Marc and The Mambas - History

History

Marc and the Mambas started Marc Almond's solo career. As Soft Cell's sound developed more into a darker mix of pop and electronic dance music, With Some Bizzare Label Marc and the Mambas continued the dark themes - but built around more complex rhythms.

Their second Some Bizzare released album, Torment and Toreros, contains a mix of ballads, both with and without dance beats, and is an interesting mix of Vaudeville, French Chanson, and goth sensibility, using guitar noise, piano, and string sections. Almond later described this recording as an "attempted suicide put on vinyl."

Interestingly, the group was closer to a jazz outfit rather than a rock group. Band members changed from album to performance and back each time something new was started. The only consistent members were Marc Almond, Annie Hogan and Steve James Sherlock. Further members, such as Billy McGee and Martin McCarrick went later on to join Almond for his first solo efforts (called Marc Almond and the Willing Sinners). But Martin McCarrick left for Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1987, and the rest of that band (then called La Magia) dissolved in 1988. Since then Almond has been a solo artist, working closely together with Neal X (of Sigue Sigue Sputnik fame) since 1993. Lee Jenkinson (guitar) recorded a single with producer Flood (under the band name The Poppyfields) and is currently in the band Jellynail.

As for the Mambas, David Ball was an associated member for their first single, "Sleaze" and Matt Johnson from The The was a member for the first and second album but did not join anymore for the last concerts in 1983 (put to Vinyl and later to CD as Black, Bite & Blues.) Never a full but an associated member was Jim Foetus (aka Jim Thirlwell/Clint Ruin), who did guest vocals and percussion on "A Million Manias" as well as "Love Among the Ruined."

It was in 1983, that Almond as well as Soft Cell were very close to the avant-garde scene around Foetus, Psychic TV, and Einstürzende Neubauten. Almond also took part as one of four members of The Immaculate Consumptive, who never released any album but did a few shows in New York and Washington D.C., at the end of 1983. The group was initiated by Lydia Lunch. Further members were Jim Foetus and Nick Cave.

Marc and the Mambas very much belonged to that scene and were something as an odd ball at the same time. Since despite being quoted differently at the time, he never gave up his pop sensibilities, which returned in Soft Cell's last effort (for 17 years) on This Last Night In Sodom... (1984). As Soft Cell called it a day and Almond started his solo career, many people were surprised that Vermine In Ermine was pop influenced. His second album Stories of Johnny (1985) even more so. However, Mother Fist and Her Fiver Daughters, released in 1987, picked up where the Mambas had left off in 1983, and since then Almond has always traversed effortlessly between pop (such The Stars We Are (1988) to chanson such as Jacques (1989) and avant garde (such as Heart On Snow (2003)). However, he only returned to hard core avant garde a la "A Million Manias" or "The Animal in You" in side projects such as Flesh Volcano (with Jim Foetus, 1987) or in guesting on albums of Coil.

In the beginning of the 2000s, he reformed Soft Cell for a while. For the first time since the early 1980s, he re-emerged as a dance music artist, exploring collaborations with artists such as System F], Loverush, or King Roc. Almond always kept in touch with some of the Mambas' core members like Anne Stephenson and Gini Ball (David Ball's ex-wife), who performed with him during his Sin, Songs And Romance gigs at the Almeida in 2004. He frequently includes Mambas songs in his live repertoire and this way, their legacy remains alive.

Antony Hegarty from Antony and the Johnsons cited Torment and Toreros as the most important influence on his life and his work.

Mambas Again???

In May 2012, Marc Almond announced on his webpage that he intends to do a one off performance of Torment and Toreros in its entirety on 9 August 2012. It would be part of the Meltdown festival, created by Anthony Hegarty this year. The message sparked a discussion among his fans if it only should be done with the original Mambas as the performing group, especially with Anni(e) Hogan, who co-wrote several of the Mambas songs, which was denied by Marc. He also canceled the release of the much anticipated 1983 Mambas DVD and CD at the Duke of Yorks Theatre, where T&T originally had been performed due to this - in parts - negative discussion. Subsequently, he issued the following statement on his webpage:

9 May 2012

"Tickets for Torment And Toreros at the Meltdown festival go on sale this week. It's 30 years since I created and produced (with Flood as co-producer) the double album Torment And Toreros. It was recorded mostly at night on dead studio time at the famous Trident Studios where David Bowie had recorded his most seminal records, including Ziggy Stardust. It's an odd record. The album wasn't a great success at the time of release, it was mostly critically panned. It was called a 'florid musical mess', a description I quite liked, and the journalist who dismissed it as some tawdry S&M I infamously attacked with a bullwhip. In recent years it has been re-evaluated and re-appreciated as a (flawed) masterpiece, as I always hoped it would be. It is a dark album with themes of madness, depression, isolation, alienation, innocence lost and destructive love, all seen through a prism of fame.

