Ringing Andy Bell.

"ALL THE OTHER GUYS liked Pink Floyd and bands like that," confesses Erasure front man Andy Bell. "It was a bit girly to like ABBA. And I think that's how people look at our band." Well, as a reward to the faithful who might have been similarly razzed, Bell and his collaborator, Vince Clarke, are about to release their most memorable songs on a two CD-set, Hits! The Very Best of Erasure, and a double DVD package, Hits! The Videos (both Rhino).

The CD and DVD packages are full of surprises, and in a revealing conversation with The Buzz, Bell is equally disarming. For example, his wish to one day do a shot-by-shot cover of Sinead O'Connor's video for "Nothing Compares 2 U" segues into an admission that O'Connor drank him under the table one night as the two did a pub crawl through Dublin. "I ended up being sick because we were drinking so much, and she kept asking, 'Are you all right?'" he recalls, laughing. The unflappable Bell also once considered having adult-film director Chi Chi LaRue at the helm of an Erasure clip. Bell was invited to visit one of LaRue's shoots, but the singer declined. "I felt like I couldn't trust myself, really," he says.

Bell winds down with some tales from the road that rival any rock star's boasts: During Erasure's 1992 "Phantasmagorical" tour, his pants kept disappearing. "I think they're selling them on eBay," he jokes.