The Twisted History of Bow Wow Wow
- Jan 16
- 7 min read
Bow Wow Wow has quite a strange and troubling history behind it… From Scotland Yard investigations into child exploitation, to claims of bullying. It’s quite a twisted story.
You probably know them best for this tune, especially if you’re American:
Or you might know them from Go Wild In The Country, a hit in the UK and Ireland:
But, where did they start?
Bow Wow Wow formed in 1980 after punk mastermind Malcolm McLaren - manager of Sex Pistols - nicked a load of musicians from a band on his books that he thought wasn’t going to make it big.
So, David Barbarossa, Matthew Ashman and Leigh Gorman left their little known frontman to form a new group.
Now, funnily enough, that little known frontman was actually Adam Ant of Adam and the Ants fame who went on to be even more successful than Bow Wow Wow… a bit of a misstep by McLaren. But anyway, this newly formed band then started a 6 month audition process to find a vocalist.
McLaren had his scouts out and about in London, trying to find someone who would fit the bill. It was only when talent scout David Fishel took a trip to a local drycleaners that they found what they were looking for.
Specifically, they found 13 year old Annabella Lwin.
Yes, let me just repeat that and really hammer that home because this is the cause of a lot of the band’s problems later on.
THIRTEEN YEAR OLD Annabella Lwin
She wanted to earn a little bit of money of her own, as her parents couldn’t afford to give her pocket money, so she was helping out at the dry cleaners.
It just so happened that when Fishel came into the drycleaners, Lwin was singing along to an ABBA song on the radio. Impressed with her talent, Fishel suggested she audition for Bow Wow Wow.
Lwin was pretty street smart, and she knew that as a 13 year old girl, there was a good chance she couldn’t trust grown men trying to get her to ‘audition’ for something.
However, she soon realised the audition was for a real band, and she was put in front of McLaren himself.
Her first impression of him was that he was an odd but clever character. She told Classic Pop Mag in 2025:
“My first impressions of Malcolm were his orange hairdo, his pinstripe suit, his very posh voice and the way he used to stare at you. As a young girl, I never knew why that stare made me think, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’, but Malcolm stared that intensely at everyone. He was a very unusual character, very dysfunctional in how he worked, but brilliant. He was a genius.”
Despite how that look made her feel, McLaren liked her, and she was officially made the singer of Bow Wow Wow.
Right off the bat, Lwin felt like a bit of an outsider. Her much older bandmates didn’t seem to take her very seriously, and she felt like they didn’t really want her there. It was only McLaren’s insistence that guaranteed her a spot.
Lwin was obviously still at school at the time, and was visiting the studio on the side. Before they had even released anything, the rest of the band had tried to get rid of her a few times. On top of that, no one seemed to be communicating with her, so she didn’t really know what was going on. You can see why she felt targeted during this time.
Can we appreciate how weird that dynamic must have been? For everyone involved? I don’t know how it was ever allowed to happen…
But, it was and pretty soon they were releasing their first single. It was a track called C.30 C.60 C.90 Go, and was written by the lads in the band and McLaren. Lwin didn’t get any input.
Now, this single was originally released exclusively on cassette. In fact, this was the first EVER single released on cassette in the UK.
Now, with Malcolm and his punk background, this song actually encouraged home-taping - in fact the second side of the tape was intentionally left blank to help with this
Off the radio I get constant flow/
Hit it, pause it, record and play/
Turn it, rewind and rub it away
As you can imagine, their record label, EMI, weren’t exactly thrilled about that… so they refused to promote it.
But that didn’t seem to matter. The track reached No. 34 on the UK Independent Chart but outside the charts, who knows how popular it became from word of mouth and sharing copies on the street…
Soon after, the mini-album ‘Your Cassette Pet’ was released. Again, Lwin didn’t get much creative input, but it started to gain the band a bit of an audience.
Then, finally in 1981, their debut album was released. See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah! City All Over, Go Ape Crazy! - exploded onto the scene in October that year. That’s a mouthful.
