The Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey appears to be like again on the band’s fourth studio album Into The Hole
The Thompson Twins launched their fourth long-player, Into The Hole, in February 1984. Right here, frontman Tom Bailey displays on the band’s biggest-selling album…
1984 was fairly the 12 months for the Thompson Twins with the band – consisting, at this level, of Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway – on the prime of their business recreation. Not solely did they take pleasure in 4 Prime 20 UK hits that 12 months, additionally they hit No.1 for the primary and final time with their two occasions platinum album, Into The Hole.
“I keep in mind New 12 months’s Eve 1983,” Bailey tells Basic Pop through Zoom from his house in New Zealand, “as we have been doing an MTV live performance in New York with Billy Idol. There was only a sense by which issues have been going to be good for us within the coming 12 months…”
Thompson Twins actually broke by in 1983, so do ’83 and ’84 mix into one for you?
A bit of bit, yeah. It was a steady sort of take-off interval, and really thrilling, within the sense {that a} occasion is happening on a regular basis. Additionally, I assume it’s the place you be taught to get the measure of it and say, “You possibly can’t do that each evening of the 12 months in any other case one thing will implode…”
Had been you a tough partier on the time?
By that stage, I’d given up medicine and drink utterly. I used to be Mr Sober, which put me in a sort of very choose membership in rock’n’roll. Most individuals round me have been going for it, so I had a slightly unusual view of all the pieces. I by no means wakened considering, ‘Jeez, that was a heavy evening’. It wasn’t like that for me, whereas everybody else gave the impression to be doing that.
I all the time say, sort of jokingly, that in America that it turned me on to nation music as a result of if you’re touring after the present, for those who’re on a bus, everybody’s behind it partying, whereas I used to be up entrance with the driving force. And drivers in America all the time listened to nation and western music so it uncovered me to this music that I’d by no means been serious about.
You launched Into The Hole in February ’84, by which period you have been averaging an album each 12 months. Was it vital to maintain up the momentum?
I by no means considered it that manner. However I assume the administration of the document firm had a watch on these issues as a result of they make hay whereas the solar shines. There was positively a ‘document, then tour, then return into writing as quick as you possibly can’ method.
We acquired fortunate with Into The Hole within the sense that we’d matured as songwriters after the earlier album, so it was fairly a straightforward document to put in writing. We adopted our recording sample in as a lot as we went and reduce the essential tracks within the Bahamas at Compass Level. We’d completed that on the earlier album, and we thought, it really works, let’s use the identical plan with the identical folks, mainly.
How lengthy did the writing take? I presume by this level you’d gotten it all the way down to a superb artwork.
I can’t keep in mind precisely how lengthy it took, however it wasn’t an extended torturous course of. I feel it was perhaps 4 weeks of writing. What we might do is lease a spot within the countryside to get away from distractions, so there have been no golf equipment, no events, no dinner engagements, we simply locked ourselves in. And we had a rule that we would have liked 4 hits earlier than we might loosen up.
We got here up with Maintain Me Now, Physician! Physician!, Sister Of Mercy and possibly You Take Me Up, and we thought, now we is usually a little bit extra experimental, as a result of we’ve ticked these containers. That’s the factor you purpose for creatively, to cowl the deadlines and the necessities so you possibly can then be free to check out some issues that maybe is likely to be a bit extra dangerous. So it went completely in that sense – we wrote 4 clearly catchy songs, after which went on to check out another extra fascinating issues.
Let’s discuss among the different singles. Sister Of Mercy is amazingly darkish as a single. Did you’re feeling any trepidation releasing that?
I didn’t really feel any trepidation as a result of it was tune. The inspiration was all Alannah’s thought. She stated there was this story of a French girl who had murdered her accomplice as a result of he was so merciless to her over an extended time frame. And in France, that falls into the class of one thing that we didn’t have within the UK legally, which is known as the crime of ardour, which carries a much less extreme penalty. And I suppose her feminist perspective was that that was a good suggestion, that when home violence was concerned in opposition to companions, that they need to be excused. And that’s what the tune was about – it was the story of that girl.
