Tag: Yazoo (Page 6 of 7)

25 SONGS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN SINGLES

19 February 2014 /

The concept of the single in the past has been to present an artist’s most immediate work for mass consumption and appreciation, often as a trailer for an album or compilation.
Like it or not, many acts’ best songs have been released as singles. They often reach an audience who would not normally be interested in the tribulations of a much longer journey.

Looking back throughout pop history, many pinnacles of a group’s career have been exclusively single releases; THE WALKER BROTHERS ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’, THE BEATLES ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, IAN DURY & THE BLOCKHEADS ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’ and THE JAM ‘Going Underground’ are a number of examples.

Today’s culture of individual track downloading now makes virtually every song in existence a single. However, a fair number of recordings which have become standards within live sets and have become a key part of a band’s history have never been accorded a single release. Such were some bands’ standings in their heyday that many were potential hits.

So here are 25 synth friendly songs which ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK felt should have been given singular status. Listing tracks not released as 45s or CD singles in the UK with a limit of one song per artist moniker, they are arranged in chronological and then alphabetical order.

GARY NUMAN Metal (1979)

With Minimoog riffage in abundance, ‘Metal’ would have made a perfect follow-up to ‘Cars’ and in hindsight, been less of a public anti-climax than the brave, but misguided release of ‘Complex’, as great a song as it is. Full of dystopian resignation with references to “liquid engineers” and chilling vox humana courtesy of the Polymoog, ‘Metal’ was Sci-Fi musicality at its best. Even NINE INCH NAILS covered it and nearly 35 years later, it is still part of the Gary Numan live set.

Available on the GARY NUMAN album ‘The Pleasure Principle’ via Beggars Banquet Records

http://www.numan.co.uk/

JOHN FOXX A New Kind Of Man (1980)

“I want to be a machine” cried JOHN FOXX as far back as 1977 on the first ‘Ultravox!’ album. Starting off side two of ‘Metamatic’, the former Dennis Leigh realised his mechanised JG Ballard inspired electro theories and went up to the next level with ‘A New Kind of Man’. Is it about genetically modified humans or homo superiors? Who knows? But the chilling Elka string machine and frightening detuned synthetics made it a distinctly new kind of song in a brave new world.

Available on the JOHN FOXX album ‘Metamatic’ via Edsel Records

http://www.metamatic.com/

JAPAN Swing (1980)

JAPAN found a refuge at Virgin Records who released their fourth album ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’. One of its best numbers was ‘Swing’ which combined David Sylvian’s muzak travelogue with Richard Barbieri’s Oriental synth textures. It was probably one of the last times JAPAN were fully as one. Guitarist Rob Dean made a full contribution before being forced out while the rhythm section of the late Mick Karn and Steve Jansen were amazingly fluid over the drum machine bossa nova.

Available on the JAPAN album ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ via Virgin Records

http://www.nightporter.co.uk/

JOY DIVISION Isolation (1980)

OK, so JOY DIVISION never took singles from their albums but what if they had? This would have been a contender. Featuring an ARP Omni and an early version of the Simmons drum synthesizer, ‘Isolation’ was the most electronic track JOY DIVISION ever recorded although Hooky’s bass ensured there was a gritty punk rock edge. When NEW ORDER reformed for the first time in 1998, a drum ‘n’ bass flavoured rework of ‘Isolation’ was part of the live set.

Available on the JOY DIVISION album ‘Closer’ via WEA Records

http://joydivisionofficial.com/

THE HUMAN LEAGUE The Things That Dreams Are Made Of (1981)

Optimistic and aspirational, ‘The Things That Dreams Are Made Of’ is the key song from ‘Dare’ and was a metaphor for THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s then pop ambitions. Gloriously spacious and delightfully catchy, each synthesizer voicing has its place while Phil Oakey gives full justice to Adrian Wright’s shopping list of life’s pleasures to a perfect Linn Drum clap track. It certainly deserves to be played live more often… “New York – ice cream – TV – travel – good times”

Available on THE HUMAN LEAGUE album ‘Dare’ via Virgin Records

http://www.thehumanleague.co.uk/

KRAFTWERK Computer World (1981)

Hooky, catchy and futuristic, ‘Computer World’ with its Speak & Spell voices and infectious four note theme was an ideal KRAFTWERK single if ever there was one. However, the perky and novelty laden ‘Pocket Calculator’ was chosen to trail the parent album. It is unlikely ‘Computer World’ could have hit the top of the charts like ‘The Model’ did, but such was the song’s popularity, the native variant got released as a limited run remixed maxi-single in Germany.

Available on the KRAFTWERK album ‘Computer World’ via Mute Records

http://www.kraftwerk.com/

OMD She’s Leaving (1981)

It was a tricky call between ‘She’s Leaving’ and ‘Radio Waves’, but the North-by-North West melancholy of the former won over the upfront Germany Calling salvo of the latter. A wonderful synthetic cross between JOY DIVISION and Paul McCartney, ‘She’s Leaving’ was pencilled in as the fourth single from OMD’s huge selling ‘Architecture & Morality’ but was vetoed by the band.  However, when ‘She’s Leaving’ did come out as a single in the Benelux region, it flopped.

Available on the OMD album ‘Architecture & Morality’ via Virgin Records

http://www.omd-messages.co.uk/

SOFT CELL Secret Life (1981)

As proven by their covers of ‘Tainted Love’, ‘What?’ and later on during their 21st Century comeback ‘The Night’, SOFT CELL always had a love of the UK’s Northern Soul scene. Its influence would seep into their own compositions like ‘Secret Life’. Marc Almond’s narrative on a philanderer’s hypocrisy was an apt reflection of suburban life while Dave Ball’s solid use of keyboards provided a suitably accessible but gritty sub-Tamla soundtrack.

Available on the SOFT CELL album ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ via Universal Music

https://www.softcell.co.uk/

DURAN DURAN New Religion (1982)

The perfect balance between art and pop, ‘New Religion’ was a key highlight from DURAN DURAN’s ‘Rio’ album. “A dialogue between the ego and the alter-ego”, Simon Le Bon’s conflicting schizophrenic voices added tension in the bridges before a classic Duran chorus. With an ambient intro that JAPAN would be proud of, it then moved at breakneck speed through the quintet’s other influences like Bowie, Roxy, Moroder and Chic with speed being the operative word.

Available on the DURAN DURAN album ‘Rio’ via EMI Records

http://www.duranduran.com/

SIMPLE MINDS New Gold Dream (1982)

A huge song with two drummers drumming as well as lashings of Jupiter 8 and a marvellous bass engine, ‘New Gold Dream’ and its parent album highlighted an ambitious streak in SIMPLE MINDS akin to their Virgin label mates THE HUMAN LEAGUE when they released ‘Dare’ the year before. Already six minutes in length, an extended mix was released as a 12 inch single in Italy while as a sample on URSURA’s ‘Open Your Mind’, ‘New Gold Dream’ became a club hit in 1993.

Available on the SIMPLE MINDS album ‘New Gold Dream’ via Virgin Records

http://www.simpleminds.com/

VISAGE The Anvil (1982)

With its heavy metronomic beat sans hi-hats, ‘The Anvil’ was Steve Strange’s tale of a night out in New York’s notorious club of the same name. But that wasn’t all, Billy Currie’s screaming ARP Odyssey and Dave Formula’s brassy synth riff completed the excursion. Rusty Egan said: “For me, ‘The Anvil’ was the lead track, ‘The Anvil’ in German (‘Der Amboss’), the 12-inch remixes, all that which I did with John Luongo was for me, the single. But the record company didn’t support that!”

Available on the VISAGE album ‘The Anvil’ via Cherry Pop

http://www.visage.cc/

YAZOO Midnight (1982)

Showcasong one of the best Alison Moyet vocals, Vince Clarke’s minimal programmed backing gave her plenty of space to let rip with raw emotion on ‘Midnight’ . Back in those days, Mute Records usually only took two singles from an album so with ‘Only You’ and ‘Don’t Go’ already accorded singular status from ‘Upstairs at Eric’s’, a 45 was never likely. But it sort of belatedly became a single when it was sampled and manipulated by REX THE DOG for ‘Bubblicious’ in 2008.

