Bananarama share the superstar encounter which left them starstruck as young pop stars in new book
You could play one degree of separation with Bananarama and pretty much every famous musician on the planet as their new memoir reveals.
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When the teenage Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward randomly met Keith Richards on the famous King’s Road in London, the future Bananarama stars could not have imagined their glittering pop future.
“It was so strange; we were about 14 and sitting on those steps of the Chelsea Town Hall and then this guy came over to us. We kind of did a double take and went ‘That’s the bloke from the Stones,’ ” Dallin says.
“And the thing about him is, which I think you can tell from his interviews, he’s so interested in music and the social scene that’s going on, which was obviously the beginnings of punk in London at that time and that King’s Road scene was an absolute catwalk because it was where Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop was, where all the punks congregated.”
It could never have occurred to the young women that just as the Stones would prove rock’n’roll has no age limit, Bananarama would also defy the cynical predictions of a shelf-life for female pop stars. Dallin and Woodward’s memoir Really Saying Something not only illuminates their fascinating evolution from teen punk clubbers to chart-topping pop stars but charts how they busted the glass ceiling for female artists.
With original co-founding member Siobhan Fahey, the trio released their debut album Deep Sea Skiving in 1983 after a string of hits including Really Saying Something, Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye) and Shy Boy. During an Australian visit in the early 1980s when a journalist asked Richards what was the big thing happening in London at that time, he replied “Those little girls who are swimming with fish on their album cover,” referencing the record’s artwork.
“The people you met who had been in the business the longest had the most respect because they realised how difficult it is to try to stay at a certain level over a long period of time,” Woodward says.
“I’ve also met Mick Jagger a few times and he could not be more inclusive, putting you on the same level and not diminishing what you’ve done. They are gracious because they do understand it’s not easy.”
The memoir could serve as a handbook for a pop version of the six degrees of separation game. Except there is only one degree between Dallin and Woodward and pretty much anyone you care to name from the pop culture scene of the ’80s.
There’s Dallin and Woodward with Andy Warhol, the story of their dinner with the Oscar-winner who lent his name to their hit single Robert De Niro’s Waiting, being asked for an autograph by Michael Caine in New York (for his daughter, of course), Bruce Springsteen checking out an early gig, Paul and Linda McCartney singing their praises, playing pool with Sting.
George Michael was a dear, close friend of many years as they all came up together in the ’80s pop scene; Woodward and Wham’s Andrew Ridgeley were partners for a couple of decades.
“I think our first starstruck moment was Bryan Ferry when we were kids. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone famous before and suddenly there he was and saying ‘Hello ladies’ to us as we waited outside after a Roxy Music concert,” Dallin says.
“We played pool with Sting; we were recording in the same studio and he came over and said ‘Ladies, would you like a game of pool’. So we made Keren play because Siobhan and I can’t play.” Did Woodward win the game?
“No, of course not, I was rubbish. I could only get my eye in after a couple of drinks and then another couple and my eye goes out again.”
While their first hit It Ain’t What You Do … with Fun Boy 3 and then breakthrough in America with Venus were covers, Dallin, Woodward and Fahey were always songwriters as much as they were interpreters of other’s works.
Their credits are there on hits including Cruel Summer, Robert De Niro’s Waiting, I Heard A Rumour, Love In The First Degree as well as dozens of album tracks.
They also had an uncanny intuition when it came to the producers and co-writers they sought out in their early years of their career, hitmakers who treated them as equals in the studio.
Yet, as the book reveals, as female pop artists they often encountered sexist preconceptions in the media. “Obviously there were bumps in the road but we just went around them to get respect and credibility,” Dallin says.
“That was difficult at times because people would see us and think ‘Oh, it’s just three girls’. It’s such a blanket write-off, in any walk of life. And it’s so annoying but you do have to have a very thick skin.
“It was always irritating just when you thought you’d cracked it, someone would come along and say ‘Have you ever thought of writing your own material?’ ”
Really Saying Something by Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward is out now.
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