Mark Hollis: A Perfect Silence

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Mark David Hollis (4 January 1955 – February 2019) [a] was an English musician and singer-songwriter. He achieved commercial success and critical acclaim in the 1980s and 1990s as the co-founder, lead singer and principal songwriter of the band Talk Talk. Hollis wrote or co-wrote most of Talk Talk's music—including hits like " It's My Life" and " Life's What You Make It"—and in later works developed an experimental, contemplative style. Such a shame: The Within Without interview with Mark Hollis, September 1998 ..." Within Without. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011 . Retrieved 26 February 2019. What led Hollis to reject fame in favour of music so esoteric and fastidious? And is Creation Records founder Alan McGee’s claim that Hollis’ is a “story of one man against the system in a bid to maintain creative control” accurate, or is his actually a tale of artistic indulgence, summarised in unusually candid fashion by former manager Keith Aspden’s remark in 2011 that “Mark had his cake and ate it all himself”? It’s unlikely we’ll ever know. Like Ditcham says: “Unanswered mysteries always have legs!” Talking to Wardle, it’s clear that resolving the contradictions of Hollis’ life was quite a task. “Don’t get me started,” he laughs, before summing them up succinctly. “Hollis was an acetic, loner genius who loved pubs, swearing, fast cars and golf. The number of times I had to think of synonyms for ‘dichotomy’!” Had the Colour of Spring on vinyl and wore it out. Haunting, beautiful and ethereal. It sounded like nothing else at the time and was a straight through consumptive listen. Still gets my heart rate up today when I treat myself again to it’s richness. Thank you for the insight.

However, Wardle does justice to the story by impinging very little on Hollis' marital life, leaving his wife and sons faceless and undeveloped, just as his subject would have wanted it.

February 2019

There are, too, more than a few hints of bitterness from those who feel their contributions were undervalued, especially those who believe they were due songwriting cuts – “[Manager] Keith and Mark are both ruthless,” Brown told me – and one can’t help wondering whether the silence around Hollis has roots in people’s determination not to get involved in debates about his demeanour. Confirming the icon’s death, Hollis’ longtime manager Keith Aspden told NPR that he had passed away at the age of 64 after a short illness. Mark Hollis: The sound of silence". www.newstatesman.com. 26 February 2019 . Retrieved 27 September 2019.

Gilbert, Ruth (23 January 1989). "Hotline: Music ( Spirit of Eden)". New York . Retrieved 27 June 2009. It’s probably Hollis’ ‘difficult’ nature that’s the most consequential aspect of this year’s retrospectives. Hollis, Wardle reminds us, could exercise a distinctly ‘laddish’ character, and his pursuit of his goals sometimes showed little regard for those upon whom he depended for their realisation. I was too young to appreciate Talk Talk - I was 12 in 1983 and whilst I liked their singles … they passed me by … only upon Mark Hollis’s death and the outpouring … did I revisit …so glad I did … spirit of Eden is probably one of the best albums I have heard … musical genius … glad I found Mark … what a legacy I sometimes feel, that where real-life relationships, people, discord, disappointment, and heartbreak has overwhelmed me, music has filled that space. It becomes an arm around your shoulder, a home inside you, a love, a language, a flame, and I light a candle to Mark today and say God bless and thank you for your honesty and passion. Thank you, for the incredible body of work, your music is a thing of beauty, and has made difficult moments feel far less jagged. You will always be an inspiration to me. You are loved by so very many.In 2004, Hollis resurfaced briefly to receive a Broadcast Music Inc. Award for having written "It's My Life". [40] In 2012, a piece of specially commissioned music by Hollis titled "ARB Section 1", was used in the television series Boss. [41] Collaborations [ edit ] A copy of your data will be held by Loop Publishing Limited (the publishers of Northern Life Magazine) for up to 10 years. But Hollis remains unknowable. He was always reluctant to speak candidly about his life even to those closest to him – sometimes he would sit with a friend in a pub in complete silence – and so Wardle’s interviews reveal something about how he was perceived but not much about how it was to be Mark Hollis. “At the base of it all, he had a really gentle, kind, sweet character, but was capable of great cruelty and ignorance at the same time,” one long-time collaborator said. RIP Mark Hollis. Talk Talk has been an ever-present shadow on the new album and it seems so poignant to hear this news on the eve of mastering. His voice was a thing of distinct fragile beauty and I think we won’t hear his like again anytime soon. ? https://t.co/37Aswhq49j As a fan of Talk Talk, admittedly in their (his?!) earlier, less experimental form, I was eager to read this. I knew so little of Mark Hollis, and that was how he liked it, it seems. Based around the chronology of the band's releases, beginning before Talk Talk was their name, it walks a path that deviates here and there to shine light on many of the other people involved with Hollis over the years. There's a little personal information, but upon reading the whole book you'll realise why it's scant. As documentary evidence of the process of recording their albums, this book is invaluable. It goes into just enough nerdy detail to explain events, but not too much that you wish you'd been born a sound engineer. I don't want to spoil anything, but for me personally, at least, I wasn't sure of who Mark was when I began reading, but I felt by the end of it I saw large pieces of his character, his 'way', and how he interacted with others. I could understand many parts of that, and empathised, yet others I couldn't rationalise with expectation. The book is well written, and aside from a few typos in this first edition that were not caught at proofreading stage, the presentation is excellent. My only wish was that there were a few more photos included, particularly ones that are explicitly mentioned in the text. I know at least some could be found from their original sources in the references, but it felt like a missed opportunity.

The other way is to stop when you’ve achieved everything you set out to do, never again reappearing. No interviews. No reunions. No explanations. No lap of honour. No further communication. Nothing. The way Mark Hollis did it. (2/2) When I began the feature I wrote about Mark Hollis for The Wire 167 in 1998 with the words, “Thrill is gone”, it was not just that a case of the November blues had appeared to hang like a pall over our encounter. It was also intended to capture something of the sense of enervation and despair I thought I heard in the solo album he was there unwillingly to promote; a feeling that much of his music occupied a numb emotional lacuna between – to use the prelapsarian imagery he also favoured – the Fall and the expulsion from the Garden. Wardle has interviewed Keith Aspden, Talk Talk’s former manager; Mark Feltham, the harmonica player and one of Hollis’ most trusted session musicians; and Phill Brown, the audio engineer who worked on the great albums. 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. It’s a conventional work about an unconventional musician. It is diligent, sceptical when it needs to be, well reported, authoritative and written from the heart. When it comes to Spirit of Eden and LS, it takes listen upon listen to keep hearing new sounds and layers on those recordings. The spine-tingling goosebumps of’ Inheritance’, his voice is immersed in the air. The calm then bombastic nature of ‘Eden’ leaving you transfixed… The rolling percussive freedom of ‘Ascension Day.’ The compelling weight of ‘I believe in you’ leaves you lost for words. Who else could be that expressive that side of silence. The listener is, inside that room yet in their own inner world simultaneously. Lingering there like an eternal twilight hour, the same way in which there is total silence in the sunlight on your face. As for that pivotal third album, Hollis declared it only came about because he had a bigger budget. Previously, he claimed, electronic instruments were employed purely because he couldn’t afford real musicians, but with It’s My Life producer Tim Friese-Greene established as his co-writer and Brenner gone, he now adopted a defiantly organic sound, populated by contributions from the renowned likes of Traffic’s Steve Winwood, The Pretenders’ Robbie McIntosh and Pentangle’s Danny Thompson.

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He took his own advice, embracing silence. Everything he struggled to communicate verbally was there, is there, in the music. Happiness, desire, hope, belief. He walked away to a quiet(er) life in South-West London because “I choose my family.” The family of musicians remains indebted to his short but stunning period of industry. He was once asked his favourite musician. “Kate Bush,” he said. Kate Bush was then asked hers. "Mark Hollis," she said. Hollis released his first and only solo album, also called Mark Hollis, in 1998. When asked about his decision not to tour anymore or maintain a public persona, he said: “I choose for my family. Maybe others are capable of doing it, but I can’t go on tour and be a good dad at the same time.” He later retired from the music industry, and was little heard from publicly. An article about him last year was headlined “How to disappear completely.” As much as so many of us would have loved to hear more music from him, the truth is, an artist does not owe us anything ever, he said more in the work he gave us than many who produced three or four times as much as he did. He chose not to go wearily into working from expectation, but to leave this perfectly formed opus of work to any unsuspecting musical trespasser. For that reason, among many, he will go on to inspire. I’m not big on hero worship, despite how all this may read, but there are people who make you feel a lot, who open your mind, your heart, and your ears, opening doors as the journey goes on. He could capture moments of perfection (‘It’s getting late in the evening’). He explored his own possibilities, so many more can explore theirs. Music was to be made only from the desire to record and perform it and no other reason. An early Mirror Man – later reworked for The Party’s Over – boasts a reggae feel worthy of The Police, I Can’t Resist sounds almost like Elvis Costello, while Talk Talk Talk Talk, later reinvented as his band’s signature tune, could pass for Dr Feelgood. Beaumont, Mark (26 February 2019). "Talk Talk's Mark Hollis: 2019 is full of the notes he isn't playing". NME . Retrieved 1 March 2019.