- Michael Pagnotta: It was a movement in technology. And the difference between what Vince Clarke or Martin Gore, as opposed to what Keith Emerson could do, was completely different. The battery of keyboards that Wakeman and Emerson had to have on stage, I was the biggest Yes and the biggest ELP fan, so I love the sound of the Moog synthesizer. But, that was not a portable situation.
- Self - Lead Singer, The Thompson Twins: We were super naive, you know. We were just South London kids making a go of things. And what happened is we got an underground dance hit here. So, we were brought over to really do that in the clubs. At that point we realized that there were these radio stations that bore no resemblance to the kind of formal, national programming that we had in the UK.
- Self - Drummer, The Cure: We were 21 and our only experience of America in any shape or form was from Marvel Comics. So, the first thing we did when we got to New York was go into a, like, a little grocery store and buy Hostess Twinkies bar. Because, that's what they advertised in the back of Marvel Comics. We'd never seen them. And we took one bite and we realized why we didn't really want to eat those any more.
- Self - Singer: The sort of mainstream American music was very much caught up in what was now the end of a decade: the 70s. And kind of it turned into - almost muzak to us. It was all very light weight rock, you know, R-O-K, as well, it wasn't rock-n-roll, it wasn't sexy, it wasn't - it wasn't breaking new bounds, it wasn't saying anything dangerous, it wasn't - it had no new fashion sense. In fact, it was all caught up in very much, sort of, the early days of the 70s and you were watching that burn out, really, and it was boring us to death. And there was someone like WLIR willing to sort of put us on their radio playlist and open our music up to a load of young kids - who would then come to New York and say to the DJs, "I want to hear 'Dancing With Myself' by Billy Idol." Or, "I want to hear 'Homo Superior' for Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks." "I want to hear this new music." "I want to hear Joy Division." "I want to hear Human League." It was all very much being fueled in sort of English dance clubs and from their its being reflected in the American dance clubs or radio playlist at the few radio stations in America that were playing post-punk music like WLIR. I think it fueled the beginning of the 80s and set the pace.
- Self - Producer, Depeche Mode: The first highlight was ever playing live. Second one was making a single for new records. The third one was hearing your record on a radio. You know, it was unfucking believable. You know, it was like you heard it and you go, you know, you want your Mum to be there because you haven't taped it, you haven't recorded it. So, you have to tell her, "Yeah, we really did get played, you know. There's an American station that will be 3,000 miles away in an America radio station playing our frickin' record."
- Self - Duran Duran - singer: In 1981 we landed in New York for the first time and I can honestly say I've never been so excited. When we saw the skyline, it was all about dreams coming true. We'd grown up loving the whole New York scene. That whole thing was so exciting to us.
- Self - Blondie - singer: It was very important for us, you know, mentally and inspirationalized to know that there were people, you know, legitimate people with a view to the public and an appreciation of music - and to be brave enough to support unknown idiots and, you know, just to - go with it.
- Self - Lead Singer, Katrina and the Waves: You didn't have any problem looking for role models if you were a woman like me looking to other women as role models because there were only a couple. And for me it was Deborah Harry and Chrissie Hynde. They were tough, the were cool, they were still sexy.
- Self - Ultravox, Live Aid, Band Aid - producer: WLIR went against the flow of what everyone else was doing. To take a huge chance like that on this alien music that was coming in - pre-MTV.
- Self - Talking Heads: We were very fortunate to be in New York at a time when a lot of people had, I think, sort of the same idea. Bands like the Ramones and Television and Patti Smith and Blondie. But, there weren't very many radio stations that would play the music. One exception to that was WLIR.
- Self - Manager, U2: Music stations in Manhattan, the FM stations were WPLJ and WNEW, and I remember that neither of those would play U2. They were really quite conservative. And, so, it was really vital for us that WLIR was around.
- Self - Author, 'Mad World': When you hear "I Melt With You" by Modern English it brings you back. But, who knew that it was about making love when a bomb is coming at you from Russia?
- Self - Singer and Songwriter, B-52's: We were sort of part of the punk scene, the tail end of the punk scene, before New Wave was really happening. We just wrote our own kind of music, I mean, we'd classify ourselves as New Wave or Punk or anything like that - we were our own Southern fried original music. We were a dance band and at the time no New Wave band wanted to be called a dance band, I guess. But, we just got people dancing. We attracted all kinds of people from the school nerds, the gays, well everybody, actually, even frat boys. We just did our own thing and you can't really say, "Oh, that's an 80s song" or the B52s are this or that. And we just did what we considered great songs.
