LWIN: I can honestly say when I first heard my vocals on “I Want Candy,” I was stunned. I was thinking, Is that me? Who’s that girl singing? Because I actually sounded good. That was the first song on which I actually sounded like a singer. The way they produced it, it was brilliant. It stands the test of time. Such a shame it was the only song we ever did with them. I don’t know what happened.
GORMAN: We tried to [work with Laguna again], but while we were mixing, “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” went to number one, and I think they were inundated with too much to do.
LWIN: I wasn’t involved in the decision-making process. I was just told to sing the song. But it brought us a new audience, and the difference over here [in the United States] is they really appreciate if you can perform live—more than they seemed to appreciate it in the U.K.
The original Ants kicked out Adam, who was the lead singer, and history repeated itself with me. [My firing] was sprung on me. I read in the music press that apparently I’d stormed off stage, which I’ve never done, even to this day, with any band I’ve worked with. I don’t understand what happened. I’ve worked with the bass player [Gorman] since, and he keeps telling me, “I was in the hospital.” You were in the band—what do you mean you were in the hospital? Things are not clear. People are avoiding the truth, and I speak the truth. I was a young girl in a rock ’n’ roll band with three guys. The next thing I know, the three guys had basically kicked me out and formed another band. I’m certainly not going to take any blame for that.
GORMAN: It’s true: I was in hospital. I don’t know why she doesn’t believe me. Annabella’s mum was a head nurse, and they put me in the ward with people with lung cancer and TB, ’cause I couldn’t breathe properly. Matthew was in a bad way too. He was coming down with diabetes—he didn’t know it; it was undiagnosed. He was going blind, and it was probably affecting his mental state.
I got wind of what was going on from [Barbarossa and Ashman]. We were at our height, and they were dissatisfied with her. I think they wanted a guy singer and to be less pop. I actually called Annabella and said, “They’re thinking of leaving the band and doing something else.” And she said, “Oh, Leigh. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.” Then they decided to [fire her] without me.
LWIN: Why would anyone break up a band that was doing well? Nobody at any record company wanted that to happen. I think the mistake that’s made is when bands have a lead singer, they seem to get upset or, dare I say, jealous that the lead singer gets all the attention. The truth is, of course the lead singer will get a degree of attention, because that’s who connects with the audience. It’s the only human element in the equation. The bass player plugs in his bass; the drummer bashes away on the drums. With all due respect, I’m not demeaning them; I’m just stating a fact. Every lead singer since time immemorial will always get more attention. You need to understand this. If you cannot have that kind of relationship within a band, the band will split up, which is obviously what happened. I was in the band three years. I gave up school and my friends to be able to work on the road and sell the band and perform as lead singer as well as write songs, and I have to read they’re getting rid of me in the NME? It was a huge blow at the time—a huge blow. It’s a shock for anyone to realize the people they’re working with don’t have the courtesy to let you know. How would you take it if you were told, “Tomorrow, the job’s finished,” and you’ve got no money? And I was 17.
THAT WAS THEN
BUT THIS IS NOW
Gorman, Barbarossa, and Ashman spent a brief time playing together as Chiefs of Relief. Ashman died in 1995. Gorman reunited with Lwin, first in an attempt to launch her as a solo star, then as part of a rebooted Bow Wow Wow. The two recorded and toured together until December 2012, when Lwin suddenly departed mid-tour. In January 2013, Lwin appeared as the opening act—billed as Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow—on Midge Ure’s U.S. tour. The band’s version of “I Want Candy” has become the blueprint for terrible punk bands and awful teen acts to record. Among those failing to reach the heights of the ’82 version: Good Charlotte, Bouncing Souls, Aaron Carter, Westlife, Melanie C, Cody Simpson, and Jedward. Among those succeeding: potato chip giant Pringles and its “I Want Pringles” jingle.
GORMAN: Chiefs of Relief was a good band but nothing like Bow Wow Wow. We put out a single called “Holiday.” They had a roundtable on BBC Radio on the new singles released, and on the panel was Adam Ant. Adam says, “God, is that what they’re doing now? That’s terrible.” Then my mum called me: “What the hell are you doing? You had that great band—why have you faded?” I should have stuck with Annabella and carried on Bow Wow Wow without them.
