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An insider’s view of 1980s bands from Merseyside, their distinctive creative talents and their current careers, will be shared on the small screen and in print by a University of Chester lecturer.
Dr Paul Skillen, now Programme Leader for Education Studies, was part of the 1980s music scene at a time which was just as prolific for Liverpool as the 1960s.
In a series called Scouse Pop, currently being filmed for Liverpool Bay TV (Freeview Channel 8 and Virgin Media 159), Paul interviews some of the decade’s leading musicians from: The Christians, The La’s, Echo and the Bunnymen, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Black as well as local record labels. The series will be screened during July 2015. It contains seven hour-long programmes, which include acoustic performances from the bands.
Later this year, Paul’s academic analysis of the era’s innovation and creativity will be published by Equinox Publishing. The book also entitled Scouse Pop will include an introduction by music journalist Paul Du Noyer, former Editor of Q and MOJO magazines, who began his career on the NME.
Paul said: “It has been a really interesting journey writing the book and finding out how the lives of pop icons have developed. Some have broken into different artistic careers and others are still playing and recording music.
“I had to write Scouse Pop because it was about a particular place and time, which has not been replicated anywhere else in the world. No other city has produced such a unique collection of bands who went out of their way to be different and who all lived within a few miles of each other. Many were not particularly good musicians, so they relied on innovation and creativity. They were not trying to fit into any particular model, so didn’t fall into clichéd styles of music”.
These days, Paul leads the BA Education Studies programme which includes a module entitled ‘Youth Education and Society’ which studies how culture affects young people’s attitudes to education. The module refers to various historical youth groups such as Teddy Boys, Mods, Rockers, Punks and Emos. The Liverpool music scene is another example of a particularly unique style of youth culture which existed in the 1980s.
Paul credits the individuality of the Liverpool bands of the 1980s to the political context of the day and the DIY ethos of Punk.
He explained: “The success of the bands was about timing. In the 1970s we’d had Prog Rock, Glam Rock, Punk Rock and the New Romantics. Youth trends were changing every couple of years and the major record labels didn’t know what was coming next. The bands in Liverpool were trying to do something different. Local labels took a chance on innovative youth culture which resulted in spectacular success for some of the bands.
“In the grip of economic strife and unemployment during the Thatcherite years, Liverpool felt marginalised and turned its back on what was happening in the rest of the country. It felt detached and got on with its own thing. From a cauldron of austerity came the attitude to create new genres.”
During the early 1980s, Paul was training to be a teacher in Liverpool, but had a passion for music. Whilst studying, he also wrote reviews for the fanzine Merseysound edited by Roger Hill.
He recalled: “Liverpool was an innovative place to be in the early 1980s in terms of Music Theatre and Art. I was a student in the city at the time and writing for the fanzine allowed me to get into gigs for free, so I saw many of the successful bands before they made it. In the early days I was not sure whether the bands would be successful because they were so diverse and different…
I remember one occasion when I went to check out a rather nasty Irish punk band in a dark and dingy club called Eric’s. They weren’t very good. There was no point reviewing a band and saying they were awful when they were just getting started. The band…. was U2! I stayed for three songs and left to see another band.”
Paul’s memories of Merseyside bands on mainstream television programmes of the 1980s emphasise how the corporate music world was unsure how to stage performances by these newcomers.
He said: “When innovative Liverpool bands arrived on Top of the Pops, the BBC didn’t have the first clue what to do with them. For Echo and the Bunnymen’s Back of Love, they introduced in to the audience a man on stilts gyrating wildly. For Icicle Works’ Love is a Wonderful Colour, they threw party balloons on to the band and had dancers, who looked like rejects from Wham’s Club Tropicana video filling in gaps on the stage!
“Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) produced a static performance of Messages. The only thing moving on stage was their reel to reel recorder called ‘Winston’. So the BBC put visual trails on the tape recorder in a comic attempt at pin pointing the electronic sound.
China Crisis appeared as two lads with shirts buttoned up to the neck, with the singer wearing an anorak. They looked like they were going on a hike! So the BBC pumped on some dry ice, which obscured their faces for part of the mimed performance…. It proved too difficult for the BBC to appropriately present bands that did not fit in to the normal pop genre.”
Paul’s own band, This Final Frame released five singles in Britain and Europe during the 1980s with Take No Prisoners reaching the top 100 of the UK national charts.
He still records albums (writing and singing) with Carl Henry, who is the drummer with Birkenhead legends Half Man Half Biscuit.
They released an album on Universal records in 2010 in the Philippines, where they are popular in the Philippines thanks to a bootlegged six track on black vinyl. This Final Frame’s highlight was headlining the ‘Larks in the Park’ festival in Sefton Park in 1984 to a 10,000-stong crowd.
For more information on This Final Frame, visit: http://thisfinalframe.com/Home.html