Music man and Langton Matravers resident Richard Evans is set to lift the lid on the secrets of the 1980s world of synthesisers and sequencers at an event in Swanage, Dorset.
After a book he wrote on electronic pop was praised by Depeche Mode’s Vince Clarke, Richard is now going to give a talk on Wednesday 13th November 2024 at The Studio in The Mowlem about what he calls the most exciting era in music history.
Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (on keyboards) of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, 1981
Larger than life characters
The book titled Listening to the Music the Machines Make: Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983, sets out to champion the electronic pop revolution which transformed the pop music landscape and still endures to this day.
If the book title sounds like an impossibly obscure Mastermind subject, the years which turned the music industry on its head are filled with larger than life characters and fascinating stories.
The invention of synth pop also led to the creation of some of the most iconic and enduring records in pop history from artists including The Human League, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Yazoo, Gary Numan, OMD, Ultravox, Soft Cell and Kraftwerk among many others.
Richard has worked in the music industry since graduating in 1990, alongside artists including Robbie Williams, Duran Duran, Ozzy Osbourne, Coldplay and Erasure, but has a special love for the years when the music scene was rewritten by the coming of synth.
Impossible punk aliens in town centres opened Richard’s eyes and ears to music
Impossible aliens in the town centre
Richard Evans said:
“I went to senior school in 1979, after growing up in a house without music – not for any sinister reasons, it was just that my mum and dad weren’t interested and as the oldest of four children I didn’t have older siblings to hand music down.
“It was only when I went to senior school that I began to realise that music was out there and that I could be part of it, which was quite an exciting thing.
“When I went to town at the weekend I used to see the punks – I didn’t know what it all meant, but it was an amazing thing to see and then I realised that some of the punks I used to see looking like impossible aliens in the town centre were kids at my school.
“That made me realise that music was something I could find for myself, started to listen to the radio, and found that I liked music which sounded like it was from the future, which tended to be electronic music.”
Richard Evans will be talking about his book at The Studio in Swanage
“Little to no musical experience”
Richard added:
“I’m a total fan of music – I’m as likely to be listening to Buddy Holly as I am to be listening to Kraftwerk, but electronic music has always had a special place in my heart – it still feels like it’s from the future.
“In the 1970s, people were influenced by glossy disco beats, sonic experimentation and then punk came along, which created an environment in which people who wanted to create their own music didn’t need to be connected to a major label or funded by the music industry.
“All of these things happened at the same time as synthesisers became cheaper than electric guitars, allowing kids to make new noises – I’m not sure that’s even possible today as technology allows you full spectrum of all sound.
“The people who were making new music at that time were largely untrained, most of them had little to no musical experience at all, so they were just pressing switches and jabbing at things to make sounds, and that became its own thing.
“All of a sudden, you could make your own record, package it yourself, talk to the fanzines and there you had the first step in a career – not that anyone thought of it as a career at the time, but some of them are still making their music today almost 50 years later.”
A typical 1980s home, recreated for the BBC TV show Back in Time for Birmingham
80s retro revival began to blossom
Richard worked for London Records and then for MTV Europe in promotions and marketing, before setting up his own marketing consultancy, The Fan Base, to connect musical artists with their audiences.
Although that began as fanzines and newsletters, with the rise of the internet it became more digital, and included the creation of a website just as the internet was taking off, Remember the 80s.com.
Its aim was to report on the current activities of 80s musicians, at a time when the 80s had been forgotten and many of the artists felt that their work was over and done.
The website was a huge success as the 80s retro revival began to blossom, which led to Richard being asked to turn it into a book, published in 2008, exploring the best of a decade that brought us Madonna, My Little Pony and Margaret Thatcher.
While he disarmingly says it was ‘mostly pictures and wasn’t very good’, he also found it good fun to do and began to plan another title about his passion for music.
Research for the book was done over the Covid years at the British Library’s reading rooms
“I’m writing to a niche and nerdy crowd”
Richard Evans said:
“Then I started working with Erasure and that catapulted me back into the world of electronic music, where I was surrounded by people like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and some of the old Human League guys.
“I realised that there weren’t any books about this part of music history and decided to write one myself, researching it at the British Library where they keep all the old music press magazines in leather bound volumes – NME, Melody Maker, Sounds, Smash Hits and all the others.
“I had no idea how it would be received, but the music magazines gave it really positive reviews. It’s a very fact heavy book and people have responded to that very well.
“I’ve a feeling that I’m writing to quite a niche and nerdy crowd, which is great because I’m in that crowd myself!”
Kraftwerk, German pioneers of electronic music, are still touring after 50 years
‘Highly entertaining and obsessively brilliant’
The hardback version of the book came out at the end of 2022, and the paperback was released in summer 2024, which has led to Richard talking about his passion at conferences and electronic music events around the country.
It was not only voted a book of the year by Classic Pop Magazine, Blitzed Magazine and Flood Magazine, but has also attracted a selection of extremely enthusiastic reviews and celebrity endorsements.
Dave Ball, of Soft Cell, called it a riveting read and said he found things out about Soft Cell that even he didn’t know.
Martyn Ware of the Human League and Heaven 17 said the book was highly entertaining and obsessively brilliant and a required read for all lovers of intelligent electronic pop.
Vince Clarke of Erasure, still making electronic pop music
“Just making it all up as we went along”
Vince Clarke, who was at the centre of the music revolution with his bands Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure, said:
“When Richard first asked me to write the forward for this book, I was well and truly chuffed. This is a fascinating, in-depth look at the music changes and innovations that without a doubt transformed my own personal musical beginnings and direction.
“Everyone brought their own thing into their music then. Punk, glam rock, disco… you can hear all of those things in the sound of lots of the bands in this book.
“We all started influencing each other, we all got better at what we were doing, and the technology kept developing.
“These were transformational times and what made it exciting was that a lot of artists, like myself, were just making it all up as we went along.”
The Studio at The Mowlem will host Richard’s talk on Wednesday 13th November
Further information
- Richard Evans: Listening to the Music the Machines Make takes place at The Studio, Swanage, on Wednesday 13th November 2024
- Book tickets to the event through The Mowlem website
