Buying a Present for 80s Music Fans: The Drummer Who Links Two of These Maps

A present for 80s music fans is easy to get wrong, because most people who loved that decade already own the records, the box sets and at least one badly printed poster. What they usually do not own is a plot of who actually played on the albums. My 1980s Music Tube Maps collection holds twenty-five discography maps, each drawn as a tube map where every studio album is a station and every credited musician is a line.

Here is the thing that made me write this guide rather than another list. Boris Williams, who drummed for The Cure across four albums, also drums on two tracks of Ian McCulloch's Candleland in 1989.

That means two separate maps in this one collection carry the same man, and neither product page tells you so. So this is not a catalogue. It is the conversation I would have with you if you rang up and said the person you are buying for is an eighties obsessive and you cannot choose.

Boris Williams Drums for The Cure, Then Turns Up on Ian McCulloch's Candleland

Williams joins The Cure for The Head on the Door in 1985 and stays for Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Disintegration and Wish. Four albums, one clean run, and then his line ends.

In the middle of that run, in 1989, he plays drums on "The White Hotel" and "Proud to Fall" on Candleland, which is Ian McCulloch's first solo record after Echo and the Bunnymen. Candleland is a station on the Echo and the Bunnymen map because I plot the solo albums alongside the band ones.

So if you buy both prints and hang them side by side, the same drummer is on both walls in the same year. That is the argument for a pair rather than a single print, and it is the only one I would actually make.

The Present for 80s Music Fans Who Already Owns Everything

Every map in the collection is printed as a Giclée art print in A2 (420 x 594mm) and A1 (594 x 841mm), from £42, with an optional black wood frame.

The reason it works as a present is that it is not information they already have. Nobody has memorised who played saxophone on a Cure B-side, and the map shows it without them having to look anything up.

It also survives being looked at twice. A poster is finished in a second, whereas these take a few minutes on the first visit and then get returned to.

Lol Tolhurst Goes From Drums to Keyboards to "Other Instrument"

This is the detail on the Cure map that people stand and read. Lol Tolhurst is a founder member, and his credit changes shape across the print.

He is on drums for Three Imaginary Boys, Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography. From The Top in 1984 he is on keyboards. By Disintegration in 1989 the sleeve credits him with "other instrument", and that is the last station on his line.

Simon Gallup's line does the opposite. He arrives on Seventeen Seconds, is absent from The Top entirely, comes back for The Head on the Door and then runs unbroken to Songs of a Lost World in 2024.

Buy this map for the fan who has opinions about the Pornography period. My guide to gifts for Cure fans goes further into that stretch of the discography.

New Gold Dream Has Three Drummers and Herbie Hancock on Track Eight

The Simple Minds map has one station that behaves differently from all the others. New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), from 1982, was made with three different drummers.

Mel Gaynor plays tracks one, four and six to nine. Mike Ogletree plays two and five. Kenny Hyslop plays track three, which is "Promised You a Miracle", the single most people in the room will recognise.

On the same album, Herbie Hancock is credited as guest keyboardist on track eight, "Hunter and the Hunted". A jazz giant, one track, one line reaching into a Glasgow art-rock record.

Two other lines on that map are worth knowing. Derek Forbes plays bass on the first seven releases, disappears before Once Upon a Time in 1985, and returns fourteen years later for Néapolis. Russell Mael of Sparks sings on track three of Direction of the Heart in 2022, which is a crossing into an entirely different map of mine.

This is the map for the fan who insists the early records are the good ones. There is more in my Simple Minds gift guide.

Bill Berry's Line Ends in 1996 and Scott McCaughey's Begins

The R.E.M. map is the one in which a single handover is visible from across the room.

Bill Berry drums from Murmur in 1983 through to New Adventures in Hi-Fi in 1996, then stops. Scott McCaughey's line starts on that same album and runs through Up, Reveal, Around the Sun, Accelerate and Collapse into Now.

One line ends where the other starts, on the same station. Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe run the full width of the print beneath them.

