By Mark Kadzielawa

Wang Chung is a very diverse band. It is very difficult to pin them down as to what they really are. Whether you go by the party anthem, Everybody Has Fun Tonight, the new wavish, Dance Hall Days, or cinematic, To Live and Die in L.A. It’s all written by the same band, and the same can be said about the rest of the tracks. The band’s continued progress attracted fans from all over the musical spectrum.
Wang Chung originally formed as Huang Chung around 1980. After their first, self titled, album the band modified their name, and became Wang Chung. At that point the line up consisted of Jack Hues on vocals and guitar, Nick Feldman on bass, and Darren Costin on drums.
The next record, Points on the Curve, really put the band on the map and in the charts as well. Dance Hall Days was a very popular single and charted on both sides of the Atlantic. Costin left the band in 1985, leaving Hues and Feldman as the core members of Wang Chng. Wang Chung followed up Points on the Curve with a soundtrack to a movie titled To Live and Die in L.A. This album provided a minor single for the band, but was a strong musical statement with great dose of integrity. Wang Chung’s next album, Mosaic, was a big smash, providing the memorable Everybody Has Fun Tonight single. In 1989, The Warmer Side of Cool, was released. It was a solid album, but in no way could compete with the success of its predecessor. Wang Chung disbanded a year later.
Throughout the 90s, the band’s music was present on the various compilation albums. Hues and Feldman kept themselves busy with various musical projects of their own. Eventually in 1997, the duo reunited as Wang Chung. Since then, various incarnations of Wang Chung toured sporadically. With the interest in the band still going strong, the duo began to work on new recordings in hope to materialize as an album. Recently, Wang Chung, completed the Regeneration Tour 2009 with other acts from the 1980s. A new album is set to follow next year.
Jack Hues tells the whole story of Wang Chung, and reflects on many personal highlights of his career. In great detail, Hues, provides many answers to little known facts about Wang Chung, and professes his love and admiration for The Beatles on more than one occasion.

When did you first get interested in performing music?
Jack Hues: Well, it was a very long time ago. I guess it was probably when I was around eight years old. I saw The Beatles on the Royal Variety Performance. I mean I’d heard them on the radio before, but it was bit difficult to figure out who they were. But as soon as I saw them on that TV show, it was like that’s what I want to do. It sounded like fun. My dad is a musician as well. He is a saxophone player, a jazz musician, and a he was very helpful to me. He could have wanted me to play what he would think of as a proper instrument like piano. But I wanted guitar so he insisted that I have lessons and learn to read music. He sent me to this lady who was very happy to teach me how to play. So from the very early age I learned to play a lot of classics on guitar, and The Beatles tunes which I was crazy about.
Jumping few years ahead, how did you come across Nick Feldman?
Nick and I sort of met after I left the university. I was pursuing a classical music degree, but I was very interested in all kinds of music. I was pretty confused by then and wasn't sure whether I wanted to be Beethoven or Jimi Hendrix. As the time went on I realized that rock’n’roll was what I really wanted to do. I was really inspired by the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and all the punk stuff that was happening around 1977 in Britain. I was looking through the Melody Maker, a music newspaper here in the UK. And Nick had put in an ad looking for musicians to form a band. He made the ad look really attractive. When we actually met we really hit it off, and the music that he was writing at the time really appealed to me. It had sort of a punk energy. He was using quite jazzy chords. He was a big Frank Zappa fan, and really open to all music.
The first two bands both of you appeared in were The Intellektuals and 57 Men. What were those bands really like?
I guess The Intellektuals was more like a punk band in terms of approach on stage anyway. Nick was writing very complex music at the time, using like major ninth chords and all that. It was an interesting mix, but it was quite raw energy. We had a drummer, Paul Hammond, who has passed away since. He was in Atomic Rooster, and various English bands. So, he provided a lot of power and drive in the band. 57 Men was bit more of a new romantic thing. We’ve had Glenn Gregory singing in that band, he went on to sing in Heaven 17. Also, we had Leigh Gorman who was later in Bow Wow Wow. I guess me and Nick were thinking about moving away from the front, and becoming songwriters, and have other people to do the singing and all that good stuff. But, that’s how these two bands worked.
So when did Huang Chung actually begin?
I think Nick and I just went through various bands, and we wanted just to make records. We wanted to get a band together to do some demos, and get a recording deal, and decided not to play live (laughter.) I came up with this name. Huang Chung was the name, and it sounded good to us. I think we were looking for something enigmatic. So we were in the studio writing and recording songs. And a friend of our manager at the time got very intrigued by what we were doing, and he wanted release some of the tracks. So he released two singles and that got the interest from the press. John Peel (a very popular and influential radio disc jockey in England) played it-he hated it, but it got the ball rolling.
Also, you’ve used stage names in Huang Chung, in fact you continue to use the name Jack Hues to this day.
I think everyone at that time was using made up names like Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious - I even thought Joe Strummer was a made up name! And I had this name Jack Hues ( Jack’s real name is Jeremy Ryder) and it just seemed to stick. Nick was Nick DeSpig. Everyone I met professionally knew me as Jack and the name really just stuck. I wish in a way I reverted to my real name again, it would make life slightly easier when booking airline tickets. But also, in the 80s I probably found it quite useful to have different persona.
How important was the experience of Huang Chung’s first self-titled record to the success that came later?
I think it was very important. I think growing up with The Beatles was very important. I mean they were on TV, played shows, and then in 1966 they sort of rejected touring and became a studio band. I think that had a huge effect in forming our band. Even in the 80s the idea of making that perfect record was something a lot of people had. Not all bands of course. There were bands much more geared up for the live thing. We spent a lot of time in the studio trying to create new sounds, and great sounding records. In retrospect, I think we should’ve spent more time out on the road. And I’m not really so sure that I hold those ideals so much anymore. But having said that, I love making records. Of course now we don’t really have albums, and people think quite differently about the process. It was a great feel to be able to hold a record in your hands, see the artwork, and really listen to it. So I very much disagree with how things are like today. I think making an album was a way for an artist to express multiple aspects of themselves.
When did you change the name of the band from Huang Chung to Wang Chung?
When we signed with Geffen they encouraged us to change the name. In fact, for a while we were thinking about changing it ourselves. We’ve had journalists asking us all the time about the name, and how to properly say it. So it was suggested that if the pronunciation is the same why you don’t put a w instead of hu. That’s what we did. It was sort of a pragmatic thing. Of course now it makes complete nonsense of any Chinese meaning that we may or may not have had. In a sense, it’s like a weird label name. But when we started using the name, it really caught on quickly.
When Points on The Curve came out, it really showed the band as a diverse musical unit. The record maintained a very nice sound, even to this day. Did you pay a lot of attention to the production aspects?
Well, thank you. We worked with Chris Hughes on that record. Chris worked with Adam and The Ants, and produced Kings of the Wild Frontier. I thought it was a great sounding record and also The Hurting by Tears for Fears. When we met Chris, he was a The Beatles fan too, so we talked endlessly about their recording techniques. We recorded Points on The Curve in Studio 2 in Abbey Road. We just wanted to be in that space. If you listen to that long fade out on the song Talk It Out, or the white noise coming up through the end of that track it'a all taken directly out of Abbey Road by The Beatles. There is another track where we use sort of radio effect in the background like I am the Walrus. We were just trying to show our homage to The Beatles.
How would you classify your music at that time? I mean the new-romantic movement was in its full swing, and there were a lot of things coming out of Britain at that time.
It’s hard to say actually. From our point of view, it was…… It actually came out on the last tour we did that we really are just musicians, and we love bands like Little Feat or Frank Zappa, The Tubes. Cult bands really. We realized we are very open to music. But to describe that record, I wouldn’t really call it new romantic because that reminds me more of Roxy Music. I guess we also had an interest in funk bands like Sly and The Family Stone, and Chic. David Bowie’s Young Americans and Station To Station records were very influential to us well. I’d like to think of Wang Chung as a very eclectic mix of all kinds of stuff. I mean I listen to classical music too, and that came through few times as well.
What came next was a real surprise. Your next record To Live and Die in L.A. was a soundtrack. It marked a real progress for the band, and was quite experimental venture.
Well, we’ve always been into orchestral music. Essentially that project came about by William Friedkin being into Points on The Curve, and particularly into a track called Wait. He was using Wait when he was watching rushes fromthe movie.
The song appears in the chase sequence in the movie.
Actually at the end of the movie. I think he just decided that the atmosphere of Wait is the atmosphere he wanted in the movie. He got in touch with us. Nick and I were in England at the time. I had a long conversation with him on the phone, and he wanted us to make an hour of music without actually seeing the film. He wanted us to create that tension that we got in Wait. And then he would cut the music into a movie. That’s how we did it. We didn’t see nay of the movie before we started writing the music. I just remember feeling very clear that we were doing the right thing. He loved what we gave him. He flew us out to Los Angeles. We wanted to see to how it was all going. He cut the music into the movie, and it worked. I clearly remember being in the preview cinema at the Universal Studios. We were watching the opening sequence of the palm trees swaying in the storm, and the money being printed, and City of the Angels track playing. It was one of those defining moments. It was absolutely brilliant.
And it turned out to be a really good and successful movie.
Yes it did. About three or four years ago I was in Turin in Italy with Friedkin. It was their big annual film festival and they were doing a retrospective of his movies, and giving him a lifetime achievement award. So, he invited me over to talk about the importance of the music in his movies. You know the way he uses music in a movie. There were a lot of Italian directors, and they loved that movie. They were talking about how often it is used in movie schools. Also, they were saying how you get a vision of Los Angeles that you don’t get in any other movie.
If that wasn’t enough, you contributed a track (Fire in the Twilight) to The Breakfast Club soundtrack. The Breakfast Club turned out to be a generation defining picture, shown even in US high schools to this day.
Yeah, I mean we were very fortunate to be asked. The song was composed for that movie. We went in the studio and recorded the track for the soundtrack. It was a great project to be involved in. We did it in Los Angeles, and recorded the song with Keith Forsey in the studio. We got to met some of the actors involved as well. It was a real exciting time, and it was an interesting movie. Everyone was fascinated by it at the time. And it’s still an iconic movie.
At the same time you split with drummer Darren Costin. What happened?
I think it came down to writing. I think Darren felt crowded out by Nick and me. We were writing all those songs. He is a good writer himself, but Nick and I didn’t quite leave enough room for him quite as much as we should. He wanted to sort of branch out, and do his own thing. He just needed that space. And so Nick and I were just sort of happy to carry on and do our own thing. So we parted with Darren at the time. We weren’t really screaming at each other or anything like that. Darren just wanted to do his own thing, and he wanted to be more out front. So he took off and did his own thing.
In comes Peter Wolf as your drummer and producer. How instrumental was he in your future?
I think he was very instrumental. To Live and Die in L.A. was regarded by Geffen as not a successful record because it didn’t have a big hit single. In retrospect, I think it was our most successful record artistically. At the time Geffen felt we weren’t following the curve of making a pop band success. When you look at the bottom line, and they were really adamant about having a number one record and stuff like that. Peter was very much a conscious choice. He just had a big hit with We Build This City with Starship. Nick and David (our manager) were really into him.
Another thing about To Live and Die in L.A. was the fact that sometimes the record was difficult to locate. It was often placed in the soundtrack section and not under your name.
It’s hard to imagine now, but in those days soundtracks and rock albums came under different departments. Different people worked on them at Geffen. I guess it had to do a lot with different business arrangements. I think we found that a lot with how the record was dealt with. Also, the movie company owned part of it as well. The record had its own momentum. When we play live the people are always shouting for that song.
Then came Mosaic, and literally everyone went Wang Chung.
Actually it’s a funny story, Nick and I wrote that song (Everybody Has Fun Tonight) as a ballad. My take on it was quite ironic one. When Peter Wolf heard it he was taken by the lyrics, and he loved the line everybody Wang Chung tonight, which for me it was just little ad lib at the end of the track. He really sort of encouraged us to up the tempo and make it into a party song. Thanks God he did. It really gave the band the lift it needed at the time. It went to number two position on the Billboard chart.
Was the enormous success of that single easy to handle?
Yes and no. In a way I was taking myself too seriously at the time, and I didn’t know where I fitted into this. But having said all that, I see this song as a very important component in the Wang Chung history. It is a great party record, and it certainly had given me the freedom to have a life where all is completely devoted to music. It’s been looked after me, that song, so I appreciated it.
Much has to be said about the video accompanying it, which even by today’s standards is very cutting edge.
Again, we were very lucky to work with the top people at the time. I think Geffen was sure that they had a hit record on their hands. They were happy to pay out for Godley & Crème to do that video. They were the sort of top guys at the time. I think everyone was fascinated by Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video at the time which I still think is brilliant. They came up with the idea for the video, and it took one day to film it. It then took an insane amount of time to edit it because in those days everything was done physically. Cutting up the different takes and glueing them together. Nothing like you can do on the computer today. It is a great video, and we are really happy with how it turned out.

Well, it even managed to amuse Beavis and Butthead who at the time ridiculed a lot of the 80s acts.
Yes it did. I think they were one of the first people to look at it in a different way, but it all worked out fine. It got featured in Frasier as well. It was really great.
Also, Mosaic was the first time when the band started to sound more American, did you notice that?
Yes. I think as you listen through our records you notice that. Even from that first Huang Chung record which sounds sort of English and part of that sounds new romantic. As you listen to the other records in order you’ll hear the Americanism creeping in all he time. I want to say by 1986 we spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, and we recorded there. But, it wasn’t a big problem for us because we were big fans of American music. And Peter Wolf, who lived in Los Angeles, came with a certain sound as well. Peter played in Frank Zappa’s band, and many of the musicians who played on that record were American. I really liked the professionalism of the American musicians, especially the singers. We worked with Siedah Garrett who wrote Man in the Mirror for Michael Jackson, and she sang on his records as well. We were very happy to have her sing on our record as well. I felt really privileged to have singers of that quality to come and sing on our record.
Was there a lot of pressure from Geffen to follow Mosaic?
Yeah (laughter.) There were a lot of expectations to sort of do Everybody Has Fun Tonight part two. Just like it was after Dance Hall Days, everybody wanted us to write part two to that song as well. There was a lot of pressure on us. The expectations were very high, and I think we’ve handled it very badly actually. We just wanted to make a good record like To Live and Die in L.A. We wanted to make a record that was good but didn’t necessarily have hits on it and just expressed what I wanted to do. And Nick had a different vision as to where the band should be going. He wanted to move in a rockier direction. So, we were pulling in different directions, and I think Peter Wolf struggled as well to sort of keep it on track with that (The Warmer Side of Cool) record. As a result the record is little bit overblown. It’s got some good ideas, but I find it hard work to listen to.
The Warmer Side of Cool was a very mature record, had some great songs, but never really gained the popularity of Mosaic.
Yeah, I think you’re right. With Wang Chung you’ll always get this eclectic mix of things. And I think once we’ve done one thing we wanted to move to something else. For an artist it’s a right thing to do. When we were in New York recently we met with our publishers, and we played them some of the new recordings, which again is quite an eclectic mix of things. They felt it was great, and they were already discussing different mixes of the tracks and stuff. But when it comes to the record label, they like to have something more homogeneous, like an album that if full of the same style of music. Personally, I’ve never understood that. I mean going back to The Beatles again, an album like Revolver where you have Taxman, and Eleanor Rigby, and I’m Only Sleeping, and so on. The diversity of the music is really where it’s at for me.
The closing track from The Warmer Side of Cool, Big World, was truly an epic song.
Thank you. It’s got some beautiful moments in it I think.
Not soon after that the band broke up, what lead to it?
I think we sort of reached a certain stage. I think with The Warmer Side of Cool not really having the backing from Geffen didn’t help. We wanted to go out and tour and they wanted us to go in the studio and make another record. At that point Nick and I could not get that together. We were just pulling apart far too much. Our manager was wanting to do other things. You see the band, Wang Chung, always had that natural curve if you’d like, the rise to success, and a fairly quick fall. Around that time another movie soundtrack came up. William Friedkin was coming out with a movie called The Guardian, and I got involved in that. I think to me it was like a release. I was writing instrumental music, and not having to deal with hit singles and all that bullshit. I think that I was where I needed to be. Nick did a project (Promised Land) with John Moss from Culture Club, and that was more commercially oriented, and that’s where he needed to be. It was the right thing to do at the time. Sometimes I wonder if we could have been mature enough to sort of settle down and do another album at the time, and how it would’ve sounded.
There were reports of Jack Hues solo record for a while, whatever came out of that?
Yeah, I did make a record for Columbia, but that record never came out. There were a lot of difficulties going on. So the jack Hues solo record still waits to see the light of day (laughter.)
Is there a chance it will see the light of day?
Well, one of the tracks is what will be end up on the next Wang Chung album that will be released next year. And yeah, I would like to put it out in some form or other. I think people would like that record.
How did you finally get back to do Wang Chung again?
A lot of it had to do with the publishing deals. It sort of brought Nick and I to work together on organizing and releasing these recordings. Also, there was a TV show Hit Me Baby One More Time, and we were asked to appear on that. That was very enjoyable, and we’ve also noticed there was a lot of affection toward the band, especially here in the States. I think the time was right to do the band again. We had some projects we were involved with, but found time to do Wang Chung again. So over the last few years we’ve been working on various songs, and we are completing an album together. This year the opportunity to do The Regeneration Tour came up, and we did that. That turned out really well.
You’ve mentioned the new record several times throughout our conversation. Any more details regarding this upcoming album?
Well, I think what we will be doing is putting new tracks on I-Tunes first. We’re going to create few videos, and put them up there as well. I would really like to produce something you can hold in your hands, like an old fashioned album. The times have really changed, so I’m not quite sure what format it is going to take. I think we’ll essentially put it out ourselves, and it will be out. It’s got some great writing on it. There are some really interesting new songs. The people who’ve heard what we’re doing are saying it’s a really contemporary sounding record.
What is it about Nick Feldman that makes your partnership so special?
I think Nick is quite outgoing. He is a good entrepreneur. He likes working with people, and is good about contacting people. He is good at getting things out there. I’m a bit more of a reclusive type. And I’m probably the one with more arty ideas and stuff. We both sort of balance really well. Nick has that commercial head, and I got the arty not in the least bit commercial head.
Nick’s bass playing abilities are great. In fact, there were two Nicks of bass coming from the same time frame. One of course is Nick Feldman, and the other is Nick Beggs from Kajagoogoo.
Well yeah. Nick’s bass playing is fabulous. He really knows how do nail it down. I think on the first record with Huang Chung he was playing the fretless bass, and that’s an amazing sound. It’s something I actually like very much. I would like to get back to that fretless bass sound.
Also, your image was very evolving as well. If you look at your album covers, each release had a visual conceptually removed from the previous one. Even your logo never stayed the same.
I think we were always a little unsure about who we were when it came to marketing the sound and the type of music we were making. I think it’s just like the name; it’s kind of hard to pin down. It’s hard to pin down exactly as to what style it is. Whether we’re sort of rock band, or a pop band, and stuff. I guess there is a the positive side to that as well. When I think of music I don’t think of it in genres. I listen to classical music, I listen to jazz, but the way I approach it as great music. Whether it’s Mozart or Roxy Music it’s all great music to me. It may have different clothing on it, but it’s all great music. And I think having Wang Chung to me was about having the freedom to take a lot of stuff on board.
What would you say is the biggest misconception of Wang Chung?
It’s hard to say, really. I guess there re a lot of people who hear Everybody Has Fun Tonight, and they think we’re a lightweight party band or something. I’d like to think that To Live and Die in L.A. shows more of a darker side of the band, another side of what Wang Chung really is. But having said that, I think all the time and again people do investigate every side of the band. I did a little bit of touring in 2000. I was on my own with American musicians. I got an overwhelming feeling from the fans, and it was really surprising. The people were talking to me about the diversity of our songs like Dance Halls Days, Everybody Has Fun Tonight, Let’s Go, or To Live and Die in L.A. Songs like Hypnotize Me or Fire in the Twilight; those songs were really high profile songs in the 80s, and I’m not sure everyone realized back then they were all written by Wang Chung.

Links:
http://www.wangchung.com
http://www.myspace.com/wangchungtheband