NICK FELDMAN

Having studied Psychology and Philosophy at Liverpool University and subsequently been thrown out for spending too much time playing lead guitar with local bands, Nick Feldman began his music business career proper by managing to land a job as an agent for DJM Live Booking Agency in London, where he brought in Adam and The Ants, who soon after were to become the biggest band in the UK. He also brought in legendary new wave band the Only Ones.

"I figured getting a job on the inside of the industry would help me strategically with my ultimate aim of being a successful artist. The experience taught me a lot, but ultimately it artistically frustrated me and so I decided after nearly two years, to take the risk and just leave and get my own band together in London."

Nick had written some punk inspired songs (but with strange harmonically leftfield chords) and recorded them himself using free of charge downtime from a tiny AV studio a friend of his was working at. He played all the instruments and sang all the vocals, using his friend Paul Hammond on drums. Paul had previously been the drummer of the successful rock band Atomic Rooster.

Having got the demos recorded, he put an ad in the musicians wanted section of the Melody Maker, putting all his money into the ad, disingenuously making him look as important as possible, to attract as many and the best guitarists available. He got another friend to pretend he was his manager, to greet all the applicants for the auditions. Nick and Paul Hammond and a bass player auditioned the scores of applicants, but one stood out a mile from the others…one Jack Hues (at the time called by his real name, Jeremy Ryder!)

So Nick and Jack’s association began! They went through various lineups / band names over the next few years, members including his friend Glen Gregory, Lee Gorman (Glen went on to form Heaven 17 and Lee went on to join Bow Wow Wow). They needed a bass player so Nick switched from guitar to bass when they finally settled on a trio lineup with Darren Costin on drums and called themselves Huang Chung, with Dave Burnand joining later on sax and keys. Nick later played a fretless bass on Huang Chung’s album on Arista Records.

Despite getting close to a breakthrough, Huang Chung didn’t sell as well as Arista, their label had hoped and eventually Geffen Records signed the band in the US in 1982, after hearing their freshly recorded demo of ‘Dance Hall Days’, with David Geffen himself suggesting the spelling change from Huang to Wang.

Wang Chung went on to achieve huge success in the US and rest of the World throughout the 80's with big selling albums and no1 singles, film and tv placements,  as well as extensively touring the world throughout this period.

Their first album for Geffen was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios, Studio 2 (where the Beatles had recorded all their music). Whilst recording ‘Dance Hall Days’ there, Nick’s left handed fretless bass wasn’t sounding quite right for the track, so the engineer went off to find another left handed bass. 15 minutes later, a guy walked into the studio control room brandishing a left handed bass, saying he was from the bass rental company. To everyone’s doubletaked astonishment, that guy was Paul McCartney! So Nick got to play Macca’s bass on ‘Dance Hall Days’….this was a big thrill for both Jack and Nick, who were and are massive Beatles fans.

Nick co-wrote and co-produced for Wang Chung who also branched out into Hollywood soundtrack work, scoring with his partner Jack, the William Friedkin movie "To Live and Die in LA", as well as writing and performing for "The Breakfast Club". By this time, Wang Chung had become a duo (Nick and Jack), Darren leaving in 1985 .

In 1990, after Wang Chung had disbanded for a while, Nick teamed up with old friend Jon Moss of Culture Club, to form the duo Promised Land, signing to Epic US after scoring huge club success and press acclaim on legendary DJ Pete Tong's ffrr label with their club interpretation of Thunderclap Newman’s ‘Something in the Air’ garnering NME’s single of the month.

After Promised Land, Nick continued with scoring for TV in UK, writing and performing the theme music for Sky TV show ‘The Power Club’ and also music for various commercials.

In 1996, Nick joined Warner Brothers UK as A&R Manager, working with such acts as Suggs, the lead singer of Madness (with whom he also wrote the lead track for The Avengers movie soundtrack, as well as A&Ring numerous UK hit singles), All Saints, Black Star Liner (Mercury Music Award Nominees in 1999), and the press acclaimed Webb Brothers (sons of the legendary Jimmy Webb).

