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Depeche
Mode, Yazoo, The Assembly and Erasure all have two things in common:
one, they were founded by Vince Clarke; two, they all enjoyed catchy
Clarke-penned synth-driven Top Ten hits in the UK and beyond. For over
the last 20-plus years Clarke has had more hit singles than most have
had hot dinners, clocking up no fewer than 15 Top Ten entries in the
UK between 1986 and 1994 with Erasure – not bad going in the increasingly
disposable world of pop, an achievement Clarke and charismatic vocalist
Andy Bell were only too happy to celebrate with their appropriately titled Pop! – The
First 20 Hits compilation.
So has it
really been that long since Clarke first hit paydirt, catapulting the
fledgling Depeche Mode into the European singles charts with light, bright
and upbeat one-fingered synth pop ditties like ‘Just Can’t
Get Enough’? Laughable as it may sound today, that seminal synth
group was first written off as early as 1981 when, dissatisfied with
promotional and touring rigmaroles, their then-principal songwriter unexpectedly
departed immediately following their lightweight long-playing debut, Speak & Spell.
While Clarke’s
former bandmates admirably reinvented themselves over coming years – attaining
world domination status on the 101st and final concert of their Music
For The Masses world tour when performing the dark, yet somehow uplifting songscapes
that had become their trademark to a 75,000-strong audience in California’s
Pasedena Rose Bowl in 1988 (captured on celluloid by none other than
D.A. Pennebaker of Bob Dylan’s Don’t Look Back 1965 British tour ‘rockumentary’ fame) – pop
jukebox Clarke also did well for himself, finding further fortune when
pairing up with gutsy vocalist Alison ‘Alf’ Moyet in 1982
to form seminal synth blues outfit Yazoo and later longevity with Erasure,
the latter performing to 60,000 people at the Milton Keynes Bowl (UK)
in 1989. Music for the masses all round, then!
10
Erasure albums down the line Clarke’s formidable songwriting partnership
with Bell rewarded him well. Having previously rented studio workspaces
in London and Amsterdam, today Clarke spends much time tinkering with
his vast collection of vintage analogue synthesizers at 37B, a unique
circular private recording studio sited in the voluminous grounds of
his equally unique home in the southern English county of Surrey.
Clarke is
not the first well-known artist to set foot in those grounds. The original
house belonged to film director Peter Collinson (of The Italian Job fame) who, when refused planning
permission to extend the property, promptly blew it up and constructed
the outlandish Tara House (named after his son, Tara) instead! Suitably
impressed, The Who’s Keith Moon bought Tara House in 1971, later
selling it on to 10CC’s Kevin Godley when relocating to the United
States in 1975. Come 1990, Godley was similarly seduced by the American
dream and who should buy Tara House but one Vince Clarke. Like Collinson
before him, Clarke promptly demolished the property in readiness for
building his own circular home and attendant studio, having spent two
years mulling over numerous futuristic architectural designs.
The reclusive
Clarke’s reasoning behind this igloo-shaped studio is simple. “I
fancied the idea of a round studio, because my house is round as well,” he
says, matter-of-factly. “So a big balloon was inflated in a hole,
sprayed with concrete and then removed to create the dome shape. Of course,
once the building was finished, it sounded really weird – like
being in a church spire or something – so a load of baffling was
designed to bring the sound back to normality. Then all the synths were
connected to a central patchbay system so I can patch an LFO from one
synth to the VCA of another across the room, or whatever.”
Electric
Eel Studio Design’s Kevin van Greene – who previously completed
studio workspaces for Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore and Mute Records
founder and Depeche mentor Daniel Miller – was duly charged with
making Clarke’s dream studio reality, rising to meet the trying
technical challenges involved with apparent ease. As 37B’s justifiably
proud owner acknowledges, “It was a challenge for everybody, but
a lot of time was spent researching it all. Everyone did a brilliant
job!”
With
37B up and running by 1994, all subsequent Erasure albums have since
been recorded there, in part or whole, with varying degrees of commercial
success. Things finally came to a head when Loveboat badly under-performed in 2000.
Could it be the hitherto unsinkable good ship Erasure has finally run
aground?
An unfavourable
press reaction implied this was perhaps the case with a British television
documentary entitled Top Ten Of Electropop (broadcast back in April 2001)
cruelly concluding, “Another album sneaked out at the end of last
year, but no-one found it exciting, or new.” On the same programme
Messrs Clarke and Bell did not appear unduly worried, however, with the
buoyant Bell playfully retorting, “There’s some great songs
on it. But we’ll just do another one. We don’t mind, do we?” By
comparison, his recording buddy was seen to draw on a cigarette before
laughing, quietly; clearly Clarke was not about to be drawn into a senseless
debate. After all, what have Erasure got to prove?
