"I remember being kind of isolated, feeling kind of spatially uncomfortable," Tom Bailey, former Thompson Twin and now the musical half of Babble, recounts his childhood, "I was very introspective. I tended to lock myself in my room playing records, and before that, spent a couple of hours every day playing the piano. I was stuck out on this farm. I lived in a fairly remote spot on the outskirts of our town, a long spot away from my school friends. So, in the evenings it was a disappointment that we couldn't get together. I didn't get much chance to hang out with my friends until much later on (in my teens). I always...felt as though my social development was retarded somehow. I didn't feel very sure of myself."
"I remember that I threatened to become a teacher at one stage. Well, I was (a teacher) for a while and then I wandered off to try to get into the music business. I think that maybe that was a massive disappointment (for my parents)." And how do Horace and Vivienne - a doctor and nurse, respectively, who met while working in the same British hospital- view their rebellious son's music career now, nearly twenty years after Tom dropped the proverbial bombshell? "Oh, I don't know....I think with some amusement," Bailey laughs. "My (childhood) recollections are centered around my impressions of not fulfilling them. When you go off and say 'I'm going to be in a band,' and they go 'Ahhhh...' But, of course, now many years later they can stop worrying about it because it was successful. I don't think they've ever listened to (Thompson Twins' or Babble's music), apart from (seeing or hearing) us accidentally on television when they were watching or something like that. My parents came to one concert very very late in the career of the Thompsons (as Bailey informally refers to the band that made him a household name around the world), in England, I think just to catch us before it (the band) was done."
Considering the astronomical commercial success the Thompson Twins achieved over the course of their career, the Baileys needn't worry. Tom's made good on his own, even if it did come at the expense of his parent's desires. But nearly every parent expects more from their children than often those children are willing or even able to deliver. For Tom, the expectation was a career in medicine, as both his mother and father and two sisters-one older, one younger- earned their livings in the field (though his sisters are still gainfully employed, his parents are both since retired). Ironically, it was his father, Horace, who unwittingly set a young Tom Bailey on a course that would ultimately traverse the stormy seas of the music industry; from the starving artist stage of squatting in an abandoned building (with his old school chums, with whom he founded the Thompsons) to the top of the international pop charts.
"(My father) was a rather keen amateur pianist and organist," the forty-three-year-old Bailey informs. "I was lucky in the respect that he exposed me to things that were pretty demanding for most children. For example, he was really interested in North German Baroch music. (And) because I showed an interest in music, I was in the school orchestra and the school choir...the church choir. I had to go to church seven times a week. Although you can imagine how one could resent all that, I learned so much about music there."
Being brought up in "your traditional Anglican-Christian household," where music was appreciated not only for its artistic value, but also for its relationship with Christian dogma, proved to have a significant effect on Bailey in his formative years. Add to this the fact that Bailey's secondary education was gained at a traditional Anglican school built in the 1470's which was attached to the town church, where the teachers wore caps and gowns and the curriculum was decidely religious. It's not hard to pinpoint this shy, awkward teenager's orchestral musical influences, which have purveyed Bailey's songwriting for the past two decades. "(It's) not that I go to church anymore or anything like that," Bailey admits, "but I still have a sort of built-in understanding of classical harmonies, for example, just because of what I went through there.
Still, like most young adults, Bailey grew restless in this conservative farming community. Sensing that there was more to the world than that to which he'd been exposed, in 1975 Bailey planned a sojourn to India, a country who's mystical appeal beckoned to him. Upon arriving, Bailey knew instantly that he'd come to the right place. There was an indescribable, other-worldly connection between this peaceful land and the inquisitive youth. One which Bailey hardly had the time to discover, as he explains, "(That first trip) it was right after I left college, so I must have been about twenty one. I went there partly as a tourist and partly searching for something, you know? Anyway, by accident, although an Indian person would say it was entirely by design (laughs), I got very ill. I ended up being taken in by the members of this monastery and I was basically too sick to do anything but stay there. And in a sense, I got my feet right under the table by getting so sick that I couldn't just go running around chasing the sights. I ended up just living this quiet but intense life in this Himalayan monastery...and ended up having a fantastic time."
Since then, Bailey's returned to India frequently and has incorporated his experiences there into the body of his work. Babble---his current project with his ex-Thompson Twin, and now wife, Alannah Currie---revels in ancient mysticism and religious connotation. Encompassing a celestial, time-defying aura, Babble is best described as world-ambient music; trance-inducing synth patterns weave a majestic tapestry of sound, with Bailey's inspiring lullabies providing the thread that connects each musical cloth together. "I really am (inspired by world music). There's some African music that I'm really in love with; my favorite singer in the world is Milton Naciemento from Brazil and so on. But I'd have to say that in terms of world music, and in terms of music in general, Indian plays the biggest part. I listen to banghra (India's most-famed musical style, recently employed by the internationally acclaimed DJ/artist Bally Sagoo) quite a bit, but I also listen to even more traditional forms than that."
