In our unique Thompson Twins interview, Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway share their story collectively after practically 40 years…
Pioneers who have been a riot of color and mischief, the group have been solely ever going to blaze brightly for a short time. Two of them have left music behind for many years, whereas Tom Bailey solely returned after years away from pop. Right here the trio reveal how squats, Grace Jones and fireplace extinguishers helped create a transatlantic phenomenon.
Earlier than we go any additional, let’s make one factor clear: Thompson Twins will not be getting again collectively. And when Basic Pop was advised that every one three Twins could be up for speaking concerning the fortieth anniversary of their sole No.1 album, Into The Hole, we have been fortunately shocked.
Now an artist, Alannah Currie has spoken to us simply as soon as about her pop life, again in 2017, shifting away from music altogether since her remaining album with Tom Bailey as Babble in 1996. Joe Leeway is much more distant from pop – a therapist in California for 20 years, Joe hasn’t been on stage since 1986, when he rejoined Thompson Twins for one present in L.A., a 12 months after quitting the group. Leeway doesn’t appear to have publicly spoken about music as soon as within the intervening 38 years. But right here all of them are.
Designers Of Pop
Throughout two Zoom interviews, plus Leeway by telephone, the band all communicate with real heat and a little bit bemusement that they managed to be worldwide pop stars for a few years.
However getting again on stage collectively? Currie sums up the temper finest: “We’re all outdated,” she laughs. “We’re grandparents, practically 70. It’s good that folks nonetheless take pleasure in our songs. However doing extra Thompson Twins? No. I’m very a lot of the assumption that issues have their time.
“I don’t go to see bands who I cherished 20 years in the past, as a result of a part of the enjoyment of dwell efficiency is within the potential, in artists who quiver with the sensation of: ‘What are they going to do subsequent?’ We felt outdated after Into The Hole – and we in all probability have been. We have been 30 then. Who desires to know anyone over 30 in pop music? Ugh! Different folks got here alongside and took over. We’d had our time.”
It’s a fortunately irreverent angle that totally matches Thompson Twins’ authentic ethos. Tom describes their intentions to grow to be “designers of pop music”, moderately than an everyday band, after the preliminary seven-piece line-up made two creative however chaotic albums, A Product Of and Set.
Breaking All The Guidelines
“It was a special band with totally different goals and targets,” notes Bailey. “It was very a lot a band of musicians, the place each tune needed to discover a position for the 2 guitarists, the bassist and so forth. That each one ended on Fast Step & Aspect Kick, after I stated: ‘No guidelines anymore.’ In all probability partly unconsciously, we broke down the assumptions {that a} band needed to be 4 white guys standing there. As soon as it was me, Alannah and Joe, our data didn’t must be something, aside from good songwriting and good recording.”
Though 1983’s third LP Fast Step & Aspect Kick and its hits together with Love On Your Aspect and We Are Detective lived as much as their grand pop designs, the trio’s background was something however pop. Like Bananarama, Bronski Beat and Tradition Membership, Thompson Twins 2.0 fashioned by way of London’s squatting group. Joe and Tom met in school in Sheffield, the place Bailey remembers them “hanging out on the snack bar, waffling nonsense away at one another.” They misplaced contact, reuniting when Leeway was working at The Younger Vic theatre in London.
Joe remembers: “I used to be dwelling in a bedsit in Fulham and met Alannah at a celebration. She stated: ‘There’s a squat reverse me.’ Inside every week, I had a complete cottage reverse Alannah in South London.” Currie takes up the story: “Joe advised me that he had mates in a band who have been shifting all the way down to London. The following factor, Thompson Twins turned up of their van from Sheffield. Joe was actually flamboyant and theatrical, stuffed with loopy concepts. Tom was very quiet, a fairly critical particular person. We have been nice associates for a 12 months earlier than getting it collectively as boyfriend and girlfriend.”
