MG: What is it about the Synthesizer you like so much?
Vince: I like the synthesizer as an instrument because it's what I play
best, you know. I'm absolutely hopeless at guitar, terrible piano player,
the synthesizers I can program and I can get to do all sorts of tricks
without having to spend hours and hours practising. It's like having a sort
of free range instrument, you're not pinned down to as I say like not being
a good player. You get to do all kinds of wierd and wonderful things.
Andy: I think when you listen to some of our tracks, in particular, the new
ones, you can't identify any of the instruments because they're all
synthesizers. But they're each doing a part like a bass part or a high hat
or percussion. You can't identify them at all.
Vince: The first synthesizer I ever bought was a thing called a Kawai 100
FS. It was a really, really terrible synthesizer, but it was quite cheap and
it had lots more knobs than the better synthesizers that weren't so expensive.
And at the back of this thing it has a thing called a gate input,
which means basically you can link it up to a drum machine and make it run
in time. And I opened it up one day and it was just a hole there, it wasn't
actually connected to anything, it was all a con!. Y'know, it said trigger
in and it wasn't going anywhere!. That was terrible, terrible really,
actually, I mean, it cost me 250 quid or something, it was a lot of money
then!!
Andy: It's like old stereos with just a cardboard tube in the back!
Vince: I don't buy anything new anymore..
Andy: He's an antique dealer!
Vince: Yeah, I know, I've got a synthesizer antique collection now.Y'know,
fortunately I'm in the position where I can buy big systems which most
people can't afford and I get a lot of stuff from America, and a lot of the
stuff is kind of really prototype stuff,.. even before what the knobs did
was even recognised, so if it says decay or release or filter or something
else, on these old synthesizers it doesn't say that, it says something else,
they never had the language for the things they do. In order to make a sound
or get a sound, as long as you've got nothing specific in mind you can just
fiddle until something comes out which is interesting and that's the way I
like to work and that way you don't come up with predictable sounds.
MG: Andy, your voice is very much your instrument. Does that mean you take
care of it?
Andy: I don't take care of my voice at all really and I'm very lucky. But I
think part of kind of abusing yourself, you come up with more interesting
ideas or with more interesting sounds. It's better to go and stretch
yourself rather than being all syrupy and sugary. I've been very lucky
as well, there was only one time on tour when my voice completely packed up.
We were about to go on stage in New York and well, I was really ill as well
anyway. And somebody gave me some herbal remedy which was really awful, it
was like drinking privet leaves crushed up in hot water. But it worked!.
Do current music trends influence what you do?
Vince: The stuff that we listen to anyway, y'know, we're not really
listening to anything that's current particularly anyway are we?. Both our
record collections are retro's, so maybe those influences come in. I'm
suddenly getting into buying records now, that's my new thing because
records sound a hundred times better than CD's.
Andy: I think, if you think about a group like ABBA, and to me they were
pop. They deserved and they had the credibility to be labelled pop. I dunno,
since then, the standard of records seems to have fallen incredibly and I
wouldn't think of the word pop as a dirty word anymore. I would think that
pop's quite a respectable description.
Vince: I think it probably stems a lot from the 70's really when people
started making more and more elaborate records, complicated records and
those people drifted away from three minute songs, and then came to despise
them.
Vince: I don't think that good pop records are disposable because I can
remember singles that I bought when I was a teen and I still really like
'em!. So I've not forgotten about them and set them aside and decided that
they're not important anymore or that they're not any good anymore, because
they are.
Andy: It's quite good I think that the musicians or the creators of it are
disposable, because the music's always there and it's a similar thing to a
smell, y'know, if you hear a record like twenty years later, it completely
transports you back to that time and what you were going through and the
artist is nowhere to be found.
MG: Your work as song writers is beyond question but I know you've covered
other people's songs, I'm thinking of ABBA's in particular. Which one of
their songs did you start with?
Vince: Gimme Gimme Gimme ( A Man After Midnight) which was on the back of Oh
L'amour, which was our third single.
Andy: Which we did it live initially didn't we?
Vince: Which we played live before we recorded it. That one was
definitely done as a laugh.
Andy: Yeah.
Andy: I think that's the thing with cover versions - they're a relief.
Vince: Not our favourite songs, necessarily, but the songs that have got a
bit of humour in them I think, that's really important. But we're not gonna
do any more though.
Andy: It's very easy to drown in them and it's very easy for the cover
versions to completely take over what we do.
Andy: I think Erasure fans are very, kind of, down to Earth people. I don't
think you can cater towards a certain group of people. Well, you can, but I
think it's good that it doesn't happen like that.
Vince: There's some people who were kids when they started following us
around and now they've got babies and everything.
