TALK TALK - Duran Duran again: "con il nuovo 'Paper Gods' smontiamo gli dei di cartapesta e vogliamo durare per l'eternità!"

Articolo e intervista di Enrico Franceschini per "la Repubblica"

«Chi sono gli dei di carta? Forse siete voi, giornali e giornalisti, fa piacere vedervi ancora con il taccuino e la penna in mano nell’era digitale, ma per quanto ancora scriverete così? O forse siamo noi, tutte le rock band e noi quattro in particolare, dei effimeri. Ma nel nostro caso con una piccola ambizione, quella di dare il meglio a 50 anni e passa, chi l’ha detto che un artista raggiunge il suo apice da giovane e poi vive di rendita?». Eccoli qui i cinquantenni che a vent’anni inventarono il “nuovo romanticismo”, via di mezzo tra il pop e David Bowie, e adesso provano a reinventarlo con un nuovo album, il 14°, Paper Gods: dei di carta, o se vogliamo di cartone, di cartapesta. Un album bello e potente, carico di echi del passato ma anche indirizzato su strade nuove, con l’aiuto di un nutrito gruppo di guest star che vanno dalla chitarra di John Frusciante alla voce di Lindsay Lohan.

A vederli spaparanzati su un divano del Soho Hotel, a far battutacce sul caffè ridendo di se stessi, i Duran Duran, ovvero Simon Le Bon (voce), Nick Rhodes (tastiere), John Taylor (basso) e Roger Taylor (batteria), non sembrano portare le cicatrici di bisticci e separazioni, tantomeno i segni dell’età: del resto sono quasi bebè rispetto alla generazione precedente, ai settantenni del rock come gli ex-Beatles, i Rolling Stones, i Pink Floyd, e difatti ambiscono “all’eternità”, non del tutto scherzosamente, come dice Roger Taylor: restare sulla scena ancora «molto, molto a lungo».

Ma cosa significa il titolo di questo album? «Viene dal verso di uno dei brani, l’autore sono io, ma riflette un pensiero comune», risponde Le Bon, «Allude al denaro, ai media, a noi stessi, agli dei di carta che credono di avere grande potere e invece non ce l’hanno, sono anch’essi effimeri in questa era digitale in cui tutto passa, ma è anche un titolo volutamente ambiguo, ognuno può leggerci quello che vuole».l coinvolgimento degli altri artisti? «John Frusciante ci ha chiamati quando ha saputo che lavoravamo all’album», dice Rhodes, «chi gli avrebbe detto di no, la sua chitarra è magica». «E Lindsay Lohan l’avevo conosciuta anni fa in uno studio discografico », continua Simon, «siamo diventati amici, la sua voce aggiunge qualcosa di unico, di sensuale, da vera diva». Osserva Roger Taylor: «Rispetto agli esordi siamo più consapevoli dei nostri mezzi, più maturi e determinati.

Sappiamo meglio quello che vogliamo. Del resto è impossibile saperlo a 19 anni e a 30 ti preoccupi al massimo dei sei mesi successivi, non di quello che farai a 50 anni. Ora invece ci pensiamo. Vogliamo durare ancora molto a lungo: per l’eternità, perché no». Certo, lo incalza Le Bon «di solito si pensa che un cantante dia il suo meglio da giovane, quando è vivace e pieno d’energia, ma anche la maturità artistica ha i suoi vantaggi e noi aspiriamo a raggiungere il vertice della nostra produzione, ad avere ancora un grande avvenire, anche da ultracinquantenni». Si sono lasciati e ripresi, adesso come va? «La verità è che, pur fra momentanee separazioni, la nostra unione è stata molto longeva», dice Nick. «Quando sei giovane è più facile stare insieme, ci sono solo i membri della band, poi ognuno ha amori e famiglie, le relazioni si fanno più complesse. Faccio un esempio, sono state lanciate tante accuse a Yoko Ono, ma non credo lei volesse far del male ai Beatles, voleva solo fare del bene a John Lennon. Noi quattro comunque stiamo bene insieme e insieme vogliamo produrre un nuovo rinascimento». Ottanta, la stagione della loro affermazione «sono stati anni di grande creatività artistica, non solo per noi, venivano fuori Madonna, Prince, gli U2, mentre David Bowie continuava a stupire », spiega John Taylor. «E poi qui a Londra, anzi proprio a Soho, c’era una quantità indescrivibile di talenti, nasceva la videomusica che avrebbe contribuito a cambiare anche la musica: è stato fantastico fare parte di quel momento ». I Duran Duran torneranno in Italia? «Senz’altro, avete un pubblico meraviglioso a cui siamo affezionati», assicura Le Bon. «Il ricordo più bello è di tanti anni fa. A Roma fummo invitati a Cinecittà per incontrare Fellini. Ma lui si scusò dicendo che doveva andare dal dottore. Il problema, disse, è che adesso la mia potenza sessuale è tutta qui, e indicò il cervello, mentre io vorrei farla scendere più in basso».

TALK TALK - Gli Hurts: "C'ispiriamo a Roby Baggio...!"

MILANO - Guardi una foto degli Hurts e quel bianco e nero e l'aria distaccata ti fanno venire in mente i film esistenzialisti francesi. Oppure una pubblicità per la moda: linee pulite, tagli perfetti. L'immagine è importante per il duo di Manchester. Theo Hutchcraft e Adam Anderson sfatano la regola che nella musica vuole gli artisti disinteressati alla moda o troppo interessati. «La moda rappresenta gran parte della nostra identità come band - dice Adam, tastierista e chitarrista -. Ci serve per esprimere noi stessi individualmente e come duo creativo. Va di pari passo con la musica. Non c'è l'una senza l'altra». Rilancia il cantante: «Lo stile rafforza ancora di più la nostra musica perché mostra un altro lato della nostra personalità. Tutti hanno uno stile, a prescindere che lo sappiano o meno. Disinteressarsi del proprio aspetto è importante tanto quanto interessarsene. Chi dice "voglio focalizzarmi solo sulla musica e non su quello che indosso" in modo indiretto sta pensando a ciò che indossa».
FELLINI - Allora, modelli o attori? «Preferirei che qualcuno pensasse che sembriamo usciti da un film di Fellini: anche se lui era molto colorato, 8½ è in bianco e nero», spiega Hutchcraft. I due hanno pubblicato questa settimana il loro secondo album, «Exile», che porteranno in concerto il 25 marzo a Milano. «Essere sempre in giro ti fa sentire in esilio e poi noi ci sentiamo di vivere in un mondo che non è reale - sottolinea il cantante -. E la cosa bella di questo titolo è anche che la parola esilio racchiude in sé molte sentimenti come libertà, paura, isolamento... sensazioni molto vivide, sulle quali vale la pena scrivere delle canzoni. Siamo stati in giro molto e ci siamo lasciati la nostra vita alle spalle». La vita di prima, prima ancora del disco di debutto «Happiness» che ha venduto due milioni di copie, era quella di due ragazzi di Manchester che le provano tutte pur di sfondare con la musica. Sussidio di disoccupazione e vestiti ricercati per non sentirsi tagliati fuori. All'ennesimo progetto fallito, Theo e Adam si guardano in faccia, prendono un volo per Verona, si fermano per qualche giorno in Italia e al ritorno decidono di provarci in due. «Quella è stata un'esperienza catalizzatrice, è stato l'inizio degli Hurts come li conosciamo oggi», ricorda Hutchcraft.
BAGGIO - L'Italia non è stata solo quella vacanza. «Da voi c'è un vastissimo panoram di musica elettronica. A metà anni 90 i produttori e i musicisti italiani di musica elettronica dominavano le classifiche in Inghilterra. Mi ricordo i Savage, i Livin' Joy, Corona... ho una lista lunghissima». E se, prendendo spunto dal titolo di una delle nove canzoni («Somebody to Die For»), chiedi a loro per chi sarebbero disposti a dare la vita, divertiti rispondono: «Roberto Baggio - scherza Adam -. Era il mio eroe quand'ero piccolo. Soprattutto per la pettinatura. E poi perché ha sbagliato il rigore per la nazionale italiana ai Mondiali del '94». A proposito di capelli, il loro taglio è uno degli argomenti più discussi quando si parla degli Hurts. Il riferimento è agli anni 80, anzi alle citazioni degli anni 40 che si facevano allora. «A me sembra di avere la pettinatura più normale della storia, molto semplice, si mette e si toglie, tipo casco», scherza Theo. Fra i dischi della loro vita citano Sinead O' Connor e Nine Inch Nails, ma i sintetizzatori e l'elettronica degli Eighties tornano prepotentemente nella loro musica. «Amiamo molto band come Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode e Japan, ma la loro influenza si sente soprattutto nel primo disco. Quella è stata un'epoca di grande integrità e originalità nel mondo della musica, perché ci sono stati enormi sviluppi tecnologici. Si sente che c'era il desiderio di fare musica pop, purché fosse musica pop unica».

