'Nightbird' Andy Bell opens up about his
HIV-positive status, his 20-year partnership
with Vince Clarke, and the new Erasure album
BY LoAnn Halden
It's well past dark in the U.K. when the record company patches through the call to Erasure's Andy Bell, the man who could lure the most jaded Goth boy to the '80s dance floor with the plaintive cry 'Oh L'Amour.'
As far back as he can remember, Bell has been a creature of the night.
'Ever since I was a kid, I've always been a nightbird for some reason,' he says. 'I would never go to [ my bedroom ] until about 10 o'clock and not start my homework until about midnight, so I was generally late for school each day. Kind of a hard habit to break, really.'
It's unlikely to get easier anytime soon. The singing insomniac is preparing to head out on tour with Erasure-mate Vince Clarke in support of their latest recording of original songs, the aptly titled Nightbird. Although the synth-pop duo has released albums steadily throughout their nearly two-decades-long career, their last two studio sets Cowboy ( 1997 ) and Loveboat ( 2000 ) didn't cause ripples on this side of the pond—at least not like in the days of Wonderland ( 1986 ) , The Innocents ( 1988 ) or Wild! ( 1989 ) . And when last seen on tour, the band's focus was its covers collection Other People's Songs.
'I felt like a bit of a phony because we weren't doing our own songs in doing Other People's Songs, so it really gave us an impetus to write,' Bell says. 'We just couldn't really wait to get together again and start writing. Vince was living in New York at the time and it was a good excuse for me to go over there, because I really love it there.'
Clarke and Bell returned to the studio where they had recorded an as-yet-unreleased acoustic album of old Erasure songs.
'That worked out so well, I wanted to go back— [ it ] was just a home studio around the corner from where Vince lived in Brooklyn run by a guy called Steve Walsh. … It was just a good vibe. We did the writing in two lots: one was in November in London in 2003 and the second half was done in February in Brooklyn—in the freezing cold. Smoking outside in the freezing cold, 14 below.'
But leave it to the nightbird to find a way around the rules. 'There's one bar in New York called The Cock, which is a gay bar, but it's so kind of politically on a knife edge. The police don't go in there and do anything so you can smoke and do whatever you want in there, so that's where I used to hang out.
'I just can't help myself,' he chuckles, 'I always seem to end up in the underground. I think it's just an instinctive thing.'
Confessions
Of all the U.K. singers that emerged in the ambiguous sexuality of the '80s pop scene, Bell deserves credit for marching into the spotlight with an 'I'm here, I'm queer' attitude from the beginning. ( Remember Elton John's wedding anyone? Or Boy George's 'bisexuality'? )
'From really a very early age, I felt like I grew out of my town. I came from a small town called Peterborough, which is near Cambridge in the U.K. I felt, as a teenager—I suppose like all young kids—a bit of a freak. I knew I liked men and [ was ] doing all the naughty things that you shouldn't do like hanging around bathroom toilets and things like that and in the park and loitering. Thank God nothing ever happened to me; but I really laid myself open to those kind of things, which probably was my protection.'
Bell moved to London at 19, because he wanted to join a band. For the first year, he hovered on the sidelines of city nightclubs with dropped jaw as he watched people like Boy George make the scene.
As hard as it is to imagine, he says he 'didn't say boo to anybody.'
'Really I think joining Erasure kind of got me over my shyness. People approach you rather than you having to approach them,' Bell says. 'When we first started, I went on stage and I just had this kind of body stocking on, which you could see everything through. The computers broke down in the very first gig and I didn't know what to say; I had no personality whatsoever. So I started doing Alison Moyet impersonations and telling jokes and stuff. The whole thing just sort of grew out of that really, dressing up.
'We played the university and college circuit here and we had a few beers thrown over us and a few names called, 'queer' and things. I just thought, 'Well, hell to that. If that's what you want to see that's what you're going to get,' and just played up to it really.'
Bell's penchant for frankness went to a different level in December 2004 when he announced his HIV status. He tested positive in June 1998 after a bout of pneumonia in Mallorca and has since taken combination drug therapy.
'My boyfriend ( Paul Hickey ) , he found out he was positive in 1990 on his 40th birthday, and he got really distraught about it. From that moment he wouldn't have sex with me, so I think I decided in my head that I would go and get it from somewhere else, which sounds really bizarre. … On tours and stuff, I went around the world and hooked up with guys and wasn't always safe.
'I've got no tattoos, but I kind of felt like that was like a gay tattoo. Which I've since discovered you don't have to belong to any groups, because you're you, you're yourself.'
His relationship weathered the storm though. Bell met his boyfriend the same time he met Clarke—2005 marks their 20th anniversary. Later this year, Hickey will release a book that addresses their HIV status.
'We're quite telepathic and it's a really, really deep soul love. It would take a lot for anything to come between that, you know,' Bell says.
Fear kept him from revealing his status earlier. He was encouraged to talk about it a couple of years ago, but says he just wasn't ready.
