Wave Goodbye, Say Hello

The reason I relate so much to the night world, the street world, the other side of life, is because if music hadn t saved me I would have been part of that life . . . and for a short while I was. I would so easily have gone down that road of alcoholic oblivion and drug oblivion. These are the words of Marc Almond, 42-year-old outre pop star turned tortured torch singer. They may sound like they ve been lifted from a dictionary of celebrity clichis but Almond himself is all too aware of the absurdity and self-parody inherent in the non-stop exotic cabaret that has been his life thus far.
Having skulked and skived his way through a troublesome childhood in Southport the archetypal coastal town that they forgot to close down as Morrissey put it Almond went to Leeds to study art. This and his subsequent escape to London provided him with the all the experience necessary to become, as lyricist and singer with the enduringly popular electro-pop duo Soft Cell, one of the finest chroniclers of the shadowy, bohemian underworld of bedsits and bordellos.
From the chart-scaling heights of Tainted Love , their upholstered take on the Northern Soul classic, to the smoky, smouldering Torch , with its Jacques Brel-style melodrama, Soft Cell were always at a remove from their New Romantic peers, who retrospectively seem to have been more style than substance, more mascara than music.
Not that such things were unimportant to Almond: image and fashion were of course an integral part of his modus operandi he was, after all, a child of the glam rock era. It s just that his world orbited around the last Camden tube, not the latest Caribbean yacht.
Since the demise of Soft Cell in the mid- 80s, Almond has carved out a bumpy solo career that has veered erratically from the sublime (check out his funeral parlour-friendly version of Brel s My Death ) to the obsequious (his best-forgotten collaboration with PJ Proby, for instance). There was also the small matter of a British and U.S. No. 1 courtesy of his 1989 Gene Pitney duet, Something s Gotten Hold Of My Heart , which featured on his most successful solo album, The Stars We Are.
Musically speaking, he is a somewhat chameleonic character, having collaborated with a wide range of artists from Nick Cave to Nico, from Coil to Psychic TV. But despite having entered his 40s, Almond is probably more productive now than at any previous time in his career. He has an intriguing new album of trip-hop textured vignettes called Open All Night, which is being hailed as a timely return to form. There is also a tour which entails a four-night stand at Dublin s HQ in May he ll be using a mixture of live musicians and backing tapes and playing both his new album and a selection of understated smoky, torch songs .
On top of that, there is a book called A Beautiful, Twisted Night, which he describes as a selection of lyrics, poems and observations that contains some of my favourite things that I ve written over the past 20 years which, he hopes, keeps the Brel flame burning. Then there is the not insignificant event of the publication of his autobiography, the tellingly-titled Tainted Life, which comes out in the autumn. Oh, and Soft Cell are reforming this year, with a view to kick-starting the new millennium with, promises Almond, a progressive new album.
Marc Almond s music incorporates many different influences from Northern Soul to Belgian balladeers via straight disco but then the man has always been an avid listener and learner.
The Northern Soul thing was really more to do with the other half of Soft Cell, David Ball, he points out. He introduced it to me. My side of Soft Cell was more to do with Scott Walker and Jacques Brel. We came together on other influences though. I discovered Brel through people like Bowie, Alex Harvey and Scott Walker in the early 70s. Also, I loved the whole glam rock thing: Roxy Music, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop.
How does he feel about the current glam rock revival?
Because we re reaching the new millennium, everything from the past 30 years is being revisited and re-evaluated, he muses. It s interesting to look back because at the time, in the early 70s, people like Bolan and Bowie really changed the whole face of music. Before them, it was really all progressive rock. Everyone denies it now but before Bowie, everyone who listened to music had those Deep Purple, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Pink Floyd albums. After Roxy Music and Bowie, I personally could never look at that music in the same way again.
Why not?
Glam rock said something more about my life, about what I felt inside. Bowie was singing about things that I related to, that I thought was part of my soul. And at the same time, he was introducing me to Jacques Brel through his interpretations of songs like Amsterdam and My Death .
Was glam rock s camp exhibitionism and transvestitism also part of the attraction for you?
To me, it was something that was tawdry and sleazy and dark. I liked that side of glam rock. I worked for a couple of years in my late teens in a theatre in Southport the seaside town where I was brought up. I was a backstage hand and worked with all the old theatre performers that came from around the north of England. There was this tawdriness of glitter and faded glamour. So I understood that side of glam rock so much.
Then I got to know about the American side of it, people like Lou Reed, who was so much more open about the whole drug thing. It seemed to me more inviting, more dangerous, more thrilling especially when you re a boy from Southport, which has such a sleazy, seedy underbelly. I thought this is the life that I am part of .
The colourful lifestyle Almond led in his younger years is well documented. Was the almost mandatory diet of drink n drugs favoured by his heroes a factor in his own substance abuse or would he have drifted into those patterns of behaviour regardless?
I would have done those things anyway. From an early age, I was very needy and addictive. Music was the thing that kept me above ground. Even though I ve become a pop star and have made money and travelled the world, it s still that nocturnal other-world I m always drawn to. That s where a lot of my friends have come from. That s often been to my cost as well. I ve been this person who has money and success, but I ve still been drawn to people who don t. I ve found that, sometimes, the worlds don t mix.
London s Soho seems to be the spiritual home of a lot of your songs. What s your attitude to that area now?
