After 80s ICON Took ROOKIE Band to #1-THEY FIRED Him-Got EVEN with #1 MOVIE HIT! | Professor of Rock

IN 1983 in the midst of the 2nd British Invasion, a new wave band with a cool name almost no one could pronounce rocketed up the charts with a one-hit wonder for the ages. Kajagoogoo with the mind-blowing bass infused 1983 ditty Too Shy. They were led by a singer with one of the decade's most iconic hairstyles with one name, Limahl! The group seemed poised to be a lot more than a one-hit outfit but then the band fired this charismatic singer and they never had another hit… but he did. In an exclusive interview, the former lead singer tells the story of this singalong ditty next on Professor of Rock
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The term One Hit Wonder is an interesting one because it doesn’t capture a band or their song universally. What I mean is that a lot of times it’s inaccurate when describing an artist and their music. Nobody would ever call Jimi Hendrix a one-hit wonder because he had one chart hit in America ditto the Grateful Dead, who had their one charting hit decades after starting with Touch of Grey. Sometimes an artist can have many hits on the other side of the ocean like Robbie Williams or Frankie Goes to Hollywood and is deemed a one-hitter here in the States. So here we celebrate the big single chart hits, calling them Bottled Lightening when music and culture combined to make history.
1983 had one such hit. As the British had invaded American airwaves for a second time with Duran Duran, the Police, Gary Numan Joe Jackson, and others infiltrating the charts challenging the mellow soft rock of the time a band called Kajagogoo named after the sound a baby makes started their ascent with a bass infused synth-pop ditty called Too Shy. It had already hit #1 in the UK in January of 83.
Kajagoogoo had started out as Art Nouveau, forming in Leighton Buzzard Bedfroshire in 1978. They were an Avant grade quintet with Nick Beggs on bass, Steve Askew on lead guitar, Stuart Croxford Neale on keyboards, and Jez Strode on drums. They released a single "The Fear Machine", which sold a couple hundred copies and were on John Peel’s show but weren’t able to lock down a record deal.
In 1981, they advertised in a local paper for a new lead singer. Enter Christopher Hamill, whose stage name is Limahl which is an anagram of his surname). From there they changed their name to Kajagoogoo… They signed with EMI Records in mid-1982. This was after Limahl met Duran Duran keyboarders Nick Rhoades while he was working as a waiter at London’s Embassy Club. This would prove to be a fateful meeting as Rhodes would end up co-producing Too Shy, the band’s debut single, actually Rhodes and longtime Duran Duran producer Colin Thurston both worked on Too Shy.
We have the story of that one from Limahl that’s up on Patreon if you want to see it there… coming right up is the story of one of the awesome 80s greatest songs Too Shy as told by former singer Limahl.