‘Before joining Warners, I had become creatively exhausted at that time, so to be able to work with and help other artists’s creativity from the other side of the desk, instead of having to generate it myself, really appealed to me. In fact I found it a useful widening of my perspective, knowledge and experience of the creativity and psychology of artists, and the machinations of the industry as a whole.’

Whilst still working at Warners, Jack and Nick briefly went into the studio as Wang Chung to record a new song they specially created, called ‘Space Junk’, for their impending Greatest Hits album on Universal. It has since been used twice in the smash hit  TV show  ‘Walking Dead’.  

In 2001 Nick joined Sony Music as Director of A&R Europe, working with many artists including Anastacia, Good Charlotte,  Cyndi Lauper, Sertab (who won the Eurovision song contest in 2003). He also co-signed and A&R'd UK metal act Bullet For My Valentine who quickly went on to achieve big worldwide chart success.

On the Special Projects front at Sony, he put together and A&R'd ‘Fever Pitch, the Official FIFA World Cup Album’  in 2002, featuring Anastacia, Jennifer Lopez, Nelly Furtado, Vangelis, the top footballers of the day, and many others from around the world.

At Sony, he also was involved in pioneering games soundtracks, working on Driver 3 and Grand Theft Auto Vice City.

During Nick’s time at both Warners and Sony, he regularly used Jack’s services to produce or co write with some of the artists he was A &R ing, including the band Arkarna and also Eg White (Eg went on to write numerous hits for Adele). So Nick and Jack’s creative association continued beyond Wang Chung, but in a different form.

In 2006 Nick left Sony to pursue artist management, working on a project with major hit composer/ producer Linda Perry, and subsequently also to enjoy the live touring resurgence of Wang Chung, who have been touring the US and the world extensively since then.

Jack and Nick also reunited in the studio to record an album of new songs they had both been writing, called Tazer Up!, which was released in 2012 to very warm response.

From 2016 to 2020, with his long time partner Jack Hues’ blessing, Nick merged Wang Chung into a hybrid touring band with famous 80s band Cutting Crew, whilst Jack chose to step back from live work for a while to do other projects. They successfully toured the States, Canada, Australia, UK and South America over that period, mostly as Wang Chung/Cutting Crew and sometimes just as Wang Chung, with Cutting Crew’s Gareth Moulton filling in on lead vocals and guitar.

Another project Nick got involved with during this period was writing and producing tracks for ex Ace of Base Swedish singer Julia Williamson, a track ‘Me, My Selfie and I’ was used in a Fiat car commercial in Italy.

During this period, Nick also worked as an auditions judge and talent scout for all the first five series’ of BBC1 TV talent show The Voice UK.

In 2019 Nick and Jack were approached by August Day record company, to make an orchestral album of Wang Chung’s hits and preferred tracks, with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, which was subsequently released with the title ‘Orchesography’. Both Nick and Jack got directly involved with the orchestral arrangements and were pleased to have been given the opportunity to try something new for Wang Chung.

This year Nick and Jack have put together a Wang Chung retrospective album of their hits and other rare unreleased tracks, called ‘Clear Light Dark Matter’ (On Sing Records). Wang Chung also have an exciting live album release by Sing, recorded at the legendary El Mocambo in Toronto in June 2024.

Nick has been very active in writing songs over the last few years and is planning to not only do some new recording of some of them with Jack for Wang Chung, but also to record a solo album later this year.

Nick has also been involved in various business start ups over the years….the first being a pre internet computer multimedia company called Interactive Ideas Ltd in the 90s which was one of the first CD Rom distributors of that era, which was successfully sold in 2014.

Over the last few years he has been involved in and consulted for other start ups….a biometric payments/verifications company called Sthaler and also for a successful music networking app called Vampr (a kind of LinkedIn for musician professionals/creatives). After winning Apple’s Best New App award in 2018, it has recently been merged with large Australian media company The Vinyl Group.
Also he has been involved with two ai based companies, Smartbox.ai (dealing in complex data privacy) and VirtTuri (ai avatar digital assistant for health info sites)