- Self - Flock of Seagulls - lead singer: I think it was pure, beautiful coincidence that "I Ran" happened to be our song at exactly the time that the Iran situation was happening. I think that a lot of people listened to that song in the first place because that's what they thought it was about. And then when they'd listen to it a couple of times they went, no, it's just a good song, you know.
- Self - Singer and Songwriter, Tears for Fears: The content of punk music affected us lyrically in the way we sort of wrote songs and what we talked about. Because, it was now acceptable to get out there and just complain about stuff.
- Self - Lead Singer, The Fixx: For me a good lyric was often inspired by just the irony, the subtext of a headline. Back then one of the big influences for me was the sense of impotence between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, you know, the big champions of capitalism and this easy credit was coming in. And it was like the first sedative - put people to sleep with instant gratification whilst we can march around and just change the whole political map.
- Self - Flock of Seagulls - lead singer: Synthesizers were coming out at the time too which the punks hated because it wasn't just crashing on a guitar. But, to people like me that was atmosphere and that was really what we were after. People that were interested like that were like going, "Wow, you're not like a rock band rock band. You're this strange combination of things." And they would be interested in just seeing how it was put together. "How do you integrate syns and lead guitar?" They didn't understand how it worked. And we always used to get people after shows coming up and going, "How did you work out what the syns going to do and what the guitars going to do?" And, of course, we just go, "It's easy. When I can't play a bit, he'll play it."
- Self - The English Beat: But it was really just starting to form the opinions of that whole generation of students who now are are a whole generation of Vice Presidents, Presidents, and Executives who are going to be the ones in the next year or two who will make that change. Cause social change takes *ages* doesn't it. You know, you're meant to be young and impetuous and then think that its all for nothing and we didn't change the world at all - what happened and it felt like we were going to but anywhere from 15 to 25 years afterwards you start to see the social implications of the way people had an opportunity to look at the world differently.
- Self - Singer and Songwriter: There was a real backlash, you know. I mean, it was kind of interesting that, you know, for a lot of middle America the lack of guitars and big hair and stuff like that was a problem. You know, they would say, they would describe this as wimpy. You know, they would say, "Its not real music if it's done with electronic instruments" and so on. And we sort of laughed at that really and pushed past it.
- Self - Singer: We were saying why does everything have to be separate? Why can't we put things - lets just take the rock-n-roll world, the dance world, the funk world, the gospel world - lets just stick it all together.
- Self - Ultravox, Live Aid, Band Aid - producer: You've got to think outside the box to try and make something that's different, that's radically different from what has been before. Rock music hasn't really changed an awful lot since the the 1950s. We still use guitars. We still record in the same way. We still make a noise. Jimi Hendrix's feedbacking noise in his guitar we still use today. So, it hasn't really evolved an awful lot. And to do something radically different, it's not just the instrumentation that's important, it's how you think. And the instrumentation, all of the sudden, synthesizers became - accessible.
- Self - Singer: We wanted to make the bands of the 70s look out-moded. We wanted it to be an instant change. That it was very obvious this was a new decade.
- Self - Ultravox, Live Aid, Band Aid - producer: We had a very different take on what music should be. It was all about creating the imagery, the atmospherics, the cinema elements of the music.
- Self - Flock of Seagulls - lead singer: Our sound was intergalactic space music, basically. Space love songs. It was Science Fiction.
- Self - Lead Singer, Bow Wow Wow: Fashion's not about wearing something and just looking perfect. It's wearing it the way you want to wear it.
- Self - Lead Singer, The Thompson Twins: We seemed to be something of a magnet for the misfits, the freaks who wanted to come out and wear their fancy and weird looking clothes; because, they saw in us some kind of kindred spirit.
- Self - Singer: We're still excited. We're still dancing and going out of our minds to great music somewhere. And if we're not, we're thinking about how to make that happen.
- Self - Ultravox, Live Aid, Band Aid - producer: What happened at the end of the 70s, early 80s, was that the Punk era had kind of set the attitude. You know, you can do it yourself. You don't need the big record companies to do this. You can go and you can, you know, pick up a guitar, learn three chords, get a few mates and make a band. And that was the attitude. I think that early 80s period was just as important musically as the early 60s was with the Beatles and the Stones and The Who and Gerry and the Pacemakers and all of those bands. The first kind of British Wave that came to America. I think the 80s did the exact same thing but in a very different way. Because, those songs are still being played on the radio today. Those songs don't go away.
- Self - Singer: Rock-n-Roll has differently fallen out of favor somewhere. But, who knows, man, it could make its evil comeback and that's what we're always waiting for. Something loud, smelly, and nasty. Yeah!