Twelfth Night

TWELFTH NIGHT emerged from the Andy REVELL Band formed at Reading University, where in 1978 they won a talent competition. Geoff MANN was an artist friend of the band from the moment in 1977 that he knocked on Andy's door to find out what record Andy was listening to and discovered that it was just Andy playing guitar! The embryonic band consisted of Andy and Brian DEVOIL (drums), with Mr Rick BATTERSBY managing the dry ice.

After Clive MITTEN joined in 1979, TWELFTH NIGHT as a band were born and got straight down to the work of recording. A live LP followed several tapes and experiments with other musicians, including one Electra McLEOD who performed vocals for one tape only. A vocalist was needed - but where to get one? Many were auditioned - including Geoff, who also performed a gig or two with the band and wrote some words for "Sequences".

A successful series of gigs was followed by the band being booked for the Reading Festival - the first local Reading band to have achieved this in the history of the festival. After much deliberating, Geoff MANN, the backdrop painter became Geoff MANN the poet, lyricist and vocalist.

It's important to consider the musical, social and political climate of the late 1970s - early 1980s to get a handle on what TWELFTH NIGHT were about; The roots of the music lie mainly in Andy Revell's HACKETT/HILLAGE guitar sound, but Genesis, early Pink Floyd and Wishbone Ash are the most obvious influences. It has been said that there is a punk element to TN, and while there is a certain amount of aggression, that energy comes more directly from NWOBHM than punk. MANN's vocal style and lyrics may be laced with anarchism, but they run a whole lot deeper than that - Geoff was a deep thinker and poet, and later became ordained. His words attack the idle non-thinking majority in a cajoling way, they attack the governments at a grass-roots level and they attack the nonsense of war - but also support the positive aspects of life, like love. After MANN left (amicably) to join the church in 1983, a new era of TN started with Andy SEARS as vocalist, co-writer.

With Andy SEARS on board, the band began a very successful period. An accomplished vocalist and musician, Andy brought a more melodic edge to TWELFTH NIGHT. Andy's lyrics also dealt with compassion, whilst attacking authority and ignorance in a vitriolic way, touching on themes that are still very much issues today. SEARS preferred a more succinct lyrical style to MANN's. Less than two months after joining the band, TWELFTH NIGHT were invited to record a live MARQUEE show for European transmission. By the time the acclaimed album Art & Illusion was released, the last for Music For Nations, the band were signed to no other than HIT & RUN MANAGEMENT, home to Genesis and Peter Gabriel. Art & Illusion itself entered the National Charts at no 83, the only Twelfth Night album to accomplish this. An extraordinary feat given that the album received no hype of promotion whatsoever. The band embarked on their most successful tour, included two sell out shows at London's Dominion Theatre. TWELFTH NIGHT signed a 10 album deal with VIRGIN RECORDS on the back of the new SEARS line-up, recording their eponymously titled album (affectionately known as XII or the Virgin Album). The album was a very brave move away from more traditional progressive rock, and an attempt to move progressive rock onwards. As such, it is TWELFTH NIGHT's most polemic album to date. Between HIT & RUN and VIRGIN RECORDS the band were badly handled, and in 1986, disillusioned by this, SEARS left, closely followed by MITTEN.

In 2007, SEARS and MITTEN reformed the band for a series of acclaimed sell out shows. TWELFTH NIGHT are still making music in one form or another - but it tends to be fitted around the day jobs. Sadly, Geoff died of cancer in 1993, though his legacy lives on, predominantly through the Fact and Fiction album.

The more narrow-minded critics tend to make puerile comparisons between MANN and SEARS, but in truth both the "MANN-era" and the "SEARS-era" were successful periods in Twelfth Night's musical journey, showing the versatility of a band that dared to make changes where many others were still following old formulas and outdated trends. MANN and SEARS were in fact good friends and would often appear together for encore numbers!

www.twelfthnight.info
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