Before “Come On Eileen,” we were on our uppers [U.K. slang for “going through hard times”]. It had been two years since the previous number one. We’d changed labels, and the records had done all right but not great, and at least one hadn’t done anything at all. We weren’t exactly flavor of the month at the record company. There was talk of them dropping us, and a lot of other people like Adam Ant had come through. I always want what I haven’t got—or I used to. I was hankering after pop success at that point. I’m not saying we wrote it with that in mind. Oh, that I would be that clever. But we did write it, like everything we did, the best we possibly could. We worked our arses off. Every detail counted.
We weren’t trying to make a happy song. I liked songs that reminded you of the summer, like the Beach Boys, like “Do Anything You Wanna Do” by Eddie and the Hot Rods, like “Concrete and Clay” by Unit 4 + 2—good songs that sounded good in the summer. And [“Come On Eileen”] really worked. It’s got so many different rhythms going on. It’s got the [sings intro] bom-bom-bom, bom-bom-bom. It’s got the banjos, and then you got the piano. We worked really hard on it.*
We really enjoyed it when it was going up the charts, but I must admit the treadmill of going around touring everywhere and doing promotion I found exhausting. You’re going to America and you’re doing an interview while you’re having your breakfast. I’m not very good as a pro, and I wasn’t prepared to schlep around America. We did two three-week tours, and after that I was like, I want to go home.
We did the demo for the next album [1985’s Don’t Stand Me Down], and when the manager came round to my flat and I played it for him, he made that noise, that intake of breath, like “Oooh, are you sure about this? You could lose everything you’ve got.” And I was thinking, What the fuck have I got? I just felt like I was an arm of the record company. I felt I had to keep a smile up because everybody I knew was going, “You should be really happy. Things are going so well for you everywhere.” And I was thinking, Yeah, I should be happy, shouldn’t I? What’s wrong with me? I didn’t think I deserved it. I thought other people would be jealous of me, and I thought the band would be jealous. I just got really paranoid and withdrawn, but I had to keep on smiling, or thought I did. I didn’t even have a car. I was in Birmingham. I would get on the bus and the driver would say, “Can you come back to the depot and meet everybody?” That happened in taxis too. I didn’t want to disappoint people, but everywhere I went, it just seemed relentless. I liked it on the way up, the first couple of months, but the workload coupled with pressure, and suddenly, a whole organization developed around us, all depending on you and all smiling at you.
* “BIG” JIM PATERSON, Dexys trombonist, “Come On Eileen” co-writer: “I can’t understand how people can dance to it. It’s an awkward tempo—the slow-down, stop, speed-up thing. How can you keep up?”
THAT WAS THEN
BUT THIS IS NOW
Don’t Stand Me Down divided critics and ended the band as a U.K. commercial force. Subsequently, the album’s cult following has blossomed, and it is revered as a neglected classic. The group called it a day in 1986. Rowland released two solo albums, The Wanderer (1988) and, 11 years later, the notorious My Beauty (a.k.a. the one where he wears a dress on the cover). After Rowland’s protracted battle with cocaine and numerous attempts to reunite the band, Dexys started playing live again in 2003. Rowland announced a new album in 2005. Seven years later, that album, One Day I’m Going to Soar, was released to acclaim. The band has been successfully touring Britain since the record’s release, including a stint in London’s posh West End. They play the entire album every show.
ROWLAND: Not that I don’t think [“Come On Eileen”] is a classic. It probably is. I’m not ready to look back. I’m just always thinking about now, and I’m grateful for the money. Not that we had the most amazing deal ever, but we get money from it, and it’s enabled us to be where we are now. If I hear it, it’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s a really good song, and we’re glad that it’s been successful. But we’re known as one-hit wonders in America, and that’s not something I’m happy about. I know it’s better than being a no-hit wonder, but over here [in the U.K., in case you forgot] we’re known for a lot more. All right, the main thing we’re known for is “Come On Eileen,” and some would know us from “Geno,” but there are quite a few people who know about our albums and what we’re really about and who follow us now. We’ve had a great response to [One Day I’m Going to Soar], and, God willing, that’s going to change things for us in America. But who knows? I haven’t got the highest expectations.
