Martha Davis of The Motels talks with Spearsy about the band’s history, her love of songwriting, and the upcoming Abducted By The ’80s Tour, which includes Naked Eyes, Men Without Hats, and Wang Chung. Spearsy and Martha share tales of writing, soundtrack hits, and her performance of “We Never Danced” from the movie “Made in Heaven.” Plus, full seggies with guest co-host Chuck Coverly. (Warning: Some profanity.)
Stuck in the ’80s creator and co-host Steve Spears talked with Martha Davis via Zoom. Here are some of the highlights. Listen to the full interview above.
Steve: We met a few years ago on The 80s Cruise and we had an amazing morning doing trivia and you dazzled us with your story, so I knew I had to have you on the podcast so that everyone could meet you again.
Martha Davis: You’re so sweet. Yeah, that was a wild time, wasn’t it? We were rocking and I mean rocking on that ship because it was very, very, very rough seas when we were out there. [chuckle] I think we were seasick, weren’t we?
Oh, yeah. I know I was for the first two days. I remember I was wearing a Motels t-shirt and Marty (Jourard) noticed it and said, “Hey, I’m one of the blurry ones right there.”
Yeah, that was crazy. And then we got off the ship straight into the arms of a pandemic. We were so lucky that we didn’t get locked on that ship. That was very lucky.
It would’ve been a great lineup to get locked on a ship with, but it all turned out for the best. Speaking of performances, Wang Chung, Man Without Hats, The Motels, Naked Eyes are all on a amazing tour that starts in a few weeks called Abducted by the 80s. Great name for a tour, by the way. That’s a great lineup. Have you toured with any of them before?
Naked Eyes and Wang Chung, we have been out together and we have a very good time. So, I’m very much looking forward to that. I have not worked with Men Without Hats yet, but I bet you that’s gonna be fun too.
I know you’re also playing Cruel Fest this weekend. It’s an incredible lineup. There’s Jesus and Mary Chain and Gary Newman, Heaven 17, Simple Minds, are you gonna be able to stick around and see any of the other bands perform?
I am not sure that I am actually. I’m gonna to be going straight back to work on our new album which is coming. We’re just finishing up some stuff and actually, the mixing has started. So, the album, which is called “Escape from Planet Earth,” should be out this year.
I’m excited to hear about this new album. Are you gonna have a chance to work any of the new tunes into the Abducted by the 80s tour?
I don’t think we’ll be doing it then. It’s a concept album and it is literally like a sci-fi musical, and I’ve written a story that goes with it, and so it’s a big old thing. It’s coming out beautifully. We all are very proud of it. Everybody’s worked so hard. Clint (Walsh) and Nic (Johns), especially Clint has done all these amazing background harmonies, and Nic does this amazing synthesizer work.
You’ve been writing songs for so long, I think a lot of people are surprised when they read more about The Motels that the roots of the band go back to the early ’70s. What was the sound like back then?
Well, the band that existed then which was originally The Warfield Foxes and we were in the Bay Area. If you listen back to that old stuff, it was like punk funk or something. The Bay Area had Sly and the Family Stone and all that stuff, so we were heavily influenced by that, even though we were very white children. But, it was that and yet there was a lot of punk.
How did the punk music sort of influence the direction of your writing and your music?
I was taken by it because my personality is such that I’m very unconfrontational and very shy. So, to have any outward-like anger and stuff like that was just not in my nature. But, if you write a punk rock song, you can definitely get all of that out, and the funniest thing was that “Total Control” of the first album … I wrote it as a punk song. So, you can see that that took a little turn.
The Motels that I knew the best, I’m thinking back to like 1982 and you’ve got some of the bigger hits; “Only the Lonely,” “Take the L,” “Suddenly Last Summer,” it’s definitely not a punk feel to them, it’s definitely more of a New Wave flavor. But, there’s an obvious sense of melancholy in the lyrics, of inherent sadness and a lot of them regret or a remorseful sense of nostalgia even. I think of songs like “Remember the Nights” or “Shame” or “Don’t Tell Me the Time” and stuff like that. Did you find the writing process to be cathartic to you?
Yeah. I think most of us that write are very happy to have a psychoanalyst that we don’t have to pay because it’s kind of what you do. You’re kind of taking all of your pent-up emotions and laying them out and it’s almost like having that discussion with a therapist. You’re putting it out there, now you’re looking back at it. I don’t necessarily ever know what I’m writing.
When I’m writing, I’m a very stream of conscious sort of writer. I just spew and edit as what I call it, the process. And nowadays, I don’t even edit that much. I’m just so used to spewing, but it really is a purging of a lot of emotions.
I’ve always been curious about this and I think maybe different musicians have different answers to the question, but when you’ve been around for decades and you have certain songs that have a deeper meaning to you about the time you wrote it or the subject you wrote about it and they were big hits, so you’re sort of obligated to play them every time you perform, does your relationship with that song, does the performance of it evolve over time? Does it mean something separate to you? Are you having different feelings as you perform them today?
Yeah, I think they do change. I mean, there’s some songs that I’m not as comfortable playing just because of their origin story. “Shame” is one of them. But it’s like the 40th anniversary of the “Shock” album, so old “Shame” got wheeled out lately and it’s okay. It’s good for me to reconnect with those things and those emotions and a lot of times you’re still sorting stuff out. You don’t just like go through it and go “Oh, I have that figured out.” It takes a long time to actually ingest and figure out what impacts situations have on you in long term, short term. Some are traumatic, but a lot of the life changing thing is a process that takes years.
