Wang Chung's Jack Hues On New Album 'Tazer Up,' 80s Music, Why They Changed Their Name

My greatest musical influence, well, the earliest musical influence comes from the Beatles. I grew up listening to the Beatles really, but more recently Miles Davis, would be a huge musical influence. All the jazz guys I know, like Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane. Back in the day it was the Beatles that started me off. Probably for Wang Chung’s, the biggest influence would be David Bowie, as well. I was a big fan of his.

Totally, it would be great. I would love to do deluxe editions of all the albums, and it’d be nice to have them in a sort of box set of everything. There are a lot of demos, alternative versions and a few songs that never made it to the album that were really pretty good, which we were excavating recently, so yeah, I think it’s of deep interest.

I think actually, a song that never was released that was never gotten to, is a song called "Joy." It’s a song that we wrote off the points of the curve. Unfortunately, it was done in L.A., and To Live And Die in L.A. sort of became our next album for us. But "Joy" was something I played with a few people, and they really adored it as a real sort of interesting example of Wang Chung, without any sort of compromise, you know. So that song I would like to see as a single.

There are reasons. I think the main thing is that Nick and I got back together after doing the TV show Hit Me Baby One More Time, a reality show. We enjoy working together, enjoy being in L.A. together, and we realize that there’s a lot of affection and interest in Wang Chung still, so we did a couple of songs, we did some touring in 2009 and 2010, and the next logical step would be to the album. The other singers and Nick and I are both song writers. We’re always working on stuff, there was some background material that was recorded a minute ago. So, yeah, we just felt now is the time. Everything is outdated, so now is the time. It just felt like the right time.

I grew up in England, in Kent, which is sort of about forty miles of southeast London. I would say that back then it was a pretty grey town, not a really brilliant place to grow up in in some ways. On the other hand, it meant that the whole world of music for me became a real sort of escape. When I saw the Beatles on TV for the first time, they covered all the stuff that was going on in the 60s. It just sort of blew my mind, there was really no other way to live, and my dad was a musician. And he encouraged me to take proper lessons and the deal was that I was getting my own guitar, but I was going to have proper lessons. So I took proper lessons and that’s how I got into real music. By the time I got to 17, 18, I went into music at University. In those days, I mean it was really a long time ago, you had to start with classical music. But I was always into pop music and rock 'n' roll and that’s what I could do, so my career was based on that.

It was really unique. Back in 1978, I just left the College of Music, and I was looking to get back into pop music really, and I was really inspired by all the pop bands that were around at that time and I answered a Musician’s Minute wanted ad. It was a music paper that was around at that time, and I did the audition not realizing that he had nothing much going on really, but I loved his songs, and he had some really good musicians. And he told me there was a deal in the offer. I guess I was one of the few guitarists who could play his crazy jazz. We did a bunch of gigs, but didn’t get signed. We then met with drummer Darren Costin and Nick and I decided to do Wang Chung.

The name originally was Huang Chung. And it kind of had a Chinese thing going for it, but it was meant to be just mysterious. We wanted to be anonymous, which we kind of really were with that name. We thought that maybe the name was ridiculous, people can’t really say it, we should change it, but then David Geffen said, ’No, you should keep it and just respell it, and people will be able to say it.’ So that’s how the name changed to "Wang." As for what it means, I think it’s no longer possible to ask that question, particularly with the way things have developed. People have just run with it and made it mean what they want it to mean, so it’s no longer my preference to answer that question.

It was exciting, it presented a lot of opportunities and we did some big tours. We did a tour with Tina Turner, I think it was in 1987 or 1988, I don’t remember the dates. We got to play in stadiums and you got a real taste of rock and roll at that point. Wang Chung, we were. The music always came first. We were really interested in making albums, and it’s hard to imagine these days, but the recordings back then were considered to be the central part of your career, and touring back then was there to support your album. We spent a lot of time back then in the studio, working with great producers, making records. It was probably my favorite bit. Things have changed now, obviously there’s the general sense that it’s the tours that are your central part of your career and recordings are there to support it. I don’t know that I really agree with that. I think that the recordings are really, really important, and we have to take care of it.

There are a lot of lives since the band broke up. I have three kids, well they’re not kids, they’re all grown up now. And in the 90s I did quite a bit of work as a producer and more recently I brought in a jazz project in Canterbury, which is my hometown. Canterbury is a pretty interesting town musically, because in the 70s there were a whole bunch of jazzy pop bands that were linked to Canterbury, though some would argue that they had nothing to do with Canterbury. There was something about these bands like Egg, Delivery, that had this approach of combined a dollop music with jazz. I love music and jazz and I guess that’s why I am falling into that long tradition. So my jazz project is a quartet set, and I’d like to have that released this year, so I guess you got to look out for that.