'A nervous breakdown committed to vinyl'. This was also when I began to bring world influences into my music; Passionate Spanish Flamenco and Turkish Torch songs. It's difficult listening in parts and to perform it again in its entirety is daunting. I have rarely been able to listen to it at all over the years and hearing it recently again I barely recognise myself at times. A few pieces on the album were all but improvised and they will have to be given some form. It was a culmination of ten years of pain from adolescence to my twenties. It was an exorcism then and will be again in this Meltdown performance.

It will be for that one time only, it will not be filmed or recorded and will only be for that live performance to love, hate, celebrate or forget as one wishes. After it (apart from a very few exceptions) I never want to perform Mambas songs again. They come with too much darkness and ghosts of the past.

Exceptions? Torment, a song I wrote with Steven Severin and Robert Smith, Untitled, a song I wrote with Matt Johnson from the album of the same name, the cover songs, Peter Hammill's Vision, The Walker Brothers In My Room and possibly my own Catch A Fallen Star which captures that whole album in a song.

It will not be a Mambas reunion. I never looked on the Mambas as a group but an amorphous collective or ensemble, ever changing. When it started to look like becoming a group I finished it, as I did the other 'groups' when they looked like consuming me. I don't like being in a band, I like to be a free sprit, to do as I like musically and personally. It is also about my own insecurities. The Mambas was a side project of Soft Cell and a vehicle for my alternative musical explorations.

Torment And Toreros set the mould for me as the artist I would become. A collage of my own compositions, co written songs and personal favourite cover songs by artists I love and wanted to share with my audience. Songs that I could make my own in the setting of my own particular world, and saying things I wanted to say (except better maybe as I struggled for the words). I hoped the line would blur between the cover songs and original compositions, that they would become mine.

Of course this was all thirty years ago in a different life in a different world on a different musical landscape. Of course it won't be exactly the same or come from the same place. With an album such as this it's impossible. But just like the songs you sing from your back catalogue, from the past, you and them find a new place. I'll draw on the demons from that time and maybe bring them to another place and time. After all I still have enough anger and emotion to fill the space. My voice has changed. I'm an experienced singer and performer now of over 30 years and the rawness of the album cannot be completely duplicated. How could it be? But if I worried too much about that reality I would never sing any songs from my back catalogue again.

To help me perform this record I will have an ensemble of ten or more musicians and, along with Antony, they will be the Mambas for the night. There will also be one or two of the original Mambas that played on the record making guest appearances.

The album has never been played in its entirety, even back then in the days of the 1983 Duke of Yorks shows. To those that were there at those shows (and I count myself amongst them) they will remain special and unbeatable memories.

I hope you will be there and evoke and exorcise some demons of your own. Alternatively you could stay at home with your record and memories of the past. I understand that too. Memories are precious for some and they want them to remain unbroken.

Love, Marc"

The Concert

The concert went ahead on 9 August 2012 to great acclaim from both,the fans' and the critics' sides. It was generally seen as a concert that recpatured the atmophere of the original album but also managed to put it into a 2012 context. That way it became a very authentic concert and memorable moment. The fears that Marc Almond would not be able to do justice to the original album's spirit seemed in vain. It was also a very special for Marc Almond himself,as he announced on his webpage:

14 August 2012

I would like to thank everyone who made it to the Torment And Toreros show at Antony's Meltdown. It was a very special night for myself and the audience. When I recorded Torment 30 years ago I would never have imagined performing it again in its entirety. Above all it seemed such an impossible task that it never seriously crossed my mind and on the couple of occasions it did I dismissed it as just too difficult. It was an album, though immensely proud of, I found hard to listen to. I very rarely listen to my back catalogue anyway unless to learn a particular song I might like to revive but Torment was always such a demanding listen with so much baggage and so many ghosts I never really wanted to go there.

