Mark, what's it all about?

"Before you play two notes learn how to play one note - and don't play one note unless you've got a reason to play it." - Mark Hollis (1998)

Note that a lot of interview material is lifted from Within Without (I think this no longer exists as a source, but included lots of useful information): (http://users.cybercity.dk/~bcc11425/) I have just selected bits I found to be interesting.

Mark Hollis in his own words:

• How the music should be heard

• Improvisation

• The importance of silence

• The mystical (never created) film

• Why demos are important

• Creative freedom

• Attitude rather than technique?

Mark Hollis interviews

Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock

Are they worried about placing undue emphasis on the package at the expense of its contents?

"No...because it is important. You can represent yourself visually through music and clothes just as well as you can represent yourself musically. I mean, Peter Saville helped put over the mood of Joy Division with his artwork, just as he did with Orchestral Manouevres. The packaging was part of them, an extension of the band.

Songwriting

As the main songwriter in Talk Talk, Mark emphasizes the strength of the songs. In addition to the 'Mirrorman' single, he has assembled a strong and original set - 'Talk Talk', 'Strike Up The Band', 'It's So Serious', 'Magic Moments', 'Renee' and 'Candy' - with the reflective, almost transcendental edge to his writing neatly balancing the pop punch of the band.

Mark: "I don't think of songwriting as pure inspiration, just something that comes to you in a blinding flash. But it isn't. You might get the germ of an idea like that, but you can sometimes try a hundred different ways of putting it into words and still come up with nothing. "I heard Anthony Burgess talking about his writing recently and he was saying he can spend six hours writing thousands of words and then throw almost all of them away. It's the same with songwriting. It's worth it for the stuff you're left with at the end. The last thing in the world I would want is to be thought of as a disposable group. I want to write stuff that you'll still be able to listen to in ten years time...still think of as a good song then."

So who would Mark Hollis like to be compared with, I wonder, trying to calm him down a little!

"Well, in terms of singers: Otis Redding. He combines real power with tenderness. Songwriters: Bacharach and David. They were so consistent over a long period of time. Arrangements: John Coltrane. As for contemporaries, I can't actually listen to things like the Human League because they've been played to death. But I think they've made really good ground."

" Those are the people I admire."

Musical Philosophy

Mark cites the Talk Talk philosophy as being "as diverse as possible while retaining an original sound." And the group's ambition as "to be able to feel that we've always got more to do."

The first person Mark met in his dealings with Island was Keith Aspden, who soon left the company to become Talk Talk's manager and helped to negotiate their recording deal with EMI. "My idea is that a band should be able to develop constructively, like Bowie," explained Mark. "Regardless of whether your next thing is considered better or worse, it must be a positive development. "That's what is crucial to it, and it was very apparent to me that EMI would have the sort of foresight and size to actually understand that when it arose. "It was a very methodical reason for doing it. If this is to be a proper career, I've got to do it with a company that also believes it's going to be a career."

Why call the band Talk Talk?

Why the choice of one of the song titles as the band's name? "The track was up there round about the same time as the band was actually formed. We went through the dictionary, had all the novels out like William Burroughs and things, and finally ended up with Talk Talk because, partly, I like the idea of a track with the same name as the band, and I think it's really instant in terms of memorizing it, plus it didn't in any way categorize us. "The third reason was from a graphic point of view it would look good, the fourth one, purely from a personal hang-up I've got is got, is that I don't really like it when people abbreviate it, like The Stones." And the fifth one was that he really liked Duran Duran. Ouch! - only joking Mark. Is it true they're supporting you on your UK tour though?

Working with the Duran Duran Producer

Early this year, the band went into the studio to record their first album, 'The Party's Over' with producer Colin Thurston, who also happens to be Duran Duran's producer (shock, horror!). From the band's point of view it was not a totally successful pairing.

"I thought he'd be good because he'd worked with Bowie on 'Heroes' and that track is one of my all-time favourites, but the immediate problem was that he was trying to lay back our sound. "Colin wanted to soften it out too much so what we actually did was that we got Mike Robinson in to do the mix...he was actually the engineer on the first David Jensen session we'd done. Bearing in mind the sort of band he likes - very forceful - we thought he'd harden the sound up, give it more attack." And it is attack - edge - which that album lacks, even after Robinson's fire engine job.How much it lacks is not really evident until you see Talk Talk live. Live, the almost choirboy character of Mark's voice is counterbalanced by his passionate delivery, by Lee and Paul's forceful rhythms and by far more dynamic use of Simon's synthesizers.

The Influence of Ed Hollis

Ed Hollis was a powerful influence on his brother's (Mark) musical education. "Firstly," explained Mark, "because of the fact that he's a few years older, the type of music Ed was listening to was obviously stuff I'd never heard of, so when I was maybe 13, he was playing me music that otherwise I'd never have had any chance of listening to. At the same time, because of his work around the Hot Rods and his involvement within music, I could actually observe the whole situation from very close quarters."

"And he was actually instrumental in the way the band formed, in that it was him who spotted Lee and Paul, and suggested they should come and work with me. I don't think of myself as following in his footsteps - I think of him as showing me a good example. His record collection is extremely extensive so I was getting to hear things like Coltrane. He was the one who'd say 'listen to this and see what you think', and what he'd actually do would be to make a conscious effort to actually work me into it."

"Maybe he'd start me off on someone like Coltrane, fairly melodic, and then he'd get me up to things like this Ornette Coleman album when you have a quintet playing in the left-hand speaker, a quartet playing in the right-hand, and you can listen to either of them individually, or the whole thing as one weird-out. So he's been really instrumental in a lot of things."

Plans for 'It's My Life'

Mark hopes the second album will be produced by either Chris Thomas or Rhett Davies : "It's that thing off getting as close as we can in clarity and quality of vocal, but keeping the rhythm section hard and driving. That's what we all want." He also feels that the synthesizer content should be less stated than on 'The Party's Over' to avoid getting caught in the trap of being labeled as just another synthesizer band. Paul echoed this sentiment : "Me and Lee have always been club goers. We picked up a lot of rhythmical ideas from New York clubs like The Roxy Roller where you've got dance rhythms working much heavier than, say, The Palace in London where it's quite lightweight, and we hope to incorporate them in the new songs. "That's the first thing that's impressed us for years - to actually see it done with a bit of feeling. Culture Club and bands like that are trying to do it, but they just don't make it at all."

Feelings about contemporary music at home?

Paul: "It's really sad that so many bands in England aren't really playing live - they're just a total media thing. I'm sure it's going to change 'cos that excitement you can get from a good live gig you can't beat, I don't think." Mark: "With all this reliance on the drum box thing and the tape thing, a lot of bands are becoming studio bands instead of real bands. That's one of the things we've made a real effort to steer clear of by using a legitimate rhythm section." Paul: "In England things are getting produced so well, so many good sounds are coming out, that the arrangements are suffering. They're relying too much on an under-par song happening in the studio." Mark: "You can have a band like Dollar who everyone takes for granted are absolutely rank and suddenly they've got the perfectly produced pop single...and it's still totally rank. I'm sure The Wombles could get credibility now."

So which British bands did he think were worth their salt currently?

Mark: "I like Echo and the Bunnymen a lot, I think they have that force which is good...and I think U2 have got that too, although I prefer their first album. They understand excitement There's a natural tendency now to want music which is more competent, but that energy and force should still be part of it."

Simon: "There are very few people like Bowie trying new things out. There's a lack of people you can respect. You like songs and singles, but you could never sit down and listen to a whole album."

Paul: "Very few bands in England are consistent. I think The Human League are - they are very talented - and Simple Minds. But it seems most bands only last as long as their single. They're turning over really quickly. There's no room to develop your sound when you're only hip for about five minutes."

