Bow Wow Wow was an English new wave band that released two proper albums and assorted singles between 1980 and 1983 on EMI and RCA. They courted fame and infamy with a string of tribal-rhythmic hits (“I Want Candy,” “Baby Oh No”) and a series of promo stunts involving then-teenage vocalist Annabella Lwin. The other members hailed from Adam and the Ants, who also used the Burundian drum style in a series of pop hits.

Members: Annabella Lwin [Annabella] (vocals), Matthew Ashman (guitar), Leigh Gorman (bass), Dave Barbarossa (drums)

Background

Bow Wow Wow was plucked from an early formation of Adam and the Ants. In early 1980, former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren persuaded three Ants — guitarist Matthew Ashman, bassist Leigh Gorman, and drummer Dave Barbarossa — to leave Adam and form a new band under his guidance.

Ashman and Barbarossa played on the Ants’ 1979 debut album Dirk Wears White Sox. Gorman hailed from the unrecorded 57 Men with singer Glenn Gregory (later Heaven 17) and the future core of Wang Chung. He joined the Ants just after the White Sox sessions.

After six months of vocalist auditions, an associate caught the voice of a young laundromat worker, Annabella Lwin, as she sang on shift. Upon hearing the discovery, McLaren added her to the band. Lwin (born Myant Myant Aye in Burma on October 31, 1966) was only 13 at the time. Blitz scenester George O’Dowd also joined Bow Wow Wow as second vocalist under the alias Lieutenant Lush, but left soon after due to conflicts with other members. (He soon formed Culture Club and shot to fame as Boy George.)

1980

“C·30 C·60 C·90 Go!”

In July 1980, Bow Wow Wow signed to EMI and released their first single, “C·30 C·60 C·90 Go!” The single first appeared as a cassingle (cassette-only release) with the “b-side” (“Sun, Sea and Piracy”) on the same side.

EMI balked at the song’s lyrics, which seemed to encourage home-taping, a then-controversial issue in the music industry. Bow Wow Wow left the second side blank, thus giving customers free space for home-taping purposes.

Ashman, Gorman, and Barbarossa co-wrote both songs with McLaren, their acting producer.

A. “C’30, C’60, C’90 Go” (2:59)
B. “Sun Sea and Piracy” (2:54)

Weeks after the cassingle’s release, EMI issued a 7″ version. “C’30, C’60, C’90 Go” peaked at No. 34 on the UK Singles Chart.

Bow Wow Wow cut a Peel Session (10/20/80) performing “I Want My Baby on Mars,” “Fools Rush In,” “Radio G String,” and “Uomosex Al Apache.”

Your Cassette Pet

In November 1980, Bow Wow Wow issued Your Cassette Pet, a cassette-only mini-album with nine songs, including the four Peel-broadcast songs plus “Louis Quatorze,” “Gold He Said,” and “Giant Sized Baby Thing.” The track “Sexy Eiffel Towers” aroused controversy because of its suggestive moaning, performed by then 14-year-old Lwin.

1. “Louis Quatorze” (2:39)
2. “Gold He Said” (2:05)
3. “Uomo Sex Al Apache” (3:11)
4. “I Want My Baby on Mars” (2:24)

5. “Sexy Eiffel Tower” (2:25)
6. “Giant Sized Baby Thing” (2:21)
7. “Fools Rush In” (2:11) is a 1940 song by Tin Pan Alley composer Rube Bloom and lyricist Johnny Mercer; first popularized by Glenn Miller (with Ray Eberle) and Tommy Dorsey (with Frank Sinatra) and later revived by Ricky Nelson, whose 1963 version hit No. 12 on the US Billboard pop chart.
8. “Radio G String” (2:41)

Bow Wow Wow and Malcolm McLaren co-produced Your Cassette Pet, which veteran EMI/Harvest soundman Pat Stapley engineered in sequence with titles by the Angelic Upstarts and Berlin Blondes.

EMI lifted “Louis Quatorze” as a UK promo single (b/w “Fools Rush In”). In Germany in France, “Sexy Eiffel Towers” appeared as a single (b/w “Louis Quatorze”) while Dutch copies flipped the sides.

