Splits result in hits
All Saints are back with a new album and a new set of songs about their famous exes. They explain it all to Ed Potton.
REUNITED girl band All Saints are holding court in the garden of their publicist’s office in central London, talking over each other in a gale of dirty laughter and injokes.
Mention of Chris Martin from Coldplay’s declaration that he’s ‘‘so happy All Saints are back’’ prompts a chorus of ‘‘aaahs’’, as does the memory of Adele singing Never Ever, their slinky signature hit, at her recent live show. Then Nicole Appleton decides that I look like somebody she knows: ‘‘Doesn’t he remind you of Freddie?’’
It’s a combination of convivial, chaotic and slightly scary, which is All Saints to a T. When they emerged in 1997, they were billed as the bolshy, sexy, streetwise Stones to the Spice Girls’ Beatles; more urban, less manufactured.
There was Shaznay Lewis, who wrote the songs; Melanie Blatt, the outspoken one; and the Canadian-born sisters, Natalie and Nicole Appleton. On a tour with some of their 1990s peers they were, Blatt insists, ‘‘definitely the most hardcore’’. NSYNC were ‘‘terrified’’ of them, she says. I can well believe it.
All Saints were at the throbbing heart of ’90s London, winning two Brit awards, selling 10 million albums and baiting the British tabloids. They had rock star beaus coming out of their ears: Nicole went out with Robbie Williams before marrying and divorcing Liam Gallagher of Oasis; Natalie married Liam Howlett of the Prodigy; and Blatt was in a relationship with Stuart Zender of Jamiroquai.
All are now mums in their early 40s – they have six children between them, aged from 6 to 23. ‘‘We feel like we’re skiving from our real lives,’’ Blatt says.
Blatt’s daughter, Lily, has just finished at Sylvia Young, the theatre school where her mother met Nicole Appleton. Like the rest of their kids, she has been supportive of mum returning with a national tour.
‘‘They could have been, ‘Oh no, what are you guys doing?’,’’ Blatt says. ‘‘But they haven’t at all.’’
Nicole, who agreed a £5.5 million divorce settlement with Gallagher in 2014, lives with their son, Gene, in north London.
Has Gene urged his dad to reform his band? ‘‘ Oh, I don’t know what they talk about,’’ Nicole says.
It’s 23 years since All Saints formed in west London, and three since their latest reunion, which culminated this year with a comeback album, Red Flag, and a single, One Strike, about Nicole’s messy split from Gallagher. Reviews have ranged from warm to gushing.
‘‘I think people were probably expecting it to be really bad,’’ says Blatt, living up to her reputation as the straightest talker.
Blatt, who had moved to Ibiza, needed the most persuading to sign up. ‘‘I’m not one for working in general,’’ she says with a smile.
She had been put off by the failure of their first reunion in 2006, which she later admitted she had only done ‘‘for the money’’, adding that ‘‘All Saints are never ever getting back together again’’.
This time, though, there was REUTERS no pressure to come up with new material. They had been asked to support Backstreet Boys on tour; all they had to do was belt out their hits.
Seeing ‘‘people singing your songs 20 years later, enjoying them like they’d just come out yesterday’’ was the ideal confidence booster, Lewis says. After that, making a new album seemed natural.
They always resisted pressure from the suits. That got them a reputation for being difficult. ‘‘We just didn’t fit in,’’ Nicole says.
‘‘That’s why people thought we were miserable the whole time,’’ Blatt says. ‘‘If we didn’t want to be there, you knew about it.’’
The friction was internal, too. Lewis was seen as the real talent, while the Appletons got more media attention. The four began travelling in separate limousines.
Matters came to a head in 2001, when Lewis and Blatt had a row over who would wear a jacket for a photo shoot.
‘‘It was about way more than a jacket,’’ Lewis says.
‘‘It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We lost communication with each other,’’ Natalie says.
The group split. ‘‘We were all devastated for a long time,’’ Blatt says. ‘‘The bitterness. We didn’t even want to hear the words ‘All Saints’.’’
Nicole and Natalie became a duo called Appleton; Lewis and Blatt launched solo careers. None rivalled their success as a quartet.
So how has music changed since they’ve been away? ‘‘You’re probably allowed to be a bit more real,’’ says Lewis. ‘‘In the ’90s it was so polished and poppy.’’
The new album moves away from what Nicole calls the ‘‘really naughty’’ R’n’B pop of their early years towards more confessional material such as One Strike, which was inspired by the phone call in which Gallagher told Nicole that he had fathered a child with journalist Liza Ghorbani. Nicole then spoke with Lewis for two hours, and Lewis wrote the song based on their conversation.
Did the song function as therapy? ‘‘It wasn’t therapy at all,’’ Nicole insists. ‘‘It was a bad situation and I was calling her. That was real life, real emotions, and she was getting it raw.’’
Has Gallagher heard the song? It refers to ‘‘your poisoned tongue’’.
‘‘Probably,’’ Nicole says. ‘‘Yeah, he’s curious. He probably loves it.’’
‘‘It’s his all-time top favourite GETTY IMAGES REUTERS song!’’ says Lewis, cackles.
Nicole says she was nervous to perform One Strike live but the one that’s harder to sing, in light of Gallagher’s infidelity, is Never Ever (‘‘How you could ever hurt me so?/I need to know what I’ve done wrong/And how long it’s been going on/Was it that I never paid enough attention?’’)
Natalie’s favourite moment of the ’90s was when Never Ever won the Brit for best single in 1998. ‘‘We were up against Elton John’s Candle in the Wind and Blur’s Song 2.’’
Also at the Brits that year were their ‘‘nemeses’’, the Spice Girls. Disappointingly, they didn’t actually hate each other’s guts.
‘‘We used to hang out – we still do,’’ Natalie says.
‘‘I was with Emma [Bunton] last week, and I see Mel C all the time,’’ Nicole adds.
They’re clearly relishing a life that’s relatively free of media games. to more
‘‘People thought we were miserable the whole time.’’
The Times