Andy Bell is rabbiting away on multiple topics. There’s his farm in Mallorca, where he and his husband Stephen Moss have had a fine year harvesting pomegranates, kiwis and lemons. Then there’s the Erasure frontman’s fascination with clowns (“Would the makeup help you avoid facial recognition technology?”), memories of 90s nightclubbing (“You could do anything and get away with it!”) and a worry that he’s turning into “a fussy old grandpa”. Suddenly, he catches himself: “But what about you, Vince? You’re being very quiet!”
Bell’s bandmate, whose only contribution since joining the video chat from his San Diego home has been to say hello, smiles. “No, no, I just love listening to you, man. I’m really enjoying this.”
This has always been the pair’s dynamic. Ever since they formed in 1985, Vince Clarke has preferred to remain in the background, unleashing precision-tooled electronic bangers while hidden behind a bank of synths. Bell, meanwhile, spun around centre stage in sequins and angel wings, his vocals adding lovelorn melodrama to the melodies. The combination has served them well. In the 40 years since their debut album Wonderland came out, the band have never split up, gone on hiatus or – if you take their word for it – fallen out. “We’ve never been one of these ego-driven bands bringing their drama to the band every five minutes,” says Bell.
Recently, their deep friendship has proved its mettle. In January 2024, Clarke’s wife Tracy Hurley Martin died from stomach cancer. A taciturn man at the best of times, Clarke still finds the experience difficult to talk about, but he’s on easier ground praising his bandmate’s support.
“He was amazing,” says Clarke. “Andy gave me all the love and support I could possibly ever want. I don’t think I could have gotten that from anyone else. Because he’s been through shit as well.” Bell lost his partner Paul Hickey in 2012. “He’s coming from a similar perspective. So, yeah, I’m truly grateful.”
“You have to look after your friend,” says Bell. “It sounds corny, but we’ve been through so many things together. We all have misgivings when we lose a partner – that we couldn’t do the best for them when they were here or whatever. But that’s just normal life. So we have to hold each other up.”
The experience of being there for each other has fed into a new Erasure album – amazingly, their 20th – called Radio!! Radio!!. The record will accompany an arena tour across the UK and Europe, although with one significant difference: for the first time in the band’s history Clarke won’t be in attendance. Instead, he will serve remotely as the tour’s musical director, leaving keyboard technician Howard Rider to work the synths on the night.
“I was really panicking last night, Vince, thinking: oh God, I’m going to be on tour on my own,” says Bell.
“That’s not true,” reassures Clark. “You’ve got the whole crew with you!”
“I know, but it’s still not gonna be the same though,” says Bell, amusingly off-message. “But it’s your music and we can’t do it without your music.”
When I ask if Tracy’s death is the main reason Clarke is stepping back, there’s a long pause before he replies simply: “Yes.”
How has he been getting on?
“I’m OK,” he says. “Obviously everything’s changed but … yeah … it is what it is …”
Bell, realising his friend is struggling, pipes up: “Vincent, I have to say, you look amazing. You do!”
“Ah thanks,” he says. “I had a shave this morning and everything. I had a bath!”
Do they consider each other best mates?
“It’s much deeper than mates,” says Clarke.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t even say mates,” says Bell. “It’s more a family thing. A deep soul connection.”
“Can I just say something?” says Clarke. I’m expecting another moving paean to their friendship. “When you’re talking in front of that [red feather plate on Bell’s wall] you look just like Ronald McDonald!”
They’re both laughing now. “Well, I am thinking of putting a Babybel on my nose and going on stage like a clown,” says Bell.
Radio!! Radio!! acquired its four exclamation marks because Bell wanted a title with a sense of urgency. What’s the emergency he’s warning us about? “I suppose it’s technology, rushing too fast,” he says. “The album is a call to more peaceful and relaxed times.”
Is it hard to write about that without sounding like a bit of a boomer?
“I am quite surprised by how moral I’ve become!” he says. “I don’t want to be telling young people, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that,’ because I’ve never been like that myself – especially not on stage. But [as you get older] you do start seeing the world in a different way.”
