February 16, 2025

TV SMITH… The Authentic Spirit of Punk Rock!

TV Smith, born Timothy Smith on April 5, 1956, in Romford, England, is an English songwriter and musician best known as the vocalist and composer for the punk band The Adverts.

In 1976, Smith moved to London and formed The Adverts with Gaye Black (known as Gaye Advert). The band gained recognition with the single “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” in 1977 and the album Crossing the Red Sea with the Adverts in 1978, considered a punk rock classic.

After The Adverts disbanded in 1979, Smith formed T.V. Smith’s Explorers, releasing the single “Tomahawk Cruise” in 1980 and the album The Last Words of the Great Explorer in 1981. He subsequently embarked on a solo career with the album Channel Five in 1983.
In the late 1980s, he created the band Cheap, which toured the UK and Europe until 1991. After Cheap disbanded, Smith returned to his solo career, releasing albums such as March of the Giants (1992), Immortal Rich (1995), and Generation Y (1999). He continued extensive touring, collaborating with various bands, including Germany’s Die Toten Hosen.

In 2012, he was the subject of a BBC Four documentary about his career as a songwriter, renewing public interest in his work.

TV Smith remains active in the music scene, continuing to tour and release new music, maintaining the independent and authentic spirit of punk rock.
TV Smith Discography

With The Adverts:
Crossing the Red Sea with the Adverts (1978)- Cast of Thousands (1979)

With T.V. Smith’s Explorers:
The Last Words of the Great Explorer (1981)

Solo Albums:
Channel Five (1983)-March of the Giants (1992)-Immortal Rich (1995)-Generation Y (1999)-
Not a Bad Day (2003)-Misinformation Overload (2006)-In the Arms of My Enemy (2008)-
Coming in to Land (2011)-I Delete (2014)-Land of the Overdose (2018)-Lockdown Holiday (2020)

With T.V. Smith’s Cheap:
Everything Must Go! (1993)

Collaborations with Richard Strange:
1978 (2021)-A Dffrnt Wrld (2023)

In addition, he has released compilations and live recordings:
Useless – the Very Best of T.V. Smith (2001)-Sparkle in the Mud (2010)-Lucky Us (2012)-
Acoustic Sessions Volume 1 (2013)

An UNFORGETTABLE MEETING with the LEGEND OF PUNK…

Athenscalling.gr: I must say that this meeting of ours is truly one of the most significant when it comes to the International Music Scene… Dear Tim, welcome to Athenscalling.gr.

TV Smith: It’s a pleasure to chat with you.

Athenscalling.gr: 50 years of career… half a century, a whole life in the Music Scene, and you continue tirelessly with concerts in 2025 and an amazing new album in April 2024! What vitality… what energy… I must say I “envy” it. Is there, perhaps, a Magical Recipe?

TV Smith: The magical recipe is love. I love what I do. I love to write songs and play them to people, to communicate and share ideas.

Athenscalling.gr: Your discography is rich and of high quality, as are your live performances. Let me ask you about the process you follow when writing a song. Do you start with the music, or do you write the lyrics first?

TV Smith: They come together. Usually I don’t even know what I’m going to write about when I start a song. I absorb what’s going on around me in my everyday life and then let it flow out when it comes to creating. Often it starts with a lyrical or musical spark – a few words that inspire or a melody in my head – and I build on that until I have something solid.

Athenscalling.gr: Listening to your songs, we’d truly like to know: what themes inspire you the most in your compositions?
TV Smith: Like I say, it’s what I see going on around me in my everyday life, and particularly I use songwriting to try and deal with the things that make me angry – the injustices and unfairness in the world.
So much of what is wrong with society is never talked about, we just accept it. I try and use my songs to expose some of these issues, or at least put the ideas out there for debate. Silence is not an option when people are dying from war and hunger in what is supposed to be a modern civilised world.

Athenscalling.gr: …And your favorite place to write music?
TV Smith: I am a “closed door” writer, and need to be on my own without any distractions so I can concentrate 100%. The information and building blocks for the writing is coming in all the time but I write in isolation.
I’m lucky enough to have a small home studio, and when I feel the time is right I go in there and write. I never know beforehand when that’s going to be. I have periods when I write a song every day, other times I don’t write anything for a few years.

Athenscalling.gr: So, about your creations—how have music fans reacted to what you’ve presented over all these years?

TV Smith: I have a small but dedicated following who understand what I do. I like it that way. I’m never going to be a mainstream artist because the mainstream is by definition trying to appeal to as many people as possible, and that means it has to remain bland and unchallenging.

Athenscalling.gr: Do you have any influences, any role models?
TV Smith: There’s not anyone I can particularly think of. I admire anyone who sticks to their principles and creates art or music that is singularly their own and not dictated to by the music business or the desire to be famous.
So, I suppose historically I’d look up to songwriters like Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bowie, Neil Young – not just because of their great music but also because of the way they followed their own course through their careers.

