www.musicweek.com INTERVIEWBANANARAMA
(STILL) GOING BANANAS
They were one of PWL’s most loved groups – and now Bananarama are back, celebrating 30 years. Music Week talks to Keren and Sara
TALENT BY TINA HART
T
ime flies when you’re having fun. Especially when you’re having fun with Fun Boy Three. Bananarama are celebrating an impressive
30 years since their first hit Really Saying Something stormed the UK pop charts – in which time they’ve sold over 40 million records and consequently become one of the UK’s most successful girl groups. Far from putting their feet up, existing members
Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward are still touring and still popular - putting in a special appearance at Pete Waterman’s Hit Factory Live show in Hyde Park next week. They release a Best Of CD / DVD set on July 9
via Rhino UK, the same day that the Pete Waterman Presents The Hit Factory compilation (PWL/Sony) lands on shelves. When Music Week caught up with Dallin and
Woodward, they revealed how their career back in the day was “just like being on a night out”, how they partied hard with rock stars - and the video that, looking back, makes them cringe the most…
What prompted you to form Bananarama 30 years ago? Sara: At college in the early Eighties we bumped into Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols. Keren and I ended up living above their rehearsal room. We would often go down and sing with them then Paul suggested we form a group. We started off taking Venus and a couple of other tracks around to clubs and just jumping up on stage with gogo dancers and performing. It was just fun then. Somebody got to hear about it, recorded some demos for us and it went from there.
Did your level of success surprise you? Sara:We found it quite amusing. As a teenager one minute you’re watching Top of the Pops, then you’re on it. We had no training and it just felt like a night out. It was completely shambolic and amateur but the core of it was that we loved music and actually wrote our own songs. Keren: It caught us by surprise, certainly. We were swept along with it initially – it seemed so easy. It was only a year or two in that we just thought this
could be a career. A lot of people took our shyness as us being surly and rude – you could tell we had no training. I think the randomness suited us just fine. It was all part of our appeal.
What’s the best rock and roll story from your heyday - that’s printable? Keren: I’ve got quite a lot but I’m not sure if I want to tell you… We were quite known as party girls. We didn’t see ourselves as a pop act – we were more likely to be drinking the bar dry with Def Leppard – stuff you wouldn’t expect. It was a lot of fun, maybe a little too much on occasion…
What was it like working Stock, Aitken and Waterman at that time? Sara: I loved it. Peter is such a lovely guy and he’s such a music fan and so enthusiastic about everything. Mike Stock was really talented at writing music. We got on really well with them. Obviously after a while it does become a little bit stale and I think we did one album with them that wasn’t particularly great but in our heyday it was exactly what the three of us wanted to do. Keren: It was great. I though Mike Stock was particularly talented as a songwriter and Peter was great with ideas. I saw him on the news over the weekend and he still bubbling over with enthusiasm which I think is fantastic.
Are you looking forward to The Hit Factory Live show and hanging out with your former PWL musician contemporaries? Sara: [laughs] I am. It’s going to be good one. I just hope the weather’s nice. My daughter is going to be doing backing vocals with us. Keren:The only problem we have is the lady who was going to make our outfits has been deported [laughs].
Don’t you fancy borrowing something from one of the other acts? Keren: I’m not sure I could squeeze into Sinitta’s, she’ll probably be wearing gold hot pants or something.
Will Siobhan make an appearance? Sara: No. It’s quite funny because when you look back, she was only actually in it for seven years. It’s
MAIN PHOTO Really saying something: Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin, friends since the age of four, relive their Bananarama glory years
ABOVE The peel show: Bananarama as a three-piece in the early Eighties and (right) the 30th anniversary album
such a small amount of time, [but] obviously our heyday. It was really good fun, the three of us as friends going through all that was fantastic but obviously she wanted to go her own way and do her own music.
The Hit Factory Live celebrates the Best of British Pop – who do you think would qualify if there was an equivalent for today’s artists? Sara:The obvious. Jessie J and all the ones that have got great voices. Ed Sheeran - he’d be my favourite person, I love his lyrics and voice and I like the fact it’s just a guy and a guitar and not all fancy and dressed up, it’s sometimes refreshing just to have that in music.
The record you’re bringing out for the anniversary is a CD/DVD package – what’s your favourite Bananarama song? Sara: I like Robert De Niro’s Waiting just because it’s such a bizarre title. It’s completely random and I’m still not sure what it’s about. We wanted it to sound like Pull Up To The Bumper by Grace Jones. It was written in our council flat in Holborn. Keren: I like Robert De Niro’s Waiting too, it’s one I just never tire of doing. Also, Love In the First Degree. I really like a lot of the later stuff we’ve done which maybe hasn’t been that successful.
What’s your favourite video? Sara: When we first started with Cruel Summer we just wanted to go to New York so we didn’t care what the video looked like or who shot it. We had a budget of £10,000 and we would give it to whoever would get us there for that amount of money! As it turned out the video is quite good and it went on to be our first hit there. Keren: In the later years I like the one we did in Vegas called Move In My Direction. Na Na Hey Hey is probably the worst ever – we looked like a bunch of bus drivers. There was no one telling us what to wear… except for the cover of Shy Boy where Boy George dressed us up and we looked like a couple of shotputters. So I have to take full responsibility for all the hideous things I ever wore.
06.07.12 MusicWeek 19
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