Once upon a time there was a rock and roll band from Liverpool, England, that had really cool hair and a fresh, electrifying signature sound.

And that band was known as — A Flock of Seagulls.

Led by a talented young singer/songwriter named Mike Score, A Flock of Seagulls dropkicked new wave music into the 1980s with songs including “Space Age Love Song,” “I ran (So Far Away),” and “Telecommunication.”

Before that, Score made his living as a hairdresser, which helped him create an iconic hairdo for himself — spikey on the sides while coming to a long point over the bridge of his nose and down to his chin. Anyone who watched the early days of MTV would remember it.

Some four decades later, the hair is completely gone and Score insists his new look is harder to maintain because it takes longer to shave his head than it did to tease his hair back in the day. But while the hair is gone the music, vibrant as ever, remains.

A Flock of Seagulls is on a tour that brings them to Jergel’s Rhythm Grille on Wednesday. This week Mike Score spoke with the Trib in a video chat from Philadelphia.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Question: How did you go from being a hairdresser to a musician and recording artist?

Answer: I’ve always been interested in music even when I used to do my paper route when I was about (age) 12. I used to have a little transistor radio on my bike blasting out the top 40 and stuff. So, I’d be riding around, singing along, delivering papers. The interest in music was always there. So, when I got into hairdressing, people from bands would come in and want hair colors and stuff like that. I got talking to them and started to go see them play live. I’d look up on stage and go ‘I could do that.’ I got with my brother (Ali Score) and he said ‘oh, I’d like to be a drummer.’ I got with a couple of friends (including Paul Reynold on guitar and Frank Maudsley on bass) and we started jamming. It took me about a year to learn how to tune a guitar. I actually used to like the sound of it out of tune because I could write songs that were different. Once we got into that a little bit, it became more about writing songs of our own than trying to sound like other bands. Even in our first few months together, we were developing our own look and our own sound.

Q: The sound was mind blowing. We had never heard anything like it in the early 80s. U-2 was kind of…

A: Well, if you read (U-2 guitarist) the Edge’s book, he actually says he got his sound from listening to us. He says once he listened to what we were doing he picked it up and enhanced it into U-2 stuff. So, thank you U-2 for stealing our stuff (laughs).

Q: I can remember people really enjoying (A Flock of Seagulls) because it was new and it was different and it was probably like the way people felt in the early 60s when they first heard the Beatles. Of course you are from Liverpool and the Beatles are from Liverpool so I’m wondering how much they might have influenced you?

A: I think it was a total influence because coming from Liverpool and having the Beatles being the biggest band in the world and the best band in the world. You really felt like you had to do something good. You had to be up there trying to reach that kind of level. And because they wrote such different songs all the time, I think that also put in me as a writer that you can write about anything. I used to wake up in the morning and say ‘today I’m going to write a song’ and I didn’t know what would come out.

Q: In 2018, the four original Flock of Seagulls band members did a recording (of some of their hit songs) with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. It was the first studio recording with you four since 1984. How did that come about?

A: To me, (recording with an orchestra) was one of the furthest things from my mind. They said ‘can we use the other guys too?’ And I said ‘We were all there, the four of us, when those songs were written so now that it’s coming full circle and going in a different direction, I’m like ‘yeah, let’s all get back together.’ It was kind of strange but because of technology now you can be together but not together, you know. So, we were all actually in different studios and we all played our parts. We had an orchestral arrangement set up for us so we knew what was going to be going on with the orchestra. We never actually got to record with the orchestra. It’s a different direction and a different feel. You’ve got the original sounding feel from the 80s, kind of, but now it’s got this smoothness from an orchestra. In a way it’s exciting and it’s kind of puzzling. They took our lines and embellished them and enhanced them and I think it turned out great.

Q: Are these the four guys that are coming to Pittsburgh?

A: No. I wanted to move to America and carry on and the other guys wanted to basically go back to Liverpool and do whatever they wanted to do. I started A Flock of Seagulls. I’m taking it where I think it should go. I was in Key West (Florida) and did a bit of boat building and was completely happy to be out of music for a while. But because I’ve got the music bug, I got back into it with a whole new band. It’s still a four piece and the guys play the songs more or less as they’re written, with a little bit of their own style in there. And to me, I’m just as happy as I was with the original band.

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