Dave Ball, British keyboardist and producer, founding member with Marc Almond of Soft Cell, the hitmakers behind ‘Tainted Love’, has died at the age of 66, “peacefully in his sleep,” Almond said in a statement on Instagram, where he indicated that Ball had been ill for “some time.” He was 66 years old.
Soft Cell was one of the key synth-pop bands of the 80s, one of those that defined the sound of an era. ‘Tainted Love’ and other hits like ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’ They made history and transcended the dissolution of Soft Cell in 1984. The group met for the first time in 2001, in 2024 they published their last studio album, ‘*Happiness Now Completed’, and were recently preparing the creation of a new album, ‘Danceteria’, which will be a tribute to “New York of the 80s.”
Almond has stated that without Ball “I wouldn’t be here”, and has expressed that “I wish you had stayed to celebrate 50 years of Soft Cell in a couple of years.”
Ball, outside or after Soft Cell, had a multitude of parallel projects, the longest running The Grid, his duo with Richard Norris, author of the hit ‘Swamp Thing’ (1993), which reached the top 3 in the United Kingdom. He also collaborated with the Genesis P-Orridge collective Psychic TV, and formed other less lasting bands such as Other People and English Boy on the Loveranch. He released two solo albums, one of them with pianist Jon Savage.
Ball was also a producer for other artists and, for example, worked closely with Kylie Minogue on ‘Impossible Princess’ (1997), including the single ‘Breathe’. He also remixed David Bowie and Erasure.
