Soft Cell Talks the ‘Zeitgeist’ Coincidence of Releasing a ‘Danceteria’ Song the Same Year as Madonna
Billboard ·
Marc Almond reflects on Danceteria , the synth-pop duo’s final album after the loss of his bandmate David Ball.
“Bittersweet” is Marc Almond’s term for Danceteria, the sixth and final Soft Cell album which is out Friday (Sept. 25), 11 months after longtime partner David Ball passed away at the age of 66.
“It wasn’t a complete surprise, but I thought we still would’ve had more time together to see through this album, at least, and who knows what for the future,” Almond tells Billboard of Ball’s death, which came after years of extensive health issues. “I’d been in contact with him just two days before and we both ticked off the album and said how pleased we are with it, then two days later he passed away. So the album’s finally coming out, and I just wish Dave was around to enjoy it.”
Almond, 69, had an early chance to witness how Danceteria would be received on this summer’s Generations Tour with the Human League and Alison Moyet, during which he previewed three of its 14 songs, including the title track and the album-closing remake of Was (Not Was)’s “Out Come the Freaks” recorded with Nona Hendryx. The album was actually a couple of years in the making and originally planned to be released during the spring, but Ball’s health matters complicated those plans.
As far as Almond is concerned, Danceteria puts a cap on the Soft Cell story, which began during 1979 in Leeds, while he and Ball were attending Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Beckett University). They borrowed money from Ball’s mother to make a limited-edition EP called Mutant Moments and contributed a track to a Some Bizarre label compilation before the duo’s cover of Gloria Jones’ 1965 single “Tainted Love” hit No. 1 in 17 countries and for a time held a Guinness World Record for its 43-week stay on the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at No. 8 in 1982. Soft Cell released three albums before splitting up in 1984, then reunited from 2000-2005 and again from 2018 to Ball’s death. Ball also contributed to Almond’s solo efforts.
In conversation, Almond told us about how the Danceteria album came together and went down memory lane to talk about the New York scene of the ‘80s that inspired the duo’s final statement.
There must be considerable emotion, for obvious reasons, as you put Danceteria out.
It’s relief, to be quite honest. We started recording the album heading on two years ago now. It’s been an on-and-off process, due to Dave’s health and various things, and of course him passing away last year. It held things back for quite a bit and came out later than we’d planned. I’d planned, alongside with Dave, to do a small tour around what would have been March this year, but of course all that didn’t happen.
You’ve said his passing wasn’t a surprise, but nevertheless…
I think it was a matter of timing. His health had been very bad for awhile, but he was really on an up, healthwise. We’d done the album. He was very positive about it. He was feeling better than he had been in awhile. He was looking forward to doing some dates in the U.K. What makes me most sad about everything is Soft Cell’s been getting a little bit of a renaissance recently, whether it’s through Danceteria or (2022’s) Happiness Not Included … there’s been a bit of an upsurge in interest. I would’ve loved for him to at least be able to enjoy that a little more.
Do you feel like that idea of mortality was on both of your minds in any way, and had an impact on the album?
I’m not too sure. I expected ( Happiness Not Included ) to be our last album, really. I didn’t think we’d get to make another. Then (Ball) had a really bad scare; he’d fallen and broken his back, which is what put him in a motorized chair most of the time. I didn’t think I was ever gonna get any music from him again, and then I got the music from him for this album and it was, “Hurray! I’ve got a file of music from Dave!” And it was really, really great. I was really happy and loved the music and felt infinitely inspired to start writing, as I always did when Dave sent me music. We were off again making another album that I never expected to make — but inside my heart, I think, I knew we wouldn’t make another.
Did that steer Danceteria lyrically at all? There is a song called “In Heaven (When I Dance With You).”
It did, really. I really thought the music he sent me was much more uplifting than the last album’s music, which we wrote and recorded all the way through COVID, in lockdown, swapping files and things. That album had a different attitude to it; it was a little downbeat at times, a little cynical and angry. It reflected the mood of the times. It was good to get a lot of music from him this time that felt more uplifting. And immediately I thought back to a track I did on Happiness Not Included called “Polaroid,” which was about going to meet Andy Warhol in 1982 at the Factory (in New York). And then I thought back to that period of time, which was such an amazing time for Soft Cell in New York. We recorded our first three albums there, so I wanted to go back to that time and write a love letter to New York at that time, our experience of being in the U.S.A., as well as about Soft Cell. I thought if this was going to be the last album, it ties things up and comes around full circle.
So for sure this is the last Soft Cell album?
We have a live album that might come out, but there will never be another album of new Soft Cell material. I’ve got a file of some great music he left me for my solo stuff that we were working on together, so at some point more Dave Ball songs will come out, co-written with me. But it won’t be Soft Cell. I just can’t make a Soft Cell record without Dave Ball being in this world. So as far as Soft Cell, new music, this is it.
What kind of memories do you have of Soft Cell in New York 40-plus years ago?
It was so exciting for us, what New York was like in the early ‘80s, which was a pretty chaotic, somewhat dangerous place. But we just loved it; we were so inspired. It really set us free as musicians, and as people. We’d had a huge hit in England with “Tainted Love,” an enormous hit, and Mike (Thome), who produced the track, said, “I don’t want to do the (album) in London. I want to record in New York,” and we thought, “Great! Amazing!” The record company wanted us to be pop stars and carry on the “Tainted Love” torch, and we were two belligerent art students. We still thought of ourselves as an underground band, a cult band, and we were influenced by bands like Suicide and people like that, New York punk and Andy Warhol, John Waters, all these things we really loved. So when we were in New York and not under the watchful eye of our record company, we had a great sense of freedom to grow. And we were introduced very quickly to the New York nightlife.