("Corriere della Sera", Andrea Laffranchi)

http://video.corriere.it/arriva-exile-nuovo-album-hurts/e622fea2-8811-11e2-ab53-591d55218f48

TALK TALK - Robert Smith: "I Cure fuori da qualsiasi logica"

Intervista a Robert Smith a cura di Matteo Cruccu per il "Corriere della Sera"
MILANO - «Ci avete dato una bella lezione. Ma la Spagna, che squadra di marziani: da anni, io tifo per loro e non per i miei. Perché Rooney, da loro, giocherebbe al massimo nella seconda squadra». I «miei» sono gli inglesi di Roy Hodgson, battuti dagli Azzurri. E lui è l' ultima persona al mondo con cui ti immagineresti a parlare di pallone. Già, lui è Robert Smith, da 35 anni profeta oscuro dei Cure, uno che sembrerebbe avulso dal mondo. E che invece vi è immerso assai, specie quando decide di uscire dal suo ritiro nel Sussex. E di concedere una delle rarissime interviste: sabato è a Rho (Milano) con i compagni di ventura di sempre, headliner dell' Heineken Jammin' Festival che si apre stasera con i Red Hot. Robert, 53enne con la faccia di bambino, parla un inglese placido e chiarissimo. E ci parla innanzitutto del concerto: forse solo il Boss, tra i grandi rocker della Terra, è più generoso dei Cure. Robert e soci non scendono infatti mai sotto le tre ore di show. C' è un motivo, spiega: «Nel 1973, risparmiai per un mese per poter vedere a Londra David Bowie, il primo vero concerto della mia vita. Lui suonò soltanto per 45 minuti. Quando sono diventato musicista, ho sempre pensato che avrei dovuto rispettare il mio pubblico. E poi cantare è una cosa bella, adrenalinica, lo faccio in casa come lo faccio sul palco. Perché dovremmo risparmiarci?». Già, i tour: l' Italia delle lezioni calcistiche è anche l' Italia che più ha dato soddisfazioni ai Cure. «Ricordo con piacere tutti i concerti da voi. Ma soprattutto il tour dell' 89, forse uno dei migliori della nostra carriera, proprio nei giorni di Tien-An-Men: sentimmo una comunanza incredibile col pubblico». E italiano è anche Paolo Sorrentino che ha confessato di essersi ispirato a lui per il Sean Penn di «This Must The Be Place». Robert ci scherza su: «Non l' ho visto, proprio per non doverlo commentare. Ho letto però la trama. E ho guardato le foto di scena. Ma il personaggio di Penn mi assomiglia così tanto? E soprattutto, la sua storia non sembra affatto la mia, ma al limite quella di una delle mie canzoni». Ecco, le canzoni, l' immaginario buio, il mal di vivere che ancora è appiccicato come un marchio indelebile ai Cure: «Che noia. Sono una persona normale. Mi posso alzare felice, come con la luna storta. E poi sono vent' anni che cerchiamo di sembrare il più possibile allegri, guarda i video...». Di sicuro però i Cure non fanno parte dell' establishment di Britannia. Né ci tengono. Non li si vedrà nel parterre de roi dei concerti per le Olimpiadi, né sono saliti sul palco per il Giubileo della Regina. Partiamo dalla seconda: «Che cosa assurda la monarchia, la famiglia reale, il concetto di ereditarietà: io sono un fottuto repubblicano». E bum. I giochi? «Un business delle grandi corporazioni, una macchina per fare soldi. Io mi vergognerei a cantare per un evento come quello». Insomma, in questo i Cure non sono mai cambiati: «Siamo sempre stati fuori da qualunque logica nazionalpopolare in Gran Bretagna. E il potere ci ha cancellato. Non me ne faccio alcun problema». Semmai Robert non ha più la stessa concezione del tempo. Da teenager disse di voler passare a miglior vita entro i 25: «Quand' ero giovane ero abituato a pianificare la mia vita in termini di anni e avevo tempo di pensare anche alla morte. Ora cerco di vivere giorno per giorno. Anche se l' attitudine a guardare il lungo periodo non se ne è andata via del tutto. Diciamo che mi sforzo di progettare soltanto i prossimi tre mesi». Per morire c' è tempo. 

TALK TALK - Blondie forever! Debbie Harry interviewed (part 2 final)

I guess you could say that Blondie have a very street-wise glamour but they're also a band for romantics. Are you a romantic person at heart?

DH: Personally? Hmmmm. I don't know. I probably have a good imagination but I don't know if I'm a true romantic. But I do like romance. I don't know, it's a word that's been so mistreated. I mean, what is romance?

As I've only heard three of the songs off the album I had to make some guesses about the other tracks based on title alone. Does 'D-Day' stand for 'Debbie-Day'?

DH: YES! [punches air] But I really wrote it because I thought, if I play it over here it will be like [blows air through lips] … you know… it'll go down really well.

And there's 'The End, The End'. Now I'm kind of hoping this isn't The Doors song played twice in a row.

DH: That was a collaborative effort with this guy Ben Phillips and he had this idea about finding someone that you wanted to be with until the very end. So I guess that is a very romantic idea. He gave me this idea of what it was about and then we fleshed out the lyrics.

'Wipe Off My Sweat' sounds rather saucy…

DH: That's because it is [laughs]. It's in Spanish: 'Kiss me, kiss me, she has a tattoo on her skin where only he can see it…' And then when they're dancing she says: 'Kiss me, wipe off my sweat, don't stop, don't stop for anything.' It's simple and direct.

I'm also intrigued by the idea of 'China Shoes'.

