The Buggles

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The Buggles

Background information
Origin	UK
Genre(s)	New Wave
Years active	1977-1981
Label(s)	Island Records
Associated acts	Yes, Asia, The Producers
Former members
Trevor Horn Geoff Downes Bruce Woolley

Buggles (the official version of the band name, used on their albums, singles, and publicity material, omits the prefix "The") were a New Wave band formed in 1977 consisting of Trevor Horn, born 1949 in Durham (bass guitar, guitar, percussion, and vocals); Geoff Downes, born 1952 in Stockport, Cheshire (percussion and keyboards); and Bruce Woolley.

[edit] Early days

Horn and Downes had first met in the mid 1970s while members of the backing band of UK singer Tina Charles (of "I Love to Love" fame, though they did not actually play on that record). After this stint they briefly went their separate ways, Horn playing bass guitar in the house band at Hammersmith Odeon for a while, where he met Bruce Woolley. During this period Horn yearned to become a record producer, but was frustrated by not being able to find ideal songs or artists to work with. As a result he reunited with Geoff Downes, and the trio of Horn, Downes, and Woolley began writing their own songs to record themselves as a studio band.

The Buggles' sound was characterized by a deliberately synthetic quality in keeping with the technological subject matter of their songs. Two different stories are claimed for the origin of the band's name; Horn said he chose "Buggles" because "It was the most disgusting name I could think of at that time", but the booklet for the CD remaster of "The Age of Plastic" says that it arose out of a private joke between Horn and Downes and was actually a pun on "Beatles".

[edit] Video Killed the Radio Star

Their first song was "Video Killed the Radio Star," and in the summer of 1979 a demo recording was submitted to Island Records, who signed them immediately. What many people do not know is that this demo featured vocals by Tina Charles, who incidentally helped fund the project. Although the song was chiefly a Bruce Woolley composition, he left shortly before its release to form a new band, the Camera Club, which included Thomas Dolby and Hans Zimmer. Three months after the demo was sent to Island, "Video Killed the Radio Star" was at number one. The female vocalists on the "proper" recording were Debi Doss and Linda Jardim, now known as Linda Allan.

"Video Killed the Radio Star", released in late 1979, was the 444th number one in the UK charts, spending one week at the top and shooting Buggles to fame. At the time of the single's original release Buggles did not actually have an album's worth of material to record, and so they wrote most of the other tracks for their debut album The Age of Plastic (1980) while travelling around Europe promoting "Video Killed The Radio Star".

Being largely a studio creation, Buggles never toured as such. There were a couple of Top of the Pops appearances, and later some performances for promotional purposes in support of the second album, but the first live outing by the original duo came in a low-key appearance in 1998 [1]. Later, an appearance at a Prince's Trust concert celebrating Horn's career as a producer in 2004 was billed as the band's first-ever live appearance. [2]

The novelty value of the song led to the Buggles' being perceived as one-hit wonders (three subsequent singles also charted, although they were largely ignored by radio and did not perform well), but its success was sufficient to launch both members of the band onto successful careers. The video for the song, directed by Russell Mulcahy, was the first video aired on MTV North America two years later, at midnight on August 1, 1981. There also was a Camera Club version of the song. Also as with other songs from The Age of Plastic album, the songs were shortened in their Music Videos among the original versions. This applies to Video Killed the Radio Star as well however on their Adventures in Modern Recording album, none of their videos shortened from the length of that album's original recordings.

[edit] Merger with Yes

Later in 1980, Horn and Downes began work on a second album, working in a studio next door to progressive rock band Yes, who had recently lost vocalist Jon Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Both Buggles, and Horn in particular, had been long-standing fans of Yes, but felt that the quality of their recent music had been slipping. The Buggles offered a song to Yes, "We Can Fly from Here", but at the suggestion of Brian Lane, manager of both bands, Yes' bassist Chris Squire invited them to actually replace Anderson and Wakeman as fully fledged members of Yes. This they did, in one of rock music's more surprising shifts of personnel.

The fruit of their labours was the album Drama (1980, UK #2, US #18). A track called "Into the Lens" was released in its full 8.5 minute form, on a limited-edition one-sided 12-inch single. Essentially it was an unfinished Buggles song originally titled "I am a Camera," re-worked and completed by Yes. "We Can Fly From Here" did not in fact appear on Drama, but the band did perform the song on the Drama tour, and a 1980 performance can be heard on Yes' The Word Is Live CD set (2005), along with another unreleased Yes track from that era, "Go Through This." As a point of interest, another track from Drama, the somewhat brief "Man in a White Car," was extended in live performance to incorporate sections of "Video Killed the Radio Star," much to fans' amusement.

On the whole, the team-up of Yes and Buggles was well received by fans both on record (the UK chart position for Drama is testemant to that), and on stage. Trevor Horn was the first to admit that he did not have Jon Anderson's vocal range or style, and many fans missed this, but most were still keen to give the new-look Yes a chance. The critics, however, were far less forgiving, especially in the UK, and poured scorn on the band. Nowadays, the general view seems to be along the lines of "It was good, but it was not Yes." In any event, the band broke up, although temporarily, in early 1981, shortly after the Drama tour came to an end.

[edit] Downes after The Buggles

With the break-up of Yes, Geoff Downes, Chris Squire and drummer Alan White initially embarked on a project with former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, ostensibly to be called XYZ (ex-Yes and Zeppelin), but when ex-Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant declined an invitation to come on board the project foundered. As a result Downes reunited with Trevor Horn to resume work on the second Buggles album. However, he left shortly afterwards, citing musical differences, going on to join his former Yes bandmate Steve Howe in "supergroup" Asia, together with John Wetton (ex-King Crimson), and Carl Palmer (ex-Emerson Lake & Palmer). There he remains to this day, the only member of Asia to have been in the band continually since its beginnings. He has still found time for other projects though, the most notable being a double album (single CD) which he issued in 1986 under the name New Dance Orchestra, titled The Light Programme.

[edit] Horn after The Buggles

Horn continued to work on the second Buggles album, Adventures in Modern Recording, with several new players, the most prominent being Simon Darlow. The album included "I am a Camera," brought to completion as a Buggles song as originally intended, and under its original title. Adventures in Modern Recording did not chart, nor did four singles released from it--the title track, "I am a Camera," "On TV", and lastly "Lenny." Shortly afterwards Trevor Horn brought the Buggles to an end, and finally embarked on his new career as a record producer, achieving enormous success, with bands like ABC, Dollar, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Art of Noise, and even a re-formed Yes, with Jon Anderson back on vocals. In 1985, Horn won the Best Producer BRIT Award. More than twenty years on, he is still active, still producing, with Simple Minds, t.A.T.u., Charlotte Church, and most recently Captain among his many credits.

[edit] In the 21st Century

In June 2005, Geoff Downes faintly hinted on his blog [3] at an arrangement with Trevor Horn for a new Buggles album to coincide with MTV's 25th birthday, although the blog hasn't been updated for a while, but with the expected worldwide re-release of Adventures in Modern Recording by Horn's own ZTT Records, there is still a sign of Buggles activity.

In late 2006, Trevor Horn formed a new band, The Producers with other musicians and producers. At their first gig in Camden Town, November 2006, a clip can be seen on the official website of ZTT Records [4] of Trevor singing lead vocals and playing bass on a performance of Video Killed The Radio Star.