How would you describe Talk Talk?

Mark "We are a pretty hard act to define. Really the only thing that you can safely say about us is that we always work around orthodox song structures. Apart from that we draw our influences from all different sorts of music, and never just the one thing."

"Like for example, On 'Tomorrow Started', the intro reminds you of Erik Satie, the verse is maybe closer to Pharoah Saunders, and then the sort of Marvin Gaye rhythm vibe comes in. And all that is just a reflection of the fact that my whole life has been one long process of being into lots of different types of music. Pink Floyd, King Crimson, John Lee Hooker, The Standells, Chocolate Watch Factory, everything through to Shostakovich and Prokofiev."

"I guess we are very much against the grain at the moment," he says, "but then we have never really been part of a distinct movement. The first album was probably quite close to post-punk new wave, and we were definitely keen to get across a feeling of energy, but then, as far as I was concerned, all that was taken a bit too far by other people, and moved away from working within the structure of songs. "What we are doing on the new album is not to use chords to block things, but instead give everything a lot more room to develop. And hopefully the next album will be just as different again."

"It (the planned new tour) will be very different this time, because we are now actually a six-piece band for live purposes. No way will it just be a straight duplicate of the album, as there are going to be a lot of new ideas in there as well, as I can quite easily see songs stretching out to 10 or 15 minutes, no bother."

Does Mark enjoy making people feel depressed ?

Mark: "I don't think I make people feel miserable, I really don't," he counters. "I don't think it's about misery...it's soul, that's where it all comes from. It's sad because that's what soul music is. You look at Otis Redding's 'Try A Little Tenderness' and 'I've Been Loving You Too Long', it's all love, innit ? It's got to be.

"'Dum Dum Girl' isn't miserable, I just think of it as an anti-prostitution song, that's what it is. I think the songs have got to be sung with feeling, so they've got to be written with feeling."

"It is a shame a lot of people out there don't actually understand what the music is about. I just don't think we've got time to worry about it any more. Who gives a toss, as Shakespeare once said... "

"What we're trying to do is put a load of different areas of music together. But what that means is that we don't know what the market is for that material. To me, the best music takes as little as it can from as many different areas as it can, 'cos nothing's original. That's why it's difficult for people to know where we're at 'cos we do take from a wider area."

On the Talk Talk image...

Mark : "I don't think many of them ever see us. we use illustrations because it says a lot more about the music than having us three on the front, smiling. I'm aware of the anonymity thing, which I think is wrong, I'm aware that people should think 'I like that record, and he's alright', but that's not what music should base itself on."

On the Talk Talk image in the States...

Mark : "New wave. I like that, it's just like being called contemporary. That's fine, it dates you to a period rather than a type. 'Pop band' is such a horrible description. To me it means bland, disposable, instant, not very long lasting. We're an albums band, I only worked it out today - it's because we don't release our best tracks as singles!"

On the early Talk Talk development...

Mark: "Put it like this. Since we signed the record deal, it's been a learning process. You make mistakes and you learn from them. Early on, we were all over the place, and we were incorrectly labelled. There was a lot of serious posing going on at that time and we got tarred with the same brush."

"Admiration in music comes with time. I can say that Bacharach's a great songwriter because 20 years on I'm listening to 'Walk On By' and I'm thinking this is happening. Van Morrison is still a happener, still cutting it all the way down the line."

"Emotive singers like Van and Otis Redding make very open sounding music. What we (Talk Talk) do is more closed, textural. Honestly, I often arrange the songs with people like Debussy in mind, so that the singing has to be a texture. If it were different, maybe I could sing it more emotively."

From Record Mirror, February 1st 1986 (anticipating The Colour of Spring):

Why so long?

Mark: "I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. All we've been doing for the last two years is a year touring, and a year making an album."

Do you think you've gone wrong somewhere?

Mark: "No, of course we haven't gone wrong. It's been really lucky, the way things have worked out. The last album 'It's My Life' did really well abroad, so we were in a position to spend a lot of time making this album. It took a year and two days to make this one."

Is it a good thing to take so long?

Mark: "It's good in terms of what we wanted to do. We couldn't have made it the way we wanted in any less time. "You see, when we made 'It's My Life', we had to rely a lot on synthesisers. Now, I do not accept that we are a synthesiser band. Synthesisers mean electronic things to me, and I don't think we have any sort of relation to that. We used synthesisers on that album because from an economic point of view it was the only way we could do it."

What replaces the synthesiser on 'The Colour Of Spring'? Is it more orchestral?

Mark: "I wouldn't call it orchestral, no. But it all depends on what you call orchestral, because I wouldn't call it orchestral in terms of an orchestra thing, but you could look at that Gil Evans stuff as being orchestral, where you're talking about a 12-piece orchestra. So it all depends on what you call an orchestra, really."

Exactly. I'm glad we sorted that out.

Almost all of 'The Colour Of Spring' has been written with Talk Talk producer Tim Friese-Greene. How did that come about?

Mark "The only thing I ever knew about him were three records: 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight', by Tight Fit; 'Cry Boy Cry' by Blue Zoo; and Thomas Dolby's 'She Blinded Me With Science'. All those records were really well produced, but they did completely different things. There was no stylisation of sound, and to me, that was the sign of a good producer. So, initially it came from that."

Why was 'Life's What You Make It' chosen as the single?

Mark: 'For me, the only reason that track was chosen, is that apart from a two minute horn quartet, it's the shortest thing on the album. That's it, really."

I do think that there's an area of classical music which I have an affinity for. The impressionist period, around the turn of the century (You sure about this? - ed.) is something I love very much. I love the textural quality that it has. But equally, there's a hardness to soul music, and gospel music that I like."

What was the last record you bought?

Mark: "It was a Delius thing, with 'The First Cuckoo of Spring' on it, and 'In The Summer Garden'. You see, all I've listened to in the last year is that impressionist area of music. The one person I like more than any out of that lot is Bartok. He did six string quartets which are well good.

"The idea of listening to contemporary music seems quite pointless. I get more than my fair share when we're touring, so I never listen to it when I'm at home."

Do you have an ambition to be a classical composer ?

Mark: "Oh no, but I would definitely like to do something in terms of writing film music."

But for the moment, you're staying with Talk Talk ?

Mark: "Yes, but I don't see one as being far removed from the other. A lot of our backing tracks owe debts to things like Delius. "Bartok's a great geezer, and then there's Erik Satie and Debussy, and Sibelius, who I think would fit in there."

Does that mean that if we go and listen to those people, we'll come across little bits of Talk Talk ?

Mark: "There are definitely a couple of references to things. But I remember this interview where old Stravinsky was being accused of ripping off some other geezer, and he just said that he loved this composer so much, he felt he was allowed to take from it."

Why the long wait?

"It doesn't really bother me," he says. "Between the first and second albums there was about a two-year gap, as there is between the last one and this. If you're lucky enough to be in this position, then your main concern should be to make sure it's a good album. It should be done at whatever speed it takes. The second album, 'It's My Life', took about seven or eight months to make and it was obvious before we started that this one would take longer because of new opportunities."

On videos

"I know that Popey (Tim Pope) would agree with me when I say that we both get quite depressed by the way in which videos generally work. More often than not they're looked at as nothing more than an exercise in commercialism. They're so gross in their narrative - and the imagery has such a horrible, heavy sell effect - that they're fast becoming commercials. At the same time television commercials are using more and more music, as well as loads of pop video techniques. There's actually very little to choose between the two."

"With this one we've returned to the animal reference of our first video, 'It's My Life'. With 'Life's What You Make It' though, we've tried to shoot things in a very filmic, purist way. We wanted, more than anything, to get across the mood of the song. The animals naturally tie in with the theme of life but they're also much more endearing to watch. I don't really believe, just because it's our video, that we have to be in it. Ideally, we would have made a little nature film instead."

