Mark Hollis: A Perfect Silence

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Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). A Life (1895 – 1915), which has been referred to as “the album’s epic centrepiece” refers to Roland Leighton (1895–1915), a British soldier and poet who was the fiancé of Vera Brittain at the time of his death in World War I. From the beginning, Talk Talk was a rocket with a clear trajectory – discarding elements, parts, and (lunar) modules along its way as it moved through the spheres. This sumptuous top quality book is brought to you by the same people who produced the recent top notch tomes on Jethro Tull and ELP, which should be recommendation enough before we even begin! He's written a brand new book detailing the life of the late great, and intensely private, Mark Hollis of Talk Talk.

After retirement Hollis lived quietly with his wife Felicity Costello (“Flick”) and their two sons in Wimbledon, declining all interviews, releasing no more records.They would record in near-total darkness, involve hundreds of hired musicians in unguided improvisation, and only use a fraction of their effort. 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. 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. Wardle’s biography addresses and clarifies all these sources, but the book’s aim is not so much on who Hollis was.

In the first complete, in-depth biography of the Talk Talk leader, author and music industry insider Ben Wardle has interviewed scores of Mark Hollis' friends, musicians, collaborators and record company executives to complete this important and substantial biography. The ‘New Wave synth band package’ was only transitory, and it was just a matter of honing their composing skills and getting a hold of the right instruments. Tracing Mark Hollis's life from earliest beginnings through his formative years, author Ben Wardle offers genuine insight into the creative forces which helped shape the sound and songs recorded by Talk Talk. He takes his subject as far as it can possibly go with all the resources available and the result is well balanced He debunks the myths and disproves old falsehoods, but all this only seems to add to Hollis’ complexity and heighten his allure.

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.

Talking of Talk Talk, I notice that they have started to release the original singles onto digital / streaming / hi-res platforms – Mirror Man / Strike Up The Band came out in Feb and Talk Talk / ?The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. They help him fill in some of the gaps in the story: where Hollis was living at certain times; how the albums were recorded and in what circumstances (rumours about opium-laced sessions during the recording of Spirit of Eden are shown to be nonsense); and what it was like to be around Hollis – sometimes fun and sometimes maddening.