Casefile:
Who? Kajagoogoo
What? “Too Shy”
Where? England
When? 1983
At one point this band were the “new thing”, in the same way bands like Sigue Sigue Sputnik (whatever happened to them? We’ll find out in due course) and A Flock of Seagulls claimed the crown, mostly due to silly haircuts and even sillier names, but to my mind, Kajagoogoo had one hit - admittedly a massive one - and then more or less suffered the fate of all, or most, of these bright new things, as everyone forgot about them. I think everyone knows what happened, as in, the solo career of Limahl, their lead singer, but what about the band? When he left, did it continue with another singer? Did it break up? Is it still going without him? Well, this is where we find out. But first, how did they come to be?
Formed in 1978 as Art Nouveau, Christopher Hammill, who would become known as Limahl as he rearranged the letters of his surname, wasn’t even with them at the time. When he joined up in 1981 they renamed themselves Kajagoogoo, god knows why. Oh, Wiki knows why: says it was because it sounded like what babies say when they first make sounds. Right. Attract all the teenage mothers, huh? In 1982 Limahl met Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, then a struggling band yet to have a hit, and signed with EMI. A year later they had their first hit single, which took them all the way to the top, the insipid “Too Shy”, perhaps surprisingly also breaking the US with the song, which went to number 5 there.
Riding high on their newfound success, Kajagoogoo released their first album,
White Feathers in 1983 and it went to number 5 in the UK though the USA had had enough with the one single, thanks very much and it barely scraped into the top forty ‘cross the pond. Kajagoogoo are perhaps the epitome of too much fame too soon, and Limahl was soon knocking heads with the other band members, who disapproved of his lifestyle (whatever that was; maybe he liked to stay up after ten o’clock, the little tearaway!) and summarily fired him from the band. Our Limahl was not a happy bunny, claiming that he was the one who had made the band famous, which bears some examination I suppose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkpG4XApJ28
As Art Nouveau, and without our Chris, the other guys had done nothing. John Peel had gushed about their only single, but John Peel couldn’t push them into the charts, especially without a recording contract. While it might be fair, or unfair, to say that Limahl was instrumental in their hit single, I don’t know that, as they all share a songwriting credit and let’s be honest here: though he’s not shown as a songwriter, you’d have to think that the presence of Nick Rhodes impacted upon the song, and he may have offered pointers or even written parts of it without being given credit, whether he may have wanted it or not. Still, Limhal with his stupid coloured mohawk hair was certainly the focal point of the band, and if you were to ask anyone today who remembers them if they can name any of the guys, I would bet good money that they would either name him, or say, oh that guy who did “Neverending Story”, wasn’t he in that band? I can almost guarantee the four others in the band have been entirely forgotten about.
So was he the one who made them famous? Or was he just the face of Kajagoogoo? Who knows, or cares, but at any rate the lads gave him the push, and on he went to have a hit single just to spite them, and, to be fair, it’s remembered long after “Too Shy” has been mostly relegated to the bargain basement of history. Sure, it’s more Giorgio Moroder’s song, but everyone remembers it as being Limahl’s. It’s also an undeniable fact that the three hit singles they had - yeah, they had three, believe it or not - all came from Kajagoogoo’s debut album with Limahl behind the mike. “Ohh to Be Ah” - another stupid name, if you ask me - went to number 7 while the slightly less silly “Hang On Now” fell outside the top ten, only making it to 13. Again, the US displayed a surprising amount of taste and laughed at both. Babies on both sides of the Atlantic refused to return calls for comment.
