Talk Talk – and, in particular, Hollis – were always enigmatic figures, not least for what Depeche Mode’s Alan Wilder once called “a career in reverse”, with the distinct schism between the band’s first hit albums and final neglected two bridged by The Colour Of Spring’s international accomplishments. I can’t tell you how much Mark influenced and changed my perceptions on art and music,” he said. “I’m grateful for the time I spent with him and for the gentle beauty he shared with us.” Dismissed early on as lightweights, Talk Talk and Hollis had come to be recognised as among the most influential acts to emerge from their era, with initial pop nous admired by the likes of No Doubt, who had a huge hit with a cover of It’s My Life in 2003, and later, sophisticated work championed by Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Underworld’s Karl Hyde, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Robert Plant. The group finally cut all ties with the synthesiser era with The Colour of Spring (1986), a powerful and coherent set of songs which delivered the major hit Life’s What You Make It and a slightly lesser hit with Living in Another World. They typified the album’s mix of powerful, spacious rhythms with carefully wrought instrumental colours, topped by Hollis’s pained and yearning vocals. By now Hollis was writing all the material with Tim Friese-Greene, who had been brought aboard for the It’s My Life album as producer and keyboard player. The album was a hit internationally.

A song asale should have said so much/ Makes it harder the more you love” – Mark Hollis, “Watershed” Musicians on Mark Hollis: 'He found hooks in places I'm still trying to fathom'", The Guardian, 26 February 2019. Retrieved 26 February 2019

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Hollis released his first and only solo album, also called Mark Hollis, in 1998. When asked about his decision not to tour anymore or maintain a public persona, he said: “I choose for my family. Maybe others are capable of doing it, but I can’t go on tour and be a good dad at the same time.” He later retired from the music industry, and was little heard from publicly. An article about him last year was headlined “How to disappear completely.” Ben Wardle, a lecturer in music business at the University of Gloucestershire, has set himself the challenge of getting behind or going over the wall and telling Hollis’ story. The biography is unauthorised and so it is a story told from the outside. The author did not speak to Hollis’ family or have access to private papers, diaries or notebooks. He remains cut off from the inner life of the artist. Celebrating The Genius Of Mark Hollis In 15 Songs". Stereogum. 26 February 2019 . Retrieved 27 September 2019. 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.

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.” 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!” Wardle also points to Phil Ramacon, whose multiple experiences working with Hollis epitomised its pitfalls and pleasures. “He told me how much he enjoyed his company, how Hollis bought him clothes for their shows and would regularly make him cheese on toast in his flat before they went to rehearsals together. But he also told me how he had helped Hollis assemble and write Such A Shame from fragments of cassette ideas.

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. The other way is to stop when you’ve achieved everything you set out to do, never again reappearing. No interviews. No reunions. No explanations. No lap of honour. No further communication. Nothing. The way Mark Hollis did it. (2/2) I always wanted to meet Mark Hollis & say thank you for his music. Hope he knew how much he meant to so many of us. RIP ? In Breës’ documentary, meanwhile, Ian Curnow recalls having his fingers tied together and being forced to play keyboards for hours in considerable discomfort, and it’s clear that, though this indignity is usually cast as ingenious by Hollis’ fans, the memory is far from welcome, and that this fate’s sometimes attributed to Nigel Kennedy instead probably hasn’t helped. In the absence of any direct communication from the man himself his admirers sought answers to these riddles and intrigues in his opaque, quasi-mystical lyrics or in interviews he’d given years before. But every music writer who set off “in search of Mark Hollis” soon reached a dead end – or rather slammed into the high protective wall he’d built around his life and work.

There was always a link with prog. That early show with Genesis may have been something of a nightmare on the day, the atrocious weather fuelling the disgruntlement of an audience who took it out on the support act, but there’s a discernible bittersweet, happy-sad element shared by Gabriel’s more subtle slow numbers, Genesis’ melancholy moments like Entangled, and the emotion Hollis would display on something like April 5th, the song named after his wife’s birthday on The Colour Of Spring. Lees, Alasdair (19 September 2008). "Shearwater, Bush Hall, London". The Independent . Retrieved 27 June 2009. Very sad to hear that Mark Hollis has died. You might have experienced the wonder of those final three Talk Talk albums but his 1998 solo album is just as beautiful and has been an endless source of musical and conceptual inspiration to us.

February 2019

It’s certainly a reaction to the music that’s around at the moment, ‘cos most of that is shit,” Hollis also said of Spirit of Eden. “It’s only radical in the modern context. It’s not radical compared to what was happening 20 years ago. If we’d have delivered this album to the record company 20 years ago they wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.” Beaumont, Mark (26 February 2019). "Talk Talk's Mark Hollis: 2019 is full of the notes he isn't playing". NME . Retrieved 1 March 2019.