Here's to Future Days: An Interview with Tom Bailey of The Thompson Twins
How a drum machine helped create the Twins' iconic image
One of the least-appreciated parts of 1980s music is the direct link between technology and aesthetics. If you’re a Gen Xer and grew up on a daily diet of MTV, this might seem obvious. But if you didn’t, the connection between the devices of this era, and the effect they had on how bands presented themselves, might require more explanation. After all, as technology becomes ubiquitous, it also becomes invisible: it’s something that is simply taken for granted, as is true in today’s digital world.
Maybe one of the best examples of this link is The Thompson Twins, the British trio who dominated the charts for a few years during the Me Decade. I tracked down frontman Tom Bailey last fall, primarily to ask some questions about the Movement Computer Systems Percussion Computer, a rare and short-lived drum machine that powered the Twins’ most massive hits, including “In the Name of Love,” “Love on Your Side,” “Lies,” “Hold Me Now,” and “Doctor, Doctor.”
But Bailey pointed out that the use of the Movement was about more than just its sounds (which, if you listen to them, are still among the best of their era). The Movement, a machine that was featured in multiple Thompson Twins videos, was also a critical component of the Twins’ style. And in those MTV-dominated days, that was no small thing. As Bailey says, it constituted a kind of “revolution.”
“I wanted to kind of let our audience know…that we’d become tired of the usual lineup of bands that you see endlessly,” Bailey recalled. “You know, even if we had to have drums and bass on stage, basically we were doing it all with computers and keyboards from that point onwards. And so [the Movement] became important, and we used it in a couple of videos as well, because I thought that it was important to let the world know about that.”
In our conversation, Bailey elaborated on the importance of the Movement to the Twins’ career, as well as the connection between technology and creativity. On the eve of the Thompson Twins’ return to the U.S. for a summer tour, it seemed like the right time to post this interview—and break my long Substack silence!
DL: I feel compelled to tell you up front that the first show I ever saw, in 1984, was a Thompson Twins concert. My mom, bless her, had to take me because I wasn't old enough to go myself. It was a formative experience.
TB: Where was that?
That was in Morgantown, West Virginia, at West Virginia University on the Into the Gap tour. Re-Flex was opening.
Oh, okay—I mean, I remember the tour, but I don't remember that gig specifically, so you'll have to just accept my apologies on that. (Laughs)
That's quite all right. I'd had Side Kicks for a year at that point, so I was ready. And I guess Side Kicks is probably a fair chunk of what we may be talking about here as well. Because I guess that was really the one where the Movement—if I understand right, that was the one that was really where it got its true airing.
Well, yes, but it's a little bit more of a complicated story than that. Because of the previous album, which was called Set and was made by the previous lineup of the Thompson Twins, which was a kind of seven-piece guitar-based outfit.
And I mean, I've told this particular part of the story many times, which was that we ran out of material, you know—we didn't have enough songs for the album. And we had been recording in RAK Studios with Steve Lillywhite producing.
RAK Studios was owned by someone called Mickie Most. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He was a famous producer of kind of pop-tastic hits in the 70s, but actually had a very noble background in terms of who he worked with, you know. He's long gone, but anyway...he had a Movement drum machine. It was in the control room, and everyone kind of looked and thought, what's that? And it was the first time I'd ever seen a drum machine. But we didn't use it until we ran out of material.
I’d just recently got hold of a polyphonic synthesizer, and I took it home to figure out how to use it. And actually I didn't play much synthesizer on the album up to that point because Tom Dolby had come in at Steve Lillywhite's request to do a few overdubs here and there, which he did very well. And I was slightly outclassed by Tom, who'd had several years experience with synthesizers already. I'd been wanting to, but could never afford such a thing. So...this was my moment.
I took it home and was working out. And in the process of learning how to operate the Oberheim synthesizer, I wrote a song called “In the Name of Love.” Now, the only drum machine—well, it's not even a drum machine. It's not worthy of the name, but there was a Roland little square box. I can't remember what they were called…a CompuRhythm.
Oh, the CR78.
Yeah, yeah. Which made predetermined loops of electronic impulses that sounded...I mean, some people use them to great effect, but everything just started to sound the same on those things, you know.
So I used that for the demo, took it in and said, okay, I've written this song, it can be the filler for Side Two. Why don't we use this Movement drum machine to do the drums on it? And so I programmed a very, very square four-on-the-floor [beat] with a snare on two and four and a clap, I think, because that's all I could figure out how to do, and pretty constant 16ths on the hi-hat.
