LONDON -- The Thompson Twins aren't twins at all.
One's a feisty blonde with a semi-shaved head, a super-gelled tangle of hair up front and gigantic engineer's hats. One's a black with Rastafarian dreadlocks. And one's a male heartthrob with a ponytail.
But twins or not, the group's catchy synthesizer pop songs, clever marketing and slick, visually arresting videos have made the band bigger in Britain this year than even the ubiquituous Boy George and Culture Club.
The group's latest album, 'Into the Gap,' went platinum even before hitting the record stores. Five million albums later, the Thompson Twins are international megastars, with a string of Top 10 singles -- the latest being 'Sisters of Mercy' in Britain and 'Doctor! Doctor!' in the United States.
The British press have dubbed them the pop 'sensation' of 1984, but oddly enough, their success came thanks to America and the dance charts.
The Thompson Twins were grovelling around Britain, working themselves to a bone at small gigs that paid virtually nothing, when suddenly in 1982 their song 'In the Name of Love' hit No. 1 on the U.S. disco charts.
It stayed there five weeks.
'It was funny cause we didn't look like funky or anything. We were still really into being dirty,' recalls Alannah Currie, the band's percussionist.
'We were into the whole 'dread thing,' filthy matted hair and rags. Mind you, we didn't have much choice. We were about as broke as you can get. We couldn't afford luxuries like clothes.'
Now the group can afford to wear what they want -- and go where they want.
They are just back from the wilds of Ireland where they laid up in plush surroundings to compose a followup album to 'Into the Gap.' This past week found them back in America, starting a 2 month tour in Rochester, N.Y.
The lead singer and synthesizer master of the Thompson Twins is 28-year-old Tom Bailey, the group's shy heartthrob and even shyer spokesman. He is in charge of the music while 24-year-old Alannah writes '99 percent' of the lyrics and plays percussion. Joe Leeway, the old man of the group at 29, is the genius behind their stage shows.
It's Alannah, however, who runs the show.
A tiny blonde ball of fire who left her native New Zealand at age 17, she came to Britain in 1977 for excitement and ended up cleaning toilets in Piccadilly Square. She met Tom and Joe as neighbors in squats in one of London's grimier neighborhoods.
It's also Alannah who dreamed up the group's famous image -- floppy haircuts, ankle-length lace-up boots, gloppy fluorescent socks, fingerless gloves, industrial goggles, and most of all, her funny peaked hats with French Legionnaire-style flaps hanging down the back.
Alannah's hats have become almost as much a symbol of the group as their electro-pop melodies, but the lady claims she started wearing one for practical reasons.
'I have long hair so onstage if I jump around, I start sweating and it sicks to my face. Also I've got blond hair, I'm quite small and people have a certain attitude to small blondes,' she says defiantly. 'So I figure I should do something whereby I would look taller on stage which would give me more power. And it works because they're focusing on my hat, not my body.'
Tom, in contrast, is a former music teacher from a Yorkshire family of doctors who seem to think music is worse than running away to perform in a circus.
A vegetarian and teetotaler, he is quietly witty about it. 'I gave up drink when I discovered drugs and never went back,' he says, grinning.
Joe is the least known member of the group. Born to an Irish mother and a Nigerian merchant seaman, he was a serious stage actor when he quit to play roadie for the Thompson Twins and eventually ended up on stage playing congas.
Considering the Thompson Twins started out as a seven-piece hippie group from Sheffield, renowned for inviting entire audiences on stage, and went on to champion brown rice and the anti-nuclear cause in 1981, it's no wonder critics love to criticize them now for their 'pop' sound and success.
One critic's jibe that they are victims of record company manipulation -- 'a token woman, a token black and a token looker' -- has also stuck, angering Tom.
'This idea that we've been somewhow picked because we look good and promoted by some scheming record company and that we don't actually play anything -- I mean, yknow? I started playing the piano when I was two. It was the only reason my father tolerated me for so long,' he says.
The proceeds from the group's album 'The Set' still go to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Alannah is quick to point out the band doesn't do 'straight chocolate-box love songs' because the members are all too sarcastic and cynical. Yet she concedes 'Into the Gap' may have been too 'lightweight' and promises less escapist pop in the future.
'People always say that you have to wait for a while to reach a position of power before you can move onto slightly more dodgy stuff, and I think we are on the brink of that position of power,' says Alannah.