Andy: They're the last people you should blame for anything, your fans,
because they put up with you, y'know. All your s***.
MG: When it comes to touring and you're choosing which songs you're gonna
play for the audiences, do you prefer, generally speaking, to perform new
material or is it the classic Erasure hit singles?
Vince: I would prefer to play the singles, y'know, you get a nice reaction
from them, you know them quite well, he doesn't usually make mistakes with
the lyrics.
Andy: When you're thinking about ideas for a new tour, especially after
you've just finished an album, there are just particular tracks that stick
out, whether they're singles or not, they just give you ideas for staging
and so then they become favourites, and just how they work out with the
crowd I think is important.
MG: A lot of what you do seems to have a very personal touch, like you're
very much in control of the images on the albums sleeves and of the videos
too?.
Andy: I think when we're thinking of videos and sleeves and stuff it's also
quite personal between us, and we'll just banter about ideas and then a
third party becomes involved. They might take it over and take it out of our
hands, which is also nice.
Vince: I think we've .. well, I know we've always had control. We've been
very lucky in that respect.
About his stage outfits
Andy: Well it's definitely evolved from the play pen and the dressing up
box. People always go on about being outrageous and stuff but I don't think
that at all, I think it's very tame. And my philosophy has been, you should
be the first one to play the clown, and if you have anything that you think
people might find distasteful, show that to them straight away and let them
get over it. Those kind of things are trivialities really.
Vince: I don't think that it's very camp really. Andy can pretty much do and
say what he likes, y'know, as long as he doesn't swear on stage, as far as
I'm concerned because I see that as an aggressive..it's harking back to Rock
n' Roll, y'know. Unnecessary.
Andy: I'm an exhibitionist. But I think the reason for being anything is
always opposite. So it's because I'm incredibly shy.
MG: The current album 'I Say I Say I Say' seemed to take a long time to
make?.
Vince: We had some problems finding the right producer and we couldn't
really make up our mind and we talked to a few producers and we didn't
really get along with those people. And we were supposed to finish in
September actually, but we didn't actually start till September.
Andy: I think a producer has to try and get the best out of us, not be too
imposing, be very patient with waiting for a vocal performance,...be able
to put something together out of a lot of stuff. Just, really, being objective
but kind of keeping the whole thing together.
Vince: We don't really want a producer to necessarily flood us with ideas,
I mean, usually we've got our own ideas.
Andy: We need a honer, that's what we look for..
Vince: Yeah. The only producer we used twice was Flood, that was the
first and second album. Since then we've changed producers every album,
usually cos we fall out.
Vince: A lot of producers, I think also because they're doing a lot of
programming themselves actually get involved, if it's an artist, that's just a
vocalist say, they'll be actually making the music for them, and in our
instance it doesn't happen y'know, we do it all ourselves. So we're more
looking for someone to be objective and get us into shape.
Andy: Also the sounds are complete really from when they're done because
how can you change a synth sound?, cos it's already there.
MG: So who did you get to produce the album?
Vince: Martin Ware, from Human League fame. I think it was Andy's
boyfriend's suggestion because he saw the credit on a ..Tina Turner album
and he didn't even know anything about his new romantic past.
Andy: Yeah, and he did Terence Trent D'Arby and he's also a bit of a vocalist.
Andy: It's difficult, when you're working with machines, with synthesizers,
to.. y'know, if you get somebody that's too kind of biased towards the synth
aspect, you could be treated like a machine as well, so it's good to have
somebody that has a sensitivity to know when you've done enough or when
they think you've done enough, and also that's more interested in your
performance rather than everything being precise and in tune.
On The Press
Andy: I like to read what other people are thinking because more than not, I
agree with them. I mean, they can be very hard but they often pin point things
that I'd maybe had second thoughts about in the first place, but.. they're always
exaggerated, but I think it's good to just have the feelers out in the public domain.
People try to wound you and they do for a while but it adds to your strength I
think. I can't really say that I'm immune to negative press coverage because that's
an invitation. But I think because I'm open, as much as I can be, it really doesn't
give them any cannon fodder.
Andy: If any of our future album's were to fail, I don't know, I could imagine
myself becoming quite a bitter old man really, cos you can kind of rest on your
laurels of what you've done already and if you did that, you wouldn't develop
into anything else.
Vince: If the band hadn't taken off, I think we'd still be trying y'know, we'd
probably be doing a gig tonight. I'm sure we would..be giving it a go. When
you talk to people in bands or see people in bands, they never ever stop
playing, even if you've got the same band in the pub and they've been playing
for like ten years they always think that next year something great's gonna
happen, they never give up. I think we'd have been the same.