Can’t You See I’m Burning
Initially turning into the band’s roadie, Leeway advised Bailey that he “fairly fancied taking part in bongos and congas,” whereas Alannah tried one writing session with the unique line-up, however remembers: “There have been too many individuals, too many concepts. I simply thought: ‘It is a nightmare.’”
“The squatting group enabled the band,” enthuses Joe. “Not paying hire, you may use the cash for rehearsals as a substitute. Subsequent door to us, at anyone time you’d discover The Slits or Rip Rig + Panic. The draw back was that we couldn’t get served within the pub, because the tabloid notion was that squatters have been all heroin addicts. The world thought we have been disgusting, however we had independence.”
As soon as the line-up was slimmed all the way down to a trio who didn’t must have instrumental elements written for them in each tune, Fast Step & Aspect Kick initially established Thompson Twins as an digital trio. “I can’t imagine how straightforward it was to jot down pop music then,” laughs Tom. “I discover it harder to jot down pop now. Maybe you run out of the obvious concepts. You be taught extra tips the extra songs you write however, significantly round Into The Hole, it felt easy. We have been a great group, which peaked on that document.”
With Bailey answerable for music, Currie taking good care of lyrics and movies, and Leeway overseeing the dwell exhibits, they quickly turned a workaholic co-operative, not even selecting to take Christmas Day without work. Alannah remembers: “Our songs got here from storytelling. The three of us would get collectively to inform tales, collect concepts, then sift by them, modifying and modifying. After Fast Step & Aspect Kick, I understood that the tune discovered you as a lot as you discovered it. We performed with humour rather a lot, taking fairly advanced concepts and translating them into little nuggets of pop.”
Pioneering Trio
Having not been collectively in nearly 40 years, it’s now neglected simply how pioneering Thompson Twins have been. Alannah remains to be a rarity, as a feminine musician writing lyrics for a male singer, in a band who have been male/feminine and of combined ethnicity. The trio have been so forward-thinking and forward-looking that Currie admits there have been suspicions they’d been assembled by a document firm. She says: “We have been utterly who we have been: three utter misfits and weirdos. One way or the other, it labored. Being sensible mates helped, as we acquired off on one another’s enjoyable and influences.”
Joe provides: “We have been an ideal mixture: one black, two white, with pink, yellow and black hair. We might communicate to totally different cultures. I’m fairly certain I used to be the primary musician to have cultural dreadlocks, that I used to be the primary who wasn’t a reggae particular person.”
The Twins’ look was immortalised by veteran sleeve designer Andie Airfix, who created the trio’s cartoon emblem, primarily based round their multi-coloured hair. “Pop music has to have a lightness and ease to it,” considers Tom. “It must be simply absorbable and consumable. Andie’s three cartoon heads emblem was a hit the identical method The Rolling Stones had their lips. It doesn’t sum up the band, nevertheless it offers you a method into it. I’ve seen a number of folks with the emblem tattooed on their arm at my tour, which is outstanding.”
You Take Me Up
After Fast Step & Aspect Kick had reached No.2, stored off the highest by Thriller, the trio got the proper basis for what got here subsequent with Maintain Me Now, a make-up ballad written in simply 25 minutes after a row between Bailey and Currie. “Everybody agreed: ‘Wow, you’ve acquired a success tune there!’,” smiles Tom. “There’s a variety of hubris and bravado round pop teams, so we took that with a pinch of salt. On this case, it turned out to be true.”
Thompson Twins have been helped of their pop quest by producer Alex Sadkin. Employed for his work with Bob Marley and Grace Jones, he was the proper foil to hone their anarchic facet. “A pleasant man, very calm,” displays Alannah. “Alex was instrumental in serving to us get our sound collectively, as he was musically very open. He requested what I used to be going to do and I advised him that I wished to play a fireplace extinguisher. His response was: ‘Superb with me, let’s get the fireplace extinguishers out.’ Alex made us sound so cool. We didn’t sound something like Grace Jones, however that was Alex: he took one of the best of everybody and put it collectively for them.”
