Chords for Marc Almond on BBC Breakfast – 3 March 2015

[F] _ _ _ Five years ago, Mark Coleman declared his music writing days were over.
Now the soft sell singer's back with a new album after a series of emails with what appeared to be a mysterious music producer,
inspired him to get back into the studio.
Apparently, and we'll find out in a moment, the two didn't even meet or speak on the phone before the album was completed,
but Mark says the result is one of the most enjoyable records he has ever made.
Before we chat, [D#] let's have a reminder of some of his work.
Painted love you've [Cm] given, I give you all a boy could [C] give you.
Take my tears and that love, nearly [G] [D#] all painted [B] love.
[C#] See her eyes, [B] they are bright tonight.
[C#] See the [B] stars coming out [C#] tonight.
See the moon [B] looking down tonight.
[C#] See how they [B] light your way [Fm] tonight.
_ [Gm] _ [Cm] Days of pearly spencers, _
_ _ [Fm] _ the [Gm] _ [Cm] race is almost [F#m] right.
Believe [E] my way, _ _
[A] _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [B] [E] all worth the _ [D] _ day.
[E] Just yesterday.
And here you are with an album which you said you were never going to write.
Well, after the last album, Variety, which was five years ago, I really felt the songwriting muse had left me.
As you get older, you think every album is going to be the last album you do,
because you never know who is going to pay for you to do another album in this music business.
I got a series of songs from a producer, Chris Braid from Los Angeles, a songwriter-producer,
who sent me some fantastic tunes.
I suddenly felt the muse coming back and the inspiration happening again.
And this was the most enjoyable album I've made, the easiest album I've made.
We just sent files over to each other from Los Angeles to England.
He would finish off the music at the track over there in his studio in Los Angeles.
And hence the album, The Velvet Trail.
It's a return to a pop style as well, which I hadn't done for the past few projects I'd done.
There are references to lots of parts of my musical career, Soft Cell, Mock and the Mambas, big ballads of course.
It's quite mellow.
_ I thought it was about time I made a pop record again.
I'd been working on opera projects and theatre projects, and I really missed doing pop music.
Chris sent me this music, and some of it is quite Soft Cell inspired, because he was a fan of my music.
[D#] It was just really nice to do songs with catchy choruses, good beats, hooks.
Shall we hear one of those catchy choruses?
Yeah, it's a song called Scar, I think.
Well done.
[C] When you told me [E] how you would stay [Am] around forever
[Dm] You were [C] already gone
[E] Didn't really [Am] want to be found
[Dm] Never [C] here for long
[E] You're already [Am] in the dark [Dm] Deep [C] underground
Sharpening [E] your dagger
[Am] I'll [Dm] never [F] love the same
Or never [Em] let go
My heart still [Am] bears the scar
I don't know [F] who you are
But here I am again
Back for another [C] fall
Reopen [Am] tender wounds
You never [F] really loved me at all
[C] _ [E] Do you not miss, I mean that looks fantastic, but isn't there something missing if you are not in the same room as the producer?
When you go into the recording booth, do you say, give a bit more welly love, or whatever producers say?
I do like the old school way of working in the studio.
I had a great experience a year ago, I was working with Tony Visconti on doing some songs.
[G#] He's very old school.
It's a very new, modern way of making a record.
It was really nice because I didn't have all that kind of worry.
When I make an album, it's always difficult.
I can never make decisions.
I'm working in the studio, producing and things.
It was nice to have that worry taken away from me.
I sent all the vocals over to Los Angeles, about 7 or 8 tracks of vocals.
He just mixed the track magically in his studio and sent them back to me.
It was just so unstressful, totally unstressful.
A great modern way to make a record, I think.
You did eventually meet him?
I did eventually meet him, and I didn't realise I actually knew him.
He'd actually done vocals on a Soft Cell album.
I met him for afternoon tea, because we thought, let's not speak during the record, because it will spoil the magic.
We met for afternoon tea, and thankfully we got on like a house on fire.
It's great when you meet someone you have that chemistry with.
He said, I know you.
I said, yeah, I did the backing vocals on Cruelty Without Beauty, the Soft Cell album.
I thought I'd passed you in the corridor.
It was a full circle thing that happened.
You talk about the state of the music industry and how it's harder these days to get an album made.
But in a sense, isn't it easier?
You can just do it on your laptop.
There's kids doing it on their laptop in their bedroom these days, don't they?
Well, they do.
For an artist like me, I like to make albums of a certain production level.
The day I can't do that is the day I don't make records anymore.
I like to have a good production, a certain standard I like to do.
That's just not the kind of music that I make.
For me, I'm probably old-fashioned in that way, but old-school in that way.
One of my favourites is called Winter Sun.
It's a very melancholic song, I think.
On this album, there are some melancholic moments, but it's very joyful as well.
It's a very uplifting track.
You can be _ melancholic and retrospective at the same time,
but celebrating where you are in life.
That's what this album does.
It's a pathway through my life, celebrating certain moments,
as the music celebrates some of the best of the music that I've made.
If this was the album that you were never going to write,
is there another album that you're never going to write after this one?
I'll just take every album as it comes now.
If I'm lucky to make another record,
and I'm able to make it to the standard that I like to make records,
then I consider that to be a really lucky thing.
But you never know, the music business_
What I like about my life now is that all sorts of challenges come along.
Different challenges.
You're going to take it on tour, and some of the money doesn't go through a charity
that's particularly important to you.
Headway, which improves people's lives.
A charity which improves people's lives who suffer from brain injuries, head injuries.
I was lucky, because it happened to me when I had a bike accident.
I've recovered pretty well from that.
But a lot of other people, it's all an individual thing.
People have individual things and problems,
and some people don't always recover as well, or quickly, as they would like to.
So Headway is a good charity, I think.
We wish you all the very best with that.
Thank you very much.
I'm on tour all over the country now,
so look at my website and you'll find [D#] all the dates for the Velvet Trail tour.
I've got to get that in. He's brilliant.
He tells us to play the tape, everything.
Mark's new album is called The Velvet Trail.
It's not tape, of course.
Thank you very much.
That's all from Breakfast this morning.
Tomorrow we'll be with entrepreneur and author Michel Moune,
and we'll be on the set of Poldark.
Absolutely.
See you then.
Have a great day.
Goodbye.
Bye-bye.
_ _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _