Martin Cooper

**Martin Cooper** (b. 01 October 1958) is a British musician, composer and long-time collaborator and member of OMD. He is also a painter, obtaining a first class honours degree in Fine Arts at the Sheffield College of Art in 1980.

He is married, with two children.

## Early collaboration

As an art student in the late seventies, Cooper had collaborated with OMD founder members Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey playing saxophone in with their earlier group The Id. He later contributed sax for one track, Mystereality, on OMD's debut album, released in 1980. Although he was not part of the band's first headlining tour to promote the album that year, a recording of his sax played on Winston was used for the live version of the track.

When member Dave Hughes left the group after the tour, Cooper was again recruited and started appearing and playing live with OMD from September 1980, and on the promotional tour of their second album *Organisation* which continued well into 1981. He can be seen playing keyboards with the group during performances of hit single Enola Gay on Top of the Pops and in the promo video for the song.

## Departure and reunion

An interview and feature in Smash Hits (issue dtd. 03 Sept. 1981) revealed that **Martin Cooper** was now an 'ex-member', having been replaced by new keyboard player Mike Douglas. The group newsletter of Summer 1981 confirmed this, further stating that he had formed a new group Godot with Dave Hughes and had done live work with Dalek I Love You.[1] This was despite the fact that Cooper had co-written the group's new single Souvenir with Paul Humphreys. However Cooper appeared with the group again on *Top of the Pops* on 03 September, together with new member Michael Douglas, playing sax for a mimed performance of the song. He eventually remained with the band for the *Architecture and Morality* tour, while it was Douglas who left (going on to play live with The Human League and China Crisis).

By now part of a consolidated four-piece with McCluskey, Humphreys, and Holmes, Martin Cooper continued to be a permanent OMD band member from 1983. Although he has no other specific writing credits to his name, apart from Souvenir, Cooper's distinctive tenor sax melody can be heard on the top 10 OMD single Talking Loud and Clear (1984) and sax playing on other hits such as So In Love (1985) and (Forever) Live and Die (1986).

In 1983, together with Dave Hughes, he wrote and recorded the soundtrack for the Italian film *I Paladini - Storia D'Armi E D'Amori.* The pair also composed music for the 1984 American horror film C.H.U.D, although this was never released as a soundtrack.

One of his last appearances with OMD in the 1980s was for a mimed performance of Dreaming on *Wogan* on 26 June 1988.

## The Listening Pool

After the OMD split in the late 80s, effectively leaving just Andy McCluskey with the group name, Paul Humphreys, Cooper and Holmes went on to form a new group The Listening Pool, issuing one album *Still Life* in 1994.

The album's cover art is by Martin Cooper.

## OMD re-form

In 2005 McCluskey and Humphreys re-united for OMD live work in Germany, while announcements were made for special live performances of the by-now "classic" album *Architecture and Morality* in its entirety, for which Cooper and Holmes were also re-recruited. A warm-up gig on 06 May 2007 saw the four-piece together again for the first time since 1988, with the tour proper starting on 13 May.

Since then the group has released three more albums of new material and performed several tours, usually with Cooper on keyboards, sax, occasional guitar and also on bass guitar for one of OMD's earliest compositions Julia's Song.

On 08 July 2023, Martin played his 1,000th live gig with OMD. [2]

## External links

* Official site
* Discogs