The Daily Telegraph - Features
‘On one tour, we earned less than the backing band’
Three original members of Bucks Fizz tell James Hall about the fights and feuds that blighted their careers
After 90 minutes of tears and bombshells with the female half of the original Bucks Fizz (Cheryl Baker and Jay Aston), as well as third founding member Mike Nolan, it feels like a miracle the band are still alive, let alone performing together. It’s been 43 years since they won the Eurovision Song Contest with Making Your Mind Up, and the group’s eye-popping backstory encompasses countless line-up changes, feuds, lawsuits, punchups, a horrific coach crash, life-changing illnesses, bankruptcy and love triangles.
As I tell the trio (who reunited in 2009 but have performed as The Fizz since 2016 for legal reasons), they’re like Fleetwood Mac – the band who wrote the rulebook on rock-star dysfunctionality. “No,” says Nolan, 69, his flocculent blond hairdo unchanged since 1981. “Fleetwood Mac are like us.”
First things first, though: how do the band rate this year’s UK Eurovision entry, Dizzy, by Olly Alexander? “It starts really well. Towards the end, he needs to lift it,” says Baker, 70, as we sit in a hotel in Broadstairs, Kent, close to Nolan’s home. Aston, 62, says the song is “promising and then it doesn’t deliver” and isn’t “that great”.
This band know how to deliver when it comes to Eurovision. In Dublin in 1981, Aston and Baker’s calf-length skirts were famously whipped off mid-song to reveal miniskirts beneath. The signature move has become as much a part of Britain’s pop-cultural furniture as Pete Townshend’s windmill guitar swing or John Lydon’s snarl, just with added Velcro. Eurovision winners need that “skirt-rip moment”, Baker says. The “potentially huge platform” can “bury” performers, Aston warns. No pressure, Olly.
Bucks Fizz were formed in January 1981 by manager Nichola Martin specifically for Eurovision pre-selection competition A Song for Europe. Having won, Aston, Baker, Nolan and fourth male member Bobby G (real name Robert Gubby, who retains the Bucks Fizz name and doesn’t tour with The Fizz) travelled to Dublin with low expectations. They found it surreal, particularly when an IRA threat saw them assigned bodyguards. The band’s drilled performance changed everything, says Aston. They soon topped the charts in eight countries. Back home, they couldn’t walk down the street undisturbed. Fans would camp outside their houses.
Determined that their charges wouldn’t become one-hit wonders, Martin and songwriting partner (and future husband) Andy Hill positioned the band as the British Abba. It worked commercially – two more UK number ones followed within a year. The Land of Make Believe, co-written by Hill and King Crimson’s Peter Sinfield, knocked The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me off number one in 1982. But Bucks Fizz struggled for acceptance in 1980s pop circles, and then chart positions started slipping. Luck eluded them too. Bucks Fizz recorded What’s Love Got to Do With It months before Tina Turner did, but Turner released her version first and had a global smash. Money was tight. Bucks Fizz split 4.5 per cent of the royalties between them, and I ask them whether it’s true that one sold-out tour saw their backing band earn more than them. “That’s right. The band walked away with £6,500, and we had £1,600 each,” says Aston. Martin, meanwhile, got rich.
Everything changed in December 1984 after a concert in Newcastle. An argument on the tour bus over who ate a box of Ferrero Rocher thrown on stage by a fan led to a collision with a lorry. Baker woke up on the road with three broken vertebrae, Aston was temporarily paralysed, and Gubby and the crew were also injured. But Nolan nearly died. He was in a coma for days. Forty years on, the consequences remain. “I’m well
‘An argument on the tour bus over who ate a box of Ferrero Rocher led to a collision with a lorry’
now. But the one thing it’s taken from me – and it’s the worst thing that could happen – I lost 50 per cent of my vision because I hit my head,” Nolan explains. He lost his driving licence and also suffered epilepsy, now under control. “I’m thankful I’m alive,” he says, joking that he’s “never eaten Ferrero Rocher since”. But the crash derailed everything.
While in hospital, Aston decided to quit. But she was still under contract to Big Note management (Martin and Hill), so they sued. She countersued. The timeline is messy, but Aston became involved in 13 lawsuits, seven of which she brought against newspapers. The reason for the chaos was that she’d had an affair with Hill shortly after his recent marriage to Martin.
She cries recollecting this period, adding that her parents were drawn into it. “I’m going to get upset… I had a terrible time.” Did she sue the papers because of how they wrote about her relationship with Hill? “It was at the root of it. I lost everything I had fighting my own corner and I don’t want to go back there,” she says. The three-year litigation cost her £400,000, in fees which she covered by selling her Kensington home. She won every case against the press and settled out of court with Big Note. “Cheryl and I knew nothing of what was going on with Jay and Andy…” Nolan trails off.
Baker quit in 1993; Nolan a few years later. Enter David Van Day of pop duo Dollar. Van Day toured with Gubby and newish female members including Heidi Manton (now Gubby’s wife), but the band fell out after a series of backstage rows during a calamitous tour of the Falkland Islands, as documented in an episode of the BBC series Trouble at the Top. Van Day then teamed up with Nolan and two new female singers, meaning there were two versions of Bucks Fizz touring: Nolan’s and Gubby’s. When Nolan quit his version, Van Day carried on touring as an iteration of Bucks Fizz, despite none of the four members having been in the original line-up.
Nolan claims Van Day was an “arsehole” and “an absolute nightmare”. They went to court over money (Nolan claimed Van Day was pocketing money that was his). A judge ruled that Van Day owed Nolan tens of thousands of pounds. However, Van Day declared bankruptcy and Nolan had to sell his Maida Vale penthouse to pay lawyers. “I lost it all because of him,” says Nolan. He says he’s had physical fights with both Van Day and Gubby, although he and Gubby are now on speaking terms. (Gubby says he doesn’t remember their fight. Van Day was approached for comment.)
There has been “a lot of mucky water under the bridge”, Baker concedes. The band’s name remains an issue though. Manton has owned the Bucks Fizz trademark since 2001, and she and Gubby tour sporadically (the other three challenged the situation in court in 2011 and lost). Baker believes being called The Fizz is costing them bookings. “People think we’re a covers band [or] a tribute act,” says Aston. Gubby tells me he has no plans to relinquish the brand.
The band are playing at Indigo in Greenwich’s O2 in June. But days after our interview, I hear rumbles of a final bombshell: Nolan is planning to announce on Radio 2 this weekend that he’s leaving the band at the end of the year. This year’s dates as a three-piece will be a last hurrah.
Chatting to Bucks Fizz is rather like sitting through three Eurovisions at once: it’s colourful, never boring, unexpected, exhausting. But despite everything, they know how lucky they are. “Making Your Mind Up changed my life,” says Baker sincerely. The others nod. Baker flashes a smile. That narrative’s too simple for this band. “I still don’t like it though.”
The Fizz play Indigo at the O2 on June 28; thefizzofficial.com