Chris Hamill AKA Limahl, singer, songwriter

I was in a pub in Brixton watching a trio on stage when the compere asked if anyone wanted to get up and sing. My mate nudged me. “Go on, you know you want to.” I sang Yesterday by the Beatles and the six-person audience gave me a standing ovation. All the way home I kept thinking, “I can sing.”

I was trying to put a band together when I saw an advert in Melody Maker from some guys in Leighton Buzzard who were looking for a singer. I had nothing to lose. I got the train up looking like a freak – black and white paint on my face and arty hair. I liked being stared at. Nick [Beggs, bass] met me at the station and drove me to the birthday card factory where they rehearsed. They had a monophonic synthesiser that only played one note at a time but they sounded interesting and I liked the way they looked.

We came up with Too Shy in Nick’s flat. He had the “Too shy, shy, hush hush, eye to eye” chorus, which I thought sounded cute. A businessman friend of mine invested £10,000 in new equipment for us, and having the same gear as Depeche Mode transformed the way we sounded.

One night I was working in the Embassy club in London when I served a drink to Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran. I found myself enthusiastically telling him about our band. He gave me an address to send a cassette to, and a week later called saying: “I’m gonna tell our record company I want to produce you.” When I picked myself up off the floor I phoned the band.

Nick Rhodes produced Too Shy with Duran Duran producer Colin Thurston. The intro where I sing one note was actually me warming my voice up, but Colin said: “Let’s leave it in for now and see how we feel.” After we’d finished recording I met [the DJ] Paul Gambaccini in Heaven nightclub and gave him a tape of it. He liked us and featured us in a Channel 4 programme, The Other Side of the Tracks, alongside Phil Collins, who was probably the biggest artist in the world at that point. Everything just came together. Before I knew it, we were at No 1.

Nick Beggs, bass, songwriter

Before Limahl joined we were called Art Nouveau. We were all big prog heads but in those days liking that kind of music was like having a porn collection – it was something you didn’t talk about. In the New Romantic era we tried to channel influences such as XTC and Devo, but we financed Art Nouveau by playing covers in a working men’s club band, the Handstands. The local punks hated us. At one gig they beat us all up because we had nice drums.

John Peel played our track Fear Machine but it didn’t make any difference to our progress. I said we needed a star and Chris – Limahl – was perfect. We exchanged lyrical ideas for Too Shy in my council flat. I had a verse which was so wordy it was almost rap. Limahl said “That’s way too much”, so he heavily précised it. I came up with a second verse, and he wrote the “Hey girl, move a little closer” bit.

We sent demos to all the bigwigs. [David Bowie producer] Tony Visconti said “I don’t wanna work with this band. I’m a living legend.” The major labels didn’t want to know. The demo that Nick Rhodes took to EMI was the same one they had rejected, but when it was presented again by a million-selling pop star they took notice. In the studio Nick said, “You can’t have a jazz guitar solo in the middle of a pop song.” So Steve [Askew, guitar] came up with something else.

People still talk about the bass run in the intro. Stuart [Croxford Neale, keyboards] had done this beautiful portamento chord that faded in. I just decorated it with jazz notes. The label were nervous about the length, but radio DJs loved the intro because they could talk over it.

The more the music press slagged us, the more copies we sold. Later everything turned from gold to shit for us very quickly, but we were all writers, we all contributed to arrangements and were individuals as players. Just listen to me … It’s not fucking Mozart. It’s Kajagoogoo.

• Limahl’s debut solo album, Don’t Suppose, is reissued on recycled lavender vinyl on 6 September to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Nick Beggs now plays with Steven Wilson and also with his daughters in the Beggs Sisters. Details nickbeggs.co.uk