The second part of the epic Bananarama interview, originally in Gay Times, then more in Pink Paper, finally concludes with part II. More interesting stuff from the girls…

Pink Paper: Love Bites: Best Bananarama single that never was?

Keren: (smiling) Do you like that one? Was that the first track we did on the album? When we went over to Sweden?

Sara: Yeah. How does it go again? (Keren howls with laughter)

PP: I’m not going to sing it!

K: We really enjoyed doing that album, we did a whole load of it over in Sweden, it was different for us. But we really enjoyed doing the whole of this album with one person because I actually think it makes a better album, because you haven’t got different sounding things, the whole album is better consistently.

PP: The sound is very now because pop is back. Well, acceptably back.

K: In the 90s it was impossible to put out a pop album I think. It was an eye-opener for us because suddenly there wasn’t anything in the charts where we can fit in. It was all sort of baggy indie stuff. But everything comes around again. Fashion again is quite 80s, but with a modern twist, contemporary 80s, so it suits us quite well.

PP: How will older fans feel?

S: I still think it has really strong melodies, and they’re really poppy melodies.

K: Yeah.

S: Well you take that into consideration when you’re writing music . We just do what we feel like doing at the time, it’s the way it’s always been, there’s never been a masterplan to make a certain type of abum, it;s just what happens when you’re in the studio isn’t it. Maybe you’re influenced by other songs you hear.

PP: And what are your influences?

S: Well everything’s really really produced now, with all the mod cons and the voice things. It makes me laugh when I hear some of the stuff coming back from America, I just think ‘we’ve had that sound in Europe for so long’.

K: Some of the black artists that are out there are putting out stuff that almost sounds like euro pop from five or six years ago, then it all comes full circle and comes back from over there. I think if you listen to Lady GaGa it’s out and out pop songs, for me, with that really hard electronica edge on it. I think that’s great, that’s the sort of stuff we would make in our time.

PP: Love Comes is very much of that. Do you feel positive about the whole project?

K: Positive in the way that I think it’s a great track and I think the album’s great, anything else is a bonus for us I think. I don’t sort of think ‘oh wow, that’ll be a number one’, it’s not something that would cross our minds, but I think it’s a great album. I think it’s the best thing we’ve done in years and I’m really very happy with it.

PP: Do you get tagged with the ‘nostalgia band’ label?

S: Well we steered away from all those 80s shows for a long time, we never did any of them until the last couple of years. We thought, you know, why not do it. Why we did it is because they paid for a band and we thought ‘we’ll see how it sounds with a live band without having to have any costs ourselves’ and it went down really well.

K: It was just really fun to be out there playing in front of 10,000 people. We haven’t had the opportunity to do that for a while and it’s worked really well, it’s given us our stage confidence back.

S: Now we just wanna do our own stuff.

PP: Does that mean you finally learned the dance routine to I Heard A Rumour properly?

K: (looks at Sara) Did we?

S: Yeah, that’s about the only one I can do.

K: Yeah exactly.

S: And Venus (pulls a face and does lack lustre move from the routine, both start laughing)

PP: Is there a song you haven’t tired of singing?

S: (quickly) Robert De Niro and Cruel Summer.

K: Cruel Summer in its many guises. That seems to change every year. I love the latest version of that.

PP: Is there a new one?

K: Oh god yeah, it’s fantastic. It’s just fabulous. We start the show with it, after our lovely electronic info we sounds very clubby.

PP: Have you remixed any more of your own songs?

S: No, just that one.

K: That one’s just always seemed right.

S: It’s so massive in America.

K: It was so ploddy to perform on stage.

S: People just want remixes of it.

K: And it’s a sinch to sing as well (both laugh). Unlike some of the others, which are a bit high-pitched for us these days.

PP: Does that mean Siobhan’s a happy bunny, didn’t she write it?

S: Yeah she did. But we’ve re-recorded it.

K: We’ve rerecorded it so she won’t get any of those vocal royalties. (howls of laughter) No performing rights for her off that one.

PP: You get asked this all the time no doubt, but do you still see her?

K: Yeah we do. Bless her, I love her.

S: Even though we spent a lot of years apart, when we met up again it was like time hadn’t passed.

K: She’s away a lot a the moment and really busy but when we do get together we have a giggle. It’s really good fun seeing her.

PP: And people always want to know, even though you did Waterloo, is there a change that you might work together again? (Both shake their heads) No, you’re shaking your heads straight away… So I shouldn’t mention that people also want to see you with Jacqui too…

S: No.

K: (giggles) We’re happy the way it is to be honest.

S: We’ve been two people for more years than it hasn’t been. Since 91. We don’t need anyone else.

K: Unless its Tom Hardy. Ooh he’s gorgeous.

S: You go and Google him.

PP: Are there plans then for an anniversary?

S: The 30th? It’s in a few years. Possibly. Probably. We missed the silver jubilee didn’t we?

