Railway Children
Formed in 1985 by Gary Newby (b. 5 June 1966, Australia), Brian Bateman (b. 3 August 1966, Wigan, Lancashire, England), Stephen Hull (b. 7 July 1966, Wigan, Lancashire, England) and Guy Keegan (b. 16 June 1966, Wigan, Lancashire, England), the Railway Children started playing small gigs around the north west of England. After a batch of demo tapes the four 19-year-olds found themselves being fê'ted by numerous record companies, eventually settling on a contract-free deal with Factory Records. A brace of graceful singles which fused '60s harmonies with the early '80s pop sensibility of Liverpool paved the way for the fine REUNION WILDERNESS in 1987, and the Railway Children appeared set to follow guitar-based contemporaries the Smiths onto greater things. The band signed to Virgin Records that same year, and suddenly sounded a lot neater for it. The expensive production polish eradicated the quartet's rougher edges, and with pivotal creative force Gary Newby content to have his instinct smoothed by studio techniques, RECURRENCE appeared in 1988 to an uncertain audience confused by the band's independent beginnings and the new, mellower sound. Although singles regularly entered the Top 75 of the UK charts and the Railway Children flirted with fashionable dance beats with particularly encouraging results in America, it was not until the start of 1991 that a re-released version of Every Beat Of The Heart took the band into the upper echelons of the UK chart and thus validated their efforts of five years. However, when follow-up shots Something So Good and Music Stop failed to emboss their new chart status, the band repaired to Lancashire to lick their wounds. Rumours of a final split were hardly dispelled by a complete absence of new material until Virgin's compilation of their finer moments confirmed their demise.