Entertainment Editor GORDON BARR catches up with Erasure singer Andy Bell for an EXCLUSIVE interview ANDY Bell has spent a lot of time on Tyneside in the past few years – and not just through his gigs with Erasure. A few years ago his partner suffered a stroke. The singer has made regular trips to Newcastle ever since. “I’ve been up quite a few times. They have a stroke unit as part of the university,” he says. “I’ve been up, stayed there and been out a few times. It was really good.” Andy will be back on Tuesday with pop-partner Vince Clarke for an Erasure gig at the Carling Academy Newcastle – their first on Tyneside since the acoustic concert last year at The Sage Gateshead. “I remember being really gobsmacked by the building. “Going in there, the acoustics are really brilliant,” he remembers. The current tour follows on from the release in the spring of the duo’s latest album, Light at the End of the World, which saw them make a huge return to electro-pop form. “It just seemed to happen that way. Vince said he was having his mid-tempo crisis. We had done loads of slow albums for a while and were a bit maudlin,” Andy recalls. “He sent me 10 tracks of just music, probably about a year before we started working on writing the songs. “One of those songs ended up on the album. It is called Glass Angel. The other ones weren’t ‘songs’ enough. “We really wanted to do some songwriting, we hadn’t done it in ages. I went to see Vince in Portland, Maine, which is where he lives now, and stayed there for a couple of weeks. “We just did writing, every day, and ended up with about 24 ideas for songs. Then went back again and, for the third time, recorded for about a month there. We got a little house, put all our gear in there and then mixed the whole thing at Mute back in London. “It took about four months, the whole thing. We really wanted to do some writing and it just came out. If we got stuck for ideas I took my iPod with me, listened to some stuff and played it to Vince. “It was probably more like 10 years ago, old times. I like a bit of Ladytron, a bit of Kylie, lots of Donna Summer stuff, some dance and lots of electro dance stuff.” The album will form the backbone of Tuesday’s concert – a far cry from the acoustic gig at The Sage. “It was great, really nice, playing with lots of other musicians,” says Andy of the acoustic tour. “We’re really nervous this time as it’s me, Vince and three singers. We’re a bit nervous. “I feel a bit like a monkey on a barrel sometimes. I’m sure it’ll be all right. I don’t think there will be a huge amount of costume changes. “It will be quite slick. We thought we would do an ‘Andy Warhol meets John Waters’ kind of thing. “A bit of camouflage with frills around the edge. “As it is Light at the End of the World, we thought it would have disco at the end of the Universe. A big space backdrop and stuff. “A lot of screens going on and lots of pop culture being flashed up and down everywhere.” Three years ago Andy told the world he was HIV positive, but he has not let it hold him back in any way. “All’s fine,” he tells me. “I think I’m on my third cold of the season. Hoping to shirk it off though.” Erasure have sold more than 20 million albums over the years. Since the mid-80s, they have seldom had lengthy periods out of the charts. Their hits include Sometimes, Drama!, Ship of Fools and the ABBAesque EP. In fact, their songwriting has brought them more than 30 top 40 singles and 11 top 20 albums – including five No 1 hits. The first single from Light at the End of the World was the high-energy I Could Fall In Love With You. It saw them back high in the charts again. Andy’s lyrics throughout the album are some of the most intensely personal of his career – true mediations on love, loss, regret, hope and starting over. Andy adds: “This album is to show people that our pop isn’t finished. “It’s saying we can still do it, we can still write great songs. “We’re a bizarre mixture. People don’t get it a lot of the time. “We’re quite British – working class people love a good tune in a pub – but we’re also quite eccentric.” Erasure are at the Carling Academy Newcastle on Tuesday. The gig is sold out. Contact the venue direct for returns. | 