On the Talk Talk image

“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”.

“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”.

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”.

“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?”

The idea behing 'The Colour of Spring'

“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.”

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.”

“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!”

What is your motivation?

The main reason for what I'm doing is to make records.

How much (if any) of your music has a foundation in real-life experience?

From a lyrical point of view, life and morality is probably the most important thing ideas of which can be picked up either through the media, literature or experience.

How much of your own feelings go into the songs, i.e. to what extent are the songs a part of you, as opposed to them being fictionally composed from hypothetical situations?

None of my songs exist to teach people anything they are for the most part, personal observation.

What is your personal philosophy or outlook on life?

Humanitarian.

How would you define your music?

I think the most important part about music is that you believe in it.

What response are you aiming for from your audience, and what sort of people do you think you reach?

I'm aiming above all to please myself - although obviously it feels great to have other people like it - and I recognise that it's the support we've had with the previous album that has given us the freedom to make this album (and grateful for it) - but it cannot be a consideration at the time of making a subsequent album.

Has the band ever tried to project any kind of image, or do you just wear what you want and behave as you would ordinarily, drawing attention solely to your music?

At the time of signing our record deal we were under a lot of pressure with regard to image which we were all ill at ease with. Luckily we are now in a position where our music is our image.

Would you say the band's emphasis is on Realism?

Yes and no.

What were your aims when you started out? Have they changed at all with time and experience?

The aims I started out with are with me now i.e. to make records without any constraints in terms of lyrics, sleeve design and image.

How do you feel you've progressed creatively since you started?

All I've really done is follow a train of though that existed at the second album. It's true to say that I don't like synthesisers. The only reason we have ever used them is on economical grounds. The idea of working with 'a small orchestra' if you like, was not earlier possible. Although they can quite reasonably approximate organic sounds, they do not understand 'feel.' They are essentially very cold instruments - to have moved away from them on this album is an important progression for me - more time consuming, but far more rewarding. The other important development for me has been working with Tim Friese-Greene.

Why don't the band feature much on record sleeves or in the videos? And why did the 'Life's What You Make It' video have so much wildlife footage?

I like the idea that record sleeves can be used as pictures - stuck on walls - I like the idea of including an artist within 'the package' of an album. The reason for using James Marsh is that by trade he is a book illustrator. By going through the lyrics with him and telling him what the album means to me I think we end up with a sleeve design more relevant than a photograph.

I like animals. I'd like people to give them more thought.

On 'It's Getting Late in the Evening' you can hear what sounds like either someone laughing or crying(which)? Some people have said that's pretentious: how would you defend yourself there, and what was your reason for including it?

(i) It's me laughing. (ii) I wouldn't, maybe I am. (iii) I liked the track.

What were you trying to say on 'Happiness is Easy'? It seems to me to be rather cynical. Have you any personal reason for being anti-religion?

The song isn't anti-religion - this song is about the way violence has often been linked with religion. Religion is good, War is bad. There is no connection.

You said in an interview with Record Mirror that you never listen to contemporary music at home. Does that mean you don't consider there to be anything of musical worth in the charts? And, if so, how do you explain Talk Talk's position in the Top Forty? What I'm basically saying is that if you have such a low opinion of the current pop scene, why become involved in it?

Because I am involved with contemporary music whenever I'm at home I choose to listen to music outside of that. There is such a wealth of past music it would seem blinkered to stay only with the present.

How much importance do you attach to your live stage show? Do you pay a lot of attention to the visuals and the lighting?

I think there are only three things important to a live show (apart from the audience)

(i) Firstly, the performance - that you believe in it.

(ii) Good sound - so that the arrangements can be heard.

(iii) Lighting - to help create mood change.

Why do you rate the piano so highly?

Because it feels good to touch, it's mechanical, it works with harmony, you don't have to be good to play it, it's well laid out.

Any chance of a live album?

Possible.

How far do you consider the music on The Colour of Spring to be actually yours? Bearing in mind the fact that much of it is played by session musicians.

I don't actually consider the people on this album as session people. They are people who generally work together either in their own right or in other bands. They are people whose work I like. Because of this they don't act are not treated like session musicians. We can allow them to come in and play with freedom and then select or direct in the area of which we like. I like working with people I think they add rather than take away.

As far as I know, Life's What You Make It is the only track I've come across to have an unvarying piano riff throughout. Why did you compose the tune that way?

There's an album by Can 'Tago Mago' recorded in the seventies. They used to do a lot of work around uncompromising rhythm sections. The idea was to take that stance but combine it with a song.

What was the significance of the animal noises at the intro of 'Such a Shame'?

They were only there with an idea toward future plans of involving wildlife within our videos.

How would you define art?

I think possibly intention is the most important thing. I think it is open to everyone and should not be elitist.

What are 'It's Getting Late in the Evening' and 'Have You Heard the News' about?

It's Getting Late in the Evening' takes its title from an old gospel song. Its lyric was written as such - Blacks finding deliverance from white slavery.

'Have You Heard the News?' is about being with someone who has had a bad accident - and the guilt that you feel although you were in no way responsible.

Mark: "Talk Talk are not your ordinary combo and require sympathetic marketing," he explains diplomatically. "They're not so much difficult as not obvious. You've just got to find as many ways as possible to expose the music. The standard marketing route is whack out a single, try to chart the single, and then hopefully on the strength of that, sell some albums. With the way the media is angled, the room you've got to expose adult music - for want of a better term - is very restricted. We've got to do what I believe to be a very heavy campaign on Talk Talk. we've got to go out very bullishly and tell people that this is an album for 1988. That will be the sales pitch - An Album For 1988."

"when I heard it first in it's finished form," says Tony Wadsworth, "I thought, Mmm, this is interesting, then got into it very quickly. Technology aside, it could have been made 20 years ago. I see it as even earlier than that. It's like a cross between classical music and jazz with a modern perspective. I don't see it as directly related to acid house but I see the phenomenon as having the same sorts of roots. There's common interests. They're both free-form with an insistent rhythm. I think it'll be well received. People are looking something a little more open-minded."

"Pace is of the essence," says Friese-Greene of the albums refusal to break into a brisk stroll, "even if it is a pace that approaches vanishing point at times. The more relaxed the pace, the more importance everything that happens assumes. You have to be careful and not overstep the line from being relaxed to being tedious and I think we've kept on the right side of that."

"The dynamics are a little bit hard to take at first," he continues. "There were times during the mixing when I thought, I'm not sure about this, but it scrapes through. Again it had to strike the right note between intensity and irritation. But we're not being naive about it. Some people could definitely be put off by the pace of it or the level of intensity and if people are uncomfortable with that maybe, with respect, they should listen to something else."

Ask Tim Friese-Greene if Hollis is he most boring person in the world, he will pause and reply,

"No ... he's probably the second most boring person in the world, because, according to him, there is no-one more boring than me."

One wonders how they mustered the energy to produce such a reaction-provoking record.

Mark: "Well, it's certainly a reaction to the music that's around at the moment "'cos most of that is shit, deadpans Hollis. "It's only radical in the modern context. It's not radical compared to what was happening 20 years ago. If we'd have delivered this album to the record company 20 years ago they wouldn't have batted an eyelid."

Would you recommend any particular situation in which to listen to it?

"Late at night definitely. In a very calm mood with no distractions."

You don't think it would make rather pleasant background music at, say, a dinner party?

"No I don't. Maybe after the dinner party. But you have to give it all your attention. You should never listen to music as background music. Ever."