MIXTAPE: 5 More Songs Named After Girls 1. “Louise,” The Human League 2. “Christine,” Siouxsie and the Banshees 3. “Charlotte Sometimes,” The Cure 4. “Stand Down Margaret,” English Beat 5. “Joan of Arc,” Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
“I WANT CANDY”
You’re Malcolm McLaren. The world sees you as the Situationist Svengali responsible for the Sex Pistols. But when your brainchild implodes as messily and unexpectedly as they exploded, what do you do for an encore? In 1980, McLaren kicked Adam Ant out of his own band and recruited a 13-year-old Anglo-Burmese schoolgirl to front his new creation. Like the refurbished Ants, Bow Wow Wow were a heady collision of Burundi drumming and twangy surf guitar. But in Annabella Lwin, the group found they’d recruited less a traditional lead singer and more a human popcorn popper. Her breathless shrieks, giggles, gurgles, and growls infused Bow Wow Wow’s early material with a giddy innocence that, in the U.K. at least, would prove the group’s salvation and undoing. McLaren’s attempt to wring fresh outrage from the British public by putting his grubby fingerprints all over his underage leading lady’s unspoiled youth was deflated by Lwin’s natural effervescence. By the time America took notice, Bow Wow Wow had ditched the breakneck tempo and the flirtation with adolescent exploitation and evolved into a more muscular, more traditional pop band. A mere three years after they formed, the group unceremoniously kicked Lwin to the curb and brought the curtain down on Bow Wow Wow. It was a premature end to a career that might have had a little more mileage, but, then again, Bow Wow Wow was not a group that needed to grow up or get any older.
JB: Was Malcolm McLaren a genius? Did he brilliantly choreograph every chapter in the Sex Pistols’ short history? Did he simply hang on for the ride after the band swore up a storm on Bill Grundy’s TV show in 1976? My inclination is to answer the preceding questions no, no, and yes. But the Malcolm McLaren of 1980? The one who got the then-mighty EMI Corporation to bankroll a band fronted by a girl singing about taping songs off the radio onto blank cassettes as if it were a seditious act that struck at the heart of the bloated music industry? That guy was a goddamn Nostradamus. I’m okay with “I Want Candy,” and I appreciated producer Mike Chapman’s steering the group in a mid-period Blondie direction. But the beautiful, frenetic music Bow Wow Wow produced between “C30 C60 C90 Go” and “See Jungle (Jungle Boy)” was the sound of a young woman’s triumph over a charming charlatan who did not have her best interests at heart.
LM: Annabella was my first girl crush. She was my age, she had that Mohawk, she posed naked on that album cover, and in the video for “I Want Candy,” her exotic, bronze skin glistened in the sun. I loved the way she emerged from the sea like a teenage Bo Derek. The guys in the group flashed a lot of skin too, but I barely noticed. Annabella was the epitome of new wave cool. In the summer of ’82, “I Want Candy” was an anthem for being young and carefree. It captured the singer at her sassiest; she was provocative without being skanky. Naked, she exuded more innocence than a fully buttoned-up Rihanna. There were other female pop stars I admired—Olivia Newton-John, Pat Benatar, Annie Lennox—but none I could relate to as a teen. And now, three decades on, when I’m a mature, married woman, with all the responsibility that entails … I’d still do her.
LEIGH GORMAN: I’d just joined Adam and the Ants, and Malcolm comes along and he goes, “Well, Adam, your music is rubbish.” He had u
s spellbound in the rehearsal room, just sitting there smoking Marlboros and intimidating us. Malcolm didn’t like me. He said, “He’s too much of a muso; he’s not a punk. You need to find some kid in a club who can’t really play.” Adam said, “No, this guy’s good. He might come up with something.” So they put me to one side and said, “If you want to stay in this band, you’re gonna have to come up with some good ideas.”
[Malcolm and Adam] put [drummer Dave Barbarossa, guitarist Matthew Ashman, and me] in the rehearsal room and said, “We want you to reinterpret these songs.” There were 23 songs on a cassette that Adam put together. One was “Rave On,” another was “Mystery Train,” another was “Hello Hello” by Gary Glitter. There was some Turkish belly dance music, and there was a song called “Burundi Black,” this drum record that was out in the seventies. I played a little African drum to it, and I thought, Sounds like the little legs of ants going. I drew a mind map of what I thought “Antmusic” [might sound] like. When Malcolm and Adam came down to the rehearsal room, we played “Hello Hello” and “Rave On,” and Malcolm looked at us and said, “Your band’s rubbish. You should fire them.” Then someone said, “We’ve got one more song.” It was the African thing. Malcolm went, “Right, that’s your ticket.”