The guests on this map are a strange set. KRS-One raps on "Radio Song" in 1991, and Q-Tip raps on "The Outsiders" thirteen years later. John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin writes the orchestral arrangements on Automatic for the People, and Thurston Moore sings on Monster. My R.E.M. gift guide covers the four producers who also played.

Stephen Morris, Ray Manzarek and Liam Gallagher All Pass Through the Echo Map

The 1987 self-titled Echo and the Bunnymen album is the busiest single station in this collection for guests. Ray Manzarek of The Doors plays keyboards on "Bedbugs and Ballyhoo", and Stephen Morris of New Order plays drums on "Soul Kitchen", which is itself a Doors cover.

Ten years later, on Evergreen, Liam Gallagher sings backing vocals on "Nothing Lasts Forever". Both of those men have their own maps in this same collection.

The other line on that print I would point at is Pete de Freitas. He drums on the first five albums and then the line simply stops, because he died in 1989 at twenty-seven.

Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins sings on Candleland and again on Mysterio three years later. The Echo and the Bunnymen gift guide works through the solo years properly.

Names That Appear on Two Different Maps of Mine

These all came out of the credit sheets while I was drawing lines, not out of anybody's press release. Each one is a person who links two prints that look like they have nothing to do with each other.

If you are buying for a couple who argue about which band was better, that table is your way out.

Scott Litt Produced Six R.E.M. Albums and Only Appears Twice

People ask why their favourite producer is missing from a print. My rule is that a producer only earns a musician line if the credits also show them playing something.

Scott Litt produced R.E.M. from Document onwards, and he is on the map twice: an echo-loop feed on "Radio Song" and harmonica and clavinet on Automatic for the People. Jacknife Lee qualifies on Collapse into Now because he is credited with keyboards and guitar alongside the production.

On the Cure map, David M. Allen and Howard Gray are both in my sheets for The Head on the Door and neither gets a line, because they only produced. It keeps every line on the print traceable to a sound somebody actually made.

Which of These Maps Suits Which Kind of Fan

The Cure map is the safe one. Fourteen albums, a founder member whose credit visibly decays, and enough Robert Smith on the print to satisfy someone who only knows the singles.

The R.E.M. map suits the reader. It is the print where the handover from Bill Berry to Scott McCaughey rewards standing close, so go A1 if you can.

The Simple Minds map is for the person who thinks the band peaked in 1982, and the Echo map is for the one who followed Ian McCulloch into the solo records. The New Order map is the tidiest of the five, ten albums and two unbroken lines, and the New Order gift guide explains the bass line that stops short.

For size, A2 sits well above a desk or on a landing and reads as album titles from a distance. A1 is for the person who will stand a foot away and read the guest credits. For a fiftieth or a sixtieth birthday I would go A1 and framed in black wood.

What People Ask Me Before They Buy an Eighties Map

Do these maps stop in 1989? No. Each one follows the full discography, which is why the Cure map reaches 2024 and the Simple Minds map reaches 2022. The eighties is where these bands are placed, not where they are cut off.

My person likes Manchester bands rather than a single group. Is there a better fit? Probably. There are Oasis, Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher, New Order, Charlatans and Johnny Marr maps in this collection, and my Manchester present guide narrows those down.

Are the solo albums really on the band maps? On the Echo map, yes, and Candleland is exactly why. Leave the solo records off and you lose the year when a Cure drummer walks into a Bunnymen singer's session.

What if the fan is more of a wordy, literate type? Look at the Lloyd Cole map or the OMD map. Both are in this collection and both suit someone who reads sleeve notes.

I still cannot decide. There is an art print gift card in the collection, and I would rather they chose their own than opened the wrong one politely.

Where to Start

Browse the full 1980s Music Tube Maps collection, or widen it out across every era in the Music Wall Art Prints collection.

If you are stuck between two of them, tell me who it is for and one album they played to death. I have the credit sheets open most days anyway, and I would rather check than let you guess.