The musical philosophy of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis
A few years ago, the world of music sadly lost one of the most extraordinary talents of all time: Mark Hollis. The lead singer and principal songwriter of the English synth-pop-cum-art-rock band Talk Talk passed away in 2019. The group enjoyed a reasonable level of success in the early to mid-1980s with charting singles like ‘It’s My Life’ before Hollis grew frustrated with the music industry’s fickle nature and began experimenting with modes of free-form jazz and improvisation.
The most notorious Talk Talk albums to explore this route were 1988’s Spirit of Eden and its follow-up Laughing Stock, released as the band’s final album in 1991. Shortly after the latter’s release, Talk Talk split up. Hollis’ only further contribution to music before he retired from the industry was a wonderfully sparse and minimalist self-titled solo album released in 1998.
It was that minimalist approach to music expressed on Hollis’ solo LP and the final two Talk Talk records that defined the musical philosophy of the beloved London-born musician, arguably made all the more imperative, seeing as Talk Talk enjoyed a relative amount of success in the charts and likely felt the pressures of record labels to follow up on the popularity of songs like ‘It’s My Life’. However, Hollis was always sceptical of the figures in the industry, and ever the artist, he truly understood what it was that defined great music. “Always one of the most important things about music for me is spontaneity and improvisation,” he once said in an interview. “Take this idea that the first time something is played, it is at its finest, and the minute you try to recreate that, it becomes an imitation of something that was originally better.”
That philosophy and outlook is, of course, diametrically opposed to writing a pop song, with the laborious necessity of finetuning every facet of every melody, hook, and chorus. Hollis instead wanted to capture the very spirit of music, the Spirit of Eden, if you will, something that went beyond the confines of what was expected of him in the early days of Talk Talk.
Hollis recruited several talented musicians over the recording of the Talk Talk albums and his self-titled solo record, but he always allowed them to play what they wanted to rather than giving them a set piece to play. “There are days when you know certain people are coming in to play, but around them, it would be, you know, just absolutely whatever you fancy playing on that day,” he said.
“Above everything, you’re asking them to play in a way that is completely natural to themselves,” Hollis added. “I think that’s something for a lot of people which is unusual. You [should] play as you feel.” That “play what you feel” mentality also sums up the philosophy of Hollis’ musicianship, creating the ultimate ‘music as art’ output, centralising the notion that one can speak and communicate through instrumentation as though it were language itself.
And the product of that insistence? “The optimum thing that anybody can wish for is that music exists outside of the time in which it is written,” Hollis then concluded. “The only way you can do that is to make it as honest as can [be], and that is true of the sound. If you start stylising sound, then it will become rooted to an actual period. If you just have the sound as honest as it is, then it cannot suffer that problem.”
Around 1998, upon releasing his solo album, Hollis reiterated: “Technique has never been an important thing to me. Feeling always has been, and always will be, above technique.” He added, “To me, the ultimate ambition is to make music that doesn’t have a use-by date, that goes beyond your own time.” Undoubtedly, Hollis transcended the limitations of technique and time by living by his own belief in music and, in doing so, created some of the most memorable and beautiful music ever put on tape, some of which can be listened to below.
