With her debut album "Sacred Heart" getting rave reviews from everywhere that matters and with her single, "You're History" high in the charts, Siobhan Fahey tells Dave Jennings how she started again after leaving Bananarama.
She must still feel as if she's on the run. True, a luxury hotel in Paris is an unusually comfortable hideout and, after we leave here, Siobhan Fahey's lifestyle will be that of the rich and famous person she became in her years with Bananarama. Yet she had to break out of what had become solitary confinement, a stifling institution, and she has a refugee's nervousness, speaking softly and dragging hard on cigarettes. She's alone as she talks to me, give or take periodic interruptions from her small son Sam. Her partner, Marcella Detroit, is busy elsewhere, preparing to get married. In any case, Shakespear's Sister is Siobhan's responsibility. This is not to dismiss Detroit's multi-faceted contribution, but having escaped from one institution, Fahey has no intention of building another. Shakespear's Sister will be a loose and shifting entity, with Siobhan as the one constant factor. Detroit has a high profile on the "Sacred Heart" LP, co-writing much of the material as well as contributing guitar, harmonica, and the extraordinary voice that swoops out of the "You're History" single. But this project is, in the end, as much Siobhan's baby as Sam is. As she tries to explain herself and the LP that patently means everything to her, the title track's tender words, "Spare my sacred heart" take on a new resonance. "It's such a personal thing," she says. "You're exposing things on a record that you'd never normally discuss with a stranger, that you might discuss with your best friend over bottles of wine. It'd be nice to have a Number One, it'd be a cheap thrill, but it has achieved what I wanted to achieve in that we released a record. I am in a privileged position -- I'm signed to a record label, and they've given me money to make a record at a time when it's almost impossible to get signed up. I want to make records that might make people laugh or cry, that people will relate to their own lives." "When I listen to something that I think is great, afterwards I often go into a deep depression and think I'm not fit to wash that person's feet. But, on the other hand, it's a stimulus to dig deeper -- it shows what can be done." "You can never tell how people will react to things. About six years ago, Bananarama recorded a song called 'Rough Justice'. I always thought it was a beautiful song, and I was really disappointed that, because of people's perceptions of us, the kind of people who would have related to that song never heard it. But, about four weeks ago, I was listening to a Simon Bates 'Our Tune' and it was a devastatingly sad story. This girl had an elder sister who got on to heroin when she was about 15, became heavily addicted and killed herself. The younger sister said that, although she was still deeply pained by her sister's death, the song that helped her most through that time was Bananarama's 'Rough Justice'. I just wept buckets. It was devastating to me, because it just shows what other people make of what you write, and how powerful a force it can be if you aspire to do that." She always wrote, even in her Bananarama days, but the opportunities grew less frequent. "I was the main lyrical contributor up until the 'Wow!' album. But what I wanted to say lyrically didn't fit in with those sort of backing tracks. We'd moved in a completely different direction, where the idea was that we'd make chart hits -- that was all that we were and all that we'd ever be. And I couldn't accept that, personally. I thught about leaving the group for a couple of years before I did it, and I thought I was sick of music -- I didn't have plans to do anything else. But the moment I left, I felt a tremendous release, and I realized that it wasn't really music that I was sick of -- that it was still the thing that had most effect on me as a person." Still, for all Siobhan's talk of sincere self-expression, Shakespear's Sister has been packaged with conspicuous care. We've seen the Man Ray pastiche bare-back posters and ads, the elaborate vampish outfits, and now an LP sleeve filled with a full-face shot of Fahey wearing slightly more make-up than Jack Nicholson smeared on for 'Batman'. Is this not a contrived image I see before me, Siobhan? "I put a lot of energy into thinking about how I wanted to present the band visually. Because I got really excited by things like The Sex Pistols, which were more than just a record -- the way they looked and the way they behaved totally endorsed the things they said and the way they sounded. Similarly early Roxy, similarly early Bowie -- the list is endless. I think it's all a bit hollow if you don't