They'd just had a tricky encounter with somebody called Sharon from the News Of The World.
"Do you know what she said to me?" says Vicki, all affronted. "She says 'Why do you wear that stud in your nose, it's a bit outrageous isn't it?' "
She didn't mind about the green hair?
"No, she says it's outrageous me having a stud in me nose. I says 'Asian women wear studs in their noses all the time and nobody says they're outrageous'. And do you know what she says to me then?"
Can't imagine.
"She says 'Doesn't it get in the way when you kiss?' I says 'No' and she says 'AAHH . . . SO SOMEBODY'S BEEN KISSING YOU THEN!!! . . .' Well, you know I have got a boyfriend and I have to admit yes, you've caught me out, I have kissed him . . ."
And as for the photographer . . .
"Oh and as for the photographer. . . it was all 'do you think you could lift your skirt up a bit?' and 'it would look better if you could just push your chest forward a bit . . .' I mean, look at me . . . I thought he was taking the piss!"
Thank you God, thank you God . . . just when you pick up the NME and decide to commit suicide, those glorious luscious pouting Fuzzbox gals come along with a new single to promote. An oasis of madness in the grueling sanity. The single ("Love Is The Slug") is nonsense, of course, but a nice enough spurt of noise for all that and . . . well . . . any excuse, frankly.
Fuzzbox don't disappoint. Sheehan suddenly produces a fully-fledged gymnasium and the girls instantly run amok with an exhausting glee, shrieking and shouting as bar-bells are raised, rowing machines rowed, training bicycles bicycled and the table-tennis table laid upon. Pop music just isn't important enough to be left in the hands of intellectuals, so let these girls have their heads. Go on punk . . . make their day.
Half-St. Trinians half-Girlschool, they have no illusions about their own role or the grubby industry they've lit up with their multi-coloured hair, their garish garb and their sunny irreverence. "It'll be nice if the single is a hit and if it isn't, well, "TOUGH" observes Jo profoundly and they happily admit that cute incompetence is what a lot of people come to see.
However, Fuzzbox ARE wising up. They've circulated a cassette with the single, "Radio Fuzzbox" featuring tracks recorded on their second ever gig, including a truly horrendous version of "Spirit In The Sky", while among the tacky jokes we also hear the wondrous Maggie (cherry-coloured hair and the biggest smile this side of Andrew Lloyd Webber's bank manager) exercising a rather fetching French accent. Part of the idea of this apparently was to demonstrate the difference between their shambolic playing on that second ever gig and the super streamlined sound achieved under the expert guidance of Martin Rushent on "Love Is The Slug". Not a hell of a lot, thank goodness.
Fuzzbox don't mind being cute, but they don't want to be dumb. At one point they start muttering darkly about some of the pressures being brought to bear on them. They reckon "Love Is The Slug" had about 90 re-mixes before it was to the satisfaction of those nice people in the record company and they worry that the same people are trying to make their forthcoming LP (due out next month) sound too glossy.
"We've got into a bit of trouble about the style of the LP and the sound that we actually like," says Mags, "it's deemed as immature."
Surely not.
"Yeah, but our argument is that just because it's a minimal sound doesn't mean it's crap. It's like saying to a minimal artist 'It'll be better if you put a few more colours in it or put a tree in it or something'. It's what it is. You can't expand it and start putting the London Philharmonic in . . ."
And I suppose "Love Is The Slug" has a sophisticated message . . .
"No, I was just taking the piss out of lyrics, y'know," says Mags, shaking with laughter. "Like Fifties love song Iyrics . . . we just went totally over the top. It's a piss-take on all those love songs. We just got a bass line on as usual and bunged it all together."
Jo: "Our songs just sort of . . . come out. We don't really write them . . . they just sort of . . . fester. . ."
