There were and always will be three core members of the Wild Swans: Jeremy Kelly (guitar), Gerard Quinn (keyboards) and Paul Simpson (vocals). Paul had played keyboards in The Teardrop Explodes - and Ged had replaced him for a while. Jeremy was the youngest member and this was his first serious group. They went through bass players at a rate of knots. A quick glance at the credits to this record shows a good 5 or 6 of them and that is but a fraction of the true count.

Paul formed the band shortly after leaving Teardrop sometime in 1980. To start with the band just rehearsed. Messrs Kelly and Quinn played while Paul perfected the art of not actually singing anything. See his own notes for more on this peculiar art form. And suddenly here was something extraordinary: the Wild Swans sounded like nobody else on Earth.  Neither Jem nor Ged had taken their NVQs in rock musicianship: Ged was, at that time, almost certainly the