DH: That's a ballad. Mid-tempo. It starts off, 'Cheap china shoes, tie on my feet, all man-made fabric worn out and beat, from pacing the floor, from walking the street. You fly over Brooklyn, back in a week.' So it's about someone leaving and you want them to come back. And then the chorus is, 'I left a note in the back page of your book, volumes away but it's worth a good look. Remember me, remember that you're mine, remember me when you get to the last line.'

You are a romantic! When I think of Blondie, I think of a pop group who had equals and contemporaries in the worlds of art, writing, photography, etc. I wonder if that's something that's missing from today's pop scene? How important was it for you to know people like William Burroughs and Andy Warhol?

DH: Really important. They were such great influences. It might be a little bit different in New York, because of the area — because everything is located so closely together and it's very easy to jump into the art world, to jump into the music scene, into the photography scene. It's all compacted together. Maybe that's why it happens. It seems kind of natural.

Do you think this concentration of people and ideas causes a continuum? When I think of The Velvet Underground I can see that there are clear lines through to Television, Suicide, Blondie, Sonic Youth…

DH: Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, I hope so…

Were The Velvet Underground still playing when you moved to New York?

DH: They were. Actually, the first time I saw them was one of the best shows I have ever seen. I didn't have a clue who they were. I used to go to this place — a big room called The Balloon Farm… [laughs] Well, it was the psychedelic period, right? So we went in this place, which was like a former Ukrainian nursing home, and it was The Velvet Underground playing live with Nico. The stage set and colours were designed by Andy Warhol who was also doing the lights. It was beautiful. And you know, Moe Tucker on drums was fucking great. And you could just wander in and watch them.

In a way you got the whole drug thing out of your system before you started Blondie. I was wondering how you got into heroin — was it just that there was a lot of it about?

DH: It was the time. It was all over the place. At first we felt that it might have been political [to take heroin]. Yeah, I know… [giggles and shakes head] It was everywhere and it really had a lot to do with the end of Vietnam and the fallout from that. What's that airline they talk about bringing everything in on? Air America. That's how the junk came in. It was very noticeable; it was everywhere.

A hundred and fifty years before Blondie, the popular perception of anyone female singing for their supper would have been that she was a prostitute. Do you think the music industry has ever got past seeing its female talent in terms different to commodities that could be sold or traded with?

DH: We are all commodities and I don't think it's necessarily just women. That was the game, you know? It outlived itself, didn't it?

Do you feel more in control now that the music industry is shrinking rapidly and is pretty much crippled in comparison to the monolithic thing that it used to be?

DH: No. No. Not necessarily. I mean, commerce and art have always had difficulties co-existing from the very beginning. I'm sure there were problems back when they were building the pyramids. I feel, perhaps, under the same amount of pressure to write another 'Heart Of Glass'. We're more in control of the creative end, yes, but it's not really fair for us because we've been around for a while and I think we have our thing figured out. And if we make a Blondie album we make a Blondie album. You know what that is. We've done our experimentation, basically. We've set up a framework that has a broad field of reference musically and we play with that. That is what our format is. The industry makes it hard to get a record out. It's like that for everyone. I mean, how many big artists are there? There are 10 or 20 major artists out there now and those are the ones who have big record deals.

You've said that the Plastic Letters album was about death. I was wondering how you dealing with Chris's illness in 1983 affected your view of your own mortality?

DH: I think that, up until that time, I had a lot of what you would call 'childish ways' and then the idea of taking complete responsibility for my life and not seeing it as just sheer fate or luck really hit home. Then, BAM! I knew death. I knew it right then. And I think everyone should know it. Everyone should know it, because we aren't really taught that, are we? We're not taught it and it's the total truth. I don't really want to talk about Chris getting ill today, but there are a few pictures of the last tour we did [in 1982] that I saw recently. I hadn't really seen them for a long, long time and I was so shocked. He must have gone down to 120lbs. It was just… horrible.

I guess you must get asked this quite a lot, but I'm interested in knowing what you put the bond between you and Chris down to. Because it is a very strong bond that transcends physical relationships. It goes beyond that.

DH: Yeah, it does. I think we just had a meeting of the minds…. Maybe it's because we've both got such accepting natures and we have a lot of room for a lot of different kinds of people and different dispositions and things like that. We both have a temper, though.

What do you think would have happened if you had changed the band's name to Adolf Hitler's Dog?

DH: The label would have dropped us. I loved that name, though. It's really funny, isn't it? Do you want to help me finish this salad?

This article originally appeared in The Stool Pigeon. For all things Pigeon, go here

TALK TALK - Blondie forever! Debbie Harry interviewed (part 1)

In a feature that originally appeared in The Stool Pigeon, John Doran talks to Debbie Harry about the history of Blondie, heroin, reggae and New York City. Debbie Harry photographed by Rebecca Miller.

Unusually for a bona fide pop icon, Debbie Harry was already 33 when Blondie released their UK breakthrough album Parallel Lines in 1978, and had even turned 34 when 'Heart Of Glass' was a colossal debut hit in the US a year later. In pop terms, the dynamic core of the group — Harry and her then boyfriend, the guitarist Chris Stein — were already neighing skittishly in the shadow of the glue factory when they hit paydirt. And this ascent to fame goes from being improbable to downright astonishing when you cast your eye over Harry's full CV. It seems unlikely that anyone attempting to tread in her footsteps would have any kind of life left to live by their mid-thirties.

Born on July 1, 1945 in Florida to parents who gave her up for adoption, Debbie Harry grew up in suburban Jersey, where she spent her time formulating plans of escape and daydreaming that Marilyn Monroe was her biological mother. In 1965 she moved to New York City, clicking naturally with the bohemian set, and joined the whimsical folk rock group The Wind In The Willows. Their one album on Capitol, released in 1968, was produced by Artie Kornfeld, who was determined to earn some of that hippy dollar. The year after the record flopped, he got his wish, becoming the musical booker for Woodstock. Harry, meanwhile, became a barmaid at Max's Kansas City in Manhattan where she met Andy Warhol and his retinue, served drinks to Janis Joplin and had sex with glam rocker Eric Emerson in a phone booth.

As the 60s began to sour, so did her experiences. She got hooked on heroin. She married a millionaire but left him a few months later. She became a Playboy Bunny. She moved into a Harlem drug den with a dealer and his armed gang. She eventually crawled out of New York, her life in shreds, only to get lured back by the advent of glam rock. Inspired by hanging out with the New York Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center she ended up forming her own group, The Stilettos, in 1972. A year later Stein watched the group and was so impressed he ended up joining. Although they never made it, this band were essentially part of New York punk's first wave along with other CBGB's house acts Television, Suicide and Wayne County. In 1974 Harry and Stein quit to start afresh and what was originally Angel And The Snakes became Blondie; the nomenclature derived from the name that lascivious New York drivers yelled out of their car windows at her.

They were not overnight sensations. Many rough edges needed to be sanded off before they became household names. By the time they released their first single in June 1976, the live song 'Sex Offender' became the 7" 'X Offender', for example. But Blondie were never going to fit into the narrow punk orthodoxy. Like The Clash, they were part of rock'n'roll's lineage, reflected by their nods to 50s culture and their dalliances with multiple new and classic forms of pop music, unconcerned if it made them look like dilettantes or not. And the rest of their music? Well, they barely released a bad single during their original seven-year existence, from the serrated punk of 'Rip Her To Shreds' and the clipped new wave of 'Denis' to the downtown disco hip hop of 'Rapture' and the shiny calypso reggae of 'The Tide Is High' via the unimpeachable pop statements of 'Union City Blue' and 'Atomic'.

Despite clearly possessing pop genius, the group were often dismissed as 'mere' teeny boppers and have never really garnered the kind of critical plaudits that might have been theirs had they looked like dough-faced brewers from Carlisle and sung about signing on. Harry, in particular, was always at pains to point out in interviews that Blondie were a group, rather than just her with a backing band, and after finding out that they shared a name with the favourite pet of the 20th Century's most reviled dictator, they threatened to change their name to Adolf Hitler's Dog by means of protest.

Toward the tail end of the group, heroin reared its ugly head again and the band fizzled out in 1982. Then, the following year, Stein was laid up by the life-threatening and rare autoimmune disease pemphigus. Blondie gave way to make room for his recuperation and Harry's solo career.

Although no longer a couple, Harry and Stein still share an intense bond — she is godmother to his two daughters — and they still work together continuously. This year the Blondie name has been revived once again for the pair (along with original drummer Clem Burke and newer recruits) to release their ninth album, Panic Of Girls. We join her for lunch to talk heroin, New York and why we should be taught about death at an early age.

I've enjoyed listening to the three songs I've heard from the new album and I was blown away by how modern it sounds. But then I guess Blondie has always had a very close relationship with current trends in dance music.
Debbie Harry: Yeah, we've always been very urban.

Is a Panic Of Girls a collective noun — you know, like a pride of lions?
DH: [laughs] A panic. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that.

What does the title refer to, joking aside?
DH: It's a line from one of the songs, which is about a street person who is predicting the end of the world. It's something that came out as just a rhyming line but, I don't know, it just seemed great when I said it.

The character of the mother doesn't really crop up in rock & roll that much but she seems to appear in your songs quite a lot.
DH: Really? You think so?

In 'Hanging On The Telephone'. In 'Golden Rod'. In 'Mother' on this album…
DH: Oh, mother, right. Well, Jack Lee [of The Nerves] wrote that ['Hanging On The Telephone'], so we can't be held responsible. Mother used to be a club in New York that I loved going to. It was the kind of place where they would have a theme and you would have to dress accordingly or you wouldn't get in. It was a really great fun night for me on a Tuesday. It was mainly people from the city — it wouldn't be like a Bridge and Tunnel thing. There was a good bar that you could drink in, another room with a dancefloor and stage where they put on shows… I performed in some of them. It was an off-the-wall kind of joint. There was also a basement with other music and video screens that had these loops playing that [visual artist] Rob Roth used to make up. When they closed I was sort of, 'Wow! What am I going to do on a Tuesday night now?'

Do you still live in New York?
DH: Uh huh.

When I think of New York in the late 70s and early 80s, I think of Blondie as being a quintessential band for the time and place; that you would have fitted in, in all the different New York strata — uptown, downtown, rich, poor, arty, punk rock, disco, hip hop.
DH: Uh huh. [Her nouvelle cuisine-sized meal arrives. She eyes the waiter sternly.] That's it? [sighs] Do you want some of this?

No, I'm good thanks. When you first moved to New York around the time you first started working in Max's, what was the city like?

DH: I guess it was not as crowded as it is now; not so many new apartment buildings in it, and a lot of old buildings. The rents were low. The city government was bankrupt. There were always strikes. It was kind of great — chaotic and dangerous.

Did it feel like the artistic spirit of New York was very accessible? Because didn't you meet Andy Warhol and the Factory crowd quite easily?
DH: It was a small world, basically. It was an enclave. The Downtown world really meant something. I think it's always going to be like that because it's such a small area. Everyone in New York is forced to know each other. There are new apartment buildings that have increased the population and a lot of people that would normally have moved to a nicer area at one time can now live downtown and be comfortable in a nice apartment, whereas it used to be just flats and brownstones and tenements. So that nature of it has all changed.

Do you think that 'zero tolerance' changed the musical spirit of the city?
DH: 'Zero tolerance'?

When I first went to New York, it was in 1992 and I didn't go back for over 10 years. In the intervening time, something happened — the city felt safer but it had also changed in negative ways as well. I can only speak as a tourist.
DH: It felt like Cleveland or Cincinnati, right? You know, I feel the same way about it.

Can I ask why you chose to cover Sophia George's 'Girlie Girlie' for the album?
DH: It's a great song. I don't think it was ever played in the States. But it was a big hit in the UK, right?

I must admit, until I heard your version I'd always presumed that the Sophia George was criticising a male suitor for being too camp: “Young man, you're too girlie girlie." I didn't listen very carefully.
DH: [laughs]

Obviously given this and 'The Tide Is High', you're no stranger to reggae. Did you ever go to Jamaica?
DH: No! I hate the Caribbean! I like the music but I hate the islands. I just don't like them.

Too hot? Too girlie girlie?DH: There are a couple of reasons. I don't really like being on an island that's that small and I don't really like the separation between the people who live there and the people who go there. That really disturbs me.

You're advised to stay within the compound of your hotel and not go wandering around Trenchtown, or wherever, on your own, right?
DH: Yeah. Part of the reason I would want to visit a place like that would be the religion and the churches — the local culture. As you say, you're not really encouraged to move beyond your boundaries.

What was your introduction to reggae like? Where did it come from?
DH: Hmmmm, I don't know exactly. I think I'd been hearing it for a long time. But I know that Chris came to London when there was a big reggae scene. I think it was in 1972 and when he came back he was really high on this reggae groove…Do you want some of this salad?

No thanks. On 'Girlie Girlie', I love the fact that there's a diss on there to a woman who sells cigarettes on a roundabout. Amazing. But talking of the song's wayward ways, are you a monogamist and have you always been?
DH: A monogamist? Mmm. Ha ha ha! I guess I have been. Dating is such a drag, don't you think? It gets really horrible and complicated. I have gone out with different guys at the same time but that was a long time ago. But now I just have friends so it's not quite the same, but it gets really complicated. Doesn't it?

TALK TALK - Remembering Bauhaus...Peter Murphy on Bauhaus, Dali's Car, his new solo album and his status as Godfather

Peter Murphy interviewed by "The Quietus"

For the last 30 years or so, goth has been the most durable of musical genres. Loved and ridiculed in equal measure, in its refusal to die it has come to resemble any number of vampire movies where the antagonist simply cannot be stopped despite all manner of stakes, garlic and crucifixes.
Yet bizarrely, as it came to mutate over the decades to cross-pollinate with any number of other genres – techno, industrial and metal have all felt the chill hand of goth resting on their shoulders – several of its key players have come to reject the genre like a parent disinheriting an errant child. The Sisters Of Mercy’s Andrew Eldritch will flee from the word with the haste of a bloodsucker making its way back to its coffin before the first rays of the rising sun, while The Cure’s Robert Smith is probably too cuddly to qualify as one despite a following that suggests otherwise.
Not so Peter Murphy. The erstwhile Bauhaus vocalist – sharp of cheek and pouting of lip – is only to happy to admit to his part in goth’s formation. Combining sacrilegious and blasphemous subject matter with S&M imagery and a high sense of camp and drama, Bauhaus were one of the first bands to use punk as a launchpad to somewhere else. Their brief reign of terror lasted less than five years but the imprint they left behind is still visible to this very day.

