The day Soft Cell saved me from the dance for perfection

In the fifth extract from my memoir Hit Girl: My Bizarre Double Life in the Pop World of the Eighties, I recall my first meeting with Marc Almond and Dave Ball – otherwise known as Soft Cell – who would play a big part in my unfolding story…

I first became aware of Soft Cell in 1981, when I heard their haunting track The Girl With The Patent Leather Face. My alter ego Betty Page and I were intrigued by its lyrics, which hinted at perky bondage-oriented fantasies, and couldn’t wait to meet Marc Almond, the man who wrote them.

My wish was Soft Cell manager Stevo’s command. He brought the duo to meet me at the London offices of Sounds, where I worked. At that time Marc Almond and Dave Ball both lived in Leeds, where they had met at art college. Dave was a former Northern Soul boy from Blackpool; Marc hailed from the genteel spa town of Southport, where he had grown up on a diet of T- Rex, Status Quo and Deep Purple before studying performance art.

After a few months of hanging around on the fringes of London’s elitist New Romantic scene, I was relieved to meet a pair of down-to-earth northerners. Marc was a dark-haired and terribly camp elfin with a slight stammer and a nervous laugh. Dave, the tall, silent background boy with the twinkling eyes, let Marc do most of the talking and only spoke when he had something meaningful to say. We connected immediately; the combination of Marc’s exuberance and Dave’s taciturn wit put me at ease.

We seemed to be kindred spirits – outsiders. I was one of the few women working for the traditionally male rock press, and not completely accepted as part of the New Romantic scene I’d been championing; Marc and Dave were provincial art students who scoffed at the concept of London cool. They had no time for the elitism of Spandau Ballet.

The kitsch, seedy side of life intrigued them. They were flawed, funny, passionate and not afraid to show and share their shortcomings and vulnerabilities. To Marc and Dave, the “dance for perfection” was fake and superficial; give them the grubby, dark underbelly any day.

I realised then, with some relief, that it was acceptable not to be perfect, to be who you are – chain store skirts and all. Tacky could be glamorous too, and if your make-up slid down your face, well, that’s just real life.

“Oddly enough, all our new songs seem to be about sex,”  Marc told me. “They’re not rude, though. I hope it comes across in a warm way as opposed to cold.”

The duo had evolved their sound over a couple of years, recording scratchy demo tapes full of buzzes and bleeps on cheap two-track machines. “Kind of naïve,” as Dave described it. “But it wasn’t bleak or industrial. It was all danceable sort of pop music. That’s always been our idea – doing sort of sad songs, no grinding or grating noises.”

Dave and Marc were inspired by Kraftwerk and the new industrial sounds of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League – the electro-punk bands – as well as an obscure hardcore New York duo called Suicide who used synthesisers and beatboxes to disturbing effect. Throw in Dave’s love of Sixties and Seventies soul and disco and Marc’s obsession with Jacques Brel, and you had the basic ingredients of the Soft Cell sound.

Their live performances had been pretty shambolic thus far, which endeared them to me even more. The spirit of punk lived on in Marc and Dave in a way that Spandau Ballet would never understand. The previous year they had appeared at a festival in Leeds, which had been a disaster, but resulted in a review in a German magazine that said, “Soft Cell create a beautiful new world with rubber edges.”

Marc was keen to point out that “our main influence is trash, not rubber – I wouldn’t go that far!” They’d not fared much better at Rayleigh’s premier Futurist night-spot, Croc’s Glamour Club.

“Glamour?” shrieked Marc. “There’s more glamour in a fried egg! I think that was the worst gig we’ve ever done. Our backing tapes sounded awful, it was so cold you could see your breath, and when the bloke on the mixing desk turned us up really loud. Unfortunately, members of Spandau Ballet and Visage were there to check us out and they immediately rushed around and started slagging us off. They said we were ‘an oblique northern industrial band’. They were right – we were awful. But what a start to a career – me limping around the stage with aching legs.”

Soft Cell survived this initiation ordeal and finally signed a “proper” record contract with Phonogram, through Stevo’s Some Bizzare label – allegedly for a six-figure sum, but in reality it was only a few thousand pounds. It was a calculated move by Phonogram, who really wanted another of Stevo’s acts, the more acceptably poppy boy-group B-Movie.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” said Marc. “We’ve sold out! Horrible! I don’t know the figures, but it’s enough to keep me in panstick for a year. We’re going to buy a nice glossy tape recorder and maybe a couple of computers. Oh no – I don’t want it to be too flashy. We like to keep it sparse. We’re more like a cabaret than a rock band really. We look upon gigs as making a personal appearance with music.”

A few weeks later, I went to see Marc and Dave play in Dartford, of all places. To see Soft Cell doing their minimal show in front of an audience of suburban Futurists was an experience. I’d never seen such passion and intensity emanate from two blokes, one syn-drum, a synthesiser and a tape recorder.

Marc’s years as a performance artist (the highlight of which was when he smeared his naked body in catfood during the punk days) had given him a veneer of confidence on stage, an outward exhibitionism that belied the nervous wreck he often become offstage.

I completely identified with this paradox. I’d had no problem getting up on stage with my band Tennis Shoes and gyrating in front of an audience; take me out of that context and I would never want to draw attention to myself.

The smart young things of Dartford refused to move until a good two-thirds of the way through the show. The old rules still held – records you dance to, groups you stare at, even if they’re playing in a disco. But Marc and Dave persevered.

To my delight and embarrassment, Marc dedicated a song to Betty Page. For a split second I thought he meant the original Betty (being that kind of chap, he knew exactly who she was), but no, he meant me. When he jumped offstage, launching himself into the crowd on the dancefloor to sing Memorabilia, coming to rest just in front of me, I felt so embraced by this odd couple.

To many they weren’t even a proper group, but to me they were raw and authentic. Memorabilia was one of the great 12-inch dance records of the early Eighties. For months afterwards it was played in all the most fashionable London clubs, despite the fact that no one on the New Romantic scene took the band seriously.

Soft Cell radiated talent and charm and I knew they were going to be huge. They were blackly humorous, ironic and completely apolitical. They wanted to dance, get drunk, have a good time and I wanted to do it with them.

It was the beginning of an intense relationship that would take me to places I never thought I would dare venture. Betty would be my passport to a beautiful new world with rubber edges. But that’s another story…

© Beverley Glick 2005. All rights reserved.