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PAUL WEBB, FROM TALK TALK TO… RUSTIN MAN: “NO, MY DAUGHTERS DON’T CONSIDER ME AS A LEGEND…”

The band’s former bassist left Talk Talk in 1988 after the release of the masterpiece Spirit Of Eden, and has since recorded or produced several albums including the monumental Out of Season with Beth Gibbon (Portishead) in 2002. A bit mad scientist, isolated and confined with his wife and daughters in the English countryside, he has just published the twilight Clockdust (Domino Recordings), an album of rare delicacy which owes as much to Jacques Brel as to Joy Division, even to Cab Calloway. How is it possible ? Explanations with the person concerned, as caustic as English can be.

So, like that, according to your Instagram account, you DJ for your daughters during confinement and you play them electro with Speedway by The Prodigy to challenge them. And you don’t last until the end of the piece! After being part of Talk Talk and recording an album with Beth Gibbons, do your daughters know that you are considered a music legend?

Paul Webb (bursts out laughing): No, and you could say they don’t have much respect for the old man that I am! They know that I have made music and that I still do since I have a studio at home, in a barn, but I have never forced them to listen to the records that I recorded with Talk Talk or Beth.

I looked everywhere and couldn’t find why you chose this pseudonym Rustin Man. What is he hiding?

Paul Webb: I didn’t want to make music under my own name. When I was in Talk Talk, I could play a role, hide behind the image of the group. It’s the same approach for what I do solo, I hide behind a character. I am just an illusion, a kind of mark. So it’s both me and someone other than me that you hear on this record. The name Rustin Man came to me while playing on “rusting man”, the rusty man that I am gradually becoming (Paul turned 58 at the start of the year). I am decomposing, I am gradually falling apart.

You know that in French, the word “patch” makes you think of a bandage that you put on a wheel that has just punctured…

Paul Webb: I didn’t know but I like that idea too.

Two albums in a row, one in 2019, the other in 2020, while the first with Beth Gibbons dates back to 2002. What’s happening to you? You’re in a rush ?

Paul Webb: It took me a while because I built my own studio and I wanted to take the time to experiment, to learn to play certain instruments that I didn’t master. I also wanted to find my voice, my singing voice (Paul did some backing vocals in Talk Talk but mainly played bass). And then I wanted to give time to time. I use it as an instrument, a filter to sift things. I recorded the songs for Drift Code (released in 2019) and Clockdust at the same time, then I spent two to three weeks deciding which track I kept for which record. I first published Drift Code, and so I gave myself time before listening to the Clockdust tracks again to refine them as I saw fit.

You said that Clockdust was designed under the assumed influence of Jacques Brel. But how did you discover it? Via English covers by Scott Walker or Marc Almond, or in the original French version?

Paul Webb: I really like listening to music sung in a language I don’t know. It creates a strange feeling, you can fantasize about the meaning of the song much more easily. On the French side, I was very interested in Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel (Belgian, obviously, editor’s note). One day, my brother brought me back from Paris a box set dedicated to Brel which I wore out from listening to it on my turntable. I also knew the fabulous English cover of Jackie by Scott Walker which left a lasting impression on me.

Did you already have in mind the emotions you wanted to convey with Clockdust’s songs?

Paul Webb: Yes, and no. I wanted the songs to come from the heart, to have soul with an atmosphere that was both “claustrophobic” and naive. As if they were shy songs. I also wanted them to be sung as if by an actor in these old films from the 40s and 50s. A sort of narrator. For the title Old Flamingo, I am the voice in the head of a little girl. His father is one of those old school gangsters. He knows he is reaching the end of his road. He wants to protect her and tell her that he loves her. I wanted the singing voice to be soft, quiet. Even gangsters have children…

When you were a teenager and you met Lee Harris (future Talk Talk drummer) in Southend-by-the-Sea, were you listening to this very cabaret type of music, or the Cab Calloway-style jazz that Clockdust sometimes refers to?

Paul Webb: No, I was really into reggae and electronic music of the time (Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, etc.). But when I was younger, when I was 5/6 years old, I remember that we listened to Frank Sinatra or the fabulous Mills Brothers at home. The microphones used had, and still have, incredible sound. Some are worth fortunes, up to 20,000 Euros. I have a sort of nostalgia for that era, which was not at all rock’n’roll. No, not nostalgia… Let’s say that the voices of this era give me sensations, emotions. I can’t say that I’m nostalgic for that era since when I was with Talk Talk, I wasn’t thinking about that music at all and I’m someone very anchored in the present. For example, I have a lot of trouble remembering specific things with Talk Talk… For me, it’s a thing of the past.

Do you still remember playing in front of 75,000 people in a stadium in Greece in the early 80s as the opening act for The Clash?

Paul Webb: Yes, vaguely. But I don’t think it was The Clash, more like The Cure. You know, when I was on stage, I was really into the music. I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on around me.

You mentioned microphones from the 1940s, but you use a lot of them yourself. Up to six to record in your studio…

Paul Webb: Yes, I use it creatively to multiply sound recordings with an instrument, a guitar, a bass. Then I work a bit like a painter by choosing which take I’m going to use in a piece. Each microphone gives a different color, a different nuance. It’s a process that I find very organic. That’s how I worked on Drift Code and also on Clockdust.

If you went back in time and met the kid you were at 13, what would you say to him? What advice would you give him?

Paul Webb: Not much. Maybe make more music, record more songs, write more songs. But youth is first meant to be wasted, right?

How did you start making music? With Lee joining a reggae group called Eskalator?

Paul Webb: I started by taking piano lessons, then I joined a marching band like a lot of kids. Then, I started playing bass because in all the bands I went through, there was a guitarist, a drummer but there was always a bassist missing. With Lee, we started doing concerts very young. To tell you the truth, we were even too young to be allowed to drink alcohol. Then, I went to an art school. And I met Mark (Hollis, editor’s note). I always wanted to be a musician. But before Talk Talk, I was pretty obsessed with a band like Joy Division, the Doors too. I was very attracted to a certain darkness in the music.

Many British critics compare Rustin Man’s music to that of Robert Wyatt or to pieces by David Bowie. Is this a good or bad interpretation?

Paul Webb: I like both. I must say that if I compare myself on the vocal side with these two singers, it is something that completely escapes me. I would rather say that I am very influenced by a certain atmosphere, that of Berlin in the 30s or 40s, cabaret music. I’m a very visual person, and I remember a lot of old black and white films, and a certain lost innocence that showed through in the images of the time.

You say that you are not nostalgic, but you still seem very anchored in the past. Do you have any regrets about Talk Talk? A detail, but is it true that the group was first called 300 Cubs?

Paul Webb: How do you know that? Yes, it’s true, we were first called 300 Cubs but we only had to keep that name for one, two, maybe three weeks, before renaming ourselves Talk Talk. On regrets… how could I have any? Talk Talk remained honest until the end. The group stopped right when it needed to stop. A perfect trajectory that I accept and which I like.

With time, and the sudden disappearance of Mark Hollis at the beginning of last year, speculation has been rife among fans of the group. So I just ask: do you know if there are any unreleased Talk Talk tracks somewhere, perhaps buried in a trunk, under a tree in the English countryside?

Paul Webb (amused): No. I’m sure that it’s not the case. There is no treasure to be found. If there is one, it’s on the records we recorded. Nowhere else.

Regarding Rustin Man, what directions do you plan to take for the rest of this project? You mentioned your taste for electronic music…

Paul Webb: I just know the next record should take less time. I’ve already started working on a few pieces. What I want, what I’m looking for, is to be surprised.

When the confinement is over, will you tour with a group in Europe? Possibly with Lee on drums (he participated in Rustin Man albums)?

Paul Webb: With Lee, I don’t think so. He is busy on his own project. I plan to do some shows with Rustin Man. For now, we have three dates in November this year but none in France. It is planned that I will go on stage with a band in which there will be the bassist of the group Dez Mona (Nicolas Rombouts), a Belgian group whose album Hilfe Kommt I produced in 2009. I can’t wait to play the pieces of Rustin Man on stage and see how they evolve.

Comments collected by Frédérick RAPILLY (April 2020)

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Heartbeats Nov 23 (Sweden) Thomas Balslev

With the album ‘Spirit of Eden’, the popular 80s band Talk Talk flopped for the first time in their career. No one understood the mesterværk, de selv mente, de havde lavet. Today, 35 years after the record’s release, it is considered to be one of the world’s best and most significant albums.

Rumor has it that the man at EMI started crying when he heard the finished version of Talk Talk’s album ‘Spirit of Eden’ for the first time. Not because of its immense beauty, but because he knew right away that it wouldn’t sell very well.

Possibly also because he and the rest of the record company had posted a considerable sum of English pounds in just that record. At the end of the 80’s, Talk Talk was a good stock on the way up: They were a popular band, and their new wave-inspired pop music had attracted a solid group of fans on the three previous albums. They weren’t like the other bands, but had hits, and the reviewers were happy.

When Talk Talk’s third record ‘The Color of Spring’ came out, they toured so fiercely that it nearly killed them. Still, in 1987 they found the energy to make perhaps their best album of them all, ‘Spirit of Eden’. An album that is a classic example of being ahead of its time.

The man inside the record company was scolded. The record sold almost nothing. There were six songs on, but not one was suitable as a single. Rolling Stone Magazine gave the record one out of five stars, and in general the reception was lukewarm among reviewers, who among other things criticized Talk Talk for becoming too self-congratulatory.

“Instead of getting better or worse, this band just got more pretentious every year,” as one wrote. Today, we only want to give him partial credit, because ‘Spirit of Eden’ is admittedly pretentious, but it’s also really good. In many eyes it is considered to be the first post-rock album ever and to be defining for a wave of alternative rock bands such as Radiohead, Mogwai and Low (here, a newer band like Lowly could be mentioned).

In terms of genre, ‘Spirit of Eden’ is most of all an experimental hybrid, which mixes pop, rock and jazz in a rare way, which ultimately emerges as ambient avant-garde. When you say something like that, there are probably many people who will be scared, but the truth is that both your mother and your skeptical friend will like this album.

There aren’t really any choruses, not any ordinary song structures, but mood-saturated progressions that move merrily forward and around like shoals of fish enveloped in an ocean of reverb, piano and muted trumpet. Much of the time there is no, or almost no, sound – and if you want to intellectualize about it, you would probably say that it is an artistic study of the interaction between the phenomena of silence and sound.

An illusion with 16 guests

The songwriter and lead singer of Talk Talk, Mark Hollis, is heroically famous for once saying that it is better to play one note well than to play two notes badly. He had the attitude that if you’re going to break the silence, you have to have a reason for it, and ‘Spirit of Eden’ is a full-fledged reflection of that – only surpassed by Mark Hollis’ self-titled solo album from 1998, which was so minimalist that one reviewer called it “possibly the most quiet and intimate album ever made.”

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Rustin Man: The origins resonate in the present – 2020

The story of a musician who once conquered the world with Talk Talk. Paul Webb aka Rustin Man then took a lot of time for his solo career. Now he inspires as a singer-songwriter.

A xylophone is not just a xylophone. At least not in a Paul Webb recording. With a blissful look, the perfectionist tells how he tried out ten different microphones in different positions until he found the right timbre.

Paul Webb lives with his family in a secluded country house in Essex. He also records his music there. “The whole house is often laid out with cables and blocked with instruments,” he grins. «But every evening when a session is over, I pack everything up nicely. And even this work makes me happy.”

The Times of Talk Talk

Meticulousness and passion take time. Seventeen years elapsed between the album Webb aka Rustin Man released with Portishead singer Beth Gibbons in 2002 and his debut solo album, Drift Code, which was released last year. Now comes the next beat with «Clockdust». Webb says he knew early on that his song ideas would last for two albums. He worked on all of them at the same time in order to bring them into a coherent sequence at the end.

Paul Webb’s career began in distant times. And it’s also an example of how badly artistic integrity and originality align with the market analysis of record majors. Webb and his pal Lee Harris are from Southend. Webb initially played bass, Harris drums. The guidance counselor said Webb had “zero talent for anything.” But he ended up at art school, where he met Depeche Mode singers Dave Gahan and Alison Moyet in the same class.

In the summer of 1980, Webb, now eighteen, drove to London with Harris to audition for singer-songwriter Mark Hollis. Hollis was a few years older and needed a band to make his ideas sonically palatable to the record companies. He liked the enthusiasm of the two younger musicians so much that he formed the Talk Talk trio with them.

“I left home with a promise to be back for dinner. But I never came back.” Soon Talk Talk was under contract with EMI and celebrated their first hits. “It was incredible,” Webb is still amazed. Then, of all people, the career counselor in question got in touch to hire Talk Talk for a benefit concert. But the band was already commuting between London and New York by Concorde. “With the best will in the world, we didn’t have time for the careers adviser. I hung up the phone and yelled, ‘Hallelujah! Life is sweet!’»

In 1988 Talk Talk had produced their fourth album: «Spirit of Eden». The recordings lasted a year. The sound should sound like “a night in 1967”, wrote producer Phill Brown in his memoirs. Only instruments and equipment that had existed in 1967 were used, the lighting in the studio was psychedelic, the atmosphere euphoric. In the end, everyone involved was convinced that they had created a masterpiece.

With their sound, to which the Chelmsford Cathedral Choir contributed in addition to oboe, violin and harmonium, the six songs of “Spirit of Eden” tended towards contemporary orchestral music. On the other hand, they are reminiscent of the romantic-melancholic tradition of John Martyn or Nick Drake.

The list of musicians who cite the album as a source of inspiration today ranges from Radiohead to Placebo and Steven Wilson to Divine Comedy and Ghostpoet. “But when we played the album to our manager,” Webb recalls, “he shook his head and complained: What have you done! He knew that the music would hardly please the EMI bosses.” In fact, EMI even took the band to court for not delivering “a commercially satisfactory product” with the album. After all, the verdict was in favor of Talk Talk.

The death of Mark Hollis in February 2019 brought back old memories. Webb, who was no longer in contact with Hollis, didn’t bother too long: “I’m not a nostalgic person. What counts for me is the now and the future.” After Talk Talk, Webb, Harris and Phill Brown formed the trio O’Rang. Brown soon got out again, the work process was too tedious for him. Webb, on the other hand, remembers spontaneous improvisations “and a lot of fun”.

Your own voice

For the last few years, Webb has apparently been working on his own music without any financial pressure. At eight o’clock he took the children to school, then they played music, at 12 o’clock the late riser Lee Harris showed up in the studio, they worked until four o’clock when the children were picked up from school. During this time he not only developed his own style, but also his voice. Today, Paul Webb’s singing is remarkably similar to that of Mark Hollis, although his voice is reminiscent of Robert Wyatt here and there. As with Talk Talk, the instrumental arrangements range from autumnal brass parts to swinging jazz rhythms and shimmering guitars to spooky marimbas.

