A multitude of synths: Thompson Twins, OMD talk 80s nostalgia & NZ tour
Touring here this summer, the frontmen of Thompson Twins and Orchestra Manoeuvres in the Dark chat about the dayglo good old days.
When the Thompson Twins conquered America in the mid-1980s, they took Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark along for the ride. Thompson Twins frontman Tom Bailey says he remembers pulling on a stage costume every night as the pioneering synthpop support band played Souvenir, the early OMD hit that is still a favourite. “I used to do this kind of wiggle dance putting on these really tight trousers … what a melody. It’s a fantastic piece of work.’’
For his part, OMD singer Andy McCluskey remembers the many permanent Thompson Twins earworms.
“Even now, I can’t stop singing Doctor! Doctor! We spent how many weeks on that tour? You’d go to bed with those tunes in your head, and you’d wake up with them in your head.”
By then, the group centred on the duo of McCluskey and Paul Humphreys were already six albums into a career that stretched back to 1978. But the London-born Thompson Twins – built around the trio of Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie, and Joe Leeway – had the US hits, especially the run of them from the group’s 1984 fourth album Into the Gap.
Both groups were part of a wave of British acts embraced by the MTV era that redefined what pop bands could look or sound like.
Forty years later, and ahead of sharing a stage in New Zealand, Bailey and McCluskey are reunited via Zoom at the suggestion of the Listener. Today, Bailey is in London and about to head to the US for a 30-date run after a 40th anniversary Into the Gaptour of the UK. Speaking from Liverpool, McCluskey has had the northern summer off to recover from a recent knee replacement. It seems his distinctive dancing style, often described as being like a trainee teacher, has done some damage.
“Cortisone became my rock’n’roll drug of choice after rubbing cocaine on the knee didn’t work any more,” he deadpans.
Currie was a child of Auckland’s Mt Roskill but Thompson Twins toured New Zealand only once. They had two outdoor stadium shows in 1986 and OMD turned up for three shows at the end of the same year.
After calling time on the band and marrying in 1991, Bailey and Currie spent much of the 1990s living in New Zealand with their two children, first in Matakana and then in Ponsonby. Bailey’s musical outlets included his own dub-electronica albums as International Observer and playing with the Indo-fusion group the Holiwater Project. His closest thing to pop was his co-production on the 1999 debut hit album by Stellar*.