BIOGRAPHICAL INFO
Breathless are:
Dominic Appleton : Vocals/Keyboards
Gary Mundy : Guitars/Additional Voices
Ari Neufeld : Bass/Acoustic Guitar
Martyn Watts : Drums/Percussion
An interview with Ari Neufeld (source unknown):
Before forming Breathless, I was at college studying film and photograph and was in a couple of bands then, which didn't do much apart from rehearsing every couple of weeks. I then took a job at the Virgin Megastore where I met Dominic and as I was in a band that was looking for a keyboard player, I asked him to audition (at this stage Dominic didn't sing but only played keyboard). He joined but after a few rehearsals we both realized that we didn't like the direction the music was going in but liked what each other were playing. So we decided to leave and form our own band which evolved into Breathless.
We started by writing songs with just the bass and keyboard and Dominic singing for the first time, when we'd got the basic outline for a couple of songs, Dominic contacted Gary and asked him to come to a rehearsal to see what he could add. Dominic and Gary had known each other since they were at school and had played in a band together called A Cruel Memory who also sometimes backed Anne Clark (they worked on The Sitting Room with her). When Dominic played me a tape of A Cruel Memory, I was really impressed with their sound and in particular Gary's guitar playing and really wanted him to be in our band. Our first rehearsal together was really strange as we were all really shy and extremely nervous. I don't think Gary and I said more than a couple of words to each other in the whole four hours. But that didn't matter because the moment we started playing it all instantly gelled and I knew that we were right together.
I only started playing music when I was 20, I'd never played an instrument before, apart from the recorder. But I always loved listening to music, the bass in particular and from as far back as I could remember had always wanted to be in group, so I guess I formed Breathless for the joy of playing music with people whose music I enjoyed listening to.
We chose the name because we wanted a timeless name, a name that wouldn't associate us with a particular trend, but that would leave us free to go in whatever direction we wanted. We also had to choose the name in quite a hurry as we'd already recorded Waterland but didn't have a name for the band, so we spent the evening looking through film books, came across "A bout De Souffle", which as you probably know, is known as Breathless over here, and decided that we liked the sound of it. Unfortunately we didn't realize when we chose it that in Italy they don't connect "Breathless" with the Godard film, but with being literally out of breath, in other words dead, which isn't as good.
Once Gary joined us we continued working on the songs Dominic and I had initiated and started writing new songs together, between the 3 of us, until we got to the stage when we were ready to record our first record, which originally was only going to be a demo, so we advertised for a drummer, but eventually, after lots of horrific auditions, decided to work with Tris who was the brother of a friend of mine and also the most interesting drummer that auditioned. He played with us until 1986 and left after we recorded the first four songs for Three Times and Waving and was replaced by Martyn Watts who is our drummer now and who joined us after leaving Danielle Dax.
