The Buggles -

The Buggles were a studio-based English new wave/art pop duo that scored a global hit in 1979 with “Video Killed the Radio Star,” of which the video became the first clip to air during MTV’s premier day of broadcast on August 1, 1981. The duo released two albums — between which they were briefly integrated into Yes — that are noted for the innovative production work of Trevor Horn, who would ultimately emerge as one of the industry’s foremost studio hands.

Members: Trevor Horn (bass, guitar, vocals), Geoffrey Downes (keyboards, percussion), Bruce Woolley (1977–78)

Background

The Buggles formed in 1977 as a studio project between musicians Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley. All three played in the backing band of disco singer Tina Charles.

Horn (b. 1949) hailed from Hetton Le Hole, where he took up instruments as a child. He first played contrabass in emulation of his father, a one-time bassist in the Joe Clarke Big Band. At age 14, Horn played guitar in The Outer Limits, an R&B/beat band that specialized in Kinks covers. After getting sacked from a plastic bag factory, he got hired as a bassist for a nightly ballroom dance band.

In 1970, Horn moved to London and played in a Top 20 covers band for the BBC. He then did a one-year stint in Ray McVay’s big band and worked as a session musician on jingles. In 1973, he helped build a recording studio in Leicester, where he gained his first production credit on a Decca single by the Leicester City Football Club.

In 1976, Horn formed the jazz-rock band Tracks with future Shakatak drummer Roger Odell. That same year, he played bass in Northern Lights, a covers band that included keyboardist Geoff Downs and former 5000 Volts singer Tina Charles.

Downes (b. 1952), the son of an organist father and pianist mother, came from the unrecorded She’s French, where he played Fender Rhodes electric piano and Hammond organ alongside (future Fixx) drummer Jamie West-Oram.

When Charles launched her solo career, Horn and Downes joined her backing band, which also included musician Bruce Woolley. Her producer, Biddu, made use of backing tracks in a style that influenced Horn.

Early Group Activity

In 1977, Horn formed a studio band with Downes and Woolley, initially called The Bugs, inspired by the concept of studio bugs that emerge afterhours to chew on recording equipment. When someone quipped that The Bugs would never be as big as The Beatles, they altered the name to Buggles, a spoof on the Fab Four. Horn and Woolley believed that the concept pioneered by Kraftwerk, robot-made electronic music, would replace organic rock combos in the near future.

The trio wrote several songs, including “Clean, Clean,” “On TV,” and “Baby Blue,” the last of those recorded by Dusty Springfield for a 1979 non-album single. Also during 1977, Downes played on the album So Near – Yet So Far Away by MOR pop singer Keith Simon. A German one-off single by the disco duo Boogatti contains a song apiece by Woolley (“Come Back Marianne“) and Horn (“Boot Boot Woman”).

In early 1978, Woolley wrote a chorus that Horn and Downes expanded into a full song. Horn added lyrics, inspired by J.G. Ballard’s dystopian short story “The Sound Sweep,” about a future society with ultrasonic music. They demoed the finished piece, “Video Killed the Radio Star,” later that year with Charles on backing vocals.

By the time of that demo, Woolley had left The Buggles to form his own band, the Camera Club, with a young Thomas Dolby on keyboards. In early 1979, they issued a self-titled album on Epic that includes recordings of “Clean, Clean” and the first official version of “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

During 1978, Horn co-wrote the a-side “Heaven Above” for Paul Gee (aka Paul Gurvitz), also recorded that year by Scottish singer Allan Stewart. Horn also produced and arranged the single “Love You Tonight” (b/w “Can’t Explain It”) by French disco singer Nola Fontaine.

Chromium

With the Buggles on the back burner, Horn formed Big A with Alex Everitt and ex-Black Widow vocalist Kip Trevor. They issued two space-disco singles on the Danish Sonet label: “Fly on UFO” (b/w “OFU No Ylf”) and “Caribbean Air Control” (b/w “Juke Joint Bop”). The project morphed into Chromium, featuring Horn, Downes, keyboardists Ann Dudley and Hans Zimmer, drummer Peter Robinson, and singers Linda Jardim and Vikki Spence. Under this name, the tracks “Fly on UFO” and “Juke Joint Bop” were paired on a 1978 Infinity single, issued stateside as Chrome.

In 1979, Chromium released the album Star to Star on Infinity. It features nine space-disco originals, including the two Big A a-sides. The title-track was issued as a single (b/w “Castaway”). Sporting slick bass lines, clipped guitar riffs, and breezy synth layers, the album resembles contemporary works by Dee D. Jackson and Hot Gossip.

