Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret

In 1898, William Ramsay and his assistant Morris Travers, convinced that argon and helium belonged to an unknown larger group in the periodic table, managed to isolate a previously unknown element by diffusing argon, which they named krypton. This was not quite what they had expected to find however, so they tried again, believing there was more to discover. This time, the lighter and more volatile gas they collected in a vacuum tube gave off what Travers described as a “blaze of crimson light.” Its dramatic appearance enough to tell that they had succeeded before they even tested it. Ramsay’s thirteen year old son suggested they call the discovery Novum, Latin for ‘new,’ and he agreed, but to be consistent with the other elements in the group that would later be known as the ‘noble gases,’ used the Greek equivalent, Neon.

Those vacuum tubes, known as Geissler tubes, had become something of a novelty in the late 19th century, where different gasses would glow with a bright light in contact with electricity. Some, like neon, in an intense and distinctive colour. French inventor (and future Nazi collaborator) Georges Claude experimented with these tubes and developed a lighting system which he publicly demonstrated for the first time in 1910, at the Paris Motor Show. He then had the idea to bend the glass tubes to form letters and in 1912 installed the first neon sign, the word ‘BARBIER’ in large red letters, in the window of a barber’s shop on the Boulevard de Montmartre.

Neon signs first appeared in London in 1923, when the displays at Piccadilly Circus went fully electric, until then they had been a mixture of billboards and electric bulbs. They reached the United States the same year, and by the end of the 1930s were a defining characteristic of American cities at night. London went dark during the second World War, and over the next couple of decades neon began to appear a bit dated and unfashionable, increasingly associated with the less salubrious aspects of nightlife, with gambling and vice, and the familiar backdrop to hardboiled film noir. In London, neon’s distinctive ‘crimson light’ would become known as ‘Soho red.’

Soho, it’s said, got its name from a hunting call. Once a rural estate outside the city walls of medieval London owned by the crown, it was used by the gentry for hare hunting and, on permitted days, by common people for livestock grazing and hanging out laundry. Building was forbidden, although a few houses sprung up anyway, until after the outbreak of plague in 1665 and the great fire of London in 1666, when the wealthy began relocating to less densely populated areas. Charles II realised he couldn’t do much to stop the building, so decided to make some money from it instead. Developers soon took advantage and from the fields of Soho a fashionable new neighbourhood quickly emerged, attracting in particular the protestant Huguenots who had fled catholic France and the Dragonnades of Louis XIV. Many of them were jewellers, tailors and tapestry weavers, and the area gained a reputation for its artisanship and its cosmopolitan atmosphere, attracting artists, musicians and freethinkers. The narrow streets and unpaved roads meant that the nobility didn’t stay too long in the area however, and by the time of the French revolution and the rise of Napoleon at the end of the 18th century, when many more French people were arriving in Soho, the wealthy had moved on to nearby Mayfair.

In the 19th century, many of the grand buildings were divided up into lodging houses and Soho became one of the most densely populated areas in London. Alongside the French, and working class Londoners, was a sizable Italian community, as well as other Europeans, and they were soon joined by Irish people escaping the Great Famine of the 1840s and Jewish people fleeing persecution in eastern Europe and the pogroms of imperial Russia a few years later. Arriving around the same time was the concept of the bohemian, a lifestyle particularly identified with Montmartre in Paris and, with its permissive attitudes and large French population, Soho came to be seen as its London equivalent. As the 19th century progressed, large thoroughfares were created to open up the city, cutting through the tangled slums and displacing those that lived there. Soho became a clearly defined area in between them, constrained by the grand shopping boulevards of Regent Street to the west and Oxford Street to the north, plus the newly built theatres of Shaftsbury Avenue to the south and Charing Cross Road to the east.

By the 1890s Soho was notorious as a hotbed of political exiles, radicals and undesirables, where an increasing population of workers crowded into any residential buildings that weren’t converted into workshops and warehouses, to serve the entertainment and retail industries they were tucked in behind. There were also public concerns that alongside the restaurants, theatres, music halls and pubs in the area were a growing number of houses of ‘ill repute,’ that while there had always been courtesans and prostitutes, extreme poverty was now driving increasing numbers of women into a life of vice. However, Soho’s position at the heart of London’s night time economy, where theatre, cabaret, dancing, drinking and gambling intertwined, led to a blurring of social and legal boundaries while local police were largely in the pockets of organised crime, and any outcry in the press did little more than cement its reputation.

Social attitudes began to change in the 20th century, women gained more autonomy and independence, campaigning for equal voting rights and filling gaps in the labour force as men served at the front during the first World War. At the same time Soho was where servicemen on leave went to find entertainment and sexual favours, not only from women, and where men and women could casually socialise.