Attitude towards interviews

"Given the choice, I wouldn't be doing this interview. Promoting records is not something I enjoy."

The contents of The Spirit of Eden, are they 'pieces', rather than songs.

Mark: "Yeah, sure, there's a heavy depth of arrangement. I'm sure it's not what the record company would have hoped for, but I'm happy with it. I never knew what is was going to sound like, although I knew what the vibe of the album would be. Before we started, everything was there as a basic structure, but the tracks themselves were all put down in a live format and then the overdubs were done at ridiculous length. Because you see, the most important thing with this album was just for it to have the right feel, for it to have an absolute calm, but for it to have an absolute intensity inside of that."

The dynamic range has more in common with Classical music than most pop.

"Yeah, I think dynamics are very important. The only way you can possibly lay a foundation for that is to put your track down live and just go with the one that has the right vibe. That would be just three or four of us, percussion, kit, guitar and keyboards. Then we'd give the other musicians - 17 in all - mostly people we'd worked with before - absolute freedom to play on the track so that it has a spontaneity and looseness. Eighty or 90% of what they played was improvised."

But the songs (pieces?) still sound arranged. Aren't they?

"This is one place were technology has become important to us. Working on a digital setup, you can just take things off then put them in other places and contruct your framework without loosing generation and end up with this carefully contructed, multi-layered format, but at the same time all of the parts in it are improvised and loose. Without digital technology, you couldn't do that."

Did you consider using synthesizers and samplers?

"Absolutely not. They wouldn't even be allowed anywhere near the studio. Everything is real, everything is played by people. The only thing we've used digital for is to take something from one place and move it to another. The biggest problem I have with what's happening is that it isn't aiding music. I think the most important thing in music is the way it's played. Unless it has feel, it's not there as far as I'm concerned, and the way so much of the musical equipment has gone to put the emphasis on the machine rather than the player. Unless things are played with that feeling and that heart, they're not worth anything."

"The one way I would quantify my attitude is to say that you don't have to be a good player, a technically capable player, to play with feel. I don't believe in technique in any way. I think all you need is the right attitude in your head to play. Especially when you go back to the stuff that Booker T used to do. Although that I'm sure they were technically inept, what flows out of them is really forceful. The intention with which you play is the important thing. You see, when I think of a sound, I think of a composite of two things; the way something's played and the sound itself. Where a lot of people have gone wrong is that they think the sound is just the sound, and what they're playing is a secondary thing. Generally we've gone for sounds that, in technical terms, you would say are rubbish, but when you couple that with the way it's played, then it becomes a good sound."

A lot of your work seems personal and introspective.

"Yeah, but it's getting more personal as it goes along. It's definately harder, harder to promote things in any way. I would rather just have the album say what it is itself and not do anything for it, just to let it exist."

So sales figures aren't important?

"The only reason I'm interested in sales figures is that, if it wasn't for the records we've sold in the past, we'd never have been able to make this album. What it can do is ensure us our autonomy, give us enough money to make the next record. Although, if it doesn't, we'll still make one, but with a smaller budget."

Mark talking about Laughing Stock:

http://users.cybercity.dk/~bcc11425/Real.htm

On the notorious EMI remix album (History Revisited):

"You say it's weird. I don't think it's weird. I think it's disgraceful!"

"We're gonna take them to court over this remix thing," Hollis says and, believe me, he's near to tears. "To me, it's unbelievable they could do that. To have people overdubbing stuff you've done and putting it out…" The sentence evaporates in exasperation. It's the complete antithesis of the Talk Talk ethos. Everything he's worked for is being murdered, mocked for greed.

"I've never heard any of this stuff and I don't want to hear it…but to have people putting this stuff out under your name which is not you, y'know, I want no part of it. It's always been very important to me that I've got on with the people we've worked with. People's attitude has always been really important to me. So much of why someone would exist on one of our albums is what they are like as a person. So to find you've got people you've never give the time of day to going out as thought it's you…it's disgusting."

On Natural History:

"A compilation album is not my idea of an album," says Hollis today. "I don't like compilation albums and I didn't like that one. It certainly wasn't the selection of tracks I would have liked even if there had to be one. But, at the end of the day, they had every right to do it so…"

He was even nominated for a Brits Award on the back of the rereleases (History Revisited) — a situation he finds as distressing as I find it ludicrous.

"They showed film of us from 1984," he says, visibly shaking. "It was just insulting, wasn't it? I wasn't happy with it."

On his attitude towards interviews:

"I do this to be reasonable," he explains. "But I don't see that doing an interview does anything but detract from the album. I mean, the album was a year of me being as succinct as I can possibly be and me talking about it can only detract from that."

"The last thing I would ever want to do is intellectualise music because that's never been what it's about for me," he says. "Nothing has changed from the ethic of the last album and I would never want that to change because I can't see any way of improving upon that process. As before, silence is the most important thing you have, one note is better than two, spirit is everything, and technique, although it has a degree of importance, is always secondary."

Ed. The attached link pretty much sums up Mark's attitude towards some of the cringe-worthy presenters he had to deal with, particularly the bit where he says, "... ok, it isn't Mirro Man...": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrgA2gzN3AA

Hollis comments on the powerful influence the atmosphere had on the creation of the album.

"The studio was oppressive to the point of unreality — an all day every day existence. I wanted to be totally immersed in the environment to the point where all normal everyday concerns were wiped out. For seven months it was the case that we only left the studio to sleep. Nothing else existed except the recording, the studio and the nucleus of me, Friese-Greene, Phill and Lee Harris. That sort of intensity helps the thing develop.

"What we did on this album is what we call rehearsed spontaneity. There are no demos, no plans at all. I go in and put down a basic outline of something using my Country Gent guitar and then we fly other stuff in to build up the dynamics, the space. That's the key — space — it helps to build and resolve the tensions. Silence is the most powerful instrument I have.

"All the stuff is unrehearsed and may not even have been done for that song. If a note from another track sounds right we transfer it. I'm after creating an image that goes into all the dimensions, not just the plain two dimensions of most music. That's why I treat my voice like an instrument. I don't want to create this perfect ambience and then have the vocal ride over the top without any thought."

The album itself is a strange collage of intense sounds, mellow tones, minimal percussion and unfathomable vocals all held, suspended perfectly, in Hollis' created landscape. Ambience proves one of the record's key aspects, as Hollis explains.

"It's all down in the end to the placing of sounds in an overall space, an ambience and the creation of that space is as crucial to the overall sound as what you actually put in it. A lot of what we do is accidental, built around mistakes. I'm looking for notes and sounds that are unique and the idea is how to build things, other little sounds around them. The whole idea is to build up tension and then be able to release it using the different sounds and the control of the space they sit in. In a way it's a very dynamic thing, a natural sense of the ability to create and break tension. It's amazing how little you actually need to achieve that sort of emotion. For example, on this records we recorded over 40 different musicians and kept only 20. Of those 20 we only kept sections or sometimes only individual notes because they weren't the right ones for the effect to work. For every minute that ends up on the album, there's probably an hour's worth of stuff that didn't make it."

"I thought the sessions for 'Spirit' were intense until we got into the latest one. The whole thing was incredibly disorienting. We were working to create a vibe most of the time, and although that sounds very 1967 there were elements that were very psychedelic in the true sense of the word. On 'Spirit' we worked with oil projectors in the studio and a great deal of darkness. For the new one it was like that from the start. Oil bubbles breaking on the walls, candles, incense and definitely no daylight. You'd get to the studio and within an hour be totally unable to remember what time was or how long you'd been in there. Very subdued, very strange.

On playing live?

