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ONE HIT WONDERS OF THE 80'S RARE AUSSIE CASSETTE TAPE! BLACK LACE LIMAHL BUREAU US $16.87 End Date: Saturday May-19-2012 3:30:48 PDT Add to watch list |
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KAJAGOOGOO WHITE FEATHERS LIMAHL 1983 EXYUGOSLAV LP US $25.49 (0 Bid) End Date: Saturday May-19-2012 3:50:25 PDT Add to watch list |
Christopher Hamill (born December 19, 1958) is a British pop singer. He is better known by his stage name Limahl (an anagram of his surname), and was the lead singer of the 1980s pop band Kajagoogoo before embarking on a briefly successful solo career.
Hamill was born in Pemberton, in Wigan, United Kingdom. He attended Mesnes High School, in Wigan, before eventually enrolling at the Westcliff-on-Sea Palace Theatre Repertory Company. Despite some success touring with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, he formed a short-lived punk band called Vox Deus. Next he joined Crossword but left to form Brooks with Mike Nolan. He adopted his stage name at the time he was recruited by the existing members of Kajagoogoo.
Professional career with Kajagoogoo
An advert was placed in music magazine Melody Maker asking for a “front man who could sing and look good.” Soon after he had joined, the group released their first single “Too Shy” which went to number one in the UK charts and the top five on the US Billboard Hot 100. This success was relatively short-lived, however, leading to the notorious Viz comic satirising him as “Limahl, whose hit includes ‘Too Shy.’ ”
Limahl’s relationship with the other band members was reportedly always tenuous, and in mid-1983 the band fired him after an acrimonious dispute. Defenders of Limahl claim that the band struggled with fame and Limahl’s prominence as the lead singer of the band was proving too much of a diversion from the music. Limahl accused the others of being jealous and was quoted in the press as saying “I’ve been betrayed!” and that “I was sacked for making them a success”. Defenders of the band, however, stated that Limahl had become something of an egomaniac following the band’s success and was both unprofessional and difficult to work with. Neither view has ever been conclusively proven.
After Kajagoogoo
After leaving the band, Limahl launched a solo career, achieving hits with “Only For Love” and “NeverEnding Story”, the title theme from the film of the same name. His solo success was brief though and his début album Don’t Suppose… was a commercial failure, charting even lower than Kajagoogoo’s follow-up album (Islands) - their first without him. He hit hard times after 1984, and in the late 1980s, he was photographed coming out of a job centre. The pictures were published in a Sunday newspaper, highlighting a story of how the once mighty can fall.
He still released two more albums to little fanfare; 1986’s Colour All My Days and Love is Blind in 1992, as well as a one-off single, “Tell Me Why” in 2006.
When the boom for ’80s nostalgia began, Limahl began to wear an orange wig identical to his original Kajagoogoo hairstyle and started playing gigs, performing the hits he had with the band and by himself.
In 2004, Limahl took part as a contender in musical reality show Comeback on German TV (Pro7). A year later, he appeared in a similar UK show Hit Me Baby One More Time (ITV). Ironically, the episode of Hit Me Baby One More Time in which Limahl appeared also featured Howard Jones who had enlisted the services of Kajagoogoo bass player Nick Beggs to support him during his performance.
Personal life
Limahl shared a flat with disc jockey Paul Gambaccini during his heyday, leading to rumours in the tabloid press that the two were lovers, a claim which both denied.
