ago. If we’d delivered this
album to the record label
20 years ago, they wouldn’t
have batted an eyelid.”
Inevitably, the band’s
relationship with EMI soured.
“They started messing me
around by delaying scheduled
advances,” Aspden explains,
“saying they hadn’t actually
expressed their satisfaction with
the record. It could be seen as
an attempt to bring us to heel.
You can imagine how confi dent
I felt in them.”
Aspden gave them the
statutory three months to pick
up the option for the next
record, and an extra month
just to make sure, before telling
them they were too late. The
subsequent battle went to the
High Court. A month before
Spirit Of Eden’s September
1988 release, EMI won the
case, but Talk Talk’s appeal
was successful the following
May. The band were released
from the contract but, by this
time, the six-month-old Spirit
Of Eden was, as Aspden puts
it, “dead in the water”. An
album launch at the London
Planetarium and a half-hearted
attempt at a single release for
an edited version of I Believe
In You had already failed to
make an impact, and reviews
were mixed. Many journalists
were thrown by the artistic
transformation the band
had undergone, and even
Q – who praised its “damn
the consequences” attitude –
conceded it was “the kind of LP
that encourages marketing men
to commit suicide”.
“The high Mark and Tim had
experienced after the release
of The Colour Of Spring
gave way to disillusionment,”
Aspden admits regretfully.
“They’d put their enthusiasm
into what they considered a
masterpiece. Both secretive and
introspective people displaying
their art and souls for the
fi rst time in their lives, they’d
had what they considered
their fi nest work rejected and
dismissed. The true cost was
the destruction of the band.CLASSIC ALBUM SPIRIT OF EDEN
Mark Holliss was
ultimately left
dejected by the
label’s response to
what he considered
to be Talk Talk’s
fi nest work“Mark and Tim were really pleased with what
they’d achieved and were confi dent that Spirit
Of Eden would be successful. Tim told me he
thought it would sell at least four million copies.”
KEITH ASPDEN
Inspired by a conversation
about engineer Phill Brown’s
experiences working with the
band Traffi c in November 1967,
at London’s Olympic Studios, he
and Mark Hollis chose to work
only – as much as possible –
with equipment built before
then. Brown told Tape Op
magazine that when they fi rst
went into the studio, “Mark
said, ‘Let’s set this up as if it’s
1am in November 1967.’”
Consequently, Spirit Of Eden
was recorded almost entirely
in the dark, “like a 60s acid
nightclub,” manager Keith
Aspden says. “It was intense,”
Brown adds, confi rming details
recorded in his book, Are We
Still Rolling?. “There were oil
projections on the walls and
ceiling, and no other light apart
from a strobe. I wouldn’t work in
the dark again!”In order to prevent EMI from
interfering with songs – as
they had with edits for The
Colour Of Spring campaign- drums constituted only one
track in the fi nal mix. “It was
deemed that the only way
you could stop the record
company from remixing your
track,” Brown explains, “was
if all you put on there were
things that were so decisive,
they wouldn’t be able to
make any changes.”
When violinist Nigel Kennedy
visited the studio to improvise his
parts, the band were dissatisfi ed
with his early attempts. After
trying to dissuade him from
performing in his traditional
classical style, they fi nally bound
the fi ngers of his right hand
together with gaffer tape.“He played too fast and too
many notes,” Aspden reveals the
band later informed him, but he
emphasises that, “Nigel was a
really good sport and happily
went along with it.” He ended
up on the album.Included in the album’s
credits is Hugh Davies,
who provided “shozygs”.
This was the name the
composer – formerly
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s
personal assistant – gave the
instruments he built out of
household items. The name
comes from his fi rst invention,
which was contained in the
pages of an encyclopaedia
between entries beginning
with “Sho” and “Zyg”.None of the LP’s six songs
retained their original working
titles: Modell, Camel, Maureen,
Norm, Snow In Berlin and Eric.
The fi rst three were initially
included on the UK album as
one single 23-minute suite, but
the North American release was
split instead into three tracks,
with subsequent re-pressings
following this practice.A video was made by Tim
Pope for the edited version of
I Believe In You. “I really feel
that was a massive mistake,”
Hollis later told Q magazine.
“I thought that just by sitting
there and listening and really
thinking about what it was
about, I could get that in
my eyes. But you can’t do
it. It just feels stupid. It was
depressing and, to be honest,
I wish I’d never done it.
That’s what happens when
you compromise.”A WEALTH
OF ANECDOTES
SPIRIT OF EDEN’ S
TALK-TALKING POINTSTo add to the disaster, the
record didn’t even recoup its
recording costs. Spirit Of Eden
was a sea of pain at the time,
but I’m glad the album is being
enjoyed more these days.”
In fact, 31 years after its
release, Spirit Of Eden is
enjoyed more than it’s ever
been, providing inspiration
to all those who aspire fi rstto great art rather than
commercial success. They may
have obstinately turned their
back on the very label that
helped fund their creativity, and
subsequently fallen apart after
only one more album- 1991’s Laughing Stock –
but their legacy continues,
as Hollis once sang, to
“rage on omnipotent”.
© Getty Images