"Back in 1986,they were the all-girl group who screamed: 'We can't play, we don't care!'
Now they can play,have had a top ten hit with 'International Rescue',and look set to double their success with the follow-up single.
Caroline Sullivan met them for a poolside chat."

This is beginning to feel like one of those freaky dreams you have after downing too much Pernod. There's a swimming pool surrounded by Grecian arches and fronds of ivy. A parrot,chained to a perch nearby,is squawking to beat the band. You're sitting in the pool,wearing a dressing-gown. Fuzzbox,coiffed and made-up but otherwise completely naked,float past. You're holding a tape recorder above the water,and,with remarkable equanimity, asking questions about their new record.

If this is a dream,it's pretty benign. After all,it could've been about a naked PWEI!
Fuzzbox...an apt name,you think,given the circumstances.
Vickie Fuzz has just noticed something.
"My boobs look really perky because the water is making them float upward. Take off your dressing gown and try it. Good,isn't it?"
So everybody giggles and glances covertly at each other. Even though this is 1989 and post-feminism rules,and body shape isn't supposed to be an issue any more,we're all secretly fascinated with the arrangement of each others' bits. There are a couple of other similarly unclad girls in the pool,and we'd probably all be staring openly,except we're too cool.

We're in the Sanctuary,a Covent Garden luxury spa which,with its marble floors and columned passageways,would be a grand place to throw a Caligula-style orgy. Men are verboten,haw haw,so the MM photographer was kicked out before the 10 a.m. opening.

Fuzzbox are knocked out by the sybaritic grandeur. Before they hit the pool, they collapse into poolside chaise-longues,and start in on bottles of the noxious pop star tipple,Aqua Libra,with the avidity of four young Birmingham girls who can't believe their luck.

Somehow,three years in pop haven't sobered them up a bit. Your equivalent male group would be deep into drug problems and musical disputes by now. Fuzzbox are still sanguine. Their favourite adjective,'bostin',meaning 'fabby',is still much in evidence,and they're endlessly effervescent.
Well,three of them are. Maggie,the blonde-ringletted bass player,is almost 25 and prone to taking things seriously. She's ultra-Green and a touch detached from the jovial laddishness of the others.

Could we have pictured the group in this sedate pleasure dome three years ago?
In 1986,Fuzzbox were a novelty act who garnered tons of press by virtue of their cheery admission:"We can't play! We don't care!"
Millions of bands can't play,but Fuzzbox were cute,quotable punkettes. They were also defiantly feminist,a fact missed by many,espousing a woman's right to be just as crap as a man.

This all happened during the summer,silly season for the music press,who were initially delighted. Then Fuzzbox began releasing records and proved their ineptitude. Suddenly the wilful amateurishness no longer seemed cute. Rock journos secretly hate bands who contravene the tacit credo that music is a sanctified entity,to be approached with reverence. So they reviled Fuzzbox,denouncing them as Bananarama with instruments.

Their first album,'Bostin Steve Austin',sold 126 copies in Ireland, according to Jo.

"She's being big-headed;it was only 26," says her sister Maggie.

Having made the point to their satisfaction,the group promptly disappeared.
They toured America and spent two years..."writing and recording,but we weren't happy with a lot of the recording. It just became too bland,and that wasn't what we wanted at all."

They ended up re-inventing themselves as traditionally sexy sirens in pervy cod-Sergeant Pepper costumes,learned their instruments,and returned as the all-singing,all-playing,Fuzzbox: Proper Band.

Proper bands being 30-a-penny,it was lucky that this new Fuzzbox were sharp enough to come up with a great single:they play on being girls.
No,listen. Most female bands de-emphasize their femininity,pretending that the differences between men and women don't exist. It's not just Tanita Tikaram and her librarian's weeds,it's also 'glamourous' outfits like the Bangles. They all rant eternally about being musicians first,girls second. Even the ghastly Kylie probably bleats this in her interviews!

Nuts to that! Fuzzbox are girls who happen to be musicians,like Marilyn Monroe was a woman who happened to act. So their records are girly,female,with a melting,coming-of-age sexiness.

They're in the pool now,clustered around like porpoises and suddenly being very serious indeed. "We do everything because we want to do it," says Vickie,splashing a bit.

Meeting Vickie is like coming face-to-face with a 20-year-old Rita Heyworth, until she opens her mouth. Those elongated Midlands vowels are so matey that they dispel some of her spooky elegance. Which is kind of a relief.

"There's nothing wrong with glamour. There's nothing wrong with anything. There's nothing wrong with sexuality. Everybody's got hang-ups about it. Everybody has got bigger hang-ups about my body than I have. Sexuality's a very beautiful thing. We all have it,whether we're Michelle Shocked or Alison Moyet. Michelle Shocked is very sexual to some people. Everybody's sexual to a different audience. Michelle Shocked just had a women-only concert,they were probably all screaming.
If you've got legs...I mean,if I wore a skirt or trousers I'd still have legs. Bodies are beautiful."

So what do they think of Michelle Shocked branding them as idiots in a recent MM feature?

