The Totally Tubular Tom Bailey
The former Thompson Twins frontman talks about joining the summer’s hottest 80s tour
Tom Bailey seems relaxed as he gets on a video call from his home in New Zealand, where he says he usually spends half the year, and then the remaining months in Europe.
“Usually, the half in Europe is so busy that I’m just kind of buzzing around all over the place, but when I’m in New Zealand, this is my downtime when I write and record and do some other work,” he says.
Soon, he’ll come to the end of this downtime, though, because from late June through most of July, he’ll be touring the North America with the Totally Tubular Festival. With his backing band, he’ll perform all the hits his former band Thompson Twins had throughout the 1980s, such as “Hold Me Now,” “Lies,” “Love on Your Side,” “Doctor! Doctor!,” “Lay Your Hands on Me,” “King for a Day,” and many more.
VIDEO: Thompson Twins “Hold Me Now”
Bailey will co-headline the Totally Tubular Festival along with Thomas Dolby, with Modern English, Men Without Hats, The Tubes, Bow Wow Wow, Tommy Tutone, and The Plimsouls rounding out the lineup.
Bailey says it was an easy decision to sign on to do this festival: “As we all know, the COVID pandemic killed touring stone dead for a couple of years there, so after that, there was a big line forming of people who wanted to get back on the road, and I just was looking for a good opportunity with an ’80s flavor.”
This particular festival appealed to him because it would give him a chance to finally tour with his longtime friend Thomas Dolby. “He and I go back a long way, in terms of our involvement in various projects, but apart from one glancing blow on a stage somewhere in England at a festival, we’ve never actually done shows together, so it felt like a good fit,” Bailey says. “Because we were both involved in the early days of synths in pop music, it felt like it was an idea that had to be done at some point.”
In 1982, Dolby had a massive international hit with his song “She Blinded Me with Science” – and that same year, he was a guest musician on the Thompson Twins’ second album, Set, which ended up yielding their breakthrough single, “In the Name of Love.”
AUDIO: Thompson Twins “In The Name Of Love”
Set was, Bailey says, “the first introduction of synthesizers into our sound. I actually had just bought a big synthesizer the very day that Thomas Dolby showed up. He was there before me and was so much more adept that I deferred to him: ‘Look, you do the synth parts.’”
After the success of that album, Bailey decided to make Thompson Twins focus even more on being a synth-based band that specialized in danceable songs. He also radically pared down the members to make it a trio comprised of himself on vocals and most instruments, percussionist/backing vocalist/lyricist Alannah Currie, and keyboardist/backing vocalist Joe Leeway.
“At that point, I think I realized the direction I had to go in, and very, very quickly in succession it all started happening,” Bailey says. “We had hit after hit after hit, and we were in the charts all over the world – and it was because I almost accidentally landed on this way of designing an approach to writing songs that wasn’t based on a band, but based on the songs.”
Bailey isn’t exaggerating when he says that Thompson Twins had hit after hit: throughout the 1980s, they released three albums that achieved platinum or gold sales status in multiple countries. They also had fourteen songs that entered the charts in the U.S. alone.
In particular, Into the Gap (1984) is viewed as the band’s masterpiece, and because 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of that album’s release, Bailey and his backing band have been performing it in full at shows across Europe. “Unfortunately, we won’t really get the chance to do that in the States because it’s a festival bill,” Bailey says. “There’s so many bands on that bill, which is great, but it means that everyone can’t play for hours. They have to be very concise about what they do.”
Instead, he says, the setlist for the Totally Tubular shows will draw from songs across the entire Thompson Twins catalog. “Luckily, the songs that people know well span four or five albums, so we can pick and choose,” he says. “It’ll be a show packed with hits. And that’s not just a kind of cheesy thing to say: it’s nice to know you can walk onstage with a whole list of songs that everyone knows. In a way, that gives an artist the opportunity to get right down to the more important job of making an emotional connection [with the audience].”
VIDEO: Thompson Twins “Doctor! Doctor!”
Bailey knows a big part of that emotional connection is due to nostalgia, and he’s fine with that. “That happens to me, too: listening to some of these songs takes me right back to what I was doing when I wrote them. It’s like reading an old diary,” he says.
He also doesn’t mind performing some of those hits for what may be the thousandth time. “I know there are times when artists think, ‘I can’t do that one anymore – it’s too cheesy,’ or ‘It’s too much of its time and I don’t feel that way anymore,’ or ‘There’s something about a line in the third verse that makes me wince every time I sing it,’” he says, “but luckily, I can somehow ride over those moments if they occur. And actually, they don’t occur that often. Songs like ‘Hold Me Now,’ I’m very, very happy to sing.”
As far as why, exactly, Thompson Twins managed to create so many songs that have connected with listeners for more than four decades, Bailey has a couple of theories: “I think there’s a little bit of skill and talent involved, maybe – but an awful lot of luck,” he says. “One of the skills is not saying, ‘Look at how clever I am.’ A lot of the stuff that makes pop music work is actually eternal. So if you can make an infectious, foot tapping beat, have a great sing-along chorus, but actually say something in the song that is meaningful to you, then it will have a good chance of working.”
Bailey smiles at the thought of returning to the U.S. to perform these beloved songs once again. “Mostly, I’m just looking forward to going back on the road and being in America again – it’s been too long,” he says. “I’m incredibly excited, to be honest!”
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