The Motors – Airport
Airport was a hit single by The Motors, reaching no. 4 in the UK charts in May 1978. It was also my intro to the band, and the lead track form the band’s second album Approved By. That LP was the first record I ever bought, aged 8 or 9 ish, and I still love it.
Airport that track is a keyboard lead emotional rock/pop song, finely crafted, catchy, memorable.
The band centred around Andy McMaster (bass, keyboards) and Nick Garvey (guitar, bass), who had met in pub rock band Ducks Deluxe. Garvey had played bass on the Ducks’ debut (1974), originally switching from guitar to bass as “It had less strings”, and can be seen on the front cover wearing sunglasses to hide the effects of an altercation ad a motorway service station. McMaster joined for the band’s second album Taxi To The Terminal Zone (1975).
The pair both left Ducks Deluxe, with Garvey forming The Snakes (featuring Robert Gotobed, later of Wire), releasing one single, while McMaster spent time song writing.
In late 1976 Garvey and McMaster started working together again, forming The Motors, featuring drummer Ricky Slaughter and guitarist Rob Hendry. The line-up was much more pub rock / rock’n’roll, with McMaster learning the bass because he wanted to be able to move around the stage. Nick Garvey once told me “I’d made some demos on my own, but said to [manager] Richard Ogden that it would work better if Andy was involved and off we went. We made some demos at Pathway with a Welsh drummer we borrowed from Sean [Tyler] whose name was, I think, Phil Nedin. I do remember him being surprised at how fast we wanted him to play”.
After recording a Peel Session, Hendry was replaced by Bram Tchaikovsky and the band recorded their debut album ‘1’. Dancing The Night Away was the opening track and a wonderful single too. Producer Robert Mutt Lange got the best out of the band.
1978 and the band’s second album saw a change of direction, the rock and keyboard led pop blend. Nick Garvey told me “The second album is like that because we hadn’t written enough new songs in the previous style. And it can get boring being the same all the time”, while Andy added “There was no deliberate change for the second album. It was just what came up. We knew the danger of releasing Airport and isolating the fans who bought the first album. But the Motors were never about appeasing”. Andy sung the tracks he’d demoed earlier, playing keyboards and Nick playing bass, while other tracks saw Nick singing and playing guitar with Andy on bass.
And that was Airport, a track performed on Top Of The Pops and many other music shows at the time, and the track still gets airplay on radio and TV.
There were 4 singles total from the album, including Forget About You. The band became a 2 piece at the end of the year, with Slaughter leaving, and Tchaikovsky going solo, and one more album appeared with Martin Ace and Terry Williams taking the bass and drum roles for a 1980 swansong before the band split.
The track Airport was inspired while Andy was living near Heathrow Airport, underneath the flight path. It’s just a perfectly crafted pop song you can’t not enjoy it. And it’s still a favourite.
Airport is amongst the band’s complete works reissued as part of The Motors – The Virgin Years 4CD box.
Joe Geesin | Now Spinning Magazine
