THE SINGER WHO WAS VERY NEARLY WELSH SPICE
ALTHOUGH they might not have known it at the time, budding stars Victoria Adams, Mel Brown, Mel Chisholm, Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell went on to become arguably the biggest girl band of all time as the Spice Girls.
However, things could have been very different as there was nearly a Welsh Spice in the mix, with Lianne Morgan from Cardiff originally part of the line-up instead of Mel C.
Lianne, who is now 53, was 22 when she auditioned for the all-girl group that went on to dominate the charts.
She holds no ill-will at not having made it to the top of the music industry alongside her would-be co-members and looks back with pride on what she achieved then and since – even though she was dropped from the group in a brutal way.
After being adopted, Lianne grew up in a working-class family in Tremorfa in Cardiff. She always dreamed of singing and being creative, which has continued for the rest of her life.
She said: “I’ve just wanted to sing ever since I was a kid. I’ve always been really creative. My dad was an artist... It has just been in me for a long long time.”
Lianne was a singer at social clubs and was writing her own music when she auditioned for the Spice Girls in 1993. First she was up against 60 others before the group was narrowed down and she met and auditioned alongside Geri, Mel B and Victoria.
She said: “I particularly got on with Geri. Geri was lovely and Victoria was lovely and she was only 16 at the time... The audition was really great fun.
“Geri turned up with platform trainers on. I had these really tight jeans and I had a short black crop top and beret hat – she had her hair in pigtails. Mel B was quite chopsy.
“We were put into four groups of five and throughout the day they mixed the people up and then finally I was with Geri, Mel B, Victoria and another girl and myself and they let everybody go and they said: ‘You are the group.’”
Speaking about how it felt to hear she had made the cut, Lianne said: “I was really excited. My initial thought though was: ‘Oh my God, I am going to have to cancel all my gigs.’ I had a house and I was going to have to cancel all my work. I am going to have to move into this house in Maidenhead.
“I was really excited but I’d been in the music industry a while – I was the level-headed one.”
Lianne also spoke about what it was like to be Welsh in the music industry in the 1990s. She said: “I was so excited because the Welsh in the music scene, we had the p**s taken out of us... In 1993 within the music industry we were always classed as second citizens because we had this ‘stupid’ accent.”
Lianne even tried to hide the fact she was Welsh in the audition.
She said: “I purposefully tried not to talk in too much of a Welsh accent, although when you are Welsh you can’t hide the fact you are Welsh.”
A Welsh Spice Girl would have brought an extra element to the group, she said: “I’m quite feisty and Welsh women are quite outspoken and nothing goes past us.
“I think a lot of feistiness might have been brought to the group if I had been still there.”
After being told she had made it, Lianne heard nothing from the record company before getting a letter saying she was no longer in the band.
She said: “I had a letter then to say they felt I looked significantly older than the other girls and that they had found a replacement for me.
“Well at the time I wasn’t really bothered; it is just another girl group. You are not going to realise they are going to go on to be the world’s biggest ever girl group.”
Looking back at that time, Lianne describes it as a “dream”.
She said: “I honestly wouldn’t want that level of limelight on me because the pressure must be immense... I’ve always struggled to accept this ‘Spice Girl’ tag. Now I’m 53, I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself.
“You get to a certain age and you realise you’ve got some issues. I don’t want to take them into my later life and I finally go: ‘Right, that is part of my history and it is something I’ve done and I am embracing it with pride.’”
Lianne went on to work on cruise ships, run her own festival and work for youth services running music projects, all while still keeping her passion for singing and gigging.
She said: “I was always singing, I was still gigging, I was doing my gigs just because I love the actual action of singing.”
That was until 2008 when Lianne suffered serious health problems which included losing her voice and therefore her career, work and passion.
She said: “It was sore, it was hoarse, and I was breathless and I was struggling to get words out and I was becoming dizzy when I spoke. It literally felt like somebody was choking me when I was speaking.
“I was devastated. I had this consultant just sat there and they said: ‘You’ll never sing again – this is something you are going to have for the rest of your life.’ That was my whole livelihood, singing and teaching, and my voice was the centre of everything.”
After years of treatment and investigation, in 2011 it was found that her spinal cord was compressed and struggled to send signals to the brain, which caused not only speech problems but also loss of balance and vision.
She said: “I had an MRI and they found I was three millimetres away from being paralysed from the neck down... I was glad I didn’t have multiple sclerosis and I was glad I didn’t have a brain tumour but, still, it was major.”
Lianne did not stop and while it significantly limited her singing and performing, she changed her medium of expression.
She said: “I thought I am never going to be the person to sit around and watch the f***ing paint dry if my voice isn’t working – I went into art.”
Studying at Cardiff Metropolitan University, Lianne achieved a BA honours and master’s in fine art and now runs her own studio in Cardiff Bay.
She said: “I’m really proud that I’m from a working-class background and yes it took me all that time to get there but now I’ve got a master’s and now I can talk within the art world and be taken seriously.”
Lianne is working on a project called No Word, alongside the brain unit at Cardiff University and the British Sign Language community, which explores communication issues and is a cause close to her heart.
She said: “Collaborating and exploring with people who have communication issues it is giving a voice to people who haven’t got a voice. The art covers everything from being alienated, from being estranged, language issues, neurological issues – anything where people feel they are disconnected because of communication.”
Lianne added: “For me the creative arts has always been a way to use as an expression, to communicate to the outside world.
“That is really what I am passionate about: giving people a stage, others as well me, to communicate their self through whatever medium like film or sound or poem or song or painting.”