And then I got our drummer. Then the problem was, because I'd kind of done everything on a synthesizer and a drum machine, I had to kind of think, well, what can the band do? And so I kind of thought of, oh, the guitarist can do this part, and the bassist can obviously play that part. And it was so complicated that in fact, people stumbled and didn't do exactly what had been suggested to them. And the drummer just did the tom-tom overdubs. And the basic drumming came from the Movement. I think I remember playing the timbale breaks in it as well.
But anyway, it was a kind of—it was a big sign for me. Because instead of being the filler, it became the hit of the album. And when the record company heard it, they said, there's no way that's going at the end of Side Two, that has to be the first track on side one. And it was a big breakthrough. I think it was number one in the dance charts in America for weeks and weeks and weeks. And gave us our first shot at success.
It was also, Steve Lillywhite told me, the first and only time that he's produced a record with a drum machine.
Really? Wow.
So it was a notable moment for him too. And yeah, he almost was slightly embarrassed to be using a drum machine, I think, because, you know, one of his things was the famous big sound that he got from drum kits. But you know, in his hands, the Movement sounded pretty good.
So anyway, when it came time to move on to the next album, we'd reduced to a three-piece.
And so the Movement was—having worked so well on that track, I thought, that's it. We should just get hold of one somehow, which we did. The early version, the wood-cased one. And I wrote the entire album on that.
I seem to remember that there was an attempt to actually record the programming. And also the programming on the synthesizer that went with the drum programming. And we took that to Compass Point in the Bahamas and worked with Alex Sadkin. And on something like the second day, we were hit by an enormous electrical storm which erased all the memory of the sequences we were using. So we had no choice but to go, oh, well, I'll just reprogram the Movement and I'll play all the synth parts live. I just didn't have time to reprogram anything.
And in those days, I had more of a memory for detail. So I could actually remember what to do. These days, as I often joke, I can't even remember the name of the track, never mind the parts in it. In those days I could, but it led to a kind of hurried approach to reprogram. So again, the programming I did on the Movement was very square. It was very up and down, you know, four-on-the-floor and that kind of thing. And the hi-hats would just be constant 16ths very often. Occasionally I did drum fills on the Movement, but not often.
But the thing is, because we had two percussionists—well, really three percussionists in the band, because I played timbales a lot, but so did Alannah [Currie], and Joe [Leeway] was a conga player, and everyone was kind of cowbell crazy, and all that kind of stuff. So it became an interesting kind of formula, to have a really industrially square drum part, and then a party-style percussion section that was very kind of loose and unpredictable sometimes. And that was never really a plan to do that, but it became part of our modus operandi. I'd say part of the Thompson Twins hit sound was up-and-down drums, but a party going on in the percussion department.
I'm curious about the screen—the visual interface of the Movement. It kind of set the Movement apart from the other stuff that was going on this time. How big a help was that to you as as a programmer, or was it any help at all?
Well, I mean, it's difficult to imagine this being true now, but that was like a space-age experience for me. You know, it was like a totally wonderful thing that we could have some kind of interaction with a screen. It simply hadn't happened in any other way. And I mean, I guess you started to see liquid crystal displays on some synthesizers, the little strips of dark things, you know, that we had to rotate and find the right letter and then press “print” or whatever.
But essentially, yes, the screen, which was a kind of green glowing thing, almost spookily out there.
And I remember meeting with the two men who were behind Movement.
John Dickinson and Dave Goodway, I think?
That's right, that's right. And we felt that it was such a leap forward for us to be using it, for us to be not having a drummer. It was gonna be infinitely cool and something we were keen to show off. So we even credited the Movement Drum Computer, I think, on the Side Kicks album.
Did that come through on the American version, too? Because you know that album in the UK was called Quick Step and Side Kick?
Yeah, I seem to remember that, because I was fascinated from the moment I saw it in the credits. (Editor’s note: It may be that I was imagining this. I don’t have my old cassette version of Side Kicks with me, but a quick look online suggests that there really weren’t any musical credits on the U.S. release.)
Right, right. No, I wanted to kind of let our audience know that we were no longer...you know, that we’d become tired of the usual lineup of bands that you see endlessly. You know, even if we had to have drums and bass on stage, basically we were doing it all with computers and keyboards from that point onwards. And so it became important, and we used it in a couple of videos as well, because I thought that it was important to let the world know about that. And I think also the Eurythmics did at the same time, kind of featured it as a member of the band.