In 1931, conservative social campaigner and philanthropist Laura Henderson opened a theatre on Great Windmill Street, in an effort to boost morale in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent economic depression. It struggled to establish itself until manager Vivian Van Damm repurposed the Windmill as a variety theatre, running one continuous programme of comics, singers, dancers and other performers, which they named Revudeville. To keep a step ahead of other similar theatre revues, they managed to obtain permission from the Lord Chamberlain to incorporate nude female performers, but with the stipulation that the performers were not allowed to move and that the girls involved must have a “normal figure,” the logic being that they would then resemble classical naked statues, which were not considered obscene. So the shows incorporated elaborate tableaux vivants of women usually aged 18 or 19, where the nude performers were presented on stage in motionless poses. The theatre remained open throughout the second World War and the Blitz, proudly advertising the fact as a contribution to the war effort.

The Windmill Theatre had initially been allowed special dispensation because of the respectability of its owner and its discreet location, tucked away on a side street, and while it stuck to its ‘tasteful’ format after the war, local competitors became increasingly daring. Nightclubs incorporated American style striptease and burlesque, alongside the existing gambling dens and brothels, and the area became a focal point for hedonism and escape from postwar austerity. Consolidating Soho’s reputation for sleaziness, but also for tolerance of the rebellious and the unconventional, particularly when it came to sexual identity.

A new generation of young bohemians were drawn to the area. Artists and writers from varying social backgrounds congregated in drinking clubs like the Colony Room, which stayed open beyond licenced hours by operating as private members clubs, with the most valuable membership criteria being how ‘interesting’ a person was. The French and Italian style coffee shops installed jukeboxes and put on live music, attracting teenage beatniks, rockers and ravers to what would become the epicentre of British youth culture in the 1950s and 60s. Soho’s narrow streets and urban village feel brought all of these disparate social scenes into close proximity, fostering a sense of permissiveness and possibility.

At the end of the second World War, Geoffrey Anthony Quinn began working as a stage clairvoyant, taking the name Paul Raymond, and over the next few years expanded his show into a vaudeville revue incorporating showgirls and nude tableaux much like the Windmill Theatre. Recognising that the girls were the most popular aspect of the show, he stopped performing himself to focus on the staging and promotion, and in 1958 took over a theatre space in Soho called the Doric Ballroom, on Walker’s Court, which he reopened as the Raymond Revuebar. Like the Colony Room, it was able to evade licencing and regulations by operating as a private members club, which meant it could show full frontal nudity without the performers being required to be motionless. The club was immediately successful, and Raymond was soon able to buy the theatre building. He then expanded his business to take over more theatres, including the Windmill, and into publishing adult magazines, using the proceeds to buy up more and more property, eventually owning around 400 properties in Soho alone, becoming Britain’s richest man and nicknamed the ‘King of Soho.’

In 1952, Richard Bracey, a former miner who had moved to London from Wales to train as an electrician, set up his own business called Electro Signs, having begun to specialise in neon lighting. He soon found there was a huge demand for his services from the various businesses that made up Soho’s night time economy and Paul Raymond would become one of his most valuable customers. Walker’s Court was a narrow alleyway, but the side of Raymond’s newly acquired theatre building overlooked the busy intersection of Brewer Street and Rupert Street, where Bracey was engaged to create what would be his largest and most ambitious work to date. When the theatre opened the whole façade was a blaze of neon, flashing in perpetual motion: ‘RAYMOND REVUEBAR’ was proclaimed across the top of the building, while beneath it a neon showgirl in neon ostrich feathers kicked her leg as if dancing the can-can, while more multicoloured neon flashed out ‘Paul Raymond’s fabulous international striptease spectacular’ and ‘Personal appearances of the world’s greatest names in striptease.’ A neon arrow directed the eye to yet more neon, on the side of the walkway connecting the entrance to the auditorium. ‘RAYMOND REVUEBAR’ it insisted, with another helpful arrow pointing to the entrance itself.

Richard’s son Chris joined the business in the 1970s after leaving art school, and by the end of the decade the Braceys had designed and installed most of the neon signs in Soho, as Chris Bracey’s eye-catching designs and slogans came to dominate the night time cityscape: ‘Girls Girls Girls,’ ‘Dreaming Lips,’ ‘Pink Pussycat,’ ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.’

