Eating to the beat

Press, 4 February 1982, Page 14

Eating to the beat

There was a race at the Chateau Regency on Tuesday between a member of a rock music group eating a large club sandwich and a reporter whose notebook was running out of room.

While Warren Cann, the drummer for the English rock music group, Ultravox, wrestled with the club sandwich, the reporter struggled to find gaps in his notebook to write down answers.

About this time last year the English band had a trend-setting hit single in the United Kingdom called “Vienna,” which in about four weeks went from nowhere to No. 18, then No. 6 then No. 2, and finally the top of the heap. According to Warren Cann the band were pleased about the way the single was accepted because it had a very uncommercial sound.

The band was convinced from the time that the song was recorded that this was a single cut, he said.

Ultravox had tried hard to convince its British record company that a video film of the song was justified, and finally the band organised its own production. The record company was stunned when “Vienna” went from nowhere and straight into the charts, and the cost

of the production of the video film was later sorted out between the company and the band, Warren Cann said. The video clip of “Vienna” is equally as moody and trendy as the music of the song, and the cost of its production caused some controversy. Warren Cann said a lot of numbers had been floated to say what the cost of the video film was, but the definite price was £12,000 (about SNZ3O,OOO then). “When you think that a television commercial costs four times that amount for 30 seconds on the telly (in Britain), compared with three to four minutes for the video film then the amount is peanuts.” The “Vienna” clip had been influential as it left makers with the choice of either producing an abstract