You're Malcolm McLaren. The world sees you as the Situationist Svengali responsible for the Sex Pistols. But when your brainchild implodes as messily and unexpectedly as they exploded, what do you do for an encore? In 1980, McLaren kicked Adam Ant out of his own band and recruited a 13-year-old Anglo-Burmese schoolgirl to front his new creation. Like the refurbished Ants, Bow Wow Wow were a heady collision of Burundi drumming and twangy surf guitar. But in Annabella Lwin, the group found they'd recruited less a traditional lead singer and more a human popcorn popper. Her breathless shrieks, giggles, gurgles, and growls infused Bow Wow Wow's early material with a giddy innocence that, in the U.K. at least, would prove the group's salvation and undoing. McLaren's attempt to wring fresh outrage from the British public by putting his grubby fingerprints all over his underage leading lady's unspoiled youth was deflated by Lwin's natural effervescence. By the time America took notice, Bow Wow Wow had ditched the breakneck tempo and the flirtation with adolescent exploitation and evolved into a more muscular, more traditional pop band. A mere three years after they formed, the group unceremoniously kicked Lwin to the curb and brought the curtain down on Bow Wow Wow. It was a premature end to a career that might have had a little more mileage, but, then again, Bow Wow Wow was not a group that needed to grow up or get any older.
JB: Was Malcolm McLaren a genius? Did he brilliantly choreograph every chapter in the Sex Pistols' short history? Did he simply hang on for the ride after the band swore up a storm on Bill Grundy's TV show in 1976? My inclination is to answer the preceding questions no, no, and yes. But the Malcolm McLaren of 1980? The one who got the then-mighty EMI Corporation to bankroll a band fronted by a girl singing about taping songs off the radio onto blank cassettes as if it were a seditious act that struck at the heart of the bloated music industry? That guy was a goddamn Nostradamus. I'm okay with "I Want Candy," and I appreciated producer Mike Chapman's steering the group in a mid-period Blondie direction. But the beautiful, frenetic music Bow Wow Wow produced between "C30 C60 C90 Go" and "See Jungle (Jungle Boy)" was the sound of a young woman's triumph over a charming charlatan who did not have her best interests at heart.
LM: Annabella was my first girl crush. She was my age, she had that Mohawk, she posed naked on that album cover, and in the video for "I Want Candy," her exotic, bronze skin glistened in the sun. I loved the way she emerged from the sea like a teenage Bo Derek. The guys in the group flashed a lot of skin too, but I barely noticed. Annabella was the epitome of new wave cool. In the summer of '82, "I Want Candy" was an anthem for being young and carefree. It captured the singer at her sassiest; she was provocative without being skanky. Naked, she exuded more innocence than a fully buttoned-up Rihanna. There were other female pop stars I admired—Olivia Newton-John, Pat Benatar, Annie Lennox—but none I could relate to as a teen. And now, three decades on, when I'm a mature, married woman, with all the responsibility that entails … I'd still do her.
LEIGH GORMAN: I'd just joined Adam and the Ants, and Malcolm comes along and he goes, "Well, Adam, your music is rubbish." He had us spellbound in the rehearsal room, just sitting there smoking Marlboros and intimidating us. Malcolm didn't like me. He said, "He's too much of a muso; he's not a punk. You need to find some kid in a club who can't really play." Adam said, "No, this guy's good. He might come up with something." So they put me to one side and said, "If you want to stay in this band, you're gonna have to come up with some good ideas."
[Malcolm and Adam] put [drummer Dave Barbarossa, guitarist Matthew Ashman, and me] in the rehearsal room and said, "We want you to reinterpret these songs." There were 23 songs on a cassette that Adam put together. One was "Rave On," another was "Mystery Train," another was "Hello Hello" by Gary Glitter. There was some Turkish belly dance music, and there was a song called "Burundi Black," this drum record that was out in the seventies. I played a little African drum to it, and I thought, Sounds like the little legs of ants going. I drew a mind map of what I thought "Antmusic" [might sound] like. When Malcolm and Adam came down to the rehearsal room, we played "Hello Hello" and "Rave On," and Malcolm looked at us and said, "Your band's rubbish. You should fire them." Then someone said, "We've got one more song." It was the African thing. Malcolm went, "Right, that's your ticket."
