Beautiful Twisted Night - Marc Almond

BEAUTIFUL TWISTED NIGHT - MARC ALMOND

As Plato is quoted as saying, at the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. And so too in regard to Marc Almond who as evidenced by his book, Beautiful Twisted Night, has also been touched by love and has also become a poet though not through the love of any one particular person. No, Marc has been touched by the love of the city - the cruel, dirty, heartless, selfish, souless city where the hustler is hero and the loser is saint, where the ugly is beautiful and the beautiful more beautiful. The city of secrets, neon, fantasy and desire, of darkness, sex, drugs and twilight glamour.

As Marc in his introduction explains: "When I became successful I was given so many keys to so many cities. People had listened to my songs and read the themes of my lyrics, so they knew where to take me and who to introduce me to. Prostitutes, hustlers, porn stars, strippers, gangsters, pimps, dominatrixes, transsexuals, madams, subculture celebrities, superstars and even Satan worshippers - they have all danced in and out of 'my beautiful twisted night'." Marc's songs became a reflection of this life as his life in turn became a reflection of his poems and songs.

Published in 1999, Beautiful Twisted Night is not only a testament to Marc's talent as a wordsmith but also to his prolificacy. It's a collection of his poetry and prose that throws into confusion any distinction between what makes a poem and what makes a lyric for a song. Is there a dividing line? A point of cross-over? Are song lyrics simply bad poetry and if so does bad poetry make for good lyrics? Is a poem a hymn and can a hymn be a lyric and vice versa? Is anything too stupid to say simply sung instead? I'd say 'Yes' to that one but as a proviso there are also some things that whilst they can easily be said are actually better when sung. 

And then there's Marc Almond whose words work just as well as poetry as they do lyrics, and just as well as words on a printed page as they do when accompanied by music. It's a rare thing. A rare act. An almost exclusive club to belong to. In fact, in the context of Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song, whilst most occupants are paying rent to lodge there Marc Almond owns a whole floor just a few down below from the one owned by Hank Williams.

For the record, I might suggest that actually Marc's prose is even better than his poems/lyrics because it's here that he has more room to breathe and expound even when talking in a kind of veiled Polari. He does it really well, particularly for example when on the subject of Piccadilly rent boys where he shines a spotlight upon the characters though always a compassionate and tinted one.

London, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Rio, Bangkok, Berlin, Hamburg, St Petersburgh, Beirut, Tokyo, Paris, Rome and Amsterdam. Ah yes, Amsterdam. Marc has passed through them all, making the acquaintance along the way of the exotic, the erotic, and the plain psychotic. Down into the backstreets, the cellars, the red light districts and the bars with one eye on the gutter and the other on the stars. All noted, recorded and praised over the course of over forty albums, an autobiography and this very good book - Beautiful Twisted Night.

John Serpico