The Motels’ Martha Davis On Performing Again After Losing Her Voice And The Band’s Upcoming LP

Martha Davis, the lead singer of the Motels, best known for such memorable ‘80s hits as “Only the Lonely” and “Suddenly Last Summer,” would probably rather forget the year 2024. First, she was thrown by her horse, which resulted in her suffering a broken wrist. But the second and perhaps the most devastating moment was when Davis had to cancel the remaining dates of her tour with the Motels after she lost her voice due to radiation treatments for her breast cancer.

“We did the lumpectomy, which I had to be intubated for,” she says. “And because I wanted to spruce things up, I broke my wrist. So then I had to be in surgery again and intubated again. Then I went straight into radiation. My voice went away completely. My friend said, ‘This is what you should narrate your children’s books with. You sound like a little mouse.’ And if your voice never comes back, just change the name of the band to the Mouse-tels.’”

Fortunately, Davis has regained her voice and is ready to rock again ahead of the Motels’ upcoming appearance at the post-punk Forever Now Festival (the U.K. equivalent to America’s Cruel World Festival) on June 22 at the Milton Keynes Bowl — joining other major acts such as Kraftwerk, Billy Idol, the Psychedelic Furs, Happy Mondays, Public Image Ltd., Johnny Marr and Berlin. Amazingly, this gig for the Motels marks their first appearance in the U.K. in 45 years.

“That was pretty amazing,” Davis says about being part of Forever Now. “Actually twice, we got invited to do Cruel World fest down in Pasadena. The first year, I put off going to the doctor or doing anything medical for like 20 years. And then I do it all in the next, but it was actually for the same cancer. I had a biopsy, which caused a huge hematoma. So I was like bleeding internally. I couldn’t get on the plane to go down to do the first one.

“But they said, ‘You want to come back the next year?’ So I went down, did Cruel World. They liked us and said, ‘Would you like to go to the U.K.?’ And I said, ‘Well, I haven’t been there since 1980. Sure.’”

Compared to 2024, this year looks to be an eventful one for Davis and the Motels, not just for the resumption of touring, but they are preparing for their first new album since 2018’s The Last Few Beautiful Days.

“I hate the term rock opera, but I think that’s what it is,” she says. “It’s basically a tiny graphic novel/comic book kind of thing — I’ve got an artist working on the artwork and got the story written. We’re just mastering a couple of the last tracks, and it’s very appropriate. It’s called Escape From Planet Earth, and it’s a sci-fi musical. The first side is terrestrial, so it’s all on the alien planet Earth. And the second side is celestial, so it’s all in space.”

“The music is beautiful,” she adds. “The reason it takes so long is that three of the guys live in L.A. Marty [Jourad, keyboardist and saxophonist] lives in Seattle, and I live in Oregon. So we pass the baby around, and the baby lives with different people for a while, they mess with it, and then it comes around. And generally speaking, we’re always in agreement with whatever gets done to it…There’s so many beautiful vocals on this album. It’s really wonderful. It’s a crazy album.”

Most people associate the Motels with the Los Angeles music scene when they broke through with their first Top 10 hit, “Only the Lonely,” from 1982. But the history of the band goes back even further to 1971 in Berkeley, California, where they first emerged as the Warfield Foxes. (“The first earliest recordings of the band that turned into the Motels when we moved to L.A. are the weirdest punk-funk,” Davis says. “It’s really hilarious”).

After signing with Capitol, the band released their first two New Wave-influenced albums Motels (1979) and Careful (1980). They recorded what was supposed to be their third album, Apocalypso, but that was shelved following their label’s mixed reaction to it. Instead, the Motels released All Four One (1982), which proved to be their commercial breakthrough, containing such favorites such as “Take the L,” “Mission of Mercy,” and of course “Only the Lonely.” On writing the latter hit, which has been a staple of ‘80s playlists, Davis says: “I picked that [parlor] guitar up, and “Only the Lonely” was sitting there waiting for me. Literally written. I scribbled down the lyrics as they came out.”