Now based in Istanbul, Murphy has just released his ninth solo album entitled, er… Ninth. Soon to be touring the States, Murphy returns to Europe after the summer, just in time for those long evenings to start drawing in…

From your vantage point of a lifetime of experience, how do you view the younger version of yourself who was just starting out in Bauhaus?

Peter Murphy: Well, with all modesty, when I think back, when we started writing songs in that mobile classroom I knew that I’d made it already. I remember everything because I have an elephant’s memory, and my memories of our farewell show in ’83 [at Hammersmith Palais] are particularly vivid and quite personal, in a sense. Having burnt our fires around the world, I was burnt out, really.

Can you remember what the catalyst was that moved you into music?

PM: From early on, I would whistle. I was more vocal than intellectual at school. I remember always whistling on that dreary walk to school, and there was music everywhere in my Catholic school. But there was music at home, too - more vocal music in a sense, but what really grabbed me was when I watched cheesy television shows like The Golden Shot and they’d always have these visiting stars singing a song here and there. And I used to think, 'I can do that!' I don’t know where that came from, but when I was at a concert I always knew that I’d rather be onstage than being down in the audience. But there was pivotal moment when I was about 14, and we were driving home from seeing relatives. It was night time and I was nodding off on the back seat with my head in my arms, and I just shot up with a great sense of urgency and said, 'I’m going to be a singer!' And that was that. They just turned round and said, 'Right. Go back to sleep.'

How important was the high drama of Catholicism, such as Masses, to the development of Bauhaus stage act?

PM: Tangentially, [guitarist] Daniel Ash and I were the Catholics and the other two [bassist David J and drummer Kevin Haskins] were the miserable, selfish Church of England heathens. When we first started touring, Daniel and I would stay in a bed and breakfast and their parents got them hotels. It was really pathetic. Daniel and I brought the psychodrama to the band, and I would exorcise a lot of that repressed psychodrama that had been left over from Catholicism. Personally, I used to really enjoy Mass and the hymns and there was a great contemplation of the Anti-Christ. I really enjoyed it but I also wanted a shag, which is why I went into a band, I guess. My passion, really - which came out in the first album, In The Flat Field - was escaping the flat fields of the mundane; the escape from the working class ghetto of the 'jobs for life' mentally and its forced ignorance. That reflected in the Church’s idea of hierarchical supremacy where the priests would say, 'Listen to me. We mediate between you and God; you just get on with it.' There was a lot of that that came out in the music.

Download these from "Ninth":
Peter Murphy - Seesaw Sway by nettwerkmusicgroup
Peter Murphy - Never Fall Out by nettwerkmusicgroup

LET'S TOUR/TALK TALK - Non c'è due senza tre...I Duran fanno tris di tappe in Italia e intanto raccontano moda e mode degli '80 su "Love Magazine"

Dopo l’annuncio di due date italiane, parte del loro attesissimo tour europeo, i Duran Duran hanno annunciato una terza tappa nel nostro paese: dopo Piazzola sul Brenta (22 luglio) e Milano (23 luglio) la band icona del pop proseguirà il tour estivo alle Saline di Margherita di Savoia, in provincia di Barletta (24 luglio).

Meanwhile John Taylor and Nick Rhodes confess their "careless memories" to "The Love Magazine"...watch and hear them here: http://www.thelovemagazine.co.uk/main.php.

TALK TALK - Simon Le Bon: "nel mondo che cambia, fare ancora il musicista è un privilegio"

(di Paolo Biamonte per l'Ansa)
ROMA, MAG. - Gli anni '80 sono lontani e tutto il tempo passato e' nei Duran Duran di oggi, quattro cinquantenni che portano con disinvoltura e evidenti segni di pancetta i segni di un'epoca diversa. Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes e John Taylor sono stati il simbolo di una stagione e oggi non hanno nessun rimpianto ne' provano a riproporre un modo d'essere che li ha fatti diventare dei miti pop. Pochi mesi fa e' uscito 'All You Need Now', il loro nuovo album: sostanzialmente fanno i musicisti, senza l'assillo di essere un mito pop. ''E' grande fare ancora questo lavoro, per noi non c'e' molta differenza nell'atteggiamento con cui affrontiamo la musica che resta una questione d'amore - racconta Simon Le Bon -. Attorno a noi il mondo e' cambiato: quando abbiamo cominciato registravamo i nostri provini sulle cassette, oggi persino il cd e' un oggetto superato, anche il mercato e' molto diverso. I nostri dischi dell'epoca d'oro vendevano in media 5-6 milioni di copie, due anni fa siamo arrivati al primo posto in America con una cifra infinitamente piu' bassa, ma questo non vuol dire molto perche' fare il musicista e' un po' come essere un attore, qualche volta il tuo lavoro viene preso meglio, altre volte peggio, ma quello che piu' conta e' potersi esibire per un pubblico e mai come oggi il mercato della musica live e' stato cosi' vitale''. I trent'anni di carriera alle spalle danno ai Duran Duran la consapevolezza di ''essere una fonte di ispirazione per le band della nuova generazione - dice Le Bon -: gruppi come Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chief hanno sonorita' e strutture musicali che si ispirano a noi, d'altra parte nella musica e' sempre stato cosi'. Anche oggi noi siamo appassionati ascoltatori di musica, mi piacciono molto i Gossip e adoro l'ultimo disco di P.J. Harvey''. Anche la neo principessa Kate piace alla band, cosi' come il nuovo primo ministro inglese Cameron, ''un uomo che non ha paura di dare brutte notizie e di prendere decisioni difficili, in una situazione finanziaria molto dura che, soprattutto nel nord dell'Inghilterra, si fa sentire molto''. Quando erano il massimo del divismo pop, i Duran Duran erano praticamente inavvicinabili, vivevano assediati dalle fan e giravano nei cellulari della polizia, un incubo per i giornalisti che dovevano incontrarli. Oggi sono molto disponibili, sorridenti, quattro signori che, tra alti e bassi, separazioni, progetti falliti, si sono rimessi insieme e si godono la vita del rocker senza troppi fronzoli, ben consapevoli che tutto sommato gli e' andata di lusso. ''Fare questo lavoro e' un privilegio - dice Le Bon -: nella vita le cose cambiano ma certamente se mi guardo indietro e penso a tutte le cose che abbiamo fatto mi rendo conto che da ragazzino neanche mi sognavo di raggiungere simili obiettivi. La musica e' il grande amore della nostra vita e non si puo' non ritenersi fortunati quando si pensa che per tanta gente i Duran Duran rappresentano una parte importante della loro vita''.

TALK TALK - The last hurrah! Alyson Moyet a tutto campo, svela perchè quello di sabato 14 maggio sarà l'ultimo concerto degli Yazoo...al 99%!

