By that stage, I had finessed the lyrics. “We recorded it when we went to Ridge Farm Studio to do our second album, Organisation. So we programmed up that drum pattern and that became the bed for the whole track that we put on to it and is one of the most distinctive parts of the song. As well as having the presets like bossa nova and tango, you could actually programme your own drum sounds. We purchased a Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm, which was one of the first programmable drum machines. The famous drum machine sound wasn’t on the original version. There’s a recorded version of it that is on a compilation album before it was officially released. “We worked it up as a band and played it in February/March 1980 when we were touring with our first album, before it was even released. The verse, the melody, the middle eight, it’s all the same. It’s a typical linear OMD song, it is the same four chords all the way through and it never varies. Once I got those primary ingredients I then had the blueprint to write the song.
“So, Paul was out and I was at his house and I just started writing the chords on the organ and the melody. How I wrote Enola Gay by OMD’s Andy McCluskey in Songwriting Magazine The thought of Paul Humphreys having to carry hod around is still hilarious! But I wrote this song on my own because Paul, in order to continue to receive his dole money, was forced into doing some labouring work in the rebuilding of the local baths in Hoylake.
#ORIGIN OF ENOLA GAY NAME FREE#
Paul’s father had sadly passed away when he was young and his brother had gone to university so we had the free run of the Humphreys house. His mother used to work six days a week and that was the place where we had space. It was written at Paul’s house because we used to work in the back room. “The music always has to come first with Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. I still have a ring binder which has my notes on the Enola Gay and I can see that I used some of those notes to help with the lyrics. As if I was doing a research paper or dissertation, I would read books, make notes, make lists of interesting facts, words and comments and just collect background information. Before the days of the internet, you had to go and get books out of the library. “I never start with the lyrics but I will do some research, which goes back to being geeky. So I had decided in 1979 that I wanted to write a song about that. “If you’re interested in Second World War aeroplanes then ultimately you have to come to the one that effectively ended the war, the B-29 Superfortress the Enola Gay that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. I also had a fascination for warfare, not in a celebratory way but in a sense that I was drawn by the horror of it and the moral dilemma that people were allowed to do things in war that were illegal at times of peace. I was particularly fascinated with Second World War aeroplanes, rather than the modern ones. I was an Airfix aeroplane collector and he was a train track collector, so my fascination with aeroplanes started young. US chart position: –“The origin of the song goes back to myself and Paul Humphreys being geeky kids. Here, Andy McCluskey talks us through the creation of the international hit which continues to pose a moral dilemma…Īrtist: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark In fact, it was banned from being played on the BBC children’s programme Swap Shop – not because of the events referenced in the track, but a bizarre misinterpretation that it was promoting homosexuality. That’s not to say the track was welcomed by everyone. Such is Enola Gay’s instant appeal, it has gone on to sell more than five million copies. With its title, and inspiration, taken from the name of the aeroplane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945, the song is most memorable for its catchy synth hook – somewhat at odds with the sombre subject matter. also had the knack for writing chart-bothering and catchy singles, none more so than Enola Gay. Though a successful albums band, McClusky, Humphreys and co.
Formed in 1978 by school friends Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, who had already played together in other Merseyside bands, OMD became the perfect home for their Kraftwerk-inspired synth-pop. With 25 million singles and 15 million albums sold worldwide, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) have guaranteed their place in the annals of music history. How the electro-pop classic, with one of the catchiest synth melodies, was inspired by the dropping of the atomic bomb Publisher on 27 February 2020 at 11:04 pm