Thomas Charles Greenhalgh is a singer, songwriter and multimedia artist best known as a foundational member with the

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of music that emerged in late 1977 in the wake of punk rock. Post-punk musicians departed from punk's fundamental elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a broader, more experiment ...

band the Mekons. While primarily credited as a guitarist in the early Mekons recordings, Greenhalgh's role as a lead singer and songwriter came to the forefront during the 1980s.

Early life

Greenhalgh attended

Sevenoaks School Sevenoaks School is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school. It is co-educational, a Private schools in the United Kingdom, private boarding school, boarding and day school, located in Sevenoaks, Kent, England. Established in 1432, it ...

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

with Andy Gill and Jon King, future members of the

Gang of Four The Gang of Four () was a Maoist political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and were later charged with a series of treasonous crimes due to th ...

, as well as Kevin Lycett and Mark White, who would later form The Mekons. Reynolds, Simon. "Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984". Penguin, 2006 After Sevenoaks, he attended the

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

, the birthplace of a number of punk bands. As students in the Fine Arts program, Greenhalgh, Lycett, White and

Jon Langford Jonathan Denis Langford (born 11 October 1957) is a Welsh musician and artist based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Langford is a founder member of the punk band The Mekons, the post-punk group The Three Johns, and the alternative count ...

formed the Mekons in 1976 and worked closely with the Gang of Four and Delta 5.Andrews, Mark.
Art Into Pop: Leeds Punk & Post-Punk, 1974-–81
. ''

The Quietus ''The Quietus'' is a British online music and pop culture magazine founded by John Doran and Luke Turner. The site is an editorially independent publication led by Doran with a group of freelance journalists and critics. Content ''The Quietu ...

'', 19 November 2022. Retrieved 17 May 2025. In the politically charged atmosphere of the late 1970s, they participated in events such as Rock Against Racism.Simpson, Dave.
Pubs, disco and fighting Nazis: how Leeds nurtured British post-punk
. ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', 19 April 2019. Retrieved 17 May 2025.

Music career

Along with

, Kevin Lycett, Mark White, Ros Allen and Andy Corrigan, Greenhalgh formed the long living and prolific

band the Mekons in 1976 when they were all art students at the

. According to Greenhalgh, "the punk thing was an incredible spark of creativity, but it didn’t necessarily mean that you had to conform to what might conventionally be seen to be punk. It felt more like an imperative to do something. It was very much in the spirit of the times to get up and form a band. The 70s was a really interesting time for art, expanding into

performance A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Performance has evolved glo ...

and conceptual art. So, it wasn’t such a strange leap to consider music as a viable activity for someone who wasn’t necessarily trained."The Mekons
. ''

Record Collector ''Record Collector'' is a British monthly music magazine focussing on rare and collectable records, and the bands who recorded them. It was founded in September 1979 and distributes worldwide. It is promoted as "the world’s leading authority o ...

'', 30 September 2019. Retrieved 17 May 2025 The Mekons Glasgow May 2025 5

Greenhalgh has taken part in a number of Mekons-related projects, many of which include Langford. He was The Three Johns' sound engineer for their first American tour in 1985. As a member of the Jelly Bishops, he collaborated with Langford and John Hyatt, releasing the album Kings of Barstool Mountain (1988).

Other work

Greenhalgh was a member of the band Red Hot Polkas, appearing on Let's Polkasteady (1987) and Two Step to Heaven (1989). Around 1991, he collaborated on Plate, recording yet-unreleased experimental electronic music. With fellow Mekon Sarah Corina, he recorded tracks on banjo ukulele; a sample ("Lowlands of Holland") of which appears on ResonanceFM's Clear Spot in 2002. He produced

Michelle Shocked Michelle Shocked (born Karen Michelle Johnston; February 24, 1962) is an American singer-songwriter. Her music has entered the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and received an award ...

's cover of the Beatles' " Lovely Rita" for the 1988 compilation '' Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father''.Radio 1 - Keeping It Peel - 10/02/1987 Mekons
.

BBC Radio 1 BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and Contemporary hit radio, current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including ...

. Retrieved 17 May 2025 He also produced Mush's second album, ''Face in Space'' (1998). In 2000,

Curve In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line, but that does not have to be straight. Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point. This is the definition that ...

guitarist Alex Mitchell and he (as DJ Sparky Lightbourne and DJ Tommy Tomtom) appeared at the Foundry in

Shoreditch Shoreditch is an area in London, England and is located in the London Borough of Hackney alongside neighbouring parts of Tower Hamlets, which are also perceived as part of the area due to historic ecclesiastical links. Shoreditch lies just north ...

References

External links

1996 interview
by Mike Appelstein

2000 interview with Pitch.com

interview by Jason Gross, September 1997 {{DEFAULTSORT:Greenhalgh, Tom 1956 births Living people People educated at Sevenoaks School Alumni of the University of Leeds British male singers The Mekons members