“Suddenly Last Summer” is a classic example of a song that what was years in the making. I remember very vividly sitting in my backyard in Berkeley, California. It had to be the early ’70s and it was sunny, I was in the backyard and just sitting in the grass and all of a sudden this really cold wind sort of picked up, like you knew it was the end of summer and you could feel this cold wind and you knew that summer was almost over, like winter was coming. It was that first autumn-like snap and I heard the ice cream truck and I knew the ice cream truck would not be back that year, that was it was over for that summer.
That feeling I had was a melancholy sense of loss. It wasn’t about the ice cream truck, it was about a whole other part of me that I had felt that I had lost over a summer. And that probably went back to when I was a very young girl and lost my virginity or something. I mean, who knows. That’s what I mean. The process is fascinating and we’re always growing, we’re always changing. And if you’re lucky enough to be able to somehow have this vehicle like I do to pay attention to it and sort of notate it, I always think of my songs as like a diary. I don’t journal, but I do.
Thank you so much for saying that because to be honest, I’m trying to write a book myself about the 20 years that I’ve been doing this podcast and I find that when I write, I have to be in a bit of a melancholy mood. I have to be a little bit more…
Introspective.
Yep. That’s it. I can’t come in and sit down at the computer when I’m feeling jubilant.
Yeah, you and me agree on that one. I mean, maybe there’s people that do, but when it’s sunny and you’re in love and you just are eating ice cream, you’re not writing a song, you’re [laughter].. It’s like, you’re not. You’re there in the bliss of it and it’s when the clouds roll over and you have a glass of wine and you’re sitting there and just like pondering and all of a sudden, that’s when that stuff tends to percolate for me, anyway.
… You’ve had a podcast 20 years?
This’ll be the 20th year coming up.
Is that the first podcast ever?
It’s pretty damn close to it. There might have been a couple out there.
Wow. Congratulations. That’s awesome.
Thank you.
Because now there’s 10 trillion billion of them.
Yeah. I know. When you say now, “Hey, I have a podcast,” everyone’s like, “Well, doesn’t everybody.” But I’ve done 703 episodes, and they’re like, “Oh, okay.” We talked about this next topic on the cruise and I loved our conversation about it, the song “We Never Danced,” which was written by Neil Young, But you perform it for the 1987 movie “Made in Heaven,” which by the way I have on DVD and I’m still trying to talk my wife into watching it, but she knows it’s gonna make me cry and so she won’t watch it.
Such a good movie. Oh, my god.
You worked with Giorgio Moroder on that, just I’d love to hear that story again.
We worked at Giorgio’s studio. Oh, my god, this is so long ago. Giorgio is hilarious, God bless him. Look at that guy, he’s now a DJ … It’s just insane. And you’d pull up and there’d be his like Testarossa outside and we had Richie Zito was actually producing it. I think it was Richie’s idea to get a choir of kids and these amazing kids, these young African American kids showed up and they were like maybe six, eight, maybe 10 tops. There was a bunch of them and it was hilarious. They just got a bunch of pizza and these kids are just like having the time of their life and like staring at the Testarossa going, “Oh my god.” It was so much fun. But then, they sing and they… God, it was so beautiful. It is such a gorgeous sound when you hear children singing and especially when they’re happy and full of pizza. Yeah, that’s a beautiful song, absolutely beautiful song and a great movie. I’ve been lucky that way.
You worked with some other people on some great soundtrack tunes. I always think of “We Never Danced” as the one that is like the one that I carry the highest banner for. But I remember the movie, what was it? “Soul Man?” Wasn’t there…
“Soul Man,” “Love and Affection!”
Yeah, with Sly Stone.
It was Sly Stone who I idolized growing up in the Bay Area and stuff and just like still just to this day, just such a genius. … We didn’t sing together.
That was my next question.
I wanted to meet him so badly and they said, “Martha, it’s not a good idea.” And I’m like, I can take it. I don’t care what he throws at me but he was already pretty deep into the abyss, so it didn’t happen but I’m singing with him, so there you go.
It’s a movie that people don’t talk about anymore.
Well, it’s probably not very politically correct about.
I don’t know that it was then either.
No way. No, it was like so wrong.
It’s the ’80s.
It’s 100% wrong. But incrementally, we are advancing. I think we take some steps forward, take some slides back but I think bit by bit, we’re probably not… The Crusades aren’t going on necessarily in the same way and we’re not eviscerating each other the same way and stuff. I think we’re getting better as human species, I’m not sure. I got my fingers crossed.
Well, I can’t wait to see you again on the Abducted by the 80s tour. I know it ends where I live in Florida, so we can’t wait for it to make its way down here.
Are you gonna come to the show?
Hopefully the one in Clearwater because you’re not performing in Orlando where I’m at, so I’m gonna have to drive two hours to Clearwater.
Oh, my heavens. Well, if you do that, I’ll give you a big hug. How’s that?
That’s worth it.
About The 80s Cruise
The 2025 lineup of The 80s Cruise is now available and includes Adam Ant, Squeeze, Christopher Cross, Men at Work and Andy Bell of Erasure. Listen to this week’s show for a special promo code that will give first-time cruisers $200 in cabin credit. For more information, go to www.the80scruise.com.
Our podcast is listener-supported via Patreon. Members get special swag and invitations to patron-only Zoom happy hours with the hosts of the podcast. Find out more at our official Patreon page.
The Stuck in the ’80s podcast is hosted by creator Steve Spears and Brad Williams. Find out more about the show, celebrating its 19th year in 2024, at sit80s.com.