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