And so Kajagoogoo soldiered on without their golden boy, bass player Nick Beggs now the singer, and their next album,
Islands, was released in 1984. It struggled up to the number 35 spot but ran out of steam, and while its lead single, “Big Apple” (surely a blatant and transparent attempt to win back the yawning American audience?) got to number 8, it was the last hurrah for the band. Subsequent singles bombed, though a remixed version of “Turn Your Back on Me”, which had made only number 47 here got all the way to number 2 on the US Dance charts. It is vaguely possible - though by no means certain - that the rebranding of the band to the shorter Kaja might have had some part to play in that. Either way, they decided that was the way to go back home, too, and their third album,
Crazy Peoples Right to Speak (surely that’s missing an apostrophe?) was released under the name Kaja. It made no difference and nobody cared, the album not even rising as far as number 100.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir_hgbRJTsI
Disconsolate after the failure of their third album (second with Limahl) the band realised it didn’t matter whether they were called Kajagoogoo or Kaja - or indeed, Googoo, though one wonders if the Goo Goo Dolls might have had something to say about that): their time was over and they quite rightly cashed in their chips and parked the van, all going their separate ways as to the horror and dismay of absolutely nobody the world over, Kajagoogoo broke up.
But you can’t keep a crap band who think they still have some life in them after one poxy hit single down, not unless you keep going till the hammer is covered in blood and brains, and they got dragged, um, back up by the Devil in 2003. Let me explain. You’ll like this. In an example of perhaps the very worst of commercialised music crap paired with reality show and with lots of Ben Franklins no doubt being waved around, VHI had the idea for
Bands Reunited, which purported to attempt to track down the separate members of bands who had split, fool, cajole, or otherwise tempt them to reunite and play as a band again. The show suffered a lot of criticism and ran for two years, with varying levels of success. An interesting aside tells of when the producers tried to convince Motormouth himself, Morrissey, to reform The Smiths. It doesn’t say what happened, though it was, as Simon Cowell would say, a no. I doubt it was that polite, or short.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WN0T-Ee3q4
Anyway, back to
Bands Reunited. I suppose Limahl, realising that the movie had in fact tricked him and the story had actually come to an end, and nobody really cared about him other than that one song, thought what the hell, why not? And he joined the rest of the band in a spirited - possibly - performance of “Too Shy” and “Hang On Now”. Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, Limahl was still a prick and the band still hated his guts, so there was no tearful reunion and the boys caught separate taxis to different banks to deposit their gains, which might be said by some to have been gotten by ill means. It would be another five years before they would all be together again.
In 2007, then, the three remaining members of the band wrote a song and then decided why not do an album, but this was postponed and the next year Limahl was back, as was drummer Jeff Strode, who had, well, strode off into the sunlight after the VHI thing. Sorry. On their website, the band enthused about it being just like old times. I wonder if they meant kicking the **** out of each other? At any rate, the world waited and ignored them possibly. Let’s put it this way: other than hardcore fans, if they had any, and possibly the babies who wished to have serious words with these guys about exploiting their tender years, I doubt anyone held their breath waiting for the new Kaja album. Oh no wait: they were back to using the name Kajagoogoo. Still doubt anyone cared.
Gone to the Moon took off in 2008, but rather than slipping the surly bonds of Earth and touching the face of God, it sputtered, farted and plunged back into the atmosphere, burning up on entry. Look, to be fair, I don’t know: there are no chart details about it, but surely that in itself must indicate it did poorly. If that’s not enough evidence, then the words of Nick Beggs in 2017 sound as if they tell the story: "We did something about nine years ago, and that was good. It was almost like a kind of revisiting of it for old time’s sake and I felt that we did quite a lot of good with that. But in terms of moving forward, there’s no point in revisiting that project."
Kajagoogoo did tour and promote the album, and EMI flogged every last pound sterling or dollar out of their, ahem, back catalogue, even going so far as to release a “greatest hits” package. Yeah. But the rebirth of Kajagoogoo was not to be, and the world was to be deprived of the chance to relive their misspent youth by remembering a one-hit wonder. As so often happens, the world had moved on, the band had not, and there really is only so long you can dine out on the same tired single success before the restaurants stop taking your credit cards. I don’t know, but I think it would be safe to say that a very large percentage of those who went to the gigs were only waiting for “Too Shy”, and, actual fans apart, shrugged at the rest of the largely unknown so-called catalogue.