“It was recorded on the Apocalypso album, but it wasn’t the same production,” Davis later recalls. “And so Capitol heard that album, and they said, ‘Well, you know there’s no hits on it.’ I said, ‘Okay. Whatever.’ Not that I thought it was a hit, but I can’t usually tell a hit. I’ve heard a couple that I went, ‘Oh, that’s a hit.’ That’s like, “Take My Breath Away.” And they seem to be breath songs, “Every Breath You Take.” So I’ve started writing breath songs for a while — just kidding.”

After the success of “Only the Lonely,” the band returned the following year with 1983’s Little Robbers, which produced another hit in “Suddenly Last Summer.” “I’m a person who writes completely stream of consciousness,” says Davis. “I like to get the out of my own way. For the most part, I don’t know what I’m writing most of the time anyway. But “Suddenly Last Summer” – I woke up at 3:00 in the morning when I was living in L.A. And ‘dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.’ That was running through my head. And all of a sudden, I got up and I started writing the song.”

“I realized that the song that I was writing was something that I had felt in the ’70s, sitting in my backyard in Berkeley, which was really weird because it was kind of the ice cream truck. I remember sitting in the backyard — the end of summer. And all of a sudden, this cold wind sort of hit. You knew like winter was coming. You knew the fall was on the way. The ice cream truck, you wouldn’t hear it again. It was just kind of this moment. That moment followed me to the 1980s and woke me up in the middle of the night. I mean, it’s weird. Who knows what goes on in the noodles?”

The group’s next and final studio album before their hiatus was 1985’s Shock, a very glossy work produced by Richie Zito that resulted in the title song and “Shame” as singles. The album isn’t a favorite of Davis’ in the Motels’ discography.

“My dream was to be a creative,’ she says. “Somebody said this to me the other day, and I think, ‘Oh, my God. If we weren’t, it’s what we wanted to be: an art band.’ In fact, the [earlier] hits with [producer] Val Garay were a very double-edged sword because that stuff was way too MOR [middle of the road] for me. I was listening to Brian Eno and Bowie. I wanted stuff that didn’t have to be perfect.

“By the time it got to Richie, it was that pop stuff. You can tell in my writing that I’m never going to be like your normal writer. I’m not writing pop songs. I mean, they are, but there’s always a little bit of shenanigans going on. So tthat’s not my favorite, but some songs on that album are pretty cool.”

The Motels disbanded when Davis went solo but reunited in 1998 and released two more albums This (2008) and The Last Few Beautiful Days (2018). “I started writing again,” Davis says. “I basically literally started all over. I was living in Ventura at the time, and I went out and I found young guys that had never even heard of a record deal. It was a garage band, a bunch of young dudes and me, and we called ourselves Martha Davis Jr. for a while (laughs). And it was just raw and punky…So I did the whole thing over again. I started with young kids, and then I graduated up and up and up until in 2003, this band came along, and we’ve been together now longer. Amazing band. Just truly amazing.”

The band has been touring steadily since, being a frequent presence also on the ‘80s package tours that have drawn both older fans and younger listeners.

“We love multi-generational audience members,” Davis says. “It is fantastic… I’ll gripe like the next guy about touring, getting to the airport, getting on the airplane, the hours of waiting, the hours of driving around, And then you go on and play for an hour and a half and go, ‘Whee!’ But it’s always, always once that music starts, it’s always so beautiful.””

“After all these years playing “Only the Lonely” or any of that stuff, it is new every night because it’s always a new audience, and it’s always a different venue, and it’s always a new experience. So it’s never tiring…There’s a lot of love. We have fun.”

Davis feels grateful now to perform again following her health issues last year. “This girl never has gone away ever,” she says. “I know it appears that I’ve gone away for many, many years, but I never go away. I’m always out doing this crazy stuff and writing. We’ve made many wonderful albums that— I do a thing where I’ll get it together as far enough to create and put it together and put it on some vinyl or even just release it on the internet and then just watch it go. So I’ve never gone away, but I’ve never been seen either. It’s a really good trick.”