Perhaps this maturing viewpoint inspired the album’s shift away from the synth sound of 2020’s The Neon and towards piano and guitar. Bell and Moss made it their personal mission to buy a “perfect Spanish guitar” for Clarke before he arrived in Spain for the sessions, chatting to a local instrument shop owner about everything from his specific body measurements to the most common guitar lines used in classic Erasure songs.
Bell happily admits to an ignorance of technology. He still uses the term “ghetto blaster” and his knowledge of Clarke’s synth collection seems to extend to: “Do you still use that one with the little bulbs inside it?”
The pair of them reminisce about the very early days, working on Wonderland, when Clarke would roam the studio asking people to shout out random three-digit numbers. As Bell recalls: “I’d shout, say, 246 and he would input that into his synth and that would create the arpeggio for the song!”
“That was before randomise functions,” smiles Clarke. “I’d go around asking the tape operator, the engineer.”
Wonderland struggled, but soon afterwards the band released the single Sometimes and entered an imperial phase: between 1987 and 1991 their hits included Ship of Fools, Chains of Love, Stop!, Drama! (from their 1989 album Wild! – they’ve always loved exclamation marks), Blue Savannah, Chorus, Love to Hate You and plenty more. A Little Respect in particular has taken on a life akin to Dancing Queen or Come on Eileen – a song guaranteed to pack the dancefloor.
Bell tells me the young people in the village where he lives often ask him if he knew the song was going to be such a hit when they wrote it. “And of course, no, we didn’t, we didn’t even think about it.”
“I’m chuffed that they’re singing it at football matches – and rugby too,” says Clarke.
“To have a calling card in your life is amazing,” says Bell. “And Vince has three!”
He’s talking about Clarke’s former life as a founding member of Depeche Mode, and then a partner to Alison Moyet in Yazoo – during which time he penned the enduring hits Just Can’t Get Enough and Only You. Bell seems just as proud of Clarke’s pre-Erasure smashes as he does the ones they wrote together.
“There’s a lot of programmes on here in Spain about Vince, about the making of Only You or the breakup of Depeche Mode,” he says. “I’m always like: wow, who is this guy?”
Bell was a huge fan when he answered an advert in the music press seeking a singer, so seeing Clarke in the room was an understandably nerve-racking experience. Still, he threw himself into the songs. Clarke liked that he interpreted them in his own style. “It wasn’t like: this is the guy I’m going to be with for 40 years,” he says. “It was: this is the guy who can sing this one song. We weren’t planning for 10 years ahead, we were planning for what was going to happen next Thursday.”
Despite their success – more than a dozen Top 10 hits, the best British group award at the 1989 Brits – Erasure were often treated a little suspiciously by critics. “Vince’s persona has always been very cool,” says Bell, “but when I came along I ruined it for him. I’d get him to dress up onstage as a cactus” – as he did during their 1997 Cowboy tour – “and then expect us to be taken seriously by the music industry! But to me that’s more punk than punk, right?”
Most famously, the pair recorded the video for their chart-topping Abba cover Take a Chance on Me in drag as Frida and Agnetha. Looking back, was there something subversive about Clarke, a proper working-class geezer, throwing himself into camp abandon like this? “It was always funny to me,” he says. “If you’re dressed as a cactus on stage, people relate to that – don’t ask me why! I think they just see you and think: ah, he’s a silly bugger.”
Radio!! Radio!! might have emerged during a traumatic time, but it’s a more positive record than that suggests. “I’m a bit of a doom merchant and a spiraller,” says Bell, “but I always have this internal optimism.”
The song Holy! is a good example. It deals with LGBTQ communities under increasing attack, from the perspective of showing up as a friend: “When you’re falling / I will shield you.” Bell was one of the few out gay pop stars in the 1980s, and has lived through decades of social progress. Is he shocked at the way things have fallen backwards over the last decade?
“I am, but I shouldn’t be, because politicians always pick the supposedly ‘weakest’ group to attack,” he says. “Really, it’s because they’re the strongest.”
How does it compare to the 1980s? Was there more acceptance then in some ways? “I don’t think there was more, it was just different. Back then was the first time things were sort of laid out. We were just showing people there’s nothing to be scared of.”
Ultimately, says Bell, whether it’s gay rights, a friend’s grief or performing a huge pop show without your trusted partner, the solution is always the same: “All you need to do is put your arms around people,” he says. “You bring them all in – and that’s what music does best.”
