Soft Cell

In 1978, two students at Leeds Polytechnic, UK, decided to form a musical partnership. The result was Soft Cell, an act that added its own particular color to the musical palette of the 80s.

Their first recording was a self-funded and independently released (just 2000 vinyl copies) EP called Mutant Moments. The EP and their live shows caught the attention of the independent branch of the music industry and they were signed to Some Bizarre Records. Memorabilia was the B-Side to their 1st 7' single, but was promoted to the A-Side of their 1st maxi-single. It failed to make the UK charts, but it made #35 in the US Dance chart. It is very highly regarded, considered to be one of the earliest techno tracks, before the term was even coined. Watch it here:

Their record company, however, needed a hit, so they allowed Soft Cell to record a second and final single. It was 1981 and the duo chose a song that was written by Ed Cobb of The Four Preps (26 Miles, Big Man) and first recorded in 1964 by Gloria Jones, who would later be Marc Bolan's girlfriend, mother to his son and the car driver during the fateful car-accident that caused Marc his life. Bolan's band, T.Rex, will be in our spotlight during our next visit to the 70s, in a month or two. Jones' version wasn't a hit and the song was forgotten, but not by Soft Cell. It was to be their next single. In the official video, Marc's performance successfully channeled Caligula.

Tainted Love became a No. 1 hit in 17 countries, including the UK, Germany, France, Australia and Belgium, #2 in New Zealand, #4 in Ireland, #7 in the Netherlands and #8 in the US Hot 100, where it broke the record for most consecutive weeks (43) in the Hot 100. Another interesting fact concerning its US chart run was that it took 19 weeks just to enter the Top 40. Quite the slow burner. The maxi-single featured Tainted Love in a medley with the Supremes' first No 1, Where Did Our Love Go?:

The follow-up single was Bedsitter, a song that explored the underbelly of the London club scene of that time. The song was a hit in the UK #4, France #4 and Ireland #10. It opens like this:

Sunday morning going slow, I'm talking to the radio

Clothes and records on the floor, the memories of the night before

Out in Clubland having fun and now I'm hiding from the sun

Waiting for a visitor though no-one knows I'm here for sure

Dancing, laughing, drinking, loving

And now I'm all alone in bedsit land

My only home

Watch it here:

Their next single is possibly my favorite song of theirs. Say Hello, Wave Goodbye is about an affair that went sour. It was another hit for them (#3 UK, #12 Ireland) and this is how it began:

Standin' at the door

Of the Pink Flamingo

Crying in the rain

It was a kind of so so love

And I'm gonna make sure

It doesn't happen again

You and I, it had to be

The standing joke of the year

You were a sleep around

A lost and found

And not for me I fear

Take your hands

Off me, please

I don't belong to you, you see

Take a look in my face

For the last time

I never knew you

You never knew me

Say hello, goodbye

Say hello and wave goodbye

And this is how it sounds:

Their next single, Torch, was an even bigger success (#2 UK, #6 Belgium, #7 Ireland):

They had one more big hit with What (#3 UK, #6 Ireland & France) and then the big hits stopped coming. In 1984, exhausted by constant touring, hampered by drug use and going through a dry spell inspiration-wise, they decided to have an amicable separation. They both had interesting solo careers and would occasionally work together in their solo projects. They reunited in 2001 and have released two new albums in the 00s. L'Esqualita, a song dealing with Manhattan's trans culture, was in the final album of their 80s period, imaginatively titled This Last Night In Sodom (1984, UK #12). Watch it here:

An interview to Nigel Farndale sheds an interesting light on Marc's personal life: "Peter Marc Sinclair Almond was born in 1957 in Southport. He (and his family) moved constantly from house to house and school to school around the north-west of England and, wherever he ended up, he was bullied – often chased by gangs of boys chanting the word ‘queer’ at him, before catching him and beating him up. His father, an unemployed former Army officer and salesman, was an alcoholic who would sometimes slap his son.

The 12-year-old Almond was a bed-wetter by night and a shoplifter by day. One day his father stormed into his school and demanded to know from the teacher if his 13-year-old son was a homosexual. He was, as it happened, but the teacher didn’t know that. Although Marc Almond says he wanted to like girls – and he actually lost his virginity that year to a ‘big-boned, galumphing, sweaty girl called Hilary’  – he was always drawn to boys.

Until his twenties he was very confused about his sexuality. ‘I was attracted to anyone who would pay any attention to me, or anyone who would show me love. Love had to be sex. But I never felt comfortable with my homosexuality. I couldn’t be open about it. Even now I’m only 95 % sure.

After he achieved fame, his sexual promiscuity and drug-taking got worse and he took to hanging out with underworld figures: criminals, prostitutes and gun-carrying drug dealers. Then in 1993, he confides, something happened which forced him to change his way of life. Two acquaintances tried to throw him from a sixth-floor balcony window. A neighbor intervened and the police arrived to find Almond mutilated and unconscious on the floor. Instead of pressing charges for attempted murder he decided it was time to check himself into a drug rehabilitation clinic. He has since been leading a stable life, which was disrupted in 2004 when he was almost killed in a motorcycle accident. He has now been with the same partner for over 20 years.

Tomorrow we'll deal with Marc's solo career.