Charlie Hollis – the son of the late Mark Hollis, the enigmatic creative force behind Talk Talk – is proceeding cautiously. “It’s so easy to be misconstrued,” says Hollis, who looks and sounds very much like his father, who died in 2019. “Lineage, DNA, influences, they’re all massively important for anyone making music. But I’d be very careful about using words like ‘tribute’, because it completely gives the wrong impression.”
Hollis is discussing his involvement in the group Held By Trees, described on their Bandcamp page as “an instrumental post-rock collaboration heavily inspired by Talk Talk/Mark Hollis, and working with musicians that played for them”. The band is a passion project of multi-instrumentalist/producer David Joseph, a 40-year-old Church of England minister from Bournemouth, who wondered: “What would it be like if a bunch of the musicians that worked on Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, as well as Mark Hollis’s solo record, worked on new music?”
As beloved musicians die – and AI creates crude and ethically compromised reconstructions – Held By Trees are one of a number of bands offering an alternative to the straightforward hat-doffing of tribute acts; or to venerable groups such as Gong and Yes that continue to use the name when few original members are involved.
From Black Star Riders (featuring Thin Lizzy alumni) to House of All (members of which were previously in the Fall), these bands have resolved to carry on the spirit of an old group in a new one, playing all-new material. Not so much cover bands as recovered bands.
Contributors to Held By Trees include veteran Talk Talk session musicians such as Robbie McIntosh and Martin Ditcham, as well as Laurence Pendrous, who played piano on Mark Hollis’s 1998 solo album and whose day job is teaching music at Hall School in Wimbledon, where he tutored a preteen Charlie Hollis. Thirty years later, both men contribute piano to a group “honouring” Mark’s music.
Held by Trees were inspired by a solo recording session Joseph made during lockdown. “The roads and skies were quieter, that spring was particularly fragrant, and there was this spaciousness to the music I was making,” he says. “I realised I was really leaning into my love of those [Talk Talk] records. I knew they involved a lot of improvisation: a drum pattern and chord progression were offered to a big cast of musicians to improvise on. I thought: what if I track down some of those musicians and ask them to play on these ideas?”
Encouraged to “take the plunge” by Phill Brown, who engineered the Talk Talk records and now works with Held By Trees, Joseph embarked on a successful recruiting drive. The results were first heard in 2021 on the Next to Silence EP. The band’s debut album, Solace, arrived a year later and a second studio album is imminent.
From the start, Joseph was upfront about drawing direct inspiration from Talk Talk, who dissolved as a band in 1991 after making their final album, Laughing Stock. “I thought, OK, how does one frame this? Do you just put the music out there wearing its influences on its sleeve? Or is the more honouring approach to be very transparent about this being an active, respectful homage – not a tribute, but seeking to carry on the approach with a similar cast?”
When the post-Phil Lynott touring version of Thin Lizzy discussed releasing new material, guitarist Scott Gorham faced a similar conundrum. “You can’t go up against history,” says Gorham. “Every Thin Lizzy album I played or wrote on was with Phil Lynott, so the only thing to do was start a new band with a brand new name.” In 2012, Gorham formed Black Star Riders with other ex-members as a vehicle for “the next step in the evolution of the Thin Lizzy story”.
House of All, meanwhile, was formed by Martin Bramah, who co-founded the Fall with Mark E Smith in 1976. House of All’s core members comprise four more ex-Fall troupers: Steve Hanley, Paul Hanley, Pete Greenway and Si Wolstencroft. The third album, due early next year, features the band’s former drummer Karl Burns.
Bramah co-wrote and played on the first Fall album, Live at the Witch Trials, before leaving in 1979, weary of Smith’s autocratic behaviour. He rejoined in 1989 but was fired a year later. After a “respectful” moratorium following Smith’s death in 2018, Bramah resolved “to pull together some of the key figures from the Fall’s long history and try to recreate some of the more spontaneous working methods we experimented with”.
For these tribute bands, following the original working methods is key. Three tracks on the next Held By Trees album were “entirely composed in the moment”, says Joseph. “Absolute spontaneity.”
Bramah, meanwhile, states: “We weren’t trying to sound like the Fall, it’s a natural byproduct of the discipline imposed by working quickly with spontaneity. To make up for the lack of Mark’s dictatorial attitude, the pressure came from the fact that we didn’t rehearse before we went into the studio, or have any material written. It was just: get a sound, press record, start playing. Perhaps when we were younger we needed the uncompromising discipline that Mark brought to the table. Maybe we don’t need the teacher in the room now.”
The response from Fall fans, who comprise most of their fanbase, has been positive. The estate of Mark E Smith has been less effusive. “They were very wary of us using Mark’s name or the Fall, but we try not to step on their toes,” says Bramah. “We’re not calling ourselves the Fall or doing Fall songs, but there’s an inevitable crossover. Mark captured the zeitgeist of his generation as a cultural figure within alternative music. No one else can make that claim within the Fall, but lots of people helped and it’s our history, too. We can’t all retire because Mark died – not that I ever did!”
The cult of fandom surrounding Mark Hollis and Talk Talk, meanwhile, sometimes feels downright oppressive. Largely dismissed upon release, their later albums are now regarded as sacred texts. “The Talk Talk following is a passionate one,” Joseph says. “People deeply love them, and Mark. One or two comments I’ve seen online haven’t been sure about Held By Trees, but 99.9% of interactions have been positive. Had we said, ‘We’re Talk Talk reborn, we’ve made Spirit of Eden Pt 2’, we rightfully would have got a huge amount of kickback.”
“If people get their backs up over this, it would only be because there was a slight misunderstanding of what we’re trying to do,” adds Hollis. “I enjoy those records as the fantastic albums they are, put together with such determination, integrity and commitment. Those are the only important things when you’re making music, and if you can really push the boundaries while you’re doing that, that’s amazing. If we were trying to recreate them it would be totally impossible and completely pointless. That’s not even close to what we’re doing.”
The involvement of a Hollis in Held By Trees bolsters the air of artistic integrity. For his part, any personal scepticism was assuaged by the calibre of the people involved. “Laurence taught me piano and was a family friend,” says Hollis. “I played golf with him and my dad, and I always massively respected him. He’s an incredible pianist. I knew about Robbie McIntosh going way back, and then just from talking to Dave, it was obvious that he really got the music. Initially, there wasn’t any discussion that we might make music together. We just hung out as friends. Then he told me he was working in Brixton, and I live close by. He invited me down, I got on the piano, and it just worked.”
For all three bands, long-term progress involves stretching away from their formative influences. Black Star Riders have made five albums of original material; the last, Wrong Side of Paradise, was released in 2023 and reached No 6 in the UK. “Initially people were calling it Lizzy Jr,” says Scott Gorham. “I get that. It took the next albums to stand on our own two feet. To a certain extent, we were successful – making new material made us feel viable.”
Bramah says House of All is “on the rise and evolving. We’ve got new people coming into the mix, which was the original idea – to be an open door project for ex-members of the Fall. The new album is easily our best.”
David Joseph makes the point that Held By Trees’ musical influences range from Pink Floyd to Swans; bluesman Eric Bibb has recorded with the band. “It mustn’t be a one-trick pony of aping Talk Talk. Musically, there are very clear differences. We can’t honestly swerve questions about lineage and DNA, but there’s a tension between that and it needing to stand or fall on the music, not just the story. In the end, it’s about whether or not this music resonates with people in a truthful way.”