:
TP: I saw those pictures you did of Mark Hollis, I love that picture you did of me and Mark, it’s a wonderful picture. Talking of intense people.
(SR shows said picture)
TP: oh right yeah yeah what a wonderful picture that is. My dear buddy. Yeah what a lovely picture that is. Look at that.
SR: We’ve lost a lot of great people haven’t we.
TP: Mmm. I was very upset about Mark.
SR: I didn’t know that he was so popular but a lot of the people in this Instagram Live now that are listening are huge Mark Hollis fans.
(Shows pics from Such a Shame video).
TP: Oh look at that. Oh bless him. I remember shooting that, this is the Such a Shame video. Oh bless him. Yeah…well, erm, yeah. What can you say?
(SR shows more photos from the video shoot)
Aw, look at him, bless him. He once drove me around the north of England. When he got a little bit of money and he bought a Landrover, he took the top off it, which he wasn’t meant to, and it was January and it was, like, fucking cold. It was like minus whatever, and it had a heater about that size (indicates something very small) and we drove around the north of England. Oh my god. I’ve never been so cold. I can feel it now.
I liked Mark. Mark was always one of the most … I always say this…he was the most down to earth person, maybe you remember this, like,down to earth but the most extreme person. And those albums. I was around for all those albums. He used to joke and say that each album got half the speed of the previous one. Which was quite funny. Those albums are genius tho.
(Explaining the joke:)
I started working with him on It’s My Life, by the time he got to the next album all the songs were running at half speed, coz each album slowed down.
Funny enough, you talked about Stravinsky, earlier on, Mark, like, (he spins the camera to show shelves of DVDs “actually those are my DVDs”) he was the biggest influence on my record collection of anyone, ever, and Stravinsky was one of those people, he used to go “Get fucking Stravinsky, Popey!” So we’d be listening to a lot of Stravinsky, Milhaud…anyway, anyway, he literally shaped my record collection as it is now. Miles Davis and all that stuff. When you hear those albums … (Hollis accent)”Bit of Satie, Popey!”,y’know Eric Satie he was into,all this stuff,so he literally shaped my record collection, my musical taste, you know. Amazing. I mean, amazing.
I remember him, he got this place, he moved out of London and got this little vicarage in the east of England, near Bury St Edmunds,and he had this great big room with a piano in it, and I used to sit there with him,and he used to play these chords, with what he called claw hands or crab hands, I can’t remember what he called it,and he used to just sit there and play these chords as the sun…I can see it now, with the sun going down on the wall… just wonderful times with him.