Sounds like trouble…
[Laughs] I think on the first day or second day I was taken to Studio 54, which in those days was the dying days of Studio 54. It was just hanging in there. Then we got taken to another club, this place called Danceteria. To me, I felt like I’d come home; there was different music on each floor, playing Latin, salsa, punk, all kinds of eclectic music. There was video work going on. There was performance art going on. There was cabaret, very transgressive, out-there stuff. I’d found a place I always wanted to be, all my life. I made friends there, met people. It was great … but also a weird time for us. It was making us as a band or duo, whatever you want to call it, but it was also the beginning of the end of us.
How so?
It was the start of the separation of both of us, really, because we wanted to do different things, meet different people. We were great friends, we had loads of affection for each other, we had a lot in common. But we were like chalk and cheese, too. In New York we found our own groups of friends, our own people. Dave went on to stay with another producer guy, Phil Ramone, and went to stay with him. We worked together great and did those first three albums, but we finished before we thought we would, too.
Legend has it you saw Madonna’s first performance during that time.
Well, I remember a couple of appearances. There were so many performers coming on and off at the cabaret they did at Danceteria; Madonna came on and you could tell she was slicker than most. She had it more together than most of the acts that were coming on. And later I was having a party at a club called Tunnel — I think I was celebrating a birthday or something — and Madonna was performing with some dancers. I think she was doing “Everybody” or “Holiday,” “Into the Groove,” one of those early songs. Seymour Stein had just signed Soft Cell to Sire Records and I was standing with him and Seymour said to me, “This girl on the stage, I just signed her to Sire Records and she’s gonna be absolutely massive. You can’t believe how big she’s gonna be” – and when Seymour said somebody was gonna be massively big and enormous, you took him seriously. After the show Madonna came over and Seymour introduced me; I thought she was incredibly sweet and incredibly nice. We already had some mutual friends, but I didn’t know her apart from that. But I really was thrilled that I got to see her in those very early days.
Have you crossed paths since?
No, but I do know she has a track called “Danceteria” on her (latest) album. I think that’s great. It’s all in the zeitgeist. It’s all fantastic. She name-checks different people on hers than we name-check on ours, so it’s all a great thing. I don’t know whether she’s too aware of Soft Cell’s existence these days, although I think she’s aware of most things in the world, actually. She’s really clued up on everything. I don’t know whether she’s heard ours or not, but I’m a huge fan. I still think she’s great. All through the years I’ve really loved watching her. I feel in a lot of ways she’s like a David Bowie figure; the music is different, but the way she reinvents herself and has tuned into so many different things that are happening and producers and art people and video people is in that same kind of spirit (Bowie) had.
“Out Come the Freaks” here is inspired — and unexpected.
I used to DJ around ’81 in Leeds and I loved the mutant disco ZE Records was putting out around that time. “Out Come the Freaks” was a track I really loved and played then. When I started writing lyrics to Danceteria I wanted to imagine it was like a suite of songs in a way, a song cycle, taken from a nighttime in New York, 1982. So you’d be at the dance club Danceteria, go through this strange night and you’d end up in the darker parts of New York, this weird, kind of druggy no man’s land. Then you start the next day, “Wave to America,” with a couple of coffee and then you’d go back in the same cycle, ending up with “Out Come the Freaks.” It just came into my head; I thought it fit into Soft Cell world, just a great, amazing track. I love the whole vibe of it.
How did Nona Hendryx get on the track?
When I was playing “Out Come the Freaks” as a DJ, I was also playing “Bustin’ Out” by Nona Hendryx (with Material). I became friends with Nona, and her partner Vicki Wickham, who booked all the bands for the pop show Ready Steady Go! , was my manager for awhile. So when we decided to do “Out Come the Freaks” we thought it would be great to have (Hendryx) on there, too. I actually have a version, which I think they may release as an extra at some point, of Dave doing the whole vocal to “Out Come the Freaks”; on the record his voice is at the beginning and the end of the track. The very last thing you hear on Danceteria is Dave Ball’s voice singing “woodwork squeaks and out come from the freaks,” which was another nice, full-circle way to end things.
Will we be seeing more of Soft Cell live in the future?
We’re coming back to California in the autumn around the Darker Waves festival (Nov. 14 in Huntington Beach). The Generations Tour was quite a short, friendly show; you get 40 minutes, so you compact as much as you can, but this will give us a chance to do some of the stuff I know fans really like that I didn’t get to do, some of the darker stuff and things from The Art of Falling Apart period and things like that. We’ll probably come to the East Coast early next year and then see what else. I don’t know how long it will go on, to be honest; I’d certainly like to see out the life of Danceteria and keep Dave’s music that we did together alive a bit longer.
And then what will we be hearing from you after this?
I’ve got an album with Barry Adamson [Magazine, Visage, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds] coming out next year, and there are a few other little things I’ve got bobbling around that I’d like to do. And as I’ve said, I do have a lot of music Dave left me, which is great. I’m 70 next year; I’d like to do a glut of recording projects, even if I just sit on them for awhile, ’cause you never know what’s going to happen in the future. I don’t want to sound morbid or moribund or anything; I’m still lucky enough to have a pretty OK voice. I still enjoy the live performances a lot. You get to a place where you think, “How much longer can I do this?” As long as is possible, I hope.