Into The Hole noticed the earlier album’s all-electronic ethos disappear, broadening their sound by bringing analogue devices again. “We’d acquired a foot in America,” explains Bailey. “We observed there was nonetheless a giant rocktastic flavour in American tastes, with pure synth-pop nonetheless rejected. They wished extra of a basic rock sound. Including a couple of guitars was a part of the realisation we wanted to broaden our viewers in America. You’ve acquired to stay to your weapons, however we allowed ourselves that freedom, having been extra inflexible on Fast Step & Aspect Kick.”
High Of The Pops
The ensuing success was beginning to really feel pure, as Leeway says: “The primary time we did High Of The Pops, we have been shocked that anybody was ready outdoors for us. Inside a few years, happening TOTP was as acquainted as going spherical your gran’s home. It was the identical with journey. I’d by no means been on a airplane earlier than we went to the Bahamas to first work with Alex. Rising into that life, turning into extra assured, allowed us to do extra.”
Having a band member answerable for their concert events helped Thompson Twins’ enviornment exhibits grow to be a foretaste of contemporary pop spectacles. “We have been at all times theatrical,” Joe emphasises. “Our key thought was: ‘What’s the take care of pop?’ Nicely, pop is about picture, and that translated into our dwell present’s spectacle. They have been an occasion, with spotlights and searchlights. I wished folks to really feel determined for us to come back to their city.”
Leeway believes that the Twins’ invincibility first light once they didn’t seem on Band Assist. Their administration merely didn’t inform the band, then dwelling in France, that it was occurring. “Clearly we’d have performed it if we’d recognized,” he sighs. “Slightly determination like that utterly upset our momentum in England. Paul Weller referred to as us out, saying: ‘They’re tax exiles, that’s why they didn’t do it.’ The notion was that we have been too huge for our boots. We did the Band Assist High Of The Pops, nevertheless it wasn’t the identical. The horse had already bolted.”
It didn’t assist that the trio have been creatively burnt out. Currie remembers: “We didn’t have one thought in our brains, however the label wished us again within the studio after three weeks. We must always have stated: ‘Go away, see you in six months.’ As a substitute, we stated one thing pompous like: ‘We’ll write in the event you rent us a citadel in Eire.’ All of the sudden, we have been in a citadel in Eire.”
Right here’s To Future Days
Alex Sadkin was busy working with Arcadia, so the trio tried producing Right here’s To Future Days themselves. Alannah admits: “It wasn’t ok, so we redid it with Nile Rodgers. He wasn’t the suitable particular person however, essentially, we didn’t have the songs or the vitality.” Tom provides: “I’m certain Nile would agree that, on the time, he was scraping alongside the barrel of drug and alcohol issues. Folks have been begging me to let Nile off the hook, to offer him time to get well. However we have been underneath immense stress to complete the document, in order that wasn’t straightforward. I nonetheless totally loved working with Nile, who’s an especially refined musician and complicated particular person generally.”
Joe introduced he was leaving on the finish of the album’s tour: “I attempted making music by myself, nevertheless it wasn’t the identical,” he states. “Thompson Twins was working with associates. After I was with different musicians, it didn’t gel, so I re-educated myself and got here again to the actual world, the place life has labored out for me.”
After what Alannah calls the “horrible” Shut To The Bone, Thompson Twins’ remaining albums as a duo, Huge Trash and Queer, are unsung gems in tune with rave tradition, earlier than two LPs as Babble have been much more hardcore.
With Tom and Joe again in contact because of Into The Hole’s reissue and eager to catch up correctly, all three Thompson Twins are fortunately associates once more: Currie and Leeway had remained mates. They won’t get to play dwell any time quickly, however their bond as Twins is powerful once more 5 a long time on. As Joe places it: “It was solely seven years of my life and there are such a lot of different methods to precise myself now. However what an expertise. The momentum was simply unbelievable. I used to be plucked into the pop life and all I can say about it’s: ‘Thanks very a lot!’”.
Order Thompson Twins – Into The Hole fortieth Anniversary Reissue right here
