Credit Nick Caro

Throughout most of the 1980's The Thompson Twins were never far from the album and single charts here in the UK. Their then modern synth loaded songs, mixed unforgettable chorus's amongst afro acoustic and synth driven rhythm's. Doctor, Doctor, Hold Me Now, Love On Your Side to name a few captured a young audience who were open to the band's efforts to try and mix new and traditional sounds.

Tom Bailey has since those busy, productive times released solo material and indulged in work with other artists that doesn't promise commercial success but gives personal artistic fulfilment. He now spends a lot of time in New Zealand but is over here for promotion and Tour rehearsal's. We at Return To Sound were thankful to but in and ask a few questions. Starting with the life when Touring and is it always nice to come back to the UK after a break?

Tom Bailey: I get very excited about it, and the adrenaline keeps me going, you know, so... I usually collapse the day after the end of the tour, of course, but, during it, I always look forward to it. I spend a lot of time overseas, so I've just come back, it means I’ve reconnected with my band over the weekend, we've been rehearsing, and blah blah blah, so I'm kind of building up that sense that there's good work to be done. 

RTS: So your first Tour date is 7th of September, are you here in the UK till then?, do you get the band together, get to a certain point, and zip back home again?

TB:  We've got a one-off next weekend, actually, just a one-off concert, which we're using as an excuse to get together and rehearse, because it's been a while since we've played, so we're rehearsing over the weekend, and it's sounding fantastic.

RTS: Is this the same band? I'm thinking back to when I last saw you, it was at one of the Let's Rock Retro Festivals, It might have been two or three years ago now. 

TB: Well, I mean, there are changes that take place. I have a new bassist for this tour, except the old bassist is playing this weekend, so I saw both the old and the new bassist over the weekend. 

Credit Roasline Shahnavaz

RTS: Do you tend to use the same players? 

TB: Oh, yeah.  

The drummer and keyboard cellist have been with me for 10 years, so... 

RTS: Wow. I just remember being really impressed by the visual aspect that you produced as a band on stage. Being a retro festival, many artists tend to reproduce the hits which is fine, whereas you were adding more panache and style, I was impressed.  

TB: I think it's important to take these things seriously, you know, I mean, I don't like it when I see a band just plodding on stage and playing the music, as there's a great opportunity to connect with an audience, and that for me is what it's about. But, you know, musically, to be responsible, we should have our stuff together completely, we don't go on stage to see if we can do it. 

We rehearsed well enough to for that, then it's all about the emotional connection with the audience. So, luckily, there's already a connection because of the songs that people are nostalgic about. Though that's only a starting point, you know, it's a great excuse, it's a great starting point, but you've got to go a lot further than that and give something of yourself, that includes doing the whole visual presentation.

It's a great fortune that we ended up with a catalogue of hits. At festivals, we're obliged to play those, and usually we run out of time, and we can't play much else. But on this upcoming tour, we've got much longer, it's almost twice the length of a festival set, so we can throw in a few things that are less well-known or less often heard, we should say, including some that haven't been really played ever live, so it's nice to be able to have a balance between those two things. 

RTS: You'll be touring with Blancmange and the wonderful Neil Arthur. That must be fun as well, to connect. You must have crossed paths over time?

TB: I was a fan of Blancmange in the 80s, you know, and we knew each other a little bit then, but then missed out 40 years, you know.  

And then a couple of years ago, we by chance played some of the same concerts, so when I put this tour together, we thought, yeah, that's an obvious thing to ask Neil, see if he'd like to do it, and I'm very, very pleased that he is.

RTS: With the  Thompson Twins and Blancmange, the rhythm always seemed integral to the music, there were those Afro beats and differnet intruments, you were both similar in that respect, is that fair to say? 

TB: Yes, it's a good observation, I always had a sense that drum machines were an amazing invention, but they were very, very square and industrial at that time, and so you had to add that kind of enthusiastic human element, we added a lot of percussion to what we did, to balance the rigidity of a drum machine, and possibly they (Blancmange) were doing a similar thing, and I know that Neil's old partner in Blancmange (Stephen Luscombe) was specifically interested in Indian music as well, so we both had this kind of looking further than the next block, to see where there might be good musical influences.

RTS: Touring back then, what were the major differences between then and now, what is the good and not so good? 

TB: Well, from a business point of view, I have to say first, back in the day we would lose a lot of money on touring, but it was alright because it would promote our albums, which sold in their millions, now, no one makes money out of recorded music anymore, but it's all about selling tickets, so there's been a 180 degree flip in that relationship, and so it's very, very important, the only way we can put food on the table these days is to have audiences turn up, and so we put our efforts into that, specifically. 

The thing is about touring now, when we're older and a little bit wiser, you can't have a rock and roll party every night of your life, you have to pace yourself a little bit.

RTS: No, you're right, everyone's seems to be on lean diets and a “got to get through this tour” attitude, maybe the money means more and you wouldn't have thought about that as much in the early days. 

TB: Well, I mean, it's a funny thing because I don't care about it as much, it's just that you have to be really smart, not to lose money on tour, because it's expensive to do, but I'm lucky in a way that my band are much younger than me, and therefore they bring a different sensibility to the experience of touring. I mean, one thing I keep saying is that most of them weren't born when the songs we're playing were written, so for them, there isn't an inherent nostalgia, they're just doing it because they want to do a good job with that music, and we enjoy playing together, and that's the thing, so it keeps me contemporary, it keeps me wanting to add new touches to old ideas and all the rest of it. 

So creatively, I'm having as much fun now, and in a way, you lose all your ambitions to take over the world, which you had when you were a teenager, so it's much easier to have fun on tour than it was back then, when it was just too crazy, and too much was invested in it, and of course inevitably, when you're in the stratosphere of fame, it's an unsure foundation, something always goes wrong at the end. 

Tom Bailey UK Tour Dates 2026 

7 September    EXMOUTH         Exmouth, Pavillion

8 September    BIRMINGHAM  Birmingham Town Hall

10 September  AYLESBURY      Friars Aylesbury at the Waterside Theatre

11 September  BATH                The Forum

12 September  BOURNEMOUTH   Pavillion Theatre

13 September  MANCHESTER  Bridgwater Hall

15 September  WHITLEY BAY  Playhouse

16 September  GLASGOW        Pavillion Theatre

18 September  BIRMINGHAM  Town Hall

19 September  LONDON           Indigo at the O2

20 September  BRIGHTON       Chalk

21 September  GUILDFORD     G Live

23 September  CAMBRIDGE     Junction

24 September  BUXTON           Opera House

25 September  NOTTINGHAM  ROCK CITY

26 September  YORK                Barbican

TICKETS

Credit James Cumpsty

RTS: The music industry was quite cutthroat then, so you're more confident now of how it's going to go, I presume?.

TB:  Yeah, though things can still go terribly wrong, let me tell you, and that's important. 

Actually that's something I've learned, oddly enough, from one of my kids, my eldest son, who's also a musician, he said it's important to design risk into your set. A little bit of jeopardy maybe, to give it an edge. It keeps you wide awake, and very alert to the potential of the situation, as well as avoiding disasters. I like to rehearse a lot, so that we know what we're doing, and yet you can become too slick in a way, so I found a way of rehearsing 80% of the set a lot, and then leaving some of it really open to chance, you know, so there's always moments during the performance when we have to really, really pay attention, otherwise it doesn't work out. 

RTS: I look forward to spotting those moments when I see the Tour. Going forwards do you have plans for new material?

TB: I'm always writing and recording, especially when I go back to New Zealand, and I'll spend the southern summer there, I use that as a kind of writing and recording and arranging ideas time, it's a bit more relaxed, and I can just be at home working on things, sometimes with other musicians too. But the fact is that my old record company BMG have suddenly realised they want to re-release Here's to Future Days, they’ve already re-released Into the Gap and Sidekicks. 

There's no point in me putting a record out as a solo artist while that's going on, so I'll wait until they're done with that. I love making music, so it's not through lack of inspiration or effort, but I'm not that keen on the business of finishing an album, putting it out, promoting it for radio, doing all those things, for me that's a big distraction.

RTS: I understand, have you considered something similar to Andy Partridge of XTC who releases these demos in abundance, just puts them out there for his fans, have you thought of doing that?

TB: Well we're doing a not-for-release, but only on the merch stand live album, I shouldn't be telling you that, you'll be able to talk about it nearer the time. Actually you remind me, Andy Partridge was a big influence when he put out his weird dubbed versions of XTC, remember that Go Plus? 

But that led more or less directly to the Thompson Twins taking a big interest in doing dubbed versions and instrumentals and extended remixes which we put on the B-side of the cassette. So it was always part of our thing to have the old versions in circulation as well. 

credit James Cumpsty

RTS: If you met someone who'd never heard of the Thompson Twins, never knew you who you were, which maybe does happen now with younger audiences, and they said to you, just tell me the songs that you've been involved in during your career that they should listen to, what songs would you recommend someone to listen to? 

TB: Well, I wouldn't presume to narrow it down because then you're excluding a lot of stuff. 

As well as the obvious Thompson Twins hits, then I would probably say, I also do things like instrumental dub music. I've got a project, International Observer, which has six albums of mostly instrumental dub music. People go, what? You do that? And then I made two albums with a North Indian classical band, The Holiwater Project. Again, because they're not mainstream activities, they're kind of in the underground of taste. I don't promote them like they're poptastic things. 

It's a different world. But if they want to know me as a musician, then it's important to maybe hear those things as well as “Hold Me Now" and “Doctor! Doctor!”.

RTS: Looking back at those times in the 80s, which obviously we're talking about a lot, what other songs impressed you? Which songs came out that you just were blown away by?

TB: Everything blew me away. I was a big fan of the changes in pop music at that time. I was quite heavily influenced by the revolution in American music, with bands like the Talking Heads on one side and the great kind of soul and funk bands that were coming out of America. 

The reappearance of dance music seemed to me to be the perfect marriage. So post-punk new wave rock meets the dance club. And if you throw in a bit of psychedelia also at the same time. 

RTS: Is there one song that comes into your mind, that was, boom. Amazing? 

TB: Well, I do a version of "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads, so I'll say that. 

RTS: Finally, is there a landmark moment or moments in your musical career? Maybe a musician that you worked with?

TB: Well, over a period of time, for a body of work, I really, really enjoyed working with Nile Rodgers. I did an album with him, he was going through a really tough time during then, so he wasn't on top form, I have to say. But even so, I thought he was a magnificently adept and sophisticated musician, you know, who really understood on a deeper level something about music. And I'm very pleased to see that he's recovered well and he's on top form again. 

Equally, the Indian musicians I've worked with, they're amazing too, you know, and they're very generously teaching me how to understand this system of Indian music. So, all of these things. Yeah. 

Interview by Dan Reddick for Return To Sound