Intervista tratta dal sito musicale "The Quietus" (http://thequietus.com/)

In an extensive interview about the history of life before, during and after Yazoo, Alison Moyet explains why her forthcoming Roundhouse performance with Vince Clarke could be the duo's last hurrah. England's post-punk mythos tells that certain towns became spawning grounds for the pioneering new sound, with Manchester, Sheffield, London and Liverpool generally acknowledged as the quadraphonic holy alliance that gave birth to the sound of Britain in the early 80s. However, often missed in the romantic recollections of musicologists is the pure pop nexus of Basildon, where a small group of school mates somehow managed to form some of the most successful and long-lasting electronic pop acts of that time, including Depeche Mode, Erasure, and the singer Alison Moyet.
Like Depeche and Erasure, Moyet's rapid transformation from gruff punk spending her dole cheque on studio hire to international pop star involved the firm calculating hand of Ivor Novello-winning songwriter Vince Clarke, whose mysterious gift for frothy pop hooks appears almost occult. However, his project with Moyet, Yazoo, was over as rapidly as it began, with Clarke afterwards forming Erasure, and Moyet venturing uncertainly into what is now a highly successful 30-year solo career. She's worked with various producers, bands and projects, but has never been absorbed back into a collaborative project again. And yet, despite her multiple number one solo albums and singles since that time, Moyet is both blessed and dogged by her fans' – and British radio's – enshrined memory of those two stratospherically successful years three decades ago.
Moyet will revisit the Yazoo years for potentially the very last time at the upcoming Short Circuit Festival at the London Roundhouse as part of a showcase of Vince Clarke's collaborative endeavours on the label. She shares with the Quietus her memories of the years before, between and beyond Yazoo.

When did you start playing music?

Alison Moyet: For me it really took off with punk, and I think it was less about music then than the culture of it - finding yourself amongst a group of freaks you felt more akin to. It was more about the lyricism and the aggression, and entertaining yourself, really. We lived in a new town where we had no money and there was no culture going on so it was a way of us entertaining one another. We would play in car parks or in fields and everyone was in a band whether you could play an instrument or not. That was the joy of punk, really.

What was your first band?

AM: My first band was called the Vandals that I started when I was about 15 with a couple of close girlfriends from school. We used to walk around the streets singing all the time, telling everyone we were in a band, and then someone actually offered us a gig - which was a problem because we had to pull a set together really quickly. There was a guitar player in my school a year below us, I approached him and said 'Right, we've got a gig next Saturday and you're playing with us.' His name was Rubber, and he was Vince Clarke's best mate. It was us three girls and we'd pick up a different drummer every time - whoever was in the hall and could play drums would have to just come and jam with us. It would be quite brilliant: we'd hijack a pub and everyone would play a set. I think that's where the big singing came from for me, it was more about the fact that we had really shit PAs than anything. I imagined that if I sang really loudly people would be able to hear me.

How did you end up becoming the singer?

AM: Because I was the most Bolshie. Being a punk in Basildon was quite dangerous, it was very much about clans: there were skinheads, rockers, and there were the punks. In those days one of the first things you did when you met someone in the street is check their feet. If they had pointy shoes and straight trousers you knew they had a certain affinity - you could get a smack for having the wrong shoes on. I was the instigator of the band - I came from quite an aggressive French peasant family, and I was big and argumentative and I wrote the words. So, automatically I went up front.

What happened after the Vandals?

AM: Punk had done its thing - started to become acceptable, appearing on Top Of The Pops. Divisions started within the punk scene which split off into the New Romantic scene or into the pub rock scene – the new wave scene I suppose. I mean people like Elvis Costello and Ian Dury, music that was a bit more melodic, and that appealed to me. What I didn't like about New Romantics was that the punks who went that way had dropped all of the principles we had about it not being about your monetary status. Also it just was too 'prettified' for me, whereas the pub rock scene in Canvey Island (like Wilko Johnson and Dr Feelgood) seemed a more natural progression of where I was going musically. So I ended up as a part of the British R&B scene in the South East as opposed to where the Depeche lot went which was New Romantic.

Was the R&B scene where you developed your voice? Did you get any vocal training?

AM: No... It wasn't that kind of blues singing - it was much dirtier than people imagine it now. People have spoken about me as having been this kind of blues-jazz singer, and that gives it a much more 'honed' air than it really had. It was actually really thrashy: thrashy punk-blues-rock. My style of singing was based more on male singers than on a kind of gentle female singing, and that is what Vince had me doing in Yazoo. Actually, if you'd have heard 'Don't Go' when Vince first played it to me it was a very straight melody much in the way of 'Just Can't Get Enough'. Those turns in the melody in the final version were things that I brought to it from my own sense of playing R&B. I use that term loosely because R&B means something completely different now from what it did then. I think my singing skills have developed over the years and the way I have applied it has changed with my age rather than being a conscious thing. I don't think it was until I did The Voice album that I wanted to see if I could control myself better in that way.

Yazoo started from an ad you placed in the paper at that time, didn't it?

AM: Yes it did. After my previous band The Screamin' Ab Dabs split up I was looking for another bunch of blues musicians to work with. At the same time, I'd been playing in bands that predated Depeche, and Vince was looking for a singer who was quite different to Dave Gahan. He was looking for a singer generally but looking for my number at the same time, so it was real serendipity that he just opened the paper and there was my number. It was like it was meant to be.

Vince wasn't what you were after at all, was he?

AM: No, not at all, and I had mixed feelings about it. And yet, what excited me about Vince was his attitude. There was always a lot of 'We're going to do this, we're going to do that' talk going on, the hot air-ing of young people who don't have a great future ahead of them. I left school at 16 completely unqualified, I had no prospects, the idea of university wasn't even a consideration, and you met plenty of people that were just getting stoned and drunk and kept saying the same things about what they were going to do. Vince was someone that actually turned what he wanted to do into fact and I found that really interesting. Also, as I said before, I had no money so I had no way of making a demo, and Vince called me up and said he had a song, would I like to go and demo it for him? I thought that if I did this song with Vince I'd have a demo to illustrate how I sang. He played me 'Only You'. I had a very quick musical memory then and just sang it into his tape recorder. He called me up a week later saying he'd played it to the record company and they thought we should record it. So we recorded it, and when they heard that they said we should make it into a single so tried to find some b-sides. Vince had written 'Don't Go' but that was too good for a b-side so then we wrote 'Situation' together, which actually ended up being released as a single in America. Everything we did at that time just seemed to spark - it just kind of worked. I don't think Vince ever intended to start a band with me, that wasn't what he was looking for. He was still very sore, Depeche were his mates and leaving them was like the break-up of a marriage. I think he was feeling angry and disillusioned and wanted to prove himself as a writer, so we got together without having a future, and it just rollercoastered. Everything that we did appealed, and suddenly we were making an album before we'd even been for a pint together or had a relationship or knew anything about each other's lives. We had this strange studio relationship where he would bring a song to me or I would bring a song to him and he would do what he did without asking me anything and I would do what I did without asking him anything... there was no conversation. I would write a song and, for the most part, he would just arrange it up then I'd sing on it, or he'd sing me a song on the guitar and then I would play with the melody or not, add vocal pieces and sing it the way that I wanted to. There was no talk about whether this was a gentle song or a dance song, I just sang it as I saw fit.

Given your tastes for heavier sounds, did you like Yazoo's sound?

