Marc Almond has described the final concerts he performed with his late Soft Cell bandmate Dave Ball as “quite depressing to do.”
Ball died in October 2025 at the age of 66 after becoming “very despondent” during the final months of his life.
Reflecting on that challenging time in an interview with The Quietus, Marc said: “Dave was in very bad shape. The worst I’d ever seen him. They [the last gigs] were quite depressing to do.”
Marc’s longtime collaborator Philip Larsen sometimes replaced Dave when he was not well enough to appear, with the vocalist explaining: “When he wasn’t there, it felt like we could just celebrate the music.”
Although Marc found the experience difficult, he stressed that the closing years of Dave’s life were focused on “making it Dave’s thing” and “keeping him creative, keeping him well, keeping him going.”
Marc revealed that the appreciation between them went both ways, saying: “I always loved the music he gave me, and he always said he loved what I gave him back. Even though I know he probably rolled his eyes a few times, perhaps he thought things were a bit too gay.”
“He was always very gracious, saying ‘that’s great, so good, the best thing you’ve done’. He always believed 100 per cent in my ideas.”
That shared admiration also helped the pair maintain a strong working partnership, as they “never fell out once” across nearly five decades together.
Marc explained that Soft Cell only separated in 1984 because their ambitions had moved in different directions. He wanted to continue performing on tour, while Dave preferred concentrating on studio projects.
He recalled: “We never saw a lot of each other. We were never close friends. We had a kind of… affectionate and respectful working relationship. When we got together, we liked the same things, we laughed about the same things, but we never had a serious conversation about anything. We never knew how each other felt about anything.”
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