Ghosts - Journeys To Post Pop: How David Sylvan, Mark Hollis and Kate Bush Reinvented Pop Music

by Matthew Restall

Three music-obsessed, suburban London teenagers set out to make their own kind of pop after years of struggle, success came to David Sylvian (and Japan) and to Mark Hollis (and Talk Talk); Kate Bush became an overnight star. But when their unique talents brought them international acclaim, they turned their backs on stardom. ‘Just when I think I’m winning’, sang Sylvian on ‘Ghosts’, a 1982 Japan hit, ‘when my chance came to be king, the ghosts of my life grew wilder than the wind’. Haunted by doubt, spooked by fame and shocked by the industry’s sexism and rapacity, Sylvian, Hollis and Bush were driven to brave new destinations. Inspired by artists from every genre, and by their own creative originality and inner psychological struggles, they forged something new, changing how we hear pop music and the role of its creators in modern society.
Focusing mostly on Sylvian, with Hollis and Bush also explored, Ghosts uses their journeys to define post-pop for the first time. Revealing both personal ghosts and a larger cultural history, the post-pop story is about music and fame, ambition and fear, happiness and melancholy. The journey, as one from noise to silence, is ultimately about life itself.

Matthew Restall is a historian of Latin America and popular music. London-born and raised in England, Spain, Venezuela, and Japan, he currently holds the Sparks Professorship in History and Anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. Having written some thirty books on Latin American history, his first book on pop music was Blue Moves in the 33 1/3 series, and he is now writing On Elton for Oxford’s Opinionated Guides series. He dreams of retiring to write on nothing but pop until he drops. matthewrestall.com

208 pages, Paperback

Published January 15, 2025

About the author

Matthew Restall is a historian of Colonial Latin America. He is an ethnohistorian and a scholar of conquest, colonization, and the African diaspora in the Americas. He is currently Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Latin American History and Anthropology, and Director of Latin American Studies, at the Pennsylvania State University. He is President of the American Society for Ethnohistory, a former editor of Ethnohistory journal, a senior editor of the Hispanic American Historical Review, editor of the book series Latin American Originals, and co-editor of the Cambridge Latin American Studies book series.

Reviews

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's this wonderful 1980s sort-of-dreampop, sort-of-synth-pop mix called 'The Dawning' *, which I used to listen to religiously; lots of David Sylvian, Talk Talk and Kate Bush, and this is something like the book of that mix, telling the story of how these three outer London suburban kids went from commercial pop to something expansive, experimental, lush and literary that the author calls 'post-pop', between the early and mid-80s. I love most of the music here (I've never quite been as totally convinced by TT, with some exceptions, but the other two are all-timers for me) so am disposed to like this book too. It's overlong, theoretically weak (Eno's 'scenius' is not a group of musicians, but the collective intellect of a music scene; Fisher/Reynolds' 'hauntology' is not the past and ghosts, but a particular attitude to quite political spectres; and if you're going to coin a new term like 'post-pop', be a bit more rigorous about it imo!) and has a passage praising the band Yes, but it's also sensitive, good on the way the music press sneered at all these geniuses for having the wrong accents and not being in the right cliques, and has some lovely descriptions of the music and the processes by which it was made. A 3.5, really.

* here! https://musicophilia.wordpress.com/20...

[Steven Batty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would've been better served as a Japan/Sylvian biography (I think this may have been the authors intention in the first place but was given orders to flesh it out) as Hollis and Bush though mentioned in most chapters do take a back seat.

It also comes across that the author is still embittered about Sylvian splitting up Japan back in 1982.

[eLwYcKe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m pretty confident that most people who select this glowing homage of a book will be devotees of this trio of artists already.
And, possibly, just like me, would not be able to cope with life without their music.

I don’t really have anything more to add.
If, however, you are a novice:
Welcome! I envy you.

[Richard Haynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Matthew Restall for researching and writing this book about Post Pop. Three artists that I have enjoyed over the years and listened to while finding the sounds remarkable and unique and never knowing why. Thanks for informing me why.