1981

“W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don’t)”

On March 6, 1981, Bow Wow Wow released their second proper single: “W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah, No No My Daddy Don’t)” backed with a Spanish-language version of “C-30, C-60, C-90.” The 12″ contains a double-length “W.O.R.K.”

McLaren and the Bow Wow male core co-wrote “W.O.R.K,” their final release on EMI.

A. “W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah NO! NO! My Daddy Don’t)” (2:42 / 5:22)
B. “C-30, C-60, C-90 ANDA!” (3:02)

Bow Wow Wow recorded “W.O.R.K.” with Alan Tarney, an Aussie/UK music vet (James Taylor Move, Tarney/Spencer Band) with recent production credits for Cliff Richard, Barbara Dickson, Charlie Dore, and Leo Sayer.

“W.O.R.K.” appeared in a lyric sleeve with multiple color variations (purple, yellow, turquoise) and continued use of the smiley face cassette icon, a presumed backhand at industry officials.

EMI dropped Bow Wow Wow, which singed soon after with the UK branch of RCA.

“Prince of Darkness”

On July 31, 1981, Bow Wow Wow released their third standalone single: “Prince of Darkness” backed with “Orangutang,” both group-written by the full band (Lwin included) and McLaren. The 12″ adds “Sinner, Sinner, Sinner,” a track from their upcoming album.

A. “Prince of Darkness” (2:22)
B. “Orangutang” (2:43)

Bow Wow Wow co-produced both sides with Brian Tench a onetime music tape-op on Roobarb, an animated Seventies BBC children’s series.

“Prince of Darkness” first appeared in a four-fold poster bag photographed by Andy Earl, who captured the band in a lakeside picnic setting. Subsequent pressing used the two bottom folds (Lwin down on a blanket) for a standard sleeve. Earl’s photoshoot soon aroused controversy over details revealed on the group’s first album.

See Jungle! See Jungle!

Bow Wow Wow released their first proper album, See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy!, on October 16, 1981, on RCA.

See Jungle! features the recent b-side (hyphenated as “Orang-Outang”) and two additional group-writes with producer Brian Tench: “Elimination Dancing” and “Go Wild in the Country.”

Annabella Lwin also co-wrote “Sinner, Sinner, Sinner,” a product of their sessions with Alan Tarney, who also produced “Chihuahua,” one of nine new originals co-written by Bow Wow’s male core with Malcolm McLaren.

1. “Jungle Boy” (2:47)
2. “Chihuahua” (4:15)
3. “Sinner, Sinner, Sinner” (2:23)
4. “Mickey Put It Down” (3:03)
5. “(I’m a) T.V. Savage” (2:40)
6. “Elimination Dancing” (3:04)

7. “Golly! Golly! Go Buddy!” (2:38)
8. “King Kong” (2:20)
9. “Go Wild in the Country” (2:44)
10. “I’m Not a Know It All” (2:54)
11. “Why Are Babies So Wise?” (2:55)
12. “Orang-Outang” (2:44)
13. “Hello, Hello Daddy (I’ll Sacrifice You)” (4:28)

Bow Wow Wow lifted “Chihuahua” as a single (b/w “Golly! Golly! Go Buddy!”). The 12″ contains an extended “Chihuahua” (5:48), which also appeared in the US (b/w “Prince of Darkness”).

They recorded the eight most-recent tracks (post-Tarney, Tench) with Colin Thurston, a member of the fabled Bewlay Bros. sound team behind Lust for Life and “Heroes,” the respective late-1977 albums by Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Thurston earned recent credits with Duran Duran, Landscape, and Our Daughter’s Wedding.

Tench produced his tracks in sequence with titles by Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark, Landscape (Tea-rooms) and the second Visage album.

See Jungle! sports graphic details by Nick Egan, an erstwhile post-punk musician (in The Tea Set) with subsequent design credits for Bananarama. The cover image comes from Andy Earl’s “Prince of Darkness” photoshoot.

The image recreates Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, an 1863 oil-on-canvass by French modernist Édouard Manet (1832–1883), whose painting depicts a nude female and two clothed dandies at a picnic.

