Leee John

It's not just our imagination but it's been over 35 years sine Leee John was performing chart hits Body Talk and Just an Illusion.

With his 80s band Imagination, Leee became known for his outrageous dress style and hit tunes like Music and Lights, achieving worldwide sales in excess of 30 million albums.

The flamboyant lead singer is now busier than ever. Not only is he busy promoting his new album Retropia, he is also working on a film project, and is about to embark on a number of shows and festivals with Imagination, including the Rewind Festival in Henley.

We spoke to Leee about his upcoming festival and new projects, as well as his memories of his life in the 80s, including the time he almost missed his first ever performance on Top of the Pops.

How you are Leee?

I'm fine but it's been non-stop but hey, I can't complain. I've been promoting the new album Retropria, it's coming out on June 7 and I'm getting a lot of play on the new single, Do It Right Now, it's kind of like an EP, and I've got shows coming up, I'm also involved in a Flashback Film so it's getting quite crazy.

You're playing the Rewind Festival in Henley on August 19th, have you performed at Rewind before?

Oh yes, I've been on tour with Rewind in South Afria,.I've done some other shows around the world with them, it's always great fun. It's really fun meeting a lot of the people. On this show in Henley, there's Gloria Gaynor, who I've worked with on many occasions. Also, The Village People, they are really cool, because their manager Jimmy Simpson, and Ray Simpson who plays the policeman, are brothers of Valerie Simpson of Ashford and Simpson. Ashford and Simpson are my favourite singer songwriters of all time. It's amazing when you work with different people, and your muscial tastes are so different, but you still meet through the music.

What will you be performing?

I'm really looking forward to Henley because it's always a great audience. The thing is, they always wanna hear the hits and stuff, so we give it to them. I've also been putting a lot of the new stuff into the shows, like Secrets, there's also a ballad called Hello Goodbye, so I try to slip in as many as I can within the time period we've got on stage. But I still feel I need to give people a little bit of the theatricals. If I can fit in a costume change I will!
People wanna see the show, people wanna escape. I think they are tired of hearing about Trump, that's for sure. I'm finding people want that escape through their music. For me I feel I have a strong responsibility to maintain that and so I take a lot of pride in preparing myself for this show. It's very important for me to represent the sound and the look of Imagination.

Why do you think the 80s was such a special time?

I always think of the 80s as a period where we took time to look good, to look crazy. When we first did Top Of The Pops, everybody copied us. By the end of the year, we had Body Talk in the chart, then In and out of Love, and then Flashback, and by the time we finished performing Flashback that year, everybody on the floor, you know the dancers, everyone had headbands, which is what I had started. The 80s were an extension of the punk and new wave era, and you had technology coming in, computer and sequences and stuff, and there was so much ambition. Besides people having their shoulder pads and wanting to be Joan Collins or J R Ewing, there was a lot of energy and there was so much creativity and colours, and I think that's what defines the 80s. The 90s were a lot more grungy, and girl bands, and it became too much of a formula. Then into the 21st century, reality TV kicked in and you didn't know what was real and what wasn't real anymore and the depth of music and the art completely changed. While now, I'm seeing fashions of back in the day coming up again and also hearing people trying to imitate our sounds which is cool, using the same type of Imagination base sounds.

What was it like for you to perform on such an iconic programme as Top Of The Pops?

The story goes....we entered the chart at about number 44, and a band had dropped out of the programme. Everybody was trying to find me. I'd just left home, and was living with friends, and Body Talk was getting a lot of club play. It was before mobiles so there was no way of catching me. I was going down Tottenham High Road, and someone ran out to me, and said you've got to get home, it's veryimportant, where are you? I got in, in the mid afternoon, and was told to get prepared, because we could be doing Top Of The Pops! And there was me, just strolling down the road!
TOTP was like constant family viewing. Everybody would be glued to the TV to see who was going to be on there,. When we got on there, it was like wow! I had like an army unit coming in, saying what are you going to wear? My A and R guy was orchestrating 'Leee, when you get on that stage, you've got to strut that stuff!` It was such a special moment being on TOTP. I remember emotionally, I think I literally cried after it. I remember someone saying you'll never feel this way again. It was that moment, you think wow! I've been blessed to say I've had a few moments like that.

You're known for your flamboyant dress style. How did that come about?

The outfits we were wearing were kind of a combination of Funkadelic, Parliament and Sly and the Family Stone, and mixed wit hstreet cred, it was a combinatqion of all of that. And to be honest with you, it was not even trying to be outrageous or anything like that, we were just thinking of the theme. We thought we'd have an Arabic kind of theme, and take it to the level we would do in the clubs.

You recently featured in a revival of the 80s show Pop Quiz? What was that experience like?

It was great to be back with DJ Mike Read, It was really good and it was fun to do. And it was like stepping back in time. It didn't seem old.
To be perfectly honest with you, they are ruining normal TV now. The things on TV now people don't even watch. I think Pop Quiz had the highest viewing figures over Christmas when they did the two shows, and it just proves that whoever's doing programming, they completely don't understand what people want out there. That goes for radio as well, because right now, you're getting the same records repeated all the time.

Tell us about your new album.
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Retropia is basically a combination of using real instrumentation, of using great UK musicians. I've got people like Blue fom Incognito who's playing guitar, I've got Steve Nichols from Loose Ends. There's a duet with Mike Lindup from Level 42. When I was doing the albuum, there were quite a few old songs that my fans knew but I'd never ever put them on an album, I'd play them live. For example there's a track called Fantasia and another one called Utopia which were part of a concept but I'd never completed them and I managed to actually do it for this album. A lot of the DJs have just gravitated to one of the tracks, Do It Right Now. It was song of the week on a number of radio stations, and the album's also set to be album on the week on one station.

It must be exciting to have such a great reception to your new album?
It's great, it's like wow, a return to the limelight. The album's a bit like when you listen to a Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder album or Lionel Richie, you're going back in time but it's got a today feel at the same time, so you don't get alienated. But it's an album of music, songs, of jazz, funk, soul. There's some ballads that will make you cry. It's got a bit of everything on there. In actual fact, the duet I did on there with Mike Lindup was a Stevie Wonder song from the Inner Visions Album and I also do a version of Highway to Hell by ACDC.
There's another side of the album as when I started it, I'd just had a loss, a great loss. I lost my best friend and his wife, and I also lost my sister, all in the same year. It was like one after the other. It was extremely devastating for me, and the whole family. I was committed to do the album. Literally I put them to rest one week, and then I was in the studio the next week. It was a testament really of the energies of all these people that had been part of my life in the album.

Since the 80s, you've also developed a career in film producing. Tell us more.

I'm working on my fourth film production. I'm a patron for SOS, a worldwide charity for orphans, and I've filmed a lot for them in places like South Africa and Tunisia to raise awareness for the charity.
For about the last five years, I've been working on Flashblack, the history of UK black music. I've filmed about 400 hours which we are timelining so we can basically present it in a film festival and also as an eight part series. It should be finished by the end of this year.

You've had a long career. How old were you when you first started in the business?

In the industry, I started when I was 15. I was signed to EMI as part of a duo, we were called Russ and Lee. We didn't have the hit, but we were in school wearing our snake skin shoes, going out to clubs. It was a great period in the mid 70s but I thought I needed to learn more about the trade, the art, the music, my voice, playing with bands, musicians, and that is what I did up until Imagination. I was doing a lot of sessions, I was just about into my early 20s, so it was like everything was young, fast, fresh, and you weren't getting the back aches or leg aches you get now!

To order Leee's album, visit www.retropia.co.uk

Imagination featuring Leee John play Rewind South 80’s Festival on Saturday 19th August at Temple Islands Meadows in Henley-on-Thames.

More info & tickets: www.rewindfestival.com