Thirty years after “Spirit of Eden”, Paul Webb has emerged from the shadow of that epochal work, but at the same time created an album that sounds a bit like a somewhat sunnier counterpart to it. “My record company never gave me any rules,” says Webb. “I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Mark Hollis had been allowed to work under similar circumstances.”

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Bravo Magazine, July 1986

Talk Talk’s singer Mark – he never goes on stage without his green glasses
Mark explodes on the mic!

Things get lively in the Talk Talk dressing room before the guys perform. Paul Webb (bass) and Lee Harris (drums), the two buddies who went to school together, let the vodka bottle spin or, to put it better, let it fly . Everyone stands in a corner of the room, takes a sip and tosses the bottle to their partner.

Singer Mark, who is quietly scribbling on a piece of paper at the table, keeps ducking his head in defense, but doesn’t complain a word to his bandmates.

But then, about ten minutes before the starting signal, things get serious. Mark dons his trademark, inevitable green glasses, and begins his “meditation.” Strange noises can be heard outside the door – deep grumbling, as if from a grizzly bear’s throat, alternating with high-pitched hissing sounds.

With such tones Mark sings himself loose. They work to systematically relax his whole body until he feels completely weightless.

The green glasses that bathe the whole world in a soft light for the singer serve the same purpose. The Talk Talk boss still has the same problems as at the beginning of his career: Large crowds scare the introverted guy quite a bit. Only when he has completely relaxed beforehand does he bring himself on stage. On stage, too, he squats down on the drum pedestal, seemingly meditating and with his head bowed, as soon as a solo is announced.

After the performance in Munich, Mark immediately disappeared into the hotel. While his band mates were having fun with the other rockers at a garden party, he was already in bed. Parties aren’t Mark’s thing.

I thought the singer was weak because of his shyness, but he is very tough. He has the two hotheads Lee and Paul fully under control. Mark, a vegetarian for years because he feels sorry for the animals being slaughtered, has now managed to “convert” the other two, not to eat meat anymore…

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Rock This Town, November 1984

Knock Knock, It’s Talk Talk

“I want to write songs that you will still want to listen to in twenty years”: says Mark Hollis, singer, leader, mastermind and spokesperson for Talk Talk. In his mouth, such a sentence contains neither pride nor smugness. Hollis loves music in general and his own in particular: He talks about his art with passion, leaves no detail unanswered and launches into marathon responses that ultimately make Talk Talk aptly named.

Formed at the dawn of 1982, Talk Talk imposed itself on the world scale without any competitor having had time to set foot on the starting block in the neighboring lane. In fact, a bit like Mike Oldfield, Chris De Burgh or Murray Head, Talk Talk has no real challenger since they do not fit into any one category and do not convey any particular image.

MH: “Talk Talk has succeeded thanks to the quality of our music. We did nothing but record songs: immediately, they were liked. Our success is not due to a suggestive look or provocative videos. Yet, I like videos, but why approach it from an overkill perspective. Now, all the groups show themselves in the videos differently than how they are in reality. This afternoon, I just saw Billy Idol on TV… Balls, yes. We are simple guys and we present ourselves as such. In “Dum Dum Girl”, our latest music video, we are seen right in the middle of a field and I sing into a microphone, live. It’s really my voice in the field that you hear”.

A moving formation
“Party’s Over”, the group’s first LP was released in July 82. Produced by Mike Robinson. Talk Talk consisted of four members at the time: Mark Hollis (vocals), Lee Harris (drums), Paul Webb (bass), and Simon Brenner (keyboards). “It’s My Life” followed in February 84, produced by Tim Friese-Greene. The line-up is now reduced to three members (Hollis, Harris, Webb) who called on a few friends: Robbie MacIntosh (Pretenders), Morris Pert (Brand X), Phil Ramocon,… The two albums were of course preceded and followed by a string of singles: “Mirror Man”, “Talk Talk”, “Today”, “My Foolish Friend”, “It’s My Life”, “Such A Shame”,…

MH: “I think our two LPs contain similar material but it’s the approach that distinguishes them. In “Party’s Over” we still have the influence of punk, we are simple and direct there, whereas in “It’s My Life” we developed and took care of the orchestrations. In fact, “It’s My Life” should theoretically have been an album without artifice, jazzy in the Coltrane spirit: piano, sax, bass, drums. But as the work progressed , we collaborated with guests. I insist on the term “guests” and especially not studio musicians”.

RTT: When you started, you recorded demos with Jimmy Miller, a very sixties producer (Traffic, Blind Faith”. Do you like the mentality of that time?

MH” “Absolutely. And for two reasons. First, in the sixties, I have the impression that the albums were much better than today. Bands like King Crimson and Traffic for example have recorded LPs where there is not a piece to throw away. In the 80s, few albums can be listened to from start to finish. Then at that time the look was of minimal importance. The public expected music above all else”.

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Mark Hollis: Interview with Viviane Morrison 1998

What did you have in mind when you embarked on the adventure of this first solo album?

