Erasure talk ahead of Birmingham gig

Vince Clarke’s on-stage man-wife, Andy Bell, was laid low earlier this month, forcing Erasure to cancel three gigs in Dublin. The singer is on the mend when we speak and disappointed at having to postpone three nights at the city’s Olympia.

He’ll be as right as rain, however – all being well – in two nights when Erasure headline Birmingham’s O2. It’s part of a major UK tour that is completely sold out. The band are enjoying a renaissance, having supported Robbie Williams at a bunch of stadium shows last year.

“Andy’s fine,” says Vince, from The Morrison Hotel, in Dublin. “He’s on the mend and we should be fine for all of the UK dates. We’re really pleased with the way things are going. Missing a few dates is a hiccup. We’re good.”

Indeed they are. They thrilled hundreds of thousands of fans after unexpectedly being asked to support Robbie Williams on a tour of football stadia. It gave them the chance to reconnect with fans who helped to make them one of the biggest pop-disco acts of the 1980s and 1990s. Lest we forget, the band enjoyed four consecutive number one records from 1988 to 1994, with The Innocents, Wild!, Chorus, and I Say I Say I Say earning a total of five platinum and one gold disc.

That imperial phase was followed by records that were much loved by critics and fans, while not selling quite so many copies. Although last year’s World Be Gone helped to propel them back into the top ten for the first time since I Say I Say I Say.

“We’re in a good place. The tour with Robbie was really good. His audience isn’t that different to ours because as you get older the difference between fans gets less and less. Robbie was super nice. I think Andy felt as though it was a hard show because we’ve never done a support slot like that before when people are there for another act.

“But I think the people were reminded about us because we just played the hits. It was not so much about winning people over as reminding them of some of the things that we’ve done.”

World Be Gone was the band’s first record since 2014’s Violent Flame. It was written over the course of two years and Vince and Andy were resolute about not wanting to make a dance record. “The previous three or four records had been pop-dance and we wanted to do something more in the style of Erasure, form God knows when. We wanted to make more of an atmospheric record, so that tied in with all of the weird political stuff in the world. Lyrically, it’s an amazing time for songwriters. You can say that stuff and it means something now because of what’s going on, not that we’ve ever been overtly political.”

World Be Gone was released on Mute Records, the band’s home throughout their career. It was founded in 1978 by Daniel Miller and among the acts who’ve found a home there are Depeche Mode, Erasure, Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, Grinderman, Inspiral Carpets, Moby, New Order, Nitzer Ebb, Wire, Yeasayer, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Yazoo.

Vince was, of course, part of Yazoo with Alison Moyet, striking up his friendship with Daniel then. “Daniel and I have been together for 40 years. Daniel’s a real music fan, not a businessman, so I feel very honoured and privileged to be part of that organisation. These days, Daniel and I are the two old codgers.

“But the relationship with him is central. It’s all about honesty. Of all the people that listen to things before we release them, he’s the one I’ll most listen to. He’ll say whether he thinks it’s good or not and I respect his opinion most of all. If he says he doesn’t like it, I genuinely listen.”

Andy and Vince have enjoyed a similarly fruitful partnership, working together and bouncing off each other to create songs that have stood the test of time. The reason their partnership has worked is because they are not precious about their ideas. “If I come up with an idea and Andy doesn’t like it, or vice versa, it just gets dropped and we moved on. We just try to write a better one. It works both ways, it’s about mutual respect.”

l Erasure play the O2 Academy in Birmingham on Sunday. Tickets from www.ticketmaster.co.uk