dotmusic: How did you feel your appearance at the V99 Festival the other week went?
Mel C: "It went very well actually. I didn't know what to expect having been so busy, so I never really paid much thought to it, and people had said 'you're very brave doing it', and I thought 'yeah, whatever', and when I got there on the Saturday I saw what they meant because I never really thought of it as being a different crowd. Maybe I was a bit naive but I could sense their cynicism. There was a lot of support there too, I'd say about 50/50, I think about half way through the set I won a lot of them over. So I was really pleased with the reaction.
"It was my tour manager who had the idea of V99, and asked me, I just said 'yes' straight away because the acts that are at the festivals, it's a huge challenge. It was nice for me to get out there and do it live, because that's more the direction I want to head towards with my own stuff, its very important for me to do it live."
dotmusic: Why did you decide to do your solo project?
Mel C: "I've always wanted to and it's something that we've all talked about in the band, we've all been very honest about it, you know our hopes and dreams for the future, Melanie's been going off and doing her own little solo bits and Emma's doing a great song with Tin Tin Out, and I know Victoria has had a few auditions for movies and things so we all want to spread our wings and do different things, it makes the band a lot stronger. If we just had the band maybe we would get frustrated, not that we have.
"I would rather go off and do other things rather than maybe get stuck in a rut. So I always wanted to do solo stuff. Spice Girls, I love it, but it's very pop. which is a part of me. And I love to sing R&B, but I'm not really that much of a fan to listen to it. I'm a lot more rock influenced, and that's the way I want to go. I wouldn't really want to force that upon the girls so I'll go off myself and do it.
"It's just a dream that I want to fulfill and its something that I want to set up for the future. Hopefully Spice Girls will be around for as long as we want it to be, it makes me laugh when we get all this stick in the newspapers about how we all hate each other and have these massive rows, and how awful it is being the Spice Girls. If it was that bad do you think any of us would bother doing it? It's not like we need the money, we do it for the love of it and right now we've still got the support of the fans, which is an important thing to us. We're not going to try and flog a dead horse."
dotmusic: Do you think it helps people to take you more seriously now you are not managed as such?
Mel C: "The whole Simon Fuller era, we couldn't have got where we are without him, he was our manager, but it came to the point when he wasn't the right guy for us. We're pretty bolshi girls, we've always had a really big say in things, but things did start to go off in different directions. His vision started to sway, i.e. sponsorship. We were quite uncomfortable with that because we wanted to concentrate on the music. I found that very frustrating, wasting days doing photo shoots for crisps etc. Two days a week was taken up with sponsorship stuff. But I felt it was going a little bit too far. Then thinking about the future I did not want to get to a point where I was not taken seriously. We do have a strong office team behind us, but we make the decisions, we don't have a manager."
dotmusic: You've worked with different writers and producers on your forthcoming album. How did you decide which writers to work with?
Mel C: It was difficult at first, initially it was offers that were made to me, I was really flattered being an artist on my own, without the power of the Spice Girls. The first guy to approach me was William Orbit. I was blown away, but he'd read an interview where I'd said I'd listened to a lot of his work, so he called and said why not work together, so that was one thing I definitely wanted to hook up. And then it was Rick Knowles who was over from America and got in touch with my office and said he'd like to meet me and stuff and we got on straight away and I'm a really big fan of Madonna and I love the stuff he's done with her I wasn't really familiar with the other stuff he'd done but he's done a lot of Belinda Carlisle - you know great pop tunes.
"I initially went over to LA to work with Rick Knowles and that's when I got with all the other people. And then again I worked with Matt and Biff through years of working with the Spice Girls. I couldn't not work with them they are my mates I love to work with them and they have great ideas and we work great as a team. Elliot Kennedy who we worked with on our first Spice Girls album, we didn't actually get to work with him on the second and I felt he's a great writer and he did the Bryan Adams track that I worked on. Phil Thornally who's worked with Natalie Imbruglia, I'd worked with him years ago before the Spice Girls were signed, so we had a good working relationship.
dotmusic: Starting with William Orbit, when did you work with him?
Mel C: That was the last song written for the album, my 30th track! We wanted to work together for a long, long time but he's so busy working on his own stuff now as well as so many people wanting to work with him. We kept trying to find a time together. The last week in America he actually became free, and I became free so we just got in there and did a track. We had a really good time working together - that must have been about six weeks ago. That track is called 'Go', and it's the opener to the album.
"I learnt so much in America working with people like Rick Rubin, Steve Jones plays on the album, two of the musicians out of Beck's band, there is so much talent involved in this album, I was trying to soak it all up desperately. Every day I learnt so much and the studio experience I got, but then I started really fresh with all the ideas and inspiration. I got a little paranoid that I would get written out, and I didn't have anything else to go on, but I got revitalised working with William because he is so amazing, he's such a genius."
dotmusic: It's a very unusual choice to make, working with so many different producers. How do you adapt?
