(Credits: Far Out / eBay / Album Covers)
Sun 19 October 2025 4:00, UK
Being in a band with your significant other is playing with fire.
On the one hand, it’s a nice image, isn’t it? Rock ‘n’ roll is an inherently romantic notion, and there are few notions more romantic than you and your partner, against the world, striking out together hand in hand to make music together.
On the other hand, romance and reality rarely go well together. Vanishingly few relationships survive the high-pressure life that is playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band for the very reason it’s a romantic idea. You can’t get away from your partner.
It’s a deep irony that starting a band and taking on the world is an idea with freedom baked into its very core. You can stick two fingers up to the world and its expectations, cos you’re going your way maaaaan! The only problem is that in the vast majority of cases, being in any kind of genuinely successful band means your life is utterly not your own. Your entire world is controlled by your fans’ expectations, your management’s demands, and your record label’s every word. Then imagine you’re facing that with the person you love by your side.
That should make everything better, but as the history of Fleetwood Mac, The Fugees, Sonic Youth and the Eurythmics should prove, it can make things much worse. However, being in intense situations of personal strife can make for some great music. Not always, you understand, but… well, look at those four bands. If that doesn’t prove that being in a band with your significant other can create some spectacular music, I don’t know what does.
The Thompson Twins pose in 1985. (Credits: Arista Records)
Even from a band not at their level, the strife that comes from being in a band with your partner can make for some of your best moments. Take a band like The Thompson Twins. Today, we may look back at them as relics of the 1980s, most memorable for being the band that Madonna guested with at Live Aid. However, at the time, they were as much a part of the second British invasion as Duran Duran, The Police and The Human League. This popularity came from a hit of theirs that quite literally couldn’t have come from any of those other bands. The Thompson Twins were built around a romantic partnership.
Chesterfield native Tom Bailey formed the initial version of The Thompson Twins in 1977, yet the version that we know and love wouldn’t be fully formed until 1982. This version of the group consisted of Bailey, Joe Leeway on percussion and vocals and Bailey’s girlfriend Alannah Currie on percussion, saxophone and backing vocals. The Auckland-born Currie had met Bailey when they were squatting on the same street in London in the late 1970s, and after starting a relationship with him, was drafted into the band shortly after.
Making the Thompson Twins a trio was the making of the band as a commercial force, coming out of the gates strong with a string of hits on their side of the Atlantic. Currie and Bailey were quite open about the fact that things weren’t exactly plain sailing in their relationship, but what they had going for them was the fact that they could take any argument and make music out of it. Perhaps the fact that one of their biggest arguments turned into the song that made them international stars made it all worth it. Perhaps.
In an interview with Songfacts, Bailey said “Emotionally, it was written as the result of some argument that was resolved between Alannah and myself. We actually decided, well, this is an interesting emotional subject. What it feels like to get back together again after separation and the kind of ideas that come up and the way that emotion and physicality somehow are brought together.”
Clearly, that resonated with people as the song rocketed to number three on the Billboard Hot 100, and number four on the UK singles chart.
Currie and Bailey stayed together for the entire 1980s and actually married in 1991, having two children shortly afterwards. Unfortunately, their union came to an end in 2003, but in the grand scheme of rock ‘n’ roll relationships, theirs is one that lasted a lot longer than most and led to some great music to boot. Would that all of us could be so lucky.
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