"Even at the time of 'The Colour Of Spring' (1986) it was getting increasingly difficult to play the material live" says Hollis, with a surprisingly cock-er-nee tinge. "We were looking at rearranging songs, but having spent a year and a half making the record, the LAST thing you want to do is go back in and rearrange it ! There's a lot about playing live that I've never got on with, but I do think it's really important, and I'd hate to give the impression that I think all bands should be studio-bound."

"The Spirit of Eden was definitely the album where I thought, 'This is it. This is what we've been reaching for,' " Hollis now says. "Two things came together. First, because we'd previously sold so many records, we had a very large recording budget, which we decided to use to give us freedom to experiment. And second, digital recording had just come in."

The Split

Talk Talk made one more fine album, Laughing Stock, in 1991, before going their separate ways. "There was no big split," Hollis shrugs. "By the end, everything was so loose that walking away didn't seem like a wrench. We'd reached an end point." In execution, Mark Hollis, the album, turns The Spirit of Eden on its head. In the intervening years, its maker had learnt to read and write music and had been composing short pieces for woodwind and piano ("just for the sake of it, not with any notion that it would be heard by anybody else"). He put his new skills to good use: the delicate tendrils of woodwind and brass that lead into the bluesy track A Life (1895-1915) or the spare, brilliantly evocative piano figures that underpin Inside Looking Out and the opening spiritual, The Colour of Spring, would probably have been beyond him previously.

"The idea was to have carefully worked-out structures, within which the musicians would have a lot of freedom. I'd just say to them, okay, we're here, we want to get there - now let's play. And I wanted there to be no more than four or five things happening at any one time. Over the course of the record, there are probably 20 musicians involved, but I wanted it to feel like a small combo from start to finish."

"Well, all that I can really say is that from album to album, you want to actually make a development, otherwise what's the point of recording it?"

The album (Laughing Stock) is seasoned with weeping woodwind interruptions, testimony to Hollis's exploratory listening habits over the intervening years since 1991. "There's so much out there to listen to, and that takes all my time. For me, the best of that earlier bunch of composers that I've become aware of was Ravel, who I only ever knew for the Bolero, that hideous piece of work - and yet you've got stuff like his String Quartet, also his music for poems by Stephan Mallarmé, which are just a fantastic bit of writing and arranging. So it's like meandering along these little avenues and listening to stuff. That's how it works for me." Nothing on the album is electrified. "The minute you work with just acoustic instruments, by virtue of the fact that they've already existed for hundreds of years, they can't date. When you're looking at writing music, the ideal must be: I'd like to make music that can exist outside the timeframe. So your biggest chance of doing that, I guess, is working with instruments that by their nature don't exist in a time period. So, no syndrums - great as they were ..."

Why form Talk Talk?

"It was because I just loved records. And I really wanted to be in a band to make music. And then when we first started, the kind of stuff I was listening to was obviously very different to the stuff I'm listening to now. And you've got this thing where from album to album you want some kind of development, but at the same time in order to get development and not to hit repetition, you constantly come across things which you think, yeah, I can do that if I do It the way I've already done It, but I don't want to do it that way. And that, I think, is what forces you into other areas. You see, through these albums, for me, each one has felt like a very natural progression from where the one before was. But from this one to the fIrst one, there's no relationship there at all." Did something particularly significant happen between the making of The Colour Of Spring and Spirit? "No, I think at the point we got there, Spirit of Eden was very much felt like where it was always kind of heading, but no, nothing ... More than anything, it was just not wanting to repeat what you've done. All the time, you're getting older and everything and nothing is static It feels far more bizarre to me that there should be no change. That feels really very weird to me."

Mark and 'silent' creative partner Tim Friese-Greene decided to call it a day.

"Both of us felt that we didn't just want to repeat what we'd done in the past, but develop," says Hollis, always obliging in tone but choosing every word with great care. "That gets harder the longer you work. It was good that after 'Laughing Stock' he was of a like mind that that was it. It was hard to see where we could have gone from there."

How did you write Mark Hollis?

"Sometimes I'm listening to arrangements by Ravel and I don't even know what language it's in, but that's not what's important - the sentiment is what's important. Then again, lyrics are very important to the singer because you have to mean what you're saying."

"You look at blues music, Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker, and there's total honesty in the way it's recorded," enthuses Hollis. "What's so great with an acoustic instrument is that it's not only the note that exists, it's the friction, the creaking on the neck of the double bass. And when a lot of acoustic music gets produced, they fuck it up, they glob out all the great charm of the instrument, in order to make it seem 'polished'."

"Before punk, I never believed there was any way I could get involved with music. Punk was all about enthusiasm," recalls Hollis, eyes misting nostalgically. "And access. Suddenly, there were places all over the place where you could play. It didn't matter that 90 per cent of it was crap: the energy was what was important. And record companies didn't have a clue what to do with it."

On the early use of synthesisers..

"Through economic necessity, we had to use synthesisers to get the arrangements," says Hollis. "We'd have preferred to have brought in individual musicians, but we couldn't afford to. When it came to 'The Colour Of Spring', we'd had quite a bit of success and we had more money to make that album, so it was closer to what we wanted."

"'Spirit Of Eden' was the LP where I felt 'This is where we're heading' and really felt 'yeah, we've got it' - in terms of the totality of mood."

On EMI's attitude to their work...

"It always seemed they preferred the LP before to the one they were given at the time, only they never liked that when it first came out, either."

Mark, is your work ambient?

"That's not the same thing because you've always got this wash of sound in there. Whereas silence is something most people are afraid of. It gives them an opportunity to think and people aren't at all comfortable with that."

Mark talking about his eponymous album: http://users.cybercity.dk/~bcc11425/Real2.html

Mark, how do you write?

"The lyric is always last," Mark says, "the inflection and the phonetics must come first. The importance of the lyric is that in order to sing the thing properly you've got to mentally get yourself into what the subject is about. The lyric is extremely important in a performance point of view, but it's of secondary importance to the whole." So that's why you can't hear any of the bloody words then ? Hur hur. "No" Mark deadpans, "I just sing how it feels right to sing."

More interviews: http://users.cybercity.dk/~bcc11425/Real3.html

"I think, I’m basically instinctive, and I would generally act upon that. But at the same time I do think carefully about things. While recording the album, there were this thing that I wanted to do, and then there were this thing, but you never know at what it would actually arrive at. And that is what is instinctive. You can imagine yourself being different objects, like a water molecule. Heat is being given to you, so at some point you’re gonna turn into air. And you play through this period, and you have to make a transition from liquid to gas."

"I think of every album like a chapter. Through the time between making albums you do mentally undergo changes. And from one album to the next I would never expect someone that liked one album to like the next. The fact that this is an acoustic album is obviously odd to anything I’ve previously done to date. The reason to this album is to work acoustically, to work with a much more minimal framework, to record in this really shutdown intimate level. To record in a way where you kind of exist within the room in which it’s recorded, and to focus yourself into that. And to try and get this cross-thing between these different areas of music. I feel that I’m somewhere between jazz, folk and classical. I don’t see myself as a songwriter, I just see myself as someone who’s looking to make an album as an experience, rather than a sequence of tracks. I took it for granted that as a result of the album being acoustic, there may be a lot of people who don’t want to know. But I don’t think of it as a change from Talk Talk to this. Though I do think that from one album to the next, there are definite things that you decide that you want to do that you didn’t do before. And I think that is true with this album in that sense," says a smiling Mark Hollis.

"Well, in some ways it is. Because I’ve been working with Tim Friese-Greene (pianist and co-producer in Talk Talk - ed.) over a period of ten years, so it’s kind of like in a relationship, where you develop together and undergo a change between you. It’s not about sort of one minute "Okay, you’re my mate" and then you go and get somebody else in. So, sure, there is more of a difference when that kind of composition relationship came to an end, and then what you have to do is to find other people to work with. In that way, that’s a big difference, because a very crucial part of the album is the writing of it."

