Erasure • Features • Private Ear

"Vince advertised himself in the City Limits Lonely Hearts pages as a 'Frustrated Musician'. I was in a similar situation, so I wrote off to the box number..." Andy, IM & RW 4/86

FIRST CONTACT

20-year old Andy Bell was waiting in a corridor of Blackwing Studios. He had replied to an advertisement for a singer for a band formed by some members of the defunct Bow Wow Wow, and was due to audition for them. As he waited, he noticed a familiar face staring intently into the screen of a space invaders machine nearby. It was Vince Clarke, formerly of Yazoo and Depeche Mode, and the first famous person Andy had seen since moving to London.

"I didn't say anything to him, and I was really scared of him, being a proper pop star." Andy, Q 1/90

Andy then went on to fail the audition. But there had been a definite moment of premonition. "For the whole year afterwards his name was just floating around in my head. I knew that if it was ever going to happen for me it would happen with Vince. I'd already thought, 'Who works with really good singers?' and thought of Vince - I knew that if he needed a singer I would fit the bill. So when I answered his advert, I knew I was going to get it. I wasn't being cocky or anything. It was really like - a spiritual thing... I felt like I had already passed the audition before I'd even got there." Q 1/90, Melody Maker 4/94, Smash Hits 12/86

SOFTLY OVER

Yazoo had been formed after Vince had answered an advert placed in the Melody Maker by Alison Moyet. He was looking for a singer to help him make a demo recording of ONLY YOU, a song he had offered (and which had been rejected by) Depeche Mode. This demo became Yazoo's first single; it was initially intended to be their only release, but it was so successful that Yazoo released a follow-up single, then an album, and then went on tour. By the time of Yazoo's second album, Vince was increasingly feeling trapped in a band which had snowballed out of control; a one-off collaboration had turned into the kind of touring and promotion treadmill that Vince had left Depeche Mode specifically to avoid.

Recording YOU AND ME BOTH was not altogether stress-free, and the creative spark had left what had never really been a proper partnership. "Me and Alf rarely wrote together. It was always one or other of us, and that made it really hard, because when it's your own song you tend to get very precious about it, the way you want it sung, or the way you want it played." MM 6/83

The album was eventually finished, including the track UNMARKED, a leftover from Depeche Mode's early days, and HAPPY PEOPLE, a none-too-serious dig at the Liberal Party and Vince's only lead vocal, but it was becoming obvious that the band's days were numbered. "They had started out quite close and then gradually drifted apart." Daniel Miller, Radio 1 9/94 "It always got to a certain stage where I found I couldn't handle working with the people I was working with, or them with me." Vince, MM 5/86

Yazoo's somewhat acrimonious split was announced in the press before the album had hit the shops; upon reading the news, one disgruntled fan sent Vince a dead pigeon through the post. To mark the demise of the band, Vince chopped off his distinctive fringe and consigned it to an envelope in a filing cabinet.

Vince was still determined to remain in the pop business, but this time it would be on his terms. His first enterprise after Yazoo was the formation of a record label, Reset Records, with his business partner and co-producer Eric Radcliffe. The idea was for Vince and Eric to sign new artists and produce them independently at Splendid studios, their own studio within the Blackwing complex, and then license the recordings to RCA, who would actually put out the records and handle the paperwork side of the business.

"The idea just came up from a mate of mine [Robert Marlow]. About two years ago I'd offered him some studio time for his demos, and we finally got round to doing it just before Christmas. Eric was also doing some recording with a mate of his [Peter Hewson], so it's purely for those two artists at the moment... I've known [Robert Marlow] since I was seven, we were in competing bands. When I started I had Martin Gore playing synth and Robert nicked him for his band. We used to go to the Boy's Brigade together, practise in the same church hall. We used to do great impressions of The Who, leaping off chairs and stuff, doing Pete Townsends. Marvellous days." MM 6/83

Vince also felt that producing other people's songs would help him avoid repeating himself, giving him a chance to work with some fresh musical ideas. RCA quickly became unhappy with the label's lack of commercial success and began to try to impose more control over the recordings, and so after only four singles ('The Face Of Dorian Gray', 'I Just Want To Dance' and 'Claudette' by Robert Marlow and 'Take My Hand' by Peter Hewson) the deal with RCA was terminated. Vince and Eric were anyway already keen to move on to their new project, The Assembly. "I've done production work for friends, but it's never really worked out. I take their ideas, which might be really good, and make them over to a point where it isn't really them any more. I tend to take a situation over." Vince, Keyboard 2/90

