Usually it’s the parents telling their kids to turn the music down. But when Clare Grogan and husband, Stephen Lironi, were writing Altered Images’ first album in 39 years in their north London house during lockdown, their teenage daughter Ellie, 17, would burst in and shout “would you turn it down please”.
It’s no reflection on the music – songs such as Your Life is Mine and Double Reflection match 80s band’s classics like Happy Birthday and Pinky Blue. And it did end up a family affair with Ellie singing on some of the songs.
Clare, 60, from Glasgow said: “She’s not going to express too much praise or appreciation because she is a teenager. Because of lockdown we were stuck at home and recorded a lot of this album in Stephen’s studio, which is next door to Ellie’s bedroom.
“We drove her completely nuts and quite often she’d storm into the studio and shout ‘would you turn it down please’? But I did twist her arm and get her to sing on a couple of the tracks because she’s got a beautiful voice.
“I don’t want to sound like the Partridge Family because we are anything but, but it was nice to get her involved. It was important to me because she inspired quite a lot of the songs.”
Clare’s new album is called Mascara Streakz and is Altered Images’ first new music in 39 years – since 1983, when they released third album Bite. Ellie did backing vocals on the title track, The Flame and Red Startles The Sky.
Despite getting a two-album deal, Clare said they’d “had their moment” and Ellie won’t join her for a duet next time. But Clare is happy as she “wanted to create a memory for us”. Not that Ellie doesn’t like her mum’s music. When she has friends round they often end up listening to 80s classics and, at an Altered Images show last weekend, Clare was shocked and happy to see her singing along to the new tracks.
She said: “It blew my mind. She was with her cousins and they were all singing along to the songs. This is the person I have to sometimes coax out of her bedroom to talk to me, so to see her singing in the crowd was pretty special.”
Ellie is now at the age Clare was when she tried to make it as a pop star in the late '70s. She was 16 when she first drove from Glasgow to London in a van with the other original members of the band, including Johnny McElhone, now in Texas.
Clare said: “It makes me look back at my mum and dad and think how amazing they were to trust me on the level they did and not prevent me chasing this crazy dream. I think it was tough for them. They were strict parents.
"When I was older, I asked them why they’d let me go in the back of a Transit van with those boys and they said, ‘Because our lives would have been hell if we hadn’t let you and we knew the boys went to Holyrood (secondary) and they were nice boys – we knew their parents’. I do remind myself of that. Trusting your children is so important.”
She and Stephen adopted Ellie after a number of miscarriages and four failed IVF attempts. It’s no wonder she’s protective.
But Clare added: “I’m always going to be a protective mum. I can’t help it. But I am trying to be better at letting her go.
“The worry thing has taken me by surprise a bit because I’m well aware she’s going to be 18 in December so of course she’s absolutely entitled to her freedom and to go out and have a good time but it’s easy to forget what we were like, so I do have to remind myself to get off her case.”
Her parents’ instinct was right – in the 40 years since, Clare has become a national treasure, a pop star and also an actress in the forever loved Gregory’s Girl, Comfort and Joy, Red Dwarf, EastEnders and Skins.
She also inspired the lyrics to Spandau Ballet’s True – one of the 80s biggest love songs. Gary Kemp had a crush on Clare – as did most of Britain in the early 80s.
Clare said: “I find it really difficult to talk about. That still makes me feel a bit embarrassed and self-conscious. But it’s a lovely thing to have.” And she laughs when men tell her, “I used to really love you”.
Cackling, she pretends to be hurt, adding: “I always say ‘what happened? You don’t love me now?’ I can’t over-analyse that stuff. It’s not who I am.”
In the early noughties, Clare decided to resurrect Altered Images as a live act, but lockdown and Ellie growing up inspired Clare to start writing with Stephen, which snowballed into the new album.
And while she’s nervous at what people will think, she is proud of the songs which stand up to the legacy left by the band’s first three recordings.
Husband Stephen joined Altered Images for Bite and she’s still friends with McElhone but she didn’t feel the need to get the other original members’ blessing to release a new album by the band.
She said: “I’ll be honest, it never occurred to me because I don’t have any connection with them and haven’t for a very long time.”
Instead, as well as writing at their kitchen table with Stephen, a multi-instrumentalist and producer, she also teamed up with neighbour Bernard Butler – the former Suede guitarist whose album with Jessie Buckley has just been nominated for a Mercury Prize – and her old pal Bobby Bluebell, who she’s known since she was nine.
He’s not the only old pal she’s working with. Altered Images will be playing a double header gig with Edwyn Collins for Summer Nights at the Bandstand in Glasgow next week.
Famously, she and Edwyn had a 1981 NME cover with the tag The New Flowers of Scotland. It seems neither of them, even after Edwyn’s near fatal brain haemorrhage, show any sign of wilting yet.
Clare said: “The bandstand show is going to be a legendary night.
“It’s going to be an amazing homecoming for me. I’ll be very nervous. The one audience I never want to let down is that Glasgow crowd.”
● Altered Images’ Mascara Streakz is out on August 26. They play a double header with Edwyn Collins on Saturday, August 13, for Summer Nights at The Bandstand in Glasgow.