“When I decide to record a record, I have one priority: not to repeat myself. With Laughing Stock, Talk Talk’s arranging and recording methods had reached their limits. For this new album, I wanted a minimalist and acoustic approach. I used the minimum of material, trying to make the titles sound as real as possible.”

Seven years passed between Laughing Stock and this first solo album. Did you spend all this time working on this record?

“Not really. The work was spread over several periods. Some were devoted to woodwind writing, others to notation or the piano. I spent a lot of time playing music for fun. Without thinking about recording an album.”

Which artists do you feel close to today?

“I’ve been listening to Morton Feldman a lot lately. He is a composer with whom I feel an affinity. Especially through his approach to instruments. His composition of string quartet and clarinet is the best I have heard in a long time.”

Could you tell us about the contrast between the moments of silence and the very acoustic instrumentation of this solo album?

“I think music is all about contrasts. Looking for them is a way to find your way. I wanted to create music in which silence is as important as what breaks it. One day I would like to be able to record original acoustic instruments and be able to reveal their fragility. I would also like to be able to write in a new style. For example, with elements of classical music echoing jazz, which itself echoes something else. Music should not be limited to a single element. It must leave an impression before heading elsewhere. You have to set a goal, otherwise composing is pointless.”

Why have you reduced the arrangements to the bare minimum?

“To have a simplistic approach so that each element finds its place when you record. This requires a talented sound engineer. He must understand how you want to create balance and adjust when necessary. Although all of these things exist as a whole, and despite the fact that it may seem insignificant, some instruments are naturally more dominant than others. For everything to fit into a sound framework, you need someone with a high level of technicality.”

Who did you turn to for the sound you had in mind?

“Phill Brown. He worked on The Color of Spring and The Laughing Stock. I know him since a long time. He played an important role in this new album. Contrary to what one might think, it was not recorded live, but the idea was to create that feeling.”

The disc is sometimes reminiscent of Robert Wyatt. Is it an artist you feel close to?

“I get on well with Robert Wyatt. I’ve been a fan of his work since his debut with Soft Machine. He’s an amazing drummer. His singing is also fascinating. The way he executes the vocals on Shipbuilding is breathtaking.”

Ex-Japan David Sylvian is also taking interesting directions. Some of them sometimes remind you of your work.

“It’s hard to say. I know who David Sylvian is but I don’t know his music well.”

Could you tell us about your approach to singing?

“I wanted to sing as naturally as possible. The lyrical aspect is essential. You have to be able to make the lyrics exist mentally so that they are sung correctly. To obtain a good result, it is necessary to record the voices and the music with the same criteria. Without making exceptions.”

Was achieving such freedom of writing complicated?

“I got lucky with Talk Talk. It’s My Life, our second album, was a huge success. This allowed us to have enough money to record The Color Of Spring and Spirit of Eden on our terms.”

I read that your two favorite films were The Bicycle Thief by Vittorio De Sica and Children of Paradise by Marcel Carné.

“Oh yes definitely. Absolutely.”

And can you tell us why?

“Because I find that the narration is secondary in Le Voleur de Bicyclette. It’s more about how the protagonists feel. What I love about this film is the relationship between father and son. She is so powerful. The fact that you take an object like a bicycle that is so incidental, anecdotal, and yet the implications of what that object meant to this family is so vast.”

Do you keep up to date with what is happening in the contemporary cultural field?

“I love the fact that in London you can access a crazy art installation. So much so that it is impossible to imagine a city other than a capital funding this kind of thing. I went to see a Nicholas Pope exhibition at the Tate. He exhibited huge clay models there. There was a strong smell of burnt oil. There was also an industrial soundtrack. The statues were grouped together in a kind of Mexican chapel. It took him more than seven years to complete this work (The Apostles Speaking in Tongues Lit By Their Own Lamps, editor’s note). He developed a disease that prevented his brain from functioning normally, but he continued to work. Mutual Interest, a work by Michal Rovner also marked me. It had three screens broadcasting off-camera images for twenty minutes, with strange zooms. Again, against a background of industrial music.”

You are a Londoner by birth. What is your relationship to this city?

“I like living in London. I feel at home there. This is where my children live. I want them to grow up in a multicultural society. I also want to be able to offer them a wide variety of activities. I just left this town a few years. I was in an album-tour cycle that never ended. I wanted to find a restful, quiet place with lots of space. I wanted to be part of a small community rather than being an anonymous person in London. When one of my sons turned eight, an important age in the development of children, I wanted him to be a little more aware of what the world represented. We moved back to London.”

Do you sometimes find your inspiration in books?

“The power of books is mighty. They force you to work your imagination. In literature as in music, you have to try to find a different force and rhythm. I think I got something special with the lyrics of Westward Bound. I won’t go so far as to say that they are more important than the others, but I am particularly proud of them. They are perhaps among the best I have done. I would find it easier to write music to accompany a book than for a film. A book contains more subtleties. It is rather rare for a film based on a book to be of higher quality than the original story. This is confirmed again with a book by Bruce Chatwin that I read last week. It’s called On The Black Hill. After the book was finished, I rented the movie. I couldn’t last more than ten minutes.”

