How Cutting Crew Learned to Embrace the ‘80s

Singer-songwriter Nick Van Eede on nostalgia tours, pop references and revisiting hits with a new album

Nick Van Eede of Cutting Crew. Photo courtesy of August Day Recordings.

Isolating cozily in his old farm house near Hastings, England, Nick Van Eede watches the news, pours a fine spirit (or two) and has a good chuckle about idiosyncratic behavior in a pandemic age. An elderly neighbor has just returned home from the hospital, recovering from the coronavirus. Yet coming up the driveway they share, “His social distancing disciplines were a little bit tricky,” Van Eede concedes. “He walks up and goes, ‘Here I am! Give me a hug!’

“And you’re like, ‘OK, but not OK!’” he adds with a laugh. “We love you, but just back, back away!”

Not six months ago, the Cutting Crew lead vocalist and songwriter basked in the embrace of enthusiatic audiences on the ‘80s Mania tour with Go West, Wang Chung, A Flock of Seagulls and Pseudo Echo. He had completed a successful sweep through Australia performing hits such as “One For the Mockingbird” and “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” to packed venues.

“The tours are fantastic,” says Van Eede, 61. “I mean, who would have thought all these years later, a bunch of old guys would still be out there in front of a sold-out audience in Sydney, or in New York, or in London? And the songs survive. So I know that’s something that blows me away every day, that 33 years later, I can still do this.”

Not only can Van Eede still rock out live, he’s found a new appreciation for his songs by re-recording them. The result is Ransomed Healed Restored Forgiven, a compilation album released by August Day, a label specializing in collaborations between orchestras and pop acts.

Ever since the English musician formed Cutting Crew with Canadian guitarist Kevin MacMichael in 1985, Van Eede insists that family, friends and fans have told him that their band’s rousing rock anthems and lush ballads would work well with an orchestra. So when he got the opportunity to bring fresh interpretations to their classics and deep cuts alike, he jumped at the chance.

“We're not better than Human League, you know, we're not better than Rick Astley. We’re different from them,” Van Eede offers with candor. “But I think our songs and our arrangements are very open to the orchestral treatment. And boy, oh boy, we got it.”  

First, Van Eede had to consider what made albums like their 1986 debut Broadcast special (“funny bits and cross-fades, a little headphone candy, as we called it”) and what made Cutting Crew’s concerts stand out (“arrangements to make things work better live”). Then, he had to fuse those parts while he stayed in Hastings, the mixing engineer was in Slovenia, the orchestra was in Prague, and guitarist Gareth Moulton was in Manchester.

Partnering with him was strings arranger Pete Whitfield. They came up with a process by which they would reference composers to arrive at the right moods and soundscapes. For “Berlin in Winter,” a song Van Eede wrote about Cutting Crew being able to perform in Berlin two days after the Berlin Wall fell, Van Eede said simply, “Russian.” Whitfield replied, “Shostakovich.” On the 2006 track “No Problem Child,” which Van Eede had written about his daughter Lauren growing up in rural England, he told Whitfield, “Vaughan Williams,” and all was again understood. “I had input, but I won't claim to know any of the notes that were changed,” he says. “We just kind of went with it.”

Although ballads such as “I’ve Been In Love Before” and rockers like “One For the Mockingbird” retained key quaities of their forebears, tracks such as “Broadcast” brought out surprising vocal performances from Van Eede.

“When you're 15 years old, you want to be in a pop group, and then the next dream is that one day you might get a record deal,” Van Eede says. “And then you dream that one day you might get a hit record, and we sure did. But it's 33 years later, and to sing with just an orchestra on a song like “Broadcast,” just me and the orchestra with headphones on? I was crying. I have pictures of tissues at my feet.”

His next revelation involved Jackie Rawe, the artist Cutting Crew bassist Colin Farley had recruited to sing backup on 1989’s “Everything But My Pride.” After reconnecting at a mutual friend’s birthday party, he learned she now resided in the town five miles away from his home, making it easy to have her reprise her vocals on the new album. But rediscoveries weren’t just in store for Van Eede. Moulton found he could honor Kevin MacMichael’s original riffs on “I’ve Been In Love Before” by bringing out more flamenco flavor in the nylon-stringed guitar parts. Of the band’s co-founder, who died in 2002, Van Eede says, “I'm sure that Kevin up there will be looking down and going, ‘Well done, boy.’”

Van Eede then recalls when MacMichael introduced classical guitar to the ballad in 1986. “We were living in a loft apartment down in SoHo in the middle of Manhattan and we found an acoustic guitar on the top of the wardrobe in the place we were playing,” Van Eede says. “And he didn't bring an acoustic guitar over for the sessions, Kevin. So he found this old acoustic guitar and he played it, and it was out of tune, and it was weird.” Nonetheless, the band loved it, even when others didn’t. “I mean, the British press hate us,” Van Eede says, “and I remember somebody writing something like, ‘Yeah, it's a good song. It's number 10 in the charts, but the guitar is out of tune,’ and I wanted to write to him and say, ‘Yeah, because we found it on a fucking wardrobe!’”

Kevin MacMichael (left) and Nick Van Eede. Photo courtesy of Nick Van Eede.

After a good laugh, Van Eede pauses. He transitions to the time he had stepped away from the music he and MacMichael created just after the release of third album Compus Mentus in late 1992. “We're in the '90s now and Soul II Soul and Neneh Cherry and all these beautiful new sounding urban dance acts were coming through,” he explains. “Our time was done.” Yet a TV producer in Hamburg wanted Cutting Crew for big show and booked them for the gig. The fact that they weren’t top billing didn’t bother them, but performing after three women with pink-dyed hair and matching pink poodles did. 

“We just finished playing a song and I looked over to Kevin, and he looked at me, and that was the moment we knew,” Van Eede says. “We just gave each other a hug, and it was like, ‘OK, things have moved on now.’ It's the moment where you realize it doesn't mean that things in the future will not get better. It just means that at that moment, you are supporting pink poodles!” Although Van Eede misses the late MacMichael profoundly, he has come to enjoy seeing how others have enjoyed the music they’ve made together, including their biggest hit, “(I Just) Died In Your Arms,” which continues to get radio play along with featured moments in Super Bowl ads and films like The Lego Batman Movie.

“This song defines me,” Van Eede says. “I mean, there are many bands that have had 10 hits, so many bands that have had 20 hits. We've had two, three, four hits. But this song is so big that it eclipses everything that I have ever done. And so it's become my lover, my — and I don't mean this inappropriately —my bank manager. But it’s my passport to many more things.

Like tapping into pop culture and crossing generational lines. “It doesn’t surprise me because a good song is a good song and a great song is a great song,” he says, “and apparently this is a great song.” As for his favorite use of “(I Just) Died In Your Arms”, the premiere of season three of Netflix series Stranger Things takes it. “That,” he says with glee, “was the coolest!”

Now he’s hoping that, when he and Cutting Crew are able to hit the road once more, they can fill concert halls with fans of both their original and orchestral compositions. “I know what we’re doing is not new,” Van Eede says. “I am absolutely aware that when I was a little boy, I watched The Moody Blues and Deep Purple playing with orchestras. Hundreds of bands have done it before. But if you can do it well, and if you have great strings, and if you can still sing, and if you still got a great guitarist, and you still got people that care, this really can happen.”

Cutting Crew’s latest album is out now.

Cutting Crew in 1989 with the release of second album The Scattering. From left: guitarist Kevin MacMichael, bassist Colin Farley, vocalist Nick Van Eede, and drummer Martin “Frosty” Beedle. Photo courtesy of XO Kaytea.