London's first sex cinema, the Compton Cinema Club, opened in Soho in 1960, also as a private members club to avoid legal restrictions, and the 1960s and 70s would see a proliferation of private clubs, adult cinemas, strip shows, peep shows and sex shops. Creativity and diversity had become an important element in Soho’s sex trade after the Sexual Offences Act of 1956 made it illegal to operate a brothel and the Street Offences Act of 1959 criminalised solicitation. Instead of standing on the street, sex workers were advertised via phone numbers in the classified sections of magazines and newspapers, or on calling cards left in phone boxes and shops. Premises would announce themselves as saunas or massage parlours, or, since a brothel is defined as being used by more than one sex worker, the law could be evaded by a ‘Soho walk-up:’ an upper floor flat with a single occupant listed as a ‘model,’ where a potential client could just walk up the stairs and ring the doorbell to see if they were available.

The Street Offences Act had been the result of the findings of a committee led by Sir John Wolfenden, which was set up to look at the law surrounding two issues, one being prostitution, the other being homosexual acts between men, where ‘sodomy’ and ‘gross indecency’ were both criminal offences. When the Wolfenden Report was published in 1957, the unexpected conclusion on the second issue was that homosexual acts between consenting men over the age of 21 in private should not be illegal. However, decriminalisation did not become law until ten years later, frustration at its slow progress and limited scope a motivating factor behind the Gay Liberation movement, which gained momentum at the end of the 60s and into the 70s.

The economic downturn of the 1970s helped to foment some of the unrest that invigorated social and cultural movements, it also helped Paul Raymond to buy up properties at low prices as their owners struggled financially or went out of business. Soho’s reputation for bohemianism and permissiveness, combined with landlords like Raymond’s relaxed attitudes to how their properties were used, as well as the relatively cheap rents in ‘undesirable’ areas, meant that Soho was a focal point for social activism, particularly around sexuality, and for transgressive cultural movements like punk as it emerged in the second half of the decade. In 1977, the year that punk expanded out of London and took hold of the rest of the country, corruption trials saw the convictions of several Metropolitan Police officers connected to organised crime in Soho, including commanding officers in charge of the Obscene Publications Squad, Serious Crime Squad, and the Flying Squad. The publicity reinforced Soho’s reputation for sleaze and only served to embolden local gangsters, discouraging businesses outside of the sex trade and driving property prices down even further.

That same year, Dave Ball arrived to enrol in the art department at Leeds Polytechnic and approached the first person he saw that looked like an art student to get directions. Dressed in gold lamé trousers and a leopard print shirt, that student turned out to be Marc Almond, now entering his second year there. Almond was making super 8 films and staging performances, often involving fellow students and friends like Huw Feather, who would travel up from Nottingham where he was studying theatre design, and before long he had Ball contributing some of the electronic music he’d been working on in the college’s sound studio. As their collaboration evolved, the music developed into individual songs combining Ball’s music and Almond’s lyrics, and by the end of 1979 the duo were making their live debut as a band, at the art department’s Christmas party.

They named themselves Soft Cell, inspired by a fascination with advertising techniques, particularly the unconscious influences and subliminal messaging theorised by people like Vance Packard and Wilson Bryan Key, and the dark side of everyday consumerism would be a recurring theme. Like his performances, Almond’s lyrics were often transgressive, exploring seediness, sexuality, and the sinister, particularly as it simmered under the surface of the seemingly banal and suburban. While musically they resembled some of the rawer electronic acts emerging at that time, like Suicide, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and early Human League. In common with many of those groups, their show also incorporated projected films and slides, operated by fellow student Steve Griffiths, who had assisted in some of Almond’s performances and became a member of the band for a while. The projected images reflecting the musical and lyrical content: industrial landscapes, shop mannequins, smashed up radios, the neon lights of Soho. Accompanying the band on stage was a large reel to reel tape machine playing much of the backing track, and in front of Dave Ball’s keyboard was a large pink and blue ‘Soft Cell’ neon sign in a perspex box, that Ball had got made back home in Blackpool.

In 1980 they self-released four of the songs recorded in the art college recording studio as an EP, Mutant Moments, and managed to get a slot near the bottom of the bill at the Futurama music festival in Leeds where they hoped to launch it. Unfortunately, the finished records weren’t ready in time, but when Ball met BBC radio DJ John Peel at the festival, he gave him his advance test pressing and Peel subsequently played ‘Metro MRX’ on his show, gaining the band some wider attention.

