In 1982, when his synth-pop band Talk Talk were making a mark on the charts with the singles Talk Talk and Today, Mark Hollis said: “I want to write stuff that you’ll still be able to listen to in 10 years’ time.” Nearly 40 years later, Hollis, who has died aged 64, has left a musical legacy that seems set to last indefinitely.
Although Hollis hated the way Talk Talk were packaged by their label EMI in white suits and black ties and bundled in with New Romantics such as Duran Duran (whom they supported on tour) or Ultravox, even his early songs still stand up to critical scrutiny. Talk Talk, a UK No 23 in 1982, and It’s My Life, which reached 46 on the UK chart in 1984 and 13 when reissued in 1990, are punchy, melodic and tightly focused. Talk Talk’s debut album The Party’s Over climbed to 21 in Britain, but Hollis was dreaming of greater and grander things. The second album, It’s My Life (1984), found the group broadening its musical scope and instrumental palette, and while it reached only 35 in the UK, it cracked the US Top 50 and scored highly on charts across Europe, with European audiences also taking a shine to the single Such a Shame.
The group finally cut all ties with the synthesiser era with The Colour of Spring (1986), a powerful and coherent set of songs which delivered the major hit Life’s What You Make It and a slightly lesser hit with Living in Another World. They typified the album’s mix of powerful, spacious rhythms with carefully wrought instrumental colours, topped by Hollis’s pained and yearning vocals. By now Hollis was writing all the material with Tim Friese-Greene, who had been brought aboard for the It’s My Life album as producer and keyboard player. The album was a hit internationally.
However, apart from the compilation Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk (1990), which reached No 3 in the UK and sold a million copies worldwide, this would prove to be the high-water mark of Talk Talk’s chart success. Henceforth Hollis would take the group (comprising its original drummer Lee Harris and bass player Paul Webb, and with Friese-Greene as a regular contributor) into boldly experimental territory, creating music that would prove influential on many other artists, but was anathema to record companies looking for hit singles and platinum discs.
Hollis was born in Tottenham, north London, and attended Tollington grammar school in Muswell Hill (now Fortismere school). Hollis was always cagey about discussing his life and background, but did say he took a course in child psychology at Sussex University which he failed to complete. His move into a musical career was greatly influenced by his older brother Ed, who was writer and producer for the Canvey Island pub rockers Eddie and the Hot Rods. Ed’s own musical tastes were eclectic, and he encouraged Mark to dip a toe into everything from free jazz to prog rock and American garage bands. The punkish spirit of the era could be discerned in Mark’s first band, the Reaction, who released the single I Can’t Resist in 1978.
Ed also influenced the line-up of the fledgling Talk Talk, helping Mark and the keyboard player Simon Brenner to find Webb and Harris, who hailed from the Southend-on-Sea area. Their deal with EMI came about after the A&R man Keith Aspden heard a demo tape they had sent to Island Music, which impressed Aspden so much that he left his previous job to become their manager. EMI put the group together with the producer Colin Thurston, who had worked with David Bowie, the Human League and Duran Duran, and they set to work on Talk Talk’s debut album.
The success of The Colour of Spring meant that Talk Talk had a bigger budget to play with on the follow-up, Spirit of Eden (1988), but Hollis’s musical thinking was now geared towards Debussy, Erik Satie and Ornette Coleman rather than other pop or rock acts. Spirit of Eden, with its startling musical textures, sudden changes of pace and interludes of silence, was as much a modern classical album as a pop record. Though many critics hailed it as a masterpiece and it reached the UK Top 20, EMI were frustrated at its lack of commercial selling points. After months of legal wrangling, band and label parted company.
With the band now reduced to Hollis and Harris, with Friese-Greene producing and playing keyboards, Talk Talk’s final album Laughing Stock (1991) was released by Polydor’s Verve label, and pushed the musical envelope a little further (it began with 18 seconds of silence). Though sombre and uncompromising, it reached 26 in the UK, a reflection perhaps of the strange, lingering allure of pieces such as Taphead and Ascension Day.
The group now disbanded, with Hollis claiming that he wanted to focus on family life with his wife Flick, a teacher, and their two sons. Having been living in rural Suffolk, Hollis moved to Wimbledon, south-west London, in 1998, the same year he released his only solo album, entitled Mark Hollis. If anything even more sparse and haunted than what preceded it, it seemed a fitting coda to Hollis’s career, from which he had now apparently retired. Musicians including Tears for Fears, Radiohead, Elbow’s Guy Garvey and Steve Wilson of Porcupine Tree have acknowledged Talk Talk’s influence, while No Doubt’s 2003 version of It’s My Life was a hit in the US and Britain. A tribute album, Spirit of Talk Talk, was released in 2012.
Hollis did break cover fleetingly. As well as making guest appearances on Unkle’s album Psyence Fiction and Phill Brown and Dave Allinson’s AV1 (both 1998), he popped up on Anja Garbarek’s album Smiling & Waving (2001) to play bass guitar and melodica, and in 2004 collected a BMI award as writer of It’s My Life. In 2012 he composed a piece of music for Kelsey Grammer’s TV drama Boss.
He is survived by his wife and sons.
• Mark David Hollis, singer, musician and composer, born 4 January 1955; died 25 February 2019
• This article was amended on 11 March 2019. The original stated incorrectly that Simon Brenner was from the Southend-on-Sea area, and that he was introduced to Mark Hollis by Ed Hollis.