Meanwhile, Horn and Downes shopped their Buggles demos to several labels to no avail, including Island. Horn started dating businesswoman Jill Sinclair, owner of Sarm East Studios, east of London, where the pair commenced Buggles sessions in early 1979. Downes, who was dating a secretary at Island, handed her a tape of “Video Killed the Radio Star” that she passed to label boss Chris Blackwell. Upon hearing the song, he decided to sign the band.

“Video Killed the Radio Star”

On September 7, 1979, the Buggles released “Video Killed the Radio Star,” a harbinger for the music-video age backed with “Kid Dynamo,” a recent composition by singer/bassist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes.

Horn and Downes co-wrote “Video Killed the Radio Star” with former member Bruce Woolley, who released his own version in June 1979 with the Camera Club. Woolley conceived the chorus, Horn composed the verses, and Downes added the intro and middle-eight.

The Buggles recorded “Video Killed the Radio Star” with Camera Club guitarist Dave Birch and New Musik drummer Phil Towner. The song features vocable hooks and chorus backing by Chromium singer Linda Jardim-Allen and sessionist Debi Doss, a recent David Gilmour and Michael Moorcock sidewoman who also sang on Body Music, a 1979 solo album by ex-Second Hand/Seventh Wave keyboardist Ken Elliot.

A. “Video Killed the Radio Star” (3:20)
B. “Kid Dynamo” (3:27)

The Buggles self-produced the backing track in one 12-hour session at Town House Studios in West London with Hugh Padgham, who engineered 1979 albums by Bliss Band, The Jam (Setting Sons), Jane Air & The Belvederes, Split Enz (Frenzy), and XTC (Drums and Wires).

They recorded the vocals at Sarm East Studios with mixing engineer Gary Langan, a soundman on mid-Seventies albums by Bijelo Dugme, Blue, Easy Street (S/T, Under the Glass), Fox, Miguel Ríos (Al-Andalus), and Nutz. The final mix-down required five takes due to Horn’s concerns about the bass drum sound.

In the video, a small girl turns a vintage radio dial against a lunar backdrop while Horn sings into a Fifties Shure microphone. The radio bursts and a caped bodysuited woman emerges then drops into a cylinder inside a lab, where Horn and Downes perform in white coats. The camera pans to the “oha oha” girls (Debi and Linda), both clad in identical space suits, sunglasses and pink pageboy wigs. The girl watches the caped woman float up and down the cylinder, then climbs a heap of cardboard vintage radios. TV screens cue the final scene in a white studio, where the camera pans around Horn and Downes (both clad in silver faux-leather suits), the tube dancer, and second keyboardist Hans Zimmer.

Australian filmmaker Russell Mulcahy directed “Video Killed the Radio Star” in sequence with 1979 clips for the Human League (“Circus of Death”), The Stranglers (“Duchess”), and XTC (“Making Plans for Nigel”).

On the week of October 20, “Video Killed the Radio Star” reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart, where it ousted “Message In a Bottle,” the first of two 1979 No. 1’s by The Police. In Australia, “Video Killed the Radio Star” overtook “Computer Games” by Mi-Sex at No. 1 on the Kent Music Report, where it reigned for eight weeks through the new year.

“Video Killed the Radio Star” also reached No. 1 in Ireland, Austria, France, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The song peaked at No. 2 in Germany and New Zealand and No. 6 in Canada, where Woolley’s Camera Club version later peaked at No. 18 in May 1980.

On December 25, The Buggles mimed “Video Killed the Radio Star” for the Christmas ’79 edition of Top of the Pops, which also featured in-studios of 1979 UK hits by Blondie (“Sunday Girl”), Cliff Richard (“We Don’t Talk Anymore”), Elvis Costello & The Attractions (“Oliver’s Army”), Gary Numan (“Cars”), Ian Dury & The Blockheads (“Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick”), M (“Pop Muzik”), and Squeeze (“Cool for Cats”). In lieu of Debi Doss, Linda Jardim mimed the “oha oha” parts alongside Virginia Hey, an Australian actress who subsequently appeared in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.

The Age of Plastic

The Buggles released their second album, The Age of Plastic, on January 10, 1980, on Island.

The album contains six originals by Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, including “Elstree,” “Astroboy,” and “Johnny on the Monorail,” plus the global mega-hit “Video Killed the Radio Star,” one of two songs (along with “Clean, Clean”) co-written with early Buggle Bruce Woolley.

