Interview: Alison Moyet
Bright’n’Ali
With a career spanning 30 years, Alison Moyet is once again enjoying chart success, as she explains to Jeff Hemmings
Having recently moved to Brighton with her husband and youngest daughter, seen her son marry, and witnessed her new album make the top five in the album charts, life seems to be good for this extraordinarily successful singer, whose 30-year-plus career has remained intact despite the best efforts of record labels to pin her down as a covers artist, a move she has now firmly resisted.
Despite operating for less than two years, the influence of her first successful outing Yazoo (along with the mastermind of that project, Vince Clarke) has been huge; hits such as Only You and Don’t Go are classics of the early ‘80s synth pop era, while the album You And Me Both made it to number one. For a few years after that, Alison Moyet remained super hot as far as the charts were concerned: ‘All Cried Out’, ‘That Ole Devil Called Love’, ‘Is This Love’, ‘Love Letters’ and ‘Weak In The Presence Of Beauty’ were all top ten hits, while the album Alf made number one in 1987. All in all, she has sold more than two million albums. But, by the end of the ’80s she had become frustrated with what she saw as record company manipulation. “I became famous before I really knew what kind of artist I was. What I did know was that I was always interested in exploring, and so there are times you make a record just out of interest and it turns out to be a massive commercial success, and that kind of fixes you in a particular time.
Being famous is a really odd experience
“Being famous is a really odd experience, it’s bizarre. I found it really awkward; I never bought into that stuff. You have a 30-year career and all people are interested in is how you look. I didn’t move in expensive circles; my mates are the mates I went to school with.”
Her well documented issues with her record company saw her less active in the ’90s and noughties, although albums were still being occasionally delivered, albeit of a kind that was often out of kilter with what she was about, what she wanted. “I’m not hanging onto any anger or bitterness about it; the fact that I have been singing for over 30 years I’m sure anyone who has had that sort of career, for that amount of time, will have had similar issues. People get sacked from their jobs, and they get a different boss they don’t like, and they need to get another one; that’s just a part of living. I’m happy to be recording. S***, I’m 52! That’s quite remarkable.”
It is indeed remarkable that having released a new album this year, on her own terms (with Guy Sigsworth on production duties), that she continues to have mainstream success, the minutes album reaching number five in the charts, her highest position since ’87s Raindancing. When referring to the name of the album she says: “As young people we are sold this idea that we should be able to achieve a seamless happy life, and everyone is living better than us. And there is a thread that runs through our lives; whereas the truth of the matter is our joys come in minutes, suspended in years, and to put it in upper case (the typography of the album’s name) would give it that romanticism that I don’t mean to give it. For me, this album, after years of trying to make a creative album as opposed to a covers record that I was offered so many times, these are a collection of ‘my minutes’.
“There’s no compromise, that’s the brilliant thing about this, we made this record with no record company, no A&R men, and we really made it as a band would, as a band starting out. Consequently, there’s been no compromise at all. I actually think this album is the most cohesive I have made: I find it great that it’s the same writers, the same producers, rather than someone pulling in all the different hit writers and different producers all the time, producing what they hope to be a collection of hit singles. This is meant to be listened to as a whole.
“We’d had meetings with some labels and they would say, ‘Well OK, if you have to write a song, go for it, but you know you should do these covers’. Oh, for f**** sake! Do you really need another person doing an Etta James cover; does the world really need a poor second!? Every time I met an A&R man and I could hear his brain ticking and talking about demographics, it made my heart sink. So, I decided I was going to make the album I was going to make. If I can get someone to take it, fantastic; if not, then I’ll just release it online. But Cooking Vinyl [her current label] were blown away and it’s been brilliant. I was struck by their attitude: no hot air, nobody up their arse, just straight talking with intelligent people who are really into records.”
As she has always done, Moyet will be revisiting much of her greatest hits and songs, but differently this time, with more emphasis on the electronica side of things, as well as a big visual show. “So much of my solo stuff is grim and before people want to slit their throats; I want to give them something to lift their pulse a little bit. The old stuff will be re-worked like a remix is done, but I don’t have to morph them into a generic band… they will presented in the way they are supposed to be, which is where the instrumentation is as important as the voice. There will be lots of programming and synthesisers on this tour, minimalist in terms of personnel on stage, lots of screens and images.”
Earlier this year she re-located to sunny Brighton, and so far so good… “I wanted to be by the sea, and I’ve never lived in a city, and I wanted to be in a place that is a bit more inclusive, more of a social mix than the place I lived before. It felt so right, people are friendly on the street!”
It’s a far cry from her days training to be a piano maker, restorer and tuner at the London College of Furniture… “I was building, restoring, French polishing and tuning pianos, and it looked like I was going to complete the course, but Vince came along and it was like, ‘Do I go to Ireland to do this TV or do I stay at college?’.
“It is funny, I’ve played the Albert Hall and all these kind of places and invariably the piano tuner is the guy who was at my college!”
Alison Moyet, Monday 21 October, Brighton Dome, 7pm, £26.50–£46.50