Available on the YAZOO album ‘Upstairs At Eric’s’ via Mute Records

http://www.yazooinfo.com/

BLANCMANGE Game Above My Head (1983)

Originally the B-side to ‘Waves’, ‘Game Above My Head’ signalled the more disco based direction Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe later trod on ‘Blind Vision’ and ‘That’s Love, That It Is’ with American producer John Luongo. Merging the busy Linn Drum patterns that characterised BLANCMANGE’s debut ‘Happy Families’ with a funkier outlook, ‘Game Above My Head’ was included on their second LP ‘Mange Tout’. Today, the song remains a constant in the live set.

Available on the BLANCMANGE album ‘Mange Tout’ via Edsel Records

http://www.blancmange.co.uk/

HEAVEN 17 Five Minutes To Midnight (1984)

HEAVEN 17’s most underrated track and referencing The Doomsday Clock, ‘Five Minutes To Midnight’ followed on from ‘Let’s All Make A Bomb’ to highlight the absurdity of Mutually Assured Destruction. Using and abusing the Fairlight CMI, the ‘Protect and Survive’ styled civil defence announcements, deathly whoops and a doomy orchestral crescendo bring a frightening finality as the song suddenly stops… “Hot as a furnace – wing to wing contact! AARGH!”

Available on the HEAVEN 17 album ‘How Men Are’ via Virgin Records

http://www.heaven17.com/

HOWARD JONES Equality (1984)

‘Equality’ exploited new MIDI technology like the Prophet T8 and Yamaha DX7, combining it with a Jupiter 8 and Pro-One; “it was one of those ones that really suited my live rig” said Howard Jones With its poignant human rights message, whether ‘Equality’ would have made a better single than ‘Pearl in the Shell’ is a moot point, but the song was released as a single in South Africa as a commentary about Apartheid.

Available on the HOWARD JONES album ‘Human’s Lib’ via Cherry Red Records

http://www.howardjones.com/

ULTRAVOX White China (1984)

Despite their use of synthesizers, it was rare that ULTRAVOX went the whole sequencer route. They did so with this song about the impending 1997 handover of the British Colony of Hong Kong to Red China. The lyrics captured a sense of pessimism over a bouncy electro disco soundtrack influenced by ‘Blue Monday’. Slated for release as a single in the UK, ‘White China’ had a special extended mix prepared but Chrysalis Records preferred the more obvious ‘Dancing With Tears In My Eyes’.

Available on the ULTRAVOX album ‘Lament’ via EMI Records

http://www.ultravox.org.uk/

A-HA Scoundrel Days (1986)

A-HA were perceived as a teenybop group in their heyday, but their Nordic melancholic depth was apparent even on their only UK No1 ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’. “Cut my wrist on a bad thought” is a superb piece of second language expression that no native speaker could have come up with. Morten Harket veers from a semi-spoken growl to a full voice salvo for the terrific chorus while Pål Waaktaar’s twanginess adds some edge to Magne Furuholmen’s glacial synthetic atmospheres.

Available on the A-HA album ‘Scoundrel Days’ via WEA Records

http://a-ha.com/

PET SHOP BOYS Tonight Is Forever (1986)

Mistakenly announced as a new single on ‘The Tube’, ‘Tonight Is Forever’ is one of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s best early compositions. From its blipping intro with an odd starting snare drum to the magnificently euphoric chorus, it captured the excitement of a fleeting romance on a night out in clubland. With its sombre synth brass riff and a wonderful middle eight, it was later covered by Liza Minelli in an orchestral arrangement for her PET SHOP BOYS produced album ‘Results’.

Available on the PET SHOP BOYS album ‘Please’ via EMI Records

http://www.petshopboys.co.uk/

NEW ORDER Mr Disco (1989)

‘Your Silent Face’ may be one of NEW ORDER’s best songs, but it was unlikely to have got radio play as a single with its “why don’t you p*ss off?” quip! Meanwhile, ‘Mr Disco’ was the club friendly Mancunians in their Italo prime, complete with holiday romance lyrics and tongue-in-cheek syndrums. Some fans were dismayed by its resemblance to PET SHOP BOYS, but Bernard Sumner went and founded ELECTRONIC, aided and abetted by Messrs Tennant and Lowe!

Available on the NEW ORDER album ‘Technique’ via WEA Records

http://www.neworder.com/

DEPECHE MODE Halo (1990)

One of DEPECHE MODE’s greatest moments, Alan Wilder said: “From memory, the drums were sampled from LED ZEPPELIN’s ‘When the Levee Breaks’ (but secondhand from a rap record)… For the end choruses, there are some string samples which I think were derived from Elgar. One of my techniques is to find sections of classical strings and transpose / stretch these, then add my own samples, in order to formulate new and unusual arrangements”.

Available on the DEPECHE MODE album ‘Violator’ via Mute Records

http://www.depechemode.com/

ELEKTRIC MUSIC Kissing The Machine (1993)

Undoubtedly, ‘Kissing The Machine’ is Andy McCluskey’s finest song without Paul Humphreys as an OMD band mate. It also featured one of Karl Bartos’ greatest melodies. Recorded for his first project after leaving KRAFTWERK, Karl Bartos said “He suggested we do something together and I was up for it… We picked some cassettes and finally I found the opening notes of ‘Kissing The Machine’. A month later he sent me a demo…He wrote the whole song and the lyric and the robo voice” 

Available on the ELEKTRIC MUSIC album ‘Esperanto’ via SPV Records

http://www.karlbartos.com/

ERASURE Because You’re So Sweet (1994)

The closing track on the ‘I Say I Say I Say’ album produced by HEAVEN 17 and BEF’s Martyn Ware, ‘Because You’re So Sweet’ was a pretty ballad representative of the maturer approach taken by Andy Bell and Vince Clarke for their seventh long player. Featuring ERASURE’s trademark sequences, there was also the self-imposed restriction of no drum machines being used, so that all the album’s percussive templates were created using synths and driven by sequencers.

Available on the ERASURE album ‘I Say I Say I Say’ via Mute Records

http://www.erasureinfo.com/

MOBY First Cool Hive (1997)

There were eight singles from 1999’s ‘Play’ but for 1995’s ‘Everything Is Wrong’, Mute Records were more restrained with just five! Surprisingly, this vivid instrumental missed out on singular distribution. One of the highlights from the genre hopping MOBY long player, the looping bass sample of ‘First Cool Hive’ was like an update of ‘Empires & Dance’ era SIMPLE MINDS while female voice samples and beautiful synth strings gave it a mysterious ENIGMA-tic touch.

Available on the MOBY album ‘Everything Is Wrong’ via Mute Records

http://www.moby.com/

LADYTRON Discotraxx (2001)

‘Mu-tron’ may have opened the LADYTRON  debut album ‘604’ but the pulsating salvo at the start of ‘Discotraxx’ signalled the album’s intent… the return of the synthesizer as an instrument of value and integrity, not as a novelty to mock the past. From the moment Mira Aroyo deadpans in Bulgarian and Helen Marnie’s sweet but resigned voice kicks in about “the boy I know”, a new dawn is heralding for electronic pop.

Available on the LADYTRON album ‘604’ via Nettwerk Records

http://www.ladytron.com/

GOLDFRAPP Lovely 2 C U (2005)

The surreal concept was Kate Bush does THE HUMAN LEAGUE on this buzzy percussive extravaganza, one of the more under rated songs in Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory’s canon. The sub-TOM TOM CLUB meets PRINCE electrofunk is aided by Charlie Jones’ treated bass runs over the zooming synth hooks and chunky riffs. Interestingly despite its immediacy or maybe because of it, ‘Lovely 2 C U’ has rarely made it into the GOLDFRAPP live set.

Available on the GOLDFRAPP album ‘Supernature’ via Mute Records

http://goldfrapp.com/

Text by Chi Ming Lai
28th February 2014

ALISON MOYET Interview

10 June 2013 /

Alison Moyet first came to prominence with YAZOO, the famed electronic blues duo that was the first project of Vince Clarke following his departure from DEPECHE MODE in late 1981.

Although they only released two albums ‘Upstairs at Eric’s’ and ‘You & Me Both’ on Mute Records, YAZOO’s impact was lasting. Despite their success, Clarke was reprising the personal disillusionment that had seen him leave DEPECHE MODE. Clarke decided ‘You & Me Both’ was to be YAZOO’s swansong and he then moved on to produce his mate Robert Marlow, record as THE ASSEMBLY with Fergal Sharkey and YAZOO producer Eric Radcliffe before settling down to form ERASURE with Andy Bell.

