Robin Scott, singer, songwriter, producer
I had been a singer-songwriter in David Bowie’s Beckenham Arts Lab, and ended up working with my old art school friend Malcolm McLaren as punk started happening. I was in Paris making a live recording of the Slits when someone said: “Why don’t you do something yourself?” I asked an engineer if there was any downtime at the studio so I could lay down some ideas.
Pop Muzik started as a three-chord guitar strum. I tried rhythm, blues and funk versions before remembering that a friend, John Lewis, had a studio in London’s Covent Garden with very modern equipment and electronics. After we put the foundation of the track together, I wanted it to start with a big glorious fanfare, so John did the intro on an organ. Then I went back to Paris to finish it.
My brother Julian, who plays bass, and a French keyboard player called Wally Badarou popped in to play. I got Julian to lay down the bass drum and snare individually then a proper drummer came in to add some fills. I met Brigitte Vinchon, the backing vocalist, in a Paris nightclub – she was the last dancer on the floor. I asked her to sing “Pop, pop, pop muzik” like the Andrews Sisters, so she put down a four-part harmony one by one. Nothing was recorded in real time. It was all done very laboriously and sequentially. I was after that separated sound similar to Giorgio Moroder’s disco hits.
The name M came from the signs on the Paris Métro. I’d grown up watching The Man from UNCLE and loved intrigue. It was 1979 and I saw Pop Muzik as a sort of homage to 25 years of pop but also a comment on its disposable nature. “I can’t get Jumpin’ Jack / I wanna hold Get Back” were references to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The spelling of Muzik nods to muzak – elevator music. I sang “New York, London, Paris, Munich” because my father was a travelling perfume salesman and he had bottles that read: “London. New York. Paris.”
DJs liked the fact it was a song about pop, which helped it reach No 2 in the UK and No 1 in the US. It’s a hybrid of new wave and disco – it’s funny how something built to be quickly obsolete has become a classic. I kept in touch with Bowie and he asked: “How do you create a crossover record like that?” I’d love to think it sowed a seed for Let’s Dance.
Brian Grant, video director
I’d been a cameraman on The Muppet Show. I was friends with Animal! But after seeing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, I decided I wanted to make videos. A guy called Scott Millaney had the same idea, so we formed a little production company.
We had no showreel, so I went into the MCA office in London and asked: “Is there anyone on your record label who’d be up for making a video?” Robin overheard and said: “I would!” I loved the record and Robin told me it was sung from the perspective of a DJ spinning records at a nightclub, so I came up with this idea of an exaggerated turntable. We got a scenery company to make a DJ desk that looked like a vinyl record and covered it with pop culture images. Within a couple of years, videos would cost millions, but our budget was £2,500.
The studio was so small we had to film the record deck, then remove it to make room to shoot everything else. We hired two dancers – we couldn’t afford a choreographer – and the bass drum Robin plays with his foot was mine. We only had a day and editing suites were so expensive that Scott realised if we edited it we would lose money. I thought: “What if we shoot and edit it in real time?” Everyone thought I was nuts, but I did it by shooting bits of Robin singing and leaving blank bits on the tape to insert other sections. The machines were unreliable: if it had stuck on “record” we would have taped over the whole thing. It all took eight hours and one piece of tape.
A week later I got a call from David Mallet, the producer of The Kenny Everett Video Show, who’d seen it and said that if we could get a master copy to him that day he’d put it in the show. Scott leapt in his car – and Pop Muzik appeared on the show between Sid Snot and Kenny’s other crazy characters. I went on to make videos for Duran Duran, Whitney Houston and all sorts. I’ve had a long career in TV and Pop Muzik kickstarted it all. I’ve always been very fond of it.
• Break the Silence, the first new M track in 41 years, is released on 23 June.