When Antony asked me earlier this year if I would perform the whole album for his festival, although I said yes I had so many mixed feelings. First and foremost out of love and respect for Antony I didn't want to let him down. I also knew the high expectations from my audience who hold the album in such treasured esteem and would expect certain things from it; not to have cherished memories crushed. All that baggage and all those ghosts would come up again, I could only approach it with a view of getting rid of that baggage and kissing those ghosts goodbye. Also, a lot of the album was almost improvised and arranged on the spot, it came from excited, creative madness (and a lot of other things). Animal In You, for example, came from everyone playing everything at once and then Flood and I getting on the studio desk, muting instruments and pushing the faders up and down. How could it be re-produced? In short, it couldn't be, so to perform it, it would have to be brought into the present. String arrangements had to be more realised and re-arranged, parts more defined. It would have to be rinsed and freshened as it would be performed by experienced musicians and I myself cannot be a person from 30 years ago. That would make it too retro, a parody and, quite frankly, tragic. I had to satisfy myself creatively and keep my audience happy, nobody feeling short changed.

When a lot of negativity about me performing the record started to feed back to me I thought seriously about saying to Antony that I couldn't go there, I didn't need it in my life, but the negativity confirmed to me who I should involve and who I shouldn't and it was time, I thought, that I took back my record and exorcised all the demons around it. So I took up the baton and was so glad I did because it made me (and others) re-evaluate the record and be able to love it again as an important milestone in my musical career.

I realised it would take a lot of musicians on different instruments to recreate some of the record. I decided on a mix of some of the best musicians from the original, some of my regular musicians that I am very comfortable with and some new musicians to bring a freshness and new elements. Anne Stevenson and Gini Ball I'd worked with on numerous occasions since the Mambas but Martin McCarrick I hadn't seen for a long time, or Jim Thirwell. Martin, as well as being a great arranger, is a brilliant multi instrumentalist, I knew he would bring such an important element and I couldn't imagine doing A Million Manias with out Jim, it would have been seriously lacking. The track live had to have Jim’s wonderful madness. Thankfully they were both up for it and Neal Whitmore did a fantastic job being MD and bringing all the elements together while I was busy doing Poppea in Paris. I can’t overstress the hard work Neal did. Jim wrote an amazing string arrangement for A Million Manias and it was his idea to include Slut, a track I recorded with Jim/Foetus as Flesh Volcano and was originally an early Mambas track performed at only a couple of shows. Both Martins, McCarrick and Watkins, did arrangements with Anne and Gini, a lot of transcribing and reworking. Of the original musicians I wanted Lee Jenkinson who had played such a major part on guitar. Neal and Lee worked wonderfully together. Hugh Wilkinson was a find, from Tymps to drums to vibraphone and conducting. I even persuaded Carl Holt to play some Trumpet. All the musicians were superb and put so much hard work and preparation into it. One of the best things about doing the show was that it bought me back into contact with some brilliant musicians and people that I hadn't seen in decades.

I wanted Torment and Toreros to be as recognisable as the original album as possible but I took some artistic license. I wanted a choir to sing live some of parts that had originally been played on a Mellotron on the record and to strengthen some of the vocal responses. I wanted to do Martin Watkins arrangement of In My Room that I'd been performing more recently. I felt it had more of the right mood and sensitivity than the album version and didn't want to step back. Also I wanted to have the track Mamba as the intro which is what it was always meant to be except with a limit of 20 minutes to a side of vinyl there was just not room for a 12 minute track so it was put as an extra on the Torment 12'. The intro on the album was just a section taken out of The Animal In You and I always thought it a bit lazy.

I wanted to approach Torment as a piece of theatre, an opera if you like, and the whole piece to have more of a pagan reference, like a magical celebration and an exorcism of bad spirits, it had to be a catharsis.

Your reaction has been better than I could ever have hoped for, I hope it fulfilled all your wishes and exceeded your expectations.

Would I ever perform it again? The Meltdown performance was so special and well executed that it would be hard to top that with any show I may do in the future let alone Torment And Toreros. Everybody at Meltdown was fantastic and helped us in every way. Nothing was too much trouble. Meltdown gave us the budget that enabled it to be the fully realised show it was with no cut corners. I could never perform it in any lesser way again. Unfortunately my tours don’t generate the budget to fulfil the demands of a show like Torment, only occasionally arts festivals such as Meltdown. A few weeks ago I may have said never now I can only say never say never. If the budget was met and the occasion right…

All the shows at Meltdown were filmed by Antony on one or two camera's for archive only, not for release, so at least I have a record to see how it looked and to remind me how I did it but please don't begin demand for a public release it just wouldn't have the multi camera quality needed for a proper filming.

I have to thank Antony again for asking me to perform the record and for loving the record back then. Little Book Of Sorrows was written for us both and his duet of the song topped off an evening I shall never forget. As you get older as an artist you don’t expect the milestones to come, I'm lucky that with Ten Plagues, Poppea and now Torment I've had three within a year.

''Thank you Marc Almond 2012'