ALTERED IMAGES
Musical Youth
BACK WITH THEIR FIRST NEW STUDIO ALBUM IN ALMOST 40 YEARS – AND WITH THE ESTIMABLE BERNARD BUTLER ON BOARD, TOO – CLARE GROGAN TELLS US HOW ALTERED IMAGES’ MASCARA STREAKZ CAPTURES THE THRILLS OF HER TEENAGE BIG NIGHTS OUT
WILL SIMPSON
Clare Grogan has rebooted Altered Images for their first studio album since 1983
"This is all quite novel for me again,” smiles Clare Grogan as she sips mineral water in a Soho bar. “It’s really exciting. I have to say I feel a bit nervous about it. You know I’ve made a record – we’ve made this!”
If Clare sounds slightly taken aback by this simple fact, then it’s not surprising.
It’s been four whole decades – nearly 40 years and several pop lifetimes – since she last released a new album.
That was Bite, Altered Images’ third studio long-player. Released into the headwind of a huge (and very personal) backlash against the band in 1983, it was a critical and commercial flop and at the end of that campaign Altered Images quietly split.
After that came Grogan’s 1987 solo album which was never released, then a return to acting (Red Dwarf, Skins and, well, who can forget Niamh Connolly, her brilliant Sinéad O’Connor parody in Father Ted?) and in the last decade a new career as a restauranteur alongside husband, Altered Images drummer and producer, Stephen Lironi. Unlike so many of her contemporaries Grogan has led a successful, fulfilling post-pop life yet there is something about music and being the lead singer of a band that brings her something that those other things can’t.
“In my everyday life I really don’t feel I have to be centre stage in any way –
I genuinely don’t,” she insists. “But give me a microphone, put me on a stage and I want everyone looking at me!