Dave Ball: ‘Soft Cell became something bigger than we’d ever imagined’

Soft Cell’s Dave Ball has written a memoir. Duncan Seaman reports.
Dave Ball of Soft Cell.Dave Ball of Soft Cell.
Dave Ball of Soft Cell.

As one half of Soft Cell, one of Britain’s most successful and sometimes controversial synth-pop duos, Dave Ball’s autobiography was bound to contain some eye-popping moments. And sure enough, they’re there to be found in his recollections of trips to Soho and New York nightclubs in the early 1980s.

But it’s his memories of Leeds, where he and singer Marc Almond first forged their musical partnership in the late 1970s, that will resonate most with Yorkshire readers. Ball arrived in the city from Blackpool, where he’d grown up obsessed with glam, prog, Northern Soul and – after hearing Kraftwerk – synthesisers. “I’ve always been a bit of an outsider, I think,” he says of his upbringing as an adopted child. “I’ve got less so. There’s still part of me like that, but I’m a lot more sociable than I used to be. In my teens I was terribly shy. I was quite happy to lock myself away.”

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He met Marc Almond while studying fine art at Leeds Polytechnic from 1977 to 1980. “I did three years at what was then Leeds Poly, that’s where I met Marc,” says Ball, now aged 60. “He stayed on and I stayed in Leeds because we’d formed a band. We were living in a housing association place for two years after college because we were doing the band. We didn’t exactly have career prospects; it was the only thing we’d got going on in our lives. We were doing gigs every weekend.”

Almond, who was studying performance art, was actually the first person that Ball, a fine art student, spoke to at Leeds Polytechnic. “I remember the first day we enrolled there were loads of guys who looked just like me with bum fluff moustaches and long hair and brand new Doc Martens and Levi’s and Wranglers, how you expect a fresher to look,” Ball recalls. “Then there was this one guy wandering around with a leopard-skin top and bleached hair and spandex trousers, and I thought ‘he’s got to be in the art department, he’s not an accountant’, so I asked him ‘do you know where I enrol?’ He was the first person I spoke to there.”

Their musical bond was formed when Almond overheard Ball making “weird noises” on his synthesiser in the college studio. “He came in for a cup of tea and a chat and said, ‘Do you want to do some music for my performances?’ I was like, ‘what?’ because I’d never thought of my stuff being used publicly. I was delighted and we forged a friendship from there.

“He’d done a couple of things where he said, ‘I’ve got this song that I want to do’. There was one called Fun City that did actually make it onto the B-side of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, which was one of our biggest singles in the 80s. I played him some of my weird little songs and he said, ‘can I try singing those?’ I said, ‘of course’. Then he said, ‘can I write some different words?’ and I went ‘yeah’. Suddenly it actually started sounding quite good. There was some kind of symbiosis. Then it was ‘should we start a band and what should we call it?’ Between friends it became Soft Cell. Then we did our first gig in 1979 at the Christmas party in the art department and it went from there, really.

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“There was certainly never any intention to be a pop band. We just thought we were some sort of little indie band. We’d have been happy to be that, but then it became something bigger than we’d ever imagined.”

Marc Almond and Dave Ball of Soft Cell performing their farewell concert at London's O2 Arena in 2018. Picture: PAMarc Almond and Dave Ball of Soft Cell performing their farewell concert at London's O2 Arena in 2018. Picture: PA
Marc Almond and Dave Ball of Soft Cell performing their farewell concert at London's O2 Arena in 2018. Picture: PA

The pair played early gigs at the Warehouse and the F Club run by John Keenan, who also put the band on at the Futurama festival at the Queens Hall. It was there that Ball gave DJ John Peel a copy of Soft Cell’s first EP, Mutant Moments, which he then played on Radio 1. “That was a key moment,” says Ball. “It was not bad considering we had our own made-up record label. We had no manager or anything. He played one track, Metro MRX three times on his radio show.

“Futurama, John Keenan, I always thank him for that. I think Marc pestered him for weeks to get that gig but it was a turning point for us.”

Another early champion of their music, Steve Pearce aka Stevo, would become their manager.

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In 1981 the duo reached number one in 17 countries with their cover of the Gloria Jones song Tainted Love. “Who can be prepared for that?” Ball says of his new-found stardom. “We were just a couple of oiks from art college. We’d done Memorabilia which had done quite well in the clubs then we put out this other record which we thought might do a bit better in the clubs and it does more than a bit better, it goes mega. It was a life-changing moment in some good ways and some bad ways. It really did change our lives. We’ve both had lifelong careers musicians because of that record.”

More hits followed with Bedsitter and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye – both written in their house in Leicester Grove. The pair split up after their third album This Last Night in Sodom in 1984 but have reunited periodically since. After a ‘farewell’ concert at the O2 Arena in 2018, they signed to BMG and are now working on new music. “Thanks to the wonders of the internet we’re doing it remotely, but the album will come out next year,” Ball says.

Dave Ball’s book, Electronic Boy: My Life in and Out of Soft Cell, is out now, published by Omnibus Press, £20.

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