Turns out Dave Barb was into Latin music, and he found he had a flair for coming up with all these different Latin roots. So we had the African and the Latin thing, and we combined them. Malcolm and Adam would give us a yay or nay. We all thought any one of us was going to get fired any minute if we didn't come up with the goods. But Adam wasn't getting in on our groove. His lyrics and vocals weren't fitting on top of the music. Malcolm has a cruel sense of humor. He would push us to one side and say to Adam, "You stand over there." He would look at us and go, "Yeah that's really good," and look at Adam and shake his head.
Then Malcolm brought someone who he said was an engineer and had a studio that we could record in. He listened to us play, then they took me and Dave to a pub, and Malcolm said, "This guy is not an engineer. He's a musical arranger from the West End, and I brought him down to evaluate you. He said you two are great, the guitar player is OK, but the singer is crap." He has no idea about punk rock or Adam's history. Then [McLaren] said, "I'm going to give you this option: You can be your own band and not just an employee of Adam. You find a new singer, you've got this sound, and I'll be your manager."
I wasn't happy. I thought, Adam supported me when Malcolm tried to get rid of me. But we also thought, Malcolm must know what he's talking about. But I didn't feel it was right, going behind someone's back. And I didn't think Adam was that bad, but I did feel that he wasn't fitting in with our music. But I thought that it would come in time. But I also thought maybe Adam wouldn't like me in a month and would fire me. So we decided to go with our own band. Looking back, though, it was a mistake to get rid of Adam. 'Cause Adam was definitely a star.
"Malcolm had a saying: 'If you want to have a successful band, you have to have sex, style, and subversion.'"
The next day, we came to rehearsals, and Adam knew something was up. Dave—he'd been with him for three or four years in Adam and the Ants—said, "Adam, I want to leave the band. We've got something special going on here, and it seems like you're not into it."
Then Adam said, "What about you, Leigh?" And I went, "Well, actually, I'm with Dave." So Adam went, "I suppose it's just going to be me and Matt." And Matthew said, "Well, actually, Adam …" And Adam went, "Oh my God! I'm getting kicked out of my own band!"
I could see Malcolm sitting at the back, smoking his Marlboro like a little Mephistophelian, a little devil smiling as all the smoke rose above him. I thought, This isn't funny. It's cruel. Adam was very, very upset. Then Malcolm said, "Okay, Adam. Let's go upstairs and have a cup of tea." I thought, Well, good luck to him. I hope he does well. I didn't realize he'd do that well!
When we were looking for a new singer, we didn't care whether it was male, female, black, white, Chinese. We wanted the band to be multicultural. We were looking for something like Frankie Lymon, like a black 13-year-old. We wanted someone special, someone who was different in some way. Annabella's being young, female, and Asian was different. She had a certain naïveté, and when she got on the mic, she just blasted it out.
ANNABELLA LWIN: I never wanted to be famous. I never had any of those aspirations. I wanted to be an air stewardess. I used to sing along to records and to Cliff Richard when he was on TV. I thought he could see me. The day I was discovered, I was working at my Saturday job [at Shamrock Express, a dry cleaner in North West London] and singing along to the radio. I was very, very shy, so why I was chosen to be in the band, I don't know. You'd have to ask Malcolm McLaren, but, God rest his soul, he's no longer here. I think he found my background interesting, because I am half Burmese, half English. I was a girl who was at school one day and, after the audition for Malcolm, I joined the band and was told I'd have to leave school.
My relationship with Malcolm was pretty good. I got on as well with him as any person could. I think he was 50 at the time. I was 14. He was in the studio when I was recording the early stuff, and he inspired me just by talking to me. I had a fondness for the English countryside; it was the most beautiful place to visit when I was a child. Malcolm heard me talking about the country, and that's where "Go Wild in the Country" came from. He told me, "This is you going down to the country, and how do you feel about that?" He really made me use my imagination. The only thing I didn't like about the lyrics to that song were the lines, "I don't like you / I don't like your town." I said to Malcolm, "Why would I say that? It makes no sense." He said, "You're talking about going from London to the countryside, where snakes in the grass are absolutely free." Some of the songs were written before I even came on board, like "Sexy Eiffel Towers." When Malcolm told me it was about falling off the Eiffel Tower, I believed it. Later, I found out it was from a French porno film. He was a great storyteller.
GORMAN: Malcolm had a saying: "If you want to have a successful band, you have to have sex, style, and subversion." That was his formula, and he tried to introduce that with Annabella. We rebelled against that a bit because she was too young. But a little didn't hurt. I thought [the 1981 See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! album cover, where Lwin is sitting naked on a picnic blanket next to her fully clothed male bandmates] was a good, artistic idea. It wasn't too lewd; it wasn't too lascivious. You wouldn't get away with it now, 'cause standards are different. It's based on a painting by Manet called Le déjeneur sur l'herbe—The Luncheon in the Grass—and it was risqué, obviously. But I thought it was tasteful, and it was an artistic statement. Annabella went along with it—she was a little trouper. I think her mum objected to it. I'm a parent now; I understand. That's why we dialed down a lot of the nonsense. I'm not sure she was quite aware of it. When she wasn't around, we would say, "No, no, that's too much." I felt like we were her older brothers.
MIXTAPE: 5 More New Wave Cover Versions 1. "Always Something There to Remind Me," Naked Eyes 2. "Rock 'N' Roll/ Nightclubbing," The Human League 3. "If You Want Me to Stay," Ronny 4. "Femme Fatale," Propaganda 5. "Memphis Tennessee," Silicon Teens
LWIN: The rest of the group were all in their 20s. I didn't really have any chemistry with them. Matthew was the only guy in the band I felt a connection with. How can I put this without it sounding really, really strange? It's like you meet people, and you either click or you don't, right? I didn't spend a lot of time with them. I got on stage, and whatever happened, happened. In those days, I didn't speak very much because I was told not to. I didn't really enjoy the experience with the guys in the band, let's put it that way. If you've seen any footage of interviews I've done back in those days, you can see I'm very short and sharp and pretty aloof. I've seen some footage, and I think I must come across like a really cocky young girl. But I was very shy, very unconfident. I had no idea what I was doing. I look at that girl now, and I don't know who she was.
GORMAN: Me and Malcolm took "Go Wild in the Country" round to the publishers, and they went, "Well, that's not quite strong enough." And the American branch of RCA said we needed a more radio-friendly song, otherwise they weren't going to give us any tour support.
So we were thinking, plotting: What could we do? I go, "Let's do a cover. What about a classic bubblegum song?" Bubblegum songs had great hooks, and we could update one with our percussive vibe. A guy called Steve Leeds, who worked with [Joan Jett and the Blackhearts manager-producer] Kenny Laguna, suggested "I Want Candy" by the Strangeloves. It had a fantastic hook, lots of connotations and meanings, and it's a love song about someone in a sunny way.
They flew us to Miami, put us in a posh house with a cook and a maid and a swimming pool. We'd never experienced anything like that. They'd spent a fortune—which, of course, we had to pay back over the years—and put us in a studio with Kenny, who was part of that era, so he seemed perfect for it. We hadn't actually heard it properly yet at that point, so we were given cassettes at the airport; we put 'em in our Walkman, and we were listening to it on the way to the house.
We arranged it live. We had it in an hour. It has a great rhythm, and it caught the moment of when we were recording it. It caught our performance style, our joie de vivre. We were used to working with producers in London, where it's gray and cold. And here we are, the sun is shining, we're in a big, expensive studio, we've got a funny, friendly producer who seems to manage our personalities and make us feel good. When we recorded, they had the lights, all my rig, tons of speakers all set up, Joan Jett in the control room, all their family, all the [Blackhearts]. When Annabella did her vocals, he made her feel special, made her feel comfortable, and I think that boosted her performance.
LWIN: I can honestly say when I first heard my vocals on "I Want Candy," I was stunned. I was thinking, Is that me? Who's that girl singing? Because I actually sounded good. That was the first song on which I actually sounded like a singer. The way they produced it, it was brilliant. It stands the test of time. Such a shame it was the only song we ever did with them. I don't know what happened.
GORMAN: We tried to [work with Laguna again], but while we were mixing, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" went to number one, and I think they were inundated with too much to do.
LWIN: I wasn't involved in the decision-making process. I was just told to sing the song. But it brought us a new audience, and the difference over here [in the United States] is they really appreciate if you can perform live—more than they seemed to appreciate it in the U.K.
The original Ants kicked out Adam, who was the lead singer, and history repeated itself with me. [My firing] was sprung on me. I read in the music press that apparently I'd stormed off stage, which I've never done, even to this day, with any band I've worked with. I don't understand what happened. I've worked with the bass player [Gorman] since, and he keeps telling me, "I was in the hospital." You were in the band—what do you mean you were in the hospital? Things are not clear. People are avoiding the truth, and I speak the truth. I was a young girl in a rock 'n' roll band with three guys. The next thing I know, the three guys had basically kicked me out and formed another band. I'm certainly not going to take any blame for that.
GORMAN: It's true: I was in hospital. I don't know why she doesn't believe me. Annabella's mum was a head nurse, and they put me in the ward with people with lung cancer and TB, 'cause I couldn't breathe properly. Matthew was in a bad way too. He was coming down with diabetes—he didn't know it; it was undiagnosed. He was going blind, and it was probably affecting his mental state.
I got wind of what was going on from [Barbarossa and Ashman]. We were at our height, and they were dissatisfied with her. I think they wanted a guy singer and to be less pop. I actually called Annabella and said, "They're thinking of leaving the band and doing something else." And she said, "Oh, Leigh. You're making a mountain out of a molehill." Then they decided to [fire her] without me.
LWIN: Why would anyone break up a band that was doing well? Nobody at any record company wanted that to happen. I think the mistake that's made is when bands have a lead singer, they seem to get upset or, dare I say, jealous that the lead singer gets all the attention. The truth is, of course the lead singer will get a degree of attention, because that's who connects with the audience. It's the only human element in the equation. The bass player plugs in his bass; the drummer bashes away on the drums. With all due respect, I'm not demeaning them; I'm just stating a fact. Every lead singer since time immemorial will always get more attention. You need to understand this. If you cannot have that kind of relationship within a band, the band will split up, which is obviously what happened. I was in the band three years. I gave up school and my friends to be able to work on the road and sell the band and perform as lead singer as well as write songs, and I have to read they're getting rid of me in the NME? It was a huge blow at the time—a huge blow. It's a shock for anyone to realize the people they're working with don't have the courtesy to let you know. How would you take it if you were told, "Tomorrow, the job's finished," and you've got no money? And I was 17.
THAT WAS THEN
BUT THIS IS NOW
Gorman, Barbarossa, and Ashman spent a brief time playing together as Chiefs of Relief. Ashman died in 1995. Gorman reunited with Lwin, first in an attempt to launch her as a solo star, then as part of a rebooted Bow Wow Wow. The two recorded and toured together until December 2012, when Lwin suddenly departed mid-tour. In January 2013, Lwin appeared as the opening act—billed as Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow—on Midge Ure's U.S. tour. The band's version of "I Want Candy" has become the blueprint for terrible punk bands and awful teen acts to record. Among those failing to reach the heights of the '82 version: Good Charlotte, Bouncing Souls, Aaron Carter, Westlife, Melanie C, Cody Simpson, and Jedward. Among those succeeding: potato chip giant Pringles and its "I Want Pringles" jingle.
GORMAN: Chiefs of Relief was a good band but nothing like Bow Wow Wow. We put out a single called "Holiday." They had a roundtable on BBC Radio on the new singles released, and on the panel was Adam Ant. Adam says, "God, is that what they're doing now? That's terrible." Then my mum called me: "What the hell are you doing? You had that great band—why have you faded?" I should have stuck with Annabella and carried on Bow Wow Wow without them.
LWIN: People tell me I was ahead of my time. I still get that today. And they seem to be getting younger. They have all-ages shows where I have these young girls, five- to eight-year-olds, looking at me.
I always sound like I was this bitchy, angry, attitudinal young girl when I was in my teens, and God knows, I was none of that. It's all down to collaboration and who you're working with. It doesn't always work out in bands. Our career was only three years. I hope I can continue to sing and write songs and perform. I went on to try and pursue a career in music in the U.K., but unfortunately they said I was too old. I really think that if the music industry is to survive, they need to get rid of this ageist thing. You can't package a human being to the extent where they become unreal. When you get on stage in front of 1,000 people, they just want to feel something, and that's where I come from.
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