China Crisis

Kirkby, 1979

Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon met at school on Merseyside in 1976 and started China Crisis in Kirkby, just outside Liverpool, in 1979. The early configuration was closer to a writing partnership with a rhythm machine than a band: Daly on vocals, keyboards and bass, Lundon on guitar, synthesiser and vocals, and a succession of drummers, Dave Reilly among them in 1981 and 1982.

Their first singles came out on the small Inevitable label before Virgin picked them up, and the debut album, Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, reached No 21 in the UK in 1982. It arrived into a Liverpool scene crowded with groups doing something similar and nothing like it, and the thing that separated China Crisis was tone rather than attitude — a soft-edged, oboe-and-flute sort of pop that never quite sat with the rest of the synth generation. Daly, talking to Classic Pop in April 2025, put the longevity down to nobody involved expecting it: "We'd never have imagined ourselves to be still playing now."

The hits, and the Steely Dan in the control room

The run that still carries the band lasted roughly three years. "Christian" reached No 12 in 1983, "Wishful Thinking" No 9 in 1984, "Black Man Ray" No 14 and "King in a Catholic Style" No 19 in 1985. Working with Fire and Steel, released in 1983 and produced with Mike Howlett, made the UK Top 20 and went gold. The line-up that played it had hardened into something properly band-shaped: Gary "Gazza" Johnson on bass, Kevin Wilkinson on drums, Steve Levy on oboe and saxophone.

Flaunt the Imperfection, in 1985, reached No 9 and also went gold, and it remains the record the band builds its evenings around. Walter Becker produced it and was credited as a member of the group rather than as a hired hand, playing synthesiser and percussion. Lundon's account of how that happened is less a story about industry matchmaking than about a fan: "He'd actually bought the album... He loved the album and we got to work with him." Becker died in 2017.

What Price Paradise followed in 1986 and Diary of a Hollow Horse in 1989, by which point the chart momentum had gone and the 1983–89 line-up was dissolving. Warped by Success came out in 1994. Then, for 21 years, no studio album at all.

The long second act

Autumn in the Neighbourhood, in 2015, broke that silence, funded by a Pledge Music campaign. What Daly values about it is less the music than the paperwork: the band own it outright, which he described as "the first record that we actually own in 35 years" — a pointed thing for a group whose catalogue sits with Virgin, A&M and Polydor. Lundon has said he can see them crowdfunding another one.

Daly filled the gap with his own records. Gone From Here, his debut solo album, came out on 31 May 2019, with Tom Moth of Florence + the Machine and John Campbell of It's Immaterial among the players, and some of the same vintage synthesisers used on the first China Crisis sessions. He framed the difference in scale rather than quality: his own material as "a little indie film" against the "Hollywood blockbuster" of the band. Luna Landings followed on 20 February 2020, twenty-three instrumental pieces, demos and sketches recorded on portable gear between 1981 and 1987.

The most recent China Crisis release is China Greatness, issued on 31 May 2024 by the Glasgow label Last Night From Glasgow as a deluxe double CD and double vinyl. It is not a straight compilation: twenty songs newly arranged by Jack Hymers, the band's touring keyboard player, and mixed by Mark Phythian. "Wishful Thinking", "Arizona Sky", "Christian", "King in a Catholic Style", "Papua" and "Black Man Ray" are all there, rebuilt rather than remastered.

2026: a loss, and a tour named after a 1994 album

Gary "Gazza" Johnson died on 12 August 2026, aged 61. He had come to China Crisis from the Liverpool band Hambi & The Dance, joined for the band's first tour supporting Simple Minds on the New Gold Dream run, and played bass on Working with Fire and Steel, Flaunt the Imperfection, What Price Paradise and Diary of a Hollow Horse, as well as the 1995 live album Acoustically Yours, Autumn in the Neighbourhood and Daly's solo record. After the band wound down in the late 1980s he ran the family clothing shop and played occasionally. His death was confirmed by his sister, Jan Hughes; no cause has been given. Kevin Wilkinson, the drummer from the same era, died in 1999.

That loss has become part of the show. Reviewing the band at Concorde 2 in Brighton on 11 September 2026 — their first appearance in the city in around 22 years — Brighton and Hove News noted Daly talking at length about both Johnson and Wilkinson between songs.

The current touring campaign is called Warped, borrowing the title of the 1994 album, and the billing language is about continuation rather than anniversary: an invitation to "step into the next chapter of their story... a journey through over four decades of innovative pop brilliance." Dates run deep into the diary — Papillon in Southampton on 10 October 2026, St George's Bristol on 11 October, through November — with Songkick listing 21 shows still to come as of early October 2026. The Floral Pavilion in Wirral, close to home, has them in the Blue Lounge on 14 November 2026 at £32, tickets having gone on general sale on 13 February 2026.

Where they stand

There has been no new China Crisis studio album since 2015, and none announced. Daly has said the writing never stopped and that a record is still likely, but the band's working reality is a touring one: by his own account something close to seventy gigs in a year, played by a seven-piece that treats the back catalogue as a repertoire to be re-read rather than a museum.

The practical effect is that China Crisis now operate at a scale most of their 1983 chart peers abandoned — abbeys, arts centres, 500-capacity rooms, two sets, no support act, a long interval. It is a smaller business than the one that put four singles in the Top 20, and a considerably more durable one.