Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet reunite for Yazoo

Twenty minutes after Vince Clarke was due to turn up at this private members’ club, there’s no sign of him. As a result, Alison Moyet – already nervous about seeing her former Yazoo sidekick for the first time since they both attended a friend’s wedding 18 years ago – simply doesn’t know where to put herself. Seeking to reassure her, I suggest she merely picks up where she left off with him. “Um, we don’t want to do that,” she jokes, though quite why, she doesn’t explain.

At the beginning of the synth-pop era that the pair helped to popularise, fans and critics referred to Yazoo – Clarke, the songwriter who left Depeche Mode aged just 20, and Moyet, the ballsy soul voice known to Essex punks as Alf – as the odd couple. And there’s no shortage of oddness about this reunion. There have been no phone calls, no protracted negotiations before this moment. Just three e-mails between Moyet, Clarke and their promoter have taken us to this point.

After holding out for 25 years, the stars (or, rather, their schedules) aligned for Yazoo’s return. Moyet had finished promoting the acclaimed torch-pop of her most recent album The Turn, while Clarke – now in his 23rd year with Erasure – had done the same. In Your Room, a box set that gathers together everything they recorded, was already pencilled in for release. But, before proceeding, Clarke asked the Erasure singer Andy Bell if he had any objections to the reunion. Bell apparently said, “None, as long as you get me tickets for the shows.”

Moyet is such a formidable presence. Clarke is anything but. And yet, when the small, unassuming, shaven-headed Clarke ambles into the room and addresses Moyet with a simple “Hello, mate!”, this 46-year-old mother of three almost falls apart: “That really freaked me out, actually.” She turns around to a cameraman, who is here to film the moment for their website. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that,” she tells him. He leaves the room. “I suddenly felt all stuttery,” she says.

 

Some reunions reek of desperation. Others scratch the itch of nostalgia. The Yazoo one, though, merely formalises something that is already in the air. The duo’s stock seems to be at an all-time high. Andrew Butler, the DJ mastermind behind Hercules & Love Affair, cited Only You and Don’t Go as the first formative pop experiences of his life. LCD Soundsystem explicitly referenced them on Losing My Edge.

But then, they were no less hip the first time around. On cuts such as Situation and State Farm, the synergy of Moyet’s soul power and Clarke’s sequenced beats presaged deep house by five years. Moyet remembers David Bowie, Joey Ramone and members of Talking Heads in the audience at their 1981 New York shows. “We were supported by rope climbers,” she recalls. “They had everything but their tits hanging out.”

Moyet might have been cool, but she was miserable too. Why, exactly? Though the answer seems no simpler to Moyet, time has allowed her to get a handle on the reasons. “If you think that we got our deal because Vince already had a deal [through Depeche Mode], that already puts me in a vulnerable position. And then, suddenly to become well-known on top of that . . .”

What’s easily forgotten is just how famous they did become. Yazoo’s debut album, Upstairs at Eric’s, spent a year in the British Top 40. But whatever bonded Yazoo to each other at the beginning had all but vanished by the time of their posthumously released second album, You and Me Both. Their final Top of the Pops performance in 1983, for Nobody’s Diary, told its own story. Sporting a giant, meticulously teased quiff, Clarke cut an emotionless figure and Moyet looked anguished. It was a perfect microcosm of their alliance. “Creatively, it was fine,” Moyet says. “The thing I found difficult was the lack of warmth. I wanted to feel more likeable, and you can’t feel likeable if someone doesn’t want to interact.”