Marc Almond

During the final years of Soft Cell, in 1982, Marc Almond would already branch out in different directions: he made 2 records with a loose experimental collective called Marc And The Mambas. Their first album mainly consisted of covers of songs that belonged to Marc's influences: Syd Barrett, Lou Reed, Scott Walker and Jacques Brel. Here's a song by the latter, the classic If You Go Away (Ne Me Quitte Pas):

However, it was after Soft Cell disbanded, in 1984, that Marc properly launched his solo career.

His first solo album was the playfully titled Vermin In Ermine (1984). It received very good reviews, but could only make #36 on the UK Album chart. Tenderness is a Weakness is the closing song of the album. If these are his real feelings that he's talking about here, then Marc must surely have had a very complicated love life:

Tenderness is a weakness

It tears down your fortresses

Makes you easy access (and I guess that)

Tenderness is a weakness

It makes you so vulnerable

To that sick dangerous feeling

We all know as love

I cried for you

I even lied for you

I died a thousand times for you

I committed endless crimes for you

I sold my soul to some Devil

To do with what he will

Now I'll lock up my heart

And throw away the key

Love have no part in my destiny

The following year he released Stories Of Johnny, which was even better reviewed and a bigger hit (#22, UK). The title track stood out. Here it is:

Mother Fist and Her Five Daughters came out in 1987 and was another well-reviewed mid-table hit. The title was taken from a short story by Truman Capote. The title track is a feisty little number, extolling the joys of masturbation:

Well now I've been on my own for many a year

Seems like I'll never get loved

Got me a hand on this brother of mine

And I'm gonna get me the rub

Turn me the lights down to a purple glow

Put Bessie Smith on the wail

Bring me the five young daughters

And help my ship to set sail

Mother Fist never gets angry

Mother Fist she never gets bored

I don't have to feed her

I just have to need her

She cries give me the word

His next album, 1988's The Stars We Are, was possibly his best and certainly his most successful solo album. The reason that it became such a hit was a song, which originally appeared on the album in a different version: the Cook/Greenaway Pop classic Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart was originally sang by David & Jonathan in 1967, but it was Gene Pitney (one of my favorite Pop singers from the 60s), who made it a #5 hit in the UK that very same year.

Marc Almond had recorded a very good version for The Stars We Are album. They decided to release it as a single and then Marc had an idea: "Gene (Pitney) was a great singer, and a consummate professional, but he was in the cold winter of his career. I joked to EMI (Almond's label) that maybe Gene would be interested in doing a guest backing vocal of the song. Clive Black called him up, and Gene was straight there, stripped off to the waist in the studio and giving it his all." In Gene Pitney's words: "I was in the UK and my agent asked me if I would like to re-record one of my hits with Marc Almond. I was happy with that because 'Tainted Love' is a classic. I was playing in Bristol and I had to be in London for 10 in the morning to record my vocal 3 or 4 times. Then I went up north for another show. Marc's arrangement was very different from mine, so I was singing it one way in the morning and a different way that night! Our two vocals were edited together and I couldn't believe the result because it sounded so like we were standing next to each other, and I had never met him."

Almond and Pitney met up for the video at the Neon Junkyard in Las Vegas. Gene says, "It was the only place in the world where you could have a neon junkyard. It was full of old neon signs and they wired up these old signs and parts of them lit up. It freezes out there at night in the wintertime and the cameramen were wearing blankets and coats, but the record was booming across the desert and it sounded great."

So the duet was the A-Side of the single, while Marc's solo version was the B-Side. The single hit #1 in many countries including the UK (for 4 weeks), Germany, Ireland, Finland and Switzerland (it also went Top 10 in France, Austria, Belgium, New Zealand, Sweden and the Netherlands), but Pitney's record label refused to release it in America, where Pitney was from. They were afraid that young listeners who were not familiar with Pitney or Almond would think they were a gay couple. Here's the video:

After the single's success, Marc's solo version was replaced by the duet in later pressings of the vinyl album. On the CD, it was added as a bonus track.

My bonus to you, is the Greek version of the song, called Το Μυστικό Σου (Your Secret), sung by Vicky Leandros:

Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart wasn't the only notable song in the album: in fact there were many. Tears Run Rings talks about the all-consuming passion, that ends up burning everything around it and within it.

The Sensualist is a hypnotic song celebrating the cult of sensuality.

