I think about death all the time. I’ve got to pay the piper for my past
Marc Almond is 60, and still making music. He talks to JOE NERSSESSIAN about his ‘amazing’ ride of a career and his own sense of mortality
THE first flat Marc Almond bought was in Eighties Soho. On neon-red Brewer Street, overlooking strip clubs, theatres, chainsmoking teenagers and fellow punk Bowie fans.
Wide-eyed and fearless, he was drawn to central London on a diet of Fifties and Sixties films – think The Small World Of Sammy Lee, Expresso Bongo and The World Ten Times Over.
Purchasing property is not something one would associate with a budding musician in today’s Britain, let alone London. It’s not a change which has escaped the former Soft Cell singer. Sitting inside the central London fashion house where his management is based, he laments the loss of the city’s rawness.
“I’ve grown disillusioned with London,” says Marc. “I’ve lived here for quite a long time and at first I loved it. Soho was London for me. I came here dreaming of this world of wheelers and dealers and juke box cafes and sleazy strip clubs and girls standing on street corners and rock and roll stars and red lights and neon. But London’s become a money place, it’s lost its creativity.”
Some re-emerging pop stars don’t always appear as you expect but Marc bucks that trend. His wiry frame supports a face full of stories and a wide smile. Tattoos creep above the collar of his T-shirt. One, a swallow in flight, makes its way past his Adam’s apple which bounces as he speaks in small, sharp bursts, ready to laugh or crack a joke at any opportunity. His sentences often take unexpected left turns, but he offers genuine conversation not soundbites.
Growing up in Southport, Lancashire, Marc wanted to be an actor. His stutter put a stop to that but he found the impediment disappeared when he introduced music and rhythm.
“I started doing local gigs but I never considered this would be a career,” he says. “It seemed too unreachable. I thought I was lucky to be in a band but turning that into a professional musician felt a million miles away.”
But succeed he did. Soft Cell were formed in 1978 after Marc met David Ball at Leeds Polytechnic and the synthpop duo caught the attention of a couple of record labels. Tainted Love and several top ten singles followed. Next year will mark four decades since their launch and Marc hints at the occasion being marked.
Talking of anniversaries, the man himself turned 60 a few weeks before we met. He welcomed his sixth decade by signing a two-album deal with BMG Records and has been made an honorary Doctor Of Philosophy by Edge Hill University.
A recent hits and compilation album is to be followed with the first of those BMG albums, Shadows And Reflections. The label asked him to cover a number of Sixties baroque pop and torch songs and he has also managed to squeeze in two original tracks.
The record explores London’s changing landscape through the eyes of a rich man surrounded by luxury but no company. The title track, originally by The Action, sparks the thematic approach while the final song, No One To Say Goodnight To, was the initial inspiration for the concept.
“I was driving past the Thames and I saw these endless blocks of gigantic flat developments going up,” recalls Marc. “They are soulless and are meant to be luxury, but luxury is about time and space, it’s not about living in a box.”
With composition by Ivor Novello-award winning John Harle, the track offers a melancholic end to a record which includes covers of Burt Bacharach, The Yardbirds, Billy Fury and the Young Rascals.
The concept offers a political element which Marc is eager to discuss. He calls the buying up of blocks by Chinese and Qatari investors a “terrible crime” but cannot see it lasting.
“London has gone too far and it needs to be balanced out, it’s over-corporate and over-concerned with money. All these blocks have no one in them because people want to sit on them to hide their money and it will all crash and they will be filled by normal people,” he says, before joking that those normal people will then become “miserable and lonely” in their so-called luxury apartments.
Marc has played a minor role in this nearing revolution. He began attending Save Soho rallies but is unsure whether it is his battle.
“Whatever it was is a different place now and it’s for different people. I can’t spend my energy trying to get back something I had in the past and live in this rosetinted view of nostalgia,” he adds and jokes “I’m going to be dead in 10 years so I don’t give a f***.” He lets out an enormous cackle.
It’s not the first or last time he references mortality. But perhaps it’s not unusual given the number of near-death experiences he has had. From a major operation to remove his spleen and gall bladder to a serious motorbike accident which left him in a coma, he thinks his nine lives are almost over.
“I think about death all the time,” he chuckles. The mirth fades as he continues. “I’m just depressive, I can’t stop thinking about it, I’m obsessed with it. I feel like I’m on a countdown and I’ve got to pay the piper for my past at some point.”
Sober and clean since the late-Nineties, Marc is determined to do as much as possible before his number’s up. It’s an approach that has paid off, so far.
“I just wanted to go on this amazing ride, meet amazing people, do amazing things, go to amazing places, have incredible experiences,” he says. “I’ve had successes, massive failures and I look back and think this has been an amazing ride.”