And what songs are these? Bell and Vince Clarke wrote brilliant, resilient pop songs – so catchy, I realize, that I’ve had a little respect floating around in my head for most of my life since I taped it off Radio 1 that fateful afternoon chart show sometime in late 1988. Despite Clarke’s history as a synth-pop pioneer who had already had hits with Depeche Mode and Yazoo, at some point in the 90s, Erasure went rather stale and never really recovered. Blame the daytime TV appearances perhaps, combined with a burgeoning Britpop era that couldn’t handle Bell’s sequins and camp. But their biggest hits – including Sometimes, Stop! and Blue Savannah – stand up. “When I think about songs like Chorus and Ship of Fools and Breathe, we have songs that stand out,” says Bell. He seems to agree when I suggest they’ve been dismissed as a bit fizzy and light (even if their songs have dealt with everything from a post-industrial Britain to lost loves and homophobia), but he doesn’t seem bitter about it. “I think, wow, that’s a hell of a lot of work we’ve done. And I think that’s great.” Erasure’s new album, Day-Glo (Based on a True Story), is not a return to those poppy hits, but an experimental album, similar to 1995’s Erasure, which blew up their mainstream. It’s a layered, and often gorgeous, selection of digital tracks, largely made up of manipulated songs from their previous album, The Neon (which gave them their first Top 10 album since the 90s) and created as a kind of accompaniment. Clarke put it together in his home studio in Brooklyn during the lockdowns, and Bell wrote and recorded the vocals later. Clark told him he could do whatever he wanted. “And I did. I just wanted to do poems, off the top of my head, and vocal parts,” he says. “I was like, I wonder how Enya does it.” Laughs. “Some of the songs have poems on them and I think [Clarke] I thought maybe they were a bit harsh, because I didn’t really know what it was about.” Bell is at home in Miami (he splits his time between there and London, with his husband, Stephen, though they’ll be moving to Atlanta for a while, he says) when we speak via Zoom. He’s warm and funny, wearing a vest that shows off tattoos on both arms, his face still boyish, even if the concessions to age include glasses and some gray hair. “I love playing live, I love my voice,” he says of where his career is now. “I think we were really lucky. I’m just glad I met Vince and stayed with him.” Delete… Bell with Vince Clarke. Photo: Graham Tucker/Redferns Bell answered an advert in the music publication Melody Maker in 1985 and found an audition for Clarke. He was already a huge fan and had considered writing to Clark to ask if he was looking for a new singer. When he got the job and Erasure was formed, for about the first six months, Bell says, “I was very shy in the studio. I couldn’t even talk to him. I couldn’t believe I was there.” You can hear it on their first album, Wonderland, he says. Clarke had already succeeded. did belle feel pressured to match it with him? “No,” he says. “I just felt like I had a lot of blind faith in myself, but I also thought maybe I’m not good enough to fill that position. After a while, you just rise up.” How did he overcome that? “I think probably with our first write-up.” Sometimes, which became a huge hit, was one of the first songs they wrote together “and I think that’s what opened the doors for me.” They have been an equal duo ever since. Why did their four-decade friendship endure? “Vince is a darling. He makes it look like he’s very tough on the outside, and I know he’s not. We just balance each other out really well.” Clarke is the straight-faced foil – usually wearing a suit on stage, standing behind screens and synths – for Bell’s exuberant showman. “Although it’s been a long time, and I’m 58 now, he was a great teacher. He was in the industry five or more years before I joined him, he taught me a lot about being reasonable. As much as you can”. I suspect Belle wasn’t always listening. “No, not all the time,” he says, laughing. Did they ever have a bust? “Only once, we were on stage. We were both really tired, they were in the middle of some tour somewhere. I was really frustrated and tired and I just said, “Oh! on stage to him, to the microphone. He didn’t say a word, just walked away and said, “Don’t talk to me like that again.” Then it was fine.” Belle always wanted to be a singer. He was the eldest of six, with four younger sisters, then a younger brother, who grew up in Peterborough where his father was a factory worker and his mother a school cleaner. She then got a job behind the counter in a sex shop. “The only porn shop in Peterborough, which I thought was really cool,” Bell says. “Though we never saw any of the appendages.” So his mother, in particular, was liberal, and he says it didn’t bother her at all when he sent her a letter when he was 17. Erasure onstage in New York in 2014. Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images He says there wasn’t “really a lot of bullying” and his growing awareness of his sexuality wasn’t something he desperately tried to hide. knocked on a school friend’s door to tell him he had a crush on him. There were rumors of a gay bar in a room at the back of a hotel, which he went to a few times, but was disappointed. “Peterborough was too small. I had to leave and the plan was always to move to London with a friend of mine called Jill who was struggling at school,’ says Bell. “Her brother was gay. I would go to her house and she would tell me stories about the clubs she had been to. So we made a deal that we would move to London together and that’s what we did.” He worked odd jobs, but also joined a synth-pop band, the Void. “All I wanted to do was play concerts and be on stage. I didn’t even think about whether I would make money from it.” For a time, he lived in a gay co-op in Holloway, north London. “Through that, I felt like I got my gay education,” he says – personally and politically. His roommates included campaigners and campaigners such as Nick Partridge, who would become chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, and Lisa Power, who co-founded Stonewall and the Pink Paper, for which Bell ended up working, taking photographs while a friend was doing bar reviews. Within a year or so, she had met Clark, “so it was pretty quick.” Belle was out, ‘from the beginning. That’s one thing I feel really good about. I think it made it harder for us in a lot of ways, especially getting deals in America, being on the radio there. But it felt right.” Did anyone say he had to hide his sexuality? Not exactly, he says, but “I don’t think people were happy. But I think at that time, because you had Bronski Beat [the singer Jimmy Somerville was out]and Tom Robinson before then, and Sylvester and Divine, I think people started to see it as less risky and more like supporting an outsider.” As a public figure, did it make him feel vulnerable? “It’s done,” he says. At the time, he hung out at the Bell pub in King’s Cross, ‘which was quite a political pub. We did a lot of marches, solidarity for the Poles, miners, against Clause 28. You just thought you were doing something that was useful or necessary.” But it also meant gangs would be waiting nearby. “Sometimes they chased you out of the pub. Not that you were used to it, but you were very cautious the whole time.” Bell managed to ignore much of the right-wing press, which he says, with some understatement, “didn’t necessarily seem to like [me],” but drew the line when they tried to expel him, along with others, for having HIV (which was untrue). “You always felt like you had to watch your shoulder.” Deleted c1990. Photo: Tim Roney/Getty Images With other pop stars at the time not wanting to date, did you feel lonely? “It happened,” he says, but of those who were outside, “we had enough solidarity between us, it was enough for us. Much was changing politically, [but] it was disappointing at times that there were so few. Fortunately, things are changing.” Bell believes coming out protected him in other ways, particularly from predatory seniors in the music industry. “That’s the whole point, it was all secret. Because I wasn’t undercover, they couldn’t get close to me.” Erasure’s first big hit was Sometimes, from their second album The Circus, which went to No 6 in 1987. Bell remembers one of the women working in the accounts department telling him he needed to see the checks had for him. “He said, ‘We’re talking about phone numbers.’ Laughs. “You feel like you’ve done the job, but it’s a great job, so you go through a period where you think you don’t deserve it for a while. But then you think, all you can do is buy your parents a house, have a nice vacation.” How did you deal with the fame? He was shy, which he says ‘stays with you all your life. I guess I wanted people to know who I was, so they approached me, so…
