Gomez to kick off Tuesday – recorded at the 1999 Glastonbury Festival on June 25, 1999 and broadcast by BBC Radio 1.
Guitarist and vocalist Ian Ball and drummer Olly Peacock having played in a three-piece band from the ages of 14 to 18. They met bassist Paul Blackburn and multi-instrumentalist Tom Gray at college. Ian Ball met vocalist/guitarist Ben Ottewell at Sheffield University.
Gomez played its first gig together in 1996 in Leeds at the Hyde Park Social Club on Ash Grove. At the time, they did not have a formal name. The band left a sign out which read “Gomez in here”, for a friend of theirs whose surname was Gomez, to indicate that it was the site of their first gig. People saw the sign and assumed that the band’s name was Gomez, and it was later made official.
The band started recording four-track demos in Peacock’s father’s garage in Southport during the summer of 1996. The demos were given to Stephen Fellows (later their manager) who distributed them to four record labels. The band, having played only one performance, decided against playing showcases in London and instead made the record companies travel to Red Tape rehearsal studios. After several weeks of playing to over 25 labels, the band signed to Hut Records (Virgin Records), in September 1997.
Gomez completed an inaugural U.S. tour opening for Eagle-Eye Cherry in October 1998, while the press still offered praise (Spin magazine called Bring It On “a damn beautiful album,” giving it an eight out of ten rating). Liquid Skin followed one year later and went platinum in England, and the rarities/B-sides compilation Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline appeared in 2000. A third studio album, In Our Gun, was released in spring 2002. Another hiatus saw Ian Ball relocating to Los Angeles while still working with the band at its new studio in Portslade, England. The dozens of tracks recorded during this time were whittled down and fashioned into Split the Difference, released in May of 2004. By that time, Hut, the group’s original label, had gone under, leaving Gomez signed to Virgin (Hut’s distributor). Despite all the critical acclaim, the band’s album sales never seemed to match Virgin’s expectations, and the two sides parted ways later that year.
Gomez released their seventh studio album, Whatever’s on Your Mind, on 21 June 2011. As with their last album, production on Whatever’s on Your Mind was overseen by the band as well as Brian Deck.
Since 2020, Tom Gray has been lobbying the British government to regulate music streaming with the Broken Record campaign group. He stood as a Labour Party candidate for Brighton Pavilion in the 2024 general election, but failed to win the seat.
To get an idea what they sounded like in 1999, press Play and dive back to Glastonbury for the next 42 minutes.