'About 10 years ago in this country there was a bit of a witchhunt going on,' he explains, relaying a story the press had gotten wind of about a man who stole a jacket from him. When officers came to his house to ask if he wanted to press charges, they made a point to say the offender had AIDS—'like he was more of a criminal because he had AIDS,' says Bell, who was still negative at the time.
'This guy had made up this whole story about how he was my boyfriend and how I'd given [ HIV ] to him and the newspapers were going to print it. Fortunately I'd had my appendix out and I was tested. My boyfriend Paul had to go and take the certificate to the press and say, 'Look, this is negative you assholes; if you go ahead with the story we'll sue you.'
'This was sort of hanging over me for awhile,' he sighs, 'so I was a bit nervous about it, but now I'm just very calm. Since I've said it, quite a number of people have come up to me when I've been out, even young guys, and said this happened to them or they just found out. It's a nice position to be in. I always hate the idea of having anything hidden.'
Erasure has done numerous AIDS benefits in the past, and Bell expects organizations will approach him more frequently now, but there's nothing concrete in place.
As a flawed poster boy, he strikes a chord of reality. 'In the U.K. it's quite shocking. We have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the whole of Europe, chlamydia is kind of out of control, and gonorrhea,' he says, trying on a spokesperson's hat ( no doubt one that's brightly festooned ) . 'On the gay scene there are many sex clubs and backrooms and things like that. I'm not saying they shouldn't have those places as long as they provide condoms, so that people can protect themselves. [ I'd ] tell young people, just because you have combination therapy that can stave off AIDS-related illnesses, it doesn't mean you can go out and fuck around willy-nilly, you really need to protect yourself.'
'Primal scream therapy'
Bell says he's in good health and successful hip surgery last year has him feeling fit for the stage. His voice is in fine form on Nightbird, reflecting the inevitable creep to maturity and, he would say, a greater self-awareness.
'I think I'm more in tune with who I really am, and I think it's much deeper than it has been,' he says of his singing. 'I've been a bit of a soul fan really. I love Motown. That's what's slowly coming out rather than being a shrieking diva or something. I think it's really finding your feet. If the singing wasn't to improve every time, I don't think it's worth doing anything.'
The songs, from the first single 'Breathe' to the high-energy 'All This Time Still Falling Out of Love,' are unabashedly retro, undeniably Erasure. Lyrically, the psychological drama of the past is still present, reflecting 'the infinite complexities of love.'
'I make up all these songs of unrequited love and dramas going on, when it's not really true, when actually my life's quite dull. So then I kind of try and go out and re-enact them with my boyfriend,' Bell says, laughing mischievously. ' [ I ] say, 'Well I'm leaving you now and I'm going to go move in with this person'—big floods of tears and everything—but thankfully it wasn't really true. I'm generally pretty calm, but I think every now and then you have to just let go and be mad. I'm not the kind of person that's got to go out and get really blasted and drunk and have to be taken home by his friends; I'm always in control that way, so you have to do it in other ways.'
In the public eye, where Bell is the queerly flamboyant yin to Clarke's sedate, hetero yang, 'calm' is not the first word that comes to mind for the Erasure vocalist. This is a man who once humped a snail-like creature across a stage on tour, after all.
'Oh right,' he laughs. 'That's another story. Being on the stage is a bit like primal scream therapy or something. You just feel like you're a little animal that's been let out of its cage and you can just kind of go wild.'
For their upcoming tour, there's a fairy forest under construction, which Bell envisions as 'quite icy,' and when he thought of who might be partying amid the trees, he pictured Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. 'I had no idea it was Elvis's 70th birthday either. … It's obviously some kind of zeitgeist thing going on.'
But when it comes to his long-term partnership with Clarke, he says he's not one to rock the boat. The opportunity to work with the former member of Depeche Mode and Yaz meant a chance to work with one of his heroes.
'I've always been one of those people where if I want to do something, I won't go directly to the source and trample over lots of people. I'll go in a huge great big circle and make sure I end up where I want to be, so I don't harm anybody. I think Vince is the same. He's a Cancerian and I'm a Taurus. I don't know, we both just seem to get on well; we both love our home comforts and we're both pretty down to earth and we don't seem to belong to the MTV generation. We've never really been part of any kind of clique, whether it's Brit-pop or whatever.'
As they enter the 20th year of Erasure, there is talk at their record company of releasing remastered versions of their earlier work. The aforementioned acoustic album may also see the retail light of day, and Bell is working on the last two songs of a solo project—one he hopes to sing with 'one of the girls' from the B-52's and the other with Jake Shears from the Scissor Sisters.
'I'm not sure when it's going to come out,' he says. 'They're all a bit like London buses, these albums: queuing up and all waiting to come all at once.'
As for a personal celebration, Bell says they might just hold out for 21 years.
'That used to be the old age of consent here in the U.K. for gay sex,' he laughs, 'so we might wait.'