I feel it was innovative. I imply, many of the band’s work had a sort of liberation agenda behind it. Folks accused us of being saccharine and all the remainder of it however we all the time had this concept that we have been making an attempt to make folks’s lives and the world a greater place, and private politics got here into that very, very strongly. I nonetheless like performing it as of late, truly.
What about Physician! Physician!? On the time that was your highest-charting tune.
I didn’t write that one, Alannah did. It’s one other monitor within the custom of seeing love as an sickness and the way it may be cured. There are many these and it’s a sort of a blues traditional, isn’t it. However the truth is, I got here from a medical household. I used to be having huge fights on the time with my father who was a physician and so perhaps she was interested by that when she wrote the tune. However I feel largely the primary clarification is the very best. It’s simply within the custom of lovers’ illness.
You Take Me Up was an enormous hit right here (UK No.2), however its flip, Ardour Planet, grew to become a well-liked tune on American radio. If you discovered that out, did you assume, “Ah, we must always have put that on the album…?”
It was only a bonus I feel. Different songs have been like that as effectively. Typically you get a freak response for causes that you possibly can by no means actually clarify. Ardour Planet’s a very throwaway piece of labor, it’s a B-side by way of its songwriting, however it has a catchiness about it.
There are simply 9 tracks on the album general. Had been there many left over that you just simply thought didn’t fairly match?
I can’t keep in mind the dialogue that befell about that on the time. What I do keep in mind was that there was an absolute high quality restrict at 20 minutes per facet. Once we’re speaking vinyl, the longer time on an album, the decrease the standard copy, and 20 minutes was usually thought-about to be the borderline that you just mustn’t cross. So perhaps that was it – we simply couldn’t add one other tune.
Other than the singles, are there any deeper album cuts you notably love?
Deep cuts is an fascinating factor as a result of we’re going to tour the album as a result of it’s the fortieth anniversary. I did this as soon as within the UK in 2022 after which a brief tour of Australia, performing the album simply to see the way it felt, and it’s actually good. So we’re gonna do a tour of that and different issues, clearly. However it means I needed to dig out the songs I hadn’t listened to for a very long time. And I need to say there’s nothing on there that I feel, ‘Oh, it is a bit tedious’. In a roundabout way, all of them sparkle for me.
In these days, all of us listened to albums as an entire, so it’s not simply in regards to the hits. A lot in order that I don’t carry out the album within the order of the recording or of the urgent, for varied causes. One among which is I like to complete with Maintain Me Now, as a result of it’s an enormous singalong occasion, a really emotional factor on the finish of the present.
However in fact on the document, that’s not the final monitor. Some folks get upset about that, however there are theatrical the explanation why the order needs to be modified for the stay present. I actually loved rediscovering a few of these, one in all which was the title monitor, Into The Hole. We’ve determined to do it with an uncommon line-up, so we’ve Center Japanese drums, cello and bass, slightly than all of the keyboard elements.
Will you be doing little twists on different songs?
I’ve all the time completed that, since getting again into stay efficiency and with a brand new band. I took that as a chance to reinvestigate and contemporise the preparations and the music. Partly due to expertise – we’ve loads of laptop help in this stuff now that we didn’t again within the 80s.
Pondering again to 10-12 years in the past, when the thought of performing once more got here up for me, I actually was able of ignorance – I hadn’t listened to these works for a very long time. I truly went out and acquired a Thompson Twins CD to verify them out.
I keep in mind, on the tube going house, I made a psychological be aware of which songs have been those I wished to sing. That was a wierd second, re-encountering your personal work. It’s like studying an previous diary, I assume, ‘trigger it reminds you of stuff you’d utterly forgotten that you just all of the sudden realise are an enormous a part of your id.
For extra on Tom Bailey’s 2024 stay plans, head right here
Learn extra: Thompson Twins / Tom Bailey – album by album