K: We did the 20th, when Siobhan came on at the end. So there might be another outing.

PP: Please Yourself was a bit of a blue-print for Steps. Discuss.

S: Well obviously we’d had 10 years in that field, it was time to move over and let other people have a go.

K: Steps were a bit of a one-off in that period, weren’t they? I don’t know how they quite managed that. It really was the Brit-pop time, but people obviously still wanted a bit of pop.

PP: What’s your take on Steps’ versions of your songs?

S: The more the merrier as far as I’m concerned.

K: Lovely!

S: Cheers for that.

K: Cheers for Last Thing On My Mind being in the charts for about 25 weeks. We could just sit at home watching the money rolling in without having to do any work at all, it’s fantastic. I’m not going to moan about that. Lets celebrate with a cookie. (grabs giant cookie, leans back, Sarah laughs)

K: Ooh soggy old cookie.

PP: Anyway, what are Steps up to these days.

S: Yo-yo dieting.

K: Not us, Steps.

PP: So where do you stand on comparisons to other girl groups like Girls Aloud or The Saturdays?

S: It’s not the same kind of group. We’re more in tune with The Prodigy, who’re our friends, or The Cure. It’s just another group – great pop songs but another group that’s kind of manufactured.

K: I think what they do is fantastic but to me they’re paid performers. They are performers. It’s coming out of a stage school and wanting to perform. It’s not a creative thing.

S: But also it’s 20 years on, their period of time wouldn’t have worked back in our day, you couldn’t work like that, be a complete manufactured… Who was manufactured back then?

K: No-one. That was the great thing about the 80s.

S: That’s why people remember it, because everyone was individual. Duran Duran, Boy George, us, Thompson Twins. Everyone wrote their own stuff and had their own image and their own sound, then everything got blanded out.

K: Because it worked, everyone tried to stick people together to be like the success that we’d had. I know in the 80s even there were various girl groups put together by various people who tried to emulate us. But they couldn’t be us.

S: But I don’t care because good pop music is good pop music. I love Girls Aloud, you know, fine. But we’re not all the same type of band. I saw Louis Walsh on TV saying Bananarama were the first manufactured girl group. I was absolutely furious. I just thought ‘how you can say that? You manufactured your boy bands, we weren’t anything like that.’

PP: I shall categorically state for the record that you were not manufactured.

S: Absolutely.

PP: But that’s the misconception these days that these things are created, and not that people can be around for years and years before having success.

K: But I think you can only be around for years and years if you’ve got something that comes from within you. I don’t think you could be around for as long as us or plenty of other acts if it doesn’t come from you because the public would certainly tire of you. If you’re just given songs and just stood there, it has to be a bit more than that. I think Girls Aloud have lasted incredibly well, I think they’ve developed more as a live thing, or putting on a show, it’s gone a sort of different way. They’ve got that team behind them, but I can’t see them still doing it in 25 years time.

S: See they probably wouldn’t want to do that, they’d probably want to go into acting and other things, whereas for me…

K: It’s our life.

S: My main focus is music. I like writing it, I like performing it. It’s a creative process isn’t it? It’s not someone giving me a song. They probably enjoy doing that now but would want to go into acting. They might not want to be around in 25 years time, but I’m very happy that ours fortunately has kind of worked out that we’ve been able to.

We’ve had a few periods where you try and do a dance record that someone’s going to put out and then not and you go back to the drawing board and you think ‘why couldn’t it have just kept going like Madonna’s did’, but it doesn’t and it didn’t and you have your highs and lows. But I think that’s everything that shapes you and still drives you to continue.

K: I think the beauty of now, for me, is that there’s not that stress of thinking you’re in competition with anyone or you’re trying to have chart success or you need to do it because you’re desperate for money. There’s no reason for us to do it apart from the fact that we love doing it. And we have a laugh. But it’s not just a laugh.

S: I like writing songs, it’s a creative thing.

K: And if we weren’t performing we’d be writing songs. But I enjoy it actually more now for various reasons, one of which is that I think that we’re much better at what we do now than we ever were before. And it’s so easy, I love being on stage now whereas I used to get really nervous. I love writing songs, whereas I never used to be confident with my talents, maybe. You grow into things. But also, it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t work.

(Pause)

S: It is for me.

(Both roar with laughter)

S: You know I watched Madonna the other night, she was absolutely phenomenal.

K: She is phenomenal. And she is so driven. I couldn’t be like that. It’s like a whole life of… The way that she works and hones her body, I have HUGE admiration for Madonna, I think she’s quite incredible. I couldn’t be like that because I wouldn’t be able to go to the pub everynight… If I had to watch my waistline.

PP: Any chance of a book?

S: Ours would be phenomenal.

K: We have some stories to tell it’s just I’m not sure I want to tell them sometimes. It’s difficult. Firstly you think of your family, then you think of your kids and then you think about your reputation. Don’t want to tarnish my reputation. There’s lots to tell. Or maybe not to tell. Use your imagination.