Читать книгу Spice Girls: The Story of the World’s Greatest Girl Band - Sean Smith - Страница 14

Typically, Geri was filled with enthusiasm and positive energy at the prospect of being in a girl band and wasted no time telling everyone she knew in Watford. They included a young researcher at the BBC called Matthew Bowers, who drank in the same bars and was keen to make an impression in television.

He was working on a documentary about Muhammad Ali called Rumble in the Jungle and mentioned to the film’s director, Neil Davies, that he had a friend who was auditioning for a girl band and asked him if he thought it might make something. Neil, an ex-paratrooper, immediately saw the possibilities and the two went to the next instalment of the search – the ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’ workshop day at Nomis.

Most importantly at this stage, Neil had to make sure Chris Herbert was onside. Fortunately the go-ahead young manager could see the advantages of a film. Neil was impressed: ‘I thought he’d had a brainwave in trying to form a sort of Backstreet Girls – everybody at the time thought you would never get another girl band going. It was all boy bands – Take That dominated the scene. So I thought, “This guy is a genius”. He’s twenty-one so I could see this was going to be a great story – even if they never made it. It would be a kind of warning to teenage girls that this is what happens to you in Tin Pan Alley.’

He shook hands with Chris and started filming that day. He needed to obtain the written consent of the girls but the more pressing thing for the five on the day was making a good impression with Heart Management. Bob Herbert was there and Chic Murphy had come to watch for the first time so that he could see for himself where his money was going. Neil amusingly described the two men as observing the ‘Marbella Dress Code’ – the top three buttons of the shirt undone and a big medallion hanging in the middle of the chest.

As well as being introduced to Chic, the girls had the chance to meet each other properly. In particular, they hadn’t noticed Melanie Chisholm at Danceworks and she had missed the next audition so this was an opportunity to chat to her. She obviously had no airs and graces and seemed to fit in easily.

All the girls thought they sounded terrible together – definitely a cat’s chorus. To their surprise, Chris, Bob and Chic seemed a little hard of hearing that day, although the purpose of the get-together was to see if they had a future, not how they sounded in the present. As Chris explained, ‘We wanted to create a band as a unit so it did not matter so much if, individually, they weren’t so strong.’ It went well enough for Chris to move on to the next stage.

He booked the five into a bed-and-breakfast in Knaphill, Woking, which was a few miles down the road from the Heart offices. Ostensibly the week was for them to rehearse, but that was only part the plan: ‘It was just for them to spend a little time together, and see whether they actually got on and started to bond. Initially we wanted to observe and see if there was something there or if we had to make changes.’

He introduced them to working together in a studio, picking them up from the B&B and dropping them off at Trinity Studios nearby. That sounded grander than it actually was. It was little more than a glorified village hall in urgent need of a lick of paint and a decent central-heating system. The building had once been a dance studio, so at least provided the space for the five girls to hone their dancing skills. Trinity was run day to day by Ian Lee, who remembered that first week: ‘They were like five schoolgirls – a bit giggly and a bit insecure.’

After a general discussion, it was decided that for the moment they would be called Touch, a pretty uninspiring name – sounding more like a group who would perform at Eurovision than one that would inspire a generation of female devotees. Chris was keen, though, for the group to have a five-letter name. More significantly, he began putting together a team who could help shape their future during this training period.

Once more the Three Degrees provided the link. He asked their former musical director, Erwin Keiles, to come up with a song or two to get the girls started. The first they had to learn was called ‘Take Me Away’, a mid-tempo unchallenging number. Chris brought in the gloriously named Pepi Lemer, a coach of considerable experience and a backing singer since the sixties, when she missed out on stardom.

Pepi realised that collectively the girls had a lot of work to do: ‘I remember them being quite attractive in their various ways but terribly nervous. They were shaking and, when they sang, their voices were wobbling. It has to be said that they weren’t very good.’ At the end of the week, Touch gave Chris, Bob and Chic an exclusive performance of that first song. They were dressed in a manner that would, in the future, never work for the Spice Girls – they were colour-coordinated in black and white. They were the Five Degrees.

It was all exciting, though. Apart from Michelle, this was a bunch of seasoned auditionees, thrilled that they were involved in something so new. Even the cosy, old-style guesthouse was stirred by their vitality. Victoria shared a room with Geri, who complained that she was taking up all the space with her two suitcases full of designer clothes. They clicked immediately. ‘You must come with me to a car-boot sale,’ said Geri – as if that was ever going to happen.

Victoria was the first of the five to give Chris some concern when he found out that she was already in a band called Persuasion. He told her that she needed to make a decision: ‘Are you in or are you out?’ Victoria was much cannier than people realised. She kept her options open just in case Touch came to nothing. She told Persuasion that she was going away on holiday for a week or two and would have to miss rehearsals.

