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Marc Almond of Soft Cell has an apt metaphor for life at his age.
He likens it to the bars that measure the power left on a mobile phone.
Ive got about one bar left, he says.
And I dont have a charger.
he adds with a blunt laugh.
Theres not a lot to look forward to, as opposed to what there is to look back on.
Everything I write at this point is a retrospective.
But theres an irony at play.
That was hardly the only prescient move by the group.
Two years later, they wound up touring Britain again with a show that re-createdNon-Stop Erotic Cabaretin its entirety.
The same show will come to America in August.
Because Soft Cell is a bigger name than Marc Almond.
And, of course, Dave had been writing songs for years.
When I heard it, I could see myself writing lyrics for it.
So, the album was on.
The theme you came up with centers on the sad and stirring realizations that come with age.
When I was growing up as a child we had this view of a utopian future.
We would all look great and have nice shiny clothes and ride on monorails and electricity would never fail.
Its darker dystopian, even.
The withering title of the album,Happiness Not Included, highlights that theme.
We were very influenced by films likeTHX 1138, where they said, Buy our product in subliminal voices.
We love that film!
What was that meeting like?In my years at art college, I idolized Warhol.
I made little Super 8 films that were influenced by him.
But when we met him, it was in the third version of the Factory.
It was very corporate.
We met him with a view to being on the TV show he was doing at the time.
I remember babbling on because I was just so excited.
He said, What have you been doing?
and I said, I went to see Sylvester, a disco act I really like.
And he just said yeah and great and oh, gee.
It went on like that for half an hour.
I came away from it and said to Dave, What was that strange meeting?
It was not how I imagined it would be at all.
But those days had long gone.
Have you seenThe Warhol Diaries?
There was a lot of sadness in it, which made me think about him in a new way.
And I crop up in episode three.
In the new songs, you make further references to your past with multiple allusions to Marc Bolan.
You loved his music so much that you changed the spelling of your first name to honor him.
And, of course, Tainted Love was first recorded by Gloria Jones, who later became Bolans girlfriend.
For people like me, it was opening a door into something else.
He was like Gloria Swanson inSunset Boulevard.
He would say in interviews how fantastic and brilliant and amazing he was.
There was a sense that this was all a strange delusion.
But he was fantastic!
And he made a string of the most beautiful pop records of all time.
All of the allusions on the new album to pop cultures past pegs you to a certain time.
Was that your intention?Thats what Id like to think this is: a snapshot of a time.
But you recorded the song before AIDS was generally known.
Its a kind of gay cancer.
That was my introduction to New York.
Tainted Love later took on different meanings.
In terms of gay pop stars, you hold a pivotal place.
You were the first of the gay men who came to rule British pop music in that decade.
But none of you were out at that time.
How did that feel?I felt afraid, to be honest.
The whole smoke-and-mirrors thing.
And we had this blurry thing in Soft Cell because Dave is not gay.
The only person who was really honest from the word go was Jimmy Somerville [in Bronski Beat].
We grew up with glam rock and disco and punk, which was very intersexual.
Those three elements fed into early-80s music.
But when AIDS came along, it wiped out all the mentors.
Afterwards, the whole landscape changed, in Britain anyway.
It became Brit-pop, which was very lad-y and masculine.
The 90s swept away the gay culture that came from the 70s.
Of course, now just the opposite is true.
Today, pop stars can express whatever sexuality and identity they want.
Memories of this time bond you with groups like the Pet Shop Boys.
For the new album, youve finally recorded a song that features them, Purple Zone.
Its a synth-pop harmonic convergence!Its the U.K.s mostinfluentialelectronic duo meets the U.K.s mostsuccessfulelectronic duo!
But we were ships in the night.
I was actually nervous to meet Neil because hes so clever and intellectual.
I thought,Oh, hes going to think Im really stupid.
But they came to see our shows just before Christmas and they loved it.
Then Neils voice came in singing the second verse.
It was a fantastic gift because I didnt know they were going to do [that remix].
It was a total surprise.
Theres another interesting connection between you and the Pet Shop Boys: Youre both huge in Russia.
You lived in Moscow for a few years and you even recorded a solo album of Soviet-era love songs.
It seemed like the blossoming of a country.
It was emerging out of chaos.
Everybody knew that Putin was not a very nice person, to put it mildly.
He was this kind of benevolent dictator.
The thing about Putin is that hell be a friend to whoever is useful to him.
The church poured loads of money into the Kremlin, so we got the cutting down of LGBTQ rights.
Its funny because I never experienced homophobia in Moscow or St. Petersburg.
This is for gay people and people of all sexualities, never once did I get any homophobia.
In England, I do a lot of the time.
In America, too.
There was a lot of hopefulness in Russia back at that time.
People now are just in despair.
Its scary and heartbreaking.
Theres no happy ending for anybody in this.
So suddenly, you find yourself in a place where you dont belong.
The world belongs to other people.
But I have a go at think of it in a more hopeful way.
This is what nature does to you.
It prepares you for saying good-bye to the world.
We are always preparing ourselves to say good-bye.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
