Steve Fairnie
Encyclopedia
Chicken hypnotism
A chicken can be hypnotized, or put into a trance, by holding its head down against the ground, and continuously drawing a line along the ground with a stick or a finger, starting at its beak and extending straight outward in front of the chicken...
, best known as the frontman of the post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
band Writz, and as one half - with his wife Bev Sage - of the 1980s pop outfit Techno Twins
Techno Twins
The Techno Twins were a British electronic music duo in the 1980s.-Career:The band, consisting of husband-wife duo Steve Fairnie and Bev Sage, formed in 1977...
(later just The Technos).
Career
Born in FraserburghFraserburgh
Fraserburgh is a town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland with a population recorded in the 2001 Census at 12,454 and estimated at 12,630 in 2006. It lies at the extreme northeast corner of Aberdeenshire, around north of Aberdeen, and north of Peterhead...
and raised in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, Fairnie excelled in fine art, eventually graduating from London's Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
with an MA in Sculpture (contemporaries included Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
winner Tony Cragg
Tony Cragg
Tony Cragg is a British visual artist specialized in sculpture. He is currently the director of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.-Early life:Cragg was born in Liverpool in 1949...
). He began the acoustic gospel duo Fish Co with fellow singer-songwriter Steve Rowles and released the albums Can't Be Bad in 1975 and Beneath the Laughter in 1978, the latter with a full backing band - now including Fairnie's wife Bev Sage - that would form the nucleus of their subsequent project Writz.
Writz became a fixture on the post-punk London scene, headlining at major venues including the Marquee Club
Marquee Club
The Marquee was a music club first located at 165 Oxford Street, London, England when it opened in 1958 with a range of jazz and skiffle acts.It was also the location of the first ever live performance by The Rolling Stones on 12 July 1962....
. Outright commercial success was elusive but 1979 single Night Nurse (produced by 10cc
10cc
10cc are an English art rock band who achieved their greatest commercial success in the 1970s. The band initially consisted of four musicians -- Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme -- who had written and recorded together for some three years, before assuming the "10cc" name...
's Kevin Godley and Lol Creme) was a minor hit and was followed by the album Writz. The band - now Famous Names - played in the Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
LWT production Cream in My Coffee
Cream in My Coffee
Cream in My Coffee is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast on ITV on 2 November 1980 as the last in a loosely-connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal. A juxtaposition between youth and old age, the play combines a non-linear narrative with the use of popular music to...
. Famous Names folded in 1981, many of the band and crew moving on to other musical projects, most notably Willie Williams
Willie Williams (lighting designer)
Willie Williams is a video director, stage and lighting designer for concerts, theatre, & multimedia projects...
, who went on to become an integral part of the U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
entourage. Sound engineer Ken Watts has been tour director for George Michael
George Michael
George Michael is a British musician, singer, songwriter and record producer who rose to fame in the 1980s when he formed the pop duo Wham! with his school friend, Andrew Ridgeley...
since Wham! days and monitor engineer John Roden went on to become one of the industry's foremost live engineers with clients including Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
.
Fairnie and Sage continued as the Techno Twins, covering Falling In Love Again, which charted in 1982, and releasing Swing Together, a Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller
Alton Glenn Miller was an American jazz musician , arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands"...
-meets-Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
pastiche. The album Technostalgia followed, and in 1985, as The Technos, Foreign Land—produced, amongst others, by Anne Dudley
Anne Dudley
Anne Dudley is an English composer and pop musician, and was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001. She has worked in both the classical and pop genres. She is perhaps best known, however, as one of the core members of the synthpop band Art of Noise and also as a film...
of Art of Noise—was issued to critical acclaim but minimal sales. In August 1985, the Technos performed their last-ever live show at the Greenbelt festival
Greenbelt festival
Greenbelt Festival is a festival of arts, faith and justice held annually in England since 1974. Greenbelt has grown from a Christian music festival with an audience of 1,500 young Christians to its current more secular festival attended by around 20,000 - Christians and non-Christians.The festival...
, an annual Christian event with which they had been heavily involved from its inception more than a decade earlier. After a three-year hiatus, the Technos' final album Songs for a Nervous World was released. Parallel to their Technos output, Fairnie and Sage formed the avant-garde performance art collective Casualtease. As well as an album, credited to the Techno Orchestra, there were sporadic outbursts of Casualtease productions throughout the 1980s.
As a fine artist, Fairnie's most prominent pieces were created in the second half of the 1980s to his death in 1993. He also received many commissions to illustrate magazines and books, including for US poet Robert Lax
Robert Lax
Robert Lax was an American poet, known in particular for his association with famed 20th century Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton. A third friend of his youth, whose work sheds light on both Lax and Merton, was Ad Reinhardt. During the latter period of his life, Lax resided on the island of...
's 24th and 7th. Other creative projects included the rock'n'roll board game Hype, conceived and designed in partnership with Willie Williams
Willie Williams (lighting designer)
Willie Williams is a video director, stage and lighting designer for concerts, theatre, & multimedia projects...
, billed as "the only board game with all the slime and grime of the music business". Fairnie also starred in a silent TV comedy series called The Kid, broadcast by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in 1986. He was a part-time Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
lookalike, assignments including some of the 1980s IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
newspaper ads. Finally, Fairnie was an accomplished chicken hypnotist, to the delight of mostly bewildered crowds…
In 1993, Fairnie died from an asthma
Asthma
Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
attack while on a field trip to Brixham
Brixham
Brixham is a small fishing town and civil parish in the county of Devon, in the south-west of England. Brixham is at the southern end of Torbay, across the bay from Torquay, and is a fishing port. Fishing and tourism are its major industries. At the time of the 2001 census it had a population of...
, Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
, with a group of students from Weston-super-Mare
Weston-super-Mare
Weston-super-Mare is a seaside resort, town and civil parish in the unitary authority of North Somerset, which is within the ceremonial county of Somerset, England. It is located on the Bristol Channel coast, south west of Bristol, spanning the coast between the bounding high ground of Worlebury...
College, where he was a lecturer. Despite his limited commercial success ("The thing I hate most about myself is my complete inability to make money."), in his lifetime he inspired scores of up and coming musicians and artists, the most notable example being U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
. During the Zoo TV tour, Bono
Bono
Paul David Hewson , most commonly known by his stage name Bono , is an Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his...
would close shows citing a 1979 Fairnie lyric from the Writz track 'Muscle Culture': "I have a vision, television".
Albums
- 1975: Fish Co - Can't Be Bad
- 1979: Fish Co - Beneath The Laughter
- 1979: Writz - Writz
- 1982: Techno Twins - Technostalgia
- 1982: Techno Orchestra - Casualtease
- 1985: The Technos - Foreign Land
- 1988: The Technos - Songs For A Nervous World
Art
- 1975: Houseworks - Home Is Where The Art Is exhibition, London (with Mark Dunhill)
- 1983: Techno Exhibition, The Art Centre, London
- 1987: Casualtease Video Missionaries performance art show, Bristol
- 1993: Illustrations for Robert Lax's 24th & 7th (Stride Publications)
Acting
- 1980: Cream In My Coffee, LWT
- 1986: http://www.theroses.co.uk/TheKid/, The Kid, BBC