Tintin Forums

Does anybody remember the band Tin Tin from the early 1970s?

In 1971, I saw them (Steve Kipner, Steve Groves, and Johnny Vallins) perform in Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA, when they opened for the Bee Gees.

They were certainly named for our hero, Tintin, because while their music doesn't reference him directly, one of the songs, "Ships on the Starboard," mentions the Unicorn.

I liked their music a lot and bought their two record albums. The only song of theirs I ever heard on the radio was "Toast and Marmalade"; I don't think it was a hit.

Yesterday (Oct. 19, 2024), I played their first album for my wife, and she liked it enough that she wanted to hear the second. But she had not heard of the band or our hero.

She's a native of the Philippines, where there must be a following for Tintin, because there was a Tintin shop in or near Manila. However, my wife is not from that area.

I used to have just about all the Tintin books, but I think the kids (all grown now) got them.

Soon we expect to visit a college friend of mine in New Jersey who introduced me to Tintin more than 50 years ago. He still has the books, so when we visit maybe my wife will read one of them, and I think she'll like them, and I guess then I would set about reacquiring the books.

I know of them, rather than actually remembering them.

It says on Wikipedia that they started as an Australian beat group, The Kinetics, but - from the information provided in that article and others - it would be fairer to say that two bands (Steve & The Board and The Kinetics) broke up, a duo was formed by guys who who had been in each, who recorded an album together then moved to the U.K., where adding another ex-Kinetic and a fourth person, a new band was formed under the name Tin Tin, rather than that the Kinetics moved to the U.K. and became Tin Tin.

The article also says that Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees was instrumental (no pun intended) in getting them a record deal, played on their album, and produced the record, but doesn't mention that Steve Kipner (the guy from Steve & the Board) already knew the Gibb brothers from their time living in Australia in the Fifties and Sixties, as they were on the same record label, and he had sung backing on recordings they made.

They do get attention in the oldies music press, like Record Collector magazine, and I remember there was a CD compilation which came out with some fanfare, but the Bee Gees connection was what really seemed to be the thing, rather than the band itself; perhaps that was in a sense their undoing?

The Tin Tin sound was heavily influenced by the Bee Gee sound of the period, to a point where it's pretty much indistinguishable (to my ears), which isn't in and of itself a bad thing, but perhaps made a rod for their own back - someone hears the record, is told it's to do with Maurice Gibb, and that person them goes and buys something by the Bee Gees...?

Further confusion/ noteriety is added to the mix by the fact that Gibb and Tin Tin members were involved in a single which was released under the band name The Fut. The A-side was a song called Have You Heard the Word?, which, either by accident or design, gained the urban legend that it was a "lost" track by The Beatles - Gibb sings in a manner which could (possibly) be mistaken for John Lennon, and the free-form nature of the track, which sound improvised and full of background chatter and noise, could be compared to the "jams" performed during the Get Back and White Album period.

It has to be said that the members seem to have done much better outside of the group than in it - they have as individuals written and produced countless hits over many decades, so perhaps Tin Tin served them as a launching pad, rather than as an entity in itself.

Well, I didn't know all that!

I think that Tin Tin's biggest flaw was that they sounded too much like the Bee Gees.

If there's a story about how Tin Tin was chosen as the name of the band, I would like to hear it.