Yesterday I was told that Dave Ball has passed. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the album ECCE HOMO, that we both worked on for many years. Time waits for no one, and life is fuckin’ hard. I knew Dave had been ill these past years, but I didn’t expect him to leave this world gone wrong that we all struggle with.
I first met Dave in 1982 at the French House in London’s Soho, a time when Soho really was something extraordinary. We immediately clicked, mutual fans of each other’s music and roughly the same age. From ’82 to ’86 we saw each other often and worked together on many projects, especially when he produced the Virgin Prunes’ final album, The Moon Looked Down and Laughed. Then I didn’t see or hear from him until 2010, when we remotely recorded a cover of Suicide’s Ghostrider. That collaboration eventually morphed into writing together, out of which came the album Ecce Homo.
From 2010 to 2020 I got to know the man so much more. Not just us both being older, wiser, and all that baloney. Writing and making music together is truly intimate and revealing. It creates a deep bond. So I got to truly know and love the man.
Dave was a giant of a man with a soft, shy, and sensitive soul. The way he played synthesizer was as onto a bricklayer. But the rhythms and melodies that came out of his bricks-and-mortar stance were beyond… He was, in a strange way, Britain’s Giorgio Moroder. Only more profound and darker.
And now the moon looks down and cries. Death is not the end. The music lives on forever. As we used to say back in the day: “We dreamed of things like this.”
My deepest condolences to his family and friends, especially Marc and Gini and his beloved children. Farewell Dave. Rest in power.
Love xx
Gavin Friday
Dublin, October 24th, 2025