When the EP did finally get released, one person who got a copy was Stephen Pearce, better known as Stevo. He had been DJing in London playing some of the new electronic and industrial music emerging at the end of the 1970s and compiling a weekly ‘futurist’ music chart for Sounds magazine, now he was planning to start his own record label, Some Bizzare, beginning with an album showcasing new artists which would include a song by Soft Cell, ‘The Girl With The Patent Leather Face.’ After meeting Almond and Ball, Stevo also convinced them he should become their manager, Some Bizzare had a distribution deal with a major label, Phonogram, and one of his first achievements as the band’s manager was an agreement for Phonogram to release a single, with an option to put out another one if it did well enough.

Earlier in the year, Soft Cell had played a gig in Essex with a band called Composition of Sound, they too had a track on the Some Bizzare album under their new name, Depeche Mode. Compared to Depeche Mode’s increasing professionalism and discipline, Almond and Ball felt their own image and live performances were a bit sloppy, so they now set out to refine them and develop their sound. Before moving to Leeds, Ball had been a regular at Blackpool’s northern soul clubs, and had been a mobile DJ for a while on a set-up he’d built himself, and as Soft Cell were getting started Almond was DJing at the Warehouse in Leeds, at a club night inspired by the Blitz club in London, plus much of the support they were getting was from DJs playing their songs in clubs. So it was natural that, as they refined their stage shows, they also began to focus on making people dance. When they went back into the studio they chose to work with Daniel Miller, who was now working with Depeche Mode having signed them to his label, Mute, and the track they focussed on for the single was the dancefloor friendly ‘Memorabilia,’ Ball also took the opportunity to remake many of their backing tracks.

Steve Griffiths was no longer in the picture, so Huw Feather designed a stage set for them which he had built at the Nottingham Playhouse, where he was now working in the props department. Made to be transportable, it consisted of large panels upholstered in white to resemble the walls of a padded cell, one of them containing a window with neon bars, in pink and blue to match the existing Soft Cell box. Meanwhile, another friend, Liz Pugh, designed and made their stage outfits. The single wasn’t a chart hit but their reputation was growing, and ‘Memorabilia’ was popular enough in clubs for Phonogram to agree to a second single.

Marc Almond and Dave Ball had both grown up in seaside towns in the north-west of England, Ball in Blackpool and Almond in Southport. Like Soho, these areas had a tradition of theatricality and risqué entertainment, particularly at night and accompanied by displays of neon and other electric lights. Blackpool even has a festival of light, Blackpool Illuminations, which dates back to the late 19th century. Also like Soho, their reputations had declined in the 1970s, and Soft Cell took some inspiration from the contradictions and juxtapositions inherent to these resort environments. Where off and on seasons were entirely different worlds, and to where working people briefly escaped to indulge themselves and release the pent-up energy suppressed by rigid work patterns. Where the desire for glamour on a budget and the unrealistic ambitions of amateur performances meant a spell could be broken or a dream shattered at any moment. Where the sinister aspects of entertainment and consumerism were often revealed as their structures decayed.

Almond had been drawn to the theatre and cabaret, where eccentrics and misfits could find community and express themselves more openly, Ball to the northern soul clubs where young working class people developed acrobatic dance moves to obscure American soul music from the 1960s, and one song in their live set incorporated aspects of both. They had included cover versions from early on, and for Ball it made sense to combine his equal passions for electronic music and northern soul, so while working with Daniel Miller on demos and backing tracks they had considered a few options. Almond liked the simplicity and the suggestive title of ‘Tainted Love,’ an underground hit in northern soul clubs in the 70s, firstly for Gloria Jones and later for Ruth Swann, and after adding it to their set it became an immediate favourite with live audiences. A&R man Roger Ames proposed ‘Tainted Love’ as the next single and Phonogram put them in a more expensive studio with an experienced producer, Mike Thorne, to record it.

As a student Marc Almond had made a few trips to London and been introduced to what he describes in his autobiography as a “secret twilight world,” one which was thrilling but also sometimes dangerous. Then, after graduating in 1979, he had briefly moved down to Soho, somewhat on a whim, and got a job working in a clip joint. A clip joint being an establishment where customers are overcharged for inferior or non-existent services, usually when there’s something illicit involved, like sex work, so they are unlikely to make a fuss or get the law involved. In Almond’s case, he was employed in an office selling tickets and giving the location for a nearby strip show, with the insinuation that there might also be more on offer, but then the ticket buyer would be charged a second time on the door, with what was behind the door unlikely to meet their expectations. Soho, and the idea of Soho, embodied much of the imagery and ideas that had fuelled his art college films and performances, with titles like Teenage Vice, Twilights and Lowlifes, and Glamour in Squalor, and this continued into his songwriting. Where the seductive glamour of neon lights and private clubs led, inevitably, to the tragedy of unfulfilled dreams and broken promises. In 1983 he would move back to Soho, renting a flat in one of Paul Raymond’s properties on Brewer Street overlooking the Raymond Revuebar, its dazzling neon displays lighting up his bedroom at night.

