Give It A Spin

That's Entertainment : Thompson Twins

Originally written December 2012...

For Christmas 1984 (our first family Christmas in Indonesia), I got a tape that would change my life. Thinking back, I believe it is the 'first' album I ever got that was 'mine'. I played it to death, still have it to this day and love it to infinity and beyond.

That tape was the Ghostbusters soundtrack.

Anyway, this column isn't about that tape. It's about one of the band's on that tape: the Thompson Twins.

The song : In The Name Of Love. It has this kitschy keyboard line, heaps of rhythms and jungle beats. It was a club hit in the US where they were seen mainly as a curiosity and was tacked on to the Ghostbusters soundtrack. This catapulted them to stardom and a major album/touring act.

See, the Thompson Twins were one of those massive new-wave 80's pop groups that dominated the airwaves with a slew of dancy, pop songs and were distinct and fashionable. Probably a year after Xmas 1984, I got another Thompson Twins tape, which was also called In The Name Of Love (it was the US combination of the Thompson Twins first two LPs, Set and A Product Of...). If I played the Ghostbusters tape to death, then I murdered this one. Whizzing it back and forth on my Sony Walkman, I felt like the coolest kid in school when our music teacher set us the task of learning Hold Me Now for the school performance. We had to sing it and play it on xylophones or recorder - I was on xylophone...LOL!

Anyway, Jakarta was a great place to live, because they pirated EVERYTHING and you could get tapes for a dollar. All these pirated "Greatest Hits" tapes, that basically wedged 10 songs per side on to cassettes, with made up artwork and little song booklets (the lyrics are askew from the person transcribing them AND/OR if they wrote the wrong lyrics they couldn't be sued for copyright breaches!). So I got one that slammed all the Thompson Twins hits on to one cassette tape.

It was aural nirvana.

The Thompson Twins, along with Duran Duran, really utilised video, producing out-there, memorable video clips that got huge rotation on the young MTV. They were in the right place at the right time. Suddenly, middle America was seeing these new-wave punks on TV and whilst many went WTF?, plenty of kids rallied behind the hooks and the looks. I remember once seeing an interview with Tom Bailey, the singer, and he said he let people chose for themselves how they liked their music. But he had been told by fans in staid mid-Western US towns that they were the only kid who dyed their hair, or broke out of the John Cougar Mellencamp mould and saw there was more to small town living.

I bought all the vinyl in the mid-late 1990's because they always released albums with remix singles and/or cassettes with heaps of B-sides, 12 inch remixes and dance remixes. And a bit like New Order, they even released differing 7 inch single mixes of their songs in different markets. You can never get enough mixes of the same songs :-) It was also impossible to buy their first two albums (when they were still a seven piece collective) as they only hit it big when they trimmed down to a trio and released Quick Step and Side Kick in 1983. Sadly, they were all in pristine condition in the bargain bins at Lawsons.

Remembered disparagingly by some for their haircuts and 80's fashion, as a trio, their three albums Quick Step and Side Kick, Into The Gap and Here's To Future Days would launch them to the top of many charts. They released an album a year for five years, but the pressure began to mount. Tom Bailey had a nervous break down (and was in a relationship with co-band member Alannah Currie - a no no in music) and percussionist Joe Leeway split. As a duo, they popped out 1986's Close To The Bone and 1989's Big Trash but the hits slowly dried up. The last popular single was Long Goodbye. Kind of sums it up.

If you squint at the video of Get That Love, you could pass them off as Roxette. And they still had a delicious ear for a pop hook. Sigh.

Then they went techno. In 1991, they released white label acidic housey tracks anonymously and got HUGE wraps in the music press in the UK until they discovered it was the Thompson Twins. By now, seen as naff, the album Queer died immediately. Weird eh? I'd have thought enjoyable music was enjoyable music. C'est la vie! The renamed themselves Babble and released a few ambient albums. But the game was up.

And back in the day, I used to get Smash Hits and Hit Songwords. So lame, I know. But I actually wrote in to a competition and won a LP version of Big Trash, as well as a plastic garbage pail full of lollies and some TT promo gear.

Now you may be wondering how the Thompson Twins could be 'cool'. Well here's a list of reasons why:

* They played Live Aid

* Their song If You Were Here appeared on the movie Sixteen Candles.

* Tom Bailey wrote Debbie Harry's I Want That Man.

* They haven't regrouped, or toured for a 80's retro reunion cash in.

* Their catalogue is amazingly diverse.

Then a couple of years ago, they did something wonderful : they remastered ALL the albums PLUS the remix tapes AND B-sides and released 2 disc versions of their first FIVE albums (Set, A Product Of..., Quick Step and Side Kick, Into The Gap and Here's To Future Days.). Then they bundled them up in one box and I bought two of them. Ahhhhh...the majesty.

The band members now have different lives.

Alannah Currie is married to a member of the KLF and an upholsterer.

Joe Leeway busies himself with hypnotherpay and neuro-linguistic programming.

Tom Bailey is involved in music and the arts, and charity works.

All remain friends, but they have no interest in re-living their younger, popular music years. They're proud of their work but like ABBA, they feel they were of a time and a place and have moved on.

For me, they will always be a huge part of my music life. The amount of nights I laid in bed, reading Choose Your Own Adventure novels listening to them on my Walkman cannot be counted. That best of tape is so engrained in my head, their songs sequence in my head and when the i-tunes doesn't play the song I expect next, I have to either alter my singing in the shower OR flip to that track and be in synch.

Of all the 80's bands, the big pop ones, The Thompson Twins would have to be close to being my favourites. Because they haven't mined their rich legacy and done all the retro stuff, they seemed to be forgotten. But their legacy should not be forgotten. I hope there's some kid out there watching these YouTube videos and wondering what it's all about. If they came to me, I'd just hand over my beat up old walkman and cassette tape and tell 'em to go enjoy.

Addendum - 2014:

And now Tom Bailey is out there, touring Thompson Twins gear after eschewing the overtures to re-group.

To say I'm excited is an under-fucking-statmement!!! Mine your back catalogue for all it's worth!!!