"She saw us being photographed,and the photographer was saying: 'More sex, girls!',and we were playing up to him," says Jo. "What she said would have been fair comment if it had been true as she saw it. The photographer was,in fact,our manager's brother,who was taking the p***. He was taking the pictures with Tina's camera.
We do have photographers who say: 'More sex'. One gave us lollies to pose with. He wanted us to have lollies in our mouths and look stupid. We stuffed about ten lollies in our mouths and in our ears and stuff,posing and pouting and things. We just took the mickey and rose above the situation."

Wendy James,you murmur. Maggie gets mildly piqued.
"What really bothers me about Wendy James is that she thinks she's not sexual. You can't not be. I can claim I don't have blonde extensions, but you can see it and everyone else can see it,and that's what [she] fails to recognize. She comes on with: 'I'm not a sex symbol,I'm in control',and she is not.
You can't control what people think about you. Men will wank over her. So what? It happens to everybody. Saying 'I'm in control' doesn't make a jot of difference."

What do you think of guys slamming their ham over you? (Sorry,but this is the way girls talk in swimming pools!)

"Couldn't-care-less. As long as they don't do it at me personally. Men wank and always will wank and whatever stimulus they use..."

"I went to a petrol station at about three in the morning and got five quid worth of petrol," says Jo. "I hadn't got my Barclaycard with me so I had to go inside and fill in this form. The chap kept dillying and dallying and I said: 'Right,must go now,ha-ha',and the door was locked. I said: 'You gonna come and open this door then?' He says: 'Fancy paying it all off now?' Five quid,cheeky b******! I wouldn't do it for five quid! Insulting enough that he should dare suggest I might fancy him,repulsive little individual."

"Sunday Sport's taken to calling me 'Busty beauty lead singer'," confides Vickie. The others fall hysterically about at the notion. "They thought I didn't have any knickers on when I was on a children's show. I had flesh-coloured tights,so they obviously don't know what one looks like. They probably assumed it was shaven."

We schlep over to the Jacuzzi. Maggie and Jo dip a toe into the steamy water and hie themselves off to some lounge chairs. They have a tendency towards fainting,they claim,and heat exacerbates it. Tina and Vickie clamber in.
God,this is surreal. Only their heads are visible,and the tape recorder being brandished above the fierce bubbles add a Fellini-esque touch.

The forthcoming Fuzzbox album is a radio-friendly mixture of pop,disco,and the 'almost-classical',whatever that means. Having heard four of the songs, it's clear that the album is a flyweight classic. Only the Darling Buds at their most transcendent have bettered some of the stuff here.

'Pink Sunshine',with its aching,sighing choruses,will probably be a TOTP summer staple. 'Irish Bride' is folky,with an exquisite,almost madrigal feel. And,bizarrely enough,there's a cover of Yoko Ono's 1981 hit 'Walking On Thin Ice'.

"I think Yoko Ono's really good,and I like that song and just thought something nice could be made of it," says Vickie. "The title,I think,that's what we're doing,to a certain extent. It's a very fine line we're treading,and I know most people are hoping we'll fall in."

"'Irish Bride' is based on Maggie's mum. It's like a tribute to the story of her life. She's divorced and been through a lot,the typical Irish-Catholic upbringing. She's only just got free,really."

Are Maggie and Jo good Catholic girls?

"We're all Catholic except me. I'm the only C of E," says Vickie.

"We're not so good any more," Tina snorts.

The first time you had sex,were you afraid God would zap you?

"No,because I haven't," Tina says smugly. "None of us ever have,or ever will..."

That most famous of Catholic girls,Madonna,has recently returned to the church...

"If you're brought up in a strict Catholic background,it always stays with you,always,that guilt. If not to the church,then to your family,because you're going against your family."

Catholicism is so patriarchal. Femme fatales Fuzzbox should worship goddesses.

"I don't worship God as a man. It's a being,really. I'm quite religious in my own way,a nature way. I love nature," says Vix.

Do Fuzzbox meet lots of groupies on tour?

"I think blokes are more likely to say 'Get yer tits out',then they run away. Pathetic."

Back to Maggie and Jo,who loll pallidly on a couch overlooking a poolful of carp. Jo amuses herself by allowing the screeching parrot to wander up her arm.

How long will Fuzzbox's current image last,Maggie?

"I don't know. I look different in public than when I'm being myself. I'm so much my own person and I'm not prepared to give that much. When I go out I want my own identity back. Fuzzbox is something I do,my job. An air hostess wears a uniform and nobody questions it. My uniform is just the same for me. If you get too obsessed with something,it gets boring. The band is an interesting part of my life,but I'd hate for it to be the be-all and end-all."

So is Fuzzbox a hobby for you?

"No,it's a job. Like an air hostess,it's a job."

"But," Jo adds,"we've got this thing that Fuzzbox will not go away. We're determined."

Jo is echoing what the other three have each said at one time or another during the course of this interview. Fuzzbox's gimmicky beginning in 1986 made them seem a threatless joke. They weathered it and came back stronger. They may appear no more threatening in their mini-skirt incarnation,but you may ultimately find that appearances are deceptive.

END