Turns out Dave Barb was into Latin music, and he found he had a flair for coming up with all these different Latin roots. So we had the African and the Latin thing, and we combined them. Malcolm and Adam would give us a yay or nay. We all thought any one of us was going to get fired any minute if we didn’t come up with the goods. But Adam wasn’t getting in on our groove. His lyrics and vocals weren’t fitting on top of the music. Malcolm has a cruel sense of humor. He would push us to one side and say to Adam, “You stand over there.” He would look at us and go, “Yeah that’s really good,” and look at Adam and shake his head.
Then Malcolm brought someone who he said was an engineer and had a studio that we could record in. He listened to us play, then they took me and Dave to a pub, and Malcolm said, “This guy is not an engineer. He’s a musical arranger from the West End, and I brought him down to evaluate you. He said you two are great, the guitar player is OK, but the singer is crap.” He has no idea about punk rock or Adam’s history. Then [McLaren] said, “I’m going to give you this option: You can be your own band and not just an employee of Adam. You find a new singer, you’ve got this sound, and I’ll be your manager.”
I wasn’t happy. I thought, Adam supported me when Malcolm tried to get rid of me. But we also thought, Malcolm must know what he’s talking about. But I didn’t feel it was right, going behind someone’s back. And I didn’t think Adam was that bad, but I did feel that he wasn’t fitting in with our music. But I thought that it would come in time. But I also thought maybe Adam wouldn’t like me in a month and would fire me. So we decided to go with our own band. Looking back, though, it was a mistake to get rid of Adam. ’Cause Adam was definitely a star.
“Malcolm had a saying: ‘If you want to have a successful band, you have to have sex, style, and subversion.’”
The next day, we came to rehearsals, and Adam knew something was up. Dave—he’d been with him for three or four years in Adam and the Ants—said, “Adam, I want to leave the band. We’ve got something special going on here, and it seems like you’re not into it.”
Then Adam said, “What about you, Leigh?” And I went, “Well, actually, I’m with Dave.” So Adam went, “I suppose it’s just going to be me and Matt.” And Matthew said, “Well, actually, Adam …” And Adam went, “Oh my God! I’m getting kicked out of my own band!”
I could see Malcolm sitting at the back, smoking his Marlboro like a little Mephistophelian, a little devil smiling as all the smoke rose above him. I thought, This isn’t funny. It’s cruel. Adam was very, very upset. Then Malcolm said, “Okay, Adam. Let’s go upstairs and have a cup of tea.” I thought, Well, good luck to him. I hope he does well. I didn’t realize he’d do that well!
When we were looking for a new singer, we didn’t care whether it was male, female, black, white, Chinese. We wanted the band to be multicultural. We were looking for something like Frankie Lymon, like a black 13-year-old. We wanted someone special, someone who was different in some way. Annabella’s being young, female, and Asian was different. She had a certain naïveté, and when she got on the mic, she just blasted it out.
ANNABELLA LWIN: I never wanted to be famous. I never had any of those aspirations. I wanted to be an air stewardess. I used to sing along to records and to Cliff Richard when he was on TV. I thought he could see me. The day I was discovered, I was working at my Saturday job [at Shamrock Express, a dry cleaner in North West London] and singing along to the radio. I was very, very shy, so why I was chosen to be in the band, I don’t know. You’d have to ask Malcolm McLaren, but, God rest his soul, he’s no longer here. I think he found my background interesting, because I am half Burmese, half English. I was a girl who was at school one day and, after the audition for Malcolm, I joined the band and was told I’d have to leave school.