Meanwhile, Moyet signed to Columbia Records and began a successful solo career with a run of chart singles that included ‘Love Resurrection’, ‘All Cried Out’, ‘Is This Love?’ and ‘Weak In The Presence Of Beauty’. So highly regarded was Alison Moyet that the legendary Motown producer Lamont Dozier penned ‘Invisible’ for her in 1984.

Her massive selling ‘Alf’ and ‘Raindancing’ were dovetailed by a pair of stand alone covers ‘That Ole Devil Called Love’ and ‘Love Letters’ which widened her audience. The result was well deserved Brit Awards for Best Female Singer in 1985 and 1988 where during her acceptance speech for the latter, she acknowledged the debt to her former YAZOO partner.

However, all this commercial success didn’t sit well with the down-to-earth girl born Genevieve. When she pursued more artistic musical avenues, she met resistance from her label following the less than enthusiastic response to 1991’s ‘Hoodoo’. As a result, its follow-up ‘Essex’ was heavily controlled by Columbia. The album yielded a hit single ‘Whispering Your Name’ which was accompanied by a hilarious promo video starring comedienne Dawn French but spelt the end of her relationship with the now Sony owned record company.

But this single’s release included a remix by Vince Clarke and rekindled public interest in YAZOO, eventually leading to the ‘Only Yazoo’ compilation in 1999. Her next album ‘Hometime’ wasn’t until 2002 as she extracted herself from Sony and licensed the recording through Sanctuary Records.

Further albums ‘Voice’ and ‘The Turn’ kept her busy, but Moyet formally reunited with Clarke as YAZOO for 2008’s well received concert tour which was subsequently issued as the ‘Reconnected Live’ album. In 2011, they played ‘Nobody’s Diary’, ‘Ode To Boy’ and ‘Don’t Go’ as part of a joint set by YAZOO, ERASURE and THE ASSEMBLY at the Short Circuit Presents Mute Festival.

But since then, Moyet has been working on her most exciting AND electronic project since those heady YAZOO days. Entitled ‘the minutes’, it is a collaboration with producer Guy Sigsworth, best known for his work with Björk and Madonna. With overtly synthetic but contemporary tracks such as ‘Right As Rain’, ‘Filigree’, ‘Love Reign Supreme’ and ‘Changeling’, the album is rightly being hailed as one of her best recordings for many years. Alison Moyet spoke about her new album and more…

Your last album ‘The Turn’ was 2007 and you did the YAZOO tour in 2008. What was the spark to record an electronic based album?

What you have to remember with me and electronica is that it was reported for a long time that I left YAZOO… I didn’t leave YAZOO, Vince split the band! I’ve been wanted to do it for ages, I was kind of disillusioned in the 90s with it because technology has been brilliant and allowed a lot to people to come up and be creative. However only some of those have a profound musicality… like Vince! He taught himself electronica but came from a musical enough background where he was listening to well constructed music like Simon & Garfunkel as opposed to the techies say in the 90s who grew from previous techies.

There’s something that I still want a vocal to be a part of the song as opposed to being jammed in because you had to have a voice in there, which happened a lot in the 90s. You had a feeling that there wasn’t a real synchronicity to it all. It’s a big sweeping statement but the ones I met were so entrenched in the techie-ness that it was all like a one-note wonder thing and I find that dull! I love interesting things but I have to have taken some strong sh*t to tolerate some of those trance things.

How did you come to work with Guy Sigsworth?

It was difficult meeting the right person because I’m restless about meeting new people anyway. But I got introduced to Guy without any great expectations and it turned out he was perfect for me. The whole thing with ‘the minutes’ is that it’s an artist’s album, it’s not a singer’s album. It’s quite a different thing. I’m singing on it but it’s not about me showboating or using the album as a platform for me to sit above as a vocalist. The lyrics in some ways are more important and the whole sound…it’s a music album.

Was there any particular work of his previously that you liked?

I knew a bit of his work with Björk but it was more a case of when I met with him that we connected musically in what it was we were looking to do. For me, one of the things that puts me off whenever I work with someone is when they say “what kind of record do you want to make? What kind of song do you want to write?”

How the f*** do you know what song you are going to write until you’ve written it? I’m not trying to replicate anyone else’s record, I’m not trying to write for an audience, all I want to do is sit in a creative place with someone and open the box, that’s what I want to do so I can’t tell you what it is until it’s done! And there’s so much of that! I never had to do that in YAZOO and I didn’t have to do that with Guy. What I enjoyed about the YAZOO period is there was none of this horrible “let’s theorise what kind of record we’re making”… we made the record that we made.

You said you’d wanted to make an electronic album for quite a while…

…because it’s the space. There’s something about the sonic space in it. I love the air that comes within electronica. Of course you can have pads but it’s not so common and when you have pads, they’re not ten finger pads. D’ya know what I’m saying? There’s just air in there and there is a wider, more unusual palette, a more unpredictable palette than can be had with a generic line-up.

Did the YAZOO ‘Reconnected’ tour in 2008 inspire this?

No! No! No! I would have worked with YAZOO anytime since the time that we stopped because I really enjoyed that plus for me when I first started out as a musician, I started from the live element and then went to recorded work.

So the very fact that ‘You & Me Both’ had never been played live could never be a project finished for me. You have to sing a song live to actually find out what you would have kept and what you wouldn’t have done.

So when Vince presented you with ‘Only You’, did he do that on acoustic guitar?

I have a feeling I would have heard it as an electronic demo on his portastudio. I’m assuming he must have had ‘Only You’ in electro form because he’d have presented it to DEPECHE MODE and they knocked it back! I remember singing the first vocal demo in his kitchen and I had such a fantastic musical memory at that stage that I only had to learn the tune once and the lyrics once; they were consigned to memory.

The subsequent songs we did together we played to one another on guitar. ‘Nobody’s Diary’, that was a song that I wrote which was played in bands when I was 15-16! So when me and Vince talked about making an album together, he goes “got any songs?” and I replied “yeah, I got a couple!”… they were written but they were never intended for recording.

How did ‘Nobody’s Diary’ go down with the people in the bands you were playing in?

At that point, I was part of that Estuary Delta kind of vibe and playing on the Canvey Island scene. So it was punk mixed with pub rock, the bed that kind of related to Elvis Costello, DR FEELGOOD and those kind of people.

No, none of my mates were particularly complimentary about it! But I can understand why, the muso lot were very partisan for blues so they wouldn’t have been interested and your mates that you leave at the time as your life goes another way, I think there’s going to be an element of people finding it hard to be happy for you.

Did REX THE DOG’s sampling of ‘Midnight’ for 2008‘s ‘Bubblicious’ and acts with YAZOO influences like LA ROUX and HERCULES & THE LOVE AFFAIR have any bearing on your reawakening with electronics?

I wasn’t particularly aware of it. I’m not aware of what’s going on until I’m working on something and someone says “have you heard so and so…”

The songs on ‘the minutes’ do cover all sorts of directions… which have been the key songs for you?

I would say ‘When I Was Your Girl’ is the least like everything else. The reason it’s the single is that it was picked up by radio. That can cause confusion because out of all of them, it’s the only one I wouldn’t call electronica. But there’s absolutely no point in me giving them ‘Rung By The Tide’ and say that’s the single because no f***er’s going to play it, it’s not going to happen!

And also single smingles, it’s not like any of my singles are ever going to sell but that’s the one you can present to radio. And that just happened to be by accident because that was the song I wrote on guitar and Guy worked it up from that. The rest of the album, they’re all quite different. But I think there’s no weak spots on this record, that’s quite a big statement to make because I can think of every album where I know there’s a track that I would skip…

You’re touring in the Autumn and there will be a focus on your electronic based material… without giving too much away, what can fans expect?

They can expect songs from ‘the minutes’, ‘Hometime’, YAZOO, ‘Alf’ and maybe ‘Raindancing’. But on all of the tracks, there’s going to be screens, it’s going to be me and one other who will be John Garden. He’s going to be my computer whizz kid and playing live. It’s going to be programmed but I haven’t decided if I’m going to have a backing singer yet, I don’t know. It’s going to be like a minimal set-up but all electronic.

