Peet Coombes

Who was Peet Coombes?

Peet Coombes was a British musician, guitarist and vocalist with Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart in the two pre-Eurythmics bands, The Catch, who only released one single, "Borderline/Black Blood" before morphing into the other, The Tourists, who had quite a few UK hits in the late '70s. Many of The Tourists' songs were written by Peet.

Born in Bradford, but spent most of his early life in Sunderland, Coombes befriended Stewart prior to the latter's romance with Lennox. Although the Tourists were moderately successful in 1978-79, by the release of their third album, artistic differences were emerging between Stewart and Coombes, particularly as the former wanted to go more in the direction of the synth-pop sound that the early Eurythmics would prefer.

Coombes and Singapore-born bassist Eddie Chin decided to form a group called 'Acid Drops' but it was not successful. Coombes lived in London during most of the 1980s and was effectively retired from the music scene. However, he spent 1992-1995 working in Cornwall with amateur producer and bassist Andy Brown and his wife Cathy with Dave Farghally as drummer. The band was known as Diminished Responsibility, and though tapes exist of their work, it was never commercially exploited due to his illness.