The fact that Talk Talk started as a New Wave band and opened for Duran Duran on tour was more a case of mismarketing than an expression of intent by the band. Hollis has stated about the song…“That was someone born before the turn of the century…and dying within one year of the First World War at a young age.

Among the interviewees for this book are Simon Brenner, producer Rhett Davies, Phill Brown, James Marsh, musical collaborators George Page, Phil Ramocon, Martin Ditcham, Dominic Miller, Mark Feltham, Johnny Turnbull, Robbie McIntosh and others. Silence was always the end journey for Mark Hollis and Talk Talk: silence was the final step on their evolutionary ladder. After retirement Hollis lived quietly with his wife Felicity Costello (“Flick”) and their two sons in Wimbledon, declining all interviews, releasing no more records.A new generation of musicians led by Guy Garvey of Elbow and Thom Yorke of Radiohead frequently referenced the band and cited Spirit of Eden (1988) as a totemic work. Growing up amid the Punk movement, Hollis would take their modus operandi of DIY to heart, follow the sounds in his head, and form Talk Talk in 1981. Wardle’s biography addresses and clarifies all these sources, but the book’s aim is not so much on who Hollis was. After that, a seven year gap before his last work, a self titled solo effort originally intended to be a Talk Talk album titled Mountains of the Moon, and that was that – twenty years of silence was its only follow up.

Later on, legendary independent record label 4AD tried to convince Hollis into recording again, on his terms, but ultimately Hollis was in a world and time of his own. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. They both have “2022 Master” – does this mean we are about to see a re-release / remastering campaign ? Wardle gives an honest account of the musician’s all-out determination to innovate, which he often did to the exasperation of collaborators, bandmates, producers and managers. Indeed, Phill Brown likened Hollis’s unforgiving standards to attempting to “bottle the spirit of improvised magic”.Outside of Britain they had more success, notably in Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands following the release of their second album in 1984.