So no jazz covers?

No jazz covers! *laughs*

Has that been a bit of a millstone round your neck?

What you’ve got to understand with me is that I’m an artist… I use that word advisedly because some people won’t even know that.

There’s a great assumption that when you’re the female counterpart, that the creativity always comes from the man. It’s always the case! I wrote half of the YAZOO songs… even ‘Don’t Go’, the melody that was sung was very different from the one that was presented to me.

And you only have to compare YAZOO to ERASURE to see the colours within that to see what influence I had on YAZOO to what Andy Bell has in ERASURE. Different bands y’know!

But I’m also an instrumentalist and my voice is my instrument. There are certain songs that as an instrumentalist, I want to sing, that I want to try myself out on that I would never write. Jazz is another matter! Jazz is a format that I don’t like! I’ve never been interested in jazz, I don’t consider Bille Holiday jazz, I consider her as pop music of that era.

Now when I released ‘That Ole Devil Called Love’, that was a time when ‘Alf’ had gone triple platinum in the UK and they wanted to pull a fourth single off… because my fans are going to buy that and have already bought it, I’m not going to have them buying it again! So I said “if you want to put another single out, why don’t we do this track I do live?”

What you have to remember about ‘That Ole Devil Called Love’ at the time was that none of that sort of music was played on the radio and there was none on the television. The acts that recorded that stuff were not in the music shops, only in specialist places… they were not high profile. In fact, it was quite a risky move to make.

Consequently, it was my biggest selling single and all the record companies that had the real deal, the proper acts that did that sh*t better than me released all of their records and they end up all over the adverts, on the telly and there came a big revival. It looks it retrospect like I’ve done a very safe thing. So what has been a mill around my neck is that one little thing, that actually for the time was quite leftfield, has ended up being quite mainstream and people think of me as a jazz singer when I don’t listen to jazz, I don’t own jazz records and that’s it!

Was that the same circumstances when you released ‘Love Letters’ after the success of ‘Raindancing’?

‘Love Letters’ was me shooting myself in the foot! That was me being a show-off! That was me showing I had an A&R thing…”oh, I know what a hit is”! I did that twice, I did it with that and with ‘Weak In The Presence Of Beauty’! Two times that I recorded songs knowing they were hits, as opposed to the fact I loved them! I say that honestly, that’s the only time I’ve ever recorded anything cynically!

Of course, all this reaccquaintance with all things synthetic will remind people of YAZOO. Can you remember your initial reaction to Vince Clarke replying to your “blues musicians wanted” small ad?

I’ve known Vince since he was 11 so we both went to Saturday morning music school at Laindon High Road School. I was also in the same form class as Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher at school plus Perry Bamonte who later joined THE CURE. And then I went to college with Dave Gahan. So I knew all of the Depeche Boys much better than Vince who I knew by face… we were on nodding terms.

Out of all of us, I was the first person to play live in bands. So they already knew what I sounded like. Vince was looking for my number anyway and it was a coincidence that he picked up on the ad… it was serendipity.

So I had that kind of funny mixed feeling because me and Dave had been punks while Vince, Fletch and Martin were what we called Godbotherers at the Christian camp. But when punk started dissolving and the New Romantics started to take shape, I was appalled! I believed in my naïve 16 year old way in the ethics of punk and how we didn’t care about ownership, beautification and acceptance. Suddenly, all these people were buying poncy clothes and it was the opposite. So that’s when I ended up going toward Canvey Island and hanging out with DR FEELGOOD because that had far more of a punk ethic that this kind of thing.

What did you think when DEPECHE MODE started happening?

I’ve known these boys since when they were children and seen them right up to the month before in ordinary clothes. So when they all got Depeche away, my first thought was “what the f***?”! But that is also balanced with “oh how interesting” and “fair play, you got it away”! All that kind of stuff!

Interestingly, Vince’s album with Depeche, I didn’t like it whereas the darker stuff later, Martin’s writing… later Depeche appealed to me more than early Depeche.

So when Vince asked me to do it, I was really excited to be even able to sing into a tape recorder and thought “great, I’m going to have a demo now”. So I didn’t think anything of it or that it was going anywhere. I got a phone call a week later saying “let’s record it”; we recorded it and they said “let’s do an album, have you got any songs?”. It was bizarre, he just did what he was doing, I still did what I was doing and sung the way that I sang. We did it together. I was singing over his chords or he was arranging over my chords and we didn’t have any discussions about what we were making. We just did our own thing in the same musical collective.

In YAZOO, you and Vince mostly wrote songs individually?

Yes, we only co-wrote twice… one being ‘Situation’, the other being ‘The Other Side Of Love’ which is probably our weakest moment! I dislike it, it’s my skipper!

Is that why it never appeared on the ‘Only Yazoo’ best of compilation or got played live on the ‘Reconnected’ tour?

Yes, it’s hateful, I think it’s horrible!

On a similar subject, ‘Happy People’ from ‘You & Me Both’ is not exactly Vince’s finest moment… is that why you didn’t sing on it?

I completely forgot about ‘Happy People’… I’d wiped that out! *laughs*

That could have been the beginning of the end for us… in fact, no it wasn’t because Vince had already decided to leave. ‘Happy People’, I just tried singing it a couple of ways and I just hit him with “I can’t do this, you want it sung, you sing it yourself mate!”… so he sang it himself, fair play to him. And funnily enough, it was a massive hit in Poland!

‘Happy People’ does have a strange cult following, I’ve never understood it!

I think it is improved by him singing on it, because you don’t have to be a singer on that track. Him doing it with that real Basildon accent in check, there’s something more interesting about it. It’s not a good song and Vince has written some great songs, but that was not it! It had something that obviously struck people that came from him… if I’d had sung it, I don’t think it would have been lifted at all.

Did Vince ever tell you what ‘Happy People’ was about?

Nah! I don’t think Vince was very obtuse, d’ya know what I mean? I don’t mean that in a rude way, we were young and when you’re young, you don’t try to explain something if you’ve got something to hide… I don’t know what he was trying to hide! *laughs*

Electronic blues was quite an unusual template back then… what were your YAZOO highlights artistically?

For me personally, it would have been ‘Ode To Boy’ and ‘Winter Kills’ because they were obviously songs I wrote on my own and the arrangements didn’t take away from what I’d written. They were intact. In fairness, all of the songs we wrote were intact but I relate to those two more as an artist maybe than I would do to some of the others that some of the other things that I wrote that are of a time. They resonate more truly in my current state.

When YAZOO ended in 1983, much was expected of your solo career. Can you remember the sort of pressure you were put under?

There was no pressure other than the fact that I wanted to carry on working. So there was a big bidding war that was going on and it came down to between Columbia and Virgin. Virgin were actually offering me a lot more but Columbia had Janis Joplin which impressed me and also they had tidy offices! As someone who has ADHD and is panicked by my own lack of organisation, I feel safer around tidy people. And that swung it more to me bizarrely *chuckles*

What was being on a major record label like after the indie family atmosphere at Mute?

The first thing they said was “what kind of a record do you want to make?”… dunno, I’d never thought like that, I hadn’t intended to make records in the first place, I was a live act. And then they introduced me to Tony Swain and Steve Jolley and I said “yes” to the first people who came along as I didn’t want to meet lots of people.

As it transpired, they were really nice fellas. They were working on SPANDAU BALLET and came round my house, on the first day we wrote ‘All Cried Out’ in about 10 minutes. It was really easy and there was no pressure, just left to your own devices.

We recorded it and but the first time I noticed there was a problem when I’d written a song on my own. Then you’re suddenly aware that it becomes about publishing, all those kind of things which I’d never thought about. Before, it was always about the project; I wasn’t thinking about who would make more money from what and I suddenly realised they weren’t going to let me do record it and the record company weren’t supporting me in that. That’s when I first noticed there was some differences going on.

Had remaining at Mute as a solo artist ever been an option?

It had been an option but I tell you where I had the problem with it. Everyone at Mute had been Vince’s contacts. There were only three people working at Mute at the time and all the communication was via Vince so I had no relationship with anyone. So when Vince split YAZOO up, I was very much on the outside, not through lack of care but because they had the relationship with him. I think Daniel Miller cared very much but he’s not a verbose person, neither of us were great talkers!

