“I was spending half my time with this lady in Pembrokeshire, dreadful relationship, but that’s another story. “I had a couple of years to myself,” he begins when he calls from his flat in Kennington, south London. His pioneering synthesiser “bleeps” provided Almond with the neon cabaret setting for his lyrical tales of sleazy nights in Soho, with the musical springboard for terrific, future-perfect electronic pop music that touched on both classic torch song tradition (Say Hello, Wave Goodbye) and very Eighties underground sleaze (Sex Dwarf). We empowered each other, and between us we made for quite a formidable combination.” “He was the stinging nettle and I was the dock leaf, and it worked musically. “We found this weird artistic symbiosis,” affirms Ball. Soft Cell was the electric, electrifying result. But it was just assumed – I was the Great Dark Man, or the GDM, as Quentin Crisp called it.”īeyond their similar backgrounds – both from northern seaside towns, Ball from “rough and ready’ Blackpool, Almond from “posher” Southport – their core connection was a brilliant, inspired musical one. ‘Oh, you’re the one from Soft Cell, aren’t you? So, Dave, are you and Marc lovers?’ I said: ‘No, this is my girlfriend, Anita.’ And he went, ‘Oh!’, bought us both a bottle of Becks and flounced off. “And we were standing at the bar, it was all fine, and suddenly Freddie Mercury was there. I was with my girlfriend one time and we went to this gay bar – I think it was called The Mineshaft – just out of curiosity because a guy we knew was performing. To be fair, it wasn’t just teenage girls who were confused. “The only thing that bothered me was that people assumed that I was Marc’s boyfriend. But we’d do interviews with girls’ magazines like Jackie and they’d write: which one do you prefer, hunky Dave or skinny Marc? They’d get readers to vote which one of us they fancied the most.” I’m very comfortable with my sexuality, I’m straight as a die. It never bothered me, I couldn’t give a toss. “I think it was quite obvious to everyone that Marc was possibly gay. Then, the minute Tainted Love was massive, they told him: listen, when you do interviews, don’t talk about your sexuality. “But they were so thick, they couldn’t see the star potential of him. Was there, I wonder, a sense that Soft Cell were flinging filth at the nation’s youth? “It wasn’t me, I was already quite toned down, it was Marc,” he protests, as if there might still be some doubt. Can you imagine if we toed the line, doing Tainted Love with Marc looking normal and a bass player and drummer? They really thought that was a good idea.” “When we first did Top of the Pops, the record label literally said they were going to get us a drummer and bass guitarist – and that Marc couldn’t wear bangles and had to tone down his make-up. “People would be like: what do you mean there’s only two of you?” recalls Ball. “We were probably the first British synth duo, and after us was the Pet Shops, Yazoo, Erasure, Eurythmics…”Ĭertainly, being electronic pioneers caused issues for the pair who’d met in 1977 while studying art at Leeds Polytechnic. But that’s not a problem,” he adds sanguinely. They modified the silent-looking keyboard player at the back with the flamboyant singer. “Well, I think we maybe gave the Pet Shop Boys some ideas. Curious and curiouser… “Ha ha ha!” laughs Dave Ball when I relay to him this quote. So wrote future Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant, then an editor at Smash Hits. “On television Marc comes across as the most extraordinary performer, pouting and waving his arms, while an impassive David Ball stands with his synthesiser, looking like the quiet bank manager who has a secret life behind the lace curtains.” And this was the hulking and ecclesiastical square who had co-authored with Almond a deliciously sleazy debut album called Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret?īy the next summer, when Tainted Love was firmly lodged in the US Top Ten – part of a then-record-breaking 43-week run in the Billboard Hot 100 – Smash Hits was still trying to work them out. His hands serve as exclamation marks, musically infatuating with the jangles of bangles and bracelets.”Īs for Almond’s 22-year-old musical partner Dave Ball, “he has the build and moustache of a second-row rugby forward charmingly combined with the gentle face and dark brown voice of a trainee vicar”. Writing about the northern synth duo in November 1981, when their second single Tainted Love was well on its way to becoming the year’s best-seller, the music magazine described singer Marc Almond, 24, as speaking “in campish tones with a lot of italics. They weren’t wearing kilts, or dressed like dandy highwaymen, or on Top of the Pops making your dad think their male singer was a girl. In the heady days of 19, Smash Hits – pop bible in the time of Spandau Ballet, Adam and the Ants and Culture Club – was particularly confused by one new British group.
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