or any
thing. It's too dangerous ... too marry maniacs
out there. When I get time off I like to fish, or
whittle or cook. It helps me relax.”
Hovering behind the cameras, Hill instructs
his young lead to get into a fire-engine red,
chopped, channeled and lowered Mercury
that sits ready on the hosed-down street, wait
for his cue, then stride out through a phalanx
of 1951 bullet-nose Studebakers, decked out
as world-of-tomorrow police cars, and glare
menacingly at the lens. Pare prepares for the
scene with a bit of shadow boxing and, after
four takes, returns to his chair, the job well
done.
“After Eddie and the Cruisers I went to Au
stralia to be in a movie called Undercover,”
he picks up, as his Streets of Fire co-star Diane
Lane (last seen in Coppola’s ill-fated The Out
siders) rehearses her next shot. “It was di
rected by David Stevens who did A Town Like
Alice and wrote Breaker Morant. It was the
first time I’d ever been out of the country.”
And the second time in two films he landed a
leading role. "I play a New York promotion
man in the 1920's who goes to Australia to
teach people how to sell corsets. It’s kind of
like a Cary Grant/Doris Day screwball com
edy.” He adds, “Australia is a beautiful coun
try, but empty. There really isn’t much com
petition over there if you’re an actor."
What Pare knows about competing is, on
the other hand, hardly a topic for meaty dis
cussion. Two weeks after returning from
down under, Hill called him with an offer.
The kind of breaks that have littered his
career to date don't seem to be diminishing:
if Streets of Fire is a hit, which appears likely
from both Hill’s current success and the fash
ionably futuristic Ux)k of things around the
back lot, Pare, as Cody, is assured of a starring
role in at least two more films. “Cody is a
character I think Americans can really identify
with," Pare says. “He’s someone w'ho can
come in and straighten everything out. It’s
great to be that guy.”
As Hill summons his star back to the set, a
sweating extra, shrouded in black leather,
looks up briefly from a copy of Variety. “Look
at that," he says to a nearby lighting man with
a mixture of awe and contempt in his voice.
“Walter is setting him up in every shot like he
was Clint Eastwood or something ..