Brother Beyond T-shirt

Brother Beyond Tee

Sometime at the end of the 1980s when TDR™ was hitting its stride with Pop Will Eat Itself, Age of Chance, FON Records’s Krush (House Arrest), Funky Worm and t-shirt collections for Leeds’s X Clothes etc there was a call out of the blue from Brother Beyond’s management to design a promo tee for the boy-band.

They referenced the back cover of Krush singer Ruthjoy’s Rob Gordon produced solo single Soul Power (MCA). They wanted something sunshine tribal. The band had been featured alongside Funky Worm in Smash Hits and liked the TDR™ gear Julie ‘Worm’ was wearing.

Like everything BC (before computers) at the time, the design was Rotring-drawn, photocopied and / or PMT cut and pasted onto graph board and marked up for colour on K-Trace overlays.

We used Soul Power off-cuts and vague memories of fashion designer Sue Clowes amazing prints from the early 80s to fashion a response to the brief. The tee shirt design is what’s left of what we wanted after the management, the label and the band had stripped away the bits they didn’t like!

We assumed we’d be drafted in for subsequent record covers for the band but the manager actually laughed when it was suggested. I’m laughing at the idea now!

So, here you have it, the one and only Brother Beyond shirt we’ve ever had, and didn’t know we had until a few weeks ago found, ironically, at the bottom of a box of Aim Low + Miss tees!