While some
might say Erasure is taking the easy way out by opting to record an album
of cover versions, such a plain perception understandably cuts no ice
with a songsmith of Clarke’s undisputed calibre. “When the Loveboat album didn’t do very
well the record company were trying to make me tour, and I didn’t
want to tour,” clarifies Clarke. “So we thought that rather
than sit around and sulk, we’d go and do something else – and
move on. The fact that it’s cover versions came from Andy’s
original concept, so we’ve just been following that through.”
Indeed, it
transpires Bell’s long-mooted solo album, comprising mainly cover
versions and 1960s standards, unintentionally became the foundation of
the forthcoming Erasure covers album, tentatively titled R.I.P. by Clarke (and instantly vetoed
by Bell)! “Andy was originally working on a solo album of torch
songs with Gareth [Jones], and I just got involved; I started interfering,” Clarke
chortles. “We had this plan that rather than having it record company-fronted,
we’d all share in the production as equal members, rather than
Gareth just being the producer.”
Fresh
from a lengthy engineering stint on Exciter, Depeche Mode’s multi-million-selling
latest longplaying extravaganza, Gareth Jones has enjoyed a similarly
fruitful professional working relationship with Erasure stretching back
to 1989’s chart-topping Wild! album on which he shared production credits with Mark Saunders
and the band themselves.
Jones picks
up the story. “On this project I feel I’m an honorary band
member,” he jokes, before adding; “it’s been a real
working together.”
Clarke begins
to offer an acute assessment of events leading up to the project’s
three-way expansion – “I think Gareth and Andy were having
trouble; not with the programming…” – before Jones
interjects: “Well, we knew from the start we needed musical input,” he
admits, “because keyboards are not Andy’s strength. I love
programming, but I don’t have anything like Vince’s depth
of musical talent – obviously! Luckily for us, Vince was very keen
to be involved.”
With Clarke
safely on board, Bell’s initial remit likewise expanded to take
on board his collaborators’ wildly varying musical tastes. “I
think Andy’s take on it originally was that he was more interested
in doing torch songs,” posits Clarke. “I was more interested
in doing pop songs and Gareth was more interested in weird songs.”
Jones is
again quick on the uptake: “So we finished up with an amalgamation,
really. Andy and I had demo’d up ‘You’ve Lost That
Loving Feeling’ on a laptop, and there was a strong Phil Spector
feeling at the beginning. We started with 12 Phil Spector songs, but
we couldn’t find a way to turn that into an album that was satisfying
for all of us. So we chose some songs we loved, and had between 30 and
35 songs in the pool; Andy and Vince selected from those.”
Choosing
an album’s worth of suitable songs for Erasure to cover must have
been an unenviable task for these three disparate musical characters. “It’s
been a bit of an extended process,” admits Jones. “I kept
out of it!”
Yet recording
cover versions also has its advantages, as Clarke readily acknowledges: “You
don’t have to worry about melodies; you’re not pulling your
hair out worrying about the lyrical or melodic content – that’s
already fantastic. So then you can make the track as leftfield as you
like, because the song’s still great. What I think we’re
trying to do is make them more weird.”
Jones agrees
with his erstwhile colleague: “We’ve taken some great songs
and done them in our style.”
Stylistically, Clarke and Bell have long
since grown used to honing the instantly recognisable, yet continually
evolving Erasure sound with a tried-and-tested working methodology: Clarke
strums away on an acoustic guitar to work out a basic chord structure
while Bell experiments alongside with possible vocal melodies and lyrics.
Surprisingly, synths are usually nowhere to be seen during these early
sessions, captured for posterity in a rough and ready form on a basic
portable tape recorder of some description.
In the case of the as-yet-untitled covers album, the newfound trio are working with pre-existing song structures. This naturally necessitates another approach, as Clarke explains: “What we are tending to do is take the arrangement as it was on the original record and then start messing around with the sounds. So sometimes we take some of the original parts and then use unusual sounds to play those parts.”
Jones nods
in agreement. “Rhythmically, we recreated each track.” he
adds. “But we took a lot of the melodic parts and structures from
the original arrangements. They’re such great songs already that
I certainly felt I couldn’t actually improve on the arrangement
by changing it. So I think most of the songs we’ve arranged ‘as
is’ – out of respect to the originals, as much as anything.”
But where does one begin when covering a timeless classic like The Three Degrees’ ‘When Will I See You Again’? Jones’ reply makes it sound so easy – albeit unintentionally so: “Originally, all the songs are programmed up with a very simple rhythm, and guide chords. Then we obviously do all the normal stuff – get the key; decide what tempo we’re going to do it in. In a way, it’s a little bit like working with a demo; we didn’t go in saying, ‘Well, let’s program up this song to sound marvellous and then ask Andy to sing it.’ But key and time signature are really crucial; if you don’t get them right then you’re fighting an uphill battle all the way.”
