We’d had a couple of abortive attempts trying to record Love Missile but could never get close to the anarchic dub sound of the Portastudio demos. We needed a producer. I tried to contact my old friend Prince - it’s too violent he said (well, a flunky said). Bowie - wasn’t in, well didn’t reply anyway. (how weird then that 20 years later he records a version of Love Missile himself. Amazing, Bowie changed my life with Ziggy and now he’s singing my song - that old cliche “you couldn’t make it up’ exists for a very good reason.
But the main man was always going to be Georgio Moroder. How many times had we played the Scarface soundtrack album. And the Midnight Express album. Donna Summer’s “I feel Love’? Don’t even get me started.... So, before you know it, given these golden times, me, Degville and X are standing in the actual studio in Munich where all those great sounds were made, playing Georgio the demo video. And he LOVED it and agreed that he would come to London asap to record the single.
We played an amazing gig at Abbey Road studios which we filmed as well, everything - back stage too. Clips from this appear in the final video for Missile. A horror film ‘Friday the 13th style. Degville wears an Ice Hockey mask on the flyer for the show. Does it incite violence? I’m not sure but it sure came in handy when the bottles started flying later during our first French show. I adopted it as my look, realising fast that it was safer!
Just in time too. We played the TransMusicalles festival in Rennes just before Christmas word was obviously out about this Clockwork Orange styled group glorifying designer violence. You want war France? That beat we had pummelled the audience and tt worked. Things were getting scary. I loved it.
I’m creating more and more T shirts for my image now by painting straight on to the blank shirt. Rambo Child, World War 4 and Atari became classic slogans. I can wear my catch phrases. Only thing is you can’t wash them or the paint comes off!
Actually some wag had printed some pirate T-Shirts with the legend “Saatchi Saatchi Sputnik” on the front - I wish I had thought of that. Thing is I WAS hanging out with Charles Saatchi by now in real life because of JSP.
He loved the futurism and the game of it all. We were playing Scrabble together.
Degville looked amazing by now, evolving, becoming more and more larger than life. X has the biggest quiff this side of Little Richard and Yana out-does Jayne Mansfield. Ooh Aah, a pink guitar!!!
Life was great that Christmas and we had it all to play for.