Yes.
Which, you know, was not entirely our idea. I think Echo and the Bunnymen—I think Echo is supposed to be a drum machine, isn't it?
Yeah. Even though Echo didn't have as long a run, I think, as the Movement did.
No, maybe not. And we also, off the album, had a song called “Watching.” And we did a video for that. And the Movement features in that as well. I remember John Dickinson came to the video shoot, and he was the one who programmed the words “Thompson Twins” coming at the screen. Because we didn't know how to do that, you know? That wasn't one of the user interface options. It was a kind of secret back-door bit of programming that he could do. So he did that for us, and we were so proud to see our name flashing up a screen, you know. It all seems so naive and innocent and pathetic now.
here's the thing. Looking back—and I never really realized this clearly at the time—but looking back, the fact that we reduced from seven people to three people and suddenly became a technologically based band meant that we stopped writing music for a band and started designing music for records. That was a revolution in terms of what we did. And it also coincided with a revolution in our success.
And I can't say that I could have predicted that. I was just having fun, you know—it was a crazy time, and I was loving every second of it. And in a way, you know, I'd wanted a synthesizer since I was a much younger musician, and always thought the sound of them was unbelievably attractive. So the desire in me to go tech had been frustrated for years. And finally, finally, I got my hands on these things. So I can see now that I was just having the time of my life with this technology.
And so as soon as the new version of the Movement came out, the orange one, yes, with the built-in screen rather than the separate screen, I got one of those. And we took that to Compass Point. And we did the Into the Gap album with the Movement as well. But by that time, we'd also started to relax a bit about only having electronic instruments. You know, we got back into guitars and pianos a little bit.
So the Movement was the primary drum machine on Into the Gap as well?
Yes, definitely. By then, Linn had become the kind of industry standard, but we were kind of, no, we're not going there. We've got our Movement and we like it.
And I also felt the same way about—I was an Oberheim OBXA synth guy, and everyone else was going with the Sequential [Circuits] Prophet, you know, the Prophet 5. And I thought, you know, there's a reason why we sound different from every other band that's into electronic music at the moment. The synth pop wave was becoming very, very big, but we didn't want to sound like everyone else.
I'm correct in saying that some of your bass lines are from the XA, correct?
Yeah, the OBXA.
Which I think are some of the most incredible bass sounds. Like, that's one of the things when you talk about setting yourselves apart, I think.
Yeah, well, there’s a story behind that, which is that we kind of discovered that sound accidentally halfway through the recording of, I think it was Into the Gap, where we really found the quality of that sound. But we realized it was so good that we went back and re-recorded bass parts that we were already happy with. But now we realized that we wanted them to sound like this. And essentially, it's a kind of clavinet sound, but just—so it's got a twang to it, you know. But tuned down and put through a nice warm compressor. So it has the kind of weight of a bass instrument.
And for a long time, I had that in the memory of the Oberheim. And then one day, for some reason, it got wiped, and I didn't have a copy. So I actually don't have that sound anymore, but I kind of know where it comes from, if you know what I mean. You get into the clavinet department and then fool around until you find it.
One of the things that I’ve heard that John and Dave would do was they would, if you had a sound, you could take the sound to them, and they would try to sample it, and they would try to make you a patch out of whatever the sound was. I'm curious as to whether that was something that you ever approached them with.
I seem to remember that we did do that at some stage, but it wasn't successful. I think we had a separate piece of equipment in which we could—I think the phrase was we could “blow a chip” for the individual sounds that we wanted.
Yeah, the EPROM blower.
Yeah. And for some reason, it was so fiddly, and the interface didn't work, and blah, blah, blah. So it was possible, but slow. And it didn't run at the same pace as our excitement demanded. So it got left behind.
And in fact, you know, I've got to say also that Alex Sadkin, our producer for those two important albums, he was an absolute magician with sound, you know. So he would mess around with the Movement sounds—both tuning them on the Movement, but also, once it got into the sound desk, he would sculpt away. I think he got the absolute best out of it.
And I seem to remember that he could even make a very kind of credible side stick, and vary the high hats, and all this kind of stuff in a way that your regular user perhaps wouldn't have been able to. But I mean, sound was his thing. And he started out as an assistant to a cutting engineer, in a mastering room, you know. So it was all about how you get these great sounds on a record that don't take up too much space. So it was very clean, very well-designed. And we talked endlessly about these ideas.
