\n Nearly 50 years after Andy and childhood pal Paul Humphreys started experimenting with old tape recorders and called themselves Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, the synth pop pioneers are on the road with their Summer of Hits tour.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve played Bradford since the 90s,\u201d says Andy. \u201cIt was St George\u2019s Hall – I sliced my right hand open on the keyboard stand. I looked down and realised I was spraying blood all over the front row. My white shirt looked like a butcher\u2019s apron.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Following last year\u2019s success of the re-mastered Crush album, OMD are celebrating the crowd-pleasers, in captivating shows packed with hits.\n<\/p>\n
\n Having seen them devote an entire concert to Architecture and Morality, I ask if set lists can be a tricky balance of album tracks, new material and pop bangers. Last year\u2019s release of the re-mastered Crush album was a US success, and in 2023 OMD released a new album, the acclaimed Bauhaus Staircase, \u201cwhich would\u2019ve been Number 1 if it wasn\u2019t for Taylor Swift,\u201d smiles Andy.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cEvery year is a 40th anniversary of something – this year\u2019s it\u2019s The Pacific Age (OMD\u2019s seventh album).\u201d says Andy. \u201cPeople love the albums but we have to perform the hits too. This tour is about the hits.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n And what gems they are! Since debut single Electricity in 1979, OMD have led the way in British electronic music, selling 25 million singles and 15 million albums worldwide. Their hits, including Enola Gay, Souvenir, Messages, Joan Of Arc, Locomotion, She\u2019s Leaving and Tesla Girls, are a dreamy blend of haunting melancholy and upbeat synth pop. Seminal 1981 album Architecture and Morality established them as one of the UK\u2019s most influential electro-pop acts, inspiring the likes of Depeche Mode, The Killers and Moby.\n<\/p>\n
\n Back in the day, they were on Top of The Pops a whopping 29 times. \u201cOur last appearance was the same day the Spice Girls\u2019 first,\u201d says Andy. \u201cI finally got my 30th Top of the Pops in 2000 – thanks to Atomic Kitten.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n OMD are a captivating live act. Image: Tim Hughes\n<\/p>\n
\n Creating a girl group might not seem the most likely career move for a musician who started out emulating Kraftwerk, but when Andy founded Atomic Kitten in 1998 it was a vehicle for his pop songwriting. He wrote their biggest hit, Whole Again, in 2001, earning him an Ivor Novello Award nomination. \u201cI love a good pop band and I had a blast with Atomic Kitten,\u201d says Andy. \u201cI\u2019m still in touch with Kerry (Katona), I spoke to her the other week. She\u2019s great fun.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n By the mid-90s, OMD had called it a day. \u201cI was banging my head on the wall,\u201d says Andy. \u201cIt was the age of Britpop and grunge, nothing was as unfashionable as an Eighties synth band. In 1996 we released Walking on the Milky Way and Radio 1 wouldn\u2019t play it. Fifty per cent of British single sales were from Woolworths, but they only sold records on radio playlists. We had no chance.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n A decade later, in 2006, Andy and Paul reunited, initially to appear on a German TV show. Thanks to the Eighties nostalgia vibe of the last two decades, they\u2019ve enjoyed a resurgence as a hugely popular live act, while continuing to release new material and push boundaries.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cCultural fashion has a timeline,\u201d says Andy. \u201cIn the 80s synths were the future. In the 90s it was Oasis, and I was thinking \u2018How come the Beatles are the future again?\u2019 I\u2019ve been around long enough now to know that all pop culture eventually eats its own history.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Andy is a charismatic performer on stage\n<\/p>\n
\n Andy and Paul were school pals, growing up on the Wirral in the 1970s, when they started carrying out weird musical experiments with old radio sets and tape recorders. It all started when Andy went to see Kraftwerk, in 1975: \u201cI sat in seat Q36, that concert changed my life. I built a stereo from two record players and started raiding obscure German back catalogues.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cPaul\u2019s widowed mother worked six days a week so we had the house to ourselves. We used to pump everything – war noises off the TV, experimental soundwaves – through tape recorders. Even our mates said: \u2018That\u2019s not music\u2019. We gave ourselves this preposterous name and only intended to do one gig. I was going to Leeds to do fine art and Paul was off to London to do an electronics degree.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n But their catchy electro-pop melodies fused with intelligent lyrics caught the ear of Factory Records supremo Tony Wilson, who released Electricity. \u201cWe were just trying to blag our way onto Granada Reports. We never planned it to become pop stars,\u201d says Andy.\n<\/p>\n
\n Late 70s Liverpool had a fertile music scene and young bands cut their teeth at Eric\u2019s – where OMD first played, in October 1978. \u201cEvery other person around us was in a band,\u201d says Andy. \u201cOpen mic Tuesdays at Eric\u2019s were full of people who went on to be in bands like Teardrop Explodes, Echo and The Bunnymen, China Crisis, Siouxsie and the Banshees. They were all in this mad punk supergroup, Big in Japan.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n OMD are returning to Bradford next month\n<\/p>\n
\n For fans like me (OMD was the first band I ever saw live), their beautifully catchy songs – about things pop acts don\u2019t normally sing about, like oil refineries, religious martyrs, technology and the atomic bomb – take us back to wistful hours in bedrooms playing records.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cSongs that were part of your journey remain with you. They\u2019re the pegs on which hang so many memories,\u201d says Andy, who is so delightful I could talk to him all day. \u201cWhen Paul and I got back together in 2006 we had people from a certain generation coming to see us, but also a new broader demographic: kids discovering us on a deep dive through Spotify.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhen we first started having hits we had imposter syndrome – 48 years later we\u2019re still here, and still doing what we want to do.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n OMD\u2019s Summer of Hits tour is at Bradford Live on Wednesday, July 8 and York Museum Gardens on Thursday, July 9.\n <\/p>\n