Chris had to keep his fingers crossed where Victoria was concerned but another potential problem was building within the group. Four of the girls – Geri, Victoria and the two Melanies – were getting on famously but the fifth, Michelle, was becoming more distant. This was not the gelling unit Chris wanted: ‘Even when they broke for lunch or a coffee break, the four would be inside having a coffee and Michelle would be outside. She seemed a bit separated from the others. We spotted it and thought there was a problem developing even during that initial week.’

A bigger concern was their lack of progress at Trinity Studios. Clearly they needed much more time to practise and improve. Chic came up with the solution. He happened to have a spare three-bedroom house in Maidenhead. The girls could move in right away. It was basically a drab semi on a grey estate in Boyne Hill Road. Geri had clearly already had enough of sharing and bagged the tiny single room for herself. She was the oldest so there was no argument. Michelle and Victoria bounded up the stairs and managed to grab the twin-bedded room. That left Melanie Brown having to put up with Melanie Chisholm snoring away in one double room. Having two Melanies in the group was slightly problematic especially as they both preferred the longer version of the name. Chris began to call Melanie Brown ‘Mel B’ to help differentiate between the two.

Relations within Touch continued to slide throughout the first month. The gang of four were exasperated by what they perceived as Michelle’s lack of commitment. She wasn’t putting in the work to improve her dancing, preferring, they said, to top up her tan at lunchtimes rather than copy Geri’s lead and practise hard to try to catch up with the dance-school veterans. Perhaps, tellingly, Michelle still had every intention of going to university in the autumn. She also had a Saturday job in Harrods that she didn’t give up.

Melanie Brown, in particular, tried to motivate her but in the end the gang of four felt they had no choice other than to express their misgivings to Chris and Bob, echoing the thoughts the Herberts already had. Bob explained, ‘She would never have gelled so we had to let her go.’

Did Michelle go of her own accord? Was she pushed? Or was it a mutual decision? There were two sides to the story. While it was true that the other girls questioned her desire, Michelle, herself, was struggling with a family crisis – her mother Penny had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was also the youngest of the group – five years younger than Geri. There’s a world of difference between just leaving school and hosting a game show on Turkish TV.

Michelle went travelling around Europe before starting her degree. She has had to live with the label of being the Spice Girl who wasn’t – although, at the time, Touch was nothing like the Spice Girls. She didn’t enjoy the music they were rehearsing, considering it far too poppy for her taste. She was not a fan of Take That, for instance, much preferring the harder edge of Oasis and the Prodigy. She later told Neil Davies that she became frustrated by the slowness of it all and she ‘didn’t think the girls would make it’. She added simply, ‘I had different plans for my future.’

Of the four who remained, Victoria was by far the rudest about Michelle, describing her voice as ‘cruise-ship operatic’, her dancing as ‘having less rhythm than a cement mixer’ and saying that she ‘couldn’t be arsed to improve’. The normally more outspoken Mel B described her as ‘sweet, very upper class and very well turned out’. In fact, Michelle was probably more posh than Victoria, although she didn’t have the wardrobe full of designer labels. Michelle remarked, ‘Victoria had some beautiful clothes.’

Michelle has made her own way in music. She has recorded her own songs, acted as a backing singer for Ricky Martin and Julio Iglesias and presented for Channel 4. She once said, ‘Of course I regret I’m not a multi-millionaire like them. But at the time I left the group I knew I was doing the right thing – and I still think it was the right thing.’

Eight years after she left, Chris and Shelley were in the Pitcher and Piano bar in Richmond when he recognised the waitress. It was Michelle. He recalled, ‘We shared a fond welcome and had a good chat.’ By that time, they both had cause for some regret. She would continue to be involved in music by hosting club nights before eventually marrying Hugh Gadsden, the manager of Madness.

Michelle’s departure created a vacancy. Chris and Bob didn’t go back to their original shortlist but decided to try to find someone new. They still wanted a five-piece band but they couldn’t face going through a drawn-out audition process again just to find one girl so they asked Pepi Lemer if she could think of anyone. She could – one of her former students, Abigail Kis, a half-Hungarian girl with a stunning, soulful voice.

She proved to be a non-starter. She had a steady boyfriend who, by all accounts, was not that keen on her moving into the house in Maidenhead. She also had a place at university to study performing arts, which seemed a better option for her. With hindsight, she was probably a fraction too young, and putting a boyfriend first was not in keeping with the ethos of the rest of the band. She became another ‘fifth’ Spice Girl, observing sadly, ‘I would have loved to be that famous. Every time I see them I think, “It could have been me.”’

