Kim Wilde’s first records were written and produced by her father and brother, Marty and Ricky. The three of them have had a great influence on the music world, as this regular series ‘Wilde World’ shows.
In the early eighties, vocalist John Adams and guitarist Morris Michael formed Private Lives, a band that foreshadowed ‘sophistipop’ bands like Johnny hates Jazz and Living in a box, but are only remembered by those who were touched by their near-hits ‘Living in a world (turned upside down)’ and ‘From a river to a sea’. Those who have heard these songs are sure to remember the band and the promise that oozed from those tracks.
In 1984, they released their only LP, ‘Prejudice and pride’, on EMI Records.The credits of that album read like a ‘who’s who’ of the pop world at that moment in time, with Gary Twigg and Nick Beggs on bass, Andy Duncan on drums, and best of all: Kiki Dee and Ricky Wilde providing backing vocals. The album didn’t make the albums chart, and eventually the group split up. Because of its obscurity, Prejudice & Pride became a sought-after collector’s item among hardcore new wave devotees in the late ‘90s; it even reappeared on bootleg CDs. The album deserves a release on CD, but so far that hasn’t happened. American readers are lucky: they can download all the tracks from the US incarnation of iTunes.