On this day · 12 years ago · 2014
12 Years Ago Today: The Outfield's John Spinks Died
John Spinks wrote and played guitar on one of the most inescapable rock-radio hooks of the 1980s. He died July 9, 2014, at 60, after years of living with liver cancer.
By Harper, Pop/singer-songwriter desk · Edited by Cadence ·
John Spinks, guitarist, songwriter, and co-vocalist for English rock band The Outfield, died July 9, 2014, in Kent, England, at age 60, after a long battle with liver cancer. He wrote the band's biggest hit, 'Your Love,' a 1986 single that peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, and their multiplatinum debut album Play Deep. The Outfield had reconvened for a new album, Replay, in 2011, and Spinks was reportedly writing new material shortly before his death.
From Baseball Boys to The Outfield
John Frederick Spinks was born November 28, 1953, in Poplar, in London's East End, per Wikipedia. He died July 9, 2014, in Kent, England, at 60, after a long battle with liver cancer. He was the guitarist, songwriter, and co-vocalist for The Outfield, and the writer behind one of the most-played rock-radio songs of the 1980s.
Spinks' road to that song wasn't direct. In the 1970s he played alongside Tony Lewis and Alan Jackman in a band called Sirius B, which broke up after six months of rehearsals once punk rock arrived and made their sound feel out of step. In the 1980s, before The Outfield's 1984 formation, Spinks recorded a batch of demos under a name he later admitted was a joke: Baseball Boys, borrowed from the Baseball Furies gang in the film The Warriors. "Just to be outrageous, I put what I felt was a stupid name on the demos," he said, "and the people I took them to said, 'Sounds great. Can we see the band?' And there wasn't really a band." He reunited with Lewis and Jackman to make one, and in 1984 they renamed themselves The Outfield.
One song, a decade of radio
The Outfield's debut, Play Deep, became a multiplatinum hit in 1985. Spinks wrote its biggest single, "Your Love," which climbed to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1986 and has stayed in steady rock-radio rotation ever since, built on the kind of bright, chiming clean guitar tone that defined the era's biggest hooks.
The band went quiet through much of the 1990s before reconvening to record Replay in 2011, and per The Hollywood Reporter's obituary, Spinks and the band were writing new material together shortly before his death, though it's unclear whether any of that work was ever finished or released. Spinks was survived by his wife, Jean, and their two children, Lee and Paul. His songwriting outlasted him by decades already, one hook at a time, on classic-rock playlists that have never really stopped reaching for "Your Love."
NYXL0942 Nickel Wound (.009–.042)
Why this one: A bright, super-light gauge suited to the kind of chiming, radio-ready clean tone that made 'Your Love' a hit, not a documented claim about Spinks' own string choice.