In our unique Thompson Twins interview, Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway share their story collectively after practically 40 years…
Pioneers who had been a riot of color and mischief, the group had 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 hearth extinguishers helped create a transatlantic phenomenon.
Earlier than we go any additional, let’s make one factor clear: Thompson Twins should not getting again collectively. And when Traditional Pop was instructed that each one three Twins can be up for speaking concerning the fortieth anniversary of their sole No.1 album, Into The Hole, we had been fortunately surprised.
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 closing 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 cellphone, the band all communicate with real heat and a bit of 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 previous,” she laughs. “We’re grandparents, practically 70. It’s good that individuals nonetheless get pleasure from 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 liked 20 years in the past, as a result of a part of the enjoyment of reside efficiency is within the potential, in artists who quiver with the sensation of: ‘What are they going to do subsequent?’ We felt previous after Into The Hole – and we in all probability had been. We had been 30 then. Who desires to know anyone over 30 in pop music? Ugh! Different individuals got here alongside and took over. We’d had our time.”
It’s a fortunately irreverent angle that solely suits Thompson Twins’ unique ethos. Tom describes their intentions to develop into “designers of pop music”, somewhat 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 distinct band with totally different goals and aims,” notes Bailey. “It was very a lot a band of musicians, the place each track needed to discover a function for the 2 guitarists, the bassist and so forth. That every one ended on Fast Step & Aspect Kick, once I mentioned: ‘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 at 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 residing in a bedsit in Fulham and met Alannah at a celebration. She mentioned: ‘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 instructed me that he had mates in a band who had been shifting right down to London. The subsequent factor, Thompson Twins turned up of their van from Sheffield. Joe was actually flamboyant and theatrical, filled with loopy concepts. Tom was very quiet, a fairly critical particular person. We had been nice pals 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 instructed Bailey that he “fairly fancied enjoying 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: ‘This can be a nightmare.’”
“The squatting group enabled the band,” enthuses Joe. “Not paying hire, you possibly can use the cash for rehearsals as an alternative. Subsequent door to us, at anybody 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 had been all heroin addicts. The world thought we had been disgusting, however we had independence.”
As soon as the line-up was slimmed right down to a trio who didn’t must have instrumental elements written for them in each track, Fast Step & Aspect Kick initially established Thompson Twins as an digital trio. “I can’t consider 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 study extra methods the extra songs you write however, notably round Into The Hole, it felt easy. We had been group, which peaked on that file.”
With Bailey in command of music, Currie taking good care of lyrics and movies, and Leeway overseeing the reside reveals, they quickly grew to become 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 via them, enhancing and enhancing. After Fast Step & Aspect Kick, I understood that the track discovered you as a lot as you discovered it. We performed with humour quite a bit, taking fairly complicated concepts and translating them into little nuggets of pop.”
Pioneering Trio
Having not been collectively in virtually 40 years, it’s now missed simply how pioneering Thompson Twins had been. Alannah remains to be a rarity, as a feminine musician writing lyrics for a male singer, in a band who had been male/feminine and of blended ethnicity. The trio had been so forward-thinking and forward-looking that Currie admits there have been suspicions they’d been assembled by a file firm. She says: “We had been utterly who we had been: three utter misfits and weirdos. In some way, it labored. Being good mates helped, as we bought off on one another’s enjoyable and influences.”
Joe provides: “We had been an ideal mixture: one black, two white, with crimson, 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 brand, primarily based round their multi-coloured hair. “Pop music has to have a lightness and ease to it,” considers Tom. “It needs to be simply absorbable and consumable. Andie’s three cartoon heads brand was successful the identical approach The Rolling Stones had their lips. It doesn’t sum up the band, but it surely offers you a approach into it. I’ve seen plenty of individuals with the brand 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 bought successful track 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 had 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 instructed him that I needed to play a fireplace extinguisher. His response was: ‘High-quality 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 the very 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 bought a foot in America,” explains Bailey. “We seen there was nonetheless a giant rocktastic flavour in American tastes, with pure synth-pop nonetheless rejected. They needed extra of a basic rock sound. Including just a few guitars was a part of the realisation we would have liked to broaden our viewers in America. You’ve bought to stay to your weapons, however we allowed ourselves that freedom, having been extra inflexible on Fast Step & Aspect Kick.”
Prime Of The Pops
The ensuing success was beginning to really feel pure, as Leeway says: “The primary time we did Prime Of The Pops, we had been shocked that anybody was ready exterior for us. Inside a few years, occurring 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 in command of their concert events helped Thompson Twins’ enviornment reveals develop into a foretaste of recent pop spectacles. “We had been all the time theatrical,” Joe emphasises. “Our key thought was: ‘What’s the take care of pop?’ Effectively, pop is about picture, and that translated into our reside present’s spectacle. They had been an occasion, with spotlights and searchlights. I needed individuals to really feel determined for us to come back to their city.”
Leeway believes that the Twins’ invincibility first light after they didn’t seem on Band Support. Their administration merely didn’t inform the band, then residing in France, that it was taking place. “Clearly we’d have completed it if we’d recognized,” he sighs. “A little bit choice 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 had been too massive for our boots. We did the Band Support Prime Of The Pops, but it surely wasn’t the identical. The horse had already bolted.”
It didn’t assist that the trio had been creatively burnt out. Currie remembers: “We didn’t have one concept in our brains, however the label needed us again within the studio after three weeks. We must always have mentioned: ‘Go away, see you in six months.’ As an alternative, we mentioned one thing pompous like: ‘We’ll write if you happen to rent us a fortress in Eire.’ Out of the blue, we had been in a fortress 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, basically, 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. Individuals had been begging me to let Nile off the hook, to offer him time to get well. However we had been underneath immense strain to complete the file, in order that wasn’t straightforward. I nonetheless absolutely loved working with Nile, who’s a particularly subtle musician and complex particular person on the whole.”
Joe introduced he was leaving on the finish of the album’s tour: “I attempted making music by myself, but it surely wasn’t the identical,” he states. “Thompson Twins was working with pals. After I was with different musicians, it didn’t gel, so I re-educated myself and got here again to the true world, the place life has labored out for me.”
After what Alannah calls the “horrible” Shut To The Bone, Thompson Twins’ closing albums as a duo, Massive Trash and Queer, are unsung gems in tune with rave tradition, earlier than two LPs as Babble had been much more hardcore.
With Tom and Joe again in contact due to Into The Hole’s reissue and desirous to catch up correctly, all three Thompson Twins are fortunately pals once more: Currie and Leeway had remained mates. They may not get to play reside any time quickly, however their bond as Twins is robust once more 5 many years on. As Joe places it: “It was solely seven years of my life and there are such a lot of different methods to specific 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