The Prodigal Twin

Rip It Up, Issue 102, 1 January 1986, Page 12

The Prodigal Twin

Alannah’s Back in Town

if Alannah Currie of the Thompson Twins ever finds the music bubble has burst, she could well make a fresh start as an actress. In a way, she’s already role-playing with her larger-than-life stage personality, but her best piece of acting to date has given fans a glimpse of what it’s like to live behind that sort of mask. s ' Those who saw the video from last year’s Into the Gap tour will recall a scene on the tour bus where Currie breaks down and tearfully narrates through shattered mascara the pressures of being A Name and A Face, recognised and constantly pestered, unable to go shopping, dancing, do things the anonymous take for granted. It was a vivid and touching moment. And a great piece of acting. ‘ :

“I'd actually been doing onions up the back of the bus to make myself cry. But it was very easy to do, because we wanted to show in that documentary what it’s like being on tour. You're either extremely happy, very high, or very down. There's no midway. That’s not what touring is about. There's ail that pressure, when you're going out in front of thousands of people every night, having to turn it on because people pay money to come and see you, and you've got to give them what they come to see. Even if you're feeling really bad, you've got to go and do it. That’s what | was trying to show. “| was acting that part, but in a way it wasn't acting either, because it's happened so many times.” ; ; b :

Currie speaks matter-of-factly about such things, being right in the middle of another such tour at the time of speaking, backstage at some venue in the heart of Ahmurikah, 30 minutes prior to going onstage. Her voice is already shot, having gone hog wild on stage at Madison Square Gardens a couple of nights previously. But she’s still huskily enthusiastic and not just a little excited about the prospect of playing to a hometown crowd very soon. (“How many people does Mt Smart hold? Ooh, | must get all the family along!”) All enthusiasm aside, 1985 has hardly been an easy year for the Thompson Twins. Their high media profile has been maintained, but often in ways theyd prefer to forget. The pressure to produce a creditable follow-up to Into The Gap probably contributed to the mysterious and ap-

parently quite serious illness that affected Tom Bailey. “Dodgy” is how Currie describes the year past. , “Everything for us before this has grooved along and nothing has gone wrong. But when Tom got ill, which was the first disaster, then we put out records in England and they didn’t go to Number One like we expected them to, that was the next disaster. Then some personal things happened which weren't very good. “But on the other hand, some great things have happened as well, through all the shit that's flowing. We could have split up at the time Tom got sick, instead of finishing the new album. But

a lot of good things have come out, the three of us feel stronger together, there's a lot of loyalty and sympathy there. During that time, fans were amazing, everybody was really supportive and that was great. “We've also had terrific luck in America in 'BS. ‘Lay Your Hands’ went to Number Six, the secondhighest single we've ever had, the album has been really well received here and the tours have been going brilliantly.” Once the current tour has finished (Currie will get a week and a half here with her family before continuing on to Australia and Japan at the end of March), offers from Hollywood have to be considered.

“We've been offered the score of absolutely every ‘youth’ movie that they’re doing in Hollywood this year. But we don't want to do that, we want to do something that’s a bit older and a bit weirder. Were holding out at present, we're going to sift through what'’s available. After that, we're not sure. We 'know we're going to do another album, but we might take a break from each other for a while, and do individual projects.”

The desire to be an individual within what has become a very structured system is the ambition of any member of an established musical group. Achieving same is probably today’s greatest mark of success. Look at Sting. _ Here’s To Future Days has hardly had an easy gestation period. As mentioned before, there was a point when everyone was ready to jack it in. “The title really takes on a new meaning,’ laughs Currie” Originally it was meant to be really optimistic, ‘Let’s go for it,; but after all the ups and downs, it became ‘Well it can't be any worse! - “But I'm really pleased with it all the same. It took longer to make than any other album, there were a lot of emotional dramas during the making of it, between us and other people who are associated with us, then Tom got ill and we switched from the Raris studio to New York and we had to hang out for about six weeks in Barbados (insert your own cynical remark here) till we could get another studio and finish working with Nile” : - =

