“When Alison first approached me, I was quite flabbergasted,” said Vince Clarke. “I’m pretty much married to Andy [in Erasure], and it’s like you and an old girlfriend going out on a date. But we met and we spoke, and it’s been 25 years between then and now. A lot has gone on — mostly children. We’re very different people, and we ended up kind of feeling anxious about the idea, but very excited.”

As Clarke tells it, their unforgettable sound was pretty much an accident.

“When Alison and myself were recording, we were both pretty naive about the whole process. The arrangements may have been unique, but it’s not so much that we planned to do that as that when you’re first in the studio, everything you do sounds great, because it’s all fresh to you.

“When I approached Alison, I already knew she could sing really well, and I think that my songwriting was probably getting a little more romantic as I was getting older. I wanted to work with someone who could express that feeling, but it never occurred to me that her singing was really soulful or ‘bluesy.’ She was just someone who could sing with emotion and bring out those emotions in the songs I was writing.”

“At the end of the day, you don’t listen to a record and go ‘that was great’ because of the sound; you would never remember the chorus when singing in the shower if it wasn’t for the song, and that’s my thing.”

via CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Image: gussifer