Again, Lwin wasn’t listed on the writing credits, however this time that wasn’t exactly true. She had written for the album, she just wasn’t credited for it. She told Classic Pop Mag:
“There’s a lot of songs they never gave me credit for. I can’t do anything about it now, as we’re way, way down the road from it all. But thanks a lot, guys.”
But it wasn’t the writing credits that caused controversy on its release. It was the album cover.
By the time this album came out, Lwin was still just 14 years old. But her being a child didn’t stop the creative decision to have her appear naked on the sleeve of the record.
The album cover is a recreation of Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeneur Sur L'Herbe.
In the album photo, Lwin was portraying this lady - with an accurate costume (that being, no costume) and the other band members were portraying the others, sat near her
The idea that they made a 14 year old girl strip off in front of a load of adult men to get this cover is appalling, but nobody in the industry batted an eyelid at the time.
This was an era where safeguarding basically didn’t exist in the music industry, and clearly the record label were happy to put it out.
That’s not to say no one was concerned by this; in fact, the person who you would expect to be most concerned was furious: Lwin’s mother.
Apparently, McClaren convinced Barbarossa, Ashman and Gorman to be the ones to reveal the album artwork to Lwin’s mum. Gorman told The Guardian in 2012:
"Malcolm told us it would be a great idea and how proud Annabella's mother would be. And of course like idiots, we fell for it. And her mother reacted as you might expect. And Malcolm hid behind a wall round the back. And he goes, 'I knew that would happen.' And I thought, 'you bastard, you set us up.' But that's the kind of thing he would do. Just 'cause he had the devilment in him."
You have to question what on earth they were thinking to believe her mum would be happy with that. It does really pull into question the character of McLaren as well. As their manager, he was responsible for the safety and wellbeing of Lwin. He failed spectacularly.
As you might expect, this led to a police investigation. Scotland Yard viewed this case as potential child exploitation, and it rightfully got quite serious. However, there’s no recorded outcome, so we can probably assume the case was dropped.
This saga soured the relationship between Lwin and her mother as well. To this day, Lwin herself defends the cover, saying it was just art. However, her mum saw it as the music industry exploiting her child. This caused a rift.
Regardless, the album did well, and they gained a new load of fans. This album contained the song Go Wild in the Country, which went on to become one of their most popular tracks.
Bow Wow Wow would go on to release just one more album after this; When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going in 1983.
However, thoughts of mutiny had not gone away for the rest of the band. They were never truly happy with Lwin being their frontwoman, and wanted to start a new band without her. Lwin was fired between tours, and was suddenly left with nothing. She told Classic Pop Mag:
“I was told we were having a break for a month before an Australian tour. I thought, ‘Yay! I can rest my vocals!’ No one talked to me about it, no one explained it. It was all a shock.”
The worst part of this is they didn’t even bother to tell her. She found out through reading NME magazine. It seems that throughout her time in the band, they flipped between treating her like a child and then an adult when it suited them - that being the whole album cover thing. It must have been so frustrating for her to feel so out of control.
Lwin was still only 17 when she was fired, but the record label informed her that she still owed them music, regardless of if her band had left her.
So, she released a solo album - Fever, Anabella - in 1986, but then left the music industry for a decade. It wasn’t until 1997 that Lwin reformed Bow Wow Wow with Gorman. Ashman had died from complications with diabetes in 1995.
Bow Wow Wow continued to perform occasionally across the next 15 years, and released some live material and compilation albums. However, in about 2011, Lwin suddenly left the band. It’s thought that Gorman fired her.
Gorman continued performing under the name with a new vocalist. Lwin reflected:
“I guess history can repeat itself. We had an agreement, but what’s the saying? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
Gorman still denies he had anything to do with the first firing - he was in hospital at the time - but he was obviously at the centre of the second one.
Despite how she was treated early on in her career, Lwin believes the world has become a better place for young girls in the music industry.
This is a great interview - skip to 15:56 to hear her talking about what the music industry is like now.
Lwin continues to make music to this day and is involved in campaigns to encourage kindness. You can understand why with her story!
If you would rather watch these stories than read them, check out my YouTube channel!
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