Currie, who's always been Bailey's lyrical side-kick --in fact, she's penned everything from the Thompson's big hits to Babble's more eloquent ramblings-- is more of a modernist, specifically when it comes to percussion. Her recent decision to contribute to the songwriting process from a musical standpoint has proven to be a powerful antithesis to Tom's free-flowing romanticism. The pairing of the two, first as musicians and later as husband and wife, has been an effective counter-balance for over fifteen years; yielding scores of global hits, two phenomenal Babble records and two children: Jackson and Indigo. Bailey remembers the first time he saw Alannah, "She was pretty full-on; I think I was intrigued. We met because we were neighbors. We lived on a street of squats, it was low-class housing, border-line illegal. In England, it was kind of a lifestyle statement for punks at that time. But, yeah, we lived across the street from each other on a tiny little street of squats, along with several other groups as it happens (including the Slits and the members of The Pop Group)."
"I was kind of fresh in town at that point. I'd moved down from the north of England to live in this squat, because Joe (Leeway, the third musician most often associated with the Thompsons, although the band originally consisted of seven members) - who was an old college buddy of mine - had said 'Hey, I've got a squat, do you want to move in?' And so I moved in. I was slightly intimidated by the big city," Bailey's small-town charm is still apparant, even after all these years away. "I guess meeting someone like Alannah who had been there awhile and was very confident and knew her way around and was a tough woman in that sense...I hadn't come across too many women like that. I was careful around her, put it that way. Actually, we just became friends a long time before we became lovers."
The rest is pretty much history. Bailey teamed up with Currie and old school mates Leeway, John Roog and Peter Dodd (along with Chris Bell on drums), creating the nucleus that was the original guitar-oriented Thompson Twins, releasing their debut on T Records, "A Product of Participation", in 1981. Adding Matthew Seligman on bass - and employing the skills of Thomas Dolby on additional synths - the band went into the studio to record their sophomore follow-up, "Set" (released in 1982 in the U.S. on Arista as "In the Name of Love", which added "Make Believe" and "Perfect Game" from "Product..."). Bailey explains the band's singular defining moment, an oddball occurrence that ended up as the catalyst for the Thompson Twins' ensuing success, "We didn't have enough material for that album. So I wrote this sort of song ("In the Name of Love") that was intended to fill some space, and it became the big single. It was also the first track where we used electronic drums and mostly synthesizer rather than guitars. So (because that song became so popular) it put into sharp relief whether we were doing the right thing with the old guitar-based Thompson Twins. These things happen. It's a voyage of discovery. And although I instinctively knew that that was the way we had to go, I in no way resented the time spent with the guitar-based band because it was a fantastic group. Yeah, maybe it was a little bit over the hill there at that point. If I think back at what my three or four favorite concerts were that I played in, two of them are from that era. I always remember it being an astounding live band. There was one notable concert at Reading University (just southwest of London) where we played seven encores. It's kind of gone down in the mythological history of Reading University; (we were) the band that they wouldn't let go home."
Even so, it was the synthipop eccentricities of the Thompsons that propelled them to superstardom and which ultimately led to the group paring down to the trio as which they are remembered. Dodd, Roog, Bell and Seligman all left due to creative differences with the band's new direction ("I think that inevitably there had to be some animosity," Bailey admits) and Tom and Alannah became (with the additional assitance of Leeway) the heavyweight tag-team synthesizer duo that they remain to this day.
Yet, even with a string of New Romantic classics to his credit ("Hold Me Now," "In the Name of Love," "Love On Your Side," "Lay Your Hands On Me," "Doctor, Doctor" et al.), Bailey became restless again towards the end of the last decade. New Wave was out and it seemed as though the Thompsons had, as Bailey describes it, "gone missing." Leeway left the band and subsequently found himself involved in legal wrangles, and the Thompson's had seemingly lost their stranglehold on the Top of the Pops. They say that "all good things must come to an end." For the musical follower of Eastern Mysticism and his wife/partner, the end was fast approaching.
"I sort of remember the events at the time and I remember feeling like we were a successful pop group, but we were starting to wonder what to do next," Bailey recalls. "I think we tried to offshoot the Thompsons into a different direction; we had a remix group that was essentially the same people along with our engineer, running alongside the Thompson Twins. Some people were saying, 'But this (kind of music) isn't going to get you on the pop charts.' We just got tired of saying, 'But we don't *want* to be on the pop charts.' In the end it just became kind of obvious (to disband). It was at first a reluctant decision, but then we went with it and the Thompsons had to be kind of formally killed off and put out to pasture."
