Tom Bailey (musician)

Tom Bailey

Bailey of The Thompson Twins – 19 January 1986 in San Bernardino, California
Background information
Birth name Thomas Alexander Bailey
Born 18 January 1956
Origin Halifax, West Yorkshire, England
Genres
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter
Instruments
Years active 1975–present
Labels
Associated acts

Thomas Alexander "Tom" Bailey (born 18 January 1956 in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England[1]) is a British musician and composer who led the new wave band Thompson Twins, and its later incarnation Babble, from 1977 until 1996. He currently works in various musical fields including scoring for film. He records and performs dub music under the name International Observer and Indo-fusion music with the Holiwater Project. His latest collaboration is the Bailey-Salgado Project (BSP), an audiovisual ensemble formed with José Francisco Salgado.

Career

He grew up in a family associated with the medical profession. His father was the Medical Officer of Health for Chesterfield Borough Council and Tom was educated at Chesterfield Boys' Grammar School. A "whole school" photograph from April 1967 shows him at age 13 (4th from the extreme left in the second row) and, despite training as a classical pianist, he initially worked as a music teacher at Brook School, Sheffield. In his late teens and early twenties he travelled the world. He was shot at in the Khyber Pass and nearly died from illness in India.

Bailey formed the Thompson Twins in 1977 with Pete Dodd (guitar/voc), John Roog (guitar), and Jon Podgorski (drums). Podgorski did not want to move to London, so Andrew Edge played drums with them for one year before Chris Bell joined.[2] The group eventually ended up as a trio with Bailey on vocals, guitar, bass, and keyboards, his then girlfriend Alannah Currie (percussion, saxophone, and vocals), and Joe Leeway (percussion and vocals).[2] The Thompson Twins became fixtures on MTV during the 1980s as the videos for "Hold Me Now", "Lay Your Hands on Me" and "King for a Day" were played in heavy rotation.[2] Subsequent to the marriage of Bailey and Currie, Thompson Twins released their final album, Queer, in 1991. In 1994, Bailey and Currie formed the techno-oriented duo, Babble.[2]

In 1988, Bailey worked with Phil Thornalley, who worked frequently with the Thompson Twins, on Thornalley's only solo album Swamp. Aside from playing numerous instruments, Bailey also produced three tracks, remixed three tracks along with Thornalley and co-wrote the track "When I Get to Heaven".[3][4]

Bailey produced the New Zealand band Stellar*, where in 1999 he won Record Producer of the Year for their debut album, Mix.[5] Bailey is also the figurehead for the dub project, International Observer. Recent performances with 'Holiwater', a cinematic fusion of Indian classical music (Sarod- Vikash Maharaj), electronica (keyboards – Bailey) and video (film maker – Andrei Jewell), blur boundaries between art installation and performance. The band was formed in 2002 to highlight issues of water pollution on the Ganges.

In 2010, Bailey and astronomer and visual artist José Francisco Salgado formed an audiovisual ensemble called Bailey-Salgado Project (BSP). BSP combines music with photography, video, and motion graphics to create multimedia works that have as subject the physical world. Their first work together, a short film entitled Sidereal Motion, was previewed in Bath, England in October 2010.[6]

Bailey now resides in London with his second wife, artist Lauren Drescher, and two stepchildren.

In 2014, Bailey embarked on a tour of the UK and USA under the name "Thompson Twins' Tom Bailey". The tour also featured Howard Jones and others.

References

  1. ↑
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Sutton, Michael (18 January 1956). "Tom Bailey - Music Biography, Credits and Discography". AllMusic. Retrieved 16 March 2013.
  3. ↑ "Phil Thornalley - Swamp (Vinyl, LP, Album) at Discogs". Discogs.com. Retrieved 16 March 2013.
  4. ↑ "Swamp - Phil Thornalley : Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 16 March 2013.
  5. ↑ "Thompson Twins - The Bubble Burst - Where are they now?". The Bubble Burst. Retrieved 16 March 2013.
  6. ↑ "INSAP VII speaker - José Francisco Salgado". Insapvii.org. Retrieved 16 March 2013.

External links