“ABC’s Martin Fry is a revelation, a soul man supreme, belting out pristine Vegas glitter pop and uptown House in his electric blue lounge suit. An ageless performer, Fry is the missing link between Bryan Ferry and Jarvis Cocker. For the inevitable encore of ‘The Look of Love’ he returns dipped in sparkly gold lame, a self-ironising pop genius on top form.”
Stephen Dalton NME
Martin Fry is a Piscean. He is over six foot tall. Martin Fry is the lead singer in a band called ABC. Maybe you already knew that.
ABC are one of those groups who come along once in a while and change the way music is heard and made, one of those groups who move the music forward, alerting us to the possibilities of strange combinations, employing radical ideas yet never confusing arrogance with ambition. ABC kick-started the Eighties with their own brand of pop for the ‘new decade’.
Fusing dance floor finesse with a post-punk attitude they released their first single, ‘Tears Are Not Enough’, in autumn 1981. More hits followed in rapid succession. ‘Poison Arrow’, ‘The Look Of Love’ and ‘All of my Heart’. On it’s release in May 1982 their debut album ‘The Lexicon of Love’ crashed straight into the album charts at number one.
Their second album, ‘Beauty Stab’ was a very different record to the polished beauty of ‘The Lexicon of Love’. It spawned the hits ‘That Was Then But This Is Now’ and ‘SOS’.
In 1984 Fry re-routed ABC and headed for the dance floor, releasing ‘How To Be A Zillionaire’. They conquered American audiences with a series of devastating club mixes via ‘How To Be A Millionaire’, ‘Be Near Me’, alongside ‘Vanity Kills’ and ‘Ocean Blue’.
Summer 1987 the world wide hit ‘When Smokey Sings’ represented a return to luxuriant soul sound. Likewise the songs ‘The Night You Murdered Love’ and ‘King Without A Crown’. Their fourth album was co produced by Chic’s Bernard Edwards. Entitled ‘Alphabet City’ it captured the cosmopolitan feel of the moment. Heavy MTV rotation and an appearance on legendary show Soul Train cemented success in the U.S.A for the band.
House inspired album number five “Up” was released in the second Summer of Love 1989
In 1991 ABC began work on an ambitious soul pop extravaganza ‘Abracadabra’. They released ‘Love Conquers All’ and the Blackbox mixed ‘Say It’ the following year.
Following a four year hiatus Martin Fry resumed recording with A.B.C. , re-emerging on Deconstruction Records and touring extensively throughout the U.K in preparation for the release of ‘Skyscraping’. The NME described ‘The Look Of Love’ at the Shepherd’s Bush show thus “It’s not perfect but it’s near as dammit”. The same year Fry contributed a guest vocal to ‘Thunderball’ on David Arnold’s James Bond Project ‘Shaken and Stirred’
In 1998 Martin Fry performed to over 120,000 people at fifteen UK arena shows with Culture Club and The Human League. The tour was the first of it’s kind since the Eighties and despite a number of other similar tours over the past few years this original line up with ABC proved to be the most successful To coincide with the tour there was a world wide release of re-mastered versions of “Lexicon of Love”, “How To Be A Zillionaire” and “Alphabet City”. Once again Martin Fry and ABC were in the Global Charts.
Martin continued touring over the next two years and in 2001 joined Robbie William’s to open his show on the European Tour. The choice of ABC was entirely Robbie’s; he recognised the perfect mixture of ecstasy and sorrow, club usability and pop accessibility. Martin Fry’s combination of sly northern wit and subversive intelligence, pop flamboyance and rock swagger, gold lame and lyrics that deal with treachery and regret. For ABC it was a huge success, again playing to hundreds of thousands of potential new fans across the UK andEurope.
Martin Fry’s constant hard work, and continued respect for his music has allowed him to continue writing, producing and performing. He performs with the band around the world, as well as participating in new projects with new artists.
In March 2004 ABC’s DVD ‘Absolutely Classic Cuts’ went to number 1 in the DVD Charts. In June of that year Martin reunited with David Palmer for VH1’s top rating show “Bands Reunited” In November 2004 Martin performed before His Royal Highness Prince Charles at Wembley Arena in a Princes Trust concert alongside Seal , Grace Jones ,Yes , The Pet Shop Boys , Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Lisa Stansfield
Today ‘The Lexicon Of Love’ is still regarded as one of the greatest British pop albums of the last 25 years. If not of all time. It was re released in November 2004 in a deluxe package. The Deluxicon.
With courtesy of www.abcmartinfry.com
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