My relationship with Malcolm was pretty good. I got on as well with him as any person could. I think he was 50 at the time. I was 14. He was in the studio when I was recording the early stuff, and he inspired me just by talking to me. I had a fondness for the English countryside; it was the most beautiful place to visit when I was a child. Malcolm heard me talking about the country, and that’s where “Go Wild in the Country” came from. He told me, “This is you going down to the country, and how do you feel about that?” He really made me use my imagination. The only thing I didn’t like about the lyrics to that song were the lines, “I don’t like you / I don’t like your town.” I said to Malcolm, “Why would I say that? It makes no sense.” He said, “You’re talking about going from London to the countryside, where snakes in the grass are absolutely free.” Some of the songs were written before I even came on board, like “Sexy Eiffel Towers.” When Malcolm told me it was about falling off the Eiffel Tower, I believed it. Later, I found out it was from a French porno film. He was a great storyteller.
GORMAN: Malcolm had a saying: “If you want to have a successful band, you have to have sex, style, and subversion.” That was his formula, and he tried to introduce that with Annabella. We rebelled against that a bit because she was too young. But a little didn’t hurt. I thought [the 1981 See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! album cover, where Lwin is sitting naked on a picnic blanket next to her fully clothed male bandmates] was a good, artistic idea. It wasn’t too lewd; it wasn’t too lascivious. You wouldn’t get away with it now, ’cause standards are different. It’s based on a painting by Manet called Le déjeneur sur l’herbe—The Luncheon in the Grass—and it was risqué, obviously. But I thought it was tasteful, and it was an artistic statement. Annabella went along with it—she was a little trouper. I think her mum objected to it. I’m a parent now; I understand. That’s why we dialed down a lot of the nonsense. I’m not sure she was quite aware of it. When she wasn’t around, we would say, “No, no, that’s too much.” I felt like we were her older brothers.
MIXTAPE: 5 More New Wave Cover Versions 1. “Always Something There to Remind Me,” Naked Eyes 2. “Rock ’N’ Roll/ Nightclubbing,” The Human League 3. “If You Want Me to Stay,” Ronny 4. “Femme Fatale,” Propaganda 5. “Memphis Tennessee,” Silicon Teens
LWIN: The rest of the group were all in their 20s. I didn’t really have any chemistry with them. Matthew was the only guy in the band I felt a connection with. How can I put this without it sounding really, really strange? It’s like you meet people, and you either click or you don’t, right? I didn’t spend a lot of time with them. I got on stage, and whatever happened, happened. In those days, I didn’t speak very much because I was told not to. I didn’t really enjoy the experience with the guys in the band, let’s put it that way. If you’ve seen any footage of interviews I’ve done back in those days, you can see I’m very short and sharp and pretty aloof. I’ve see
n some footage, and I think I must come across like a really cocky young girl. But I was very shy, very unconfident. I had no idea what I was doing. I look at that girl now, and I don’t know who she was.
GORMAN: Me and Malcolm took “Go Wild in the Country” round to the publishers, and they went, “Well, that’s not quite strong enough.” And the American branch of RCA said we needed a more radio-friendly song, otherwise they weren’t going to give us any tour support.
So we were thinking, plotting: What could we do? I go, “Let’s do a cover. What about a classic bubblegum song?” Bubblegum songs had great hooks, and we could update one with our percussive vibe. A guy called Steve Leeds, who worked with [Joan Jett and the Blackhearts manager-producer] Kenny Laguna, suggested “I Want Candy” by the Strangeloves. It had a fantastic hook, lots of connotations and meanings, and it’s a love song about someone in a sunny way.
They flew us to Miami, put us in a posh house with a cook and a maid and a swimming pool. We’d never experienced anything like that. They’d spent a fortune—which, of course, we had to pay back over the years—and put us in a studio with Kenny, who was part of that era, so he seemed perfect for it. We hadn’t actually heard it properly yet at that point, so we were given cassettes at the airport; we put ’em in our Walkman, and we were listening to it on the way to the house.
We arranged it live. We had it in an hour. It has a great rhythm, and it caught the moment of when we were recording it. It caught our performance style, our joie de vivre. We were used to working with producers in London, where it’s gray and cold. And here we are, the sun is shining, we’re in a big, expensive studio, we’ve got a funny, friendly producer who seems to manage our personalities and make us feel good. When we recorded, they had the lights, all my rig, tons of speakers all set up, Joan Jett in the control room, all their family, all the [Blackhearts]. When Annabella did her vocals, he made her feel special, made her feel comfortable, and I think that boosted her performance.
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