Lwin was fourteen when she posed as Manet’s nude character for Earl’s photo. The ensuing controversy prompted RCA to reissue See Jungle! in a tame Earl photograph from the “Chihuahua,” where Lwin holds a long blue sheet. When a child-porn probe came up empty handed, RCA green-lit subsequent use of the Manet-based image.

See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! reached No. 26 on the UK Albums Chart.

1982

In January 1981, “Go Wild In the Country” became the second See Jungle single, backed with the non-album “El Boss Dicho,” a trio-credited track (without McLaren). The 12″ contains an extended “Go Wild” (5:02).

B: “El Boss Dicho” (2:10)

Tench produced both sides, which RCA packaged in a green-tinted monochrome reproduction of Earl’s recently censored Manet recreation.

Bow Wow Wow mimed “Go Wild In the Country” amid green-lit glass grids for the February 11 Top of the Pops broadcast, where DJ Tommy Vance also introduced in-studio numbers by Adrian Gurvitz (“Classic”), Depeche Mode (“See You”), Haircut One Hundred (“Love Plus One”), and the Fun Boy Three/Bananarama duet “It Ain’t What You Do It’s the Way That You Do It”). By the time of this appearance, Annabella adopted Matthew Ashman’s Mohican hairdo, clad here in a white robe next to Leigh Gorman, who wore an orange toga over striped floods.

They made an encore appearance for the March 11 TotP broadcast, where Lwin wore a printed oversized Vivienne Westwood mini-suit while Ashman (with his multi-autographed white Gibson) wore a vintage 1975 “bare boobs” shirt, one of the most notorious designs of the SEX incarnation of the World’s End McLaren/Westwood shop. “Go Wild In the Country” reached No. 11 in Ireland and No. 7 on the UK Singles Chart.

On April 16, 1982, Bow Wow Wow released “See Jungle! (Jungle Boy),” a remixed version of the See Jungle! track “Jungle Boy” backed with “(I’m a) TV Savage.” RCA issued 7″ and extended 12″ versions (5.12) with Annabella’s green-tinted profile.

The Last of the Mohicans

In May 1982, Bow Wow Wow released the EP The Last of the Mohicans. It features their take of the Sixties pop hit “I Want Candy” and three originals co-credited to the male core and McLaren, including a re-recorded “Louis Quatorze.” For sleeve, they once again reused the controversial See Jungle! recreation of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.

A1. “I Want Candy” (2:43) originated as a 1965 single by The Strangeloves, a New York trio formed by producers Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer, who purportedly wrote the song (ostensibly about sweets) in response to a skit at the 1964 World’s Fair by song-and-dance woman Candy Johnson.
A2. “Cowboy” (3:30)

B1. “Louis Quatorze” (2:48) first appeared in 1980 on Your Cassette Pet.
B2. “Mile High Club” (3:26)

Bow Wow Wow recorded Last of the Mohicans in Miami at Criteria Studios with Kenny Laguna, a Joan Jett collaborator with earlier credits behind Advertising, Bethnal, and the Steve Gibbons Band.

“I Want Candy” appeared simultaneously as a 7″ single backed with the earlier “King Kong.” In the video, Bow Wow Wow perform on a sandy beach amid candy-cane pillars under a saturated blue sky, intercut with scenes of Annabella hovering over her sand-buried bandmates under an orange sky.

“I Want Candy” reached No. 7 in Ireland and No. 9 on the UK Singles Chart. Abroad, it went Top 30 in Benelux and New Zealand. The video received high rotation on the fledgling US cable channel MTV, which helped “I Want Candy” reached No. 22 on the Billboard Top Tracks chart.

I Want Candy

In May 1982, RCA issued the Bow Wow Wow compilation I Want Candy. It gathers the four Last of the Mohicans tracks and the two prior a-sides (“Go Wild in the Country,” “Jungle Boy”) and last three b-sides (“El Bosso Dicho,” “(I’m a) T.V. Savage,” “King Kong”), plus one new group-written original, “Baby, Oh No,” their US followup single to “I Want Candy.”

