The Buggles
The Buggles are an English new wave band formed in London in 1977 by singer and bassist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes. They are best known for their 1979 debut single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which topped the UK Singles Chart and reached number one in 15 other countries and was chosen as the song to launch MTV in 1981.
For the brass instrument, see Bugle.
The Buggles
Wimbledon, London, England
- 1977–1982
- 1998
- 2004
- 2010
- 2011
- 2023–present
The duo released their first album, The Age of Plastic, in January 1980. On 7 September 1979 "Video Killed the Radio Star" was released, being the lead single of the album. Soon after the album's release, Horn and Downes joined the progressive rock band Yes, recording and releasing Drama in the process. Following a tour to promote the album, Yes disbanded in 1981. That same year, on 1 August, the music video for "Video Killed the Radio Star" became the first ever shown on MTV in the United States. The following year, the Buggles released a second album, Adventures in Modern Recording. Its lack of commercial success led to the breakup of the group.
Since 1998, Horn and Downes have occasionally performed the Buggles' songs. The band had its debut tour in 2023 in a lineup with Horn, but without Downes.
History[edit]
1977–1979: Formation[edit]
Downes claimed the group's name derived as a pun on the rock band the Beatles, saying: "It was originally called the Bugs ... studio insects—imaginary creatures who lived in recording studios creating havoc. Then somebody said as a joke that the Bugs would never be as big as the Beatles. So we changed it to the Buggles."[6] Horn later spoke of its name: "I know the name's awful, but at the time it was the era of the great punk thing. I'd got fed up of producing people who were generally idiots but called themselves all sorts of clever names like the Unwanted, the Unwashed, the Unheard ... when it came to choosing our name I thought I'd pick the most disgusting name possible. In retrospect I have frequently regretted calling myself Buggles, but in those days I never really thought much about packaging or selling myself, all that really concerned me was the record."[7]
Horn began his career producing jingles and punk rock groups.[8] Downes was a keyboardist in She's French and graduated from Leeds College of Music in 1975, after which he moved to London looking for keyboard work. The two first met in 1976 at auditions for Tina Charles' backing band[9] and worked with her producer, Biddu, whose backing tracks had an influence on their early work as the Buggles.[10] Horn met musician Bruce Woolley while playing the bass guitar in the house band at the Hammersmith Odeon.[11] Both expressed an interest in Kraftwerk and Daniel Miller, leading them to read Crash by J. G. Ballard. Said Horn, "We had this idea that at some future point there'd be a record label that didn't really have any artists—just a computer in the basement and some mad Vincent Price-like figure making the records ... One of the groups this computer would make would be the Buggles, which was obviously a corruption of the Beatles, who would just be this inconsequential bunch of people with a hit song that the computer had written ... and would never be seen."[12]
In 1977, Horn, Downes and Woolley got together and began recording a selection of demos in a small room above a stonemason shop in Wimbledon, southwest London, including "Video Killed the Radio Star", "Clean, Clean" and "On TV". Though unsure about what they wished to do with the demos, Downes remembered that "we knew even then ... there was some distant goal that had to be reached",[13] and proceeded to re-record the songs at a 16-track recording studio in north London.[13] Initial searches for the right record label to record and release an album failed,[5][8][11][13] but Horn, having begun a relationship with Jill Sinclair, a co-founder of Sarm East Studios, managed to secure plans for a potential deal.[11] However, the demo version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" caught the attention of producer Chris Blackwell of Island Records and, on the day on which Horn and Downes were due to sign with Sarm East, Blackwell offered them a more lucrative deal, which they accepted.[5] Downes claimed Island rejected them three times before a final deal was agreed upon.[14]
1979–1980: The Age of Plastic[edit]
With the Island recording contract having been secured, the Buggles recorded their debut studio album, The Age of Plastic, through 1979. Initially, the demo of "Video Killed the Radio Star" featured vocals by Tina Charles, who also helped fund the project. Although the song was primarily a Woolley composition, he ended his association with Horn and Downes to form the Camera Club before the song's release as a single.[15] Making The Age of Plastic involved several months of tiresome and intense experimentation with studio equipment and techniques, struggling to capture the "magic" of the original demos.[13] Debi Doss and Linda Jardim-Allan, the female voices on "Video Killed the Radio Star", contributed their vocals to other songs on the album as well.
"Video Killed the Radio Star", the album's lead single, was released first in September 1979 to considerable commercial success, topping the chart in 16 countries.[16] Its music video, directed by Russell Mulcahy, was the first aired on MTV in the United States on 1 August 1981.[17] Film composer Hans Zimmer makes a brief appearance in the video. The Age of Plastic was released in January 1980 and reached No. 27 on the UK Albums Chart. Three subsequent singles were released: "Living in the Plastic Age", "Clean, Clean" and "Elstree", all of which charted in the United Kingdom.[18]
1980–1981: Collaboration with Yes[edit]
In early 1980, Horn and Downes began work on a second Buggles album in London, working in a studio next door to that of the progressive rock band Yes,[9] who had lost vocalist Jon Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman following failed recording sessions for a potential new album. In particular, Horn had been a long-standing fan of Yes. The Buggles offered a song to Yes, "We Can Fly from Here", but at the suggestion of Brian Lane, manager of both bands, Yes' bassist Chris Squire invited them to actually replace Anderson and Wakeman as members of Yes.[19] Horn and Downes accepted the offer and joined Squire, Steve Howe and Alan White to record Drama.
The absorption of the Buggles into Yes met with mixed reactions; the band was sometimes booed in the United Kingdom despite its chart position, but not in the United States. Horn admitted that he did not have Anderson's vocal range or style, which many fans missed, but most were still willing to give the new incarnation of Yes a chance. However, some press critics and fans were far less forgiving, especially in the United Kingdom. The US tour was much less financially successful than expected, and Yes disbanded in December 1980 after the Drama tour ended.[20]
1981–1982: Adventures in Modern Recording[edit]
In early 1981, following the disbanding of Yes, Downes and Horn reconvened at Sarm East Studios to record the Buggles' second studio album, Adventures in Modern Recording. However, Downes left the group on the day that the recording was to begin[16] to help form Asia with Howe, citing musical differences.[9] Horn was angry that Island Records renegotiated publishing terms for Downes to join Asia, but never did for Horn since, in his words, he was "washed up, career-wise."[16] To fix this problem, Jill Sinclair made a deal with the French label Carrere, whose leader Claude Carrere, whom Horn described as a "very nice man", helped fund the album.[16] Horn was now left to complete much of the album with several additional personnel.[16]
Released in November 1981, Adventures in Modern Recording involved Horn's experimentation with numerous production techniques, especially with the heavy use of sampling with the Fairlight CMI, with instruments from the computer such as the drums on "Inner City" and the big band jazz sounds on "Vermillion Sands".[16] These same sampling techniques would later be used in records that he produced, such as Slave to the Rhythm by Grace Jones, 90125 by Yes, The Seduction of Claude Debussy by Art of Noise, and Welcome to the Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. While the album garnered little attention in the United Kingdom, Horn recalled in 2010 that it was a commercial success in France,[16] and in the United States the album peaked at number 161 on the American Billboard 200. By the time of the album's release, when Horn was also producing the album The Lexicon of Love by ABC, he decided to take Sinclair's advice that he was always meant to be a producer rather than a performer or songwriter; thus the performance of "Lenny" on a Dutch television show, with ABC as the backing band, marked the end of the Buggles. As Horn recalled when he was interviewed after the show: