“I’ve always had an ambivalence regarding the dropping of the bomb,” says McCluskey a history nerd and World War 2 buff going back to his adolescence on the Wirral. As the world marks the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima this week, his feelings remain nuanced. McCluskey himself has gone back and forth over the years about Enola Gay, named for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the bomb in August 1945.
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.
