Vince Clarke (born Vincent Clarke, 22 January 1950) is an English musician best known as the founder, keyboardist, and principal songwriter of the synthpop band Erasure. He is also the keyboardist for the electronic act Yazoo. Clarke was born in Cheltenham, England, the son of a clergyman, and has said that his first experience of music was hearing Elvis Presley on the radio at age five. He attended St
Joseph's School in Cheltenham, where his family moved after he completed elementary school. His interest in music led him to take up piano lessons at age eight. At age eleven, he learned to play the organ and began playing pop songs on it.
The family moved again when he was 13 years old, this time to North London. He received piano lessons there from Roy Plomley, who had studied under Thekla Reuter at Charterhouse. After secondary school at St.
Marylebone Grammar School for Boys, Clarke studied music engineering at London's Royal Academy of Music. However, he became increasingly involved with his group Erasure instead of continuing with his degree course. After being discovered by Andy Diamond via a Melody Maker competition in 1975, Erasure signed a record deal with Virgin Records in 1977 and released their debut single "I Love You" in 1978. The success of their debut single led to major success for their subsequent releases "Chains Of Love" (1978), "A Little Respect" (1979), "Somebody" (1980), and "A Little Respect (12'' Version)" (1981).
Their first four studio albums were certified Gold by the RIAA and had top ten singles on various charts worldwide: "Chains of Love" (UK No. 2), "A Little Respect" (UK No. 4), "Somebody" (UK No.
8), and "A Little Respect" (US No. 5). In 1981 they released their fourth studio album "The Innocents", which reached #7 on the UK Albums Chart and #8 on the US Billboard 200 chart; however it received some negative reception due to its departure from the synthpop sound of previous releases and was not as commercially successful as its predecessors despite having two top 20 singles: "Sweetest Smile", which reached #15 on the UK Singles Chart and #17 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart; and "(Keep Feeling) Fascination", which reached #37 on both charts.
After recording
With a track like 'White Christmas, ' everybody has done that song in every format you can imagine, so I just looked at the chords at that particular song and what chords would make it work. That's kind of quite a sad song, and I had this idea of someone singing it in the subway, someone who is homeless, old and sad.Vince Clarke
I went on i Tunes and looked at versions of Christmas songs. Everyone has done them!Vince Clarke