Soho s not the same kind of place it was when I first came to London. Then, I found it thrilling and exciting. Now, it s a tourist attraction full of coffee bars and upmarket gay restaurants. Soho is a world that s been lost, been absorbed into mainstream culture. Porno stars, strippers, lap dancers are now a part of the mainstream. Even prostitution has become quite a respectable profession these days! People have their own web-sites! It s still fascinating and interesting but it s not what it used to be. That said, I m glad that I ve been part of documenting that world.
And now he s set to document his own world, with the book Tainted Life. So then, Marc, what s it all about?
There s lots of things. It was obviously about my journey through the music business, about somebody who was really a bit of a damaged person, who was put into this mad world of the music industry and given the money to feed his problems, basically.
But I like to think it s a very funny book as wel,l because I ve written it with a lot of irony. I ve looked at myself in a very brutal way. But I ve laughed at myself because I ve been fortunate enough to reach a position in my life when I can look back and smile and see how ridiculous it was.
You can only do that from a perch of safety, can t you?
I think before you write a story about your life, you have reach that point where you can give it some sort of optimistic ending, he answers. After all, you don t want to depress the reader! But the book s not just about the madness of my life so far, it s also about how ridiculous and nonsensical the music business is. About how it feeds the insecurities and addictions of damaged people.
Interestingly, most pop stars worth caring about seem to have damaged psyches, in one form or another.
I think the drive that makes someone become a performer or a singer or a pop star or whatever, is that drive of neediness. They often come from a background that had a lack of love. To them, the only way you can compensate for that is to get an audience to send waves of love over the footlights. And it s never, never enough. And you re in this business that encourages you to be a child and never to grow up. To exist in such a business, you have to be youthful. And part of growing up and maturing is being able to realise that you ve got a problem and you ve got to leave it behind. So the music business encourages these needy, damaged, addictive people to continue being like that.
And when they fall apart whether it s Robbie [Williams] or whoever and they get fat and become drug and alcohol-addicted, they re then either abandoned or they re raised up as some sort of folk hero. I find it a bit tragic, really. If you re a big name like Robbie, people have a financial stake in you. But if you re a less successful musician and you become involved in drugs you re seen as a problem, a freak, and abandoned.
When you were at the height of your success with Soft Cell, did it bring you happiness?
Not at all. I don t think anything can ever totally bring me happiness. Maybe some sort of spirituality could, which I ve still been juggling with and trying to find. Working brings me happiness; my music brings me happiness. As long as I m working and not getting into trouble, I can channel all my anger at the world through writing. I can be happy for periods of my life I m not saying I m never happy but I find that I always have to boost up that happiness with something else.
Are drink and drugs now a thing of the past for you?
It s never a thing of the past, though I ve learned that I don t want them in my life anymore. Even though I stopped smoking 15 years ago, I still look at a cigarette and think, God, I d love to have that cigarette or look at a glass of wine and think, I d so love to have that glass of wine . But I wouldn t just want the glass, I d want the entire bottle. If anybody offers me a line of coke now, I say I don t want a line of coke because I want the whole gram . And when the whole gram s gone, I d be desperately trying to ring somebody up and get another gram and another gram. So I ll never accept a line of coke.
Plus, I think when you get older your health starts to catch up with you. When you re young, you tell yourself, I m living this hedonistic lifestyle. It s wonderful and inspiring and it helps me be creative .
But hedonism eventually becomes destructive.
You reach middle age and think, I can t get up in the morning any more. I can t walk properly. I ve got a perpetual headache. I m tired. I can t sing. I m losing my voice. I m knackered . That s how it is. That s why everyone, when they become middle aged, checks themselves into rehab.
Do not go gentle into the Betty Ford Clinic!
Rehab now has become part of the marketing budget. It s like the record companies add up the cost of making the video, recording the album, doing promotion. . . and rehab! It s as if they say, go on, take a few drinks, dabble with a bit of coke and then check yourself into rehab and we ve got a great story to sell the papers. And you ll have a bit of credibility! Everyone will think you re a bit of a bad guy. . . but you re a survivor! . Stop me if I m being cynical.
Just to change the subject. The Welsh singer, David Gray, has done a remarkable cover of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye on his new album. In fact, it s probably the best thing he s ever done. Has Marc heard it?
I can t wait to hear it. I m always really flattered when people cover my songs. It doesn t matter who it is. The only thing is: I don t own them anymore any of them! What happened was that I had such bad financial problems through the life I led at the beginning of the 90s that I was forced into selling every single song that I ever owned. So when I sing live, it s like I m covering my own songs.
Finally, what can Marc Almond tell us about this proposed Soft Cell reformation?
I m too old to be a pop star, he laughs. Dave [Ball] and I planned to do a project together for many years now but management and record companies always got in the way. We were going to do it under a different name but, really, when Marc Almond and Dave Ball do an album together it s going to be, let s face it, a Soft Cell record. We re doing a new album this year. I ve no idea whether it ll be a one-off or a continuing thing. But we ve both learned so much over the past 15 years, it ll be quite different than what we did before. Neither of us has ever been interested in some of sort of nostalgia, retro package. That s what always stopped us in the past.

*Open All Night is released on Blue Star. Tainted Life will be published by MacMillans in the autumn. Beautiful Twisted Night is published through Ellipsis London. Marc Almond plays HQ at the Hot Press Irish Music Hall of Fame, Dublin on May 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th.