Mark Hollis: A Perfect Silence

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I then wrote to Hollis personally so that he would understand what was driving me, that I was interested in the music, the approach, the spirit, not in his personality or his private life, not in making a biopic. He replied very kindly, but asked me to respect his position: ‘I would be wholly against a film being made in connection to these albums, since I prefer that they be allowed to stand alone and exist in their own right.’”

Perrone, Pierre (8 October 2012). "After all this time, it's still good to Talk Talk". The Independent . Retrieved 25 February 2019. A record that floors me each time." Parkes, Jason A. (12 May 2007). "Rev. of Mark Hollis, Mark Hollis". Julian Cope Presents Head Heritage . Retrieved 27 June 2009.Yet over the years, Hollis, working in intense and rewarding collaboration with Friese-Greene, confounded his critics – as well as EMI, with whom he was often mired in bitter legal disputes – by going entirely his own way. He had intellectual and artistic courage, and made music without compromise. “All that matters are my records,” he said in 1991. “I can’t live up to them, I can’t be as succinct and clear as they are.” Ed also influenced the line-up of the fledgling Talk Talk, helping Mark and the keyboard player Simon Brenner to find Webb and Harris, who hailed from the Southend-on-Sea area. Their deal with EMI came about after the A&R man Keith Aspden heard a demo tape they had sent to Island Music, which impressed Aspden so much that he left his previous job to become their manager. EMI put the group together with the producer Colin Thurston, who had worked with David Bowie, the Human League and Duran Duran, and they set to work on Talk Talk’s debut album. I would rather just have the album say what it is itself and not do anything for it,” Hollis told International Musician And Recording World’s Andrew Smith on the eve of Spirit Of Eden’s release. Ten years later he extended his fondness for reticence further, telling Danish TV: “I get on great with silence. I don’t have a problem with it. It’s just silent, y’know. So it’s kind of like, well, if you’re going to break into it, just try and have a reason for doing it.”

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 spoke about making music that didn’t instantly point to the time it was made in. I hope somewhere he knows that he did just that. Really sorry to hear of the death of Mark Hollis. His music was rich and deep, and a huge influence on my development as a musician. 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.

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!” 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. 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. Few artists succeed in making such sharp left turns – from articulate, refined pop to something almost metaphysical – so it makes sense people want to know more. Fortunately, this Spring brings two contrasting attempts to unravel such mysteries. Hollis, however, further muddied the water by punctuating interviews with seemingly bizarre references to King Crimson, John Coltrane, Shostakovich and Debussy, all of whose influence was practically invisible. The press were baffled, sometimes aggressively negative, and Hollis’ attitude didn’t help.

February 2019

Zabel, Sebastian (26 February 2019). "Zum Tod von Mark Hollis: Der Mann, der keine Vorbilder brauchte"[To the death of Mark Hollis: The man who did not need role models]. Rolling Stone (in German). Recent news of the passing of Mark Hollis in February 2019 was deeply sad and an addition to Lennon's execution in December 1980 that tremendously reduced the amount of music delivering anything of substance, purity and meaning. Sorry kids, find what they left behind or anything else that learned from or was influenced by their contributions to the music world and enjoy it. 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. 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. 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’!”