During the The’s more prolific period of releases, from Soul Mining (1983) to Dusk (1992), most artwork used on the albums and single releases was produced by Johnson’s brother Andrew Johnson , using the pseudonym Andy Dog. The artwork has a distinctive style, and sometimes courted controversy, most notably the…
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The The released their official studio album debut, the synth-noir effort Soul Mining , in 1983. It featured the minor UK No. 71 hit ” This Is the Day “, as well as a new recording of the The performing “Uncertain Smile”. Produced by Johnson and Paul Hardiman , it…
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Around 1982 the The played a series of four concerts at the Marquee Club in Wardour Street , Soho , entitled ‘An evening of Rock n Roll with the The’. These concerts were weekly for four weeks and featured Marc Almond on guitar and vocals.
In 1982, the intended debut album by the The ( The Pornography of Despair ) was recorded, but was never officially mixed nor released. Johnson apparently ran off some cassette copies for friends, and several tracks (“Mental Healing Process”, “Leap into the Wind”, “Absolute Liberation”) were subsequently issued as additional…
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In early 1981 the The also contributed the composition “Untitled” to the Some Bizzare Album . In September of that year Johnson and Laws signed a recording contract with Some Bizzare Records and released the 7″ single “Cold Spell Ahead”. By this stage Matt Johnson had begun playing all the…
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Johnson was signed up later in 1981 to 4AD Records by Ivo Watts-Russell to record a solo studio album, Burning Blue Soul . All instrumentation and vocals were performed by Johnson, but the album featured various producers including Wire’s Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis, Ivo and Johnson himself. Years later,…
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Towards the end of 1981 Colin Lloyd-Tucker and Simon Fisher Turner joined the band for a series of stripped-down the The acoustic concerts in London.
Peter Ashworth , then known as Triash and later to become a noted photographer, became the The’s drummer in 1980, and Tom Johnston (also managing the The at this point and later to become a cartoonist for the Evening Standard , Daily Mirror and The Sun newspapers) was added on…
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The The made their debut at London’s Africa Centre on 11 May 1979, third on the bill to Scritti Politti and PragVEC , using backing tape tracks that Johnson created at his day job at De Wolfe studios for the drums and bass. The band at this point consisted of…
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While trying to get his band going, in 1978 Matt Johnson had recorded a solo demo album ( See Without Being Seen ) which he sold at various underground gigs on cassettes. In 1979, working with Colin Lloyd-Tucker (a friend and colleague at De Wolfe Music , the Soho music…
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