You seem to be inspired by Ravel’s music. Is this really the case?

“I was made to listen to a piece by Ravel earlier that was supposed to sound like a song from the new album. I did’nt see it. My favorite compositions by Ravel are Mallarmé’s Trois Poèmes, his string quartets and his Miroirs for piano. Particularly the Oiseaux Tristes section, which I find really superb.”

Your writing style has evolved over time. It reaches a new dimension with this solo album.

“It is a natural change. When I started composing, I liked the classic verse / chorus / verse formula. I quickly tried not to repeat myself. This is a development that I find normal. I wasn’t the only one going this way. After the success with It’s My Life, Tim Friese-Greene constantly pushed us to renew ourselves. For Myrrhman, the first title of The Laughing Stock, we wanted to compose a song in which no part was repeated. For the following title, Ascension Day, the first verse was seven bars long, the second nine bars, the third ten bars. It was necessary to add words in coherence with this complex framework. All this in order to move forward. With the new album, I opted for more minimalism in the arrangements. There are never more than four or five bars. There are many acoustic instruments recorded calmly, in the most realistic way possible.”

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Rolling Stone (German Edition) – Mark Hollis Obituary 2019

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On the death of Mark Hollis: The man who needed no role models

by Sebastian Zabel 02/26/2019

He sang in a gesture of desperation, which one could find romantic. The record company also believed Talk Talk could be New Romantics. In the end he pushed his music into the open, genres dissolved in a sound of great freedom. An obituary for Mark Hollis.

A thin man with a long parting in the middle, straggly hair falling over his face, ears sticking out to the left and right, eyes behind dark wire-rimmed glasses. Mark Hollis wasn’t a pop star, he was the opposite of a pop star. A shy artist who refused the constraints and demands of the music industry, who gave up everything at the peak of his success, or rather: did what he and his band were headed for with unprecedented consistency, in the end alone with his producer and a piece of music of disappearance. Now Mark Hollis is dead.

His band was called Talk Talk, after a song the London musician wrote early on. The song “Talk Talk” had already set the tone that would make Hollis’ band unique: a perfunctory synth-pop track with lava flowing beneath its shell. Mark Hollis sang with an air of desperation, which could be considered romantic, and his record company thought the young band, which also included Hollis on bassist Paul Webb, drummer Lee Harris and keyboardist Simon Brenner, would do well to sway into the early ’80s To be able to fit in with the new romance wave. The Party’s Over was the name of their first album, a statement that was lost in the roar of its contemporaries Duran Duran and Depeche Mode.

Hollis could write hits. “It’s My Life”, “Such A Shame”, “Dum Dum Girl” – British pop music of the mid-80s had few better. And nobody could combine euphoria and depression more convincingly. “Funny, how I find myself in love with you?/ If I could buy my reasoning, I’d pay to lose,” Hollis sang emphatically, “It’s my life/ Don’t you forget/It never ends.”

That wasn’t true.

But of course, when 1986’s third album, The Color Of Spring, was released, there was no telling how Hollis would take his fellow musicians to the fringes of popular pop schemes and beyond. “Life’s What You Make It” is yet another unlikely and irresistible scream propelled by a powerful piano riff. A desperate celebration of life, baby.

After that, Mark Hollis and Talk Talk destroyed her career. Sprit Of Eden was released in 1988. They isolated themselves to the recordings in a church, ignored several of their label’s deadlines and far exceeded the budget. The album consisted of six pieces and knew no role models. At least not in the pop context it should have fit into. Hollis and producer Tim Friese-Greene, who had increasingly become Hollis’ closest musical partner, pushed their music into the open, genres dissolved in a sound of great freedom.

There were no more singles and nothing commercially to get. The label turned off the juice. And Hollis recorded a final talk-talk album with Friese-Greene called Laughing Stock, which is breathtaking in its soaring, meandering sonority. It was released on the jazz label Verve. A ghost piano gropes its way through “Taphead”, a trumpet finds a melody, Hollis whimpers from afar. The six pieces gyrate and flow into one another, like blues, jazz, trace elements of classical pop music and romantic classical music flow into one another. Mark Hollis’s desperation seemed to have given way to concentrated absorption.

Once again, twenty years ago, Mark Hollis gave a sign of life. He released a self-titled solo album, his first and only, a work of dissolution, music that seemed to stand in mid-air like a dragonfly, a sound against which Laughing Stock seemed heavy and voluminous. It was to be Hollis’ final departure from music.

What has Mark Hollis been up to for the past twenty years? One does not know. He remains hidden from the public. The few confidants he kept in touch with reported that he leads a modest life, made possible by the accomplishments of his hits, that he has an interest in football and shows no intention whatsoever of returning to music. A New Wave Syd Barrett.

He died on Monday February 18th.

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Dutch Magazine, 1998

Mark Hollis takes off the sticker from his first, self-titled solo CD at the beginning of the interview, which reads ‘formerly of Talk Talk’ as a recommendation. Then the humble Englishman explains why he does that. “Because the artwork looks better then, not because I distance myself from my past.” Still, we would like to talk about the past for a while. Because if someone like Mark Hollis doesn’t release a record for seven years, then something must be wrong. Not true? “No, not necessarily. I like to make music, but I don’t always feel the need to record it. I’ve written a number of compositions for woodwinds in recent years, just because I found it an interesting challenge. Every record that I record, I have the feeling that it could be the last. Until The Color Of Spring I always had to make concessions with Talk Talk. Only from Spirit Of Eden did I have total freedom to do whatever I wanted .. The same goes for Laughing Stock and this new CD.

If I decide to make another CD, I have to have a good reason for it. I need time to find out to what extent that new record differs from its predecessor so that it has a right to exist.” However, most artists have a contract stating that they have to make a new CD every few years. How did Mark Hollis get that coveted freedom to do whatever he wants? “The success of The Color Of Spring has ensured that. As a result, I have had hardly any contact with record companies for the past twelve years. That is a luxury position. I am treated the way one treats writers. As long as I have nothing to say, I don’t have to say anything. I do have a contract, but only when I requested an advance for this record, I committed myself to actually make it. But then I had already written the entire album and so I knew what I wanted. The arrangements were finished. I knew it was going to be a fully acoustic record. And I knew where, how and with whom I was going to record. So the basis was fixed, but when recording the musicians were given the freedom to interpret the material in their own way. The music had to sound relaxed, to the point of improvisation.” As you can hear on the rightly acclaimed CD, Mark Hollis’ music is becoming more and more subdued and smaller. Can he see that process continue? “Yes. at the moment I can’t imagine making another CD like this one. I can imagine making an instrumental record or an album for all piano. This album is the next step towards total silence, but that doesn’t mean that silence is more important than music or that I will ever stop making music. Music respects silence, silence sets the tempo of the music and music gives me a reason to break the silence.

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Pink Light with Mark Hollis (translated from Italian)

When spring arrives for the leader of Talk Talk it is the moment of poignant memories because love is never forgotten.

He is 24 years old, he is not beautiful at first sight and is also introverted, almost unfriendly. Then comes the charm of someone who is modest about his feelings and who experiences emotions in an intense and profound way. Mark Hollis, up to now has put into use all his sensations and a new romantic and refined rock has come out, that of Talk Talk, of which Mark is the mastermind. He is in love with Italy, with his city, London, when it is immersed in fog, with green spaces and with the “voice” of animals. He is especially in love with Africa which with its harsh and wild nature is the source of all his inspiration.

A less abstract love, a little more human love, don’t you have it, Mark?

“A girl you mean? No, at the moment I don’t have any fixed relationship, of the kind that make you say: “Now I have to go because she is waiting for me.” Well, I’m not in love.”

Haven’t you found a girl yet to make you dizzy?

“Maybe they are there and I meet them, but the fact is that at the moment I am too busy with my work and I can’t see them. You realize that I haven’t been home for about a year. This means that if I had a girlfriend she would be alone for twelve months! With this I am not a misogynist, I try to capture love a little here and a little there, as it happens to me.”

Do you mean that you make love the same even without being in love?

“Yes, I do, even if it is not a thought that haunts me, precisely because I am conditioned by my pace of work. Basically, I am like a footballer, even when I am not working I am forced to think only of my profession… little else.”

What strikes you first in a girl?

“The eyes, no matter what color they are, as long as they “speak”; then the legs, I like long and full legs, with a thin ankle. Clean and natural beauty immediately attracts me. The best is when the girl also has a good character and is intelligent.”

And how do you flirt with her?

“With words. I tell her many fantastic stories, I chat to the point of making her stunned and senseless. I try to convince her that I am the most interesting person on this earth. To court someone is beautiful and adventurous: you are in agony, in a sprint and you are not sure you will reach the finish line.”

Have you fallen in love often?

“So many times that I even believed that it wasn’t true love. The first happened at school, in the city where I lived and studied, Birmingham. She was a splendid girl, she studied in a classroom next to mine, I saw her everyday from the window and daydreamed. I didn’t think she could fall in love with me, but it happened.”

Why is it over?

“For the usual reasons that make all stories shipwrecked… out of boredom, or fatigue, or whatever.”

Did you suffer a lot?

“Yes, I don’t like to talk about it. Everything seemed perfect between us and, instead, at a certain point she left me for another… To say that I was very upset is an understatement.”

How are you in love? Closed and reserved or expansive?

“I am very sweet and outgoing, because my first concern is to make the woman I love happy.”

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Nick Cave / Mark Hollis 2021

One is finally speaking without restraint, the other is definitely silent. As the Aussie crooner embarks on a tour of meeting and chatting with his fans, the visionary Talk Talk frontman, evaporated for twenty years, has left this world for good.

