Thompson twins & tom bailey

“The Thompson Twins were never two. Once they were four, now they are six, although the number fluctuates to meet needs.” Not Classic Pop’s words in 2022, but the opening sentences to the band’s first feature in The Face, published mere weeks before the release of their debut album. Even then it was necessary to explain the story behind their ever-changing line-up, and those raised on the hits that followed – their opening UK Top 40 strike, 1983’s Love On Your Side, was the first of 10, though they saw no more after 1985 – normally recall them as a trio: Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway.

The band originally formed in Yorkshire at the height of punk, but by the time they’d self-released their first single in 1980, the not-entirely-promising, Television-like Squares And Triangles, founders Tom Bailey, Pete Dodd and John Roog were squatting in Clapham and on to their third drummer, Chris Bell. He’d prove vital to their debut album – which, incidentally, sounds as little like the Thompson Twins of Doctor Doctor fame as they looked – because rhythm is at its heart, as it had been at their appealingly chaotic early shows, where crowds were invited to join in on stage.

Indeed, according to that Face article, two audience members, Leeway and Jane Shorter, subsequently joined the band to add percussion, though others insist Leeway met Bailey because both were teachers and Shorter, significantly, also played saxophone. Currie, meanwhile, if not officially a member, is thanked for “playing and singing”, so yes: things were always ‘fluid’. A Product Of..., however, sounds like the work of a sophisticated, well-established unit, if one still paying off an overdraft to its influences.

In hindsight, A Product Of... could at times be The Police, with The Price’s groove slickly lazy and Anything Is Good Enough indulging their muso side. A love for West African music is also apparent on the dubiously titled Slave Trade, which pre-empts Adam And The Ants’ experiments in the same theatre, and Oumma Aularesso, which might give Paul Simon’s later Graceland a run for its money. They share this enthusiasm with their most obvious debt, Talking Heads, whose twitchy, tense but playful artiness thrives in opener When I See You’s spiky guitars, the New Wave-y Politics, whose jerkiness somehow remains admirably rigid, and the title track, with Shorter’s sax a vital embellishment. A product of participation for sure, then, and more than the sum of its parts.

A PRODUCT OF... (PARTICIPATION) Released 1981 Label T Records Chart Positions UK – US –

All change, all change. The Twins’ third album foun