I gave an emotional performance asking the press monster to stop hurting us -- well me actually. Maybe it touched a few hearts and watching a video of that day at the British film institute with my gang and JSP around me, I looked human for the first time, standing at the lectern with my trusty brick-like, iconic mobile phone by my side and looking the journalist pack in the eye, trying to hide my emotion.
It was a tough day and I thought I did okay... but it was too late, as in all good horror films, the scent was up and the jackals could smell blood...
I was becoming power crazed all over again as the new ideas coursed through me and I was already on to the next scheme. I thought we could get advertiser’s to sponsor a single so it could be sold at next to nothing or given away in the shops. I thought I could fix everything by throwing another blizzard of ideas into the arena.
Unfortunately I had to give a press conference to announce the change of plans, to try and put an upbeat spin and hide the fact that we’d cancelled nearly all the upcoming UK tour dates due to poor ticket sales. The spin was that it was to be all video walls now and we could not take that to ordinary venues, and would concentrate on one big show in capital cities. Of course.
I was waiting at Heathrow looking forward to the exciting day ahead. Except that Neal X, normally totally reliable, had gone out the night before we left, got drunk and had not come home yet. Degville arrived at Heathrow looking great but without his passport. Ray had just overslept. So a pathetic three member Sputnik arrived in Munich. Two motorbikes each as me, Yana and Chris tried to bluff it out. Fortunately I couldn’t understand German because the producers seemed quite excited with this economy sized Sputnik and not in a good way.
How Rock and Roll was that we said later, trying to laugh it off, and besides we probably don’t need a hit there anyway....
Undaunted I was still brimming with ideas, full of slogans, full of confidence although for the first time I felt a slight vulnerability. The press that had previously lapped up every word as genius was now more .....skeptical.
We had to cancel most of the upcoming UK Album tour as those “fleeced” fans were not buying tickets and all that press about us miming had started to put people off. I thought I could ward off everything by a flood of new ideas and the planned futuristic extravaganza of the upcoming Royal Albert Hall show and its satellite TVs.
Next on the agenda was ADVERTISING! As the sound of television was part of the sound of the eighties, I wanted to have an unbroken stream of music and Ad jingles on the disc. it was like The Who did on their 60’s album The Who Sell Out. But it proved hard to get major sponsors to be involved with a group glorifying violence in the vein of Clockwork Orange. But we bluffed it out with a few good Ads and Moroder’s final mixes were back and I was ready to go with the album release.