Athenscalling.gr: Let’s take a small trip back in time… you, a youngster born on April 5, 1956, in a country famous for its music industry—what were your early musical influences back then?

TV Smith: I was brought up listening to the Beatles, who were an interesting band to follow as a young boy – I saw how they developed from being a simple pop band, almost a “boy band” as we’d think of them today, to being a radical experimental band who changed the face of pop music.

Athenscalling.gr: Do you remember the first album you bought and at what age?
TV Smith: I’d like to say it was something cool and interesting, but it was one of those awful “Top Of The Pops” albums, with a collection of pop songs recorded on the cheap by cover bands.
They released one of those a year in England, and the one I bought only cost about one pound and had a couple of songs I liked on it. I would have been about 12 years old. Ironically, eight years later, “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” ended up on one of them.

Athenscalling.gr: If I were to ask you now about your first teacher in your musical journey… do you remember them?
TV Smith: I never really had much to do with music teachers at school. I taught myself guitar, and was writing poetry at the time.
I loved pop music and wondered if I could put my poetry together with what little I could play on guitar, and it all carried on from there. I suppose some of my english teachers encouraged me with my poetry, and so did my mum and dad, who were both teachers themselves – and any encouragement is important, particularly when you are young and don’t really have any self-confidence.

Athenscalling.gr: Returning to today and to your… truly remarkable new album titled “Handwriting”, oh, I honestly can’t remember how many times I’ve listened to it on YouTube… Hats off to you! Tell us about it!
TV Smith: I’m so glad you like it.
Every new album is important to me, but somehow this was a really special one. I had gathered a collection of songs that I honestly felt were some of the best I had ever written and knew that the production had to reflect that.
I’d been in touch with producer Gerry Diver, who was know for his work with Shane McGowan and Billy Bragg, amongst many others, since I’d sung some backing vocals for a record he was producing for Tom Robinson a few years ago.
Tom kept telling me that Gerry would be a great choice to produce one of my albums, and I decided this would be the one. Gerry loved the songs, and the brief I gave him was that it wasn’t to sound anything like a rock album – so no conventional guitar, bass, drums setup.
I wanted a completely different musical landscape. That’s what he gave me! Gerry is a brilliant multi-instrumentalist and was very sensitive and sympathetic to the songs so it was thrilling working with him on it.

Athenscalling.gr: In a time when everything has changed, has turned upside down as we say here in Greece… and honestly, I don’t know what’s happening in music either—things have changed here too. I’d like to hear your opinion on whether you believe punk music remains just as important as a form of protest today.
TV Smith: I want to say yes. The trouble is, punk has to move forward too if it is going to stay relevant and speak to people about today’s problems.
It’s no good still protesting about life in 1977 – even though a lot of those issues are still the same today.
We have to talk about today and we have to stay positive about being able to reach solutions even when everything seems hopeless and we seem on a path to self-destruction.

Athenscalling.gr: And the position of an independent artist in today’s music industry?

TV Smith: For a start, I don’t care about the industry. The job of an artist is to confront, protest, stimulate – and at the same time create something of beauty.

Athenscalling.gr: We’d like to touch on your collaborations now and ask: which ones do you consider the most significant in your career?
TV Smith: They all have their place and I can’t really call out favourites. I loved working with Die Toten Hosen, they are such professionals, good people, and so dedicated about what they do.
I helped with some english translations for them, did some co-writes, and they ended up as my backing band playing a selection of my songs on an album “Useless: The Very Best Of TV Smith.” That still a big favourite of the fans.
But I’ve also enjoyed the smaller collaborations too – writing and recording a song with US indie band The Red Dons for example. And just recently I tied up a loose end by recording again with Richard Strange, who was in a UK pre-punk band called Doctors Of Madness, who I used to go and see before I formed The Adverts.
We recorded some songs together on a two-track tape machine in 1978 but they never got released. Finally a couple of years ago we decided to re-record them using the new technology we had available, and put it out as a double CD together with the original recordings, and including a new song called “A Dffrnt Wrld” about the changes the world has seen since 1978 – quite relevant to what we’ve just been talking about!

Athenscalling.gr: Wonderful! And plans for the future?

TV Smith: I intend to keep touring and writing songs as long as I can. But my main plan is – don’t make any plans.

Athenscalling.gr: Before we say goodbye, send your message to the inhabitants of Planet Earth…
TV Smith: Good luck. The way the rich and the powerful are behaving at the moment, you’re going to need it…

P.S. Photos by – Anne Schelhaas Wöll – Chris Hill – Jojo – Steve White .

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