ABC

Hailed by the British music press as "purveyors of perfect pop," ABC was actually a highly self-conscious white neosoul group that articulated singer Martin Fry's grandiloquent vision. His mannered vocals recall "Thin White Duke"-era David Bowie, and his songs of romance revisit the worldly fatalism of Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry.

Fry was writing and editing his own music fanzine, Modern Drugs, when he interviewed White and Singleton about their electric rock band, Vice Versa. They asked Fry to join them, and he did - changing the group's name to ABC and its direction toward pop. Completed by a rhythm section, the group recorded “Tears Are Not Enough” and released it on their own Neutron Records. A British Top 20 hit in 1981, it was followed over the next six months by three more crafty, melodramatic Top 10 hits - “Poison Arrow,” “The Look of Love,” and “All of My Heart” - from the lavish Trevor Horn–produced Lexicon of Love. Released stateside, the album garnered rave reviews and sold well (#24, 1982); bolstered by lush, evocative videos, “The Look of Love” (#18, 1982) and “Poison Arrow” (#25, 1983) were hit singles, too.

ABC lost most of its U.S. fans with Beauty Stab (#69, 1983), a harsher, harder-rocking, guitar-based collection that contained only one charting single: “That Was Then but This Is Now” (#89, 1984). With female percussionist Eden and American keyboardist David Yarritu replacing David Palmer and Stephen Singleton, ABC adopted a cartoonish image and rebounded with Zillionaire (#30, 1985), which yielded the yearning pop ballad “Be Near Me” (#9, 1985) and another hit in “(How to Be a) Millionaire” (#20, 1986).

Shortly thereafter, Fry was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. ABC was off the scene until Alphabet City (#48, 1987), which featured the group’s biggest hit to date, the Motown tribute “When Smokey Sings” (#5, 1987). Fry dropped out of the music business after the release of Up. He made a full recovery from his illness and, by 1997, was back onstage. A new edition of ABC, with Fry the sole remaining original member, recorded two British releases - Skyscraping and the live album Lexicon of Live - and toured the U.S. in 1999.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)