Chapter 2: The Geoff Years

Geoff Mann
Geoff had performed with the band before, as a guest singer: G-008 (June 1979 at "Midsummer Rock", Reading University, Reading, England) and G-011 (08 September 1979 at the Youth Club, Salford, England). He had expressed his wishes to join the band as well, but somehow, this never happened. And now the band was looking for a singer again, Geoff's joining was not taken for granted.
Geoff had recorded a tape on which he sung his lyrics to Sequences to an instrumentally recorded version, and this tape was used to compare the auditioning singers. It was not until the last singer they heard, when it was clear no one was better to fit the job than Geoff himself. The band decided to ask Geoff.

After consulting his wife, Jane, Geoff decided he would take the position as the front man. This marked the beginning of probably the most successful or at least most widely appreciated era of the band, although not directly from this moment. It also marked a change in musical direction.

After a warm-up gig in a bar (G-134, 26 August 1981, Reading University, Reading, England), Geoff's first proper gig was at the "Reading Rock" festival in 1981 (G-135, 27 August 1981, Thameside Arena, Reading, England) in front on 15,000 people... Twelfth Night were the first local band to appear at the festival.

Smiling At Grief
It became clear there was more chance of a record contract when you had shorter songs. Besides the epic songs, the band now tried to write shorter songs as well. The results of this are on Smiling At Grief, the first recordings featuring Geoff Mann on vocals. At first, the band only wanted to record some demos. But after the recording sessions, it appeared they had about forty minutes of music, enough for a full album.

During the recording sessions, Rick decided to leave the band to pursue a solo career and other interests. Some tracks were already recorded, but for the remaining tracks, Clive doubled on keyboards. It was here that the idea was born to record Für Helene Part II, a track that was left off the live set ages ago. It was recorded exactly the same way it was recorded for the Skan demo, so no vocals and no keyboards, just Andy, Brian, and Clive.

The Smiling At Grief cassette album was released in December 1981. It contains these tracks:

side A
1. East Of Eden (3:29)
2. This City (3:13)
3. The Honeymoon Is Over (2:35)
4. Creepshow (10:13)
5. Puppets (Intro) (1:25)
   side B
6. Puppets (2:50)
7. Three Dancers (2:54)
8. Makes No Sense (4:02)
9. Für Helene Part II (10:48)

The artwork was completely done by Geoff. The tape included a supplemental booklet (copied on A4 format), with the lyrics and some other drawings by Geoff.

The band kept on playing live frequently, but when the tape got some interest from a guy at Revolution Studios, things were getting more serious in recording a new album. On 1981-12-19, the band would play their last gig for nine months, and concentrate on recording the new album.

Revolution Studios
The story goes that the interest from Revolution Studios party lay in the owner's love for The Beatles and Twelfth Night's version of Eleanor Rigby. What's unclear, however, is how he learned about this, as there is no proof of the band playing Eleanor Rigby at all prior to the single release. Maybe someone can explain one day.

Recording went slow. As the band didn't have a lot of money, they were recording in donw-time mostly, which meant nighttime.

With the luxury of hindsight we can say 1982 was a pretty important year. Twelfth Night were recording Fact And Fiction and not playing live, while Marillion were gigging heavily, which resulted in their EMI deal. This is of course only open for speculation, but I think that if Twelfth Night had been playing live a lot more during the year of 1982, things might have gone differently for them.

Eleanor Rigby was released as a single, with a re-recording of East Of Eden as the B-side on the Revolution label, catalog number REV 009. It came in a white paper sleeve.
The lyrics to East Of Eden has changed slightly. On the Smiling At Grief version, the third verse contains only three lines, while the new version has six.

Things didn't go too well between the band and the Revolution Studios owner. (Does someone know his name?) The band decided to buy the recordings. Most of the artwork was already done, including the planned catalog number for the album: REV 006. Mark Hughes remembers Geoff had to change several parts of his original drawings, cutting out pieces and sticking in new ones.

There was also a promotional poster already printed. It contains artwork in the style of the Fact And Fiction cover (it also has four heads with a total of five eyes), with a large white part below for any type of text to be added later. It contains the text "REV 006". This poster was never used, of course. Stephanie very generously gave me her copy of this poster. I'll make a photo of it and have a scan up here, so you know what it looks like.

The band were invited to appear at the Old Grey Whistle Test. They were going to be on the telly! Without Rick, it wasn't very easy to decide which track they were going to play, but it was to be East Of Eden, assumingly because Clive could handle the keyboards and bass live without too much time for rehearsals. During the recording, there were some technical problems, and the band could hardly hear themselves play!

Fact And Fiction
The album was finally released in October 1982. The tracks:

side A:
1. We Are Sane (10:27)
   1. Te Dium
   2. We Are Sane
   3. Dictator's Excuse Me
2. Human Being (7:50)
3. This City (4:01)
4. World Without End (1:54)
   side B:
5. Fact And Fiction (3:59)
6. The Poet Sniffs A Flower (3:51)
7. Creepshow (11:57)
8. Love Song (5:38)

Rick Battersby
Nineteen gigs were played as a four-piece, with Clive doubling on bass and keyboards: from 1982-09-21 (G-144) through 1982-11-04 (G-162). At least one of these gigs was recorded. This has been released as the first Twelfth Night Archive Recording.

On November 5, 1982, Rick played his first gig after re-joining the band. Ironically, this is exactly one year before Geoff's farewell gig.

An interview by Malcolm Dome was published in Kerrang with the title "Night Manoeuvres". This must have been early 1983.

Another long article was written by Philip Bell, who wrote a lot of favourable reviews on the band. It was published in Sounds, 6 August 1983, on page 19.
Popular photo, by the way... :-) The original article was printed in three columns. Displaying the article the way it was printed would make this page too wide.

New Songs
After the completion of the Fact And Fiction album, the writing of new songs continued as ever. Some were recorded, some not. A song that was played live a couple of times, is Deep In The Heartland. When the music was re-written, the song became known as Not On The Map. (Later, Andy Sears wrote new lyrics to Not On The Map, and the piece was called Blondon Fair.)

This was the time the band would write their masterpiece among masterpieces, the song this site is named after, The Collector. Almost twenty minutes, although the first live version lasted for about twenty-four.

The End Of The Endless Majority
On 28 August 1983, the band played on the last day of the Reading Rock festival. A proggy edition, with Pendragon, Solstice, Pallas, Marillion, and Twelfth Night.

The band played The Ceiling Speaks, Creepshow, The Poet Sniffs A Flower, and Sequences.

At the end of the Summer, Geoff said he wanted to leave the band. Recording the album was very hard, spending many nights, thus cheap studio time. Also, Geoff was an individual artist, and a band means compromising.

November 4th and 5th, 1983. The two Geoff Mann farewell gigs, G-223 and 224. Both gigs were sold out long before November, through the fan club. I don't know about the set list for the first night (November 4th), but I guess they were the same on both nights. The gigs were probably the longest the band ever did.
Both nights were recorded on both tape and video tape. The set list for November 5th is as follows. Intro / The Ceiling Speaks, Human Being, ..., Afghan Red, Sequences, Creepshow, Art And Illusion / East Of Eden, Aspidentropy, Love Song. Sequences is the last song of the regular set list, and I think it is the version of November 5th that made it to the album. For the CD version, the encores are all from November 5th. Note that East Of Eden is part of a medley with Art And Illusion.
On the last night, someone recorded a few words spoken by Geoff in the dressing room: "This is a bootleg recording and all of you listening to this are probably criminals." The total time of the recorded chat is one and a half minute.

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