The first Tubeway Army single, That’s Too Bad, came out early in 1978, but it was quite a different sound from the likes of Cars, wasn’t it?
Yes. That record came out on 10 February, and I stayed in my job right up to the date that it came out. I was working for WH Smiths, driving a lorry and a forklift truck. At that point all I’d done was just write songs and put a band together to try to get a contract, and it was a bit punky because that was what was happening and what I thought I needed to be doing to get signed.
The first album wasn’t what the record company expected, was it?
They thought I’d be delivering a punk album. When I got in the studio and discovered the synthesizer in the control room, that was when everything changed. When I took the album to the record company, it really wasn’t what they wanted. I had a really big, quite heavy, argument with them that was almost aggressive at times. It was not a good meeting. About three-quarters of the way through, Martin Mills, who was the director who wasn’t shouting at me, said, “OK, why not release it and see what happens.” I’m embarrassed to say, and this was part of my argument with Beggars Banquet when I delivered the first album, that I said to them that this synth-based approach was a brand-new thing. I actually said, almost word-for-word, “Very soon other people are going to find out about this.” I was that ignorant of what was going on [laughs].
So, you weren’t influenced by the likes of Human League and Kraftwerk?
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