CELTIC Football Club could be hit with a huge song royalties bill if synth pop legend Vince Clarke gets his way. The former Depeche Mode star penned their 1981 hit, Just Canât Get Enough, which has become a terrace anthem belted out by Hoops fans. The song can also be heard blaring from the public address system whenever their team score. Liverpool fans, too, have adopted the song - The Kop tweaking the lyrics to suit a ditty about striker Luis Suarez. But now Vince says he is fed up being emailed by Celtic supporters to let him know they have adopted the tune and plans to ask his publishing company to recoup any royalties due from the SPL club. Vince revealed: âI am aware of the song being used because I get updates on that. âPeople are always sending me different links to that song and itâs very flattering, but I donât know if the publishers are very pleased. âThey are trying to work out how to collect royalties on the song because it ends up on TV. âHow are Celtic doing lately? Have they scored a lot of goals. Iâm going to have to send their results to my publisher and see what he comes up with.â Vince quit Depeche Mode in 1981 and went on to have success with synth acts Yazoo and The Assembly before forming Erasure with frontman Andy Bell in 1985. Since then, the duo have sold a staggering 25 million albums and scored more than 30 hit singles, such as Sometimes and A Little Respect. But, despite mammoth success and his status as a pioneer of electronic music, the millionaire hitmaker - real name Vincent John Martin - rarely gives interviews and lives an anonymous existence in the US state of Maine. The 50-year-old admitted: âIâve got a family and I do value my privacy. I have never really been interested in the celebrity world. Even when we started, it seemed absurd to me. Itâs just the way I am. âWhat seems to happen is that if I am on TV because we have a single out then people recognise me. âBut I am not on TV every week, so people donât tend to notice me. In the town where I live in Maine, people have no idea who I am. âThey donât recognise me. All they know is that I am English because I have a different accent. I live here because my wife is American. I met her in New York and she didnât want to move. âThere are some odd things going in Maine. Iâm sure thatâs why Stephen King bases so many of his stories in the State. I like his books and I am a bit of a fan so it would be nice to meet him one day.â Erasure perform at Glasgow Academy on October 13 and Edinburgh Corn Exchange on October 15. The dates follow an extensive tour of South America, which saw the band perfoming shows in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. Taking a break from rehearsals in Florida for their upcoming UK tour, Vince said: âSouth America was fantastic. âWe hadnât been there since 1997. The venues were quite big so we were nervous about that but the audiences were great, especially in Brazil where 95 per cent of the audiences were under 25. âWe couldnât work it out but decided the people must have discovered us through the internet and YouTube because it couldnât have been from radio exposure. âIt brought us a whole new generation of fans. This tour will be a lot more elaborate and it will be good to come back to Scotland. âOne of the very first things Erasure ever did was a PA tour. We went to a disco in Aberdeen on a Saturday night and said to the management that we had come to do our PA. âThey looked in their books and we werenât in there. So we asked if we could come in and play the record. There were a few drunk people in the club. They cleared the floor. We mimed the single and people were really not interested. âWe were standing there dressed as cowboys. We left and took the single, which was Who Needs Love? with us. âBut since then we have had some fantastic shows in Scotland. It seems the further north you go the warmer the audiences become. âI rarely listen to old Erasure records unless we happen to be doing a tour. We have been asked to do some of these 80s reunion tours with loads of other bands but we feel we are more relevant than that. âWe are still making records. We havenât stopped. Itâs just that we are a bit older.â Erasureâs new album, Tomorrowâs World, is released on October 3. That marks over a quarter of a century of recording with Bell, who answered an advert in the now defunct Melody Maker for a singer. Vince recalled: âI was doing stuff on my own and getting frustrated because we werenât finding the right singers to work with. The producer I was working with suggested auditions. We put an ad in the music paper. It was really hard work. âWe did auditions for two-and-a-half days. Everybody who came in had to sing two songs. There were really good singers but none of them had a really distinctive voice until Andy came along. âI found in Andy somebody that I enjoy working with. We have similar views about politics, social issues and the world, but not on fashion. âWe both trust each other implicitly and have never had the need to argue about anything. Itâs an idealistic relationship we have and I feel lucky to have met Andy and still be working with him. We share the same sense of humour.â The bandâs first album in more than four years has been produced by rising British electro-pop star Frankmusik, who, at 25, wasnât born when Erasure formed and has worked with Lady Gaga, Pet Shop Boys and Ellie Goulding. Vince went on: âAs Iâve got older, Iâve become much more open to other peopleâs ideas and production input than when I was younger. Itâs always good to have someone new to work with in the studio and having a fresh person in helps. âI wasnât thinking about how old Frank is, but what he was doing, which was exciting. Andy is responsible for most of the lyrics. I just correct his spelling. âWhen I was in Depeche Mode, it was a three minute pop song band. We had just signed a record deal and a couple of records got into the charts. âThat was the exciting part of the whole thing. We just couldnât believe it. âWe were all working-class lads from Basildon and we just couldnât believe that we were hearing a record of ours on the radio. That was incredible.â Written in New York, London, and recorded at Vinceâs cabin studio in Maine, as well as in London and Los Angeles between January and June 2011, Vince used his vintage collection of analogue synths for the final touches to the new album. He said: âI have always been interested in synthesisers since we started. What is amazing is that there are more electronic sounding records in the UK and the US than they were in the 80s. Part of the reason is that synths are more readily available and cheaper so lots more people are making those records. It is a really exciting time. âAndy and I thought Britpop spelled the end of the keyboard because it seemed to go on forever. Now everyone is playing synthesisers so I am very happy.â
HMRC are knocking at the door again today Imagine Tina Turner had the same idea at this stage How long you been singing?
