“Everything went into the music”: the tragic genius of The Sound’s Adrian Borland, the lost prophet of post-punk

Originally published in Uncut’s Take 332 [September 2024], friends and band mates look back at the life and career of Adrian Borland, the lost prophet of British post-punk, and his band The Sound…

“Iggy Pop showed up…”

September 29, 1977 was an auspicious date for the 19-year-old Adrian Borland. His band, The Outsiders, were supporting Radiators From Space at the Roxy – the infamous early London punk club which hosted some of the first shows by The Clash, X-Ray Spex and The Damned. For a joke, among the names Borland added to The Outsiders’ guest list that night were Iggy Pop and David Bowie: his musical heroes.

At the time, The Outsiders were being sort-of-managed by Jock McDonald, the colourful promoter and DJ who later fronted the Gollock Brothers. He told his young charges that not only was Iggy in town, he would be coming to the show later.

“We thought, ‘Yeah right, tell us another one’,” remembers Graham Bailey, Borland’s oldest childhood friend. “Iggy was Adrian’s god, he literally worshipped Iggy And The Stooges. But then… Iggy actually showed up.” No sooner had The Outsiders launched into their regular cover of “Raw Power” when their very special guest made his presence felt. “Iggy leapt on stage, grabbed the mic and started singing,” continues Bailey. “Suddenly, Adrian was playing guitar like he was James Williamson.”

Success never arrived

The following month, it was Borland’s turn to leap onstage with Patti Smith – this time, however, he was unceremoniously bundled back into the audience by security at the Hammersmith Odeon. Two years later, though, as post-punk began to evolve into a more windswept and epic kind of music, Adrian Borland seemed well placed for stardom himself with The Sound.

But while their second LP, From The Lions Mouth, still sounds like a crucial document of the era, success never arrived. Bad timing, misfortune, record company neglect and mental illness meant they never scaled the same heights as contemporaries like Joy Division, U2 and Echo & The Bunnymen.

The Sound finally broke up in 1987 – by which time Borland was in the grip of a schizoaffective disorder. He committed suicide on April 26, 1999, aged 41. Brilliant but overlooked during their lifetime, today Borland and The Sound have come back into focus.

“Everything went into the music”

Marc Waltman and Jean-Paul Mierlo’s 2016 documentary Walking In The Opposite Direction began an upsurge in interest in Borland and The Sound which has peaked, close to the 25th anniversary of Borland’s death, with Simon Heavisides’ biography Destiny Stopped Screaming and the reissue of their first three albums.

“The internet’s given us a whole new audience,” says Mike Dudley, the band’s drummer who now occasionally plays in In2TheSound, one of the four current tributes operating internationally. “I think anyone who has problems relating to the world can use Adrian’s songs to help them make sense of it.”

According to Steve Budd, The Sound’s only proper manager, Borland always was something of an outsider. “Adrian could be a jovial character,” he says. “But there was part of him that didn’t know how to bond with people on an emotional level. Everything went into the music.”

Borland saw the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club

The son of a physicist and an English teacher, Adrian Borland was 14 when he was given his first guitar by a neighbour. Musically gifted, he formed his first band, Syndrome, while still at school. They later became The Outsiders, named after Albert Camus’ novel. Together with Adrian Janes, a fellow pupil at Tiffin grammar school in Kingston-upon-Thames, Borland saw the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club in September 1976.

There, ITV cameras captured the teenage Borland pogoing in the audience. “I was on holiday in Scotland when I read about them in NME,” says Janes, who became The Outsiders’ drummer. “At the time, I remember thinking, ‘This sounds fantastic. I can’t wait to get back to England.’ After we saw the Pistols, Adrian had his antennae out for every new band coming up.”

Graham Bailey met Borland aged nine, when their families moved into the new Hillview housing development in Wimbledon, south London. Later, Bailey was initially The Outsiders’ “unofficial roadie” because he had a car. “Then we were down the Roxy or the Vortex or Jock McDonald’s club, the Speakeasy, all the time.”

“I was looking for something new”

Besides the Iggy guest spot, The Outsiders had one other claim to fame. Their 1977 debut Calling On Youth was the UK’s first self-released punk album – although the long-haired, middle-class boys were given short shrift by the music press. “A more plump, well fed bunch of boys you’ve never seen and apple-cheeked Ade has a complexion that would turn a Devon milkmaid green with envy,” sneered NME’s Julie Burchill.

