VIA PRESS RELEASE | Looking Back – Living The Years is a career-spanning collection celebrating the 40th anniversary of Mike + The Mechanics. To be released via Craft Recordings on CD and digitally on 14 March and as a double LP on 4 April, it is a retrospective look back at the incredible body of work that has seen the band sell over 10 million records globally. Pre-order and pre-save all versions of the record from HERE.
Looking Back – Living The Years starts with their debut hit “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)” and showcases the band’s biggest hits from their 1985 self-titled debut through to their latest album Out Of The Blue that was released in 2019 and broke into the UK top 10. The compilation features all of the band’s vocalists through the years—Paul Young, Paul Carrack, Andrew Roachford, and Tim Howar—and includes amongst a plethora of era defining hits, GRAMMY®-nominated single “All I Need Is a Miracle ’96,” Ivor Novello Award-winning and GRAMMY® nominated “The Living Years,” and the international smash-hit “Over My Shoulder.”
Formed in 1985 by Mike Rutherford “as a side project to Genesis,” Mike + The Mechanics originally featured Paul Young and Paul Carrack as frontmen, and together, they achieved huge commercial success through the ’80s and ’90s gaining number ones all over the world. Amazingly, by the time Mike started the band, he had already released 12 albums with Genesis and the idea of the band was initially to be a creative outlet for Mike who, to that point in his career, had only been in the studio with the other members of Genesis.
Mike + The Mechanics ran concurrently with Genesis. In 1985 they released their self-titled debut which included the global phenomenon “All I Need Is a Miracle,” and the following year Genesis released Invisible Touch. In 1988 Living Years was released featuring one of the Mechanics’ biggest hits, “The Living Years,” and in 1991 Mike returned to Genesis releasing “We Can’t Dance” and the harmonious and incredibly prolific period that continued through the ’90s. After Paul Young’s sudden death in 2000, the band went into a period of uncertainty and released one further album, Rewired, in 2004 before deciding to call it a day.
In 2011, Mike started writing songs again and invited Andrew Roachford and Tim Howar to join him—and their chemistry was instant. They released The Road album that year, and the Mechanics began touring again with huge success and have remained together since, playing sold-out concerts across the UK and Europe; the group continues to write new music to this day.
Mike Rutherford says, “It’s been 40 years since the Mechanics’ first album. It opened up another part of me as a songwriter. I’d only ever written with Phil and Tony together in the studio, and it gave me the confidence to branch out and co-write with other people. It also kept Genesis very fresh for me, and I always looked forward to going back with the guys.”
An extensive Looking Back – Living The Years Tour will be coming through the UK from early March.