Anyhow, the fact that Talk Talk came to an end, didn’t turn Mark Hollis’ world upside down. "Over the last couple of hours it was a very loose, flexible affair. We worked together for a long period that went well. The whole point with the last albums was that, you know, it isn’t this kind of band-thing where it’s all like this tight thing that you’re forced into. It was much looser, we could come together and play, but... The thing with me and Tim, we had worked together over a long period and then we got to a point, where we thought that there were really nowhere for us to go, in terms of how we work and how we write. We’ve always wanted to not to repeat, but then we came to a point where we thought that if we do more, we’re gonna repeat. And with Lee (Harris, drummer in Talk Talk - ed.) who’d sort of like bought his own studio, and he was getting into very different areas of music to where my head is out of everything. I’m just happy that everyone is into what they’re doing and goes where they wanna go."

Your solo album is very different from the rest of today's music scene. Was that your intention?

"It was not intended to be different, but then it is totally obvious to me, that it would be. Because given the things I wanted to do on this album, I didn’t imagine it would have any relationship at all with the modern music. I don’t think I’ve been in the pop scene since 1986. From the point on when we finished touring, we’ve never done television, radioshows or anything that is connected with it. I don’t feel I’m part of any music scene. I’m just a musician playing with other musicians," Mark Hollis explains.

Not even the beginning of a solo career will make Mark Hollis perform live. He says, that a concert situation doesn’t allow the music to be performed in it’s own acoustic environment. The solo album consists of woodwind, percussion, harmonica, piano, harmonium and acoustic guitar.

"I just love the sound of those instruments hid that low down and the physical sounds that surround the instrument, whether it’s creaking or whether it’s the way air goes through or whatever. That is almost as important as the note. So just purely on a sound aspect, the reality of what an acoustic instrument is, is one reason to why the album is so quiet. Another reason is from a mental point of view, that I just like that kind of calm and that relaxed feel within players and musicians." Mark Hollis describes with soft and simple gestures the quiet rush.

"But mentally, from a vocal point of view, I don’t think it’s all calm. I think it goes for things that are quite severe headwise. But at the same time, I like that kind of way it moves and sort of waves. For me it’s kind of like a sound and a feel of this room that you exist within. But I think, you know, that one minute you might be in a room which is optimistic and then the next minute it completely dives out from that. It’s like with music when you sort of have to find a chord that is justified by the chord that went before it. The same is true emotionally and textwise."

The music contains a collection of disturbed emotions which are some how put into an order that you seemed to be developing during the process of writing the music?

"Yeah, yeah. Where that is correct is that it is arranged upfront, so that everything is thought about precise. But when it comes to the way it’s performed, the whole attitude towards that is very loose and free. So I think those things do exist together, whether it’s something very precise and contained or an actual movement in it that is opposite to that kind of thing. It’s kind of like if you looked at my favourite albums ever; when Miles Davis was with Gil Evans, there were two albums: The Sketches Of Spain and the Porgy & Bess. They were very careful arrangements, but within the arrangements there’s a feeling of improvisation that goes on within it. I think my new album is very different moodwise and everything, but I think that the balance of containment might break out as being true in both arrangement and performance."

"If you asked me: "What picture would you look at, when you listen to this album?", I would say something like a picture with only two colours, for instance purple on black, black on red. I would say something where you have something extremely simplistic to look at with no narrative content at all, that has enough texture within it. It’s your imagination that it makes work, and from one moment looking at it to another moment, different things will appear in it. If you just glanced at it, it would just look like nothing was there. It’s like in a relationship. The more you focus on the music, the more you will hear from the music. The more that you give in terms of listening to what’s happening on the album, the more things will reveal themselves within the album."

After '86 you never went on tour again?

After '86, yes.

Mark,why retire from touring?

“I cannot go on tour and be a good father at the same time”

That's quite a long time.

"It's a little time", yes.

Are there any intentions to play live at the moment?

No, none at all. Firstly it would be totally impossible to play this music live and besides I have no desire to reproduce music for a whole year that I've just recorded. I'd rather be writing new songs.

It's not a problem of contact with the audience, but the question of sound.

Yes, absolutely.

But what about locations for classical music?

Yes, sure, but look, even during a classical concert you have noise, there is coughing during really soft parts. That throws off my concentration. With rock music the live aspect has a value of its own, whereas silence is an extremely important aspect of classical music, so with the latter I prefer listening to records. It's the same with my music, everything is so incredibly soft that any interference would be fatal.

Are there any bad memories concerning the time with Talk Talk?

No, on the contrary, rather amusing ones. There are a few things we could have done better when we signed the contract, but otherwise it was great fun and we had nice moments. And as far as the albums are concerned, they are as good as was possible at the time.

And what about the commercial aspect? Weren't the last two albums problematic in so far as they were very expensive and failed commercially?

Yes, but...you know. I love these albums, so what the hell. Spirit of Eden, Laughing Stock and this new album are related to each other and I'm fond of all of them. Spirit of Eden was the first album to emerge without pressure from outside.

But what happened when you presented the tapes to the record company?

I never bothered about that. I only concentrated on the album and Keith, my manager did the rest. I always tried to separate these areas and not let anything interfere with the music.

And what about the remix album?

Totally out of my control. There is nothing I can say about that. I never listened to the record. We had left the record company and it happened. I couldn't stop it.

Did you ever think about something like remixing?

No, never. When a record has been mixed, that's it. I don't listen to it again or think 'we should have done this or that differently'.

Was the evolution of Talk Talk a joint process or did you lead the way?

Tim Friese-Greene had an essential share. The two of us composed and arranged songs. It was important to us not to repeat ourselves but to develop constantly. Lee and Paul...they liked the direction it all took and enjoyed being part of it.

So it was not a question of your concepts that the band ceased to exist?

No, no, everything sort of drifted apart...since Spirit of Eden we had no gigs any longer, so Tim and me worked together and met the others only at the recording sessions. This situation allowed all of us to start something new. By the time Laughing Stock was finished Lee and Paul had bought a studio and worked on their own project.

Was that part of the mixing?

No, it was part of the composition. The other new aspect was to expand the songs further than ever. With the first song for instance, Myrrhman, we had the idea of doing a composition with no repeating sections. With Ascension Day we did have three verses, but each with fewer bars and identical vocals. It was all about changing song structures.

A very intellectual approach.

Yes, yes, that's true. When we had completed the recordings we were through with it, knew what it was like and didn't want to go further. We had pushed song writing as far as possible and thought 'this is the right moment to stop'. That was the end of it, very vague, if you know what I mean.

Doesn't that mean at the same time, you could come together again?

Oh no, it doesn't work that way. All of us took different directions and explored different fields...

Would it not be more appropriate for the last two Talk Talk albums and your new record to be managed by the classic department rather than by pop people?

Sure. No question. The existence of such sections is unfortunate anyway, be it in companies or music generally. And on top of that there are these pointless arrangements determining when something is released, and when one is supposed to listen to it. If you look at the Blues for instance, I myself would find it impossible to consider the Blues of the nineties only. If you want to understand something you have to look at all of the past 90 years.

Was it actually difficult getting the contract for this record?

No, this record was still part of the last contract. The contract I signed prior to Laughing Stock included two records, with no temporal limit.

And what about the financial aspect? Do you have to make records in order to earn a living?

No, not really. I earned enough through old royalties to make a living.

Until the end of your days?

(laughs) No, that's a bit long. But for a conceivable time. And that is important for me to work the way I like.

And what did you do during these seven years? Music?