What Bailey and Currie did want was a chance to escape from the confines of pop-song structure, the composition of which leaves little room for experimentation or innovation. As Bailey describes it, "From the earliest days of being taught music, I always wanted to make music rather than to copy it, rather than to play it. I wanted to write. The idea of composition just completely fascinated me. I think that the pop architecture is something I became obsessed with. I wanted to understand it. Music has a necessary architecture. For example, if you look at the way dwellings are build around the world they all have different styles but certain things are in common. There has to be a way in and out; there has to be a place to lie down and go to sleep. Your three and a half minute pop song has to have those necessary things as well. It has to have a way of getting into it, a way of telling a story or putting something across and a way of hooking the chorus. I wanted to know how you build a house in that way and do it as well as I possibly could. When I felt that it was no longer a challenge, then it was just an inadequate thing to be spending time on. I became kind of frustrated with that."
By symbolically wiping the slate clean, and pursuing a new identity as Babble, Bailey afforded himself the opportunity to compose music in an entirely different fashion. Rather than relegating himself to the constrictive nature of the Top 40 format, Bailey opted instead for music of more ethereal and epic proportions on the band's debut. Released in 1993 on Reprise, "The Stone" contained ten glistening gems of organic/synthetic orchestration, half of which exceeded six minutes in length. Even the album's single, "Tribe," clocked in at an unheard of five minutes forty-nine seconds.
Bailey justifies the band's seemingly sudden reversal, "Having for a long time before that been interested in those sort of groups like Can, who did those twenty minute sides, it wasn't like I had actually discovered it for myself. I had already been exposed to it. And of course, classical musical is very often a lot longer than three and a half minutes long. It was already there; it was just the next thing to be explored I guess. In terms of carrying a concept, we toyed with songs with very blatant messages and very clear stories being told, but they never really worked for us. In fact, I found that it took some of the magic out of it. I've never really been sure what any of ours were about, totally. I'm as much finding out about it as anyone who listens to it."
"I just ended up feeling great about "The Stone"," Bailey continues. "It's one of my favorite records that we've ever made. But in terms of feeling that something's successful, you see what I mean. You walk away from it and sort of live with it for awhile and then think 'Yeah, we discovered something and it was great.' And then you move on. As far as it being commercially successful, we're now completely disconnected from sales figures or airplay or anything like that....probably because we're not getting it (laughs), so it would be foolish."
The fact that Babble's work (including last year's sophomore outing, "Ether") may not be receiving the same sort of mass success as did the Thompsons in their day, neither assaults Bailey's ego or deters him from continuing on with his audio experiments. In fact, Bailey's retreat from the spotlight has been, in a way, deliberate. He and Currie left London years ago, relocating to her native New Zealand countryside, to a small house surrounded on three sides by dense forrest and fronted by a large natural lake.
Aside from the obvious benefits for his children (whom Bailey admits will have a hard time readjusting to city life in the future - "It's going to be interesting trying to take them back to the city and getting them to wear clothes"), Bailey claims being in such close proximity to nature has inspired him musically. "When you live in the city, you forget about the very big rhythms that are going on around the planet," Bailey contends. "Here, we're just permanently focused on things like the phases of the moon and the tide coming in and out. Changes in the weather and all those sorts of things become absolutely crucial to how your life is going to be. And certainly the changing of seasons here is just incredible. (Nature) is beautiful, but it's also something that you know you'll never really understand."
Babble's music is routed in Nature and Mysticism, to be sure, but Bailey admits there are other, more bio-physical influences at work. Even though Bailey contends that "I never had a drink or took any drugs during the entire career of the Thompsons," he does admit to having his own particular vice; a vice which, it turns out, stirs his creativity in much the same way as narcotics influence other musical artists. "I like to include those motifs which are all about exploration. But some of them....I'm about to turn you on to a secret now....I stopped taking drugs a long time ago, but there's something about music that is almost a drug. It has that psychedelic experience locked inside it somehow. I like to liberate that sensation in the music that I write, where you feel like you've been lifted and taken off somewhere."
To call Bailey's music uplifting is an understatement. In fact, Tom Bailey has lead millions of fans on a twenty-year-long travel to distant lands bound by synthesizer-lined skies and the elemental heavens of popular electronic music. Even though while this piece was being written Reprise Records and Babble reached a mutual agreement to part ways after two albums, Bailey is undeterred. Finding a new fascination with the art of scoring films, he's currently finishing up the soundtrack to the upcoming independent New Zealand short, "Possum", and has begun composing a series of experimental piano pieces for possible future release. As a remixer, he's kept busy by his work with the classical Indian project, Bic Runga, and is also polishing off production of the percussive-techno outfit, Mesh.
Bailey also informs that the music he composed for the "Mortal Kombat 2" soundtrack, which was not used for that project, will finally be offered commercially as part of the conceptual "Sex on the Street" compilation. And with half of a new Babble record already written, it's only a matter of time before Bailey and Currie find themselves back at the top, with a new label and a new following of fans.
You see, Bailey transcends the music industry. Not one to bow down to the whims and fads of disposable pop-culture, he is instead an icon of creative individualism. Who'd have thought that this dreamy British beau-hunk would turn out to be such a maverick?
Only Horace and Vivienne Bailey, I suppose.
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