the Mummer sessions to take care of his wife and newborn child in Australia. In the meantime, guitarist and principal songwriter Andy Partridge produced Peter Blegvad's album The Naked Shakespeare (1983). Partridge said that his services were requested partly because Blegvad heard a rumour that he had died in 1982. He summarized his feelings at the time: "We're about to make another [album] that probably won't sell very well, and Virgin are getting fed up with us and starting to grumble about potentially not carrying on with us ... I was really confused about what I was supposed to be doing." Immediately after Mummer, he stated that he thought the next album would have a more R&B sound and that the band were "conscious of wanting to get away from the" style of their previous two albums, and said that "I don't think you'll hear any acoustic guitars this time, or any particularly multilayered things." Years later, he reflected that "Funk Pop a Roll" from Mummer could be considered "the first Big Express track". In late 1983, XTC released the holiday single "Thanks for Christmas" under the pseudonym Three Wise Men. It was produced by David Lord, owner of Crescent Studios in Bath, who impressed the band with the story that he had turned down an offer to arrange the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home" (1967). He met Partridge while working as an engineer on The Naked Shakespeare. According to biographer Neville Farmer, Lord was "a world's away from XTC", having turned down the Beatles offer because he believed the Beatles were not serious musicians, and "made a deep impression on Andy. He hadn't had a musical guru before now. David Lord could hold his own in any musical conversation and piqued Andy's interests in unexplored musical areas." Moulding was not as effused and said he was unable to relate to Lord on a musical level. XTC subsequently negotiated a deal that allowed them to work as much as they want on their next album at his studio. In April 1984, about a month into the new album sessions, the group learned that ex-manager Ian Reid had incurred them an outstanding value-added tax bill of several hundred thousand pounds, and they immediately pursued litigation that would last for the next five years. Concept and production The intention for The Big Express was to "let the music have a more boisterous feel"