Timing can
still be a tricky business, even when working primarily with strictly
sequenced synthesizers. Covering Peter Gabriel’s popular early
post-Genesis single ‘Solsbury Hill’ – one of Clarke’s
all-time favourite songs – is a perfect case in point. “When
we were sketching ‘Solsbury Hill’, it went along in 7/4 for
ages and ages,” explains Jones. “We both thought it was great,
then one day we just went, ‘Fuck it!’”
“We
were trying to create drums that you dance to,” declares Clarke,
by way of expanding upon his production partner’s unexpected expletive.
“That’s right,” Jones
corroborates. “Neither of us could satisfy ourselves with 7/4 drums,
so we just thought, ‘Let’s use 8/4.’”
In this case,
it was ultimately deemed easier to get Bell to perform his vocal parts
again. “Andy couldn’t tell that there was any difference,
really,” Clarke grins, mischievously. “He just sang it naturally. ‘Solsbury
Hill’ is very interesting, because once you hear it in 4/4 it sounds
like it should be in 4/4. It just worked like that immediately.”
Such radical
rethinking was also applied elsewhere on the project, as Jones relishes
recounting. “There’s one song that suddenly went from being
a 12/8 ballad to an uptempo 4/4 song! That came from working with Andy,
who’s very passionate about disco. We were just working at his
place, sketching an idea there, then we brought it back here, and it
was a similar situation: ‘Vince, when you heard this yesterday
it was a slow ballad, but now it’s a full-on hi-NRG track; what
do you think?’”
Having inadvertently
confirmed the presence of an additional recording set-up at Bell’s
home, Jones divulges more. “Andy’s doing most of the vocals
in his house in a little studio that we’ve built for him, based
around a laptop,” he clarifies. “He’d been experimenting
with a home studio set-up for a while, but it was a question of finding
something he was comfortable with. He loved his laptop, which he used
for email, graphics and word-processing, so we took the risk of using
that. He’d worked with an Akai digital recorder in the past, and
didn’t really enjoy it – he got a bit stuck, feeling he needed
an engineer all the time. Part of what we wanted to do was set Andy up
so he could work on his own whenever he needed to – partly to save
time, and partly to give him creative freedom. When Andy wants to sing
now, he just goes into his room and sings – he doesn’t have
to wait for me to turn up, or ask Vince for help. Obviously, Andy already
had the mic and vocal channel; all we did was buy Logic and a little mixing board, and set him
up.”
With a dedicated
vocal booth in its basement, Clarke’s impressive 37B studio has
also accommodated Bell on this project. “Andy’s been doing
vocals at home,” reasserts Clarke, “but he’s also performed
a lot of them here in the control room, because he doesn’t particularly
like working downstairs as it’s a bit isolated. We got a couple
of fantastic vocal takes just using the little mic here straight into
the desk.”
Jones
is keen to point out that, unlike previous Erasure longplaying excursions,
expensive outside commercial recording facilities are not the order of
the day: “We don’t need all that! Just to emphasise what
Vince said: some of the guide vocals are unbeatable still, after months
of working. There’s a magic moment when we’re all here together
and Andy sings a track for the first time that’s just amazing.
That magic will be on the album!”
Not only is this forthcoming Erasure album a meeting of musical minds, it’s also a meeting of music technologies, with Jones merging his beloved Apple Powerbook G3-based portable studio set-up with Clarke’s resolutely analogue synth collection at 37B. With a twinkle in his eye, Clarke instigates a lesson in ‘mix ’n’ match’ recording techniques by possessively hugging his vintage (in computing terms) BBC B Micro-based UMI software step-time sequencer: “Well, this is mine! Most of the songs are programmed on the UMI, so that’s been the master of most of the tracks. We’re using that [points with mock distain to E-magic Logic Audio running on Jones’ laptop] as a tape recorder, mostly. Then sometimes we’ll get that to play my analogue equipment as well via MIDI.”
Jones goes on the defensive – in the nicest possible way, as is apparently his way. “Funnily enough, when we first started on this project, we were just recording on Vince’s RADAR,” he smirks. “I went through about 10 days of extreme frustration because we hadn’t made the transition to where we are now – really comfortable with Logic and the UMI system running side by side. I just felt I didn’t know why I was recording on what seemed like an old-style tape recorder when I’m a big Logic-head, full of the arrangements and sonic vibes that can be achieved with a modern workstation.”