And because he'd worked a lot in reggae, he said, you know, that one of the great things about reggae is that each instrument occupies its own frequency space in the overall spectrum of records. But when you get rock music, everything's competing with everything else. Everyone wants to be at the front of the stage, you know, the biggest bass sound, the, you know, the wildest guitars, the shriekiest vocal, and the massive drum kit. And so it just makes a mess, you know.
But we’re doing the opposite. We're finding the position of every frequency for every instrument, [which] should be in its own separate space. And so that's how we thought about making records. And using a computer rather than a drummer just seemed to be the natural tool.
I'm curious as to how this worked live—in particular maybe on the first tour, like when you guys were touring the Quick Step stuff. Were you using any part of those drum programs on stage?
Yes, we were—and you've reminded me, we had a rack. Now, whether it was made by Movement or not, I've got a funny feeling that Dave Goodway actually made it for us. We used a Simmons kit as triggers, but it was going into this rack which had the Movement sounds that we'd used on the record in there.
And it always sounded a little bit...because the samples were short, you know, the sample time was expensive in those days. So snares, especially…you had to add reverb. And you know, luckily by those days we were playing some fairly large rooms, so often they sounded great anyway. But it took skill to make it sound exciting on stage.
But yes, to be honest, I'd forgotten about that. And I remember it was orange, the same color as the drum machine.
And you know, there's a guy who looked after that side of things: Steve Dewey. I don't know if you've ever come across him. He was my kind of keyboard and technical assistant for a long, long time. Where are you based now, by the way?
I'm in Pittsburgh in the United States.
Oh, okay, okay. For a long time he had a sound design studio in L.A. called Machine Head after working with the Twins. But he'd probably remember more about that stage setup than me.
So by the time we get to ’84, ’85, the recording of Here's to Future Days—by this point, there are so many choices that you can pick from when it comes not just to drums, but to pretty much everything. Things are going digital. There's new gear coming into the market, it seems like, every week. What was the next step for you guys, drum programming-wise?
Well, by that stage, I'd gone to Fairlight. So Fairlight had its own drum samples and we were able to sample drums on the spot and use them. And suddenly everything was in one box, you know. It was rather a big box, but at least it was one box. And so all the keyboards and the bass lines and the drums just came in the same session, as it were. And then we would do the same thing of adding live percussion and vocals basically. A few keyboard overdubs here.
So Here's to Future Days, that's a Fairlight record, at least in terms of the drum programming.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Did you have a personal drum machine that you used for songwriting?
By that stage, I would carry a Fairlight with me wherever I went, you know. Ridiculous but true. That was my indulgence as a pop star. There'd be a Fairlight backstage at every gig, in case I feel like writing a song. And even in hotel rooms, you know, bring the Fairlight up to the room. And yeah, it was good, because long, long tours shouldn't stop you writing songs. And, you know, for a guitar-based band, that's relatively simple. You take your guitar to your hotel room, strum a few chords, write them down, and the next day play it to the band at soundcheck. For me, more difficult.
So I would insist on having the Fairlight. And I think quite a lot of things were written in that way. And that's become my practice now. I mean, although I've kind of jumped ship to more portable platforms—like I went through a Pro Tools phase and now I use Logic Audio. But I mean, I write songs in hotel rooms and in the back of buses and anywhere, you know, and I do travel a great deal. So I want to be able to write wherever I am. And so it's quite nice not to be encumbered by the need for truckloads of equipment all the time.
In talking about some of those computer-based recording platforms, by the time we get to records like Big Trash and Queer, a lot of people have either already made the jump to some early form of computer recording, or they're about to make the jump. When did that happen for you?
Well, I think Future Days is when we went with Fairlight. I got in early by chance anyway. You know, Fairlight was made in Australia. And most of the British bands who were my peers in the UK were ordering them through the Fairlight distributor. I can't remember what they were called, but in the UK, you kind of had to join in the line, you know, and stand and wait for your turn.
When the first Fairlights came out and everyone was raving about them, I happened to be touring in Australia. So I jumped the queue by a long way, picked up my Fairlight in Australia and was already using it by the time I got back to the UK. And then as it happens, we set up a kind of writing camp in a little farmhouse, we rented in France.
And I called in a Fairlight programmer and he thought he was coming to program some songs, and I said, no, just teach me everything you know. So I spent three days just learning all the basic commands on the early Fairlight—which is funny, you know, because you tend to do what you know, if you, unless you're a rabid experimentalist, which sometimes I claim to be. (Laughs)
But if you only know part of what a machine can do, that's the part that you use. And so I was discovering things like—and that happens still now with logic—I never knew it could do that. So that's part of the fun of using these complex machines.