Mel C: "The reason I did it, because being a lover of all kinds of music I want to go in all different directions. You feel different every day. Just to get all this experience and the offers of people who wanted to work with me, people who I've dreamed of working with. I didn't want to say 'no to anyone. For me personally it makes for a better album, an album that I would prefer because, it's not a rock album, I buy more indie rock albums, but I like my album because it's different, it's more like a compilation."
dotmusic: What about Rick Rubin?
Mel C: "Rick Rubin, was very anxious to get me in with a live band and get them down as live tracks, which is something I was really excited to hear. I wasn't afraid of that and spending New Years Eve in the studio doing a lot of stuff on the computer. It was nice being in that environment with musicians rather than having a session in one evening. It's very different from just going in and recording the vocals. It was great, we did four or five of the tracks together and I was there right from the beginning when the band went in there. I even made a demo for the first time and we were strumming it out, working out what the chords were, that was an experience in itself, and I was in there singing along with the band, it was really good fun."
In the second part of dotmusic's exclusive interview with Melanie C, the solo Spice Girl tells us how she came to hook up with TLC and why the Spice Girls may not record a Christmas single this year
dotmusic: Why have you chosen 'Going Down' as the first single?
Mel C: "It's an instinct thing. Its nothing like it, but when we wrote 'Wannabe' it was one of those songs that we thought 'this our first single otherwise it will never make sense'. Quite similarly with this single I feel it's the right one that I wanted to launch myself with. It seems to have created quite a stir, like people think I'm some horrible beast but I'm not, I'm just singing an angry song, it's just a song."
dotmusic: And it's lead a lot of people to think that your new album is a rock album.
Mel C: "Yeah, I hope nobody is too disappointed because it's not, is it? There are all kind of things, there's a dance track.
dotmusic: There's one with Lisa Left Eye rapping on it, right?
Mel C: "It's called 'Never Be The Same Again'. That's the track that I worked with Lauret Lawrence on, who's not a person I would have chosen to work with myself because I love the work that he has done but he has done a lot of stuff with Brandy and Monica etc. He would probably be great for the Spice Girls but I wanted to go in that direction myself. I met him and he was really sweet, he really wanted to work with me I thought I'll give it a go, and we had a really good time, wrote a few tracks, came up with this one really good track, one that we might use with the Spice Girls.
"One song we were writing I thought I could really imagine a rap with it, but I had never really thought of that on my album, you know like a TLC rap and he said, 'I know Left Eye' and I thought don't even go there because things like that never come off. I just left it and he made the calls and played her the track and she loved it and wanted to be involved - that's where it came from. The collaborations have come through social situations more than anything else."
dotmusic: What about the future as a solo artist?
Mel C: "I'm already thinking second album, but I'd better see how this one goes first eh? I didn't kill myself to write thirty tracks it just happens that in that time I did write thirty and it was really difficult choosing which ones for the album. I like so many of the tracks but I would never hold them back for the second album because you're in a different place. I would want to start afresh, I would have toured the world on my own, you just see things through different eyes, but I've got all these other tracks so I'll have great b-sides and if any movies come up then I would like to be on soundtracks.
dotmusic: How does the promotion of the single and album, 'Northern Star' fit in around what you are trying to do with the Spice Girls at the moment?
Mel C: "It doesn't. It's very difficult, because we've had to plan everything so far in advance and it's very, very structured the time we spend in the studio. We've got like two weeks here and there and then the girls will be free to do things, Emma has got Sleeping Beauty coming up and it gives me a chance to do my thing, its all very structured so it fits in very nicely around the release of the single, the album, so everyone is kept nice and busy all the time."
dotmusic: The follow up single 'Northern Star' is coming out about November. Does that mean there is not going to be another Spice Girls single this year?
Mel C: "Well, this is something that we are writing at the moment to see how things go, the romantic side of us would love to have that single but realistically I think we need concentrate on getting the album together. We've got some shows to put together in December, and so maybe there won't be a Spice Girls single this Christmas, we don't know at the moment."
dotmusic: How do you think your single and album will be received?
Mel C: "I don't know . I want people to like it, but I want to make more albums more importantly. I really don't know how it is going to be received at all because I think a lot of people think 'oh it's Spice Girls ...' but it's not necessarily so, so I am just going to have to wait and see. Because Mel's last single went top 20 but didn't hang around in the charts. I was quite surprised really because I thought it was great track. It just goes to prove having the Spice Girls tag doesn't necessarily help."
dotmusic: Will there be further solo releases next year?
Mel C: Most definitely, that's very important to me, I am really not into going around the world and doing doggy TV promotion, they are all going to be live shows, I've done to much promotion with the Spice Girls, doing some silly show in Japan, I'm not into that anymore. It's all about live now.
dotmusic: What's the best moment you've had on stage?
"They're all so different. Probably doing my first solo gig, that just blew me away, but the most poignant moment must have been when we were at Wembley Stadium. The first night of the Spice Girls gig as the doors opened, I've never seen 50,000 people before in one place and that freaked me out because of other artists that have played there. I just thought 'shit' I'm stood here now."