And it got to that point that Depeche are there, now Vince is there as a solo act… we’d already gone in there before and I’d felt the animosity from Depeche, there was a bit of frisson going on between them… y’know, all school boy stuff, completely understandable. Nothing malicious, just competitiveness and I thought “There’s going to be a third one! Vince is not in a good place with me, I’m not in a good place with him. I stay, there’s going to be three acts at loggerheads with one another! It just doesn’t feel right!”. So I chose to leave and I did regret that!

You teamed up with EURYTHMICS’ Dave Stewart to write ‘Is This Love?’, how did that come about?

I was in America recording with Jimmy Iovine who’s mates with Dave Stewart. I was also working with David Freeman who was published by Dave Stewart. Dave was in America and just said “shall we do some writing?”; he came up with a little track and melody idea that I went away and wrote words to. I don’t know whether he had issues about whether Annie Lennox or his record company wouldn’t like it but he wanted to do it under a pseudonym.

He told me he wanted to be named Jean Guiot so I said fine and then it was quite funny because that came out the same time as ‘Thorn In My Side’ and ‘Is This Love?’ did better! He then never told me he waited to claim it so I did an interview with someone who said “you co-wrote this with Dave Stewart”, I said “no!” and the interviewer said “You liar, I’m mates with Dave Stewart!” and I thought “You f***er, you’re the one who told me I had to use a pseudonym because your publisher would have problems with it!” !*laughs*

When the first ERASURE single Who Needs Love Like That? came out, I thought it was an unreleased YAZOO song…

Oh did you? *laughs*

What did you think when you first heard it and how did you feel about Vince recruiting a vocalist who initially had a very similar voice to you?

I can’t remember what I thought of it, but Andy could obviously sing and Vince was doing what he always did… I’m sure that I would have felt resentful at the time! I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t have done because I didn’t want YAZOO to spilt up, I didn’t like being replaced, any of that kind of stuff! It’s probably one of my preferred ERASURE tracks; they are more naturally poppy than something I would gravitate towards, but you can hear the craftsmanship in it.

Is it true you and ERASURE had tried to record a duet version of ‘This House’?

No, I sent them the song and asked if they wanted to do it. They came over and I think Andy didn’t want to do it because Vince really loved that song. But it’s not a song for duetting, it’s a loner’s song.

The ‘Reconnected’ tour in 2008 and the Mute Short Circuit show in 2011 was your chance to deal with some unfinished business with YAZOO. Thinking back now, have you seen it as a worthwhile experience personally?

Oh, I loved it, loved it, loved it! I had a brilliant time! On a personal level, Vince and I connected in a way we never did before. I actually found out he was funny and he found out I wasn’t an axe murderer, d’ya what I mean?

There was these kind of things that you discover about yourself when you’re more relaxed and you’re not carrying all the weight of the darkness he felt after leaving Depeche, the darkness that I felt about being thrown into the spotlight and feeling quite alone with it because Vince had already removed himself; I was very much on my own with no-one to mitigate it. It was a dark place for both of us but the reunion was wonderful because we were both in happy places and didn’t see each other as the cause of our misery.

Was the Mute Short Circuit set the curtain call for YAZOO?

Never say never but I would say I doubt it would happen again… that’s not I would not do it again. That’s more to do with the fact that Vince was married to DEPECHE MODE, he’s married to ERASURE and I’m like that transitional relationship. So it’s almost like when he comes back to perform with me, it’s a bit like kinda having a shag for old times sake and that doesn’t really work when you’re married! *laughs*

Of course, me and Vince have never been biblical, it’s obviously a metaphor! But it’s that kind of thing! Were I Andy, I would not want my musical partner to go and get too involved with an ex! That’s how he might take it but that’s not from conversations I’ve had with him but Andy is Vince’s singer which is why Vince could do the VCMG project with Martin Gore, he’s not replacing him with someone else.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its grateful thanks to Alison Moyet

Special thanks to Duncan Clark and Rhianon Davies at 9PR

‘the minutes’ is released as a CD, red vinyl LP and download by Cooking Vinyl.

http://alisonmoyet.com/

http://www.facebook.com/AlisonMoyet

https://twitter.com/AlisonMoyet1

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
10th June 2013

ALISON MOYET the minutes

30 April 2013 /

Up until 2008, for many fans of electronic music, Alison Moyet had completely disappeared off of the radar. But it was the re-connecting with Vince Clarke and accompanying tour of YAZOO material that helped vividly remind how an act had helped shaped the future of female-fronted synthetic music.

The tour, with it’s stripped back to (electronic) basics of Clarke’s laptop and controller keyboards could be seen to have re-energised Moyet’s interest in synthesizer-based production. The artist herself though has denied this, saying that it was a desire to work with “a more unpredictable palette” rather than the more “generic” approach of traditional production values.

With this, her eighth album, there is a real sense of creative freedom and from recent interviews with Moyet, a feeling that she was tired of succumbing to record company pressure to fit a demographic/stereotype that was no longer comfortable to her.

‘the minutes’ is a collaboration with Guy Sigsworth, a producer/musician with an enviable production and songwriting CV including Robyn, Seal, Bjork and Madonna. The album itself, however, isn’t a full-on return to the totally electronic pastures of YAZOO – there are guitar textures and more traditional sounds at work here (Sigsworth also worked extensively with Alanis Morissette), but the framework/backbone of the tracks is resolutely electronic.

Followers of Moyet will already have an idea of what to expect as two tracks from the album were previewed prior to its release, the first ‘Changeling’ as a free download and then the lead-off single ‘When I Was Your Girl’. The former gives a feel for the style and atmosphere of the album – ‘Changeling’ being a very twitchy, yet dynamic production, from a guitar-led intro moving into dubstep-influenced drum/synth programming, yet ‘When I Was Your Girl’ showcases a much more conventional pop-rock sound, which in the context of the album makes it stick out slightly from the rest of its companion songs.

However, both tracks are shot through with the kind of dark, nostalgic lyrics we have come to expect from Moyet and the yearning vocal on the latter could quite easily be seen as an older sister to ‘Nobody’s Diary’, whilst ‘Changeling’ mourns both a loss of innocence and expresses dissatisfaction with modern life and it’s multitude of pressures.

What initially strikes about the album is that as well as crafting a credible musical landscape with a pop sensibility, Sigsworth has coaxed an incredible dynamic range out of Moyet from the soft, ambient vocal textures on the opener ‘Horizon Flame’ to the more strident/familiar stylings of ‘When I Was Your Girl’. With ‘Apple Kisses’ there is a fantastic mix of jazz-inflected vocals and octaved electronics, the track is also not ashamed to showcase and celebrate its’ melodies with a climatic musical outro.

This track leads into one of the most overtly synthetic tracks on the album: ‘Right As Rain’ with its house 4-4 kick/stabs and fidgety elastic bassline. There are almost echoes of EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL here with the opening vibe of the track, but again the musical palette is rich with plenty of twists and turns to prevent the track turning into generic dance-floor fodder. ‘Love Reign Supreme’ gently dips its toes into Drum n Bass territory but on Moyet’s terms… with a dynamic ebbing and flowing feel, light, compressed verse drums giving way to a full-on contemporary-sounding chorus.

‘All Signs of Life’ takes things one step further, after a gentle, floating introduction, the song kicks into life with an overall sound that wouldn’t be out of place on either a NETSKY or a LONDON ELEKTRICITY song with anthemic stabbing synths, half-time drums and (finally) 175 bpm outro kick/snare interplay. ‘Filigree’ is probably the most YAZOO-sounding of all of the tracks on show here, a slow-paced but lush song with beautiful, warm monophonic analogue synths.

Orchestral string flourishes take the track to another level as Moyet’s wordplay paints a strange, otherworldly picture with the “I fell into a cinema” line… one wonders how the fans of Moyet’s more traditional work will accept this album as it’s light years away from the point she got to with 2007’s ‘The Turn’, yet the feeling is that most will embrace it as a tremendous return to form and applaud her decision to follow this sound and direction.

