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Stephen Duffy - Icing On The Cake
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Stephen Anthony James Duffy (born 30 May 1960, Alum Rock, Birmingham, England) is an English singer/songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He was a founding member and vocalist/bassist of Duran Duran. 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 older brother Nick. He has also co-written with Robbie Williams and Steven Page.
While attending the School of Foundation Studies & Experimental Workshop at Birmingham Polytechnic (now Birmingham City University) Duffy met John Taylor. Together they formed the group Duran Duran, along with Taylor's childhood friend, Nick Rhodes. While Taylor was the guitarist (later switching to bass) and Rhodes played the synthesizer, Duffy was the band's vocalist/lyricist and bassist. 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.
In 1982, he created the band Tin Tin, with John Mulligan and Dik Davis (both then of Fashion), Andy "Stoker" Growcott (of Dexys Midnight Runners) and Bob Lamb (original producer of Birmingham band UB40). The band was signed with WEA Records in the UK, and released the song, "Kiss Me", which went top 10 on the UK chart. By 1983, Tin Tin had signed with Sire Records in the US, and "Kiss Me" hit the dance charts there as well. Another single, "Hold It", was also released in 1983, reaching number 55 in the UK.
After a stint of working in the US, Duffy returned to England and signed another deal, this time with Virgin 10, and worked on recording his first full album, The Ups and Downs (produced by Duffy, Booker T. Jones, J.J. Jeczalik, Nicholas Froome and Stephen Street), under the name Stephen "Tin Tin" Duffy (which name was frequently mocked by Radio 1 DJs as Stephen "Duff Duff" Tinny). The album reached number 35 in the UK. Prior to the release of The Ups And Downs, Stephen and brother Nick formed their own design office called "DUFFY and DUFFY". For the album's preview release, they had an exhibition of about 80 paintings, drawings, photographs, and video.
A re-recorded "Kiss Me" single was released in 1984, this time only in the local West Midlands area, followed by a nationwide release of "She Makes Me Quiver". At the end of 1984, Duffy recorded a third version of "Kiss Me" with Froome and Jeczalik. The new version of "Kiss Me" was released on 25 February 1985. It debuted at no. 22 and peaked at no. 4, selling 250,000 copies in three weeks and staying in the UK Top 10 for five weeks altogether. It was the last song played on the medium wave service of Radio 1 before it became an FM-only station, at 9 A.M. on 1 July 1994. The final single released from The Ups and Downs album was "Icing on the Cake", which peaked at no. 14 in June 1985.
A new single, "Unkiss That Kiss", was released in September 1985 and peaked at no. 77. For this single, Duffy had become known as Stephen A.J. Duffy, after dropping the "Tin Tin" reference from his stage name apparently due to legal issues with the estate of the late Hergé, the Belgian cartoonist who created The Adventures of Tintin. 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), however this single (and the album itself) failed to chart.
The 1993 Stephen Duffy album Music In Colors (Parlophone) was recorded with Nigel Kennedy, and featured the singles "Natalie" and "Holte End Hotel".
The next album was called simply Duffy, released in August 1995 on Indolent Records. "London Girls" and "Sugar High" went to the top 10 on the UK indie chart. ("Starfit" was also released as a single in the US.) The album was reissued on CD in 2000 by BMG Fun House.
He participated in a temporary supergroup called Me Me Me, consisting of Duffy, Alex James of Blur, Justin Welch of Elastica and Charlie Bloor. The one-off single, "Hanging Around", was released 5 August 1996, and reached Number 19 on the UK chart.
I Love My Friends was released in 1998 by Cooking Vinyl Records, who also released the singles "17" and "You Are".
Virgin released a compilation album entitled They Called Him Tin Tin in 1999.
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