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INTERVIEW: Anne-Marie Hurst
Anne-Marie Hurst may be the queen of Goth but that doesn't stop her having to contend with life's less pleasant tasks.
"The dog has been poorly, it was all over the kitchen," she says in her broad Keighley tones. "I got home to a bit of a catastrophe."
Fortunately the dog has duly been bathed by the time we speak and Anne-Marie's able to talk about her forthcoming show at Gasworks in Bradford – aptly on Halloween. The gig will be her first major public performance since she left Ghost Dance nigh-on 20 years ago.
"Rehearsals are going really well," she says. "We're working at Voltage on Manchester Road in Bradford. It's been seven weeks now. We'll be doing every night in the last week. It's pretty intense for the next two weeks before Stan (Greenwood, her former bandmate from her Skeletal Family days) goes on holiday."
Originally when Anne-Marie and Stan first agreed to work together again, the intention had been to avoid revisiting their past in two of Yorkshire's best-known Goth groups of the 1980s. Yet it seems it was unavoidable – and for this 'comeback' gig at least, the set will comprise "half Skeletal Family and half Ghost Dance".
"We've written some new tracks as well," Anne-Marie says, which she and her band are midway through recording. "The backing tracks are laid down, I've just got to get on with the lead vocals."
Like John Lydon's recent decision to reform Public Image Ltd, it seems a brush with mortality has brought Anne-Marie back to the limelight.
"I was doing some work with my father before he passed away – country and western and folk music," she says. "My younger brother Patrick, he was a really good artist as well; he passed away last year. I thought I need to get on with it.
"Music has always been a passion. Due to family commitments I could not start any earlier. Then I bumped into Stan."
The pair got on well and decided to write some new material together. They had some interest from Germany, where Skeletal Family and Ghost Dance had been popular in the 80s.
"We got Trotwood (Roger Nowell, the Skeletal Famly bass player) back on board – and two very talented musicians. Ed (Kellet, the guitarist) was a roadie for Terrorvision; Rob (Caswell, the drummer) is a jazz player.
"We've all been working really hard to make it sound as close as possible to the old bands," Anne-Marie says.
It turns out Anne-Marie and her band have a useful ally too. Thanks to Roger Nowell's longstanding work as roadie for Paul Weller, the former leader of The Jam and the Style Council has made his studio, The Barn, available "at any time". "He's taken quite an interest as well," Anne-Marie says, sounding genuinely flattered. "He's such a fine musician."
Had she joined the Skeletal Family reunion, as originally proposed seven years ago, she's doesn't "think it would have worked as well as it is now". Today her two children are taking a keen interest in what Mum's up to. "They're coming down to rehearsals and really enjoying what they are seeing and hearing." It has "given them a bit of a spurt" on to try their hands at music.
Anne-Marie says it feels "really good" to be playing her old songs again. "Not having the original line-up of Skeletal Family has given a new dimension to it. It sounds heavier than the two bands together. It doesn't sound like an 80s band; it's got more of a heavy rock feel."
It's early days, but the new material "is coming along". "I'm writing the lyrics – I've got enough for about 200 songs," Anne-Marie says. People will be "quite surprised" when they do hear the tracks she's planning to perform in Bradford. "One is quite moody, the other is a rocky one. We're thinking of doing an acoustic set with Stan, then the next one with the whole band."
If everything goes to plan, the band will tour Germany next year. The last time Anne-Marie was there was with Ghost Dance. "We did 22 dates back to back with the Ramones," she recalls. "We were playing big arenas as well."
They've also been invited to perform at Whitby Goth Festival and next year's Bingley Festival too. "It's coming together really nicely," Anne-Marie reckons.
Looking back on her career, she says one of her fondest memories was working with the Sisters of Mercy, through whom she met Gary Marx. When Anne-Marie left Skeletal Family, she formed Ghost Dance with the Sisters guitarist. "It was upsetting when Skeletal Family did split," she says. "But I felt it was time to move on to do rockier music."
She regrets that Ghost Dance themselves split in 1989 after their then label Chrysalis rejected the option of a second album. "I think we would have gone down quite well in America," she says.
But there are also memories of playing to 50,000 people at Reading Festival to fall back on ("My knees were knocking backstage"), as well as once sharing a piano stool with Stevie Wonder. "He touched my face at dinner," Anne-Marie recalls. "It was quite inspirational really."
As for the 80s Goth scene, she remembers it being an exciting time. "Definitely," she says. "Siouxsie was queen of punk, I got labelled the queen of Goth. We created that look. There are still punks and Goths about now. To see them and think I contributed to that is great.
"There was never any bitchiness with the Leeds scene. It was really fruitful."
Now she's back performing again, will there be any pre-gig nerves? "I think there will be," she laughs. "If you've not got the nerves then the passion is not there. There were a couple of shows I did with my dad when I was not nervous.
"I've been in the music industry in some way since I was seven years old, doing singing lessons, learning guitar. I definitely get nervous, even though it's nearly 25 years since we started performing."
Tickets for Anne-Marie Hurst's show at Gasworks on October 31 are available from Jumbo and Crash Records.
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