After 1978’s Close Up, Adrian Janes and bassist Bob Lawrence decided their futures were better served by going to university. The Outsiders’ final gig took place at the Old Swan in Kensington on April 26, 1979, with new members Bailey, using the surname Green, on bass and his girlfriend Benita Biltoo – later known as Bi Marshall – on clarinet.

Shortly after, with Biltoo switching to keyboards, they were joined by drummer Mike Dudley – 10 years older than the others and into Cream and Jimi Hendrix. “I saw them in a club in Clapham when they were still The Outsiders and thought, ‘This is really good’,” says Dudley. “I’d been playing in bands for years and was looking for something new.”

“His father was very domineering”

The new line-up began rehearsing in the Borlands’ garage in Wimbledon, with Adrian’s father Robert – a keen amateur sound engineer – recording their sessions. It was an arrangement that caused friction between Borland and his father, Robert.

“Adrian’s parents were supportive, but his father was very domineering,” says Bailey. “The era of the authoritative parent. It was always: ‘Don’t be stupid, Adrian… Don’t be ridiculous, Adrian.’ He was on him all the time. They didn’t fight physically, but the language that went between father and son… Adrian would swear and Bob would be like, ‘Don’t swear! It damages my equipment!’ Then everything would calm down and we’d go back to recording again.”

For their new name, Bailey thinks it was Borland who eventually came up with The Sound. “We didn’t want to pick a strange name like everyone was choosing, like Echo & The Bunnymen or A Flock Of Seagulls,” he says. “You can’t get much more generic than The Sound, but we didn’t want to be pigeonholed in a genre of music.”

“One great song after another”

“Adrian started writing about how he felt and stuff,” says Dudley. “Innermost feeling, which is a lot more intimate and involving if it rings a bell with other people.”

From his vantage point in the crowd, Janes noticed a transformation. Suddenly, people were singing along. “After that, I started going to as many of their gigs as possible. Very quickly, it was one great song after another.”

Despite their own musical advances, The Sound were in danger of being left behind. By autumn 1979, post-punk was already in full swing. Borland saw Joy Division at London’s Nashville Rooms in August 1979 and immediately adored them, while a falling out with Jock McDonald had left them with few industry connections.

Impassioned and anthemic

“They were being looked after by a sculptor [Geoff Cummant-Wood] when Adrian asked me to come in,” says Budd. “I was a roadie who’d made a little bit of money touring with Motörhead and Generation X and wanted to start my own label.”

Budd’s first act as manager was to put up £50 for Borland and Bailey’s electronic side project, Second Layer, to release a single. Then he gave The Sound £150 to record the “Physical World” EP, released in December 1979.

If the EP’s lead track “Cold Beat” sounded like archetypal angular post-punk, the driving “Unwritten Law” pointed the way forward to their debut album, Jeopardy. It’s bigger, more impassioned and more anthemic, the insistent rhythms, surging keyboards and guitars providing the perfect vehicle for Borland’s ominous lyrics: “A change of climate, a change of air/All the pressure would remain”.

“Support from the label was minimal”

The EP was well received enough for Budd put up £500 for them to record “the best part of an album” in leaky Elephant Studios, with engineer Nick Robbins. The tapes made their way to Warners exec Rob Dickins, whose new Korova subsidiary was already home to Echo & The Bunnymen.

“Rob was a powerful figure in the music business even then,” says Dudley. “But maybe they thought, ‘Here’s a band, bit of a name. They’ve got an album already which we don’t have to pay for.’ Support from the label was minimal. Our A&R man [Greg Penny] was really enthusiastic, but the label was all geared to the Bunnymen.”

Korova released Jeopardy in November 1980 – the band were told it was the cheapest major-label album since The Beatles’ debut. The reviews were strong, but they failed to translate into sales.

“There was a weird jealousy thing going on”

“The Sound were never cool,” says Budd. “Adrian in his jacket looking like a slightly overweight schoolboy didn’t help. They translated in Holland, where it was more about, ‘Are the records good?’ Nobody who saw them could deny that they were an astonishing live band. The difficulty was getting people in the fucking room.”

To support Jeopardy, Warners sent The Sound out on a national tour with the Bunnymen, who had already enjoyed Top 20 chart success with their debut album, Crocodiles. “That was difficult. There was a weird jealousy thing going on,” says Budd.