I listened to an incredible amount of music and composed a great deal. But there is no need to record everything. I play piano for the sake of piano playing. You know...(pause)...the first couple of years I wrote arrangements for wood-wind ensembles, four or five players. That's what interested me after the last record - writing for small ensembles, with no percussion and no song structure. At the time I never thought of making a record and only a few little parts are included on this record now. Most of it exists on paper only.

But you are still in contact with other musicians.

Sure, I met a lot of musicians over the years. But that has nothing to do with the music business. They are almost all guys who can't make a living of making music.

You say you listen to a lot of music. Do you listen to modern or temporary music?

No, not at all. That is, a little modern classic, but no rock or pop.

That's far off your world.

At the moment, yes. The reason for this is that I'm interested in musical references and like to dwell on some things more thoroughly.

Life

I read that after Colour Of Spring you moved to the countryside. Do you still live there?

No, I'm back in London for two years now.

Doesn't the noise bother you?

Yes and no. I need a room that is very quiet. But what I also need and especially want with respect to my two sons is a cosmopolitan society, a vital culture that does not exist in rural areas.

And you don't mind your children listening to hardrock or hiphop?

They can listen to whatever they like. Occasionally I play something for them, but that's just to see how they respond, not to educate them.

Is music important to them? How old are they?

Seven and ten. No, music is not very important to them. They both learn instruments, piano and guitar, but totally relaxed and without constraint.

The new album is just titled Mark Hollis. Does that mean it's kind of an essence?

No. I just didn't feel there was a reason for a title. The songs have titles, which makes sense. But the album...if it was the second it would need a title to distinguish it from the first.

The album begins with "The Colour Of Spring". Is that a reference to the past?

No, I just thought it would be a good title for the text. Apart from that, the reference is ok.

There is a remarkable connection between the title and the text in which you talk about burnt bridges.

It is definitely not an autobiographical song. The song is about people who think in absolutely materialistic ways, do anything just for money, have no moral principles, and are going to tell you something about the beauty of nature. And yet they know nothing about it, because these are completely contradictory ideas. The next thing is a very romantic idea: that while you have this sensation of beauty you can fly over the bridges that you burnt before...

Are you romantic?

Am I romantic? Good god, that's a question (smiles, muses...)

New album

Let's skip this point. The recording process must have been a very disciplined matter.

It was the composing and arranging that was rather disciplined. During the recording sessions the playing was - within the limits of the strict arrangements - quite free and lively.

But doesn't the fact that you hear such noise as the creaking of chairs mean that you hardly breathed?

Yes, no, I just wanted to record everything as it is, an album without producing. To make you feel like being in a room together with these people.

How many tracks did you use to achieve this?

Good god... it must have been something like 66, I think. This was necessary in order to capture the colours and the space.

Did you write more songs than there are on the album?

No. Everything is included. There has to be a carefully planned balance of tension and ease, with each song as well as with the whole album.

Little philosophical excursion: there is this old Talk Talk song called "Happiness Is Easy". Is that so?

Good god, is happiness easy...good god (rolls his eyes)

Ok, let's put it this way: are you happy? Now? With this situation?

I am definitely happy with this record. It is exactly what I wanted it to be.

And the rest is too private.

Yes, I think so.

Would you say you escape from reality? Escapism?

Yes, certainly. Music is an escape. And yet at the same time the exact opposite of it, something that deepens your senses and forms your perception of things, i. e. your life.

"In addition, I really write alone, that's to say, without anything familiar around me. A small studio, a piano, a unique little lamp and the darkness around, nothing else, and then I am able to put my ideas into music. I compose very slowly and only with a piano. This explains why I can't do anything on tour. Luckily I had four months off to enable me to write the songs for 'The Colour of Spring'! I prefer the piano to any other instrument for composing. Yet, technically I am very poor on that instrument, but I don't intend to learn to play it well one day, to play it better, for the sole reason that I compose on it. To me, technique isn't a language, it doesn't really enable you to express yourself. Music needs to be composed intuitively, with emotion. Like it's always been the case for gospel, soul, that kind of music. I know that by proceeding by trial and error on my keyboard, I'll always end up finding intuitively what corresponds to my feeling. Technique must come afterwards, in the studio, but not in the composition. When we are in the studio recording, I only play a few basic lines from the piano and Tim Friese-Greene, who is far better than me, plays the other fancier parts. 'Life's What You Make It' is a good example of this method.

I think that the team that I form with Tim Friese-Greene, who produces Talk Talk with me, is very good because I am intuitive and technically uneducated, and he is a real technician. Our understanding comes from the fact that we are both passionate about impressionist French music from the Nineteenth century: Debussy, Satie. I feel it and he explains it to me. It is the same thing with Talk Talk's music. I create it instinctively and he perceives the technical structures within it, the harmonious implications, and he develops them, thus building up the spectre of each track. In fact, Tim and I set up the essential bits from the tapes I make at home. The group only come in at the end but please, don't believe that we are dictatorial to the point of imposing all the arrangements, that Talk Talk's musicians are only our workers. We give each of them a line of direction, a kind of sphere of activity in the song, and they do whatever they want. I'm certainly not going to dictate note by note to Steve Windwood what he's going to do on the organ or to Robbie McIntosh what he has to play on the guitar."

"No, I prefer to write at home, alone and quietly. I am not like the ones who say: 'Here, I'm taking two weeks off and I'm going to write the songs for the next album, quietly'. I am unable to plan my inspiration that way, because of the simple fact that I can't tell myself: 'Here, I'm going to write a song on such or such topic'. This would be very positive, but I'm a very negative person. I write little by little, under the influence of impulses, and most of the time in reaction to something that has offended my sensitivity. I can't write in favour of something, I always write against it. And that may be the reason why my songs often have a slightly sad aspect."

"It's true, he admits, that my situation is a little contradictory, but I like being in a group. I don't think I'd be able to stand the situation of being a solo artist. In fact, if there is the band Talk Talk and not simply Mark Hollis, it's because Paul (Webb, bass) and Lee (Harris, drums) are people I like, who I like to be with and travel with. We form a kind of football team. In a team, there's a captain who decides on the strategy, but everybody has a good time playing together. The band function a bit like that. I like being on stage with them. I like living it up with them after the concerts, having a drink, having a laugh. Being a solo artist must be sad. I like this team spirit, even if you may be right in thinking that I direct everything, that I am Talk Talk and even if you can point out to me that I'm the only one doing interviews! It's true, but if they weren't by my side, there probably wouldn't be any Talk Talk at all, and therefore, no Mark Hollis either.

I think I would have never got involved in such an adventure without a group. There is more to it than music and production. In groups, there is a whole human dimension, an inner life, a chemistry of minds which are as important as all the rest, but that people tend to forget from the outside. To me, Talk Talk satisfy musical needs as much as more social and human ones. I might be an individualistic, centralising composer, but I also like to share what I create with others. That's why I continue to maintain that Talk Talk are a real group."

"It's very easy to work with me. Each person has complete freedom and contributes to the final result. I'm only a selector, in my team I take people for what they are and I only ask them to give me what they want. I don't demand anything, I don't expect anything specific, I let them be. When we record, I like to use huge studios. That way, each instrument can be moved so that its position during the mix is right. That means that I never have to use electronic: if I want the instrument to stand back, I get the musician to move back in relation to the others because the biggest part of our tracks is recorded live. We arrive at the studio with a minimum setting, that we're playing live. We then complete with improvisations. Therefore, I never know in advance what our albums will sound like. I just know what the atmosphere will be like, but that's all. I don't know where the songs will be heading. Besides, I spend more time erasing and cutting than recording. My work mainly consists of purging again and again ... Hours and hours of tape from which I only need to keep a few crucial moments. Our musicians don't understand that we want to keep these little bits where they go wrong, where they find themselves out of tune, but these mistakes interest me. I've never been able to stand technique, it's never impressed me. That is why the Punk movement counted so much for me. Everyone could become a musician, everyone was a musician. If you feel something, just play it: even if you can only play one note, it doesn't matter, you're as important as any other musician. I'll always be faithful to this Punk spirit."

