The Tourists

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The Tourists (1977 - 1980) were a moderately successful British pop band, but are better known for two of their members (Annie Lennox & David A. Stewart) who went on to achieve superstardom as Eurythmics.

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[edit] Formation

The band formed around a nucleus of two musicians from Sunderland in north-east England, Peet Coombes and Stewart. Coombes was a guitarist singer-songwriter with a folky style. As a teenager, guitarist Stewart had been a member of folk band Longdancer, who were signed to Elton John's Rocket Records label.

The two moved to London and encountered Scottish singer Annie Lennox, who had dropped out of her course at the Royal Academy of Music, where she had been studying flute and keyboards to pursue her ambitions in pop music. Lennox & Stewart quickly became lovers.

The three of them initially called themselves The Catch, and released a single Borderline under this moniker in 1977 on Logo Records, which failed to chart.

[edit] Career

By 1978, they had become a viable live gigging band, recruiting Singapore-born bass guitarist Eddie Chin and memorably nicknamed drummer Jim "Do It" Toomey, re-christening themselves The Tourists.

This saw the beginning of a productive two years for the band - they recorded three albums (The Tourists, Reality Effect, and Luminous Basement) and half a dozen singles, including (minor) hits : "Blind Among the Flowers" (1979), "The Loneliest Man in the World" (1979), "Don't Say I Told You So" (1980), and two major hits : the Dusty Springfield cover "I Only Want to Be with You" (1979) and "So Good to be Back Home Again" (1980), both of which reached the top 10 in the UK. "I Only Want To Be With You" was also a top 10 hit in Australia, and made the lower rungs of the US pop charts at #83.

Coombes was the band's main songwriter, although later releases saw the first fledgling compositions by Lennox and Stewart. The band's music expanded upon their folk roots, demonstrating some punky energy (often termed power-pop at the time) and also reggae and 1960s pop influences. A key development was their decision to record later material with legendary German avant-garde producer Conny Plank.

The band were unhappy with their Logo contract (which saw their management, song publishing and recording contract all owned by the same company), and legal wranglings secured a transfer to RCA Records in 1980.

The band toured extensively in the UK and abroad, including a support role on the Roxy Music "Manifesto" tour, but despite modest chart success, they tended to be given a critical savaging by the punk-championing UK music press. This, combined with the legal wranglings and also some personal tensions, led to the group disbanding in 1980 whilst on a world tour.

[edit] Break-Up

Coombes and Chin reputedly began a new project Acid Drops, but this met with little success and Coombes, despite originally being the main artistic force behind The Tourists, drifted out of the music business into obscurity.

Lennox and Stewart split as a couple, but decided to continue working as an experimental musical partnership, under the name Eurythmics. They retained their RCA recording contract and links with Conny Plank, and by 1983 had achieved global success with their hit single Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).

The Tourists' back-catalogue is largely unavailable at present on CD, with only a compilation album being issued by BMG on its Camden imprint.

[edit] Discography

[edit] Albums

  • 1979 The Tourists #72 UK
  • 1979/1980 Reality Effect #23 UK
  • 1980 Luminous Basement #75 UK; #7 US
  • 1984 Should Have Been Greatest Hits
  • 1997 Greatest Hits (Tourists album)

[edit] Singles

  • 1979 Blind Among The Flowers #52 UK
  • 1979 The Loneliest Man In The World #32 UK
  • 1979/1980 I Only Want To Be With You #4 UK; #83 US; #6 AUS
  • 1980 So Good To Be Back Home Again #8 UK
  • 1980 Don't Say I Told You So #40 UK
  • 1980 From The Middle Room (bonus with Luminous Basement album)

[edit] Compact Disc Release

  • "Luminous Basement" was re-issued on CD in 1998.
  • The US version of "Reality Effect" (actually a compilation of the first two UK albums) was re-issued on CD in 2007.
  • Currently there are no plans to re-issue The Tourists debut album.

[edit] External links