Nile, of course, is Nile Rodgers, Mr Chic and listed as the album’s co-producer. He also jammed with the Thompson Twins in the Philadelphia section of last year’s Live Aid charity bash. “It was a complete mistake, the way he got involved. Tom was producing this time, after coproducing the last two with Alex Sadkin we decided it was time we did this one ourselves. It was going fine in Paris, wed done seven tracks and then Tom got really ill. We lost the studio time and Nile was just asking through a friend how we were doing. We didn't know him that well at the time, but when he heard about our problems, he said ‘'l help them finish it!" That's Nile all over.” In return for saving the Thompson Twins, Rodgers will enlist Bailey as producer for his own album; sometime this April. The New York salvage job on Future Days coincided with Live Aid, hardly a classic performance on the Twins’ part, but then that wasn't the purpose. Rodgers ended up jamming with the band and Madonna.

“When Geldof called us and asked us whether wed do it, we said ‘Fine, as long as we can do it in Philadelphia, rather than going back to London. We got a band together, mainly through friends of Nile's and other people we knew. We hadn'’t played live for eight months, but then it wasn't a proper gig. For us it was a bit like being small children at this magnificent birthday party; ‘Ooh there goes Bob Dylan, ooh there goes Tina Turner, there goes jack Nicholson. We were really like five-year-olds. “When we went onstage, we were playing in front of 90,000 people and billions more on television, it was an incredibly hot day and you just got this glorious sensation that for once everyone was focussed on just this one thing. By the end of the day people were saying ‘Led Zeppelin's on stage now, Alannah, are you going to watch them?’ And | said ‘No, I'll see them at home on video. We were just exhausted.” The jam of the Beatles’ ‘Revolution’ which closed the Twins/Madonna portion of the telecast led to the inclusion of the track on the Future Days album. “Wed already recorded that track, but we wer*en't going to put it on. When we work in the studio, we always have a piece of music that isn't going on the album. When we can't think of any--thing to fill the track that we have availdble, we generally do something mad and manic and to‘tally unlike us. It usually ends up as a B-side and this time we did ‘Revolution’ because it's one of the few songs that all of us like, plus wed never done an out-and-out rock 'n’ roll song or a cover version before. Steve Stevens from Billy Idol’s band did the guitar, and it was really exciting and .-fun to do. Then when we played it on Live Aid, it just seemed appropriate, not just for the words, but as a song which everyone knew. After that, everyone said we had to put it on the album.

“We've had a lot of flak from that too. A lot of people think ‘How dare they, as though the Beatles are untouchable. They're forgetting that when the Beatles started playing, 80 per cent of their songs were cover versions. Stupid haircuts too (laughter).” 1985 will be remembered as the year in which musicians decided to Go Public. Live Aid started it, followed by an anti-heroin campaign in England (coke and Angel Dust are the U.S. targets) and culminating in Miami Steve Van Zandt’s ‘Sun City: We all knew Pretoria was Babylon, but what prompted all this? ; “I remember when we first started, people were saying ‘Don't get political, people don't want to hear about that sort of thing. | didn't want to not say anything, so we got around it in other ways. But by the time 'BS came around, -people had got sick of the political climate, keeping their mouths shut and not saying what they wanted to say. | think it got so desperate in 'BS that we decided wed do what we could to help, because you couldn't just close your eyes.” : ‘Don't Mess With Doctor Dream’ is the Thompson Twins' contribution to the anti-heroin crusade. Currie readily concedes that the music industry has to bear some responsibility for mak-

