Marc Almond

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Peter Mark Sinclair "Marc" Almond, (born 9 July 1957) is an English singer-songwriter and musician.

Almond first began performing and recording in the synthpop/new wave duo Soft Cell.

He has also had a diverse career as a solo artist.

His collaborations include a duet with Gene Pitney on the 1989 UK number one single "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart".

Almond's career spanning over four decades has enjoyed critical and commercial acclaim, and he has sold over 30 million records worldwide.

He spent a month in a coma after a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 2004 and later became a patron of the brain trauma charity Headway.He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to arts and culture.

Early life

Almond was born in Southport, Lancashire, the son of Sandra Mary Diesen and Peter John Sinclair Almond, a Second Lieutenant in the King's Liverpool Regiment. He was brought up nearby at his grandparents' house in Birkdale with his younger sister, Julia, and as a child suffered from bronchitis and asthma. When he was four, they left their grandparents' house and moved to Starbeck, Harrogate. Two years later they returned to Southport, and then moved to Horsforth, West Yorkshire. There, he attended Horsforth Featherbank Infant School.

At the age of 11, Almond attended Aireborough Grammar School near Leeds, West Yorkshire. He found solace in music, listening to British radio pioneer John Peel. The first album he purchased was the soundtrack of the stage musical Hair and the first single "Green Manalishi" by Fleetwood Mac. He later became a great fan of Marc Bolan and David Bowie and got a part-time job as a stable boy to fund his musical tastes. After his parents' divorce in 1972, he moved with his mother back to Southport where he attended King George V School. He gained two O-Levels in Art and English and was accepted onto a General Art and Design course at Southport College, specialising in Performance Art.

Almond applied to Leeds Polytechnic, where he was interviewed by Jeff Nuttall, also a performance artist, who accepted him on the strength of his performing skills. During his time at art college, he did a series of performance theatre pieces: Zazou, Glamour in Squalor, Twilights and Lowlifes, as well as Andy Warhol inspired mini-movies. Zazou was reviewed by The Yorkshire Evening Post and described as "one of the most nihilistic depressing pieces that I have ever had the misfortune to see", prompting Almond to later refer to it as a "success" in his autobiography. He left art college with a 2:1 honours degree. He later credited writer and artist Molly Parkin with discovering him. It was at Leeds Polytechnic that Almond met David Ball, a fellow student; they formed Soft Cell in 1977.

As a child, Almond listened to his parents' record collection, which included his mother's "Let's Dance" by Chris Montez and "The Twist" by Chubby Checker, as well as his father's collection of jazz, including Dave Brubeck and Eartha Kitt. As an adolescent, Almond listened to Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg. He listened at first to progressive music, blues, and rock, and bands such as Free, Jethro Tull, Van der Graaf Generator, The Who, and The Doors. He bought the first ever issue of Sounds because it contained a free poster of Jimmy Page. Almond became a fan of Bolan after hearing him on The John Peel Show, buying the T. Rex single "Ride a White Swan". From then on, Almond "followed everything Marc Bolan did" and it was his obsession with Bolan that prompted Almond to adopt the "Marc" spelling of his name. He discovered the songs of Jacques Brel through Bowie as well as Alex Harvey and Dusty Springfield. Brel became a major influence.

Personal life

Almond has stated that he dislikes being pigeon-holed as "a 'gay' artist", saying that such a label "enables people to marginalise your work.  I am a singer who happens to be gay".

In response to being appointed OBE at the age of 60, Almond said he is still a "little bit" anti-establishment, but added: "I can't really be a rebel any more. I think it's time to leave it to younger people."

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Career

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Stevo Pearce, a music publisher who at the time was compiling a "futurist" chart for the music journal Record Mirror and Sounds, which featured young, upcoming, and experimental bands of the new wave of electronic music, was "Mutant Moments." Between 1981 and 1984, he signed the pair to his Some Bizzare brand, and they had a string of nine top 40 hit singles and four top 20 albums in the United Kingdom. They released three albums in New York: Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing, and The Art of Falling Apart. Almond joined the New York Underground Art Scene at this time, allowing him to visit artists including Andy Warhol and perform at a number of Art shows.

"Tainted Love," a cover of a Gloria Jones Northern Soul album, debuted in the United Kingdom and several countries around the world, and it was in the Guinness Book of Records for a while as the longest time on the Billboard Top 100 charts in the United States, as the longest in the Billboard Top 100 chart. At the first British Awards, it also received the best-single award of 1981. Soft Cell brought a relatively obscure Northern Soul classic to mass public attention, and their version of the song is to date, the UK's 59th best-selling single of all time, selling more than one million copies in the United Kingdom.

Almond initiated Marc and the Mambas as an offshoot project from Soft Cell in 1982. Marc and the Mambas were a loose experimental group that provided the artist with the style that Almond would become. Matt Johnson, Steve James Sherlock, Lee Jenkinson, Peter Ashworth, Jim Thirlwell, and Anni Hogan, who worked later in his solo career, were among the Mambas' many others. Almond released two albums, Untitled and Torment and Toreros, under Mambas moniker John Malmaison. He disbanded the group when it began to sound too much like a regular band.

Soft Cell disbanded in 1984 just before the debut of their fourth album, This Last Night in Sodom, but the pair briefly reunited in 2001.

Vermin in Ermine was Almond's first proper solo album, which was released in 1984. It was produced by Mike Hedges and it featured musicians from the Mambas, Annie Hogan, Martin McCarrick, and Billy McGee. Mother Fist and Her Five Daughters (1987), also produced by Mike Hedges, were part of this ensemble, The Willing Sinners. In reviews, the new album was highly praised, with Ned Raggett describing the 'Mother Fist' album "embraces classic European cabaret to stunning effect, more so than any American or English rock album since Bowie's Aladdin Sane or Lou Reed's Berlin."

McCarrick left The Willing Sinners in 1987 to join Siouxsie and the Banshees, from which time Hogan and McGee became known as La Magia. In 1988, Almond signed to EMI and released the album The Stars We Are. Almond's version of "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart," which was later recorded as a duet with the song's original singer Gene Pitney and released as a single on this album. The track reached No. 87 on the charts. In the United Kingdom, there is only one. It also ranked No. 1 in Germany and was a major hit in countries around the world. The Stars We Are The Most Popular Solo Album in the United States, and his single "Tears Run Rings" became his first solo single to debut inside the US Billboard Hot 100.

Almond's other recordings in the 1980s included an album of Brel songs performed by Juliette Gréco, Serge Lama, and Léo Ferré, as well as poems by Rimbaud and Baudelaire set to music. Absinthe was released in 1993, and was first released in the late 1980s and then finished in Paris in the early 1990s.

Enchanted was Almond's first release in the 1990s, which resulted in the UK Top 30's hit "A Lover Spurned." Dave Ball, who was then in the experimental dance band The Grid, remixed a further single from the album, "Waifs and Strays." Soft Cell returned to the charts in 1991 with a new remix of "Say Hello Wave Goodbye" followed by a re-release of "Tainted Love" (with a new video). The singles were released to promote a new Soft Cell/Marc Almond compilation album, Memorabilia - The Singles, which has received some of Almond's biggest hits from the previous ten years. The album debuted at number ten in the United Kingdom.

Almond later signed to WEA and launched Tenement Symphony, a new solo album. The album, which was partially produced by Trevor Horn, resulted in three Top 40 hits, including versions of the Jacques Brel classic "Jacky" (which made it to the UK Top 20) and "The Days of Pearly Spencer," which brought Almond back to the UK Top 5 in 1992. Almond held an orchestra and dancers as part of his entire career later this year. The show was produced and released on CD and DVD as the 12 Years of Tears.