While they searched for the right replacement, there was some good news for Chris when Victoria told him she had decided once and for all that her future lay with his all-girl band and not with Persuasion. She had talked things over with her parents and realised that everything was much more professional with the Herberts and she could not keep both going if she was going to continue living in Maidenhead. This was business and she seemed to have no compunction in ditching her former bandmates.

Nothing was etched in stone as far as the make-up of the new group was concerned. It seemed a good idea, however, that the fifth member should be the youngest – thereby lowering the average age of the five. It was back to the drawing board for Pepi, whose next thought was a bubbly blonde girl she had taught three years previously at Barnet College. She remembered that her name was Emma Bunton but, in those pre-Facebook days, had no idea how to contact her. She had to pop into the college to search through old records before eventually coming up with a phone number. Emma’s mother, Pauline Bunton, answered and Pepi explained that she wanted to invite her daughter to try out for a new girl group.

Emma was thrilled to be asked. She had the advantage of being another stage-school veteran and had attended many auditions. Chris drove over to North London to meet her and her mum, and they had a pleasant chat over a coffee before going back to Pepi’s house where Emma sang ‘Right Here’, a top-three hit in the UK the previous year for the all-girl American R&B trio SWV (Sisters with Voices). It was a good choice. Chris Herbert thought she was perfect: ‘She was very cute, very nice with a sweet voice, a very “pop” voice. I really liked her character a lot. It was one of those light-bulb moments when I realised she was definitely something we didn’t have. It was immediate for me.’

Chris had to explain, though, that it all depended on her being accepted by the other four. They would have to look at the dynamic between her and the current residents of the house in Maidenhead. One thing stood in her favour – that she was from a working-class background in North London. When Emma Lee Bunton was born in the Victoria Maternity Hospital, Barnet, on 23 January 1976, her father, Trevor, was a delivery driver. She would be the youngest of Touch but was actually older than Michelle.

Trevor subsequently became a milkman and sometimes took his daughter out on his rounds during the school holidays. Her mother did her bit for the family finances, working as a home help for a well-to-do local woman. Pauline was raised in Barnet but her father – Emma’s grandfather – was Irish, Séamus Davitt, from County Wexford. They were Catholic and Emma had a traditional baptism and attended mass growing up. Sadly, she never knew her grandfather, who died before she was born.

She has an older half-brother, Robert Bunton, from Trevor’s first marriage and she would go to the park and watch them play football in the local league at weekends. Her younger brother, Paul James, known as PJ, is four years her junior and the two of them are very close. They shared a room until Emma was twelve. Because money was tight they sometimes needed to share their dinner as well.

Emma might have been the baby of the new band but, more relevantly, she had the most extensive CV. She seemed to have been in showbusiness all her life. She was a natural blonde and a very photogenic little girl, who was much in demand as a child model, getting work from the age of two onwards.

Pauline had done some modelling when she was a child so it seemed natural to sign her daughter up with the prestigious Norrie Carr agency, putting aside Emma’s earnings so that she would have a nest egg when she was older. In the end the money proved invaluable when she needed fees for theatre school. Over the years Emma featured in so many promotions that it was a rare household that hadn’t come across a picture of her cherubic face plugging some product or business, or on the front cover of a magazine in the dentist’s surgery.

She was the poster girl for Outspan oranges, the girlfriend of the Milky Bar Kid, smiling sweetly on the tins of Heinz Invaders spaghetti-shapes and standing next to a pretend mum in ads for Mothercare and Argos. She was a cover girl for Woman’s Weekly and Womancraft magazine. She was the face of best-selling games including and, arguably most famously, the timeless favourite Pop Up Pirate. One of the agents at Norrie Carr said, ‘She never stopped working and had that special something we were looking for. She had a twinkle in her eye and loved the camera.’

Hardly a week would go by when Emma wasn’t whisked out of school so that her mum could take her off to a shoot. If it was in the West End, she always made sure to include a trip to the Science or Natural History Museum to make sure her little girl wasn’t falling behind in her educational progress. She was at St Theresa’s, a Catholic primary school in East End Road, Finchley, close to the North Circular Road.

Emma loved her modelling days, spending time with the other boys and girls or sometimes inviting her own friends along to join her. Occasionally someone at school might be jealous if they saw her picture in a catalogue but mostly she had a very happy childhood. It helped that she developed such a close bond with her mum. Emma said, ‘She’s got such a soft nature, so unselfish. But she’s also a very solid person.’ The biggest drama for her parents came when she was hit by a car at the age of four. She needed hospital treatment and still has a scar on her leg as a permanent reminder of a lucky escape.

One huge bonus of modelling was that every year from the age of about six until she was twelve she was one of ten boys and girls chosen to shoot a catalogue abroad for two weeks. Family summer holidays were always spent in a caravan in Clacton-on-Sea so trips to Corsica, Lanzarote and Mallorca were very exciting for a young girl.

Emma’s other great love was dancing. She had started ballet classes aged three and had a natural talent. When she was five, her mum had spotted a flyer locally for the Kay School of Dance in Finchley and managed to enrol her daughter even though she was younger than the other children there. She was always far more interested in ballet, tap and disco dancing than in taking part in any sports at school. Her parents could only afford the ballet lessons but the school gave her the other classes for free. Her early ambition to be a professional dancer was dashed at fourteen when she fell and injured her back. By coincidence, when she was eight she came across Victoria Adams once or twice in dancing competitions in North London.

When she was ten, Emma was accepted by the Sylvia Young Theatre School, which had rapidly become one of the leading performing-arts schools in the country. Sylvia was an East Ender from Whitechapel and had originally become involved with teaching by organising fundraisers for her daughter’s primary school in Wanstead. She enjoyed that so much, she moved on to charging 10p a lesson for talented local youngsters. In 1981 she started a Saturday school in Drury Lane but that soon proved so popular that she decided to look for a permanent base. Two years later she took over a disused former Church of England primary school just north of Marylebone station in Rossmore Road.

Sylvia liked to call her pupils her ‘babies’ or ‘young ’uns’, which led her to adopt Sylvia Young as her professional name. Legend has it that she expelled her own daughter, Frances Ruffelle, from the school for being ‘disruptive’, although the award-winning actress and singer was already eighteen when the permanent school was founded. Discipline, however, was an important ingredient of life at Sylvia Young’s – not so much abiding by a long list of rules but, more importantly, cultivating an ability to work hard and be a step ahead of the competition in the tough world of entertainment.

Sylvia was always looking for ‘someone who has a certain amount of ability but is trainable’ – mirroring Chris Herbert’s expectations for his girl group. Another mantra from the school also fitted perfectly with his strategy: ‘If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.’

She also insisted that her students learn everything equally so they could audition for a television soap one day and for a new pop group the next. It’s easy to see how Emma would be a perfect candidate for Touch.

By the time Emma joined Sylvia Young in 1985, the school seemed to have a direct conveyor-belt to Central Casting for some of the most popular programmes on television – if you needed a young Londoner for a market stall in Albert Square, Sylvia’s establishment was the first place to look. Adam Woodyatt (Ian Beale), Nick Berry (Simon Wickes) and Letitia Dean (Sharon Watts) were just three of the alumni who became household names in EastEnders.

You had to be good to be accepted at the school in the first place, passing an audition, an interview and a written test. Her mum waited nervously in the street outside throughout the process and was as pleased as Emma when she was accepted. Parents had to be able to afford the fees, which weren’t cheap and were an obvious drain on the Bunton family finances. It didn’t help matters when Pauline and Trevor split up a year later, although he still lived locally and, according to Emma, the disruption to her life was minimal. She remained on very good terms with her dad throughout her teenage years. Pauline retrained as a martial-arts teacher and taught her daughter the finer points of Goju-kai karate. Emma might look sweet but you wouldn’t want to get on her wrong side.

Apparently much more traumatic than her parents’ split was the news that she would have to leave the theatre school because her mum and dad could no longer pay. She was enrolled for a week or two at a local secondary school, which she hated. ‘I cried so much,’ she later said. All ended well when she was awarded a scholarship back to Sylvia’s.

By this time Emma and her mum had moved to a third-floor flat on a small estate in Rogers Walk. There was no garden so Emma and her friends would spend a lot of time in the local park. One of her best friends as a young teenager was Kellie Bright, then another budding actress. They would spend weekends at Alexandra Palace in North London, roller-skating or messing about in the rowing boats on the lake. Much later Kellie would become one of the best-known faces on British TV playing Linda Carter, landlady of the Queen Vic pub in Albert Square.

Another classmate was star actress Keeley Hawes, the daughter of a London cab driver, who lived in a three-bedroom council flat practically across the road from the school in Marylebone. She and Emma were London girls and became firm friends; Keeley was a welcome guest at the caravan in Clacton. She, too, had won a scholarship to Sylvia Young’s. In those days she didn’t sound anything like her famous creations, Mrs Durrell in The Durrells or the home secretary, Julia Montague, in Bodyguard. A series of elocution lessons gave her the cut-glass vowels of one of television’s most recognisable voices.

When she left Sylvia Young’s, though, she became a model before her breakthrough as an actress, and didn’t need to speak. She had been working in the fashion department of Cosmopolitan