AM: I adored it, even retrospectively. What I really liked about it is that my tastes are very eclectic and when you look at the material the songs come from a million different places and yet are tied together by the sound, the voice and the instrumentation we used. What was great about Yazoo is that there was never feeling that you had to give up on anything. I could still sing blues, I could still sing the darker poetry stuff that appealed to me. There were a couple of light pop moments that appealed less. When it came to 'Happy People' on the second album we had a big fallout because I refused to sing it. He did it none the less because he liked it, and by all accounts it was a big hit in Poland [laughs]. There are just some places you can't go, I tried singing that song a couple of times but I couldn't genuinely bring anything to it so I wouldn't do it. But that's the only time I ever refused a song.

How did you feel about the level of success Yazoo so quickly attained?

AM: It was bizarre, but when I compare having a hit then to having one in the late 80s or the 90s it was so much more exciting. Nowadays when you have a record out you know by day two what the trajectory is, you know mid-week where you're predicted to go to. In the early 80s you had to sit listening to the chart countdown on Radio 1 to find out whether you were in the charts or not, so there was always this excitement. 'Only You', for example, entered the charts at, I think it was 157, but I was thinking '157, that's amazing.' Also, you wouldn't be told about the Radio 1 playlist, DJs were playing what they wanted to so you could be completely surprised by something being played. It was a really amazing time, really exciting. Where it all started going wrong for me was when I started becoming incredibly recognisable. When it was just a song on the charts and the radio, that was brilliant, but, especially with my physicality, I was so recognisable. When you start getting chased down the street... that was just too odd.

How did that affect your personal life?

AM: I found it really difficult because I was one of the only people I knew who wasn't desperate to escape Basildon. I really liked the town and my friends in it. I never had an aspirational character, and I never wanted to socially climb - none of that stuff ever occurred to me. I just really wanted to be with my mates, just like I'd always been - that's the sort of thing that matters to me – and it was difficult because you'd want to go to the same pubs as always, but you were constantly getting other people trying to get your attention, to talk to you. So you stop going to those places, and then you start becoming isolated and feeling excluded, and your mates don't want the hassle of it, either. So instead of fitting in more you actually become more of a freak when you become famous.

That sounds like the opposite of everything you would have wanted as a punk... how did your 'bolshie' side react to this excessive artificiality?

AM: You don't know it until you're in it, you have no idea what that lifestyle means. I think 'Be careful what you wish for,' but at the same time I feel really ungrateful for saying that, because due to moments like that, when I had fallow years I could say 'no' because I had earned money and didn't have to take jobs for the sake of it. I think what was particularly difficult about that time is that Vince had already experienced that moment with Depeche, and he was also in this blessed position where he was the songwriter but stood at the back so he could disappear if he chose to. When you're the front person that's a much more difficult thing to do. Also he was in quite an insular angry place at the time and wasn't able to understand what I was dealing with, and I was a difficult adolescent/young adult, not naturally graceful or gracious...I wouldn't have been particularly likeable.

Were you told how to act publicly, as a star? For TV performances and things like that?

AM: No, I was completely left to my own devices. You think of how well prepared youngsters are now, right down to the things they should say to the press, the way they should dress. I remember when I did Top Of The Pops I had been unemployed, I never went into music for money so I'd never asked anyone for any. The first bit of money I got I blew completely on a motorbike so I still had no money, and I remember my mum lent me 30 quid to go down the Basildon market to buy some fabric and a friend made me a dress with it for TOTP. There were no... millions...when people said 'Have you bought your mum and dad a house yet?' you thought 'Are you fucking mental, they're giving me pocket money!' [laughs]

Is it true that by the time the second album was being made, you and Vince were starting to fall out?

AM: We'd had problems before that. I think the second album happened because of advice from his publisher, because Vince'd done one album with Depeche and had walked, and then he'd done one album with me and he was ready to walk then. I think that his publisher was going 'You're mad - you shouldn't be doing this, you should make at least one more record.' But even as we began the second album we knew that it was over, he had already decided he didn't want to work with me anymore. It was reported that I had left Yazoo to go and be a solo act, but I never ever had the ambition to be a solo singer. The only reason I did is because I'd become so disenfranchised with Yazoo, in the sense that all the contacts that Yazoo had were Vince's: he was the one dealing with the record company, the publishers, he was the one who had the mates and I was completely reliant on whether he was communicative with me or not. I'd lost the company of my old bandmates who were appalled that I'd done the kind of record I'd done, or perhaps jealous that I'd got something away, and were determined that it was all going to go badly for me, so I had no mates at the time. Even in Yazoo I'd become solitary very quickly - I didn't socialise and never networked or anything like that. All I had were a lawyer and an accountant who really did a job on me saying 'You've got to leave Mute' and got me a deal with Sony. So now, all of a sudden, I had a deal with Sony and no band, and that's what made me a solo singer. It was one of my residing regrets, becoming a solo singer. There's something really brilliant about having other people to share your successes with and to share your fears and anger and your bullishness, having someone onside that truly has as much to gain and as much to lose as you.

So how did it actually end with Vince?

AM: It was Vince's decision but I can't remember if it was on the phone or how he told me. I remember asking him to reconsider on one occasion but he was absolutely adamant that he was out, so when we made the second album we were entirely working on our own. He'd go in in the mornings, I'd go in in the evenings, he'd do something then later I'd do something on top of it. It was like a patchwork album where there was no discussion or getting excited about each others' things. We just worked separately.

You signed to Sony and were expected to do a solo album: what happened next?

AM: It was a really miserable time. My lawyer had told me I was free to sign worldwide and I never had a deal with Mute, that's not how they worked. However there was a deal with Warner Brothers where they'd release the albums. My lawyer told me I was free to sign with Sony worldwide and then promptly disappeared, and never took any of my phone calls. By the next week I was injuncted by Warner Brothers and that was a really bad time. I had no contact with anybody other than my lawyer and accountant who weren't talking to me and I was injuncted and there was no way of getting out of it. I said 'I'll pop into Warner Brothers' and did a deal that was stupidly punitive just to get the right to work again: a year of not working. I became agoraphobic and quite ill, and Sony (they were CBS at the time), their attitude had been 'Come back when you've sorted this out' - they weren't going to help me with it. So I didn't see them for a year. In the first meeting with them after that, I was a complete space cadet. I signed a producer and they did that horrible A&R thing that they do, which is pick up a Music Week and see who's got one album that we can put together with a certain producer and I was too mad to really consider what was happening. A year of not really leaving the house and not having spoken to anyone was not really conducive to making a good move.

So what had you done in that year? Did you write any music?

AM: I stayed indoors. I literally stayed indoors for a year. I couldn't even listen to music. Music had been something that I did every day since I was 15 and here I was, 22 or something like that, and I wasn't allowed to work. And I couldn't just go and play in local pubs because the week I signed to Sony I'd just been number one so I was really, really recognisable, and sort of famous. So I couldn't even listen to records, it would make me physically sick.

So how did making Alf go?

AM: It was interesting. I worked with Swain and Jolley on it, they would come around to my house - I had a piano there - and the writing process was really quick and easy. We got the album done in three months and then went to the studio. It was interesting, different from the way that I'd worked with Vince in the way tracks were built up. Also, [I was] working with producers, which Vince and I hadn't done, so the experience of it was interesting. I ended up really disliking that album for the wrong reasons - I'm much more comfortable with it now than I was then.

What didn't you like about it?