Almond, on the invitation of the British consul in Moscow, toured Russia (including Siberia). He appeared in small Soviet halls and theatres, many without amplification, and came to a close at Moscow's "mini Bolshoi." Almond made a plea for the inclusion of gay people on television. The tour was fraught with difficulties, which Almond chronicled in his autobiography, but it came at the start of his passion for the Russian folk torch songs referred to as Romance.

Almond's next album Fantastic Star appeared on WEA and Mercury Records. Parts of Fantastic Star was recorded in New York with Mike Thorne, but after signing to Mercury, it was reworked in London. Almond also recorded a session for the album with John Cale, David Johanson, and Chris Spedding; some of them made the final cut. Mike Hedges and Martyn Ware's other songs were produced. Adding to the disjointed recording process was the fact that during recording Almond spent several weeks at a rehabilitation center in Canterbury for prescription opioid abuse. However, on its debut, Fantastic Star gave Almond a hit single with "Adored and Explored," as well as minor hits and stage favorites like "The Idol" and "Child Star." Fantastic Star was Almond's last album on a major record label, and the time coincided with his managerial relationship with Stevo Pearce.

Open All Night, Almond's more downbeat and atmospheric electronica collection, was released in 1998. This collection includes R&B and trip hop influences, as well as torch songs for which he had not been identified. The album featured a duet ("Threat of Love") with Siouxsie Sioux as well as a one ("Almost Diamonds") with Kelli Ali (then of the Sneaker Pimps). The singles from the album "Open All Night" were "Black Kiss," "Tragedy," and "My Love."

Almond moved to Moscow in 2000, where he rented an apartment. He started Heart on Snow, a three-year recording project of Russian romance and folk songs, with encouragement and acquaintances. Featuring many Russian stars old and new, including Boris Grebenshchikov, Ilya Lagutenko of the Russian band Mumiy Troll, Lyudmila Zykina and Alla Bayanova, as well as Anatole Sobolev's The Rossiya Folk Orchestra conducted in English for the first time, many of the beloved Soviet era songs were performed in English in English for the first time. Andrei Samsonov, a musician/arranger, produced the album. Lyudmila Zykina and Alla Bayanova played many times at the Rossiya Concert Hall, as well as the Rossiya Folk Orchestra.

Soft Cell reunited briefly in 2001, with their first new album in 18 years, Cruelty Without Beauty. Two singles came out of this album, "Monoculture" and a recap of Frankie Valli's "The Night," which resulted in a Top of the Pops appearance for the band, the first since the mid 1980s.

Almond was seriously wounded in a motorbike crash near St Paul's Cathedral in London in October 2004. He had two big blood clots and had to do emergency surgery twice near death and in a coma for weeks. He suffered with head injury, multiple fractures and fractures, a collapsed lung, and hearing loss. He began his slow recovery vowing to get back on the stage and in the studio.

Almond's Stardom Road, an album of cover songs, was released in June 2007. The album featured songs from "I Have Lived" by Charles Aznavour to "Stardom Road" by Third World War, Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night," and "Kitsch" by Paul Ryan, each with their respective lives and careers. "Redeem Me (Beauty Will Redeem the World)" was his album's first new song since the motorcycle accident. Until 2007, Stardom Road was to be one of three albums on the Sanctuary label, the UK's biggest independent record label until 2007, when it ran into financial difficulties and was sold off to Universal Music Group in June 2007. Almond's birthday was on display at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London in July 2007, and he paid tribute to Marc Bolan, his teenage hero, in September. He accompanied Bolan's wife, Gloria Jones, on an impromptu version of "Tainted Love" at the festival. The fashion house Yves Saint Laurent selected Almond's "Strangers in the Night" to represent their performance at London's Fashion Rocks in October 2007. Almond appeared at the Royal Albert Hall for the occasion.

