By Gregg Shapiro

Contributing writer

Three years after being critically injured in a motorcycle accident, gay singer/songwriter Marc Almond makes his triumphant return with the marvelous “Stardom Road” (Sanctuary). Of the 13 tracks, 12 are covers, but the sum total is intended to tell Almond’s story. This is a marvelous return to form, made even more so in light of his near-death experience.

Gregg Shapiro: It’s more wonderful than I can express to be able to talk to you about your new CD, “Stardom Road,” especially in light of the serious motorcycle accident in which you were involved in 2004. At what point are you in your recovery process?

Marc Almond: Well, I’ve made a very good recovery. I’m feeling a lot better now than I have been for quite a while, for the past couple of years. The past few months I’ve started to feel a lot better. I still have some problems and I probably always will as a result of the crash. It’s things that I’ve learned to deal with and I’ve worked my life around them and things. As time goes on it’s things I just take in my stride. The main problems came from the serious head injuries and the post-traumatic stress, and that’s a much harder thing to deal with. But I’m feeling very good and optimistic at the moment.

GS: What was involved in the process of selecting material for the “Stardom Road” CD?

MA: It was just finding a balance of songs that really work well together. I think when you’re doing an album of cover songs, sometimes you tend to go all over the place in different directions. You can have an album that goes from one extreme to the other and still not sound like a complete album. For me, I wanted to pick a cycle or journey of songs that would all go together and form, in a way, what I imagined as a stage musical based on my life or something. It was finding songs that flowed and went well together. Days and days I spent with my producer Tris Penna in the studio listening to hundreds and hundreds of songs. He’s got a very big music library and we spent days listening to and rejecting songs. Of course there was the temptation to be very self-indulgent, as well. But I wanted to make an album that would be a crossover album that would have a wider appeal to a lot of people, because of the great reaction that I got from people following my accident. I didn’t want to make an arty obscure album for myself, I wanted to make one that would cross over.

GS: “Strangers in the Night” has long been referred to as having a gay subtext. Was it your intention to reclaim that aspect of the song in your recording?

MA: That’s definitely why I picked it for the record. It’s always been one of my favorite songs. I’m not a Frank Sinatra fan, but being British I tend to listen to more British singers. It was a version (of “Strangers…”) by a British singer called Matt Monro that I really liked. Of course there have been so many versions over the years. There’s always the danger of having people looking at it as a karaoke song with this cheesy element to it. But I found that a challenge, in a way. I thought, some people are going to get it, some are not. But I chose it because of its gay subtext. It’s a song about picking people up casually.

GS: “The Curtain Falls,” the final track, is also in the same spirit. You always get the sense that audience is so grateful to the singer for performing, and yet here is the singer thanking the audience and hoping that they enjoyed his performance.

MA: It’s a great song, Gregg. I just had to end the album with it. I’ve been doing some concerts recently and I’ve been ending the concerts with it now. It’s kind of camp—“and to think I get paid for this.” It’s a great line which everybody loves. It brings the album full circle, like a show. I like to imagine every album I make as a show, with an opening song, a middle, the interval comes here and then you’d have the finale and an encore at the end. “The Curtain Falls” is like the encore. I love albums that sound like shows and musicals.

GS: Last year, singer Rihanna sampled Soft Cell’s version of “Tainted Love” in her song “S.O.S.,” and I was wondering if you’d heard it and if so, what you thought of it?

MA: It’s fantastic. It was great because it makes lots of money for me, as well (laughs). But I have to say that I really love what she did with that song. She took the sample and made a really great tune around it. I really like it when people do that. I’ve tried to do that myself a couple of times. You take a sample and you make a tune around. She did something great with that song. It really works. There’s a whole generation of young kids out there who, when they hear that “Tainted Love” hook, they associate it as a Rihanna record and not a Soft Cell record. But then they say where did that sample come from and then they discover the Soft Cell version and then they discover me. So, I’m really grateful to her for doing that. It’s been one of those songs that’s taken on a life of its own and it keeps going on and on and on. The song has been so good to me and it’s paid the bills and the mortgage and it’s given me a great life and opened loads of doors for me. People ask me if I ever get sick of singing it, and I don’t really. When I get the chance to sing “Tainted Love” it’s like having a holiday.