Flashback

With a 17-album retrospective on the shelves, Daryl Easlea catches up with Leee John, the flamboyant leader of glossy 80s pop-soul act Imagination whose camp aesthetic shouldn't preclude their entry to the post-Chic pantheon.

- Daryl Easlea

In many respects, when Imagination Leee John, Ashley Ingram and Errol Kennedy - first appeared on Top Of The Pops in early 1981, their performance was as incendiary in its own way as David Bowie's arm-round- Mick-Ronson on the show nine years earlier. Before they had been seen, Body Talk, the ballad they breezed in with, was being taken very seriously, as a next step forward in the burgeoning Britfunk movement. Wearing spandex, togas, harem pants, and the only phrase for it-prancing around, they were offering something that had rarely been seen in Britain; a new kind of black sexuality. Released on R&B Records (its strapline: "It's got to be about the product"), an offshoot of the rather less glamorous PRT, Body Talk was sultry and steamy and, combined with their visuals, stunned UK audiences not yet fully aware of Rick James or Prince. The African-American "love men" who ruled in this area were usually either in bow-ties or behemoths of machismo; here was Leee John, equal parts sexual threat and camp vaudevillian, giving it his all.

Forty years later, he still throws himself wholeheartedly into everything he does. To celebrate the release of 40 Years, the 17-disc Imagination collection, John offers Record Collector, via Zoom, a Flashback to the Music and Lights of the early 80s.

"My focus has always been about the work," says the cat in the well-angled hat on RC's screen. "It's my St Lucian background." Work is something John has always done. From his breakthrough in 1981, he hasn't stopped: writing, singing, directing, collaborating. Within several minutes, he has reeled off a long list of what he's currently up to and all before we discuss the gigantic career retrospective he's just launching. Exhausted just by listening to his current activities, RC reflects on how it all began.