With ‘the minutes’ and the partnership with Guy Sigsworth, Moyet has seemingly found her muse in the way that electro-pioneer John Foxx did with Benge – cultivating an album which doesn’t feel forced or panders to any particular musical movement, yet still sounds modern. In summary the album is a triumph, making it must have come with risks, yet they are ones which many fans would have wished Moyet had taken earlier, the opening lyric “Suddenly the landscape has changed…” an entirely appropriate way to kickstart the rebirth of one of this country’s finest female artists.

Special thanks to Duncan Clark and Rhianon Davies at 9PR

‘the minutes’ is released as a CD and download by Cooking Vinyl on 6th May 2013

Alison Moyet’s UK and Irish 2013 tour includes:

Cork Opera House (30th September), Belfast Waterfront Hall (1st October), Dublin Olympia Theatre (2nd October), Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (4th October), Edinburgh Usher Hall (5th October), Gateshead The Sage (6th October), Sheffield City Hall (8th October), Rhyl Pavilion Theatre (9th October), Coventry Warwick Arts Centre (10th October), Northampton Derngate Theatre (12 October), Ipswich Regents Theatre (13th October), London Royal Festival Hall (15 October), Cambridge Corn Exchange (16th October), Folkestone Leas Cliff Hall (17th October), Bristol Colston Hall (19th October), Cardiff St. David’s Hall (20th October), Brighton The Dome (21st October), York Barbican Theatre (23rd October), Salford The Lowry (24th October), Liverpool Philharmonic Hall (25th October), Nottingham Royal Centre (27th October), Birmingham Symphony Hall (28th October), Southend Cliffs Pavilion (29th October), Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre (31st October)

http://www.alisonmoyet.com

http://www.facebook.com/AlisonMoyet

https://twitter.com/alisonmoyetnews

Text by Paul Boddy
30th April 2013

Lost Albums: ROBERT MARLOW The Peter Pan Effect

7 May 2012 /

Robert Marlow’s ‘The Peter Pan Effect’ is a true lost album.

Recorded between 1982 to 1984, although four singles were released via his best mate Vince Clarke’s imprint Reset Records, parent label RCA declined to release the album.

It did not actually see the light of day until 1999 when Swedish electronic label Energy Rekords, whose roster included VNV NATION, S.P.O.C.K and ELEGANT MACHINERY, picked it up.

Often seen as a Vince Clarke curio recorded in the interim between YAZOO and ERASURE, the songs on ‘The Peter Pan Effect ‘were wholly written by Marlow with Clarke at the producer’s helm along with EC Radcliffe who worked on YAZOO’s ‘Upstairs At Eric’s’ and was the ‘Eric’ of the album’s title. Listening back, the end result is a charming collection of HI-NRG synthpop, almost like FAD GADGET on Prozac!

‘The Face of Dorian Gray’ is the track familiar to most, possessing that early monophonic ultrapop quality which featured so highly on Vince Clarke’s work as part of DEPECHE MODE and YAZOO. ‘Calling All Destroyers’ is another quirkily jaunty single but one track from the sessions that is also worthy of mention is the extended version of ‘No Heart’, the B-side of ‘I Just Want To Dance’ much acclaimed by electronic music enthusiasts around the world, which comes over like a pulsing take on ‘Fade To Grey’.

But who better to discuss ‘The Peter Pan Effect’ than the man himself. ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK caught up with Robert Marlow to chat about his cult classic.

How did you meet Vince Clarke and become involved in the Basildon music scene?

I met him when we were 8 years old at the Boys Brigade, we both shared a good friendship and a common interest in music.

He was having violin lessons, I was learning to play the piano and we both picked up the guitar. So that was how we got together doing music.

We diverged later in our teens when he went off to college and I got involved with Alison Moyet who invited me… well she bullied me into playing a gig with her band THE VANDALS in Southend. I got into that for a while and it was from there that the music bug gripped *laughs*

Meanwhile, Vince was doing more mellow acoustic things and we got together in a band later on called THE PLAN. He played guitar and I bought the first synthesizer in Basildon, an old Korg 700 on hire purchase…it made these really beautiful sounds and it was then that Vince got into synths and bought one himself. He went on to form COMPOSITION OF SOUND which as we know is the early incarnation of DEPECHE MODE. For a while, we were in two rival bands, there was COMPOSITION OF SOUND while I had a band called FRENCH LOOK and we both shared the very talented Martin Gore on keyboards!

What were the circumstances leading to you recording with him?

After Vince left DEPECHE MODE and was in the middle of the YAZOO project, I tapped him on the shoulder and said “I’ve got some songs, can you give me a day in the studio?” and he went “No, it’s very expensive… I can’t do it” and I was “Please! Please!” Eventually, we did one day and we recorded The Face Of Dorian Gray which actually then went on for about 3 to 4 weeks… after we spent all that time, Vince said “it seems daft just to do a demo, let’s get it released”. I was made up and we found RCA who decided to licence Vince’s own label Reset Records and that was it. What happened was four singles and the recording of ‘The Peter Pan Effect’ album.

What instruments and synths were you using?

I was very excited to use the LinnDrum Mk2 and there was a DX7 which was kind of the birth of digital. We also used the RSF Kobol, Sequential Pro-One, Minimoog and most excitingly, the Fairlight! We didn’t actually use the Fairlight that much because in those days, the samples were appalling… they were very short and you had to EQ them up to the hilt to get a discernable sound. On ‘The Peter Pan Effect’, you can hear it in a couple of songs just as effects more than anything else.

What was the creative dynamic between you and Vince with regards arrangements and production?

I did all of the music and melodies but I was rubbish at programming… Vince was a programming genius. In those days, we were working on a Roland MC4 Micro-composer which you had to programme in step times of 12, 24 and 48s… my maths was appalling but Vince was very quick at it. I used to say “I want it to sound like this…da-dah-dah”, and he would get it very quickly.

It was very time consuming so we did a lot of programming at his house beforehand and go to Eric Radcliffe’s home studio in Dartford. Then we took it into the studio at Blackwing but then Vince and Eric formed their own company within Blackwing and another studio was built in the drum store called Splendid studios and that’s where the rest of the album was finished.

‘The Face Of Dorian Gray’ should have been a hit. Any thoughts in hindsight as to why it wasn’t?

Well, in many respects I do think RCA at the time thought that they were getting Vince Clarke rather than his record company. So they thought merely his name could sell the record itself as he was so successful in DEPECHE MODE, YAZOO and THE ASSEMBLY. So their publicity machine wasn’t really up to full whack. In those days, you had to get three radio plays a day on Radio 1 and sometimes I was getting one or two so it did get some airplay but who knows… maybe it just wasn’t good enough, that’s the thing!

You got on perform in on Channel 4’s Switch. Can you remember much about it?

It was my first TV, it was a live show filmed out in Bushey! I was on the same bill as ANIMAL NIGHTLIFE and Elvis Costello! It was a long, long day and I thought: “this is not glamourous at all!”. We were just sitting around. I remember we had a big backdrop made of the Dorian Gray single cover and some slides made up of me getting older using make-up. Anyway, when I went and did the first rehearsal, it was just me singing to taped backing, this voice from the gallery went: “Is that all he does?”… it was the director! *laughs*

During the performance, I was all over the place doing this weird dancing to look more animated and the slide show went a bit weird. It was all quite exciting because afterwards, we went by fast car to the West End of London to play a gig at a club in Mayfair called The Titanic Club!!! *laughs*

It was a weird club, they had almost early electronic house music in the DJ sets and had someone on stage doing spot welding…it was very performance art!

‘Crying For The Moon’ almost has a SILICON TEENS vibe to it like an electro-‘Great Balls Of Fire’…

It is, that was exactly what I wanted… the riff is almost Eddie Cochran, very SILICON TEENS! I wanted that cod, camp Rock ‘n’ Roll feel to it with synths. It was good.

Do you think ‘Claudette’ musically may have sounded too much like THE ASSEMBLY’s ‘Never Never’?

It did, it has a similar chord construction but it was recorded before ‘Never Never’. I’m certainly no Fergal Sharkey and that’s why when the single came out, we used cellos and made it different. It’s a shame but I don’t know the masters for that are!

Photo by Brian Hedges

How was it working with Eric Radcliffe in the studio?

Lovely, very talented. I was so pleased to be working with him as he was instrumental in the career of FAD GADGET who I worshipped.

Eric reminded me a lot of Charlie Drake and had a real “can do” mentality. He did a lot of the drum programming on ‘The Peter Pan Effect’, he was a very accomplished rock musician who played guitar, bass and banjo!

