Back in the early eighties, Rob Hall was the singer/songwriter of a little-known band called Curdle. He met Emma Feathers, his wife-to-be, one night whilst playing a social club in the middle of nowhere. She was there with her parents, watching from the crowd. Sparks flew immediately, and within a few months, Emma was a backing vocalist for Curdle. Despite being only fifteen years of age (eight years younger than Rob), she would travel around the country performing onstage with the band.

Hall was a prolific songwriter, and was rumoured to have written over nine hundred songs by the time he hit twenty, but his output really rocketed when he met Emma. A real ladies man, he devoted song after song to her and it was no surprise, that on Emma’s sixteenth birthday, the couple married.

Not long after marrying, however, Emma’s bisexual nature began playing up. At first Rob loved it, but pretty soon she was keeping all the groupies to herself. Poor, humiliated Rob lost his sex drive and was only saved from losing his mind by signing a one album deal with now defunct independent label, Easy Pieces Inc.

Heading home from the studio after a particularly late night‘s recording, Rob entered the marital home only to find his wife making a pornographic film with her schoolgirl lover Victoria, and two very well-endowed coloured gentlemen.

Rob took a baseball bat to the gentlemen concerned, then fled the house and holed up in a hotel room with two bottles of Jack Daniels, eighty lambert and butler, a guitar, and a pen & paper. Forty eight hours later, he emerged with eighteen brand new tracks and a new sound for the band.

Rob forgave his wife, realising he needed her not only to record the songs, but as inspiration, too. Within a month, the new album was ready to be released

Esteemed British music journalist Sheridan Vally, upon hearing the songs, lavished praise on Curdle. Coining a phrase to describe their unique sound: “Emotive Minimalism”, Vally hailed Rob Hall as the saviour of the British music scene, and the future looked blindingly bright.

But Curdle is a tragic tale; the onstage collapse of Rob Hall - nervous exhaustion - at the album's premiere in Soho, London, and his subsequent mental breakdown brought the curtain down on Curdle’s brief career before it had really begun.

Although the album, “J’accuse”, went on to spawn four top ten singles, Rob Hall remains to this day incarcerated, a sad, delusional, wreck of a man, a brilliant lunatic talent burned out all too quickly.

Curdle

"How Much?"

 - Rob Hall,

singer/songwriter

of Curdle.