Alison Moyet on her new disc, musical theater and her reunion

By Gregg Shapiro
PGN Contributor
© 2008 Gregg Shapiro and Philadelphia Gay News

The first thing most people think of when you mention the name Alison Moyet is the voice. Booming, yet beautiful. Powerful and persuasive, yet sensuous and soothing.

Moyet, 47, first surfaced on our radar as half of the groundbreaking ’80s electro duo Yaz, along with former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke. And, in spite of only releasing two full-length albums (“Upstairs At Eric’s” and “You and Me Both”), Yaz went on to have an indelible impact on the scene.

Released more than 25 years ago, the albums contained dance songs such as “Don’t Go,” “Situation,” “State Farm” and “Walk Away From Love,” as well as mid-tempo numbers “Nobody’s Diary” and the exquisite “Only You,” which have become staples in the contemporary pop songbook.

Soon after the dissolution of Yaz, Clarke went on to form Erasure with out vocalist Andy Bell and Moyet launched her solo career. Since 1984, she has released seven albums, with the latest being “The Turn” (Decca/W14). I spoke with Moyet about her newest disc, as well as the upcoming Yaz reunion tour of the U.S., hitting New York City and Washington, D.C., in mid-July.

PGN: I interviewed you a few years ago around the “Hometime” release in the States and I remember you talked about having played Mama Morton in a production of “Chicago.” Does having done musical theater have anything to do with the theatricality of songs such as “The Man in the Wings,” “World Without End” and “Home,” on your new album “The Turn?”
AM: I don’t think “Chicago” informed them in any way other than that in musical theater there is greater precision required in the delivery, clearer enunciation. The lyrics are integral to these songs and I wanted them to be heard. After “Chicago,” I was in a play called “Smaller” for which I needed to write three songs. These songs had to describe my character by dint of the language I used. “World Without End” was the funeral song, written for a devout mother at a time when a child wants, above all things, to believe their mother’s faith was not misplaced. “Smaller” was certainly a play with song as opposed to a musical. As such, the songs were written in the same way I would write an album track, only the lyrical voice was not entirely mine. It had to set out the stall for the character. “Home” opened the piece. I decided to write a song that ended something as opposed to its being a beginning. My character, Cath, is pissed and tired and is imploding. She wants the punters in her club to fuck off home. The song was influenced by the writings of Jacques Brel and the recording includes a performance by 80-year-old accordion supremo Marcel Azzola, he who performed on Brel’s great recordings and notably “Vesoul,” which is my all-time favorite. “Man in the Wings” was influenced by my performing in this play. As I drove home one day, the realization came to me that when I sang a particularly moving song, it was on one person close by me that I would concentrate my attention. It would be a different person each time and someone unknown to me; someone to whom I would never speak. Someone with whom I would never be intimate and yet for the duration of the song, I liked to believe there was a place we were both meeting and connecting and were being understood.

PGN: There was something recently on the television news about the upcoming “Brokeback Mountain” musical. Is there a movie you dream of adapting as a stage musical?
AM: I don’t think there is. I am not a person with a wealth of ambition. I do not overestimate my powers of attention or my ability to care for long enough to be the protagonist. Projects that require that much of me do not appeal. I would love to act more, to learn. I do not dream of chiefdom. [Laughs.] I like to be utilized. I am a performer. I am a lyricist. I like to see the end in sight.

PGN: There are literary references on “The Turn” — for instance, “Fire” was “inspired by ‘His Dark Materials’ by Phillip Pulman” [author of “The Golden Compass”], and even makes mention of the “dust” that features prominently in the series, and “Home” contains a quote from a poem by Phillip Larkin. Has literature always been a source of inspiration for you in your songwriting?
AM: I don’t know that it has been, although I don’t doubt that I have absorbed many things that I have been unaware of. As a child, I was a big reader but I became bored by required adult literature — purple prose and endless pages of describing. I like to see rooms of my own choosing. I consumed nursery rhymes way past school. I remember as a child wondering what the big deal was about the man landing on the moon when everyone knew that there was an old lady tossed up in a basket 17 times as high. [Laughs.] Latterly reading has returned to me. Clive Barker’s “Weaveworld” opened me up again and I love Pulman’s “His Dark Materials.” The Larkin quote was a gift to Carmel Morgan. She is a huge fan of his. She wrote the play “Smaller.” It told the story of a carer. It was her story in many ways. I wrote “World Without End” for her mother.

PGN: Do you have literary aspirations in terms of writing a book?
AM: Perhaps. I have been told that I can write but I have no story yet to tell.

PGN: Does the title of the disc “The Turn” come from the song “The Sharpest Corner (Hollow),” which contains a line about “the sharpest corner ever turned?”
AM: “A turn” is a name given to low-end variety performers in the north of England. It is the nickname I use with my fan base on my Web site. It reminds me that after all we are each of us less important than a song and a quickstep. We performers are a bubbling soup and we rise and fall in the stew. [Laughs.] A “turn” is also a phrase used for a stage of a magic trick where something ordinary becomes for a moment extraordinary. That resonates with the way I see myself at times.

PGN: A few of the songs, including the retro soul of “A Guy Like You” and the acoustic funk of “It’s Not the Thing, Henry,” stretch the framework of the disc a bit. Was including that kind of variety something you did for your fans, for yourself or both?
AM: I do not think in themes. My tastes are exceedingly eclectic. I think sometimes people assume that a record describes your career trajectory. For me it merely describes the day.

PGN: “It’s Not the Thing, Henry” begs the question, who is Henry?
AM: Henry is any man — or woman, come to that — that believes we are all motivated by the same things: by money, or objects, or by acquiring. He is he that assumes that the purse determines all choosing. This song is about the beggar choosing and the beggar says no ... stick it. [Laughs.]

PGN: Are you going to have a chance to perform any of the songs from the new album, or from any of your solo discs for that matter, while you are on tour with Vince Clarke in the reunited Yaz?
AM: I had the chance but rejected it. Vince was up for putting in some of my solo stuff. I have been unable to sing Yaz songs for such an age because they needed us both present to be relevant. I did not want it to be some nostalgia karaoke. We are a band reuniting for the briefest of outings. I want it to matter for its own sake.

PGN: How did the idea of a reunion tour come about?
AM: I hated the fact that we never got to perform the second album [“You and Me Both”] live. We had only done 24 shows together previously and only three of those were in the U.S. Playing live is my bag. I prefer it to recording. I e-mailed Vince about a year ago asking him if he was up for it. He loved the idea but said no, as he worried it would offend Andy Bell. I understood completely. When I was touring on my own in January, he contacted me through Daniel Miller of [record label] Mute and said that Andy had requested a two-year break from Erasure and, on hearing about the Yaz suggestion, told Vince he absolutely should do it. So we were on.

PGN: Had you and Vince remained in contact over the years?
AM: Not at all. I have seen him maybe three or four times in 25 years and neither of us do phones.

PGN: Did you ever imagine that Yaz songs such as “Situation,” “Don’t Go” and “Nobody’s Diary,” to name a few, would have the impact and long-lasting appeal that they do when you were creating and recording them?
AM: No. I wasn’t even sure they would be released. It’s odd listening to your records next to other people’s. They always sound so much smaller — you can hear the making of them.

PGN: As part of Erasure, Clarke has established quite a following in the LGBT community. Is such a following something of which you have been keenly aware in your own career?
AM: Electronica attracts a lot of straight men. I think you will find my audience could challenge Erasure for its LGBT supremacy any day! Percentage-wise at least. [Laughs.]