Red Box is a British pop group founded by Simon Toulson-Clarke and Julian Close. Active from the early 1980s to the present day, they scored two UK top ten hits with the singles "Lean on Me (Ah-Li-Ayo)" in 1985 and "For America" in 1986, both of which were included on their debut album, The Circle & the Square.
Red Box returned briefly in 1990 with the single "Train" and the second album Motive, and again in 2010 with the third album Plenty, released in October 2010. The group is now led by singer-songwriter Simon Toulson-Clarke with a third line-up of supporting players.
In February 2019, the band released "This Is What We Came For", the first single from their fourth studio album Chase the Setting Sun, due for release in September 2019. In July 2019, they released their second single "Gods & Kings", also from Chase the Setting Sun.
History
Early years and formation (1978–1984) Simon Toulson-Clarke formed his first band, aged thirteen, at Harrow School with his friend Paddy Talbot (another member of the band was cricketer and insurance executive Matthew Fosh, who recognised,"two of the guys were talented and two of us were rubbish. I was one of the rubbish ones"), playing covers of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple as well as some self-penned material. Other early influences are cited as being Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Cream, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens and particularly Buffy Sainte-Marie. On leaving school, he moved to Middlesbrough and formed another band in the vein of New York Dolls.
In the late 1970s, he travelled south to study at the Polytechnic of Central London where he formed a band with Bristolian Julian Close. Initially the band performed under the name Harlequins and comprised Toulson-Clarke (vocals/guitar) and Close (saxophone) together with Paddy Talbot (keyboards), Rob Legge (bass) and Martin Nickson (drums).
The band later took the name Red Box, after some deliberation, from a box left behind by the rock group Slade following a performance at college (and in which they had since been storing microphones). The name was favoured for its political (Red) connotations – Toulson-Clarke describes the band members as 'Student Activists'. He was also attracted to the notion of square (Box) being an old North American Indian term for 'white man' (circle being the term for 'man' before Europeans were encountered), a concept which would be explored further on the debut The Circle & the Square album in the song "Heart of the Sun", a line from which gave the album its title.
Whilst still students, the band regularly sold-out shows at the Marquee and Moonlight Club and released their debut single "Chenko" on the Cherry Red label in 1983. The record was a hit on radio and brought them to the attention of Seymour Stein, who signed the band to Sire in 1984. Soon after this, the band slimmed down to a duo, took on a more synthpop direction and re-signed direct to WEA, who released their second single "Saskatchewan" (a cover of the Buffy Sainte-Marie song), under the Sire imprint.
The Circle and the Square (1985–1987) In August 1985 the duo had their first UK hit single, "Lean on Me (Ah-Li-Ayo)", a song which reached and stayed at number three in the UK top 40 for over a month. It also reached number 1 in five countries and the top 5 in a further 12 giving worldwide exposure to the band. It was promoted with an unusual video (nominated for Best Video at the Brit Awards 1985) in which a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter provided a translation of the song's lyrics, which led to a feature on BBC Two's Newsweek programme.
In 1986, the band released their debut album The Circle & the Square, mixing traditional musical styles – brass ensembles, choral music and chants – with modern rock and synthpop. Among the vocalists drafted in to create the multi-tracked backing vocals (or "Box Vox") is English actor Anthony Head.
The album received praise for its "evocative lyrics" and "global political intelligence" and is notable for introducing 'ethnic rhythms' and elements of World Music into the 1980s pop milieu alongside established artists such as Paul Simon (Graceland, 1986) and Kate Bush (The Sensual World, 1989). It includes a re-worked version of the 1984 Buffy Sainte-Marie cover "Saskatchewan", as well as "Chenko", which was given a more sombre, stately treatment bringing chants to the fore and featuring Alexander Balanescu on violin. Toulson-Clarke and Close, however, found themselves at odds with their record company regarding what it perceived as a lack of mainstream appeal in their choice of material, despite the success of "Lean on Me" in the UK and Europe.