STOP/START

"The Arse-embley? Well, we intended to do an album. We were going to get together with a producer and use various vocalists..." Vince, Record Mirror 6/85

"After Yazoo finished Vince felt he didn't really want to do a conventional group with a permanent singer, so he had this idea to produce a record of his songs, working with a number of different singers." Daniel Miller, Private Ear

The Assembly was intended to be an album by Vince and Eric, with them adopting a Phil Spector svengali-type role, bringing in different vocalists to perform Vince's songs. It would be the ideal way of sidestepping the music industry machine; the singers would take the limelight and deal with the promotion, whilst Vince and Eric remained safely behind the scenes, concentrating purely on the music. And with their excellent first single, NEVER NEVER, everything went according to plan.

"It was great to do, 'cos it was done quickly. I think there was a rumour in Smash Hits that I was going to be working with Feargal Sharkey. Which neither of us knew anything about. Then Daniel Miller, who runs the record company, started saying, 'It's a good idea, why don't you try it?' I had a song written with the backing tracks recorded. So we sent Feargal a demo tape to see what he'd think. He came Clarke and Radcliffe over to the studio on a Monday, sang it and went home on the Tuesday - and that was it." RM 6/85, Electronics & Music Maker 8/86, RM 3/90

The single went to number 4 in the UK, and The Assembly made a short tour of European TV shows with Feargal Sharkey to promote it. Finishing the rest of The Assembly album was to prove more difficult. The main problem was getting the other 9 singers required for the album. "We started doing the album after the first single but there were lots of problems in finding singers. People imagine that if you're a musician it's like one big family, but really you don't know anybody else. I contacted a few people and they either didn't want to do it or they weren't available, and even when they were there were contractual problems... The whole business is usually a bit messy. Once you've had the idea, you have to start contacting managers and record labels. Then you have to send the artists a demo cassette of the song, trying to ensure that it is in the right key for them. It usually means a lot of aggravation, especially if the people are really wrapped up in their own careers." E & MM 6/86, New I Musical Express 6/85

Amongst the singers approached were Matt Johnson of The The and Neil Arthur of Blancmange. "We once tried recording 'It Takes Two' together [with Yazoo]. We thought it would be I great because Neil and Alison have fabulous voices, but it was a difficult song to do.. .it was dire." MM 6/83

Vince did, however collaborate briefly with the other member of Blancmange, Stephen Luscombe. The resulting single, 'Ave Maria', featuring Indian vocalist Asher Bhosle, was credited to the West India Company. "We were also waiting for the producer we wanted for the LP, Daniel Miller, and then when we did get started it didn't seem to work out. We tried a few things when we actually got to start just before Christmas [1984], but we realised it wasn't going to work. By this time myself and Eric had been living in the studio for months and we were sick of the place." MM 4/85, RM 6/85

Vince was extremely disheartened, The Assembly project having collapsed into a complete waste of time. With no producer or singers on the horizon, Vince had even resorted to attempting to sing some of the songs himself, but just become even more disheartened when he heard the results played back.

"That was really depressing. It was one of the low points of the year, just discovering that I didn't have the cavities in my body to do it... We spent a year in the studio just farting about, hanging around writing songs, preparing for The Assembly album which never materialised. When we started to do the next single but we couldn't get the right singer, myself and Eric took the synths and went home. It was a really bad time, it was a year wasted, and it made me really lethargic because we hadn't got anything finished. We just decided to go home and call it a day." RM 11/85, E & MM 8/86, No 1 7/85

After a year spent achieving little more than a high score on the Blackwing Studios space invaders machine, Vince retreated to his flat in Westbourne Grove to do some decorating and to consider his future in the music business. "[1984] was terrible for me. It was so depressing and I didn't do anything. I wasn't consciously thinking I'd have a holiday, but it turned out like that. It was just terrible... The Assembly thing got to be really depressing. There was no positive vibe about it, we got stuck in a terrible rut. It's like, when you're not working, you wish you were, and when you are working, you want a break. Well this was just one big break, and I sort of sank into it. You just get into the habit of not having to get out of bed and do things - it's really destructive... You're just drifting and you're not really aware of it." RM 3/90, RM 6/85, RM 11/85