“We were playing to a bigger crowd,” says Dudley. “Adrian always found it difficult to relate to people he didn’t know. So between, in his own opinion, being the star of the show – quite rightly so – and then having to sort of occupy the also-ran level on that tour made him withdraw a bit. Les Pattinson was a nice guy, Will Sergeant was a bit distant but the singing bog brush [Ian McCulloch] was really quite horrible and would sneer at you when you were talking to them. So it wasn’t really sociable.”

“It sowed a seed”

“They ended the tour throwing pies at us,” remembers Bailey. “Which didn’t go down well.” The band cite closer ties with fellow raincoat groovers Comsat Angels and The Chameleons. Chameleons singer Mark Burgess, in particular, became close to Borland.

The Bunnymen tour aside, there were other problems in the camp. After initially agreeing to split royalties four ways, Jeopardy emerged credited just to Borland. “Adrian was very sheepish when we confronted him,” says Bailey, who suspects the controlling hand of Borland’s father in his business affairs. “But it sowed a seed.”

Not least for Biltoo – a trained musician who Bailey says “struggled with the fact that we didn’t understand musical technicalities such as keys” and was asked to leave. “I was given the job of telling her she wasn’t wanted any more,” says Dudley. Her replacement was 20-year-old Colvin “Max” Mayers from Cardiacs forerunners, Cardiac Arrest: “When Max came in, it went up another level,” says Dudley.

“He also had a sense of humour and could be very garrulous”

Although Mayers’ arrival introduced a more polished and accessible sound, some couldn’t help noticing Borland was retreating inside himself more frequently.

“The songs present an image of this ultra-serious person,” says Janes. “He had that side to him, but he also had a sense of humour and could be very garrulous. Over time, though, I realised something was up. I think the pressure started getting to him.”

For their second album, Korova put The Sound in Rockfield Studios with Hugh Jones, who’d produced The Teardrop Explodes’ Kilimanjaro and the Bunnymen’s Top 10 breakthrough, Heaven Up Here.

“It was almost like there were two Adrians that lived inside his head”

“There was a question of whether we should go in with the same producer as the Bunnymen,” says Budd. “But he’d made a great record. We got to Rockfield and were overawed. A proper recording studio. There weren’t leaks in the roof or a puddle under the mixing desk.”

As impressed as the band undoubtedly were with Rockfield, some found the recording process dispiriting. “He [Jones] was a nice guy and really talented, but he’d get us to do our bits individually, then send us out to play pool. Like, you’ve taken the band apart bit by bit, then there’s no feeling.” While Bailey and Dudley both find the album too polished, Budd disagrees, praising it as “a great, great album”.

From The Lions Mouth exists in a constant state of nervous tension between the band’s melodic gifts and Borland’s passionate, dark-hearted lyrics. “It was almost like there were two Adrians that lived inside his head,” says Dudley. “One was a bit scared of the other one.”

They had to pull out of a high-profile slot supporting U2

The band followed the release of From The Lions Mouth in November 1981 with a long-overdue John Peel session and an appearance on BBC2’s The Old Grey Whistle Test. The reviews for From The Lions Mouth were unanimous in their praise. Things, finally, seemed to be falling into place. Until, that is, Dudley broke his hand and they had to pull out of a high-profile slot supporting U2 at the Lyceum. Without mainstream radio backing, what should have been one of the defining albums of the era stalled at No 164.

There are many reasons why The Sound were never as big as they should have been. The lack of a conventionally photogenic frontman, inexperienced management… Maybe the label simply picked the wrong songs as singles.

Budd argues that “Winning” should have put them up there with their contemporaries of the day, but it was never released as a single. It’s now their most-streamed track on Spotify. But with the benefit of hindsight, Bailey thinks that, deep down, none of them would have been comfortable with success.

Internal troubles

“I remember the label asking us where we saw ourselves in four years’ time. I guess we must be pretty stupid, but we said, ‘We’re really happy.’ We were living off the proceeds from From The Lions Mouth, paying ourselves and didn’t have to work. Of course, what they wanted to hear was that we wanted to play stadiums and dominate the world – which was probably the answer they got from the Bunnymen. I also think the label picked up on the internal troubles we’d had from the beginning, so probably didn’t push as hard.”

