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Reproduced from The Herald 15 January, 1999
Na-na-naa-na, hey hey hey
by Jacqueline Wake
When I was at university, I was in Bananarama. Not the real Bananarama,
admittedly, but the next best thing. Me and my two best mates - who were
male, oddly enough - knew all the words to their songs and the steps to
their dances and would do them at parties.
Once, when we were performing Nathan Jones in the kitchen at my 21st,
our pal Douglas Caskie picked up a tambourine and played along with us.
It was the beginning of a promising musical career, for Doug anyway.
Years later I discovered that he is in the Glasgow-based band Geneva,
who recently passed the acid test of pop success, that of being listed
on the jukebox at my local. So that's what happened to Doug, but
whatever happened to Bananarama?
Tonight's documentary Young Guns Go for It: Bananarama (BBC2, 11.15pm)
should shed some light on the matter. The original "girl group" make the
Spice Girls and All Saints look like amateurs, for with 12 hit singles
and four hit albums, Bananarama are still the most successful all-female
group in the UK. Sara Dallin (the chubby one), Keren Woodward (the
pretty one), and Siobhan Fahey (the one who married Dave Stewart and
went on to form Shakespears Sister and wear funny eye-shadow) will
explain what drove them, what kept them at the top of the charts, and
how success affected their friendship.
Sara and Keren had been friends since schooldays and met Siobhan when
they moved to London. They were encouraged to form a band by ex-Sex
Pistols drummer Paul Cook. They teamed up with the Fun Boy Three and had
two hits, It Ain't What You Do and Really Saying Something.
It gave them the start they needed to go it alone and from 1982 to the
early 1990s they had a list of hits as long as their fringes. Shy boy,
Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye, Cruel Summer, Robert De Niro's Waiting,
and Venus among others all made the top 10.
Colin Bell, of London records, remembers: "These were three girls who
came out of the do-it-yourself punk ethos and were very much determined
to keep control of what they did." Sara explains: "We never took
ourselves too seriously, we never said we're gorgeous, we're great
singers, we're great dancers, we just said this is it, take it or leave
it - you either love us or hate us."
In 1984 Band Aid came along, which apart from raising money for a good
cause, provided one of the defining moments of the decade. Picture a
scene from the Feed the World video, with the clothes, and the hair and
the attitude, and you've got the eighties. Bananarama were there, as
were Boy George, Duran Duran, and Wham!
Another pop puzzle - whatever happened to Andrew Ridgeley? Well, last
time I saw him he was in Hello! magazine wearing an Aran jumper and
splashing along on a beach in Cornwall with his wife ... the pretty one
from Bananarama.
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