STAR-ECENTRAL.COM

Still got it
By N. RAMA LOHAN

Where and how the Sex Pistols came to involve themselves in the birth of 1980s pop sensation Bananarama may be one of those fabled, rarely-told stories lost in the mist of time, but band member Sara Dallin remembers it as clear as day.

“I lived at the YWCA hostel and I met the Sex Pistols’ drummer Paul Cook around there because he had a rehearsal space below us. It really wasn’t a glamorous place to be living at. Paul invited us to use his studio so Keren (Woodward) and I used to plug the guitars in the amps and play through the night. It was Paul who got us our first break with a demo,” she reminisces fondly over the phone from her home in London.

While not viewed as one of the most cutting edge or revolutionary of 80s pop acts, Bananarama easily slipped into the mainstream with its catchy pop tunes and along the way found itself inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records as Britain’s most successful girl group.

The ride through that illustrious decade was breathtaking for Dallin and her mates Woodward and Siobhan Fahey. Making hits was what the girls knew best, churning out chart busters like Shy Boy, Cruel Summer, Robert De Niro’s Waiting, I Heard A Rumour, Love In The First Degree, Venus and more. And even if they remain reluctant to accept the Girl Power manifesto, the girls predated The Spice Girls by more than a decade with their spunky attitude.

“It made me laugh when I saw the Spice Girls on TV recently because that’s exactly how we were when we first started ... we gave the same sort of responses to questions thrown at us. When we first came out, people really thought we were strange. It has always been a male-dominated industry and women have to work that much harder to get noticed. I’ve always felt that women should be given the same opportunities and that’s something we fought for, so I’m glad things have worked out well through the years.”

It was all a far cry when the trio first began, though. “Keren and I are childhood friends. When we first started, we were shy 18-year-olds. Our performances were quite shambolic then. But our songs were always polished, even the older ones,” she says proudly.

The Bananarama of today isn’t the same as it was before, though. For starters, Fahey left the fold in 1988 (after getting married to Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart) as the band was in the midst of reaping the success of its fourth album Wow! Even Jacquie O’Sullivan’s stint in the set-up was short-lived, suggesting that Bananarama was meant to continue as a duo after all.

Today, both Dallin and Woodward continue to carry the Bananarama legacy well into the new millennium and will even bring its brand of care-free pop to Malaysia for the Here & Now Tour 2008: The Very Best of The 80s at Arena of Stars, Genting Highlands Resort on March 21 and 22.

“This is an 80s show and naturally, we’ll be doing all our big hits ... with a real backing band and dancing. We’ll definitely be playing Cruel Summer, Robert De Niro’s Waiting, Venus and the lot. There’s a massive audience for 80s music, so this is going to be exciting,” professes Dallin.

She says it was the live band that really got her set on wanting to do this. “We’re really excited about having a band. We also had a band on our tour in 1989 and we remember how great those shows were.”
While the group is recognised as the classic all-girl trio, both Dallin and Woodward have grown comfortable that they are only a duo at the moment.

“Keren and I have been a duo for more than 15 years, which means we’ve been a duo longer than a trio, so there is nothing unusual for us about this arrangement.”

Fahey remains close friends with the girls till today, though. “Yeah, of course we keep in touch. In fact, sometimes it feels like we’ve hardly been apart,” says Dallin.

Bananarama’s headiest time was when it plundered American radio and heard that artiste Andy Warhol had described the band as the next big thing. “It was absolutely fantastic to be getting into America and we did it with Venus. I remember us being at Prince’s club in Minneapolis ... we had such a great time.”

Though the trio wrote its own songs, like many acts from the 80s, Bananarama would in the tail end of the decade, enlist the assistance of production powerhouse Stock, Aitken and Waterman (SAW). “We really liked their production of Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round, which is why we went to them.”

SAW had never shared songwriting credits with any of its previous artists, so the collaboration with Bananarama marked a first. “It wasn’t a big deal for us to write with them. We had always been writing our own songs. I guess Kylie (Minogue) and Jason (Donovan) never wrote their own songs. And this is something I’ve noticed more recently as well ... a lot of big-name artistes these days don’t write their own songs.”

People remember the 80s as musically unique and Dallin concedes wholeheartedly. “They were very identifiable. The songs now are so sanitised and you have to look at reality shows for explanations. You have songwriters writing for everyone where artists barely get their personalities into songs anymore.”

Neither Dallin nor Woodward are spring chickens now and touring isn’t embraced with the same wild reckless abandon it might have been back in the day. “Back then, it was all about Bananarama and often, this was at the expense of personal relationships. The whole touring thing is more appealing these days because we get to do it at a more leisurely pace.”

The Here and Now tour won’t be the duo’s first time in Malaysia. Bananarama was here in the mid-90s. “We did a couple of shows and I remember that people were really friendly,” she says, sounding pleased.

It’s hard to put a price on nostalgia – but for as little as RM200, the price of admission seems paltry, especially for a blast-from-the-past experience.