Between 1978 and 1988 Deaf School had a ten-year half-life, as if cryogenically frozen. Its scattered members made new lives for themselves, with impressive success. Financially, if not emotionally, none of them needed Deaf School any more. Yet the dream never quite died. From carefree art school chancers they had become the Next Big Thing of a multinational corporation, until an abrupt divorce brought the whole adventure to an end. A sense of unfinished business has always lingered in these people.

Clive Langer moved back to London in 1978, feeling he had no further role in Liverpool if Deaf School weren't around. He shared a flat in Camden Town with Mel Haberfield, a co-founder of the Swanky Modes fashion shop downstairs, and they eventually married. Anne Martin, a fan of Swanky Modes designs, took another room in the same flat. In time, they were joined by a new resident, Suggs from Madness, who would duly marry Anne. A London network was replacing Liverpool.

Clive's priority, that year, was to get himself a band. He auditioned for Chrissie Hynde's new group the Pretenders, but the job would ultimately go to the gifted young player James Honeyman-Scott. (One might say this was a fortunate escape for Clive, as the Pretenders did seem cursed: in 1982 Honeyman-Scott died of a cocaine-related heart failure, while the bassist Pete Farndon, fired just two days before, died the next year of a heroin-related drowning. Ironically he was in the process of forming a group with Steve/Enrico.) This left Clive free to pursue his own dream of starting a band called Clive Langer & the Boxes. This was an ambition fulfilled, but also an effort to exorcise his previous band. ‘Deaf School were who they were,’ he says now, ‘and I wanted to morph into something different. I was really excited by that.’ He was rapidly signed to a new label, backed by Warners, called Radar. And the first EP set out his stall: ‘I Want the Whole World. And I wanted it now. It's going back to the Doors, it's aggressive.