As ABC’s seminal debut album, ‘The Lexicon Of Love’, is celebrated with a 40th anniversary reissue, Martin Fry opens up about the making of its accompanying film, ‘Mantrap’.
The longform video uses songs from the record while telling the story of how the unsuspecting lead singer is duped into fronting the band, in what soon unravels as an espionage thriller.
In line with the celebrations, the Julien Temple-directed film has been restored and remastered for the first time in four decades, released as part of the Blu-Ray edition of the LP, with Fry sharing his recollections of the project during an intimate press screening in London.
“We’d had a couple of hits with Tears Are Not Enough, Poison Arrow and The Look Of Love, so we were on a roll, and the ‘Arena’ documentary makers from the BBC said they wanted to do a film about ABC,” he shares. “It quickly transpired that it was going to be about five deranged lads from Sheffield, moving from the north of England to London, and we felt a bit uncomfortable with that.
“At the same time, we had a pretty good relationship with Julien Temple and we loved ‘The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’, which he directed, so we approached him and Polygram video said, ‘Here’s some money (not a lot), and off you go make your feature film,’ which is how ‘Mantrap’ came about.”
Clocking in at just under an hour and starring Lisa Vanderpump, parts of the feature were shot in Austria “and Ladbroke Grove Sainsbury’s car park,” laughs Fry. “We were very very ambitious, probably arrogant and rather stupid, and I’ve always found those qualities are very good in rock and roll. So we started filming on Boxing Day and went for 10 days, crammed in between tour dates.
“We’d seen Duran Duran in Sri Lanka [in the Save A Prayer music video] and ours was definitely an attempt to be as glam as those guys – but it was on a shoestring,” he adds.
The budget was so tight, in fact, that not all of the band was able to shoot on location when Martin headed to Europe. “We couldn’t afford to take everybody to Europe, so the four string players Jocelyn pook and the band had to get on the ferry, film their bits, then go back home again. Only me, Julien Temple, Oliver Stapleton [cinematographer] and Lisa Vanderpump got to continue into Europe.”
Having just watched the film for the first time in four decades, does he have any words of advice for his 24-year-old self? “I’d say, ‘Look ahead – 40 years later, you might still be out there playing shows’… A lot of the [performance] footage was from the Hammersmith Odeon, which was the biggest place you could get to play back then, and we’d only made one album, so when we played those shows we only had nine songs really.
“It was very much an experiment, but it feels good, 40 years later, to be sitting here,” he smiles. “That was my apprenticeship.”