“It’s easy to look back and see signs of self-destructive behaviour, but some people have a substantial, deep-rooted fear of success,” says Budd. “I remember thinking, ‘Adrian doesn’t want to be successful.’ We needed to be playing Hammersmith Odeon or on the main stage at major festivals. But Adrian felt comfortable in a [smaller] environment that he could control.”

Budd left after Lions Mouth. Now without a manager, the band were contracted to produce a third album. They didn’t have enough songs, so pulled in material from their side-project Second Layer to make up numbers on 1982’s All Fall Down.

“It was only towards the end that things went downhill”

“This is why you’ve got drum machines and weird things sounding different,” says Bailey. “The label got wind of this and asked us to make it more commercial, so we put an extra bass drum on one track. But that album wasn’t a ‘fuck you’ to Warner Brothers as some have said. It’s my favourite album.”

Reviewers cooled. Korova dropped them. The Sound soldiered on, releasing 1985’s Heads And Hearts for indie label Statik… which then went bust. “For 10 years we had a fantastic time,” says Bailey. “It was only towards the end that things went rapidly downhill.”

Looking back, Adrian Janes noticed Borland beginning to struggle when he was invited to join The Sound on a European tour to promote From The Lions Mouth.

“He started getting into deeper areas in his psyche”

“On the ferry, Adrian started coming out with strange stuff,” says Janes. “I started surreptitiously asking the band about his dark moods and they said, ‘Oh, this is how he is on tour.’ If you’re really exposing yourself that much in songs night after night, it’s like worrying at a wound. I think he started getting into deeper areas in his psyche.”

At a show in Germany, the audience hated them. “So Adrian went full-on Iggy, doing the John Cleese ‘silly walk’ up and down the stage,” remembers Bailey. By the middle of the ’80s, Borland’s drinking was out of hand. “Bottles and bottles of Liebfraumilch,” says Bailey. “Is that alcoholism? Or is he masking something?”

The breaking point came in December 1986, after Bailey dropped Borland off at his parents’ house. “Adrian had had enough of his father going on at him – ‘Don’t be stupid’, ‘Don’t be ridiculous’ and all that,” he says. “In the car, Adrian just said, ‘I’m going to kill him.’ An expression we all use. But that night he did try to kill his father.”

“They’d put him on powerful meds”

Borland was offered a choice: go to prison or be sectioned. “I went to see him a couple of days later in the mental hospital and he came shuffling down the corridor,” says Bailey. “They’d put him on powerful meds and he was like that expression, ‘The lights are on but there’s nobody home’.

“He was never the same after that. When he was on tour with us, there were no signs of any suicidal tendencies. Depression, yes, but not suicidal tendencies.”

By mid-1987, Borland was in the grip of what Dudley describes as “full-blown mental illness”. The band had been mixing the final Sound album Thunder Up when the singer woke everybody up at 4am. “He said, ‘The aliens have come to get me. I want you to see this,’” says Dudley. “We went down, opened the curtains and it was the corporation dust cart, cleaning the gutter with the yellow light going round.”

“Adrian walked offstage”

Towards the end of the year, The Sound headed to the Netherlands for a handful of dates. On December 5, 1988, they played their final show at De Boerderij in Zoetermeer. “Halfway through ‘Winning’ the guitar stopped,” says Dudley. “Adrian just put it down and walked offstage. That’s the last thing we did together.”

Borland’s loyal parents supported him as he managed to forge a solo career while still undergoing treatment for his mental health. In 1993, Mayers died from an AIDS-related illness. Six years later, in the early hours of April 26, 1999, Adrian Borland threw himself in front of a train.

Today, Dudley admits he still has imaginary conversations with Borland, while Bailey continues to experience deep regret that they never made up. “Adrian and I had a big falling out in the ’90s over money,” he says. “I said a lot of things, so it’s so painful that I never got the chance to say, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’”

After pushing Warners to reissue the band’s early albums, Budd has started dreaming about Borland for the first time in 40 years. Last year, after The Chemical Brothers sampled Second Layer’s 1979 single “Courts Or Wars” for their For That Beautiful Feeling album, he went to see their show in London. “Suddenly Adrian’s voice was booming out over the O2,” he says, his voice tinged with emotion. “I thought, ‘Yes! Adrian! You would have loved this.’ People only saw the beauty of Van Gogh’s flowers years after his death.”