She Took My Soul In Istanbul is about his infatuation with a girl in Istanbul, or is it? We can't deny the female pronoun. Interesting lyrics:

I found myself

Down by the sea

A hundred years ago

When I was in my teens

And years go by

I turned into a man

My childhood trapped within the sand

I crawled through life

On broken glass through hell

It seems I wakened my desires

And woke one day

Wet with the sweat of fear

Wet with the sweat of fear

As now with you

I'll reveal your mother

Come to me

I'll take you to the safety of the womb

Tell me your secrets

Sorrow tears and darkness

Pour out your heart

Sorrow tears and darkness

You'll be a fool

A fool for love

And hell had never seemed so good

As when I lost my soul

Became a fool for love

His next album, Jacques (1989) is a tribute to one of his idols, Jacques Brel. In it, he does another version of If You Go Away (he had already recorded the song as Marc And The Mambas, as we mentioned earlier). Here is another song, Litany For A Return:

His first album of the 90s was Enchanted. Here's A Lover Spurned, yet another Almodovaresque melodrama:

In 1991's Tenement Symphony he was rejoined by his Soft Cell group-mate David Ball. Among the producers is none other than Trevor Horn. The album produced 3 UK Top 40 singles, Jacky, My Hand Over My Heart and his last Top 10 hit (at #4), the wonderful The Days of Pearly Spencer:

And here's the original by David McWilliams (1967), which I love:

Marc's follow-up was Absinthe, another voyage into French music and poetry, including works by Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Jean-Paul Sartre, Charles Aznavour, Juliette Gréco and Barbara. The Slave was a Serge Lama song. The lyrics are steamy:

Me I'd like a black slave

With the white teeth, strong and cruel

Who'd split my shackles wide

And who'll take me to the sky

In the damp languor of evening

Me all white, and he all black

He'd bite my body, sliding

With a serpent slow...attack

We're running out of space, so I'll speed through the rest of his (always interesting) discography. From 1999, here's Almost Diamonds with Kelli Ali:

From 2001, with the help of Icelandic multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer, Jóhann Jóhannsson, here's Love in a Time of Science:

The ever adventurous Almond traveled to Russia for his 2003 album Heart On Snow, using Russian musicians and adapting Russian songs, traditional or contemporary. Here's Gosudaryunia:

His follow-up, Stardom Road (2007), was among his best solo efforts. It was an album of carefully chosen covers, the obvious (Strangers In The Night, Dream Lover), side by side with the eclectic (Stardom Road, The Ballad Of Sad Young Men). On the latter he teamed with Antony Hegarty (now known as Anohni):

Orpheus in Exile (2009) is another album of cover versions of songs by Russian Vadim Kozin, while with Varieté (2010) he was back to performing original material. This was among his most personal works and one that gay themes are clearly explored. See all the references in the lyrics as well as in the video of Lavender: it reads like a comprehensive Gay History in the UK of the 2nd half of the 20th Century.

Mauve cravat and corduroy jeans

Well we all know what that means

A halo of curls

For Satyricon girls

Our Lady of the flowers

Grows shadier by the hours

Lady Stardust, Judy Teen

In your own Moonage Daydream

Blusher smeared across your cheeks

Kohl that stayed around for weeks

Smudged on your eyes

A Biba disguise

Maybelline in shades of green

Coloured up your teenage scene

Light of fot and limp of knees

In the 1970's

Last night's panstick

On yesterday's grime

You displayed all bruises

While I covered all mine

Elusive mercurial

Effeminate ethereal

They whisper you swish by

Your eyes up to the sky

Lavender, lavender

He's got a touch of lavender

Lilac and lavender

Lavender

Heartache Noir leaving a scar

Exploring all the shades to be

Through life's black and white TV

St. Dirk of Bogarde

Showed you what to discard

So you splashed on some Brut

And lowered your voice

When Charlie was really your choice

Last nights Lurex gave yesterday shine

You held on to your sparkle

While I lost all mine

Those long drunken nights

With the misfits and rebels

Playing the angel

While sleeping with devils

Lavender, lavender

He's got a touch of lavender

Lilac and lavender

Lavender

And this is the part

Where you'd get beaten up

But you're saved by a quip

And a whole lot of luck

Frankie and Charlie have gone

Now Larry and Kenny

Once they all had a beard

Sadly now don't have any

Last night's indiscretion

Was yesterday's crime

You stayed true to yourself

But I was poisoned by my time

Elusive mercurial

Piss-elegant ephemeral

They whisper you swish by

Your eyes up to the sky

The renters on the 'Dilly

In their fake leather jackets

Say she's 'ere on the meat rack

Knowing all of the rackets

Where everything's gift wrapped

And coming in packets

Just a knock on the door to some

Club where no need to say more

Lavender, lavender

He's got a touch of lavender

Lilac and lavender

Lavender

So much there's not to say

You don't have to anyway

His next album, Feasting with Panthers (2011), was called by the "Record Collector" "a sumptuous banquet of tales of young boys and dark pleasure" and includes poetry by famous gay poets set to music by Almond and Michael Cashmore. The poets include Genet, Cocteau, Rimbaud and Verlaine. Here's The Thief and the Night by Jean Genet:

In 2014 he released three albums, among them The Dancing Marquis. The title track was produced by Bowie's producer, Tony Visconti:

His last album so far (I'm sure there will be more - the man is unstoppable), was The Velvet Trail (2015). The album received glowing reviews (79% Metacritic). Here he is, in a duet with Beth Ditto in When The Comet Comes:

Almond's voice may be an acquired taste, but there is no doubt in my mind that the man has carved a unique artistic path and like good wine, he gets better with age. Instead of letting himself become a legacy artist, content with playing his old hits over and over, or, even worse, trying to replicate the sound that made him famous, every time he travels to new and exciting directions. Even his failures are interesting.