Why else would she reboot her band, Shakespears Sister, after a prolonged absence and yet refuse to play their biggest hit? Stay, you might remember, was a heaving goth-opera in three parts, with a video pitched somewhere between The Addams Family and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane. A number one for two months in 1992, the only person who didn’t much care for it, it seems, was Fahey herself.
“I don’t think I’ll be doing Stay on this tour,” she says. “It doesn’t feel right at the moment, and you have to go with your gut. While it was absolutely amazing to have eight weeks at number one, it was weird at the time because it was so unlike the rest of the album. When you’re signed to a major label you do feel pressurised to go with your more commercial work, which you might not feel is your favourite or the most representative.”
There’s a little more to this than meets the eye. The bulk of Stay was sung by soaring soprano Marcella Detroit, her erstwhile partner in Shakespears Sister. The pair fell out in 1993 and wounds have not healed. One of the reasons Fahey was reluctant about reviving Shakespears Sister as the vehicle for her music was a worry about “the public perception that it was a duo”.
Shakespears Sister, she is keen to point out, was always her band. Detroit was invited to join for the second album, Hormonally Yours, and left before the third. “Everything I do has my stamp,” she says. “My personality, my world view, my influences and my taste. This tour is an opportunity to recast what Shakespears Sister means, which is more in the tradition of other singles like Hello and I Don’t Care.”
It might seem oddly self-defeating, but Fahey has always seemed suspicious of mainstream success, identifying more with Patti Smith – “a guiding light” – than Ginger Spice. Born in County Meath to Irish parents, she was raised in London and feels like a “weird hybrid of two cultures. I’ve got an Irish passport but an English accent; I think that’s a key factor to who I am. I’m an outsider wherever I go, but I’ve made my peace with that.”
Fahey joined Bananarama in 1979, at the age of 21. Britain’s original bubblegum-pop girl group, they contrived to have a string of Top Ten singles without taking themselves too seriously. Fahey left in 1988, disillusioned with the way the band was progressing, but remains friendly with the other original members, Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin, who have continued to perform as Bananarama. She joined them for a brief one-off reunion in 2002, but has resisted anything more permanent.
“Occasionally we’ll get together for a cup of tea and muse over possibilities, but I went on to do very different types of music so it doesn’t make sense creatively,” she says. “I look back with very fond memories. We were a breath of fresh air, but there’s no reason to go back there.”
After leaving the trio, she married Eurythmic Dave Stewart and formed Shakespears Sister, an odd, off-kilter, darkly humorous vehicle for Fahey’s glam-pop leanings. The band had a handful of hits with You’re History, I Don’t Care, Hello and the ubiquitous Stay, but fizzled out by the mid-90s amid a host of personal and professional problems.
First, Fahey sacked Detroit after a series of rows centring on the identity of the band. “I’m afraid my personality is a little too candid and open,” is her explanation. “Honesty is a terrible curse!” Around the same time she was hospitalised after suffering severe psychiatric illness, and then in 1996 her record label refused to release the third Shakespears Sister album, a decision she describes as “devastating”.
The same year she divorced Stewart after nine years of marriage and two children.
It’s clear the road back to some form of equilibrium has not been easy, all of which makes her comeback such a pleasant surprise. The fourth Shakespears Sister album, Songs From The Red Room, was recorded in fits and starts over the last few years and features an abundance of lean, smart, electro-pop, the lyrics a typically unsettling mixture of horror, heartache and humour.
“At least I deliver my bitter pill with a twist,” she laughs. “An awful lot of people relate to it, because I probably say things in my songs that many people think but don’t say.”
Are her kids – Sam and Django, both now living in Los Angeles – comfortable with her wearing her heart so boldly on her sleeve? “No, not really,” she says quietly. “They’re not, but I can’t help myself.”
Although her old friend Terry Hall – who first sang with Fahey almost three decades ago when Bananarama backed Fun Boy Three – added vocals, and Marco Pirroni, once of Adam And The Ants, played guitar, Songs From The Red Room is no nostalgia trip. One of the reasons the album sounds so contemporary is that Fahey spent much of her hiatus DJ-ing.
“It made me revisit all my old influences and become a music fan again,” she says. “I missed performing live and it was another way of sharing really loud music with people, but it took my attention away from writing and recording. I didn’t finish the record until I gave up DJ-ing and focused.”
Dividing her time between Los Angeles and London, at 51 Fahey is clearly relishing the chance to get back on stage. “I write just so I can perform, so I’m thrilled to be back on tour,” she says.
“There’s a whole new album to do and loads of old songs that I really love.” Except Stay, of course. She sighs, and says: “It’s about not playing to people’s preconceptions.” No change there, then.
Songs From The Red Room is out on SF Records. Shakespears Sister play O2 ABC, Glasgow, tomorrow.