LWIN: People tell me I was ahead of my time. I still get that today. And they seem to be getting younger. They have allages shows where I have these young girls, five-to eight-year-olds, looking at me.
I always sound like I was this bitchy, angry, attitudinal young girl when I was in my teens, and God knows, I was none of that. It’s all down to collaboration and who you’re working with. It doesn’t always work out in bands. Our career was only three years. I hope I can continue to sing and write songs and perform. I went on to try and pursue a career in music in the U.K., but unfortunately they said I was too old. I really think that if the music industry is to survive, they need to get rid of this ageist thing. You can’t package a human being to the extent where they become unreal. When you get on stage in front of 1,000 people, they just want to feel something, and that’s where I come from.
“I KNOW WHAT BOYS LIKE”
ew York’s achingly hip ZE Records was dubbed “the world’s most fashionable record label” by the Face, whose contributors knew of which they spoke. ZE’s catalog was adored by tastemakers, critics, and DJs. It released smart, witty, cynical, self-satisfied dance records by the untouchably cool likes of Cristina, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Was (Not Was), Lizzy Mercier Descloux, and Material. ZE never courted mainstream success and would’ve professed to have been appalled had they achieved it. Fittingly, the closest ZE came to connecting with a popular audience was with a band that didn’t exist—at least, not at first. An Akron, Ohio, art-pop outfit, the Waitresses were dreamed up by Chris Butler as a vehicle for a scratchy, stuttering, put-down song crying out for a female vocal. Butler would eventually find his voice and his muse in Clevelander Patty Donahue, who delivered his words with the sass and gum-chewing snap of a screwball-comedy heroine. As the Waitresses gradually evolved into an actual band, they occupied a unique position somewhere between the honking, atonal jittery rhythms of New York’s no wave scene and the pop star allure of Donahue’s trash-talking, tough chick. While ZE’s back catalog is still adored by tastemakers, critics, and DJs, the Waitresses, almost by accident, are responsible for two of the label’s best-known records—one a novelty hit, the other a Christmas song—which are kept alive by the love of the unhip.
JB: There was a time I would leave the house. I would willingly go and see bands, and I would harbor the hope that they would be good. During this uncharacteristic period, I suffered through what seemed like a lifetime of bands who just stood there. The visiting American bands did not just stand there. The B-52s didn’t just stand there. The Cramps didn’t just stand there. And neither did the Waitresses. All I knew of them when I went to see them play Glasgow’s Satellite City was that one taunting single. It’s possible I caught them on an exceptionally good night, but what I saw was a very tight but also very chaotic group (like the Muppet Show band, in that respect) with a set list so preoccupied by the romantic misadventures of its wisecracking chick singer that it was almost like being at a musical—only without the terrible music. It’s one of the few times seeing a band live persuaded me to purchase their album, and the only time it didn’t turn out to be a huge mistake.
LM: Before Valley Girl, before John Hughes’s Molly Ringwald trilogy, there was Square Pegs. It aired for just one prime-time TV season, from 1982 to ’83, but, omigod, it was, like, the best show ev
er. Its cast of characters was awash in cool coifs and lurid new wave attire, their bedrooms were festooned with Berlin and Missing Persons posters. There was also a bat mitzvah performance by Devo, and of course, that catchy, singsongy theme tune by the Waitresses: “Square pegs, square pegs / Square, square.” Head Waitress Donahue was like a real-life version of the show’s Jennifer DeNuccio: aloof, scary, and seemingly slutty, but not really. Sure, she knew what boys liked, she knew what guys wanted, but she didn’t let them have it. (“Sucker. Ha ha ha!”)
CHRIS BUTLER: Women’s sexual power is pretty obvious. In this case, I was living in Akron, and there was a bar on our high street called the Bucket Street. It was our local watering hole, and it was an interesting mix of bohemians and lawyers and politicians and artists. At the time, I had a record deal, I didn’t have a girlfriend, and all these lawyers were going home with hotties up the ying-yang, while I’m going home alone. I was getting a little bitter about that. The song is not polite, although it does seem to capture the empowering of women. The dirty little secret about “I Know What Boys Like” is that it’s me going, “What’s wrong with me? Go home with me! I’m horny!”
I liked Patty Donahue’s deadpan delivery. She was a girl about town, and she was a firecracker and a fun person. She was willing to give it a try on my demo. I guess I can claim that I had a little bit of an idea what I wanted, but it wasn’t that calculated. She could play that role really easily; she was a tough party girl. I was like, “Just do that thing where the guy comes up to you at the bar who you don’t want to do the deal with,” and she goes, “Oh yeah, I know how to do that.” She brought a nonthreatening kind of puckish manner. The idea was “I’m gonna be playful here, but in the end I’m gonna say no. I’m gonna toy with you a little bit, but in the end, sorry. No score.”
I was in a band from Akron called Tin Huey—very influenced by Kraftwerk, Matching Mole, anything with Robert Wyatt. As a song, [“I Know What Boys Like”] was the complete opposite of what I thought I wanted to do and nothing that Tin Huey would think was aesthetically correct. I presented the song to them as a goof—maybe Tin Huey should have a side project that does pop stuff—and they all just thought it was crap. But they were generous enough that, after a Tin Huey show, [Patty and I] would do it for an encore. We would put on these T-shirts that a wonderful diner in the town of Kent gave us that said “Waitresses Unite.” It wasn’t a real band. It was a fake name, and Patty would come up and Tin Huey would do a “Waitresses” set, two or three numbers, and have a laugh.
Tin Huey ran its course. We got dropped from Warner Bros. We had two records left in our contract, and they gave us a butt-load of money to go away, and we did. We split up the money and moved to the New York area. Tin Huey had done very well in New York. It was the only place we had done well. I had that version of “I Know What Boys Like,” and I played it to a couple of people, and they thought it was a hit. This guy named Mark Kamins, who was a DJ at Danceteria, flipped over it. He played it a couple of times one night, then the next day he took it up to Island Records and said, “I want a job as an A&R man, because I can sign stuff like this.” And they wanted to sign it. They said, “Where’s the band?” I lied and said, “They’re back in Ohio.” Island said they wanted to sign the Waitresses for a single, and they needed a B-side. So I got some folks together. I convinced Patty. I sent her my last 50 bucks to come to New York. Her boyfriend drove her to the bus terminal, and she went off to the big city. She flew from Boston to New York, and we put a band together. I was able to cobble together some of the Contortions, and we recorded the B-side, “No Guilt.” Then Island had its first number one, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” The A&R guy in the U.K. did not like “I Know What Boys Like,” and it got bumped down to Antilles, their sublabel. It did well enough to where they were thinking about putting out an album, and I thought, Okay, maybe I should put together a real band.
Our contract was traded like a football star over to ZE Records, and we recorded our album [Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful, 1982], but “I Know What Boys Like” continued to crawl along. It never hit number one, but it got caught in the hierarchy of the social consciousness, and it stayed there.
With the Waitresses, there’s a veneer of pop, but if you try to dissect the music, I think the musicians flatter the hell out of me. It’s pretty fucking complicated and sophisticated for a “pop” band, but that was a bit of a sleight of hand I was trying to achieve because I wanted to keep my job and feed everybody, do something the record company liked and something Patty could handle. She was a great actress, but she didn’t have great pipes. She wasn’t a full-throated singer. She was great with character and story lines.
We talked a lot [about a male writing lyrics for a woman to sing]. It wasn’t any big deal that there were once no women in Shakespeare’s plays, but this was a little different because I came up with a character who was half based on the wisecracking school of comedy from the 1930s and half on me kind of wanting a big sister to explain what’s going on. I wanted to—how shall I say this politely?—know the enemy. I tried to get it right as much as a man could. In hindsight, I didn’t think there was anybody writing that type of character. I loved the confessional side of the stuff that Marianne Faithfull was doing. That was brutal in its honesty. I thought, Gee, how come nobody else is doing that in the mainstream? How come it’s either a rock tart or a party girl or a sensitive folk singer? How come there’s no sort of manic pixie with a feminist streak who’s just trying to get through life? It was part of my modus operandi.