"But I'm not the one who counts. The only important thing is to make music. In England, my records don't sell. This is an ideal situation for me. The rest of Europe gives me a living and yet, I remain totally anonymous at home. I've got the possibility to make records the way I want, I've got the means to do it and I can still be the average man. If I was recognised in the street, I would feel claustrophobic, as if I was locked up. This is very dangerous to be centred on yourself too much and I'm happy to be anonymous. I live in the countryside, far from everything. This is very important for my state of mind, but as soon as I need to record, I need to go, come back into town, to London. This is extremely important to make a break. In the countryside, I would feel too out of place to be able to record ... I left the city six years ago, I wanted to find a sense of community again. Where I live, I can go into shops and talk to people. This isn't only the money you're going to leave on the counter that counts. I needed this contact, I felt like slowing down the pace. Yet, I miss the cosmopolitan side of the city. I need to come back to London regularly, to keep in touch."

"The only mistake was to accept the producer who the record company absolutely wanted to impose to us. We should have never let them do it. Our image also harmed us for a long time. When we signed up with EMI, our image was close to the 'Doors', we felt we could relate to this psychedelic period, but the record company 'cleaned us up' (smiles) ... We really had to break this ridiculous image they had thought for us. I was never comfortable with the suits they tailor-made for us. I had the impression to play in a farce, but we had to accept certain compromises to be able to be more adamant on some other issues, such as our refusal to appear on our record sleeves, because to me, that was more important than anything else. My real image is my music."

"I am going to sue EMI, our former record company. They gave our songs to DJ's to remix them, released compilations of dance-mixed songs of our own tracks without even talking to us about it. I refuse to listen to these records. This is a scandal to give my songs like that to people who I wouldn't even work with in my worst nightmares. They bastardised my work, released it behind my back, they should be ashamed. My songs aren't guinea pigs, this is disgusting to play with them that way. When I release a record, it means that I consider it definitively finished. Therefore, I can't see what you should remove or add, they aren't guinea pigs."

"Few people like music in record companies.""

"Of course, our reality is a commercial suicide. Our first two albums were huge hits but I don't feel the least ashamed of these records. At that time, I wanted to write songs, I wanted to limit myself to these pop structures, but I have never taken the split decision to stop writing that way, to commit a 'commercial suicide'. We've just moved on naturally. I've grown older, I've been influenced by new friendships. At the beginning, it was impossible to establish a real relationship with a musician. We used them, got the best out of them and threw them away if they weren't useful to us anymore. However, after ten years, friendships were born, they've changed me considerably. It's thanks to them that we never stagnated. Instead of changing our musicians all the time, we prefer to get to know them better, to fight frustration together ... because frustration pushes us forward, keeps us away from these limited structures. Even if we don't always know what we want, above all we know what we don't want, we can then push it away together."

"After 'The Colour of Spring', we went on tour. That was the last one of our career. Until then, the routine had settled in for three years: album, then tour ... The big difference comes from there: we weren't limited by time anymore, we didn't have any deadline to stick to anymore. Therefore, we could then start working as we wanted, improvising. To me, tours were far too retrospective. As soon as a track is recorded, I don't feel like going back to it again. Besides, I decided to have children and my family had priority over the concerts. Anyway, our music became more and more difficult to play on stage. Moreover, the tracks on our new album would be physically impossible to play in concert."

"Yes, I needed to be permanently drunk, that was really worrying. We'd play six days a week and so, I had to get totally tanked up six evenings a week. It wasn't even pleasurable anymore, but a necessity: without alcohol, I was unable to go on stage. When we started, enthusiasm would make me go on stage, but I quickly lost this. The routine, the repetition quickly killed it. The only way I had to appreciate our music, to have the impression to hear a bit of purity in it was to be continuously pissed".

"There has been some reaction of reject, admits Hollis, and our change of label is certainly the result of this. The fact is that, in the past, in record companies there were people who dealt with music and others who dealt with business, and now there are only business people. They couldn't, or didn't want to understand where we were coming from. EMI probably would have wanted us to stick to the former Talk Talk. Who cares? Now they don't have either. I think that a lot of people have wrongly told themselves that what we are making now isn't accessible, and so it can't be sold. I believe, on the contrary, that there's nothing more accessible than the music we're making now, because all you have to do is to let yourself go, to let yourself carry away by emotions, without prejudice or any previous special knowledge."

"I don't think that I belong to what you call Pop music anymore. I am closer to jazz now."

"Yes ... I would say that, to make an album, you need to have a reason that justifies it. On 'Laughing Stock' we took improvised snippets in order to build heavier arrangements whereas on this album, one factor was essential to me: even if we might have had fifteen or twenty different instruments on the record, I didn't want more than four or five at a time. That's why it sounds so bare. I didn't mind working with only one instrument or two mikes. I wanted the listener to have the impression that the music exists in the very place where it is created. That's why I took good care to place the mikes in certain places rather than in others for example. This enabled me to create the atmosphere of an empty room."

Do you feel close to people's approach such as John Cage or Terry Riley?

"When you listen to a record it's always with certain references which are your own and I'd be flattered to be compared to such musicians ..."

(NME, January 16, 1982) - Interview with Mark Hollis and Paul Webb.

TALK TALK

(Smash Hits, August 18, 1982) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

HOT GOSSIP

(SOUNDS, October 30, 1982) - Interview with Mark Hollis, Paul Webb and Simon Brenner.

LIP SERVICE

(Melody Maker, March 17, 1984) - Interview with Mark Hollis and Paul Webb.

SAD SONGS SAY SO MUCH

(Record Mirror, August 4, 1984) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

THE ESCAPEES

(Record Mirror, August 4, 1984) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

Talk Talk

(Record Mirror, February 1, 1986) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

A CHIN WAG with TALK TALK

(Number One, February 8, 1986) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

Communication Breakdown

(NME, February 22, 1986) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

Mark Hollis interview

(May 5, 1986) Interview by Rachael Demadeo made at the Britannia Hotel, Manchester.

Come on, market me

(Q, 1988) - Interview with Mark Hollis, Tim Friese-Greene and Tony Wadsworth.

TALK TALK talk

(International Musician and Recording World, November 1988) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

Mark Hollis talks about Laughing Stock (RealMedia)

Interview with Mark Hollis from Verve promo tape.

Silencing the scams

(Melody Maker, September 7, 1991) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

BLAH BLAH BLACK SHEEP

(NME, October 12, 1991) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

Tech Talk

(Melody Maker, October 26, 1991) - Interview with Mark Hollis and Phill Brown.

Chatback

(VOX, November, 1991) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

Composing himself

(The Sunday Times, January 25, 1998) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

(The Wire, January, 1998) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

(Record Collector, January, 1998) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

Mark Hollis Talking Liberties

(VOX, February, 1998) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

Interview with Mark Hollis from Danish National Radio, February 4, 1998.

SUPER SHY GUY

(NME, February 14, 1998) - Interview with Mark Hollis.

Okay Tone - Mark Hollis Special (RealMedia)

(DR2, Danish National Television, February 22, 1998) - Interview with Mark Hollis and clips from Talk Talk videos.

Simple complexity

An English rewriting made by Mette Castbak of an article she wrote for the Danish magazine GAFFA, February 1998. - Interview with Mark Hollis.

The path over the burnt bridge

An English translation made by Stefan Weber of an interview with Mark Hollis from the German website Subaudio.