Almond performed with Jools Holland in 2008 and 2009, as well as appearing at shows by Current 93, Baby Dee, and a tribute show to late folk singer Sandy Denny at the Festival Hall. Almond's second album of Russian Romances and Gypsy songs, released in October 2009, was called Orpheus in Exile on an album. The album was dedicated to Russian singer Vadim Kozin, who was exiled to the Arctic Circle's gulags. Alexei Fedorov produced the album, which also featured an orchestra orchestra arranged by Anatole Sobolev.

Almond's first studio album of self written content since 2001's Stranger Things. The album honors Almond's 30th anniversary as a recording artist, as well as a new concert tour in autumn 2010. Also in the summer of 2010, Almond was named Mojo Hero by the music publication Mojo. Anohni, a New York native, came from New York to Almond to award the award.

Almond's Feasting with Panthers album was released in 2011, as a result of musician and arranger Michael Cashmore's collaboration. Count Eric Stenbock, Jean Genet, Jean Cocteau, Paul Verlaine, and Rimbaud's poems were among the poetry set to music. Ten Plagues, a music-theatre performance performed at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre in the 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, took place later this year. Ten Plagues is a one-man song cycle based on Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year (which dates back to 1722), with metaphors of Aids and epidemics. It was written for him by Mark Ravenhill and Conor Mitchell.

In 2012, Almond played Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher, in the Paris Théâtre du Châtelet's experimental rock interpretation of Poppea, based on Monteverdi's original 17th-century opera The Coronation of Poppea. Carl Bart, French singer-songwriter Benjamin Biolay, Swedish singer Fredrika Stahl, and former Clash drummer Peter Howard appeared in the film. Almond appeared at Meltdown Festival in London's Southbank Centre later this year, with reforming Marc and the Mambas performing their second album Torment and Toreros live for the first time. Anohni has stated that Torment and Toreros was her favorite album in her youth, and that it became Antony and the Johnsons' starting point. For one song, Anohni appeared with Almond in "My Little Book of Sorrows."

In 2013, Almond revived Ten Plagues and performed it for a month at Wilton's Music Hall in London. At The Royal Albert Hall, he also appeared on stage with Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson on Tull's concept album "Thick as a Brick." Almond was also given the Ivor Novello Inspiration Award from Attitude last year, which was given to him by longtime associate and co-manager Vicki Wickham.

Throughout 2014, Almond released three albums. The Tyburn Tree with composer John Harle, a concept album about gritty historical London, came first. This was followed by The Dancing Marquis album, which was produced by a number of collaborators, including Jarvis Cocker, Carl Bart, and Jools Holland, which featured Tony Visconti's production on certain tracks. Almond also released a studio recording of his 2011 film, Ten Plagues - A Song Cycle.

The Velvet Trail, Chris Braide's album of original material, was released in 2015. Almond is currently working on a song cycle to accompany the shooting of a multi media version of a Joris-Karl Huysmans' film titled Against Nature). Feasting with Panthers collaborator Jeremy Reed has contributed to this project's score. Reed states that he has written 15 songs for the project, including that Against Nature is "undoubtedly one of the most decadent books ever written" and that Almond has always wanted to do it, adding that "now we're both jaded aesthetes we should do it."

Marc Almond has been working with BMG Rights Management since 2004, signing a two-album contract. The compilation album Hits and Pieces / The Best of Soft Cell & Marc Almond's debuts at number seven on the UK album chart in 2017. Shadows & Reflections was released in September 2017, debuting at No.14 in the UK charts in September 2017.

Chaos and a Dancing Star, Almond's next solo album, was released in January 2020. Braide was also written with Braide. On the album, Ian Anderson sings and plays flute. Almond and Braide produced a new Soft Cell album during COVID-19 lockdowns, which was released on May 2022. The album featured 12 new songs, as well as a Pet Shop Boys' collaboration on the track Purple Zone. “It was by far the best-received album that Soft Cell had ever produced,” Almond said.

Almond performed a Bauhaus show at the Barbican Centre in May 2022 with his long-term collaborator John Harle. In late summer, a US Tour with Soft Cell was followed by a tour of the United States.

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