MIXTAPE: 5 More Quirky, Female-Fronted Songs 1. “Give Me Back My Man,” The B-52s 2. “How to Pick Up Girls,” The Little Girls 3. “Who Does Lisa Like?,” Rachel Sweet 4. “Lucky Number,” Lene Lovich 5. “Call Me Every Night,” Jane Aire and the Belvederes
THAT WAS THEN
BUT THIS IS NOW
The Waitresses released an EP, I Could Rule the World If I Could Only Get the Parts, and their final album, 1983’s Bruiseology. The group disbanded in 1984. Donahue died of lung cancer in 1996. “I Know What Boys Like” has been covered many, many times, mostly poorly. Among the culprits: Tracey Ullman, Shampoo, Vitamin C, the Bouncing Souls (also responsible for roughing up the Bow Wow Wow version of “I Want Candy”). It was performed on Glee—by that show’s worst-ever character (and it sets a sky-high bar!), the overconfident Lauren Zizes. And Katharine McPhee sucked all the fun out of the song when she performed it in The House Bunny.
The Waitresses recorded another song that never went away: 1981’s seasonal classic “Christmas Wrapping,” which was also performed on Glee, this time by that show’s best-ever character, Brittany S. Pierce.
BUTLER: “I Know What Boys Like” is a period piece now, and I’m amazed. I thought it was a novelty record. It seems to make people laugh. It makes women feel sexy when they sing it. It’s a gay anthem. It’s a gift. I’m not living on the Riviera, and I’m not driving a Maserati. Harvard? Forget it. But my kid will be able to go to the finest trade school in America. I did hold on to my publishing. It goes up and down over the years, but I am very grateful that [the song’s] stuck to the culture. It’s evocative of an era. It’s turned out to be utilitarian for sampling or setting the musical theme to supplement a movie scene or TV show.
I have two half-hits. I’m as flabbergasted about “Christmas Wrapping” as I am about “I Know What Boys Like.” Thank you, world. Even the Spice Girls couldn’t ruin it.
“WARM LEATHERETTE”
In the same way that we put blind faith in fresh offerings from HBO, AMC, FX, and occasionally Showtime, based on their previous output, we used to put trust in record labels. We bought releases from Rough Trade because its zero-budget track record was incredibly consistent, from ZTT because of the grandiosity of Trevor Horn’s production and Paul Morley’s bombard-and-confuse approach to marketing, and from Factory Records because of Peter Saville’s iconic sleeves. And we purchased whatever Mute Records put out because of Daniel Miller’s taste in elect
ronic music. He brought us tunes that popped like bubbles; he brought us painful, dark industrial noise; he brought us groups who passed the test of time and continue to thrive—and he brought us groups who didn’t. (We don’t mean you, I Start Counting.) But before he did any of that, he put out a track under the name the Normal, and that 1978 record played a big part in changing music for the next few decades.
JB: “Warm Leatherette” and “T.V.O.D.” couldn’t have come at a better time. I was obsessed with punk, but I hadn’t realized there would be so many Cockneys—so many phlegmy, shouty Cockneys fronting what were little better than the boogie outfits they’d displaced. As Sham 69 supplanted the Sex Pistols and punk lost the power to shock, the Normal released a record that was genuinely disconcerting. I was the type of teenager who memorized record reviews, which meant I could drop J. G. Ballard’s name as the lyrical inspiration of “Warm Leatherette” without having read a word he’d written. I responded to the noise. I liked the machines; it sounded like the lead instrument was a dentist’s drill. And I liked Miller’s dead, detached delivery. Several formative electronic tracks were released in 1978: the Human League’s “Being Boiled,” Cabaret Voltaire’s “Nag Nag Nag,” Dr. Mix and the Remix’s version of “No Fun.” “Warm Leatherette” was the one that pointed me in the direction of the others—and away from the Boomtown Rats.
LM: Whenever Dave Kendall would spin “Warm Leatherette” at Communion, the weekly freak fest at New York’s infamous Limelight, every punk, skin, goth, drag queen, and collegiate would assemble on the dance floor. Madonna and her voguing had nothing on us. We’d strike and alter our poses in time to the whirring of the power-drill effect, miming every word and taking particular pleasure when pointing to the “tear of petrol” in our eye. “Warm Leatherette” has no intro and no outro, and there’s barely a bridge—just a few droning verses and a highly repetitive chorus courtesy of an anonymous male voice. Yet, it was our new wave rave’s version of Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration,” inviting even those not outfitted in skin-tight PVC to join … the car crash set.
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