Well here’s a post that’s more than 40 years late to the party. I first got the idea to do this post when I saw a standup bit about Spandau Ballet’s lyrics for their massive hit song, True, sometime around 2007 when this blog started. Imagine my surprise when, decades later, I learned that Gary Kemp wrote those nonsensical lyrics as a coded love letter to one of his peers, Scottish actress and signer Clare Grogan.
So true, funny how it seems
Always in time, but never in line for dreams
Head over heels when toe to toe
This is the sound of my soul
This is the sound
I bought a ticket to the world
But now I've come back again
Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh I want the truth to be said
Okay, I said. There’s an explanation as to why True has such hilariously nonsensical lyrics. Fine. Moving on.
But there’s another New Wave band I can’t quite leave unmentioned in this blog. Its name is Thompson Twins. The British music press used to refer to them as The Three Haircuts. They were helped by their style, musical connections, and crucial airtime on MTV that cemented them as a significant synth-pop band of the 1980s. And I write this knowing that there are far more influential electronic bands of the era out there, mainly from the Industrial sub-genre and also in avant garde pop, which includes A Flock Of Seagulls, a much better band that I will get to in a future post.
Wikipedia led me down quite an amazing history of the band and those they have either worked with or met. Thomas Dolby. Robin Hitchcock. Alex Sadkin (and the whole Island Records family behind him - Grace Jones, Robert Palmer, Duran Duran, Nile Rodgers, Bob Marley and his eldest son, Ziggy).
Thompson Twins had some great things going for them in 1983. They had a hit single from the previous year that people remembered called In The Name Of Love.
On the heels of that hit in 1982, they and their manager secretly worked to cut the band from 7 members to 3, and shuttled the trio of Alanah Currie, Tom Bailey and Joe Leeway to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas to make more hit singles with legendary Island Records producer Alex Sadkin. The next three years of their lives were about to get nuts. They were going to become stars with three quick albums, music videos, hit singles on the Billboard and BBC charts and even a messy Live Aid appearance in Philadelphia with Madonna and Steve Stevens. They even added a logo by British graphic designer Andy Airfix. It looked really good and was perfectly fitted to the early 80s.
The band as we remember it was formed in London. Tom Bailey was the singer, from Halifax, West Yorkshire. And the driver of this bus, it seemed, was Alanah Currie, the blonde percussionist and writer from New Zealand. She took on most lyric duties, which I’ll get to in a bit.
I remember exactly where I was in 1983 when they released their next two singles, Lies and Love On Your Side. I was at Whitman School in Brockton finishing fourth grade. I liked what I heard and saw, since the band fit right into the new generation of synthesizer bands. I particularly liked the bands diversity and the somewhat distinctive, almost drunken bass sound. I don’t think Joseph Martin Leeway gets enough credit for his use of an upright, fretless electric bass from 1983-1986. A very similar sounding bass appears in Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science in 1983, and interestingly, it was played by Matthew Seligman, one of the four Twins members who was let go.
So here we have a band with the right look and sound for as many singles as they can deliver for the label. They had engineering and programming help from Thomas Dolby, who had been making money in the business since 1981 on Foreigner’s fourth album (“4”). They were just missing one key thing: consistently good lyrics. That’s one of their few weaknesses, and it has irked me for years. What brought this on is the numerous times I have compared Thompson Twins to their contemporaries in the synth-pop genre, particularly A Flock Of Seagulls, who in my analysis, did a little more with a little less. So let me dive into to some weak lines.
From Hold Me Now (1984)
You say I'm a dreamer, we're two of a kind
Both of us searching for some perfect world we know we'll never find
So perhaps I should leave here
Yeah, yeah, and go far away
But you know that there's nowhere that I'd rather be than with you here today
The video, by the way, is one of the best studio-shot music videos of the 1980s, up there with Killing Joke’s Love Like Blood.
The first verse of this smash hit is actually really good, depicting a couple that has their ups and downs. But things go off the rails in the second verse. We’re dreamers, fine. And then there’s this silly empty threat to run away. ‘Just kidding! I’d never do that. The perfect world is here babe, even though I just said we’ll never find it.’ Ugh, this is messy and weak. And yet the musical composition and mix makes it one of their best songs. In fact, if they didn’t have this smash hit, their shelf life would have been a lot shorter.
Moving on. The Gap (1984)
East is east, west is west
Two different colors on the map
We say break the line, chew the fat
Keep moving out into the gap
To a degree, I like the humor in this song. It’s inspired by 1,000 Nights with a sprinkle of good ‘ol T.E. Lawrence British imperialism, and it’s not not meant to be taken seriously. But I know poor lyrics when I hear them. Often it is better to be obtuse and weird than pull off this silly path to get to the title of the song. So, wait, this really is about geography?
And finally King For A Day (1985)
If I was king for just one day
I would give it all away
I would give it all away to be with you
If I was king for just one day
I have just one thing to say
You know what love is
All we need to get us through
Ugh. This is the culprit. This is the song that throws us a false scenario (like the 'I’m leaving, just kidding’ line, from Hold Me Now) and also a direct quote of a Beatles song. Plus it gives us a list of luxurious things the singer could have if he was king, but also a declaration that if he was king, he’d give it up for his love. I can’t deal with this. I gong this song. Into the trap door it goes. I don’t think I like a single verse of this song. It sucks.