live it, in all the ways that are at your disposal." Fine, but talking to you now, you don't seem like the vampish character who sings "You're History". "Really? Well, still waters run deep, as they say! I don't try and be a vamp," she insists. "I'm not denying my own sexuality, but I don't regard it as the major part of anyone's personality, and the music that I really respect is an expression of the soul and the mind of the person rather than their sexual cravings. I don't think my album dwells particularly on sex." Well, yes and no. "Sacred Heart" isn't salacious or brazen, but Siobhan's lyrics do dwell on the darker, crueller side of relationships. It's a record more about power than about affection. And there certainly is some sexual imagery, not least on the track that's been strengthened and remixed to become the next single. "Run Silent" has Fahey intriguingly purring, "You're soft and naked, young and strong/My heartbeat races as you aim the gun/Don't talk of revolution as a thing of the past." "That's difficult to talk about because it's abstract -- not about one experience. The braod themes are faith, fear, and violence. As I say, I'm not afraid of sexuality, and I'm not afraid of using or talking about that. But I regard it as a very dangerous thing, potentially very destructive. I've never played games with it, but games have been played on me, and I suppose that's why I see sex almost synonymously with cruelty and deceit. All the really horrible things that are happening on a larger scale in society also happen on a one-to-one basis. So my songs always have ambiguity. They describe a much bigger state of affairs as well as a personal relationship." "I've been really surprised by people's response to "You're History". People say to me, 'My God, that's such a waspish, bitchy lyric' -- in such a cruel, cynical, hard world as modern Britain! That's what people really think! That's an honest reaction to a situation I've been through, that I haven't tried to dress up for public consumption and therefore, I'd have thought it'd ome as a welcome relief. Most songs on the radio tend to deal with how attractive love and sex is, how it's the ultimate goal to aim for, and how everybody's really nice." "Run Silent" is a hypnotic, insistent whisper of a song. Dramatically arranged, and with its spiralling melody boosted by the attractive contrast between Fahey and Detroit's voices, it will add a rare touch of humanity and sparkle to daytime radio in a couple of month's time. And that will be a tribute to Fahey's determination -- for the LP contains a song that would have been a far safer bet to chart. It's the album's one cover version, a pleasant but hardly radical remake of Bob Marley's "Could You Be Loved". "That was the first thing that Richard (Feldman, co-producer with Siobhan on the LP) and I tried to do, just to break the ice and establish a working relationship. It wasn't intended to be on the record. But the record company heard it and said, 'It's a smash, Top Five, it's coming out as a single!'" "I said, 'It's never coming out as a single!' Much as it's a beautiful song and I love the sentiment, I felt that it was an expression of Bob Marley's spirit and not my own, and that it didn't belong on the album. But the record company contractually own it, and put it on -- they said it was their safety net should everthing else I released fail. But I won't ever promote it or do a video for it. It'll come out as a single over my dead body." Though Siobhan still claims to regard London as her home, she and husband Dave Stewart have bases in Los Angeles and here in France, as well back in Britain. "I haven't got a home at the moment," she says wryly. "Three houses and no home. I'm never anywhere for long." Doesn't she think that this interant, privileged lifestyle is likely to put her out of touch with her audience? "I don't worry about it at all. I come from a very ordinary family, and I've known a great deal of poverty in my life -- a lot of it through choice, because I didn't follow the accepted route from middle-class grammar school girl, to university to 'a good career'. I went and lived in a squat in London and lived hand-to-mouth for a few years. And so did Dave. All right, we find ourselves at the other end of the financial scale now, but the wealth -- which isn't mine, it's Dave's -- is a by-product of having refuted those rat-race values. I mean, I wouldn't feel uncomfortable in a squat -- I've been there, I've done it! I've got more in common spiritually with those people than with people who've decided to go the more normal route in life." So many people sacrifice all their potential for this illusion called security, don't they? "Yeah. I crave security, too -- I think a lot of women do, especially. But I found in Bananarama that