Horn plays bass and select guitar on The Age of Plastic, which features Downes on keyboards, synthesizers, drums, percussion, and vocoder. New Musik guitarist Dave Birch reappears on the titular “Living in the Plastic Age,” the second Buggles single. Additional guests include Tina Charles and drummer Paul Robinson (Turning Point) and Richard James Burgess (Landscape).

1. “Living in the Plastic Age” (5:13)
2. “Video Killed the Radio Star” (4:13) adds an extended coda to the single version.
3. “Kid Dynamo” (3:29)
4. “I Love You (Miss Robot)” (4:58)

5. “Clean, Clean” (3:53)
6. “Elstree” (4:29)
7. “Astroboy (And the Proles on Parade)” (4:41)
8. “Johnny on the Monorail” (5:28)

The Buggles completed the instrumental tracks at the Town House, where Hugh Padgham engineered The Age of Plastic in sequence with Peter Gabriel‘s third self-titled solo album (colloquially known as “Melt”). Gary Langan mixed the vocal tracks at Sarm East ahead of 1980 albums by The Records and The Invaders.

The lead track (title-abbreviated as “The Plastic Age”) appeared simultaneously on 7”, backed with “Island,” a non-album Horn/Downes original.

B. “Island” (3:33)

In “The Plastic Age” video, a robed trio emerge from an ancient dugout and point to a nearby city, where a vinyl-suited Horn roams through rooms and corridors flanked by plastic-attired zombies, who grab him at every turn while Downes plays keyboards (some sentient) in a white, adjacent studio.

The Buggles mimed “The Plastic Age” for the January 24 TotP broadcast, which also featured in-studios by Barbara Dickson (“Caravan Song”), The Boomtown Rats (“Someone’s Looking at You”), Joe Jackson (“It’s Different for Girls”), and The Pretenders (“Brass In Pocket”). They returned for the February 7 broadcast amid numbers by The Selecter (“Three Minute Hero”) and The Tourists (“So Good to Be Back Home Again”). “The Plastic Age” reached No. 16 on the UK Singles Chart.

On March 24, “Clean, Clean” became the third single, backed with “Technopop,” another Horn/Downes exclusive. Select pressings came in a picture sleeve with illustrations of the duo in military fatigue with female lower extremities.

B. “Technopop” (3:48)

In the “Clean, Clean” video, Horn and Downs roam a field in a military ground carrier and play a Missile-X arcade game, clad interchangeably in white suits and green fatigue.

The Buggles mimed “Clean, Clean” for the April 10 TotP broadcast, which also featured in-studio numbers by The Bodysnatchers (“Let’s Do Rock Steady”), Judas Priest (“Living After Midnight”), Sad Café (“My Oh My”), Saxon (“Wheels of Steel”), Siouxsie & The Banshees (“Happy House”), and Sky (“Toccata”).

In late October, after Horn and Downes wrapped their subsequent activities, “Elstree” reappeared as a fourth Buggles single, backed with a revised “Johnny On the Monorail” (subtitled ‘A Very Different Version’).

The video to “Elstree” takes place on a BBC film set with a bleak in-studio hilltop, where vintage black-and-white swashbucklers and noir schemers appear superimposed, wielding swords and shots. Horn portrays several film characters and also plays the mustached, tench-coated set janitor who narrates the song.

Yes

In early 1980, The Buggles rehearsed material for a second album in a studio adjacent to Yes, a fellow client of manager Brian Lane. Yes entered their second decade down to three members following the recent departures of keyboardist Rick Wakeman and singer/co-founder Jon Anderson.

As longtime Yes fans, Horn and Downes offered the band a song, “We Can Fly From Here.” As they demonstrated the piece, Yes bassist Chris Squire noticed Horn’s vocal similarities to Anderson. At Lane’s encouragement, Squire on-boarded the duo as replacements for Anderson and Wakeman. Atlantic Records green-lit the new lineup, which quickly recorded Drama, the tenth Yes studio album, released in August 1980.

Drama features six songs group-written by Horn, Downs, Squire, and Yes mainstays Steve Howe and Alan White. The album reached No. 2 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 18 on the US Billboard 200. The Buggles/Yes configuration toured both markets but disbanded that December. Downes kept in touch with Howe while Horn reconvened on the next Buggles project.

Meanwhile, “Video Killed the Radio Star” made history on August 1, 1981, when it became the first video aired on MTV, a US cable music channel whose concept embodied the song’s lyrics. Within a year, MTV helped usher in a Second British Invasion of the US, a long-obstinate market where “Video Killed the Radio Star” stalled at No. 40, despite its global popularity.