Okay, I have written a lot and I’ve taken some big swings at a synth-pop band that has poor lyrics in 3 of their big hits. That’s not so bad, considering how many other bands of the era had bigger hits with poor lyrics. I guess what bothers me is that these were hits. Howard Jones had hits, from 1983 to 1989. Jones had smarter lyrics.
Did Thompson Twins have any good songs? Why yes, they did!
While I don’t love their minor 1983 hit, We Are Detective, the lyrics are good. They make sense and don’t annoy. It’s a whimsical, comical song inspired by The Adventures of Tintin, which I didn’t know in 1983 and I still don’t know now.
What’s that? The band name is also inspired by Tintin? The Thompson Twins are twin detectives in the comic? Someone really liked Tintin.
A Thompson Twins song I really like is Love On Your Side (1983). It’s simple, but it also isn’t. There is some slick, radio-friendly channel separation at work. This song has their trademark groovy bass, that sounds a bit like the bass synth in Human League’s Don’t You Want Me (1982). It has a chanting chorus and some good synth drums. It’s a little dark and self-deprecating. It’s about a guy who just isn’t going to win the one he desires. And -bonus- it references In The Name Of Love with a quick keyboard riff! It’s one of their very best tracks. It’s almost precisely 4 minutes long. “Rap, Boy, rap!”
Doctor! Doctor! (1984) is better still! I was a big fan of Dr. Who at the time, so that only helped matters. Silly lyrics, yes. Notice how the sung words start and stop. There’s very little flow. In many Thompson Twins songs, these starts and stops draw attention to how poor the lyrics are. But Doctor! Doctor! makes sense! There are stronger harmonies and backing vocals on this one as well, plus a real, genuine synthesizer solo (featuring a Oberheim OBX, I think). The drum machine / percussion sounds are from a Prophet 5.
While weaker, and hobbled a by use of the inappropriate Oriental Riff, Lies (1983) is still a good Twins hit. It was the single that came after Love on Your Side on their first of three biggest albums. Again, a chant-like chorus carries it. And it is somewhat fun. I will always like the line “Cleopatra died for Egypt, what a waste of time.” I never saw the video for this song. It’s a wacky homage to the final scene from 2001. It is weird! Is the band both in the bed and dancing around the room?
I’m saving the best for last. Their best song is probably Lay Your Hands On Me (1985). The first recorded version was okay. It has their trademark bass and that percussion tone that I think is a Prophet 5. So it sounds like a song from their 1984 record, like Hold Me Now. But Nile Rodgers was brought in to punch it up, and punch it up he did, with a guitar, some better layering and more backing vocals. This wasn’t just a hit, it was their last great original song. And I can say that with confidence as the other singles on their 1985 album were the awful Don’t Mess With Doctor Dream, King For A Day, and their worst song, You Killed The Clown.
Can I pause for a moment and say how much I hate You Killed The Clown? I think the dislike for clowns is pretty widespread, so the title alone is a strike against the song. When I first heard the song around 2002, devouring as much New Wave music as I could, I remember questioning the meaning. Did a Debbie Downer put a stop to the fun? Did someone put a stop to comedy at a party or on a night out? Well, the lyrics suggest that someone shot down a woman who was being funny. Someone shut down the girl who was about to become the life of the party:
Draped in silk gown
She danced around
She filled this place with her smile
She was the queen
Of an Amazon dream
She made us feel for a while
Was it from spite
Or just sheer delight
You stooped so low
I wanna know
Why you killed the clown
(Yeah) You shot her down
I watch you try
Try to make that girl cry
So you could be king for just one day
And you said that her smile
Was no more than a lie
Just because she had something, something to say
Was it from spite
Or just sheer delight
You stooped so low
I wanna know
Why you killed the clown
(Yeah) You shot her down
Yeah! Why did you shoot her down? And why did you make her cry so you could be king for a day? Ah, there goes Alanah Currie, referencing another bad song on the album! This band released their most successful trio of albums between 1983 and 1985. The last of that trilogy was terrible, aside from the great Lay Your Hands On Me. But the first two are their best. That wonderful bass and Prophet 5 is prevalent in so many of their songs from this trilogy. That’s their defining sound. That bass setup is overused, perhaps, but look at what they accomplished. They made four albums (half of which were good) and delivered over 10 hit singles in under four years. They toured. They played Live Aid in Philadelphia (while their close friend Thomas Dolby played keyboards for David Bowie at Wembley). Their sound and theme was consistent. They worked themselves to utter exhaustion (as young New Wave bands do). And then when Joe Leeway left the band, they carried on as a duo for 7 long years.
In the years that followed, I paid no attention to Thompson Twins, with one big exception. Their very good dance cover of Cole Porter’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was recorded around 1989, and was included on the excellent AIDS research and activism benefit album Red Hot + Blue.
Today, the Thompson Twins carry on with just lead man Tom Bailey touring and performing, occasionally joined by Thomas Dolby. They are touring together in this summer’s Totally Tubular Festival in the US.