«I wake up some mornings and I feel overwhelmed with loss.»
Loss of what?
MARK ALMOND: Everything. People. My youth. The world we live in. We’re constantly losing things. The quality of our lives is being stripped away and replaced with a celebration of mediocrity. I hate it when I see old buildings being pulled down. The two words I hate most in the world are “luxury flats”! They pulled down the Gainsborough Studios where Alfred Hitchcock made so many fantastic films. There’s a Tesco there now. A Tesco and some luxury flats! Why couldn’t they have made that into a film museum dedicated to British films? It’s not about wanting to live in the past. There are lots of exciting things happening now, if you know where to look for them. But I do think we should value the past.’
So here we are in Soho, a place where you certainly have a past. At Wilton’s you sang a new song called ‘Soho So Long’. How much has it changed in the 25 years since you lived here?
MARK ALMOND: ‘It’s become a very commercialised place. You can still find the spirit of Soho here and there, but on the whole it feels very much like an imitation, a show we put on for the tourists. Soho was always a very bohemian place, full of artists and outsiders. When I first came here in my late teens, listening to songs like “The London Boys”, Soho was quite a dark, edgy place. Like I wrote on “Little Rough Rhinestones” [from the final Soft Cell album “This Last Night In Sodom”]: “The deep dark-red doorways call to a limbo of loneliness”. And a lot of that old spirit has gone. The world that inspired me has kind-of moved on in a way. Which is probably why I find myself writing about the past, or things I’ve written about so many times before.’
my parents felt the same and so did my grandparents. they felt the world was changing to something they didn't like and to something they felt was worse. and guess what? they were wrong and so is this mark almond. we don't need a museum in every place that has some history. we certainly don't need another film museum. the ones we have do not receive enough visitors already. mark almond and all that despise luxury flats try to disguise their jealousy with an ideological posture but the moment they have the means to own a luxury flat they are the first ones to buy one. if you have any doubts, look at the musicians that became well known and earn plenty of money (of which this mark almond is not an example or otherwise we would not be unknown to me).
ResponderEliminar