“A Genius With Trailblazing Musical Ideas”: Remembering Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis

Talk talk’s first phase: “A band should be able to develop constructively, like Bowie”

“Talk Talk came into existence purely coincidentally,” Hollis told Kim in 1983. “I just got Simon Brenner [keyboards], Lee Harris [drums] and Paul Webb [bass] to join me for a few days while we made some demo discs of my songs to take to a record company. But we liked what we were doing so much that we decided to throw every penny we had into hiring a rehearsal room and practicing to go out and play in the clubs.”

Taking their name from one of Hollis’ best early songs, Talk Talk signed a deal with EMI. Their early electro-pop sound was dominated by synthesisers, and, with New Romantic bands on the rise, the label thought the group would become a similarly glossy pop act. Hollis, however, resisted this, telling Noise magazine, “I get depressed about the whole thing [because] kids ought to know about music, not image.”

Nonetheless, Talk Talk’s early synth-based sound opened doors for the group. Released in July 1982, their debut album, The Party’s Over, climbed to No.21 in the UK and went silver, while its third and final single, the strident Today, became one of the group’s biggest domestic hits, rising to No.14.

The Party’s Over helped establish Talk Talk, but Hollis remained unhappy with the band’s synth-based sound and the assumptions it led many to make about the group. Following the album’s release and tour cycle, an important personnel change significantly altered their course. Simon Brenner departed, and while he wasn’t officially replaced, Hollis recruited Tim Friese-Greene to help with the recording of Talk Talk’s second album, 1984’s It’s My Life.

Initially seen as a temporary studio aid, Friese-Greene, who had previously produced synth-pop acts such as Thomas Dolby and Blue Zoo, hit it off with Hollis and, while he never officially joined Talk Talk, became an indispensable producer, studio keyboard player and writing partner from It’s My Life onwards.

Friese-Greene never performed live with Talk Talk, but he played an influential Brian Eno-esque role during recording sessions. He encouraged the band to use more organic instrumentation instead of synthesisers, and supported Hollis’ desire to write more introspective and impactful songs. He also suggested that Hollis, Harris and Webb extend their line-up, bringing in skilled studio alumni, including keyboardist Ian Curnow and Pretenders guitarist Robbie McIntosh, to play on future recordings.

Spawning chart success in Europe and the US with spin-off singles Such A Shame and its evergreen title track, It’s My Life was an important step forward for Talk Talk. In contemporary interviews, though, Hollis dropped hints that he had much grander ambitions for the group.

“My idea is that a band should be able to develop constructively, like Bowie,” he told Sounds, while in an NME feature he stated that he wanted to “write stuff that you’ll be able to listen to in ten years’ time”.

Talk Talk break the rules: “Stunningly intricate works of breathtaking imagination”

Proof that Hollis was serious about realising his artistic vision arrived with Talk Talk’s third album, The Colour Of Spring. Released in February 1986, this sublime collection featured lush, cinematic pop songs (I Don’t Believe In You, Time It’s Time) amid notably sparser, introspective ballads (April 5th, Chameleon Day) and two of Hollis and Friese-Greene’s most enduring hits, Living In Another World and Life’s What You Make It.

Though artistically bold, The Colour Of Spring was still in essence an accessible pop record, and, with the help of an extensive world tour – including an acclaimed show at that year’s Montreux Jazz Festival – it went on to become Talk Talk’s best-selling album, moving around two million copies worldwide.

The Colour Of Spring’s commercial success provided a springboard for sustained mainstream success for Talk Talk. Consequently, EMI handed the band a bigger budget for their next album. Expecting something similar to The Colour Of Spring, they were shocked to hear the dramatic left turn Hollis and Friese-Green would take with 1988’s Spirit Of Eden.

A year in the making, Talk Talk’s fourth album again featured contributions from numerous guests, among them Robbie McIntosh and percussionist Martin Ditcham. This time, however, Hollis and Friese-Greene decided against writing structured songs, instead editing the record’s six tracks down from much longer improvisations – most of which were recorded while the studio lights were dimmed to create the desired ambience.

“Twelve hours a day in the dark listening to the same six songs for eight months became pretty intense,” studio engineer Phill Brown would recall, in an interview with The Guardian. “There was very little communication with musicians who came in to play. They were led into a studio in darkness and a track would be played down the headphones.”

Taking in jazzy soundscapes, Eno-esque ambience and glorious orchestral textures, Spirit Of Eden was truly groundbreaking. Seducing many of the critics of the day, it has since been hailed as a masterpiece, but it proved a challenge for Talk Talk’s label. To their credit, however, EMI respected Hollis’ artistic vision, but marketing the album was another matter altogether.

“There was real nervousness and misunderstanding about that record,” Nigel Reeve, then EMI’s Director Of Repertoire, told The Guardian in 2012. “Nobody got it. There wasn’t a hit single and they didn’t know how to sell it.”

In addition to Spirit Of Eden’s radical change of direction, Hollis had also decreed that Talk Talk would be retiring from live performance. For their final few years, the band effectively became Hollis and Friese-Greene’s studio project, though drummer Lee Harris still made a decisive contribution to Talk Talk’s final album, 1991’s Laughing Stock, released by legendary jazz imprint Verve.

Once again the product of lengthy, improvised studio sessions overseen by Phill Brown and later edited down to a more palatable 43 minutes by Hollis and Friese-Greene, Laughing Stock was a logical extension of Spirit Of Eden. Opening with 15 seconds of amplifier hiss, it was largely stark and minimal in design, though it included moments of sublime beauty, not least on the bewitching New Grass, which remains one of the best Talk Talk songs.

Following a brief peak at No.26 in the UK, Laughing Stock quickly disappeared from the charts. However, as Q magazine’s Ian Cranna noted in a perceptive review, the album might have put Talk Talk “at odds with the commercial charts” but it has gone on to become “valued long after such superficial quick thrills are forgotten”. Certainly, Laughing Stock’s reputation has only grown in stature. As Elbow’s Guy Garvey noted in Chris Roberts, James Marsh and Toby Benjamin’s book, Spirit Of Talk Talk, both Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock are “stunningly intricate works of breathtaking imagination, generosity of spirit and timeless art”.

Solo album and later projects: “We searched a long time to find the right balance”

Those craving more of this same glorious introspection were left hanging after Hollis quietly disbanded Talk Talk following the release of Laughing Stock. In fact, many long-term fans believed he had gone to ground for good in the early 90s, and were shocked when he resurfaced, in 1998, with his lone, self-titled solo album.

Mark Hollis featured contributions from long-term Talk Talk alumni such as Phill Brown, Robbie McIntosh, Martin Ditcham and harmonica maestro Mark Feltham. Once again adopting a less-is-more approach, Hollis led his team through the sparse, almost hymnal brilliance of tracks such as The Colour Of Spring, Watershed and A New Jerusalem, and the album represented a valuable – if slightly warmer and jazzier – adjunct to Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock. Granting a few rare interviews at the time of the album’s release, Hollis offered some choice insights into the recording process.

“I… like the character and realism of acoustic instruments,” he told Music Minded. “I looked for instruments who could grow above the limitations of a certain style like a clarinet, trumpet and flute.

“We only used two microphones to record,” he explained elsewhere. “We searched a long time to find the right balance. We placed the musicians in different locations – that’s the way the sound and the resonance are built up. Recording in its purest form, really, like in the old days. To me, the ultimate ambition is to make music that doesn’t have a use by-date – that goes beyond your own time.”

Hollis’ solo album would become his swansong. Yet though he wouldn’t release any new material under his own name during the final two decades of his life, he still made sporadic forays into music. Under the name “John Cope”, he recorded a solo piece, Piano, for Phill Brown and Dave Allinson’s AV1 album, in 1998, while he also made an uncredited appearance on Psyence Fiction, the acclaimed debut album by James Lavelle’s UNKLE project, co-writing and playing piano on the track Chaos.

Hollis discreetly broke his silence again in 2001, when he co-produced, arranged and played bass, piano and melodica on two tracks from Anja Garbarek’s album Smiling And Waving, and in 2012 he wrote a specially commissioned piece, ARB Section 1, for the US TV drama Boss, featuring Frasier star Kelsey Grammer. But though Hollis hadn’t disappeared, he had no desire to take things further. “I choose for my family,” he told The Guardian in 2008. “Maybe others are capable of doing it, but I can’t go on tour and be a good dad at the same time.”

Death and legacy: “Musically he was a genius”

Having said all he wished to say as an artist, Hollis simply eased himself out of the spotlight. He maintained a quiet family life in Wimbledon, South London, until 2017, and then lived out his final years in Heathfield, East Sussex. The first the public knew of the cancer that killed him was when his manager, Keith Aspden, publicly announced Hollis’ death in February 2019. As in life, Hollis chose to depart quietly and with dignity – though that certainly doesn’t mean he wasn’t mourned.

“Musically he was a genius and it was an honour and a privilege to have been in a band with him,” Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb wrote in a tribute he posted on Instagram. “I have not seen Mark for many years, but like many musicians of our generation I have been profoundly influenced by his trailblazing musical ideas.”

“Mark Hollis started from punk and by his own admission he had no musical ability,” Guy Garvey said in a Mojo interview. “To go from having the urge, to writing some of the most timeless, intricate and original music ever is as impressive as the Moon landings for me.”

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