After ‘Tainted Love’ was a huge hit, Phonogram extended their deal and Soft Cell were soon back in the studio with Mike Thorne to record an album, this time in New York. Musically, they took on influences from the eclectic and hedonistic club scene which they threw themselves into as soon as they arrived, where ‘Memorabilia’ and ‘Tainted Love’ played alongside new wave, electronic, hip hop, disco and latin music. Ball would pick up ideas from what he was hearing in places like Danceteria and the Mudd Club, and on New York radio stations, working with Thorne to incorporate them into his palette of electronic sounds, now expanded by access to Thorne’s Synclavier II synthesiser and Roland TR 808 drum machine.

Lyrically though, the songs were reflective of their experiences in Leeds, Blackpool and Southport, but more than anything else they conjured up images of Soho after dark. Almond envisaged the album as a glimpse into a seedy world of peep shows, striptease and red-lit doorways, one where seduction and glamour combine with fantasy, subversion and hypocrisy, inevitably resulting in lost innocence, disillusion and betrayal. They named the album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret after a neon sign advertising the Pink Pussycat, a Raymond-owned club next to the Revuebar, which at one point was subject to a Sunday Times investigation claiming that waitresses were offering “after-hours activities,” and was part of the signage which was Chris Bracey’s first commission after joining his father’s business.

Peter Ashworth had become a photographer’s assistant after graduating from London College of printing and then set out on his own through being part of the scene around the Blitz club, beginning with work for Visage. His photograph of Steve Strange was used as the cover image for their first single, ‘Tar,’ and from there the commissions kept coming, including Visage’s debut album in 1980 and Adam and the Ants’ Kings of the Wild Frontier that same year. Ashworth also briefly played drums for The The, who were managed by Stevo, and met Stevo at a Some Bizzare label night they played where Soft Cell were also on the bill. The two got on well and Stevo began giving Ashworth regular commissions, including for Soft Cell, he became their regular photographer and very creatively involved with them, along with Huw Feather and video director Tim Pope.

Feather was keen that Soft Cell have a visual image that was consistent with the music, and for Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret he wanted the sleeve design to evoke a rainy neon-lit Soho street at night. Ashworth photographed Ball and Almond in front of a black PVC backdrop, with lighting to match the pink and blue neon of their stage set reflecting off the PVC in abstract patterns, as if they might be standing in the foyer of the Revuebar itself. In one unused photo from the shoot, Ball seems to be approaching Almond with a knife as Almond recoils or swoons, his throat and shoulder exposed. The image eventually selected for the cover is more ambiguous, in it they both look to the camera, perhaps threateningly, perhaps guiltily, as if interrupted or caught in the act. Almond slips an object wrapped in brown paper into his jacket, possibly an erotic book or pornographic magazine from ‘Doc’ Johnson’s Love Shop next door to the Revuebar, on the opposite corner of Walker’s Court to the Pink Pussycat (Almond has said he actually used a copy of Vogue as the prop). ‘Doc’ Johnson’s Love Shop was the most prominent of a chain run by another notorious Soho figure, Ben Holloway, allegedly with backing from American mafia figures seeking to establish themselves in the UK. He would eventually sell the chain when his twin sons were both convicted and jailed for distributing obscene materials a year after Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret was released.

The rear of the sleeve was a photo of Walker’s Court itself, basically the view the duo would have if they actually were looking out from the entrance of the Revuebar, and the inner sleeve featured the song lyrics superimposed over photos of Huw Feather’s padded cell stage set.

The sleeve design itself was completed by Andrew Prewett, Phonogram’s in-house designer, who before joining them already had a distinguished career as a photographer, illustrator and graphic designer, including several years at the BBC, designing or illustrating many of the sleeves of their record releases through the 1970s. Over Ashworth’s photo of Marc Almond and Dave Ball he superimposed images of the Soft Cell neon light box and the ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ section from the Pink Pussycat’s neon display, to give the finished version something of a film noir effect.

At the beginning of November 1981, ‘Bedsitter’ was released as the follow up single to ‘Tainted Love,’ in the video Dave Ball walks along Brewer Street past the Pink Pussycat towards the entrance to Walker’s Court. The album was released a few weeks later, reaching number 5 on the album chart and being certified platinum the following year. Walking that same route after its release, and throughout Soho, Ball and Almond now had the slightly surreal experience of hearing the sound of their own music coming out of the same strip clubs, peepshows and sex shops that had inspired it.