Neil O’Connor
I was born and raised in Coventry, U.K. and my musical career took off with the “Punk/New wave” movement of the late 1970’s when our band “The Flys” ( not to be confused with the 1990’s surfer band of the same name from California ) released our independent EP “Bunch of fives” on our own Zama label in late 1977. This release coupled with extensive touring opening for “The Buzzcocks” brought us to the attention of E.M.I. who signed the band in early 1978.
“The Flys” enjoyed a cult status with E.M.I. releasing 3 albums, “Waikiki Beach Refugees”, “Flys Own” and “The Flys” ( this last one only available in Canada on the “Harvest” label ) and 7 singles over a period of nearly 3 years. The album “Flys Own” marked the first time that I also took on the responsibility of Producer.
Finally internal band conflicts broke up the band and I was invited to join my sister “Hazel O’Connor” who was about to break into the musical scene in a big way with her movie and self penned album “Breaking Glass”, a huge hit in the U.K. and Europe in the early 1980’s. My second production opportunity occurred during this time when producer “Toni Visconti” was not available to immediately start the third album and the record company needed a new single. The result was a song called “D. days” which achieved top five status, sold over 250,000 examples and earned a silver disc. Toni Visconti went on to make the rest of the album and the experience of being able to work with such a world class producer helped a burgeoning new direction.
Hazel broke up the band in 1983 though I continued to work with her as musical director culminating in co-producing, with “Martin Rushent” at his “Genetic studios” , her fourth Album “Smile” for R.C.A. in 1984.
After the completion of Hazel’s album Martin invited me to stay on at Genetic studios to learn engineering skills, to program the sophisticated synthesizers, of that time ( Fairlight, Synclavier) and to co-produce with him.
I stayed at Genetic for the next 4 years and during this period some of the artists who passed through the studio doors were “The Human League”, “The Stranglers”, “The Cure” and “Steve Winwood”.
In 1989 the Canadian band “The Box” came to Genetic to record their album “The Pleasure and the Pain” with Martin Rushent and I was introduced to “Marc Durand” the band’s manager and executive producer who had an album recorded by Montreal francophones “Les Parfait Salaud” that needed to be mixed. I was offered this job mixing their album at Genetic and thus a relationship with Canada and particularly Montreal was begun.
One year later I was invited to Montreal to work with the all girl band “Gingersnaps”. Six months later I was back to work with “Too Many Cooks” for their album “Food fight” which also took me to “Compass Point Studios” in Nassau. Six months after that I was back again to record some songs for an upcoming new album for “The Box” ( unfortunately the band broke up before a whole album could be realised ). Six months later I was again invited back to Montreal to work with “Pierre Belmare” and “Dédé Traké”.
During this period I continued to work in the U.K. and achieved a notable success with “The Human League” and their song called “Heart like a wheel”.
As a “by the way”, while visiting Montreal I met and eventually married my wife, Kristeen, and so became a new Montrealer continuing to live in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal.
Since being full time in Montreal I've worked with and produced such bands and artists as “Tango Tango”, a second album with “Too Many Cooks”, “Tribes of March”, “Daniel Weaver”, “Gaston Mandeville”, “The Whereabouts”, “Pop Mécanic” ,“Papillon” and "Nico Lelievre".
I continue to write and occasionally perform with some of my artists and in my own right.
As a couple of bylines;
in 1990 the German band “Die Toten Hosen” recorded and included on their album “Learning English” a song originally recorded by “The Flys” called “Love and a Molotov cocktail”.
Also in 2001 Duane Peters and the Hunns covered “Love and a Molotov Cocktail” on the album “Old Skars and Upstarts 2001”.
In the October 2001 issue of the U.K. music magazine “Mojo” included “The Flys” in their top 100 most influential bands of the Punk/New wave epoch.
In late 2001 the U.K. re-release label “Captain Oi” have released the first 2 “Flys” albums.
Some web sites with extra information;
http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/flys.htm
http://www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/artist/artist.cgi?ARTISTID=783675
http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=flys
http://punkmodpop.free.fr/flys_pic.htm
http://music.msn.com/album/?album=10462039
bravenet.com