What was the relationship with RCA like because they eventually passed on the album?

I was not particularly involved in dealing with RCA as we had a label manager and she did a lot of negotiation. I think Vince and everyone else involved were trying to keep that from me that they were losing interest. So the first thing I heard about it was when Vince came down to see me and said: “RCA are withdrawing but we’re going to go with Sonet”. Sonet licensed ‘Calling All Destroyers’ and ‘Claudette’ so there wasn’t a big difference but we didn’t have the power of RCA. But we didn’t get the airplay.

It was disappointing that the album didn’t come out. But when you work on a project like that, you can’t see the logic when you think of the cost in studio time and all of that. It wasn’t a big production compared with other artists. Just stick it out… if it sells, it sells; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t! To sit on the shelf, it just didn’t make any sense. Contractual issues stopped us from putting it out ourselves at the time but I wasn’t very good at following things up like that so I accepted it and calmly dropped out of the music scene.

Was there ever any talk of you and Vince working in a more permanent set-up, or even joining what was to become ERASURE?

No, I’ll be honest with you… Vince is my best friend and I love him dearly but he has a particular way of wanting things done and is very, very driven. And it’s different to what I want. So although I’m very proud of ‘The Peter Pan Effect’ and all the music I did with Vince, perhaps if he wasn’t Vince, it would be a different sound. At times, it did get a little fraught, nothing terrible but some frustrations now and then. So I don’t think it was ever on the cards for us to work that way.

How did the arrangement with Energy Rekords in Sweden come about to finally release the album in 1999?

Vince and I’s publisher was a real Rock ‘N’ Roll character named Rob Buckle who ran Sonet Records who were based in Sweden. It was a subsidiary of a blues label for people like Muddy Waters. He got in touch with me and said “I’ve been to a music fair and there’s this small label who want to put the album out” and I was made up. But our relationship with Energy didn’t really kick off, I think there were some language differences so we didn’t do anything more. But it was great to have the album remastered at Polar Studios where ABBA had worked and going over there to play the Helsingborg Festival and a small tour of Scandinavia later that year. I still go over to Sweden two or three times a year, I was there last week in Malmo.

How was the reaction to the album?

I was amazed because the album has never sold massive amounts but having the played that festival gig on the eve of the album coming out in Helsingborg, there was about 500 people there and they knew all the words! Not just the singles but the album tracks as well. I don’t know how, maybe it had been going backwards and forwards as a bootleg on cassette or something…but these kids weren’t born when the album was recorded so I was really, really gobsmacked to have such a reaction. It’s been like that since… every time I get p*ssed off and I think “I’m a 50 year old bloke, what am I doing this for?”, there’s a gig like last week in Malmo or Berlin or Budapest. You’re making people happy and that’s the thing.

What are you up to now musically?

For the past 10 years, I’ve been in a partnership with my friend Gary Durant in a project called MARLOW. Unfortunately, pressures of work and musical differences have led to us to part ways which is a shame as we have an album’s worth of material ready to go. We may actually release it at some point, probably on Electro-Shock records but we want a rest from it. We’ll see where the land lies and possibly it may see release next year.

You recorded the album between 1982 and 1984. Listening back to the album, what were your favourite tracks at the time and which do you think truly stand up today?

I’ve always liked ‘That Dangerous Age’, the sound on it is good and ‘The Kiss’ because it was quite dramatic and intense…that was my best vocal performance. Yes, it’s an album recorded in 1982-83 and it will sound like early ERASURE, YAZOO, DEPECHE MODE because it’s the same synths being used. But it is definitely my album, I wrote all of the music and Vince added his bits so it would be ungenerous to say he didn’t add his musical bent to it. He put the sounds on it and made it was it is. I’m very proud of it and I think it’s great.

What’s the funniest story you can tell us involving you and Vince?

There’s one that doesn’t particularly involve me but one that happened during the time I worked with Vince but he was still working with Alison Moyet in YAZOO… they was driving backwards and forwards from the studio back to Basildon. His and Alison’s relationship was going its course and on the way back from London, they were in the Dartford tunnel and he ran out of petrol which she was not best pleased about!! *laughs*

So he had to walk through the Dartford tunnel to get petrol! Bearing in mind he’s been on Top Of The Pops two nights before, I was saying to him “surely you had money to get enough petrol?” That always amused me, the idea of him struggling through the Dartford Tunnel leaving Alison fuming in the car! *laughs*

And on the 12 inch version of ‘The Face Of Dorian Gray’, there’s a bit where we decided to physically whistle the tune. So that involved me and Vince in studio, and Eric running from the control room to join us at the mike after he hit record.

We lined it all up to go as everything had to be done in one take. But we unplugged his headphones, so when Eric came in and started whistling, he couldn’t hear a thing and we cracked up… you can hear us laughing on the record!

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Robert Marlow

Special thanks to Deb Danahay

‘The Peter Pan Effect’ was released by Energy Rekords as a CD

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marlow/108723069219508

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Robert+Marlow

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
7th May 2012

DEB DANAHAY Interview

8 March 2012 /

Photo courtesy of Deb Danahay

This UK May Day Bank Holiday weekend sees a gathering of the masses taking place…

DEPECHE MODE fans from all over the world will gather in Basildon, Essex between Friday 4th to Saturday 5th May 2012 to celebrate the legacy of the town’s biggest musical export but also the region’s electronic music scene which had its own hub in the shape of Southend’s Croc’s club.

Together with other ‘Some Bizzare Album’ contributors SOFT CELL, THE THE and B-MOVIE, DEPECHE MODE became part of an emergent scene that was to have a long lasting impact on pop, electronica, alternative, industrial and beyond with artists as diverse as DAVID GRAY (who covered SOFT CELL’s ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’), MANIC STREET PREACHERS (who covered THE THE’s ‘This Is The Day’), RAMMSTEIN (who covered DM’s ‘Stripped’) and DIDO (whose song ‘Here With Me’ was co-written by B-MOVIE’s Paul Statham)!

But the biggest coup has been the announcement that BLANCMANGE will be headlining. Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe opened side two of the Some Bizarre Album with the instrumental ‘Sad Day’ and later supported DEPECHE MODE. Remaining friends in particular with Vince Clarke, the duo had their own success with the albums ‘Happy Families’ and ‘Mange Tout’ while they made their return last year with ‘Blanc Burn’ and a series of well received live dates.

The Saturday afternoon will host an exhibition of DEPECHE MODE memorabilia at The James Hornsby School in Laindon which Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher and Alison Moyet once attended. It also hosted one of DEPECHE MODE’s first gigs with the original line-up of Vince Clarke, Andy Fletcher, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore; a plaque at the school proudly commemoratives that occasion.

Curator Deb Danahay is a well known member of the DEPECHE MODE family having founded the band’s fan club with Jo Gahan.

As Vince Clarke’s girlfriend, Deb experienced at first hand the trials and tribulations of a group of young men fusing the sound of the synthesizer to a new ultrapop template.

Photo by Deb Danahay

Signing to Mute Records, they released their debut album ‘Speak & Spell’ in Autumn 1981 but there was then the shock announcement that Vince Clarke would be leaving the band to form YAZOO with blues singer Alison Moyet!

With the transformation from synth boy band into something much darker and sinister, DEPECHE MODE were very much a product of their surroundings, a development provoked by the conservatism of their new town birthplace and the gifted opportunity to suddenly see the world.

Despite their inventiveness, DEPECHE MODE garnered a negative reaction from the British music press but found a more positive response abroad. Their stark industrialised experimentation and filmic qualities eventually conquered the arenas of Europe and then the stadiums of America with albums such as ‘Music For The Masses’, ‘Violator’ and ‘Songs Of Faith Of Devotion’.

Deb Danahay kindly spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK and reminisced on her time within the DEPECHE MODE camp.

What was the original catalyst for holding a DM fan event in Basildon?

I joined Facebook and started having lots of European fans get in touch with me… they’d read the book ‘Stripped’ by Jonathan Miller and I’m the only Deb Danahay in the world as far as I know, so it was easy to get hold of me *laughs*

They started posting up photos and someone sent me a video of The Masses, a DM event in Hamburg… I thought it was a gig, but there were all these fans waving their hands to a DJ! It blew me away that people went to evenings that were purely DEPECHE MODE music all night long. I was invited to go over to Berlin with Robert Marlow which was really surreal that they wanted me to go over. That’s when I realised this was quite a big thing.