Adventures in Modern Recording

The Buggles released their second album, Adventures in Modern Recording, on November 11, 1981, on Carrere and CBS.

Trevor Horn completed the album as a solo project after the early departure of Geoff Downes, who co-wrote “Lenny,” “Vermillion Sands,” and “I Am a Camera,” a rearranged Drama track.

Horn completed Modern Recording with Toyah keyboardist/guitarist Simon Darlow (“Inner City” co-writer) brother-in-law John Sinclair, who handled drum programming and co-wrote “Rainbow Warrior.”

Adventures spawned five singles, including “I Am a Camera,” a re-arranged version of “Into the Lens,” which Horn and Downes recorded the prior year with Yes. The album made pioneering use of the Fairlight CMI, a sampling keyboard that factored into Horn’s subsequent productions.

1. “Adventures in Modern Recording” (3:46)
2. “Beatnik” (3:38)
3. “Vermillion Sands” (6:48)
4. “I Am a Camera” (4:56)

5. “On TV” (2:48) features backing vocals by co-writer Bruce Woolley.
6. “Inner City” (3:22)
7. “Lenny” (3:12)
8. “Rainbow Warrior” (5:22)
9. “Adventures in Modern Recording (reprise)” (0:51)

Sessions occurred in London at Studio Sarm East, where Horn self-produced the album with brief assistance by Downes, who left the project after making keyboard contributions to “Beatnik,” “Lenny,” “I Am a Camera,” and “Vermillion Sands.”

Horn played guitar on the Downes tracks and bass on the rest of Adventures. Darlow plays on five tracks, while “Lenny” features Cayenne’s Danny Schogger and Boogatti’s Rod Thompson, who wrote and arranged Linda Jardim‘s 1980 single “60 Miles By Road or Rail.”

Additional Modern Recording guests include Chromium keyboardist Anne Dudley and Portugese session percussionist Luís Jardim (Linda’s husband), who both play on “Beatnick.” The title track features sound effects by Chris Squire.

Adventures in Modern Recording was engineered by Gary Langan and fellow Drama soundman Julian Mendelsohn, who also engineered 1981 albums by The Sound and The Ak Band. The album’s cover, designed by Glenn Travis Associates, features an illustration by one Rory Kee, whose image depicts a cracked pair of giant glasses on a golf field.

Jill Sinclair secured funds for Modern Recording through the French Carrere label after Island Records pulled its support on the project. Horn produced the album in sequence with “Mirror, Mirror,” a synthpop single by the MOR duo Dollar.

“I Am a Camera” appeared in October as an advance single, backed with “Fade Away,” a non-album co-write with John Sinclair.

B. “Fade Away” (2:31)

The “I Am a Camera” video opens inside a pair of spectacles, where Horn appears suited in an ivory manor. He stammers, turns, and collapses as glasses fall, lenses crack, and mirrors drop to the floor. At a table, he scrounges for the right pair of glasses while a metaphorical eye examination occurs.

In January 1982, Horn lifted the album’s title track as a second single, backed with “Blue Nylon,” an exclusive co-write with Sinclair and Darlow.

B. “Blue Nylon” (3:55)

In March, “Lenny” appeared as a single in Europe. In April, “On TV” became the third UK single. Stateside, “On TV” and “Fade Away” appeared as a flexi giveaway in the May 1982 issue of Trouser Press.

In October 1982, “Beatnik” reappeared as a French single.

Post-Buggles

Geoff Downes left the Buggles early and teamed with Yes colleague Steve Howe in Asia, a supergroup with King Crimson bassist/singer John Wetton and ELP drummer Carl Palmer. Their 1982 self-titled debut album went multi-Platinum in the US on the strength of the singles “Heat of the Moment” and “Only Time Will Tell.”

Trevor Horn parlayed his Dollar credits into production work with ABC, whose 1982 album, The Lexicon of Love, spawned the video-iconic hits “Poison Arrow” and “The Look of Love.” Horn reteamed with Yes for the 1983 release 90125, made by a revised lineup with Squire, White, Anderson, original keyboardist Tony Kaye, and South African guitarist/arranger Trevor Rabin. Horn established ZTT Records for his subsequent clients Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Propaganda.

As a performer, Horn teamed with Buggles auxiliaries Anne Dudley and Gary Langan in the Art of Noise, an avant-garde electronic band with writer Paul Morley. They made four albums between 1984 and 1989 and scored a video hit with “Close (to the Edit).”

Discography: