Dave Ball, synth-pop hitmaker as one half of Soft Cell, dies aged 66

[Celerity]

Synth player and producer had huge success with Tainted Love and other Soft Cell hits, and later returned to UK Top 10 with dance project the Grid

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/oct/23/dave-ball-hitmaker-as-one-half-of-soft-cell-dies-aged-66



Dave Ball, who as one half of Soft Cell brought dark, cutting-edge synth-pop to the masses, has died aged 66. Representatives for the musician said he “passed away peacefully in his sleep at his London home on Wednesday”. No cause of death was given. His partner in Soft Cell, Marc Almond, paid tribute, writing: “He was a wonderfully brilliant musical genius … 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”.

Born in Chester in 1959 to a single mother and named Paul, he was adopted and given the name David Ball, and raised in Blackpool alongside an adopted sister, Susan. The resort town rubbed off on Ball who cited its “showbizzy” side – “the funfairs and the craziness” – as an influence on his music career, as well as his father’s engineering background getting him interested in electronics. He cited hearing Kraftwerk’s Autobahn in 1975 as a “turning point” in his life.

After his father died of cancer, he left Ball some money which he spent on a guitar, soon trading it in for a synthesiser. He moved to study art at Leeds Polytechnic – “I was just desperate to get away and start my own life”, he said – where the first person he met was Almond. “There was this one guy wandering around with a leopard-skin top, bleached hair and spandex trousers, and I thought, ‘he’s got to be in the art department, he’s not an accountant’, so I asked him, ‘do you know where I enrol?’”, Ball later remembered.



They formed the duo Soft Cell in 1979. The flamboyant frontman Almond was into pop-soul and 60s ballads, while the more reserved Ball had an interest in synths and “machine music”, as he called it. “We were a weird couple: Marc, this gay bloke in makeup; and me, a big guy who looked like a minder,” he told the Guardian in 2017, but this seeming disconnect resulted in a dynamic and striking kind of pop. Ball handed a copy of their debut EP to BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel who played it on his show, and the duo were signed to the label Some Bizzare. Their first singles A Man Could Get Lost and Memorabilia flopped, but their next was a sensation.

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