Sigue Sigue Sputnik - 'Love Missile F1-11' (1986)

"Soon the whole world will know my name."

Sigue Sigue Sputnik was a UK act active from 1982 to 1989, being the brainchild of Tony James, earlier of Generation X fame (being the band that gave the world Billy Idol), with Martin Degville on vocals and also featuring guitarist Neal X, keyboardist Yana YaYa and two drummers, Chris Kavanagh and Ray Mayhew. The debut single 'Love Missile F1-11' was unleashed on the unsuspecting world on the 17th of February, 1986, with a music video in tow, directed by Hugh Scott-Symonds.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik was the ultimate 1980s gimmick band and hype act. Their sound can be described a sort of electronic rockabilly (they cited Suicide, the pioneering electropunk act of Alan Vega and Martin Rev, as one of their major influences), with spacy dub effects and film samples added, produced by the legendary Giorgio Moroder (whose 1977 'I Feel Love' had formed the basis of all new electronic dance music), and with the overall visual image copped from such sci-fi films as A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, Mad Max II (a.k.a. The Road Warrior) and The Terminator, with Brian DePalma's 1983 version of Scarface also working as an inspiration. Alongside the violent trash sci-fi aesthetics, "video nasties", the 60s and 70s grindhouse cinema and the intentional bad taste of the films of John Waters were also familiar to the band. Sigue Sigue Sputnik, who called themselves "The Fifth Generation of Rock'n'Roll", looked like a futuristic update of the most outlandish stage outfits of the 70s glamrock era and David Bowie.

The 1980s was the golden era of "high concept" bands, with the record labels like ZTT of the producer Trevor Horn and publicist Paul Morley concocting highly-planned marketing strategies and artistic record sleeve "manifestos" for their acts such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Propaganda, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik was no exception here, having been conceived by Tony James as a carefully planned and ambitious, image-conscious idea, where the first phase had been finding the exactly right-looking members for the band, later to add to the concept "designer violence", meaning both the sounds and look influenced by the aforementioned action-filled futuristic movies.

With these visual references abound, the music video for 'Love Missile F1-11' was their ultimate showcase, musically and image-wise putting into the game everything that Sigue Sigue Sputnik was all about. As an exercise of stylish cynicism and with the rapidly-edited imagery of war and violence, both imaginary and real, added with glamour, fashion and sleek "international" style, it sounded and looked like Marshall McLuhan's worst nightmare, which penetrated directly into one's central nervous system, that nagging sequencer sound left reverberating in one's brain.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik were no stranger to controversy. For the video, a couplet from the song that had been on the original single version, "A mondo teeno giving head", was censored and shortened to merely "A mondo teeno giving, giving". Later, also the part "Ultraviolence in Japan, wham-bop-a-lula, thank you, ma'am" was removed from the album version as there had been accusations of Sigue Sigue Sputnik inciting violence. Incidentally, Stanley Kubrick sued the band for the use of the spoken word sample "Ultraviolence", recited by Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, that the band had used on the original single and its extended mix (Kubrick still felt sensitive of having been personally the target of accusations of some gang-related incidents of violence allegedly inspired by this 1971 film of his, and subsequently had taken the movie off the cinemas).

As none of the film samples originally used on their tracks had been given an official clearance, the band received some extra grief as those parts had to be re-recorded for the album by voice actors.

Hype was the name of the game, including such claims in the press that EMI had signed Sigue Sigue Sputnik for £4 million (in fact, only £350,000). There were also audio ads that were heard in between the songs of Sigue Sigue Sputnik's summer 1986 debut album (the idea in itself was nothing new as The Who had already done the same for their 1967 Sell-Out LP), with further plans for the whole "Sputnik Corporation", featuring (as heard on one of their audio ads) video games, real estate, whatever, in the true 1980s entrepreneurial spirit.

The 'Love Missile' single reached number three on the UK Singles Chart. It was followed by '21st Century Boy' (26 May 1986, No. 20) and the full-length album, Flaunt It (28 July 1986, No. 10 on the UK Albums Chart). 'Sex Bomb Boogie' from the album was released as a "video single" (in VHS tape format) in September 1986, featuring footage from The Terminator. There was one more single from Flaunt It, 'Massive Retaliation', that was released only in America, on Manhattan Records later in 1986.

Music critics of the time almost universally panned Sigue Sigue Sputnik. There was just too much in the band's very premises to rub the taste-makers the wrong way. As artists they were not "authentic" and "serious" enough, there was also too much media hype and brouhaha. Here in Finland Erik Ahonen of Soundi magazine called the band "awful trash, and even on The Beatles' old record label" (referring to EMI/Parlophone). It also didn't take too long before the band was started to be considered a musical one-trick pony and it's true that the band's other songs (the "ballad" 'Atari Baby' being one exception) follow pretty much the same format established by 'Love Missile' (the band's trademark sequencer bassline with "space guitar", samples and FX), only in slightly differing variations. Still, there seems to have been enough to capture the imaginations of certain core audiences, among them indie people, punks, goths, techno and electro fans, to make a lasting impression. In any case, along the years the cult reputation of SSS has grown only stronger, the band now remembered fondly and nostalgically as a prime example of the 1980s excess and visual flare. Several bands have covered 'Love Missile F1-11', among them UK's Pop Will Eat Itself, even David Bowie made his own version in the 2000s.

There was a second studio album called Dress for Excess that came out in April 1989, preceded by the single 'Success' in November 1988, this time produced by the Stock-Aitken-Waterman trio which had enjoyed multiple British Top Ten successes, but it seemed the more "chart-friendly" sound and Sigue Sigue Sputnik didn't really mix, the album reaching only No. 53 on the UK Albums Chart. Sigue Sigue Sputnik split in July 1989. Years later there have been different SSS revivals, though not featuring all the members of the "classic" line-up. One of the original drummer duo, Ray Mayhew, sadly died in 2025, aged 60.

Tony James in his own words: The story of Sigue Sigue Sputnik @ The Sputnik World.