and was Top Ten in other countries, but, strangely, not back home in the U.K. Their most famous song is, of course, “I Ran (So Far Away).” With the combination of keyboards, judicious use of the guitar’s delay pedal, and the percussion sound achieved with Ali Score’s electronic drum pads, the song was both immediately identifiable and instantly modern. “I Ran (So Far Away)” (Uploaded to YouTube by A Flock of Seagulls) While it might not be the most famous song on the album, it would be the band’s second Top 40 hit in America and equally emblematic of their sonic architecture. When discussing what they might call it, Maudsley said, “It just sounds like a space age love song.” The band wrote the description on the chalkboard in their rehearsal space, and “Space Age Love Song” became the title. Mike Score came up with the tune by noodling on a Casio keyboard, and took it to the band for Reynolds to develop a guitar part. The sound was best described by the second track on the debut album. One look at the band let you know that this was going to sound different. His various coifs on stage and in the group’s videos cut memorable, instantly recognizable images into the minds of Generation X. Rarely has one musician’s hair generated that much attention, but Mike Score put his hairdressing background to work on himself and created something akin to sculpture. A Flock of Seagulls embraced elements of the New Wave fashion of the time, including shirts and jackets with sharp edges, Reynolds’s oversized shades, Maudsley’s tailored leather jacket, and, yes, Mike Score’s hair. For early promotional footage, New Order wore, well, normal clothes. “Space Age Love Song” (Uploaded to YouTube by A Flock of Seagulls)įor one thing, the various songs and singles that A Flock of Seagulls wrote and recorded at the time coalesced into what would become a concept album about alien invasion.
However, for all of frontman Bernard Sumner’s emotive sincerity, New Order wasn’t deploying the same kind of conceptual dramatics that Seagulls were attempting. While Mike Score has said that their sound was “somewhere between Pink Floyd and punk Floyd,” their closest spiritual cousin was probably New Order, who came together in 1980 from the ashes of Joy Division. On the other end of the spectrum, Reynolds’s playing separated them from acts like Depeche Mode, who didn’t use guitars at all.
Duran Duran had both guitars and keys, but frequently featured Andy Taylor’s fret work in a more traditional rock context. Their sound combined Mike’s up-front keyboards and Reynolds’s guitar textures in a way that stood out from their contemporaries. Mike attributed the group’s unusual name to two sources of inspiration one was the 1970’s bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, and the other was the lyric “A flock of seagulls!” from the 1978 song “Toiler on the Sea” by British punk royalty The Stranglers.ĭespite the punk inspiration, A Flock of Seagulls took aim at a different musical direction. After some line-up shuffling put Paul Reynolds on guitar and Frank Maudsley on bass, the classic line-up of A Flock of Seagulls was set. The band was gone a year later (Mike has said he was thrown out), but Mike put together a new outfit he took lead vocals and keyboards while Ali joined on drums. By 1978, Mike was making a living as a hairdresser in Liverpool while he assembled Tontrix, a post-punk band, with himself on bass. Five years later, his brother Mike made his debut. “Tellecommunication” (Uploaded to YouTube by A Flock of Seagulls)Īlister (Ali) Score was born in Beverly, Yorkshire, England in 1952.
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