From NME, February 22, 1986
A Passion Play: Will Euro giants TALK TALK break big in Britain with their ‘Colour Of Spring’ LP. Head talker Mark Hollis defends his art. ‘What a prat’, argues NEIL TAYLOR, reasonably. LAWRECE WATSON snaps the clash.
At almost any point you can see what’s going to happen. There’s a tension in the room that is waiting to be released when he yanks the tape out of the recorder and exclaims, “This is all a pile of shit’.
Like some ghost in the machine committing technological suicide, he’s pulling the plug on the interview – pulling the plug on himself. He gets angry because he never seems to get anywhere, and he doesn’t like interviews, and, well, he’s bored. He’s got nothing to say but he’s got a lot to lose,
“Consider character assassination as one of the Fine
Arts”.
Three Trapped Tigers, C Cabrera Infante.
I came here expecting to be conquered: I left feeling slightly conned. I got Russ Abbott. I got Paul Daniels. I even got Rolf Harris, court painter extraordinaire. But I only got half of Mike Hollis, the biggest comedian of them all. Try this for starters.
“If you’re talking art, maan, Russ takes the cake – apart from Rolf, of course, Rolf Harris. I mean, what Rolf Harris could have given to the Renaissance period, who knows? I certainly don’t”.
Then try this.
“If you’re talking about inspiration, I actually think that Paul Daniels is a very good entertainer. What he can’t do ain’t worth doing, issit?”
Finally, there’s this.
“I think Russ Abbott is a genius. ‘Wot an atmosphere’. What a record! What a man!”
Oh dear, what a prat. I like Talk Talk – I genuinely do. I believe that they have the ability to rise above the slushy quagmire of Top 20 fodder and inject some quality pop into the charts. But they do make life difficult, and Mark Hollis, gateway to his north-and-south forever open, has an infuriating habit of talking down to interviewers.
“I’ve told you about eight times before”, he explains at one point. “All Talk Talk have done is make three very fine albums with a gap of two years inbetween each. We’ve made each album different from the last, and we’ve based all our albums upon songwriting strength. So don’t give me no Spandau Ballet shit, success shit, or image shit. Our image is our music”.
In fact, Talk Talk burst on to the pop scene in February 1982 when ‘Mirror Man’, their debut single, was released by EMI. Three albums, nine singles, and four years later, they’re still with EMI. They’re phenomenally successful in Europe (they top bills where Spandau Ballet play third), and this year their record company hopes they’ll make a bigger dent in the British charts.
“I would never consider us in terms of the likes of Spandau Ballet”, continues Mark aloofly. “I have no desire to be a popstar, I just want to make records. If we were image conscious we wouldn’t but illustrations on our covers, we’d use photographs. Every Talk Talk album has got an illustration on the front because I want to separate image from music. All I’m interested in is writing songs”.
That songwriting talent finds form in the work of Talk Talk, and develops out of a songwriting partnership between Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene, TT’s producer. The band consists of Hollis on guitar, piano and vocals; Paul Webb on bass; and Lee Harris on drums. Their forthcoming album, ‘The Colour Of Spring’, ranges from choral sounds (‘Happiness Is Easy’) to monotonous, calculated bass beat of their current single ‘Life’s What You Make It’. It will be interesting to see what the public makes of it, but Mark Hollis has got no time for such hypothesis.
“It’s about time we brought art in, innit?” he says.
Art then, it is.
Flashing, on a TV screen, is the video. It’s called ‘Life’s What You Make Of It’. The box has a butterfly on it and lots of water. There’s water and caterpillars and frogs and slugs and rats and spiders and the band. But is there art?
People have said that you’re a pretentious prat, Mark?
“Have they? Well let them say what they like. I do what I do and, I mean, who’s to say what’s perfect when you’re dealing with art? I don’t think there’s enough art in this interview. I mean, take our current single. The idea comes from A Streetcar Named Desire. There’s a bird in that book who just spends her time living in the past. The song is a very simple idea. It lyrically deals with optimism, and musically it’s very original. The rhythm section in the song is unchanging and I’ve never heard any other song where that is so”.
There are actually about 11 lines in Talk Talk’s current single and most of them are reworkings of the title line. A charge of theft from Williams’ classic play would probably be thrown out of court on account of the fact that the tie is so tenuous. Underlying all of Williams’ work is a feeling of violence. There’s none of that in Talk Talk’s single – Mark Hollis keeps that for himself. It boils just below the surface.
It’s fairly throw away material Mark isn’t it?
“Look I think it’s quite obvious that that is not the case. My music pleases me and that’s all that fucking matters. All I’m doing with you is repeating the same fucking answers to the same fucking questions. If you listen to what I say we’ll make some kind of progression. Our songs are not throw away because there’s a lot of team effort and time put into them. We’ve got a good producer, a sympathetic video director and that’s all that fucking matters. Now do you want to ask me questions about our art or shall we just forget the whole idea?”
Am I not bringing enough art in?
(He’s annoyed)
Should we talk about pop?
(He’s seething)
Alright then, do you think you get angry for no reason at all?
He didn’t bother answering, apart from an aside which, roughly translated, said “This is a pile of shit”. Almost in tears he stormed over to the cassette and ripped out the tape.
What is this thing called art that always ends in tears?
“Turn that off! I don’t want to be looked at in this merciless glare!”, Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire.
But it doesn’t end there. Instead of storming out of the interview room, Mark Hollis discusses Talk Talk’s latest album.
“The aim of ‘The Colour Of Spring’”, he explains, “is to present great variety in terms of mood and arrangement, treating the whole thing as a concept. An album shouldn’t be something from which a single is pulled, leaving the rest filled up with rubbish.”
“In our case, the only reason ‘Life’s What You Make Of It’ was picked for a single was because it was the shortest track. There will be another single from the album bit it will have to be edited down. Most people approaches singles as things you can boil and egg to. If it comes out nice and cooked it’s a good single. In those terms, I suppose ours are hard boiled.”
Although Mark sees variety of mood and arrangement as being important, the album requires painstaking serving to locate the nodules and bumps of ideas that truly represents variety. Rather the record lulls you into an etheral world of polished production, crisp, echoing instrumentation, and haunting wispy vocals. Any alteration with the blueprint of pop mid-80s-style only comes afterwards.
There’s seemingly barren drum intro to ‘Happiness Is Easy’, a song about “the effect violence has on kids”. ‘Life’s What You Make It’ retains this constant beat, and the fast, organ dominated ‘Living In Another World’ is a long way away from the variphon and piano terrain of ‘Chameleon World’. But still there seems to be this all-present, floating nothingness. Some people would call it blandness.
“No, that’s bullshit. There’s an area in what we do – based on songwriting and melody – which is commercial, but then I don’t believe that merely because something is commercial it can’t be good. The criterion for judging the quality of a record must come down to the intention of the artist. I don’t believe you have to be obscure to make good records.”
Yes and no. As far as Mark’s latter point goes, yes, but he’s wrong on the former, and if the test for judging a record was based of the subjective intention of its maker there would be no records in the world which could be defined as anything short of ‘utterly brilliant’. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Talk Talk have often been misunderstood.
“The press is something that exists to educate people,” he explains, “but if they (the press) don’t appreciate art that’s irresponsibility on their part. Listen, I work primarily because it pleases me. If people interpret that as arrogance then so be it. I’ve just spent a year in the studio. I’ve made an album that is exactly how I want it. That album is now being released. I’ve got all I want out of Talk Talk, and nothing, nothing else, matters!”
Exit Mark Hollis, art on his sleeve(s), tears on the tape and,
in between, a little talk talk.