It’s been seven years since pop music icon and master songwriter Nick Heyward last spoke to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. The former lead singer and chief songwriter for the bouncy, breezy 1980s pop band Haircut 100 was living in the Tampa Bay Area at the time, eager to continue the sparkling run of solo records he’d released since leaving his former band, and anxious to play live in the United States.
With his always cheerful and boisterous aura, the Beckenham, England native, now 64, seems to have never lost his passion and zeal for life and for making music.
Since then, Heyward has had the chance to reunite with his former bandmates, and they’ve collectively decided to have a go at it again, with remarkable results.
In 2022, the band’s sole album with Heyward at the helm, Pelican West, celebrated its 40th anniversary, and a lavish, deluxe four-CD box set came out to commemorate the record’s release. Playing a run of reunion gigs throughout its native United Kingdom the following year to capitalize on the momentum and the attention the box set received, the group played to sellout crowds who’d never stopped loving the band or its bright, infectious blend of jazz and funk-influenced pop music.
Known for hit singles “Love Plus One,” Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl),” and “Fantastic Day,” the band enjoyed tremendous chart success throughout Europe in its heyday, which also spilled over to the States and earned it a respectable spot on American album sales charts.
While Haircut 100 never toured extensively throughout the U.S. back when the album was racing up the charts and they were enjoying exposure as mainstays on MTV, the band was invited to partake in a package tour in 2023 throughout the U.S. that found its on a bill with contemporaries like ABC and headliner Howard Jones. Due to the overwhelming response they got from audiences on that run of shows, Jones has invited Haircut 100 to once again join him on tour for another trek, which, luckily, includes a stop in St. Pete this weekend.
Speaking to me from a cafe in Nashville, Tennessee (where the current tour, which spans the entire month of September, is due to kick off), I had the chance to once again chat with the always jovial and lively Heyward about his reuniting with Haircut 100, the promise of new music with the band, and their return to the limelight.
Tickets to see Haircut 100 play Duke Energy Center at Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg on Saturday, Sept. 6 are still available and start at $53.
It’s great that you’re returning to the area, and that you’re going to play locally at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg
Well, it’s funny, because like, you know, you’re just not really in charge
of anything. Because if I’d have tried to plan this, it probably, maybe, wouldn’t have happened, but it’s kind of just happened that way. When we were sitting and watching David Byrne at the Mahaffey Theater [during his 2018 concert at that venue], I remember saying to [his spouse] Sarah, “Wow, wouldn’t it be lovely to play here?” And that’s it, just like a dream.
But you know, COVID happened after that, didn’t it? COVID happened, and then the whole world changed. Then we went back to the U.K., and a 40th anniversary release of Pelican West was coming up. I was standing backstage somewhere up north at a Let’s Rock! retro festival concert, and I was speaking to Joff [Hall] from Kilimanjaro, which is a big booking agency, and he said, “What you got going on?” I didn’t want to say “Not a lot, really,” so I said “Well, I’ve got a 40th anniversary,” and he said “Oh great! I think you should play the [concert hall] Shepherd’s’ Bush Empire.” And I said, “Really? Oh, OK.” Anyway, I thought nothing of it, and about a week or two later, he said, “I’ve booked it.” And I went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I haven’t even spoken to the guys for ages.” I don’t know why I said yes, but I just said yes, because I just thought, “I’ll just have to ask everyone.”
So I’d emailed everyone, and it was [drummer] Blair [Cunningham], [bassist] Les [Nemes], [guitarist] Graham [Jones], and I that turned up to the meeting… and then we went on stage at Shepherd’s Bush, it was a sellout show! Then we got a phone call from Wet Leg’s management, which was even more shocking, because we thought, “What do they want to do with us? Surely they don’t want to manage us,” and we just said,”We’ve got to work together, one day in some way.” So, that’s why we’re on our second tour now, and just finished an album, and put out a single [the ultra-catchy “The Unloving Plum” and that’s why it’s all happened! And we’re playing in St Pete!
And what has been the reaction from the fans to the touring been?
Yeah, there’s been full-on, grown men crying, like the Rolling Stones lyric goes! We were in Utah and on the second gig of the last tour when it really kicked into shape. It was just, ”Ah, right, OK! This is gonna be an amazing tour!” and we went out to do a sort of impromptu [autograph] signing, and we sat down, and the first people were coming up, queuing up, and three guys just came up and started talking, and they started crying, and it made us cry. It was like, there were six men crying, because these songs meant so much to them. This was their road trip that they did. It was an emotional moment, and that kept happening throughout the whole tour. It was an emotional tour.