The recent announcement of a European tour (which unfortunately does not go through France) by Nick Cave in “talk” mode, where the Australian, alone on stage, would engage in the game of questions and answers with the public, was greeted by a number of grunts about the rather prohibitive price of seats. Certainly, the case, with its device at a lower cost, offered at a grand concert rate, is very beneficial to the interested party. It’s not Al Pacino who will say otherwise. But when you love, you don’t count, do you? Especially since, in the case of Cave, there is something really new about the proposal, quite exceptional even. Because this time it is a real exchange, without a net, between the public and him. Without taboos, he assures us. Which is already quite extraordinary, even more so from the brooding crooner. At least until recently.

Nick Cave, devious artist, as somber and restless as the spasmodic rock of his early recordings, was for a long time, for journalists, the least convenient of customers. Blame it on his extreme and assertive drug addiction, coupled with a frenzied refusal to deliver his emotions other than in his epic songs, with often encrypted images. Even calm, he still said to me a few years ago: “At Bad Seeds, empathy is not the first quality. We’re just a bunch of guys who get together to work together. Everything else, the worries, the heartache or even the overdoses, is in our free time. A ruthless boy club, in short. Until one day tragedy befell this hard worker, as hard on himself as on others.

On July 14, 2015, Cave’s world and certainties collapsed. Arthur, one of her twins, under the influence of LSD, fell off a cliff to instant death. The Australian, for whom the sky or the horizon seemed to have no limit on Push the sky away, a prodigious 2013 album, had to change. To share his pain and his pain, finally. He, who rocked dangerously on stage in a messianic boasting number à la Bono while touching the hands of his disciples during scheduled crowd baths, suddenly found in this carnal contact a comfort, a warmth, which he once seemed to mock. The tour that accompanied Skeleton Tree, shattering work of mourning, revealed a transformed singer, now feeding, disdain evaporated, greedily, on the love of his fans. In an interview at his home in Brighton in May 2017, I discovered a troubled man, more fragile and, above all, more attentive. In the grip of doubt for the first time. The preacher had turned into a real interlocutor.

He went further. In the wake of a meeting tour with his audience in Australia last year, he started a dialogue last November on his site The Red Hand Files (www.theredhandfiles.com), where he strives to respond with sincerity in the questions asked. An exercise in which he deploys a rare frankness, depth and humor. And that the man, long stingy with confessions, who recorded for more than thirty years on the Mute label (“silent”), should manifest just as fully during his next public performances. As he speaks, 61-year-old Nick Cave progresses, finds the strength and inspiration to keep creating.

Talk Talk. It was the name of the group of Mark Hollis, who was very silent before the Lord. An immense artist who passed away last Monday, at 64 years old. Twenty years after having sunk into silence, stopping the music in 1998, after his splendid and unique solo album. What killed him? Mystery … But we can say to ourselves that he was happy to have taken the tangent, to live peacefully with wife and children, how can we not believe that he did not succumb to wounds that had never healed? My memory of Hollis, beyond his precious records, is disturbing. Because he’s not the happiest. It was at the time of the Children of Rock, and of Rockline, with Bernard Lenoir, in the spring of 1986. To welcome the release of the exciting Color of Spring, an album which already announced the deep stylistic break to come from the group after the cumbersome popular triumph of It’s my life, we received the trio at the Le Martial club, rue Fontaine, in Paris, to film them playing Life’s what you make it and Living in another world. In playback.

Mark Hollis, the awesome Talk Talk singer, is dead

Disappearance

Frédéric Péguillan

The shoot, with its multiple takes, dragged on, especially as the musicians clamored for beer for beer throughout the session, with the corpses of cans numbering in the dozens. It wasn’t the first time that we had dealt with a group of rowdy thirsty people (if only our Cure chouhous). Except that they, Mark Hollis, haggard and not very helpful, at the head, reached heights of ill will in their behavior turning to sabotage. This provoked the exasperation of the technicians and consequently the tension of Lenoir. The show was hell to wrap up and then edit, and the memory of Talk Talk, from a human perspective, far from imperishable.

It’s hard to imagine back then that those who suffered the most that day were them. The leader in particular, we understood later, already plagued by his (understandable) allergy to the laws and rules of the promotion. Talk Talk wanted only one thing: to flee the futile world of pop with which it was associated in order to flourish in total artistic freedom. What Hollis will accomplish beyond all expectations with the following discs, freed from any commercial imperative, opening an infinite field of exploration to progressive pop, between folk, jazz, classical and ambient of a sensitivity and a richness supreme. When Spirit of Eden appeared in 1988, without an obvious single, to the chagrin of the record company but also of many critics who considered the work pretentious (especially across the Channel), Hollis let go, bitter: “At the beginning of the 70s, a time when innovation was celebrated, such an album would have been received carefree. But in the face of the mercantile crap that is coming out today … “

The man who values ​​silence, including in his music, at the expense of unnecessary noises and notes, will eventually surrender. Disgusted for good? Will we ever know? An “illness” would have taken him. Let us salute the immense and upright artist who had the courage to leave a world he hated, against which he found it impossible to fight. And let us regret, by listening to it more and better than before, that we could not or knew how to support it more.