security is nothing to do with money -- it's all to do with if you feel right about yourself and what you're doing. You've got to find like-minded people in the world, because if you just go with the crowd then that's when you begin to feel really alone and isolated." "What was good about Bananarama to begin with was that we were irreverent, and we broke all the rules of pedigree," she remembers fondly. "Then, when we had success, we were expected to be like a Pickettywitch of the Eighties. But we started writing and saying things that we weren't supposed to say, and people didn't understand that kind of mould-breaking. When the band decided that they were tired of fighting the expectations of the record company, media and public, that's when I started feeling uncomfortable with it. We'd always sent ourselves up, and the more normal the music got, the more outrageously camp we got to counterbalance that -- and I gradually realised that the camp thing was a smokescreen we were using to fool ourselves that we were doing something original. I'm speaking in the royal 'we' -- Sarah and Keren are really happy with what they do. They had a different vision for Bananarama than I did -- mine was more the early and middle years." Ultimately, ambition and a weakening of will led Bananarama into the embrace of the anti-Christs of Eighties' pop. Siobhan's memories of the "Wow!" sessions with Stock, Aitken, and Waterman reflect a classic case of alienation from the means of production. "I felt very uncomfortable working within that environment. They'd present us with a backing track, and suggest a melody, then we'd write a lyric. The final adjustments to the melody would be made, we'd do the vocal, and the next thing would be that we'd hear when it was mixed. I just felt that if you'd taken our vocals off and Kylie on, it would've been a Kylie record. It's cynical, cold and calculated. If you don't care about music, then you don't regard it as a big sin, because it's making a living, other people are making a living so fine. But I've got too much love and respect for music, having experienced what it can do to me." And Pete Waterman, she reckons, despises his audience. "He's a sort of thinning medallion man. He's frightened of women. And most men who fear women manipulate women, to keep them in their place. It's about as creative as all the Fleet Street editors who have their Star Birds and Page Three girls, marketing women in a very one-dimensional way." A more edifying recent experience for Siobhan was the trip to the USSR which included Shakespear's Sister's live debut. "It was the most amazing experience I've ever had -- a real insight into human beings. They've lived their lives in such a repressed and poverty-stricken environment, but the thing that struck me most was how much we had in common, which far outweighed the different circumstances. What I really loved about the people I met in Leningrad is that they use their intellects -- they read a lot, they go to art galleries, they write poetry, they paint. That's how they get their excitement -- we turn on the bloody 'Top Of The Pops'! We're all bombarded by this imagery that we're supposed to think is exciting -- and it's not exciting, because it's got nothing to do with us. And so our minds are just dead." She also found Soviet women generally bolder than their British counterparts -- "But I think that's probably true of every country in the world apart from England, which are reinforced wholeheartedly by the media all the time. I think it's very difficult even to form a friendship with an English man. It's always a bit weird -- very reserved, all on one level -- I can't explain it. It's a man's world, and never more so than in the wonderful music business! Men don't have faith in women as musicians, or as creative forces generally. Marcella is a fantastic guitarist, and she's said that she's always had to struggle against bigotry. Even when we were making our record, Richard would say things like, 'Oh, just play it once and we'll sample it.' She's going, 'Why? I can do it!' That's the kind of thing you have to fight against all the time." Siobhan's escape is just about complete: she's made an album that's political and inted and devoured the live performance experiance that was denied her in her Bananarama years. "It was something that I'd always wanted to do," she says, looking back on Leningrad and summing up the whole Shakespear's Sister adventure. "An exorcism of a whole lot of things that have been brewing up for years. I am fairly defiant, and a total exhibitionist as well, so it was just a complete and utter thrill. Terrifying, as well. But I think terror is exciting, in a funny sort of way." Transcribed by Jason Fisher, passed on by Sarah Mager and Mike Devery, reprinted w/o permission.