It's possibly not quite the way George Michael goes about his business, but to prove how mature Fuzzbox have become since a passing Martian dumped them on us, I can exclusively reveal that they recently held a top-level meeting to decide whether it was ideologically sound for them to do interviews with The Sun. They decided it wasn't, but they probably would anyway. Not that The Sun wanted to interview them, but like good girl guides they knew they must be prepared for all eventualities.
The question arose because The Sun recently ran a story claiming that Harry from "EastEnders" was secretly working as their roadie, paid to go on tour with them in Belgium and was planning to make a record with them. The strange thing about the story was that some of it was actually true.
"We have met him and he did come to Belgium with us. He got pissed out of his head. He fell asleep on some grass so we put loads of make-up on him and put a bra on him and stuffed knickers in his hand and things like that. Then we took some photos which, of course, you can have for a small charge. Say £5,000?"
Bet Garry Bushell's on the phone before you get to the end of the page.
Mags: " I don't worry about the sun because most people know it's bullshit anyway. Anyone with any intelligence knows."
Vicki once met Margaret Thatcher. She was 11 at the time (Vicki, not Margaret Thatcher) and It was on a television program called "In the limelight with Lesley" (Lesley Judd)
"I had to ask a really boring question... I was told what to ask so she could reel off all this stuff... I had to say "What concerns you most when taking a personal view of welfare over the country?" I couldn't even work out what the question meant. I had my hair in curlers, especially - It was foul! Then I realised she was a bit of a prat."
There then follows a 20-minute squabble while the girls discuss politics. Jo and Mags particularly become entertainingly animated debating the ethics of spoiling your paper. Mags says ecology is the onlyparty she has any sympathy with and as their chances at getting elected are akin to Norman Tebbit cracking a joke she feels the only way she can make a political statement is spoiling her paper.
"I'd vote Labour," says Jo huffily, "but I wouldn't' have any illusions about what I was voting for. But being as what women had to go through to get the vote, I don't think it's fair if I just turn my nose up at that opportunity "
It has to be said that a lecture on the history of women's rights isn't something you expect on the agenda when you anticipate a meeting with Fuzzbox.
"We know people probably think we're pretty silly," says Mags. "They think we're totally stupid and can't string a sentence together. But now we're consciously making an effort to put forward what we're really thinking. We spent the first six months being completely overawed by what was happening, then we began to take stack and now to a degree we do try to control our own destinies a bit more, but it's still very difficult."
Their education has indeed been rapid. It's been hard enough for them learning the names of the various pieces of equipment let alone how to play the instruments . . .
Mags: "At first we didn't have a clue where to plug things in or anything. They'd say things to us like 'Do you have your violin Dl'd?' And we'd just look at them, y'know . . .' No, it's just a normal one . . .' And there were all these terms we had to learn like monitors. We'd just got to grips with the name monitors and they started calling them foldbacks. So we made an effort to learn what all these things meant . . . top end and bottom end . . .
"Music is meant to be entertainment and we're at the entertainment end rather than the Dire Straits muso end which, quite frankly, I find baring. There‚ again, there's nothing wrong with musos . . . I nearly had a muso conversation myself the other day . . . I started talking about concert pitch!"
The danger is that, Martin Rushent production or not, Fuzzbox will be seen and treated as an inconsequential bit of fun, amusing for 10 minutes and then it's back in the dole queue for you lot . . .
Jo: "Oh we want to be considered as a band who'll stay around a while instead of being written off just as a novelty."
Mags: "It's like comedians . . . just because they're funny doesn't mean you wouldn't take them seriously. You wouldn't sit there with Griff Rhys Jones and expect him to be a total buffoon. And like, the Goodies, they're all Oxbridge people, yet they spend all their time in public view pratting around."
But you must get patronized a lot.
"You get patronized anyway if you're women and under 20."
Listen you lot, I don't care if you hate the record .
. . go out and buy it anyway. These girls have a divine right
to be in the charts and they're a bloody sight better than Boris
Gardiner and Nick Berry and Berlin and Status Quo and the entire
cast of "EastEnders" and most of the herberts cluttering
up the charts.