A short note, then, on the anagrammed one. Apparently he was a punk originally (who woulda thunk it, with hair like that?) but I bet he was banned from all the best Punk clubs - like the Spit and Snot and the What the **** You Lookin’ At, Pal? No self-respecting anarchist would want to breathe the same air as the lead singer of that puffy band Kajawotsit, now would they? Nevertheless, he played in a band called Vox Deus, then another band called Crossword and finally, ensuring that not even the Bovver Boot would admit him through the back door, here’s a fiver, no questions asked, he hitched his wagon to one of the spawns of Satan himself, Mike Nolan who, despite their later chart success, will I think always be remembered as one of the two blokes that pulled the skirts off those birds from Bucks Fizz at the Eurovision.
Things were not going very rock and roll for the ex-Punk. And then he joined Kajagoogoo, as detailed above, changing his name (well, making an anagram of it) and being booted out (well at least there was some punk cred there!) after one album and one hit single. He then embarked on a solo career that really is remarked only by one hit single and the Moroder song, which was a huge hit. He released his debut album
Don’t Suppose in 1984 to colossal yawns. I wanted to quip that the title was a sort of shrug or plea - don’t suppose you remember me/don’t suppose you’re still interested, are you? - however he says himself it was more a George Michael
Listen Without Prejudice idea: don’t make your mind up without checking the music out. Right.
Anyway he had a hit single from this album, when “Only for Love” got to number 16, though his big hit would and will always be the theme from
The Neverending Story, a movie which, to be fair to him, has really only been kept alive by the song being repeatedly played. I mean, it’s an all right movie, but just another kids’ fantasy thing in the end, and like
Avatar, which everyone remembers for the fantastic 3D effects, nobody really cares about it today. The song has become timeless though, and on it he duets - as such - with Beth Anderson, though she did not feel the need to come and sing with him personally, and so recorded her vocal in the US of A. There’s no story about how Limahl got the gig, but I like to think it went something like this.
Moroder: “Ah, yes, you were with that band, what was it - Kajagaga?”
Limahl: “Googoo.”
Moroder: “You’ll need to be able to speak better if you want to sing my song, son!”
Limahl: “No, I was saying the band name was Kajagoogoo.”
Moroder: “What did I say?”
Limahl: “Gaga.”
Moroder: “How dare you sir! I’m not senile yet!”
Limahl: “Look, you want me to sing this or not?”
Moroder: “I don’t know. What was your song again, that big hit?”
Limahl: “Too Shy.”
Moroder: “Oh well, if you don’t have the self-confidence to take on my song, perhaps I'll look up that Oakey chap from the Humanity League…”
And so on.
But I digress. Bolstered by a new interest in him due to really, nothing else but singing another guy’s song and capitalising on the popularity of a second-rate movie, Limahl rather unwisely went on to release two more albums,
Colour All My Days (which it did not, unless it was coloured his bank account in the red) in 1986 and
Love is Blind in 1992. That may have been, but the audience were not: their eyes were wide open and they knew a desperate attempt to hang on to very fleeting and fading fame when they saw it. None of his albums did anything and he spent the next ten years trying to relive the past.
As already mentioned, in 2003 he rejoined the reformed Kajagoogoo for the VHI show
Bands Reunited, but this was less than a roaring comeback, the next year he tried again, on a show literally called
Comeback (he did not) and finally in 2005 on yet another of those types of shows, this time going under the name of
Hit Me Baby One More Time. After that, as detailed above, he reunited with the band for some tours before they finally broke up forever. They were however featured in the TV show
American Horror Story, though whether they performed, lip-synched or whether it was footage I don’t know, and though Limahl released two singles in 2020, one of which, with staggering and surely misplaced confidence, was a Christmas one, he mostly remains on tour in revivals of eighties bands and sounds, trying to recapture his brief moments of glory. In many ways, perhaps sadly, perhaps hilariously, and almost certainly fittingly, Limahl seems determined to continue to write and star in his very own Never-ending Story.