ing drugs glamorous, but stresses that the song is anti-heroin, not anti-all drugs. “We wrote that after coming across some kids in Ireland. They were aged between eight and 12, and they were all doing heroin and trying to sell it to us. | know people who've been doing heroin for years, but they're older people and they're made that conscious decision. But it's become a massive plague amongst the youth in Europe, because they’re bored and unemployed and it's so cheap. We wrote the song specifically for those kids. | mean, | was listening to songs like ‘Heroin’ when | was 16, and you think theres a dark, seedy side to life which is very glamorous. But it's not really like that at all. It easy as a pop star or a movie star, because you don't get dirty needles, you don't have to go out on the streets to earn the money, you don't have to sell it or turn to crime to support the habit. But meeting those kids brought it home to us, and we wanted to say something.” There is a certain moodiness pervading Future Days. It doesn't light any immediate fires, and those expecting another Into The Gap will be disappointed. ‘Honest’ would be the best descriptive word, given its background. As usual, Currie’s lyrics tend to draw on personal experiences, mixed with the odd fantasy. Living people feature strongly as well. Take ‘You Killed the Clown; a quiet but angry song: “We originally wrote that for Aretha Franklin. We really admire her, she's one of the best vocalists ever. Before she did her latest album, she was doing all this disco stuff, which was horrible. We thought it would be great if we could write something really soul-y for her. So we wrote that song, but we got too involved with it ourselves and in the end we couldn’t give it away. It's like giving away a child (laughter). It was called ‘Crime of the Heart’ to begin with, then | changed all the lyrics. Last New Year’s Eve | was out with a friend of mine who's a really outrageous woman, very funny, but men can't handle her. They find her too threatening. | watched this man slander her until she ended up crying. It was really horrible, and he only did it because he felt threatened by her. Everyone else was enjoying her, but he was the party killer. So she's the clown, and he's the pig (laughter). “There are a lot of songs about dreams on this album. ‘Breakaway’ is interesting on that note. We wrote a lot of the material when we were holed up in this 15th-century cottage in Paris in winter of last year. We were snowed in, and the only real thrill was to go down to the local supermarket, because it was centrally heated. We used to work all through the night and sleep during the day. There were just the three of us and our engineer, and we were in this really odd place for six or seven weeks. So we all got into this crazy dream stuff. ‘Breakaway’ was written for somebody | know in New Zealand, | had this vivid picture of them in my mind, even though they were far away and | hadn’t seen them for years. It was like seeing a ghost, even though they weren't dead.” ‘King For A Day’ is a breezy, upful number, written for another pop star (“Who shall remain nameless”). ‘Emperor’s Clothes, another dream song, has ‘Part One’ in brackets afterwards, with Part Two promised on the next album. ‘Love Is The Law’ was one of the last songs written, a reflection on the aggression that personifies New York and a plea to calm down. Although she's been travelling for eight years and has seen places | and | only dream about, Currie remains the wide-eyed Kiwi abroad, fascinated by her surroundings and not at all jaded by her experiences. But does she have a place she calls ‘home?

“No. | used to have a squat in Clapham, but | moved out of there. It didn't seem right when there were people who couldn't afford a place to live. So I've actually bought a place in London, the first place I'd ever bought. It's really weird to have mortgages and stuff like that. But I'm not living there, it's not home, it doesn’t feel like home. | might end up selling it and living out of suitcases again. Although | moan about that sort of thing, I'm also frightened about living in a house, I've got so used to living on the road or in rented places, like when we write and record. | like living in other people's places, there's no responsibility. Eventually I'll probably decide on somewhere | want to live, but | can't live in England or America for long periods, and New Zealand and Australia are too far away from what I'm doing. | mean, how many countries are there in the world (laughter)? | hope I'll find one eventually”

The Kiwi-turned Nomad will take the New Zealand stage later this month with her heart thumping against her back teeth. Not that she has to prove anything, but how can you describe the sensation of coming back to your birthplace, having reach such dizzy heights? “Another bizarre stage in my life,” she laughs. “l was really nervous when we set plans to tour New Zealand last year. | thought it was going to be very weird and | wouldn't enjoy it. But when it was called off, | was really disappointed. “This time, | want to see my family and friends, experience the things | really miss, the sounds and smells, the general atmosphere, even if it's only for a couple of weeks. I've kept in touch and it sounds like a lot of things have changed for the better, like going anti-nuclear. That’s just brilliant, amazing. People now seem to be taking control of things and saying what they want. “I've been chronically homesick for the past 12 months. Joe (Leeway) calls it ‘pining for the fjords, ‘Oh God, Alannah’s off again!’ ” And still more of that infectious laughter. Welcome home, Prodigal Daughter.

Duncan Campbell