Paul Oxley's Unit

Paul Oxley's Unit was a popular rock band in Finland in the 1980s. The bands vocalist and songwriter was a man from Manchester, named Malcolm Campbell, or in his stage name, Paul Oxley. Playing the keyboards was Brian Hammond, but he wasn't playing yet in the first single produced by the group. The other members of the band were from Finland, and they were Swedish speaking Finns Ulf Enberg (guitar), Kjell Ekholm (bass) and Janne Romberg (drums).

At first the band was called Paul Oxley's Radio and with this name they released their first single, "Another Heartbreak/The Judge and the Jury" which had a reasonable amount of airtime in Finnish radio stations in 1980, but the real first taste of success came around the summer gigs of 1981 and from the debut-album "Living in the Western World", released in autumn of the same year. The album's melodic and energetic pop sold its way to the Finnish youth so well, that over 60 000 copies were sold, pushing it over the Platinum marker and by today's standards, double platinum. The album reached No1 in the charts and stayed there for 17 weeks. The biggest hits from the album and possibly the most internationally recognized were "Spanish Bars", "Terry's Inside" and the album's namesake song "Living in the Western World."

The summer 1982 tour, Paul Oxley's Unit - Live in the Western World Tour, was a success and again in the autumn of the same year, a new album was released. It was called Both Sides of the Equator and reached gold record status with over 35 000 copies sold.

By the start of 1983, the band had changed its name as "Unit 6" and it released an LP named "After the Party." The band then broke up, and the British members moved back to United Kingdom. At 1987 a record label called CBS (Now Sonymusic) released a compilation album of the band's songs, "The Paul Oxley's Unit Collection". By now, all of the band's records have been released in CD -format. In total, the band has sold over 100 000 records. Terry's Inside and Spanish Bars are both included in the top 100 songs of all time in Finland. The band have released 8 albums.

In 1995 Oxley returned for a holiday trip in Finland to meet his old friends, and the band was briefly put together (without Hammond) for a one-time gig. The concert, however, turned out to be quite popular and the members of the band thought about a bigger comeback. In 1996 they did in fact release a new album "The Magic", the drummer now replaced by Niklas Björkqvist and the keyboards now manned by Johan Lyander. A tour was made in the spring of 1997.

Kjell Ekholm is nowadays FST's (Finlands Svenska Television) entertainment manager. Paul Oxley has made music in the United Kingdom with a Devon based group called New World Orchestra, during the time of 1992–2001. His solo album, Eden Wakes, came out in 2008.

Paul Oxley is now a very active songwriter and now works with top writers and producers in Scandinavia. As well as writing hits for several Finnish artists over the last few years, he has recently had cuts with international platinum selling artists including a Number 1, platinum selling single in Japan with the band; Kat Tun. Paul has had four entries in the Eurovision song contest and co-wrote the song, 'Cider Hill' which came second in the 2010 Finnish final. He also co-wrote the Jessica Wolff song 'Better' the 2012 Finnish entry. He works from his studio in Helsinki.

Members

Original line-up:

The Magic line-up:

Discography

Singles

Albums

References

    External links