Jools and Marc’s big band extravaganza
Stars of the post-punk scene tell Simon Button how a singer was coaxed back onstage after a traumatic accident
JOOLS HOLLAND and Marc Almond might seem an unlikely pairing. Holland is a rhythm and blues maestro who commands his own orchestra while Almond is a musical renegade who has always marched to the beat of his own drum.
But after touring together over the past decade, the odd couple are now releasing their first joint album.
“We both came up in the post-punk era,” Jools explains. “And we love a lot of the same music.”
Marc adds: “We have similar sensibilities. With a shared love of big bands, black and white British films of the 1950s and 1960s, vintage cars and afternoon teas...”
Then Almond admits that they have never actually shared afternoon tea: “It’s more a metaphor,” he says. “It’s about us being on the same page.”
We meet to talk about the album, A Lovely Life To Live, at House, a members’ club in west London next to the TV studio where the pair have just appeared on Good Morning Britain.
The record is a mix of classics such as How Deep Is The Ocean and When The Saints Go Marching In – with a jazzy new version of Tainted Love thrown in for good measure – and some new compositions.
Marc took Tainted Love to the top of the charts in 1981 as one half of synth duo Soft Cell, just as Jools was leaving rock band Squeeze.
He recalls the time a couple of years later when he and co-host Paula Yates welcomed Soft Cell on to their live TV music show The Tube. “It was the first programme that was genuinely spontaneous,” Jools, 60, says of the rule-breaking teatime Channel 4 series.
“It was pretty wild and off the rails. It was the beginning of that sort of TV and also the beginning of alternative comedians. Many of them came on the show and it was almost as if the producers egged us on to be more anarchic.”
On this particular episode, Jools and his crew burst into the guests’ dressing rooms to ask if they were excited about appearing on the show.
“So we barged into Marc’s room,” Jools recalls with a grin, “and he was completely naked. He quickly adopted a modesty pose, like a Carry On character getting caught in the shower.”
Marc, 61, bursts out laughing. “There I was, exposed to the British public, desperately trying to preserve my modesty.”
Jools continues: “We’d already been warned about saying or doing things that were inappropriate for that time of the evening. Channel 4 weren’t happy. They told us, ‘You said you were going to behave yourselves, now you have a naked man on screen’.”
Their paths crossed again a few times in the 1990s, including when Marc appeared on Later... With Jools Holland. But the call to sing with Holland’s Rhythm & Blues Orchestra in 2002 came out of the blue for Marc.
“I was really excited,” he says, “because it was a chance to work with Jools, whom I’d always admired, and also a big band. That’s something I hadn’t experienced before and as a singer it’s a real luxury.”
They did a couple of tours together but then Almond was involved in a near-fatal motorbike crash. He was on the back of a friend’s bike when it collided with a car, throwing him to the ground. He suffered serious head injuries and was unconscious in hospital for 10 days with doctors fearing he might be left with permanent brain damage if he survived.
Marc and his friend pulled through but his selfplumetted: “I really was in a terrible way. I’d lost my confidence about going back on stage.”
Then Jools called and asked if he’d like to do a few shows. “And that gave me a safe environment to try singing again. I was still quite ill but I had the cushion of a lot of musicians round me and it’s a very nice environment to work in. After that I was ready to do more shows. I’m so grateful to Jools.”
The duo have an easy rapport and it was the same, they say, when they were in the studio recording the album. “Marc is great in front of a big band,” Jools enthuses. “He’s very at home there and not everybody is. You have to have a certain amount of confidence because once you start singing you’ve got all these musicians following you. There’s something very theatrical about it, which Marc embraces.”
They have already performed the jazzed-up Tainted Love on tour and Soft Cell’s Say Hello, Wave Goodbye is also on the set-list.
Marc explains: “You can be very self-indulgent as a singer but sometimes it’s good to just come on and do a couple of the big hits but in a different way.”
Almond waved goodbye to Soft Cell with a one-off show at The O2 in September. “It was fantastic but a bit shambolic in parts,” he says of an evening marked by forgotten lyrics and technical difficulties.
Marc laughs about it, insisting that it was definitely the end of live shows for him and former bandmate Dave Ball: “It was a way of saying goodbye to all the fans, although I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have because I was busy being focused on everything.”
Lancashire-born, Leedseducated Marc was an art student when he met Ball. As Soft Cell they created a sensation but split up after just three years and have only worked together on a couple of occasions since.
Unlike many 1980s pop stars, Marc prefers not to ride the nostalgia wave. “I dip my toes into it but it’s important for me to look forward,” he says. “You can celebrate your past at times but not live in it. I always want to move ahead, do new things and record new songs.”
It’s the same for Jools, who remains friends with former bandmates Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook but has never been part of a Squeeze reunion.
“It’s not about not having a regard for what you’ve done before,” he says, “because I love all that music with Squeeze and I still write with Chris and see Glen.
“But there’s so much else I feel musically I want to get done and also a big band, which is always a minimum of 18 people, is a big thing to run.”
I ask if they’re more settled than in the 1980s. Marc laughs: “I can’t remember much about it, that’s how good it was! It was always a bit of a wild time. I think that’s why we burnt out after only three years.”
Jools remembers wild after-show parties: “We’d be throwing sandwiches at everybody in dressing rooms the size of a toilet. Nowadays it’s a civilised banquet for everyone when they come off stage. It’s very pipe-and-slippers.”
A Lovely Life To Live is out now. Jools Holland and Marc Almond will tour the UK until December 22. Tickets: ticketmaster.co.uk