Photo by Deb Danahay

So how was the first event in 2011 received? Where were people making the journey from?

There were a lot of Germans, some Swiss, Swedes, Romanians, and Italians… they were so lovely and happy to be together to party and be in Basildon.

What have you included this time round to make it even more of an occasion?

There’s going to be a Bus Tour visiting all of the special places that the European fans who come over to Basildon on their own steam would visit… to them, it’s like Liverpool with THE BEATLES. So included are the band members’ childhood homes, schools etc.

We’re using the tour bus that YAZOO used for their ‘Reconnected’ Tour so that’s quite exciting in itself. There’s going to be a film that people can watch on the bus and then they visit the relevant places, take pictures and meet people who were important to DEPECHE MODE in the early years. These people will tell their stories and chat to fans.

For the bands have you chosen to play, what selection criteria have you used?

Mainly, they have a DEPECHE MODE / YAZOO / Basildon connection or they’re people that we know. Although in the case of one band MODOVAR, the singer Chris used to write to the YAZOO fan club – which I used to run back in the day! *laughs*

Photo by Deb Danahay

You have BLANCMANGE headlining. So you and them both go back a long way?

Yes, BLANCMANGE supported DEPECHE MODE in 1981. Vince, Neil and Stephen were good friends, we went on holiday together so there was a camaraderie. I did lose touch with them but when they started touring again last year, I met up with them again. Neil’s really up it…

For those who are thinking about whether to come along or not, what sort of people is it likely to appeal to and what can they expect if they come?

It’s for people who appreciate electronic music and also, it’s a party as opposed to a festival really. There’s a club at the end of each evening after the bands. It’s for like minded people to socialise, appreciate live music and party! The DM devotees just love getting together at gigs and events. A welcoming friendly atmosphere is guaranteed.

What will the DJs be playing?

Electronica from the late 70s to present day. There’s a specialist DJ Dan Martin from Barcelona who will be playing purely DEPECHE MODE for the Saturday night club party.

You’ve mentioned YAZOO but will the other offshoot acts such as ERASURE and RECOIL also figure?

Yes of course – if that’s what the DJs like yourself choose to play! *laughs*

You’ve have a close connection with the DEPECHE MODE family, what was your first memory of them in those fledgling days?

I knew Dave first, we used to go to the same pubs and clubs… we were slaves to fashion and whatever was the latest trend at that time! Me and Dave were into the soul scene first. I remember we were at a party and being a good friend, he walked me home. He mentioned Vince, who I didn’t know then, had asked him to be lead singer of this band… Dave didn’t know what to do! So I said “go for it, there’s nothing to lose!” *laughs*

Vince was very astute, he’d asked Dave because Dave was popular and had a lot of friends who were part of the In Crowd. Vince, Martin and Fletch were part of a Christian Fellowship; that was their musical background. I then met Robert Marlow who was Vince’s best friend and then I met Vince through Rob.

Photo by Deb Danahay

Can you remember your first DEPECHE MODE gig?

The first time I saw them was at a party that I held at The Paddocks in Basildon, but they were called COMPOSITION OF SOUND then. I still have a Fanzine gig review of that performance – it can be seen at the Memorabilia Event.

Had you been interested in electronic music much at that point?

I was a Soul Girl initially – but was drawn to Giorgio Moroder through Donna Summer *laughs*

This led onto KRAFTWERK and ULTRAVOX then THE HUMAN LEAGUE, GARY NUMAN and OMD. Then of course, there was THE NORMAL, SILICON TEENS and FAD GADGET. I couldn’t believe it when I first got to know Daniel Miller, it was such a shock to find out he was THE NORMAL and THE SILICON TEENS!! I’d bought these records ages before… I thought THE SILICON TEENS were a proper group! I’m sure everyone else did! *laughs*

Did anyone have an inkling that something was going to happen with DEPECHE MODE?

NO! No one did! Vince was very driven and striving but he was on the dole! No-one within the band thought they would become big stars. The scene they were in around Crocs, everyone was just having a party *laughs*

On the 20th Century Box documentary narrated by Danny Baker, the boys can be seen rehearsing a song that was never actually released. Judging by the evidence on film, there’s probably a reason why that one has never come out! But in your opinion, was there an unreleased DEPECHE MODE song that was either played live or rehearsed which is perhaps a hidden jewel and should have been recorded?

There is ‘Television Set’ but that wasn’t written by any of the band and that’s why it was never got recorded.

One of the exhibits you’re going to have on the Saturday afternoon at James Hornsby School is to give fans the opportunities to hear some rare tracks and demos?

I had demos of Vince and Alison recorded at an 8 track in Vince’s flat. We have a unit so people can listen on headphones. This year we have special DEPECHE MODE demos and as BLANCMANGE are performing, I have a demo that BLANCMANGE and YAZOO recorded but was never released…

So ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ becomes a huge hit, ‘Speak & Spell’ has just been released and then Vince Clarke announces he’s leaving! What honestly did you think at the time?

Well, I was very much in love with Vince at that time, it didn’t matter what he did. I wasn’t surprised when he left, but not because of anything anyone did. It was just Vince, he didn’t like being tied down, or he didn’t then…

Of course, your loyalties were with Vince and YAZOO but were you worried for Martin, Dave and Fletch? What were relations like between the two camps at the time?

Things were fine, but obviously I remember feeling bad because they didn’t understand why. It was just Vince in himself. Socially, I used to meet the guys down the pub – part of the gang as normal – which speaks volumes of their characters doesn’t it?

Mute’s Daniel Miller has to be applauded for being a great mentor at this time…

His personality and character held everything together, he was just so balanced and level. I never saw him lose his patience or temper with anyone. He was a big motivator. Also, Mute itself then was tiny, it was really laid back and friendly.

‘Upstairs At Eric’s’ and ‘A Broken Frame’ came out within a few weeks of each other in Autumn 1982. With their 30th anniversaries coming up, how do you think these two albums stand up to scrutiny now?

They’re just brilliant of course! I’m very biased aren’t I? *laughs*

Photo by Deb Danahay

How do you think the core of DEPECHE MODE have managed to stay together all these years?

I think it’s because they have a deep friendship and Basildon people, we have this self-deprecating humour…I remember in the most recent DM book, 1983 support act Matt Fretton said he couldn’t understand how Dave, Martin and Fletch used to take the mickey out of each other… but I could understand that.

It’s a joke, not a personal thing, it’s not about having a go at someone, but he couldn’t see that. That’s the sort of thing that has kept them together. When you listen to them being interviewed, they’re still so down to earth.

So why do you think DEPECHE MODE have been the most successful act of the Synth Britannia generation, particularly in America where other acts from the era such as THE HUMAN LEAGUE, OMD, SIMPLE MINDS have had a couple of big hits but have been unable to maintain the kind of momentum which still sees DM play huge venues?

The feeling I get from the European fans is that DEPECHE MODE songs portray their lives. The lyrics in tracks like ‘Walking In My Shoes’ mean something emotionally to them. That’s why a lot of people are drawn to DEPECHE MODE, it’s about their lives, whether it’s being heartbroken or lonely through the years.

What do you think of the stuff that Vince Clarke and Martin Gore have recorded as VCMG?

I think it’s wonderful that they have connected again, but personally I’m not really into trancey disco, it’s not my cup of tea…

Your favourite DEPECHE MODE songs and album?

Wow! Too many to mention Chi! The ‘Speak & Spell’ era has got a great personal thing for me. ‘Big Muff’, I just love ‘Big Muff!’ and I love ‘Personal Jesus’. Anything that Johnny Cash covers has just got to be incredible…

Photo by Deb Danahay

What about any of Vince Clarke’s various projects?

I love all the early ERASURE catalogue like ‘Sometimes’ and ‘A Little Respect’ – but again to many to mention. THE ASSEMBLY with Feargal Sharkey, that was just amazing.

Vince did some work with the guys from WIRE which has just come out in a box set… DOME they were called – totally originally pieces of work…

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Deb Danahay

BAS II takes place on Friday 4th and Saturday 5th May 2012

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
8th March 2012

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