Andy McCluskey

Andy McCluskey was born on 24 June 1959 in Heswall, Wirral, and grew up in Meols on the northern coast of the Wirral Peninsula in England. McCluskey met Paul Humphreys at Great Meols Primary School, in Elwyn Road, and played with him in several bands, including Hitlerz Underpantz, VCL XI and the Id. McCluskey then attended Calday Grange Grammar School in West Kirby. McCluskey briefly joined Dalek I Love You as their lead singer, but left because he wanted to sing his own songs. McCluskey teamed up with Humphreys again to form OMD in 1978, achieving global success.

McCluskey developed a popular and distinctive onstage dance routine, dubbed by the BBC's Stuart Maconie as the "Trainee Teacher Dance". Rock trio ZZ Top, who shared a studio with OMD on a 1980 edition of BBC2 show The Old Grey Whistle Test, adopted the routine as part of their live set (and also played OMD's self-titled debut album over the PA prior to concerts). Maconie wrote that the "jerky, leg-snapping" dance became "the dance-floor routine of choice" for teaching students in the early-to-mid 1980s. Rolling Stone observed "the infectious manic energy of [OMD] frontman Andy McCluskey, a walking encyclopedia of New Wave dance moves". McCluskey said: "I find that it becomes part of the show. It's got to a point where I am now in a shamanistic shaking ritual. I just get physically involved."

Humphreys and the rest of the band split with McCluskey in 1989, with McCluskey retaining the OMD name: he disbanded the group in 1996. McCluskey single-handedly wrote the OMD hits "Enola Gay", "Joan of Arc" and "Maid of Orleans", and co-wrote the successful singles "Locomotion", "Talking Loud and Clear", "If You Leave", and "Sailing on the Seven Seas".

In 1998, McCluskey founded the UK pop group Atomic Kitten. Their song "Whole Again", co-written by McCluskey, was his first UK No.1, and he and his fellow songwriters were nominated for the Ivor Novello Award for excellence in songwriting. McCluskey was also a writer of the Atomic Kitten hits "Right Now", "See Ya", "I Want Your Love" and "Cradle". He parted ways with the group during the recording of their second album, Feels So Good (2002).

McCluskey and Humphreys reformed OMD for a performance on German TV in June 2005, with the promise of more gigs to follow. 2007 saw the first tour of the reformed OMD, including Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes, commemorating the twenty-sixth anniversary of the release of their seminal album Architecture & Morality. The album itself was remastered and re-released to coincide.

McCluskey later married Toni, with whom he had two children. A prominent reason for OMD's reformation was that his children had never seen him on stage; in 2007 he said: "I was happy to stop working to be with the kids, but strangely enough they have been the most vocal in encouraging me back."

The band released a CD and DVD of their Hammersmith Apollo (London) live gig from the 2007 reunion tour in the spring of 2008 before undertaking a short tour to celebrate thirty years as a band in the autumn of 2008, concluding at London's historic Roundhouse venue on 7 October 2008. A compilation of their singles and videos, Messages: Greatest Hits, was released to coincide with the tour. On 20 September 2010 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released their 11th studio album History of Modern, their first in 14 years.

The couple divorced in 2011 and Toni returned to her native San Diego, California, with the children. Their son, James McCluskey, is a founding member, bass player and backing vocalist of the group MiG 15, named after the fighter jet of the same name.

Celebrity Birthdays: June 24

Here are some of the notable people celebrating birthdays today, including Candice Patton, Georg Stanford Brown, Jeff Beck, Mick Fleetwood, Mindy Kaling, Solange Knowles and more.

Happy Birthday ANDY McCLUSKEY – MESSAGES

24.06.2013: Happy 54th Birthday, Mr. Andy McCluskey of OMD!

12.12.2017 - 24.06.2013: Happy 54th Birthday, Mr. Andy McCluskey of OMD!

Fuck Yeah Andy McCluskey

A Tumblr dedicated to Andy McCluskey, the singer and bass player of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the...

Birthdays for June 24

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