Only the hairstyles of Twiggy or Jennifer Aniston have been talked about so much. Pulp Fiction, Family Guy, Friends, Austin Powers, The Wedding Singer and Ben Stiller’s The Suburbans last year all have name-checked it or the band.Īs Mike, 55, prepares to fly to Scotland next weekend for the Rewind Festival, he laughed: “I think that haircut owns me, I don’t own it.” No other haircut has been name-checked so often in popular fiction. The former hairdresser from Beverley, Yorkshire, said: “I basically shave my head now and people still come up and ask, ‘Are you going to do your hair tonight?’ and I say, ‘What do you think?’ If you haven’t followed the band since the 80s, we have a secret – Mike doesn’t have ANY hair any more. “But I’d love to have a wig made like the haircut I had in the 80s and play these hits like Wishing then pull it off at the end. We had a crazy image and our music was upbeat rather than dark and gloomy.” “That’s what people liked about the band. Seen as a band to laugh at, the Liverpool-based Gulls were one of the UK’s big breakthrough outfits.
Their 1982 self-titled debut album went to No10 in America and they won a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1983 for D.N.A. The single I Ran (So Far Away) went to No1 in Australia and Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You) topped the charts in France. While Duran Duran and Culture Club broke America, the Gulls were one of only a few Brit bands from the 80s to actually make any mark Stateside.
And Mike doesn’t think it was all about the image, although he concedes the new music channel MTV helped. He said: “We were one of the first bands of that era to go to America and play. “Most Americans had the idea that English bands were just limp-wristed and not into lead guitar-style but we went over and showed we really could do that kind of stuff with power. They were looking for a new thing that wasn’t a 70s supergroup.” “I think that’s why we took off in America so well. To go with his outrageous hairstyle, the music was all sci-fi about alien invasion and songs with titles such as Modern Love is Automatic, D.N.A. They may have sung about the future that we are now living but their image always went before them. They were serious but everyone else was laughing at them. Mike said: “Towards the end of the original band, a lot of people slagged us off because we had such a strong image. “But then you see Ben Stiller name-checking us or Peter in Family Guy with a similar haircut, I look back and think, ‘What a genius stroke to do that hairdo’. Singer Mike Score of Flock Of Seagulls as he is today (Image: Jason Kempin/Getty Images) “Because here we are 30 years later and we are still talking about it. In those days I was so serious about my image but now I laugh and think I was crazy.” “And it’s brilliant we got a mention in a film like Pulp Fiction. The famous wings hairstyle – flat in the middle and slicked up at the sides – was a mistake.īack in the late 70s and early 80s, the singer copied David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust hairstyle but before a gig, the original bassist in the band, Frank Maudsley, put his hand on Mike’s head and flattened the middle of it.
0 kommentar(er)
