Peter Mark Almond (born 9 July 1957) is an English singer-songwriter and musician. He is the lead vocalist of the synth-pop duo Soft Cell. He is known for his distinctive soulful voice and androgynous image, and has had a diverse career as a solo artist.
Almond rose to prominence in the early 1980s with Soft Cell's hit "Tainted Love" (1981), which became a defining track of the new wave and synth-pop movement. After Soft Cell disbanded in 1984, Almond pursued a solo career, incorporating elements of pop, cabaret, and electronic music. His hits include a duet with Gene Pitney on the 1989 UK number one single "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart". and "Tears Run Rings".
Almond has released numerous albums and collaborated with artists such as Jools Holland, Nico, and Siouxsie Sioux, exploring diverse musical styles ranging from torch songs to Russian folk music. Almond's career spanning over four decades has enjoyed critical and commercial acclaim, and he has sold over 30 million records worldwide. He spent a month in a coma after a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 2004 and later became a patron of the brain trauma charity Headway.
Almond was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to arts and culture.
Almond was born in Southport, Sefton, the son of a Norwegian mother, Sandra Mary Diesen and a Scottish father, Peter John Almond, a Second Lieutenant in the King's Liverpool Regiment. He was brought up at his grandparents' house in Birkdale with his younger sister, and as a child suffered from bronchitis and asthma. When he was four, they left their grandparents' house and moved to Starbeck, Harrogate. Two years later they returned to Southport, and then moved to Horsforth, Yorkshire. There, he attended Horsforth Featherbank Infant School.
At the age of 11, Almond attended Aireborough Grammar School near Leeds. He found solace in music, listening to radio pioneer John Peel. The first albums he purchased were the soundtrack of the stage musical Hair and Benefit by Jethro Tull, and the first singles were "Green Manalishi" by Fleetwood Mac and "Witch's Promise" by Jethro Tull. He became a great fan of Marc Bolan and David Bowie, and got a part-time job as a stable boy to fund his music listening. After his parents' divorce in 1972, he moved with his mother back to Southport where he attended King George V School. He gained two O-Levels in Art and English and was accepted onto a General Art and Design course at Southport College, specialising in Performance Art.
Almond applied to Leeds Polytechnic, where he was interviewed by Jeff Nuttall, also a performance artist, who accepted him on the strength of his performing skills. During his time at art college, he did a series of performance theatre pieces: Zazou, Glamour in Squalor, Twilights and Lowlifes, as well as Andy Warhol inspired mini-movies. Zazou was reviewed by The Yorkshire Evening Post and described as "one of the most nihilistic depressing pieces that I have ever had the misfortune to see", prompting Almond to later refer to it as a "success" in his autobiography. He left art college with a 2:1 honours degree. He later credited writer and artist Molly Parkin with discovering him. It was at Leeds Polytechnic that Almond met David Ball, a fellow student; they formed Soft Cell in 1977.
As a child, Almond listened to his parents' record collection, which included his mother's "Let's Dance" by Chris Montez and "The Twist" by Chubby Checker, as well as his father's collection of jazz, including Dave Brubeck and Eartha Kitt. As an adolescent, Almond listened to Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg. He listened at first to progressive music, blues, and rock, and bands such as Free, Jethro Tull, Van der Graaf Generator, the Who, and the Doors. He bought the first ever issue of Sounds because it contained a free poster of Jimmy Page. Almond became a fan of Bolan after hearing him on The John Peel Show, buying the T. Rex single "Ride a White Swan". From then on, Almond "followed everything Marc Bolan did" and it was his obsession with Bolan that prompted Almond to adopt the "Marc" spelling of his name. He discovered the songs of Jacques Brel through Bowie as well as Alex Harvey and Dusty Springfield. Brel became a major influence.
Almond and Dave Ball formed the synthesiser-based duo Soft Cell and signed to the Some Bizzare label. Their hits included "Tainted Love" (UK No. 1), "Bedsitter" (UK No. 4), "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" (UK No. 3), "Torch" (UK No. 2), "What!" (UK No. 3), "Soul Inside" (UK No. 16), and the club hit "Memorabilia". Soft Cell's first release was an independent record (funded by Dave Ball's mother) entitled Mutant Moments via Red Rhino Records in 1980.
"Mutant Moments" came to the attention of music entrepreneur Stevo Pearce, who at the time was compiling a "futurist" chart for the music papers Record Mirror and Sounds which featured young, upcoming and experimental bands of the new wave of electronic sound. He signed the duo to his Some Bizzare label and they enjoyed a string of nine Top 40 hit singles and four Top 20 albums in the UK between 1981 and 1984. They made three records in New York with producer Mike Thorne: their debut Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (1981), its remix album Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing (1982) and the follow-up The Art of Falling Apart (1983). Almond became involved with the New York Underground Art Scene at this time with writer/DJ Anita Sarko, which led him to meet artists including Andy Warhol and perform at a number of Art events.
"Tainted Love", a cover of a Gloria Jones Northern Soul classic, was number one in the UK and in many countries over the world, and was in the Guinness Book of Records for a while as the record that spent the longest time in the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US. It also won the best-single award of 1981 at the first Brit Awards. Soft Cell brought an otherwise obscure Northern Soul classic to mass public attention and their version of the song was, as at 2012, the UK's 59th best-selling single of all time, selling over one million copies in the UK.
Almond also became friends with JG Thirlwell and, in 1983, as Clint Ruin, Thirlwell performed with Soft Cell on the Channel 4 show The Switch. Marc travelled to New York with Thirlwell and Nick Cave, where they became part of the Immaculate Consumptive with Lydia Lunch. Almond and Thirlwell continued to work together, ultimately culminating in the Flesh Volcano single in 1987.
In 1982, Almond formed Marc and the Mambas as an offshoot project from Soft Cell. Marc and the Mambas was a loose experimental collective that set the template for the artist that Almond would become. The Mambas at various times included Matt Johnson, Steve James Sherlock, Lee Jenkinson, Peter Ashworth, Jim Thirlwell and Annie Hogan, with whom Almond worked later in his solo career. Under the Mambas moniker, Almond recorded two albums, Untitled (1982) and the double-album Torment and Toreros (1983). He disbanded the collective when it started to feel too much like a regular band.
Soft Cell disbanded in 1984 just before the release of their fourth album, This Last Night in Sodom, but the duo briefly reunited in 2001 and again in 2018.
Marc Almond had a hit early 1985 with "I Feel Love, Johnny Remember Me" with Bronski Beat on the gay-themed album The Age of Consent, released in 1984.
Almond's first proper solo album was Vermin in Ermine, released in 1984. Produced by Mike Hedges, it featured musicians from the Mambas outfit, Annie Hogan, Martin McCarrick and Billy McGee. This ensemble, known as The Willing Sinners, worked alongside Almond for the subsequent albums Stories of Johnny (1985) from which the title track became a minor hit, and Mother Fist and Her Five Daughters (1987), also produced by Mike Hedges. The latter album was highly acclaimed in reviews, with Ned Raggett writing that the 'Mother Fist' album "embraces classic European cabaret to wonderful effect, more so than any American or English rock album since Bowie's Aladdin Sane or Lou Reed's Berlin."