Marc Almond biography
Peter Mark Sinclair "Marc" Almond (; born 9 July 1957, Southport) is an English singer-songwriter and musician. Almond first began performing and recording in the synthpop/New Wave duo Soft Cell. He has sold over 30 million records worldwide.
Childhood and early life
Almond was born in 1957 in Southport (then Lancashire, now part of Merseyside), the son of Sandra Mary Dieson and Peter John Sinclair Almond, a Second Lieutenant in the King's Liverpool Regiment. He was brought up at his grandparents' house in Birkdale with his younger sister, Julia, and as a child suffered from bronchitis and asthma. When he was four, they left their grandparents' house and moved to Starbeck on the edge of Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Two years later they returned to Southport, and then moved to Horsforth (near Leeds).
At age 11 he attended Aireborough Grammar School near Leeds. Almond found solace in music, listening to British radio pioneer John Peel. The first album he purchased was the soundtrack of the stage musical Hair and the first single "Green Manalishi" by Fleetwood Mac. He later became a great fan of Marc Bolan and David Bowie and got a part time job as a stable boy to fund his musical tastes.
After his parents' divorce in 1972 he moved with his mother back to his home town of Southport. 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. He 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 minimovies. The Yorkshire Evening Post labeled one of his performances "depressingly nihilistic". He followed bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees. He left Art College with a 2:1 honours degree. Almond 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 1979.
Early musical influences
As a child, Almond listened to his parent's record collection, which included his mother's "Let's Dance" by Chris Montez and "The Twist" by Chubby Checker, also 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, Blues and Rock Music, Free, Jethro Tull, Van der Graaf Generator, The Who, and The Doors, and bought the first ever issue of Sounds, because it contained a free poster of Jimmy Page. He became a great fan of Marc Bolan after hearing him on the John Peel Show, buying the T. Rex single "Ride a White Swan", from then on he "followed everything Marc Bolan did," and it was his obsession with Bolan that prompted Almond to adopt the 'Marc' spelling. He discovered the songs of Jacques Brel through Bowie as well as Alex Harvey and Dusty Springfield. Brel became a major influence.
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