Andy McCluskey’s favourite Paul McCartney song: “Very catchy”
For a moment in the early 1980s UK synthpop explosion, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were crafting the most ambitious pop cuts of the entire new wave. Following the electronic groundwork laid by Kraftwerk and John Foxx’s Ultravox, core duo Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys had taken synths to romantic planes unheard since Trans-Europe Express‘ twinkling Synthanorma Sequencer on the album’s opener ‘Europe Endless’.
While Depeche Mode and The Human League were working with conventional song formats in 1981, OMD’s Architecture & Morality dropped two single odes to the French saint Joan of Arc, showcasing the album’s lush, mellotron sweep and weighty, sonic grandiosity.
Growing up near Liverpool along the Wirral coast throughout the 1960s, McCluskey was well familiar with the ‘local boys done good‘ The Beatles. Rifling through his mother’s stack of 45s as a child without a care for which side he stuck the needle on, a lesser-known Fab Four cut found its way into his affections early on.
“It was very, very catchy. Lennon and McCartney sing in unison for parts of the song, and they split into harmonies,” McCluskey declared regarding the Paul McCartney and John Lennon number ‘Thank You Girl’ to Stereogram in 2022. Selecting the track for the magazine’s McCartney 80th birthday feature, its irrepressible buoyant energy has stuck with him all his life. “I think the song has a joyful energy.”
The 1963 B-side of ‘From Me to You’ was conceived as a means of expressing gratitude for the abundance of fan mail The Beatles were bombarded with. “We knew that if we wrote a song called ‘Thank You Girl’ that a lot of the girls who wrote us fan letters would take it as a genuine thank you,” McCartney stated in 1988. “So a lot of our songs were directly addressed to the fans.”
Like so much disparate scope of popular music, The Beatles’ foundational influence made its way to the new wave of synthesists. Despite earnestly adopting punk’s ethos of rejecting the old guard, coupled with his hometown’s Fab saturation for the tourist board, McCluskey spent OMD’s formative years resisting McCartney’s songbook before rediscovering later in life.
He said: “I often had a laugh with people in Germany: My influence came from Dusseldorf. The funny thing is, I got to meet the guys from Kraftwerk, and they were influenced by The Beatles. Who knew Kraftwerk were influenced by The Beatles?”
He added: “I had to take a couple of them to Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane and places like that when they came over. It was only later, when I was in the music business myself, that I started to reappraise The Beatles’ catalogue.”
Perhaps taking notes from The Beatles’ publishing ventures, in addition to the excellent chart-toppers McCluskey penned, including 1980’s ‘Enola Gay’, his foray into pop masterminding with his Atomic Kitten project, his contribution to the Ivor Novello Award-winning ‘Whole Again’ is filled with Macca’s songwriting guidance.
Looking back on McCartney’s legacy, McCluskey concluded, “When I reflect upon the music he’s made, his output is just undeniably brilliant. He’s a genius.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.