I can relate! I got pretty emotional myself when I went to New Jersey to see you all perform on that tour. I was so happy to finally see a band I loved so much, and that I never thought I’d get to see perform live, onstage, and right in front of me.
It’s really good to be kind of like a proper band again, like in the studio and working together in a creative way, and just smiling at each other when you get that groove going. And you just go “I don’t know what it is,” when Blair starts playing drums, and we start kind of warming our hands on him like he’s some kind of fire!
Are these runs of shows in America the most Haircut 100 has ever played in the U.S.?
Well, we did tour twice before, and they were long tours and there were little gigs, because we were following Duran Duran around, everywhere they went.
There were so many great albums that came out during the 1980s. But, from your perspective, why do you think Pelican West has remained such a fan favorite and has stood the test of time?
Nobody sounds like that. Even though you can listen Pelican West and go “Oh, that sounds a bit like Tower of Power, that bit”, and there’s a bit of Earth, Wind & Fire, and “Oh, that might even sound like Orange Juice there.” Obviously, you’ve got influences of the period, but it was not derivative of one thing in particular. But the magic of a band is that you all come together with your influences and bring them into your playing. And at that particular stage, we were all aspiring to do something, and it was all authentic. It was all just thrown into the mix, so to speak, and so that’s what, I suppose, that’s what it is. It didn’t really sound New Romantic at the time, even though we were in that new wave, new romantic period, that cultural wave, we actually were never it, music-wise.
My take on it, as a listener, is that the record doesn’t sound dated at all. The sound isn’t indicative of the time period from which it was released. It still sounds fresh, contemporary, and like it could have come out this year, and not in 1982.
I mean jazz/ funk has never really gone away, has it? Dance music is still
here. And I mean, I wasn’t singing like David Bowie, or Classix Nouveau, or Midge Ure, or something. All great singers, but taught singers. I wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t really a singer. I mean, I liked David Byrne and Andy Partridge and they weren’t classic singers; they were people that expressed vocals through their singing. It was like another instrument, if you like. So that’s what it was. I threw shapes of words together that sounded good, but I didn’t want to sing them like Stevie Wonder or something. I couldn’t, even if I tried. I wasn’t a soul singer, so, and if I tried to sing like a soul singer, it just sounds like some scrag from Beckenham, trying to sing like a soul singer which I hadn’t grown up listening to. I had grown up listening to more instrumental music like Count Basie and Oscar Peterson and stuff, so it wasn’t really singers that I aspired to, so maybe that’s it.
The reformed group has released one single so far, and I’ve read that there’s a new album coming out soon. What’s that process been like this time around?
It’s just pure joy. That’s what the recordings are and that’s what the delivery of the music is. I still feel that joy inside, I know Graham still feels that joy, I know Blair still feels that joy, and Les still feels that joy. I know that for a fact because we’re working together, and we feel that joy, and we’ve just recorded that joy again on this new album. It’s more “up” than my solo stuff. My solo stuff is, it’s just different, and something happens when you just get together and it’s like Haircut 100 energy! It’s really weird. It’s the spirit of Haircut 100.
It’s the album, plus another energy, another level of energy and joy. The shows we used to do had a lot more energy than the first album did. The album sounded accomplished and in some parts, you know, intricately woven together, but the live shows take on this built-up momentum, like a dynamo. They’ve just become something, just playing them and playing them, and they’ve developed. It’s just like the celebration of living and life, and they’ve built momentum as they’ve gone on.
I mean, the new album we’ve done is better than Pelican West. People are hearing it and they’re going “Oh wow! It’s better! It sounds better! The songs are better! Everything’s better!” I mean, I was ready for my jazz years! I was ready to, sort of, like just go out and slow down to nice, relaxed armchair versions of the songs. I was not expecting to go like a crazy man, but something happens on stage.
‘The Unloving Plum’ is the single we’ve heard from the reformed group so far, and it’s absolutely fantastic.
Yeah, there’s a new single we’ve got out called “Dynamite,” and that’s very explosive!
You’re touring throughout the month with Howard Jones again, and then the tour wraps with you all playing a headlining show at the Sony Hall in New York City. You have to be excited about that.
Yeah, that’s like a whole 90-minute show. So we’ll be rehearsing on the
fly for that as we go. Well, all we’ve got to do is stay alive. That’s the main goal now, you know, because we, for 40 years, a few of us could have gone, you know, and the fact that we’re still here and quite a few of our peers have gone. I mean, you know growing up with Wham! and stuff, and George’s [Michael] not being here. So just to be here and to celebrate life, and to play these songs flat out. I tried to pace myself, but as I say, you know, something takes over. It’s pretty wild.
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