Stephen Duffy

Stephen Anthony James Duffy aka Stephen 'Tin Tin' Duffy, and Stephen 'A J' Duffy (born 30 May 1960) is an English musician, singer and songwriter. He was a founding member, vocalist and bassist of Duran Duran in 1978–79. He went on to record as a solo performer under several different names, and is the singer and songwriter for The Lilac Time with his elder brother Nick. He has also co-written with Robbie Williams and Steven Page.

Career

Duran Duran and other early work While attending the School of Foundation Studies & Experimental Workshop at Birmingham Polytechnic (now Birmingham City University), Duffy met John Taylor. Together, along with Taylor's childhood friend Nick Rhodes, they formed the group Duran Duran. While Taylor was the guitarist (later switching to bass) and Rhodes played the synthesizer, Duffy was the band's vocalist/lyricist and bassist. When bass player Simon Colley joined, Duffy moved to drums. He left both the school and the band in 1979, before Duran Duran signed with EMI in 1980.

He went on to form Obviously Five Believers, sometimes known as The Subterranean Hawks or The Hawks, and he made his first four-track recordings. The Hawks' only single, "Words of Hope", was released in 1981.

A new single, "Unkiss That Kiss", was released in September 1985 and peaked at no. 77 in the UK. For this single, Duffy had become known as Stephen A.J. Duffy after dropping the "Tin Tin" reference from his stage name. The single was the first to be taken from the album Because We Love You, released in early 1986, for which he was credited simply as Stephen Duffy. Additional singles from the album were "I Love You" (which peaked at no. 86) and "Something Special" which was a collaboration with Sandii (of Sandii & the Sunsetz);

In October 2005, Robbie Williams released Intensive Care, co-written and co-produced by Stephen Duffy. The album sold over eight million copies, becoming Williams' best selling studio album around the world. Duffy then went on to work as the musical director for Williams' Close Encounters World Tour.

Film documentary The Douglas Arrowsmith documentary Memory & Desire: 30 Years in the Wilderness with Stephen Duffy & the Lilac Time was filmed over six years and includes vintage footage of the band. The film was released at the London Raindance Film Festival in October 2009, accompanied by a Universal Records album of the same name, bringing together songs from Duffy's thirty years of music making. It was not picked up for general distribution however and was withdrawn to be re-edited to include live footage. As of 2022, it is no longer titled Memory & Desire and it is described as an ongoing project.

Duffy sat for sculptor Jon Edgar in London in 2008. The terracotta work was coincidentally documented during the filming of the Douglas Arrowsmith documentary Memory and Desire. An image appears on the CD cover for the Memory and Desire (2009) album.

Later work In 2021, an album by The Hawks called Obviously 5 Believers arrived more than 40 years after their single "Words Of Hope", with the project overseen by Duffy, drummer Dave Twist and producer John Paterno. The album came about after Duffy got heckled by the band's guitarist Dave Kusworth (also formerly of The Dogs D'Amour and Jacobites) at an event at Birmingham's Glee Club in 2019, with the album being released by Easy Action Records, almost a year after the death of Kusworth.

Discography The Hawks Albums Obviously 5 Believers (2021), Seventeen Records/Easy Action

Singles "Words of Hope"/"Sense of Ending" 7" (1981), Five Believers Because We Love You (1986), 10 Records They Called Him Tin Tin (1998), Virgin-VIP

Singles "Kiss Me" (1982), WEA Records "She Makes Me Quiver" (1984), 10 Records - UK No. 88 "Kiss Me" (1985), 10 Records - UK No. 4, AUS No. 16, CAN No. 89 "Icing on the Cake" (1985), 10 Records - UK No. 14, AUS No. 46

Singles "London Girls" (1995), Indolent - UK #180 "Sugar High" (1995), Indolent - UK #83 "Starfit" (1996), Summershine "Needle Mythology" (1996), Indolent - UK #131 "17" (1997), Indolent "17" (1998), Cooking Vinyl "You Are" (1998), Cooking Vinyl

Me Me Me "Hanging Around" (1996), Indolent - UK No. 19

The Devils Dark Circles (2002), Tape Modern