AM: I disliked it then because I became famous from it - I got so recognisable - and hits really can be the bane of your life. People don't see that songs are like a diary of where you were at when you were 22, and then you're 23 and think something different and at 24 something different again. It's like you are forever tied to your hits and that's a fucking pain in the arse, because what is appropriate for you musically then isn't appropriate later on. What interested me about Alf was just the process of making it. I didn't really think about where that was going to lead me, or how it would represent me. It was just 'Oh, we're doing that are we? OK.'
In the process of making that album, did you begin to find what you'd consider your own sound?

AM: No, I don't think that started until Hoodoo really. You know, my favourite albums are the later ones. I feel self-conscious in saying that because so often you get artists who are really defensive of their work that's less known, but lyricism is really important to me and I find the words of a 21-year-old don't move me. Interestingly enough, I find Yazoo's work more interesting than the bleatings of an early solo singer.

How do you feel about singing Yazoo songs now?

AM: It's the songs that were milked on the radio that people remember you for, fans and non-fans alike. The hardened fans that come to my shows are as bored of the earlier stuff as I am... Actually that's not a fair thing to say - I am less bored of it now because I'd stopped for a while and refused to do them. I can now revisit that innocence without the embarrassment that you feel when you're close to it, in the same way that with an old lover, as time has gone by, you find it much easier to remember things about them that you did like than the things that you didn't. 'Only You', for example - I have to smile my way through that song because I get so bored singing it. I've sung it for over 30 years but what I get now that I never used to get is that it really brings joy to other people, and transports them to for a moment to a time in their life when hope was still a prospect. That one moment of 'Yes! Thank you!' gives you enough reason to want to do it again.

How about the Yazoo reunion? Was it full of those 'grin and bear it' moments?

AM: I did the Yazoo reunion tour in 2008, and what was really fantastic about doing those shows is that we'd never performed the whole second album live and for the first album we'd done no more than 30 dates. So of all my material, the Yazoo songs have been in some ways the least covered live-wise. Because of that it was not like some nasty karaoke, it was genuinely like doing it for the first time with the complete joy that every single song was thoroughly known by the audience... a set of hits that you've never sung live before and at the same time were not hits. It was just brilliant, I had a really great time and it was really good that Vince and I had come through the whole circle of being really angry with each other, forgetting what we'd been angry about, and forgetting that there was ever any displeasure. It was a blessing to have one of those rare times when you're accepted by the public, by the media and by the serious music press – there are not many times in your life when that happens.

So what brought you and Vince back together?

AM: It was something that I'd wanted to do for a long time because playing live always has been my favourite part. I'm much happier live than in a studio somewhere, and I do a couple of Yazoo songs in my own shows, primarily because so much of my own material is so bleak I feel I need a moment where people don't want to go and stab themselves. I look to Yazoo for some of the lighter moments: I've done 'Situation', 'Don't Go' and 'Only You' in my sets. But the majority of Yazoo songs, including half the songs I've written myself, I didn't feel I could do live because they needed not to be done with a generic band. A huge part of what they were was the electronica, and short of getting someone to come and mimic Vince, I couldn't do those songs. So, I would have played with Yazoo for that reason at any time over the last 20-25 years.

Who instigated the reunion?

AM: I emailed Vince and said: 'Would you like to play live?' It's like Vince was married to Depeche and married to Erasure and I was the transition relationship, and as such, for him to play live with me... well if the shoe was on the other foot and I was Andy Bell I wouldn't have liked it much, and I think Vince would have felt that it betrayed Andy, so his first reaction was: 'As much as I'd like to, I can't.' Then I think after Andy told him that he wanted to take a sabbatical and not work for year he said 'Actually, Alison asked me if I'd like to do some Yazoo gigs', to which Andy said 'Well, you should go for it', so he did! I think seeing Vince on stage with Yazoo made Andy miss that very much so he wanted to start working again quite soon afterwards, and that really put paid to us doing any more gigs than we did.

Is that good in a way, not to get caught up too much in the past?

AM: Well, I loved it, I had a great time. We toured England and did some gigs in America and they were great. I would have loved to have done some more worldwide, to hit some of the places we never played in. I would have been happy to have done more, but I'm satisfied with what we did.

And what made you decide that was the time to email Vince?

AM: I always thought that it was a project we hadn't finished, it was kind of half-done and then put on the shelf with all the other things Vince did. For me, it was unfinished because you never really get to the crux of something until you sing it live, until you've toured it... for me it's almost sad that you record an album and then tour it; it's a shame you can't tour an album and then record it, then you'd really find out what's the meat and bones and what are the feathers for plucking.

You and Vince are both going to be appearing at the Mute festival - might that lead to more shows?

AM: We'll be performing together and I'm 99.9% sure it's the last time. I mean, should he change his mind I'm happy to do more Yazoo gigs, but knowing Vince and his fidelity to Erasure I can't see it happening again. So, as far as i know this'll be the last time that we're playing Yazoo stuff together.

Are you still working on a new album?

AM: Yes, it's a good 70% through. I've been working with Guy Sigsworth, and I'm certainly thinking in terms of my next tour being an electronic tour. It ties in with the new album, and means that I can approach some of the early 80s stuff that I've done and also deal with a couple of the albums that I've not been able to do because they're so heavily programmed.

Does that mean that you're writing an electronic album this time?

AM: Yes, it's effectively a programmed album. It's not electronica in the sense of that early 80s analogue sound but it is electronic as opposed to acoustic instruments.

You said that Hoodoo and onwards have been your favourite albums; moving forward from that era, how do you think you have developed as a songwriter?

AM: Well, I think that the lyricism has really come to the fore, and I think that's where my area of strength is. My challenge is that sometimes you write as a songwriter and sing as a singer, which is why I sometimes cover other people's songs - because sometimes my own stuff is not always suited to a singer. The material that I listen to is not always singer-oriented so when I'm writing I'll often give more fidelity to the poetry than I would to how to showboat as a singer.

And does it reflect a less turbulent time, a more confident time now?

AM: Well, I certainly think that it's age-appropriate. You know, I'm coming up to 50 now and what I'm looking for in a lyric is... what I love about writers such as Jacques Brel is that they're not frightened of showing themselves in a less flattering way. I think you are far more intimidated by that when you are younger - when you're younger you have to be seen as sexy or edgy, those kind of things, whereas when I'm writing now I'm really happy to be ugly, to see myself in a not very flattering light. There's a kind of beautiful ugliness in it that you don't approach when you are younger.

Do you think about what your fans want when you write?

AM: It's irrelevant for me. I've collected fans from every different album, so there will be some that only ever want to see me as a gay diva, there's some that only want to see me as a dark poet, some that are happy for me to be a euphoric pop singer, some see me as a jazz singer, everyone's got a different idea and has a different era that they like. I would not write for the marketplace. I did it once: I recorded 'Weak in the Presence of Beauty' because I knew it was a hit and I regretted that totally and will never do that again.

So what is important to you in writing a song?

AM: That I move myself.

And how do you know when you have?

AM: Because I cry...

Really?

AM: Because I cry, or because I feel... that feeling. There's a feeling that you get in your stomach that you can't distinguish between anxiety, euphoria or hunger. You get that kind of feeling when you go: 'Fucking hell, you're beautiful.'

Alison Moyet plays alongside Vince Clarke for the final time at the Mute Short Circuit Festival, which takes place next weekend, May 13th and 14th. For Festival information and tickets, visit the Roundhouse website