Turns out: Politics.
"If you're going to be a liar, you'd better be a damn good liar and remember what you said, or the whole thing's going to get pear-shaped," said the song's lyricist and group's lead singer, Cy Curnin, for SongFacts in 2011. "That was 30 years ago, and look where the system is now. A lot of people stand on ballot boxes and say a lot of things and lie in order to get elected and do nothing. So those songs I'm pretty proud of."
Turns out that a number of tunes Curnin wrote with the band had political motivation to it, like "Stand Or Fall" and "Red Skies."
"I was feeling that sense of impotence back then in the early '80s or late '70s when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were getting in bed together, metaphorically speaking, and designing a whole defense system that involved Europeans' lives without asking us -- it was never on any electorate ballot that I can remember," Curnin said in the same interview. "That struck a chord."
Curnin and the band hit the American shores at the perfect time in 1983. With MTV growing as an entity and with American tastes changing from the stars of the 1960s and '70s to a younger generation wanting their "own" music in the form of hard rock and New Wave acts, The Fixx was a group waiting to explode. Curnin and drummer Jamie Woods formed the group in 1979 as The Portraits in their native London, then placed an ad in local periodicals to help fill out the band.
That ad was answered by keyboardist Rupert Greenall, guitarist Tony McGrail and bass guitarist Russell Mckenzie. Mckenzie would ultimately leave and replaced by Charlie Barrett. The band recorded a pair of songs for Ariola Records as Portrait -- "Little Women" in 1979 and "Hazards In The Home" in 1980.
McGrail would leave the band in 1980 and would be replaced by Jamie West-Oram. At that point, the group decided on a name change and went by The Fix. In 1981, recording for 101 Records, they recorded the song "Lost Planes," and that song and others began getting airplay on BBC Radio.
It was from there that the band was contacted by MCA Records. The band signed, but there was an issue -- the label wanted to add an extra 'x' to the name so that people didn't get the name The Fix mixed up with that of what a drug-user has when he needs a hit of what keeps him going as a drug-user. The band went for it and they were The Fixx with two x's.
In 1982, the band recorded its first album for MCA in London called "Shuttered Room," which featured the aforementioned tracks "Stand Or Fall" and "Red Skies." That got them the attention from MTV and music critics liked the album. Though the band was becoming a success in its native land, there was still some resistance to the guys in the U.S. They had a cult following among those who were big on the New Wave music scene, but not everyone was on board.
While The Fixx began to take off as an act, Barrett left and it was now just a quartet -- Curnin, Woods, Greenall and West-Oram. But just before they went into the studio to record their next album, "Reach The Beach" in late 1982, they brought in a new guy for the position, Alfie Agius.
The quintet went right to work on the songs that would lead off the album as the first two singles from the new album, "Saved By Zero" and "One Thing Leads To Another." But after a short time, Agius left the band. The rest of the guys worked on the album without a bass needed on the next seven tracks. Then they brought in Dan K. Brown to play bass on one more track, "The Sign Of Fire," the third single release from "Reach The Beach." Brown would ultimately be the permanent bass player of the band.
The band and producer Rupert Hine were convinced that this time, the band would break through in the United States. The album "Reach The Beach" would get its release on both sides of the Atlantic on May 16, 1983.
This time, The Fixx had reached the U.S. audience masses thanks to the first single, "Saved By Zero," which would peak at No. 20 in August 1983 and would be one of the memorable sounds of the Summer of '83. Now was the time to spring "One Thing Leads To Another" on the American public that hadn't bought "Reach The Beach."
As the summer began to fade away, "One Thing Leads To Another" debuted on the Hot 100 at No. 65 on August 27, 1983. It leaped to No. 45 the next week, then into the Top 40 the following week at No. 38.
On September 17, 1983, "One Thing Leads To Another" was the biggest mover within the Top 40 by leaping nine places to No. 29. While the song was getting heavy airplay on radio, it, too, was getting heavy airplay on MTV via the music video that featured the well-dressed Curnin (he also wears a Flashdance-like, sleeveless shirt as well) in a dark tunnel that changes colors throughout while he sorta "dances," exposing his chest in the video.
Suddenly, The Fixx were being looked at as a new British star band as Culture Club, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. After another big jump from No. 29 to No. 21, it moved to No. 17 the week of October 1, 1983, passing up the No. 20 peak of "Saved By Zero."
Then one week later, "One Thing Leads To Another" made a huge leap from No. 17 to No. 9. After a jump to No. 6 the week after that, it held at No. 6. Then it moved to No. 5, and finally peaked at No. 4 on November 5, 1983, before falling back to No. 6 the next week.
While the hit was peaking in the Top 5 in this country, the country that first gave them notice outside of England, Canada, saw the song shoot up to No. 1.
"The Sign Of Fire" would be the third hit from "Reach The Beach" and it would peak at No. 32. The band would have three more Top 40 hits -- "Are We Ourselves?" got to No. 15 in 1984, "Secret Separation" peaked at No. 19 in 1986 and "How Much Is Enough" stopped at No. 35 in 1991.
In July 2012, The Fixx released their 10th CD/album, "Beautiful Friction," produced by Nick Jackson for Kirtland Records in the U.S. In the summer of 2016, The Fixx -- still the same quintet of Curnin, Woods, West-Oram, Greenall and Brown -- went on tour in the United States, playing mostly out west, up north and in the New England states, finishing the tour with a free show at the Madison Beach Hotel in Madison, Conn., on August 31.
Curnin is proud of the work he and his band have done these last 35 years. In that same 2011 interview with SongFacts, he looked back on that changing period in 1983.
"That period of music was a very original period of music," Curnin said. "There were so many different forms coming out that really today we would have different musical divisions. I think, globally, we as musicians don't see ourselves as separate or we don't compete with each other. The nature of competition was very much born in the whole excess of the '80s and striving for as much cash as possible. And competition was good. I don't think most musicians think that way.
"And no, I don't like the name ''80s' as a musical term. It just denotes a time period. There's no way of really describing what '80s music was. It actually was such a mixture. If you look at the radio formats, they were so fragmented; it was a lot of different things. It was big hair bands, it was R.E.M., it was The Police, it was Psychedelic Furs, it was The Fixx, it was INXS, it was Human League, it was Men Without Hats, it was Flock of Seagulls, a lot of little different deviations. You can't call it the blues or rock or funk or R&B, so they had to call it a timeframe."
A timeframe to try anything -- even politically speaking.
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