Marc Almond Quotations

People are always reinventing music. We were an oddity when we formed, just a singer and a keyboard player.

A couple of years ago, I called Dave up to write some songs. It just snowballed from there and became a Soft Cell record. There's still a strong chemistry between us.

It's our most pop album since our first.

There was always a dark element to our songs, some social commentary.

Sometimes, with autobiographies, it turns into a bit of score-settling. And looking back, I don't feel the way I did then, and you kind of grow up and let it go behind you.

So often, the singer is the sound of the record. People think they can cover anything, but the whole voice is the thing that's unrepeatable.

Don't sing a song you can't carry off, like some 16-year-old kid singing 'My Way'. That song's not for you. You haven't lived that.

Frank Sinatra said this great thing, that singing isn't about singing in tune, or great technical singing. It's about making people believe in the story you're telling.

I thought, I might not look my best, I've forgotten half the words to my songs and I'm suffering from post-traumatic stress, but I've just got to get out there and do it.

I've got so much I want to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. People say to me, "You really shouldn't do so many records", because it actually harms your career.

I liked the idea of writing a song saying I'm happy with who I am, and I don't mind if people think I'm some old git.

Sometimes I ask myself, "Should I be out in a club?" But it's about realising I don't need to be always chasing after being who I was 20 or 30 years ago.

I'm often prone to self-doubt about everything I do.

I'd always wanted to write a song about a leather jacket and how wearing it makes you feel. I love leather jackets, and I've got a big collection of them.

I love this idea of shape-shifting and changing when you put on clothes, and turn into somebody else.

I thought, I'm in my late 50s now, am I ever gonna get the chance to do another album again?

I'm the most indecisive person in the world. I'll do three versions of a song, then think, "Is the demo better?"

Albums, with me, have never had an easy birth. Especially when all the songs are self-written songs.

I like situations that force me to rethink things.

What was great about the 80s was that you still had record companies who would get behind developing you as an artist. You had these bonkers heads of department and A&R people who, even after a flop album, would let you make another one.

I don't care much about success or anything like that. I've only ever wanted life to be an adventure.

I was a magnet for people who want to take advantage of people like me, who think they're part of this life but they're not.

I've always been the sort of person who immerses myself in things, and eventually you become part of that life.

A lot of the early songs I wrote were about the experience of going to London and meeting rent boys and transvestites and drag queens. A lot of my early material is that: the wide-eyed adventures of a middle-class boy.

I was quite naïve, a boy from Southport. When I went to art college in Leeds, I lived in a basement flat, and I heard clunking on the stairs all night, and I thought it was just nurses going to work on the night shift at the local hospital! Then I found out it was all working girls upstairs. I suppose I came from a protected background and had my eyes opened wide by that side of city life.

People always go on about sleaze, but I think it's only a small part of what I write about.

I'm not one of these people who thinks everything in the past is great and everything modern is terrible. But I do think cities should be a mix of old things and new things.

I have a long history with Soho: even when I was at art college, I came down to Soho to work in the summer.

I made a creativity out of that messiness.

When people talk about gender-benders and bracket me with George, I always think I'm not like that. I had more of a rock edge, mixed with the 80s electro.

I became the magnet for a lot of scary aggression. Cos it's scary Up North!

If you were born by the sea, there's always a magnet that draws you back there.

I can imagine moving out to the seaside at some point. I like Brighton, my sister lives there. I'm a seaside boy and whenever I go there, I find myself writing songs about it.

On my Instagram, I'm always keeping a record of things being pulled down in Soho and shutters being closed. Every city - and London more than anywhere - has got to be a vibrant mix of all different things. We can't allow it to become a monoculture.

Soho has got to be at its centre. It's got such a history for rock, pop, poetry, jazz, writers, all those things, and I think it should be valued as such, and protected as this centre for bohemia.

Maybe I was a bit harsh on some people. But I was harshest on myself, really.

I'm always aware of mortality.

A lot of youth today have become very narrow and conservative in a way, whereas we in the older generation are kind of living it.

I've always loved the rock & roll element to live shows, because whatever else I do, I'm basically a rock/pop performer, and that's what I like.

People come from all over the world to see this little place they've seen in movies and read about in history books: Soho.

That's what I like to do, I like to make songs.

The way the business things work in Russia is you have to meet people, you have to go through a certain amount of etiquette and business things are done just simply by a shake of the hand and whether they like you or not.

The weird thing was that Soft Cell was supposed to have come and gone before I started the album.

Russians have a new freedom, but as long as they don't express that freedom on a public platform.

I thinks it really interesting how they throw the world music samples in there. I often wonder what it would be like to do something like that, but use my lyrics and my kind of style.

I think there's always been singers like that and i've done my fair share of cheese as well.

Russia can be quite a dangerous place sometimes, but I never think about it.

You can't keep pursuing pop success, and chasing the past.

As long as ugly people are not on TV, you should only ever have interesting people on TV.

I don't really have anything against Will Young or Gareth Gates.

As soon as one project is finished I like to go straight on to something else.

I'm always more interested in trying things that will push me, and I don't care if I fall flat on my face doing it.

I think the older I get the more creative I get, I don't have the distractions that I had when I was younger.

We just kind saw the images and knew the cliches, so to have the opportunity to go there and learn something about Russian music and about Russian people and to see things apart from being a tourist.

I don't enjoy being a celebrity, I don't want any part of that or any part of that fame for fame... i'd actually rather die than be a celebrity slime!!!

I can't read music and I'm crap at learning lyrics. Especially since the accident I have memory problems. I can't remember words, names, places.

I think in the past I think I probably was a little too diverse, probably went from one spectrum to the complete opposite and confusing people.

I mean whatever I do it's important that I put my stamp on it and keep it in my world, whether I'm doing a dance track or something like the Russian album for example.

Knowing what I knew about Russia, as much as I loved the music and was fascinated by the songs and the whole idea of it, I knew it would be a very lengthy and frustrating process.

There's no such thing as 'I can't do it'.

My next record I really just want it to be a collection of great songs, classic songs in a way.

The albums I did around that time probably wouldn't have been the same without Ecstacy. The first three Soft Cell albums... were all really albums that were just done around Ecstacy and the whole E feeling.

That's the way I work and one day I won't have the energy to do it, so I think it's always good to make the most of your life and living as much as possible.

I was very much a mess, as a person. I'd come from a very turbulent teenage life, with parents who had broken up in a very bad way, and a lot of illness at school.

These days i tend to use one project I do as a kind of offshoot to the next.

It's a shame in a way that people come and go with one album.

For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.