Martin Fry On Inadvertently Creating Gorillaz

“We were playing a Lexicon Of Love show in the Royal Albert Hall a few years ago. I just looked out at the faces in the audience and it really hit me that I wanted to revisit these themes,” says Martin Fry holding court in the Hot Press Chatroom at Electric Picnic.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to watch 40 episodes of Walking Dead or Breaking Bad. I love the idea of taking a subject and then reinventing it and coming back to it. So I felt it was the right time to do a sequel.”
Fry is out on the road again touring his warmly received Lexicon Of Love II. For the follow-up to the 1982 masterwork, he commissioned an impressive array of songwriters (including Rob Fusari of Beyonce and Lady Gaga fame) and penned over 40 tracks, finally whittled down to 11. On its release the collection provided the band with their first top ten chart position in 26 years.
The new album was helmed by Fry and Go West producer Gary Stevenson. It also features, as on the original, string arrangements by Anne Dudley (The Art Of Noise). What are Fry’s memories of recording the synth pop classic?
“I remember missing David Bowie popping in!” he laughs. “We worked with Trevor Horn in Tony Visconti’s Good Earth Studios, which was not a salubrious part of the east end of London. I went out for a packet of cigarettes and when I came back I found out Bowie had popped in to visit Tony.”
“We were recording ‘The Look Of Love’ at the time and he took a keen interest,” says Martin. “There’s a spoken-word section and he suggested I do it as an answering machine message. Maybe one day we’ll put that on a record!”
After the success of The Lexicon Of Love, ABC changed sonic direction, and explored rockier territory on its follow-up Beauty Stab.
“I think that, wrongly or rightly, being in a band is a chance to experiment,” muses Fry. “It’s like being in a little gang and you have to follow your own instincts. It was probably a commercial disaster, but in a way, every album we made we kind of zigzagged off.”
Indeed on their third outing How To Be A…….Zillionare! they embraced new terrain musically and visually.
“The record label really wanted to boot us off at that point, but fortunately it was our most successful record in America,” states Fry. “The artwork and videos were all animated, pre-Gorillaz really. It was a completely different sound too, kind of pre-EDM. I didn’t even know what EDM meant till recently!”
In terms of performance they did not shy awayfrom taking risks either. A belt made of sex toys anyone?
“At the time we were going to the Taboo Club in London which was really flamboyant, a hardcore place, quite chaotic, like a Zeffirelli movie,” remembers Fry. “Our backing singer Fiona Russell Powell, who went by the name of Eden, was quite outrageous. On one memorable occasion she wore a belt made of dildos on The Tube.”
Since their 80s heyday Fry has embraced domesticity, the nostalgia circuit and even spent time as Hugh Grant’s voice coach during the filming of Music and Lyrics.
“Warner Brothers rang me and asked did I want to go to New York for four weeks and stay in the Four Seasons Hotel,” he recalls. “There was very little work involved, I did a bit of voice work and would tell him to hold the microphone this way and pose in a certain manner. I don’t really know what they paid me for to be honest, I was mostly hanging out. That’s Hollywood though, they’ve got money to burn.”

ABC play the Olympia, Dublin on November 15.