Twelfth Night

From a talent contest

The guitarist Andy Revell and the drummer Brian Devoil teamed up in February 1978 to win a talent contest at Reading University. Clive Mitten joined on bass and keyboards later that year, and they were first called the Andy Revell Band. Rick Battersby joined on keyboards in 1979, and Geoff Mann on vocals around 1981. They issued a demo, Skan, in 1979, the single "The Cunning Man" in December 1980 and Live at the Target on their own label in February 1981. They opened the Reading Festival in August 1981, and Mann's vocal version of "Sequences" debuted there, per Wikipedia.

Fact and Fiction (December 1982) was, per Louder, the first of the 1980s neo-prog debuts to appear. Mann left after farewell shows at the Marquee on November 4 and 5, 1983, released as Live and Let Live (1984, Music for Nations). Andy Sears joined that December, and Art and Illusion (September 1984, produced by Gil Norton) reached 83 in the UK. Twelfth Night XII (July 1986) came on Virgin after Charisma went bust in 1985. They split in 1987. Geoff Mann died in February 1993.

They reunited in 2007, playing Tiana in Barcelona in 2008 and Loreley in 2010; a Barbican show in December 2012 was released as A Night to Remember in 2019. The BBC called them Reading's biggest band of the 1980s. A 2018 re-recording of "Sequences" with Mark Spencer on vocals appeared on Armistice Day, and a new Fact and Fiction on Food of Love followed in 2022. Clive Mitten's Suite Cryptique (2021) recasts early material for orchestra. An official biography, Play On, appeared in 2009.