I have to say, the Movement, by comparison, you could kind of learn in 30 minutes. And it was very easy to use. It was obvious what you had to do. And I loved it.
Do you still have any hardware—drum machines, synths? Do you have any of that stuff lying around?
All my drum machines I gave away, in fact. I gave both my Movements to some people who were setting up a synth museum. And I've lost contact with them, so I've no idea if they still exist, or whether they just went round the corner and sold them to someone. But at the time I was in the kind of clearing up phase—the feeling that I was overloaded with equipment, you know. And I like to keep things simple in a sense. The operating system should be accessible and simple and miniaturized and mobile, I think, is my kind of catchphrase for the last couple of decades. I like things to be portable.
Maybe the flip side of that question: if you could have any piece of hardware back, what would it be?
Well, I still have the OBXA, although my son has stolen it. So I guess I should say, I don't have it, but I know where it is. And he uses that a lot.
In terms of recording equipment, I really loved API sound engineering equipment. And I had quite a lot of that, which he's also stolen.
But the one thing I really loved and made all those records sound so good was Fairchild compressors. Which, you know—you can go and buy one now, but they're 100 grand or something. And again, it's this big crate of heavy valves that are going to break if you carry them around too much. And so I just have to do without, you know.
When does your touring schedule bring you back to the States?
Oh, that's an interesting question. We're kind of in discussion at the moment with some ideas about that. I'd really like to tour in America next year. This year's been a bit of a weird one for us because we did an almost absurd number of festivals in the UK and Europe last year. So this year, there was nothing left for us to do. You can't do them two years running. So we were picking up really kind of odds and ends and decided it should be almost a fallow year, to let things pass.
But of course, it's really hard time at the moment for promoters. Some of them are going out of business because after COVID, where of course everyone had to do nothing for two years. They all came back and started competing with each other. And there isn't enough of a luxury dollar floating out there in the wild, you know, to go to every gig. So some of them fail. And there is, for example, one festival promoter here who last year did 14 festivals, and next year they're doing three. It's just killed them, you know, because people weren't turning up.
And I know that I've had friends who've just recently toured in America, and it only worked because the ticket price was absurdly low to get people to go along. And you know, when all your gigs are run by kind of globalised promoters who also own some of the venues and are employing people to run the bar and the parking, you know, it's more about doing anything to get people to come and buy booze and park their cars, rather than if they're interested in music. So it's become a weird twist.
But anyway, despite that, I think maybe by next year, I'm hoping that things will be looking better. I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed. (Editor’s note: The finger crossing worked: Bailey will be touring the U.S. this summer, including several dates as part of the Totally Tubular Festival 2024, which also includes The Romantics, Modern English, Men Without Hats, Wang Chung, Thomas Dolby, Bow Wow Wow, Tommy Tutone, and The Plimsouls)
Above and beyond taking the time out to talk to me today. I just want to say thanks so much for the music—because it made such a big difference to me growing up.
You're very kind. Now, are you a musician yourself?
That's probably a little bit too strong. A dabbler, let’s say.
Well, that's good. That's good. And why your focus on the Movement?
Well, I’ve been interested in it ever since I saw it in the videos, I guess. But in my book about drum machines, it really didn't get as much play as I hoped it would. And I'd like to tell that story a little bit more completely.
Good. The point I made earlier about it being a tool for the design of records—like, to me, that's the one thing that sums it up. And you could kind of say that about lots of drum machines, I guess. But it just so happens that that's the one we collided with and had so much fun with and created our hit sound with.
Probably they never had the kind of promotional or marketing budget that someone like Linn had. And so it just got pushed to one side by the big guys. But Dave Goodway, I think he went on to design compressors and noise gates which you see in studios still to this day. So he's done other good things. He was obviously a good designer of circuitry, put it that way. So I think it really was a good piece of work.
Tune in for more exclusive interviews about drum machines and electronic percussion, coming soon! (Really this time :) Meanwhile, follow me on Twitter (@danleroy) and Instagram (@danleroysbonusbeats), and check out my website: danleroy.com. And be sure to visit Tom Bailey’s Thompson Twins website, where you can get tickets for his upcoming summer tour of the U.S.!
Dancing to the Drum Machine is available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle/eBook from Bloomsbury, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers.