Feature: Limahl • So This is Christmas

IE: You initially released your “One Wish For Christmas” single in 2020. But has there been a post-Halloween time when you’ve noticed its sales spiking again annually, like Mariah’s seasonal songs?

LIMAHL: Oh yeah. Maybe. But if you’re lucky enough to be signed to one of the four conglomerates, who have now taken over the music business completely — Sony, BMG, Universal, and Warner — they’ve got such huge budgets and such power, such marketing clout…but as an independent artist, I’ve been pushing, every December, my lovely Christmas song, in the hope that somewhere along the way it would just get the right nudge, or land on the right ears, or maybe get used in a commercial, or a computer game, or whatever it is. And then probably the conglomerates will come knocking, and I might just say, “No thanks. Where were you when I needed you?”

IE: “Who will help me BAKE the bread?” “Not me!”

L: Ha! Exactly! But it’s such a short window to promote it. No one wants to hear Christmas songs, really, before December the first, so you’ve got the first to the twenty-fifth, so just over three weeks. But it was a real creative challenge. When I got together with the co-writer, John Niccol (?), we just thought, “Nah, we can’t write a Christmas song! It’s impossible — every angle’s been done.” But I’m so proud of what we achieved, in terms of the music production and the story and the song, and finding that new angle, you know? So basically, our couple has gone away for a City Break, which is a term that didn’t exist back in the day but is now common on travel websites. And our couple in the song are going on a City Break to London, because London is very special to me — I’ve lived here all my life, I love it, and I don’t think that there are enough songs about London. We’ve got songs about New York, Chicago, and San Francisco! San Jose, Amarillo, and more obscure places like that, but not that many about London, although it’s not the most exciting, vocally — “Lon-DON,” you know? But you get that it’s London from the descriptions in the verses, so that’s how we sort of balanced it out and made it work. So that’s exactly the sort of thing we’re hoping for — we nudge it every December, and it keeps picking more and more audiences, and maybe somebody will hear it, somewhere in the world, and go, “That would be perfect in our project!” So that’s the hope.

IE: Which could lead to a full Christmas covers album. What else would you like to test your vocal chops on, seasonally?

L: Oh, my word! You know, I don’t know if I would dare! It’s so difficult, because if you’re gonna do covers, you’ve gotta put your own slant on it, and there are SO many versions. I mean, my Number One favorite Christmas song is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” introduced in the 1940s film by Judy Garland. But one of the corporates of the movie didn’t think the song was right and requested a lyric tweak…

IE: Oh yeah! Because the original lyric said something dark like “If we make it to next year” or something, implying we might all be dead!

L: Yeah. So MY favorite version of that is by Luther Vandross, and now how could I possibly top a Luther Vandross vocal? You just can’t. For me, no one can sing like Luther — he is the Velvetizer of vocals, he’s the hot chocolate of vocals. He really is. So I don’t know. I’m not sure I would want to do a covers album of Christmas songs, so let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.

IE: When is 67 coming up for you?

L: 67? Oh, my birthday! It’s the 19th of December, too close to Christmas, thank you very much.

IE: I know. You only get one gift as a kid, and you’re like, “Damn it!”

L: Yeah. I’d get “Merry Christmas! P.S. — Happy birthday.”

IE: What do you have planned for the 67th?

L: 67th. Wow. Yeah — I can’t even believe it. But obviously, it’s a thrill to get to this age. So I am going to see, for the second time, there’s an amazing production, a 20-year revival of the show, based on the film by Mel Brooks, called The Producers, and it just transferred from Fringe, which is the UK equivalent of off-Broadway. So it came from the Fringe, but it was so good it got picked up by a big producer and moved to a West End theatre. And it was so funny, we were crying — we were grabbing the tissues to wipe the tears of laughter. And there’s no one that famous (starring) in it — the guy who plays the lead in it is a very big lead — his CV runs a mile, and we should know who he is. But I can’t remember his name — he’s not that famous, but he is SO good, so good, and the cast is strong. And it’s such a funny story, about this Broadway producer who wants to put on the worst possible play, so that he can rip off the money from the investors. It’s great. And they come across this one screenplay, out of all the screenplays that were sent to them, and it’s called Springtime For Hitler. And Mel Brooks, being Jewish, of course, he gets away with it. If anybody else had done it, I don’t know if they’d have gotten away with it. So that’s what I’m doing, anyway.

IE: I was just thinking of all the fabulous pop-cultural references to “The Never Ending Story,” and not just your classic theme song. There’s a great early “Simpsons” one where the lawyer Lionel Hutz, voiced by the late Phil Hartman, assures Homer that his suing of an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet is a winner with, “Mr. Simpson, this is the most blatant case of fraudulent advertising since my lawsuit against the film, The Never Ending Story’!

L: Ha! I LOVE all these references! And there’s a reference to “The Never Ending Story” in Family Guy, well, where Peter takes off on the film dragon.

IE: Yes! But he’s called Fleek, not Falkor! It’s in the brilliant episode where Peter becomes a man-bun-haired millennial, whose Millennial Tutor informs him that he’ll have to start attending loud desert concerts, where all the bands are “really young or really old,” And Griffin replies, “Oh, really? Like who? And his hipster trainer points to one Coachella-ish stage at Tame Impala, who “formed in an uberpool on the way over here, “ then another stage at “Neil Young, basically asleep in his chair.’ I first saw that episode during the Pandemic, and I could not stop laughing!

L: Yeah! Fantastic! And if I had known how important “Never Ending Story” would become culturally, when I flew to Munich to record the vocals, I would have been peeing my pants! But it’s so great that I didn’t know I just rode into town, into Munich, with a hangover, and I’d been smoking cigarettes the night before, and in the afternoon I couldn’t perform the song because I was so tired and worn out. But of course, at 23, you recover, and we nailed the vocal around 8:00, 9 000, 10:00 in the evening. And I think if I’d known how important it would become, both in MY life and culturally, out there in the big wide world, I would have been SO nervous, and I don’t think I would have been so free with the vocal. And when I listen to that vocal, I always think my theatre training came in quite useful. I was in a tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, I was in Godspell,” and these long notes, these long high notes, I’d been doing all that in the shows. So “Never Ending Story? ” It’s truly never-ending. And the family has just sold the rights to a big production company, I think Cecil Productions, who’ve done another big successful series, and apparently they’re planning to make a live-action series of “The NeverEndingStory,” and the stage production ran in Madrid for a year, then Barcelona for a year, and now it’s just moving to Seville. So I do wonder…will it be translated into English and end up on Broadway or even the West End? So it’s very exciting to watch this song just go on and on and on….

IE: What was your most recent appearance onstage? The last time you ‘trod the boards’?

L: Well, funnily enough, this year has been fairly quiet. But next year, I already have four dates in my diary. But at 66/67, I admit that I’ve slowed down a bit, so now I just choose what I fancy doing — I don’t accept everything. So I have a gig in the South of the U.K… in January, then I’m going to a big music festival in Iceland — and I’ve never been there before — and in June, I am in Vienna, in Austria, for another big show. Because of these retro events, where there’s sort of a multi-artist lineup, they’re so popular. And then in July, strangely enough, I’m in Tenerife, which is a Spanish island off Africa, and they’re doing something there. And it’s not necessarily a Limahl gig, but it’s part of something. You know, eighteen months ago, I did a private show at the National Portrait Gallery in London, for the finance company Bloomberg, and you know, I get asked to do stuff like that, so basically, I’m a bit of an antique — I’ve gained more value as I’ve gotten older. It’s wonderful!

IE: Now you’ve gotten so many similarly posh gigs, so does that automatically come with lifetime memberships to all cool London art museums? Or are you just recognized at the door now?

L: Well, I am a member of the V&A. But I PAID! It’s my favorite museum of decorative art, so I have to belong. But you have to remember, my hits were 43 years ago, and of course, people know the songs, but there are probably two generations who don’t know who sang “Too Shy” or “The NeverEndingStory,” but they know the songs, in the same way that I might hear a ‘60s song that I’m incredibly familiar with, and I might know the NAME of the artist, but don’t know what they look like at all. And that’s quite nice, because I can be fairly anonymous, you know.

IE: Well, it must be said that time has been very kind to you. But how did you originally come up with that wild hairstyle four decades ago?

L: Well, definitely, we were experimenting with ‘How do you stand out from the crowd in this incredibly competitive music business?’ But my hair was a gradual process over about two and a half years, (starting with) “Godspell.” I was performing in Godspell, and there was a cast of 13 — six female Disciples and six male Disciples, and then the Jesus character. And by the way, Godspell was written by Stephen Schwartz, who is now having global success with Wicked. So I went to the director — and this would be about 1980 — and I said, “Look — all the guys look the same. The girls are very different — we’ve got a girl with red hair, blonde hair, and a brunette with wavy hair. But all the guys have got this mousy brown hair, and I quite fancy going blond!” And he said, “Oh! Good idea!” And I went off to a local salon, and I came back with this sort of a blond spike, and I loved it immediately, so then I started adding the black bits, and it was punk, a bit trying to be different, just trying to stand out from the crowd. And that’s how it evolved, really.

IE: And then you thought, “How can I be even MORE mysterious? I think I’ll just scramble the letters of my last name!”

L: Well, I was a fan of ABBA, right? Who isn’t? So I’m reading ABBA interviews, and that’s how they got their name, from the first letters of their first names. So I started thinking about it, and there wasn’t much I could do with ‘Chris,’ my real first name, so I’m looking at. Hamill, which is the same spelling as Mark Hamill’s from “Star Wars,” So I put one ‘L’ at the beginning and then read it backwards — Limahl — and I quite liked the fact that it started with an ‘L’ and ended in an ‘L’ — it just rolled quite nicely. So I turned up at the band rehearsal and said, “Guys, don’t call me Chris anymore — I’m Limahl, that’s my stage name.” And there WAS some snickering, but they respected that, and they started calling me Limahl from that point. And I thought one word is kind of cool, too, like Sting. So that’s how it came about.

IE: This being Christmas, we have to have a fun Yuletide rundown. Starting with: What was the worst gift you ever got?

L: Ooh…well, it’s gotta be an item of clothes that you just don’t like, you know? Maybe like a shirt or a sweater. I have an agreement now with my family, where we say, “Don’t waste money, don’t buy stuff that’s just gonna get thrown away.” So I just hate anyone buying me anything — I’ve got everything I need. But I did kind of say, “If you wanna spend five pounds on something, it can be something to unwrap.” But yeah, there have been too many of those Christmases where you open the present, and you politely say, “Oh, thank you! That’s so nice!” But inside, you’re thinking, “Oh, God!” It’s so hard to tell someone that you don’t like it when you unwrap their present.

IE: Was there ever a Red Ryder BB gun sort of gift, where they warned you it would shoot your eye out, and it almost did?

L: Umm…well, first of all, I grew up with two brothers, and we’re only one year apart, the three brothers, so it was always games for us growing up. So of course, in the ‘60s, it was board games, so there would be Monopoly, plus anything that was physical — we had darts, a darts board, and we had a snooker — or pool — table, and we had table tennis because you could play that indoors. I could play you a game of table tennis now, and I’m still quite good. And it’s a great game!

IE: Did you and your significant other ever get into video games?

L: No. But I remember in the ‘90s, when computers first came out, we had Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) and my partner, and growing up and going into the local shop by our school, we had that retro game where you shoot these little monsters coming down. “Space Invaders”! We played “Space Invaders,” and it was so good! But, uhh, things have come on somewhat since then, haven’t they? And you know what? I am scared to get into computer games now, because there is so little time to fill everything in in life, with work, with the gym, with the partner, with the 87-year-old mother, etc, etc. So do you know what I really love? I just love documentaries, because I just love to learn. I mean, I was watching a documentary last night, and I think it’s on Netflix, an interesting one on EddieMurphy. And it’s great!

IE: Where does your mother live now?

L: My mom still lives in the town I was born in, Wigan, which is in Greater Manchester.

IE: You’re seeing her again at Christmas, if not before. And at our age, if our parents are still around and cognizant, you kind of look for closure. Does she ever surprise you with wild stories from her past over at holiday gatherings?

L: Yeah, she has. And we’ve had some wonderful conversations. My dad died 20 years ago, of cancer, bless him, but my dad was a drinker and a bully when he was drunk, and we were quite scared of him when he got drunk. But it was a different mentality, a different generation, where the woman was expected to clean the house, stay in the kitchen, and not have a career, etc., etc. So here’s my mom in the ‘60s with four kids — my two brothers and my sister, who’s three years younger than me — and they had no money. And so we have these conversations, and of course, I ask those questions, because I’m intrigued. I’d say, “Mom, what were you thinking? Having four children when you have no money?” And she always laughs and says, “Well, there was nothing else to do.” I think she’s tried to tell me that she may have…how can I put this? Certainly, she’s mentioned that there were guys who flirted with her at work and things like that. And I always get the feeling that she wants to tell me more. But, being old-school, she kind of holds back. But yeah, I’ve had some wonderful conversations with her, and I still do. And you’re right — she’s coming down at Christmas. And I’ve seen her a lot this year — it’s been a tough year, because she fell and broke her hip, and she needed hip replacement surgery, and that was tough, because there was just a ton of emails, tests, meetings, and liaising with my two brothers and my sister, back and forth on WhatsApp about this, that, and the other. But amazingly — AMAZINGLY — she pulled through, because at one point, I really thought we might lose her, she was that fragile, and I was really scared and quite emotional, and trying to put on a brave face and everything.

But my mom’s an incredible survivor. I’ll tell you a very quick story. After the death of my dad 25 years ago, about a year later, just out of the blue, I threw this wacky idea to her, just over the phone — I said, “Mom, do you fancy going to Las Vegas to see Celine Dion?” And to my surprise, she went, “Okay!” And I didn’t think she’d say yes. So, she got to Las Vegas, and on the second day, she said, “Oh, I don’t feel very well — I’ve got a pain in my chest.” So I took her down to the medical center, and 45 minutes later, they called me in, and my mom was all wired up. And the doctor told me that her heart was “responding” — that’s the way he put it — responding to a heart drug, but for safety, they were sending her to a hospital. So we never got to see Celine Dion! It was the day of the concert, and we had amazing seats.

IE: But you know what? On the upside, your mom’s heart will go on!

L: Ha ha haaa! If only I had a drum kit to go DOOSH on! I love it! But the thing is, they did open-heart surgery on her in Vegas, and we had to stay there for a month, because the airline wouldn’t fly her back, and I had to liaise with the hotel management — it was like a movie scene, it was just unbelievable. And I couldn’t believe it when the surgeon came in and said, “Your mother needs open-heart surgery. Urgently.” She had something called aortic stenosis, and one of the main valves I her heart wasn’t working properly — it was calcified or something. And that valve was supposed to last 16 years, but here we are, 25 years later. So she’s kind of bionic, my mom. She’s a total survivor!

IE: Well, back onto our festive December theme: Do you and your partner of 33 years, Steve, have maybe one, two, or three set-in-stone Christmas rituals you have to check off? Restaurants to visit, or other traditions you follow>

L: No, no — it’s true!  We do! Every Christmas, on the last Sunday before Christmas — it’s always the last weekend before Christmas — we have to go for afternoon tea at a very famous store in London, which is The Royal Household Grocer’s, and that’s called Fortnum and Mason. Have you heard of Selfridge’s? Well, Fortnum and Mason is even more exclusive — it’s this huge, beautiful department store, and the stuff they do at Christmas is just incredible. So we always go to Fortnum and Mason, and we buy cookies and beautiful tea, — proper tea with leaves, not in teabags — and we’ll have tea while we’re there, and there’s a shopping arcade there, opposite, and it’s very, very old. IN fact, I did a social-media post from there about three weeks ago — if you go on Facebook or Limahl official, you’ll see it, and it’s called the Burlington Arcade. It’s this really historic, gorgeous shopping arcade, with a carpet, chandeliers, and all these quaint little boutique-bijou stores selling handbags, shoes, jewelry. So we’ll do Fotnum and Mason, and then I just love all the Christmas lights, and I know exactly where they all are. There’s an area of London called Seven Dials, and it’s this junction where you’ve got literally seven streets off of it, and they’re all very small, with very little traffic, and it’s near Covent Garden. It’s got loads of shops, hotels, theatres — it’s just wonderful. So Seven Dials always has its own theme, Regent Street has its own theme, Leicester Square has its own theme, Mayfair has its own theme, and we have a huge fairground in Hyde Park called Winter Wonderland, and that’s always fun to go to, if it’s not too cold. So we really love to do it all. And most people are in a happy mood and excited about seeing their friends and family. But Christmas is also a weird time, because it’s poignant — it’s poignant for people who’ve lost loved ones, because you think of them. And there’s that huge contrast, isn’t there, between being happy and being sad, so you can be really happy at one moment, and then suddenly really sad. But I think Christmas is also a great distraction from the cold weather and the short days.

IE: And every great once in a while, there’s snow, right?

L: Yeah. Very little here now, with global warming.

IE: Well, humanity has doomed itself to extinction, and we are just inches away. But we had a good run, huh?

L: Well, not in our lifetime, but I fear for the future. It’s almost like humans are a cancer on the planet — we’re just ruining it, because we can be so blind. And I hate the fact that we’re fighting each other, instead of working for the common good of humanity, you know? It’s a huge concern, and as a little person in the world, who’s not in politics, not with any particular power, you just feel really helpless. So you’ve kind of resigned yourself to the fact that, “Well, I can’t do anything about it. But boy, are they gonna be sorry in the future!” So for the future, I’m deeply concerned. There are so many wonderful things that can be done with all the technology they’ve discovered, and yet here we have drones, making war…

IE: Peter Griffin said it best, while passing a galaxy of shallow ‘80s pop-cultural ephemera while flying Fleek/Falkor, the Luckdragon, on “Family Guy”: “America’s involved in six different wars, but millennials think about THIS stuff.”

L: Yeah! And that’s very interesting. I don’t know who writes Family Guy, but the writers are obviously injecting their points of view into these characters.

-Tom Lanham