On Nightbird (Mute), their first new studio album of all original material in five years, Andy Bell and Vince Clark of Erasure don’t do much to alter the recipe that makes their brand of ear candy so tasty and addictive--you can still dance to it with abandon, or with tears in your eyes. The pairing of Bell’s powerful and distinguished vocals and Clark’s keyboard carnival allows the songs on Nightbird to take wing. AfterElton.com: 2005 is the twentieth anniversary of Erasure. After all the years and nearly a dozen albums, how would you say your collaboration with Vince (Clarke) has evolved over time?

I went to one audition when first I moved down to London at 19. It was for a spin-off band of a group called Bow Wow Wow. I didn’t even know how to hold the microphone or anything, so I just kind of pretended. I remember seeing Vince at the studio, Blackwing, which he used to half-own, and he had split from Depeche Mode then. I remember seeing him there on the Space Invaders machine with big fringe hanging down, and I thought, “Wow! That’s Vince Clark!” He’d always been in my mind’s eye and after he split with Alison Moyet, I thought, maybe I should write him a letter and see if he needs a new singer.

In that same period, I was living in a cooperative in house in London with some people who worked for Gay Switchboard and Shelter. We would listen to Alison Moyet, and one of my flat-mates said to me, “This is going to be you in a year’s time.” I was like, “What’s he talking about?” And so I answered this advert one on this one weekend--I was in a band already, but I got fed up because we weren’t doing live gigs--which said “Established songwriter looking for versatile singer.” I phoned it up and it was Vince Clark. I just couldn’t believe it. I thought, “Well, I’m going to go down, have a great day, and whatever happens I’m going to really enjoy myself, be in the studio with the man himself.”

I was a big fan of Jimmy Somerville at the time as well, and a falsetto just came out of my voice, which I hadn’t even tried before, it just sprang up there. They said, “Would you like to work with Vince on this album project?” And I said, “Oh, yes, please.” He had two singles out in the meantime as The Assembly, one with Paul Quinn and one with Feargal Sharkey. I remember praying, “Oh, please let them be flops” (laughs). Because I want to hook up with Vince.

They put me on a retainer of £150 a week, which was a lot of money in those days, especially for an unemployed boy. So, I went to Ibiza for a little while and then came back and started working with Vince. I was totally enamored in the studio. I didn’t say a word for probably a year while we were working together. I would just stare at him the whole time and think, “I really want to get to know him.” Slowly but surely, I did get to know him and we started collaborating with the writing. He’s the most fair and diplomatic person that I know. When we were writing “Oh, L’Amour,” he’d written the whole song and had the chorus, and I said, “Let’s put in ‘Oh, L’amour,’ for the chorus line” and he gave me fifty-percent of the writing credit. I thought, “How generous!”

AE: That’s amazing and very generous.
AB: He’s fantastic. He’s really brilliant. We’re both quite down-to-earth. I just like to go out, do my own thing with my friends. None of this star “let me in, don’t you know who I am?!” kind of thing. That’s what he’s like as well.

AE: It’s wonderful to know that. Other than releasing the new album, Nightbird, are there any other special plans to commemorate Erasure’s anniversary?
AB: We don’t have any commemoration plans really. We thought maybe we’d wait until we were twenty-one.

AE: Then you’ll be legal.
AB: Right (laughs). We’ve got this acoustic album, which we’ve already recorded with violins and slide guitars and stuff. It’s Erasure ballads from past albums. It sounds so nice. It’s a bit bluesy, kind of Ella Fitzgerald-style, recorded in the same studio as Nightbird. Also, we're doing a nursery rhyme album because we’ve got lots of little godchildren. The record company’s been talking about re-releasing some of the old stuff as the year comes round.

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