Dave Ball, one half of the pioneering synthpop duo Soft Cell, has passed away. Soft Cell's Instagram account confirms that Ball died peacefully at home in London on Wednesday. No cause of death has been reported. Ball was 66.
David James Ball was born in the English city of Chester, and he mostly grew up in Blackpool after being adopted. He got into electronic music through Kraftwerk. While studying art at Leeds Polytechnic, Ball met singer Marc Almond, and they formed the duo Soft Cell in 1978. Ball's mother loaned the group the money that they needed to release their 1980 debut EP Mutant Moments. Their song "The Girl With The Patent Leather Face" appeared on the 1981 post-punk compilation Some Bizarre Album. The duo signed to Phonogram, but their debut single "A Man Could Get Lost" failed commercially. In an effort to keep their label deal, Soft Cell followed that single with their 1981 version of "Tainted Love," a fairly obscure Northern soul song that Gloria Jones released in 1965.
Soft Cell's version of "Tainted Love" completely rebuilt the track, to the point that tons of people don't know that it's a cover. Marc Almost and Dave Ball transformed it into a panting, minimal insinuation. This "Tainted Love" had all the stark intensity of underground post-punk club music, but it also worked as a bracing new form of pop. "Tainted Love" was a #1 hit in the UK and across Europe, and it even reached the top 10 in the US, thanks in part to its extremely of-the-moment video getting airplay on the fledgling cable network MTV. America was only just discovering synthpop when "Tainted Love" hit, and the song remains a classic '80s staple to this day.
Riding on the success of "Tainted Love," Soft Cell went dark on their 1981 debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. It's a great album that absolutely drips with sleaze. It takes a certain courage to release a song like "Sex Dwarf" for public consumption. None of the non-"Tainted Love" songs from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret made the US charts, but follow-up singles "Bedsitter" and "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" were top-five hits in the UK. The duo also reached #2 with the non-album single "Torch" in 1982. But Soft Cell's next two albums, 1983's The Art Of Falling Apart and 1984's This Last Night In Sodom, were much less successful. They broke up before the latter album was even out.
While still in Soft Cell, Dave Ball released the intense, experimental 1983 solo album In Strict Tempo. He worked on film soundtracks with Genesis P-Orridge and started the sort-lived projects Other People and English Boy On The Loveranch. For a while, he was part of the band Psychic TV. In 1988, Ball and fellow Psychic TV member Richard Norris started a dance project called the Grid, and their banjo-driven 1994 rave single "Swamp Thing" was a #3 hit in the UK.
In 2001, Ball and Marc Almond reunited to release the Soft Cell album Cruelty Without Beauty. They remained active as a duo and released two more albums, the most recent of which is 2024's Happiness Now Completed. Ball also produced for artists like Kylie Minogue and Gavin Friday and remixed people like David Bowie and Erasure. Ball released one more LP with the Grid, and he and Jon Savage released the 2016 album Photosynthesis. In 2020, he published a memoir called Electronic Boy.
Marc Almond has shared this tribute:
It is hard to write this, let alone process it, but it is with the greatest sadness that the other half of Soft Cell, the wonderful brilliant musical genius David Ball, died peacefully in his sleep on Tuesday night. As many of you are aware, Dave has been ill for a long while and his health had been in slow decline over recent years.
Yet he always came back with a determined spirit to continue his work in the studio and, although he has been unable to travel abroad, he has still been able to perform with me as Soft Cell on occasions in the UK. His last appearance was at the Rewind festival a few weeks ago, where we headlined to over 20,000 people, after which he was elated and given an enormous boost.
We agreed to extend the Soft Cell family and he was always behind shows and festivals where he wasn't able to appear, he always had presence, his live role being taken by Philip Larsen, his co producer and friend, but it was Dave's music and preparation that was still at the heart of it and what audiences were hearing, Dave and Philip working closely together. Dave encouraged us to take the music out with his blessing.
It is most heartbreaking, particularly at this time, that Dave was in a great place emotionally, feeling focused and happy with the new album, Danceteria, that we literally had only just completed days ago. I listened to the complete album for the first time yesterday. It makes me so sad as this would have been a great uplifting year for him and I can take solace that he heard this finished record and felt it was a great piece of work. Dave's music is better than ever - his tunes, his hooks unmistakably Soft Cell. Yet he always took it to a different level.
The pair of us have been on a journey together heading on for 50 years with ups and downs, successes and failures, though to us it was never failure, just all part of the adventure, and it was one hell of an adventure. We were very obnoxious and difficult in the early days, two belligerent art students wanting to do things our way even if it was the wrong way. We were naive and we made mistakes. We have always been a bit 'chalk and cheese' as they say but that's maybe why the chemistry worked so well. When we came back together after long periods there was always the warmth and chemistry, deep respect for each other that gave a strength to our song writing together. We laughed a lot and shared a sense of humour and a love of films and books and, of course, music. Dave had piles of books that he read his way through, and wonderful and surprising musical references. He really was the heart of Soft Cell, I always really thought it was his baby. Whatever it was it just worked and I'm proud of our legacy and taking those breaks apart always kept the public interest going, we weren't around too much for people to get too tired of us.
It's fitting in many ways that the next (and now the last) album together is called Danceteria as the theme takes us for a visit back to almost the start of it all, back to New York in the early 80's, the place and time that really shaped us. We always felt we were an honorary American band as well as quintessentially British. We have always been self referential to the Soft Cell story and myths and this album in many ways will close that circle for us.
I wish he could have stayed on to celebrate 50 years in a couple of years time. He will always be loved by fans who loved his music. It's a cliche to say but it lives on and somewhere at any given time around the world someone listens to, plays, dances, and get's pleasure from a Soft Cell song - even if it's just that particular two and half minute epic.
My thoughts are with his family at this time.
Thank you Dave for being an immense part of my life and for the music you gave me. I wouldn't be where I am without you.
Check out some of Ball's work below.
