However, he had a dramatic change of heart as in the autumn of 1980 Enola Gay rocketed up the charts, reaching number eight in the UK and number one in Spain and Italy.
Our manager at the time thought it was cheesy pop crap.” For Paul it was a little strange – like trying to adopt a stepchild. It was our first song that wasn’t written by us both. “The record company instantly thought, 'oh we’ve got a potential hit',” recalls McCluskey. 'The contention was within the band and within our own management. But it was also a lament for the destruction of Hiroshima by a nuclear bomb in 1945.
Yes it was catchy, that heavenly synth line spiralling toward the troposphere. OMD were, by contrast, hugely ambivalent about Enola Gay. When Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark ’s Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys played their weird new song for their record label, the suits immediately heard the chiming of cash tills.