Luckily for Jones, Clarke was open to suggestions; needless to say, it wasn’t long before an Apple Power Mac G4 came knocking on 37B’s heavenly door. “I suppose this relates to the fact that Vince has been doing some film work and different projects with Martyn Ware, who uses Logic Audio as well,” posits Jones. “The G4 computer was in Vince’s office, and we came together to work on this music at a time when Vince wanted to bring a digital audio workstation into his studio. One of the first things we actually did was to get the office computer’s stuff running on Vince’s laptop, and move the office computer over here and put a MotU card in it and generally get Logic Audio running in the studio.”
But is Clarke
convinced? Given there are several back-up BBC Micro Bs in 37B’s
basement it’s likely he’ll be turning to his trusty sequencer
for quite some time yet. “Although this obviously can’t do
a fraction of the things that you can do in Logic,” Clarke concedes, “ I can get it to do what it
does very quickly, with almost instant results. When I see other programmers
using Cubase or
something, I get very, very frustrated: ‘Look, I just want a pitch
bend! Why are you having to go through 10 pages?’ It drives me
crazy!”
Jones assumes
a peacekeeping role: “Well, now we can both be really comfortable
with our respective sequencers. Here we’ve got three computers
between the two of us, because it makes it a lot easier in terms of workflow.”
You’re surrounded!
Of course, what one chooses to sequence from one’s sequencer of choice is, likewise, down to personal preference. In Clarke’s case, the circular walls of 37B speak volumes: floor to ceiling, vintage analogue synthesizers are neatly arranged around Clarke’s central working position – from modular systems, like Roland’s System 100M and their even more monstrous System 700, to obscure monosynths, such as the Dutch Synton Syrinx; you name it, Clarke’s probably got one. Or even two! “I went out on a serious spending spree around the time of the Chorus album, because that’s when we started with all that weird rule stuff, like no chords and no MIDI,” recalls Clarke.
And while there are no rules as such on the current album, Clarke is keen to use this latest Erasure recording as another opportunity to push the subtractive synthesis envelope: “One of things we’ve tried to do is not use the same synths all the time. There’s always certain synths that you can just get stuck into, because you know them so well – you need a hi-hat sound, so you automatically turn to the same module. Or you assign a certain sound to a keyboard where you know you can get that sound quickly. I’ve got quite a few keyboards that I don’t really use enough, so it’s been a challenge for me trying to get a decent bass drum out of a Korg MS20, for example.”
Unlike Jones,
Clarke’s not a big fan of soft synths. “They’re quite
interesting,” he grants. “But we’ve not been using
that many soft synths. I mean, why do I need to use Pro-52 when I’ve got two real Prophet 5s
here!”
It’s
a fair observation; one to which Jones responds: “Vince has got
a very low boredom threshold, and he’s very fast with all of his
gear. Like he said, there’s no point in emulating synths with soft
synths when there are so many real ones here. But we’ve been using Reason quite a lot for beats, and also Battery, and we’re obviously using soft samplers
because it’s a lot easier than using hardware ones.”
It’s
that meeting of technologies thing again, and, judging from the impressive
past works of Clarke and Jones, one that’s sure to work well on
the new Erasure album – when completed.
Given that
Erasure’s longstanding record label, Mute Records, have yet to
hear the recording, Bell, Clarke and Jones are sensibly playing it close
to their chests when it comes to the final track listing. However, Jones
is prepared to reveal they are drawing from a wide spectrum of popular
music eras. “There’s one song that predates the 50s,” he
begins. “And there’s something from the 80s, because we’re
doing an Erasure cover version as well. I was very keen to try and do
something from Vince’s back catalogue. We managed to settle on
one.”
Strangely
enough, the prospect of covering one of his own compositions doesn’t
feel strange to Clarke. “I’ve kind of done that a lot already,” he
muses. “Because every time we used to tour I’d always re-program
the whole set. But incorporating this new technology has kind of made
working on this song more interesting. We’ve kept most of the parts,
and just jazzed up the sounds.”
Erasure fans
intent on finding out which song Clarke is referring to will just have
to wait patiently in line, together with everyone else. Someday soon
listeners will be rewarded with a classy contemporary take on several
classic songs. And, hopefully, the good ship Erasure may find itself
once again riding the crest of pop’s fickle wave.
Jonathan Miller is a British freelance writer living in… well,
England. He specialises in the ‘ancient art’ of the hi-tech
music interview, and can be reached at jonathan@millermusicandmedia.com
CONTACT:
• Loveboat (Mute, 2000)
• Cowboy (Mute,
1997)
• Erasure (Mute, 1995)
• I Say I Say I Say (Mute, 1994)
• Pop! The First 20 Hits (Mute, 1992)
• Chorus (Mute,
1991)
• Wild! (Mute,
1989)
• The Innocents (Mute, 1988)
• The Circus (Mute, 1987)
• Wonderland (Mute, 1986)
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