Though assembled to capitalize on the band’s North American breakthrough, RCA issued I Want Candy worldwide with the same tracklist. The cover features another disrobed photo of Annabella Lwin, aged sixteen at the time of release.

In July, the re-recorded “Louis Quatorze” became their seventh UK single (b/w “Mile High Club”). Concurrently, “Baby, Oh No” became their fourth US single (b/w “Cowboy”).

“Baby, Oh No” (2:44)

The “Baby, Oh No” video opens with a back-road motorcyclist and cuts to Annabella’s bedroom, where the walls are decked with jungle paintings and the biker’s poster. Amid soundstage clips with Bow Wow Wow, she rolls between her bed and vanity and fixes her mohawk for “baby.” Once he bursts through the poster into her room, she mounts the pillion and they ride off into the country.

She reuses two prior garments: the large printed minidress from the March 11 TotP appearance (stage) and the orange garment that Gorman wore as a one-shoulder piece (bedroom).

In September 1982, EMI capitalized on the band’s newfound fame with a re-release of “Fools Rush In,” their earlier Johnny Mercer cover backed with “Sex,” an instrumental. EMI included both songs on its UK album/cassette title-cribbed release I Want Candy, a nineteen-track compilation of their pre-RCA material and licensed Last of the Mohicans tracks. The comp appeared in Europe and Australia as Original Recordings.

1983

When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going

Bow Wow Wow released their second proper studio album, When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going, in February 1983 on RCA. The title idiom is an antimetabole (a sequence of words reversed in successive clauses) attributed to Fifties American football culture.

The album features twelve group-written originals by Matthew Ashman, Leigh Gorman, and Dave Barbarossa with lyrics by Annabella Lwin, including “Lonesome Tonight,” “Quiver (Arrows in My),” “The Man Mountain,” “Aphrodisiac,” and the single “Do You Wanna Hold Me?”

1. “Aphrodisiac” (2:58)
2. “Do You Wanna Hold Me?” (3:14)
3. “Roustabout” (2:20)
4. “Lonesome Tonight” (2:47)
5. “Love Me” (3:28)
6. “What’s the Time (Hey Buddy)” (3:06)

7. “Mario (Your Own Way to Paradise)” (2:54)
8. “Quiver (Arrows in My)” (3:14)
9. “The Man Mountain” (2:26)
10. “Rikki Dee” (3:02)
11. “Tommy Tucker” (2:44)
12. “Love, Peace and Harmony” (2:50)

Sessions took place in late 1982 at Basing Street Studios in London with producer Mike Chapman, one-half of the Chinn–Chap partnership behind Seventies hits by Sweet, Mud, Smokie, Arrows, and Racer. His recent credits included new wave titles by Australian Crawl, Blondie, Blue Rondo ala Turk, and Toni Basil. He produced When the Going Gets Tough ahead of 1983 singles by Altered Images and Pat Benetar.

When the Going Gets Tough was engineered by Nigel Mills, a concurrent Killing Joke and Kim Wilde soundman with credits on earlier albums by The Dance, Joe Jackson (Beat Crazy), King Crimson (Discipline), Q Tips, and The Vapors.

Veteran fashion photographer David Bailey took the group and member pics for When the Going Gets Tough and its corresponding single, “Do You Wanna Hold Me?” (b/w “What’s The Time (Hey Buddy)”).

In the song’s video, Bow Wow Wow don assorted costumes (cowboy, officer, Ronald Reagan) while Lwin sings before US power symbols. AMid stock footage and floating card, they appear in a white space as assorted characters, including Carmen Miranda (Annabella), Charlie Chaplin (Barbarossa), Spider-Man (Gorman), Robin (Barbarossa), and Robin Hood (Annabella). Ashman sticks to a blue-jacketed Teddy Boy outfit. McLaren’s cutout appears for a split second (at 1:05).

Billy Ocean used the album’s title idiom for his 1985 theme song to The Jewel of the Nile, the sequel to the 1984 comedy/adventure Romancing the Stone starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

Discography:

Your Cassette Pet (1980)
See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (1981)
I Want Candy (1982)
When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going (1983)

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