Talulah Gosh - Interview Part 2

  by Anthony Strutt

published: 23 / 7 / 2006

intro

In the second part of our three part interview with Amelia Fletcher, she speaks to Anthony Strutt about breaking up her first band, indiepop group Talulah Gosh and forming her second group Heavenly, and her brief, disastrous career as a dance musician

PB : How many labels have you been on now ? There was 53rd and a 3rd, Sarah, K, Matinee, and you are currently on Fortuna Pop with Tender Trap. Is there any that I have forgotten? I would imagine there are different versions of the same thing in other countries. AF : We have done a lot with Elefant in Spain, and stuff with labels in Japan. I can’t remember the labels names now. That is pretty much it. PB : Is there much difference between the labels that you have been on and in the way that they have been run? Or has it been pretty similar? AF : It has been pretty similar. The other one we did was Wiiija, whom put out the last Heavenly album, ‘Operation Heavenly’. It was probably the most proper label, but it didn’t make much difference. The only difference is they give you a 50/50 profit split whereas the others gives you a royalty, but that album didn’t sell well (Laughs). The others have all been small labels but K and Sarah did pretty well. They were sharp on sending stuff out, chasing you up and doing press and getting stuff done in the time that was set. PB : Were you ever on Shinkansen? AF :. No, we thought the whole point of Matt Haynes folding Sarah was to get rid of a load of Sarah bands, so that he could start afresh, but then when he started Shinkansen he signed a load of Sarah bands, which we thought was a wrong decision. We didn’t want to sign to him. It was nothing personal. We just thought we needed a clean break. We really liked him. PB : As time progressed why did Talulah Gosh fold and did you then form Heavenly, with several of the people who had been in Talulah Gosh ? AF. I actually stopped Talulah Gosh. There were a few reasons. Everyone in Talulah Gosh wrote songs and I wasn’t writing many. The muse wasn’t working then, so my songs were being out numbered by everyone else. I’m a bit of a control freak, and I didn’t like singing all these other people’s songs. I didn’t like to be held responsible, People would always assume they were my songs. Also around that time in 1988, indie just collapsed and everyone got into dance music or house, and I worked out quite fairly early on that the scene would disappear and that we should cut our losses very quickly I was also coming up to my final degree at university and I had to concentrate on that,. Apparently I didn’t tell any of the rest of the band this though but I told everyone else about it., so the band was really pissed off with me. The other thing was I felt I was too old to be in a band that was for people that were 20 or under. I still think that and so I tried to do some dance music because I thought I could be famous like Yazz who was big at the time., but it was a complete disaster. PB : Did you put out any dance records ? AF : There’s a single, ‘Can You Keep a Secret ?’, on Fierce (Which was a semi bootleg label of the time). It came out as an oddity in the end, and was my attempt at hit record. I actually spent a lot of money on it, got a loan, got a guarantee off my dad, went to a proper studio with someone who knew how to do dance music. We made it and sent it off to this record company and the label boss wrote back saying, “When you have recorded it properly send me a copy.” I had no more money and then I realised then that the reason that I wasn’t able to make a good dance record was because I don’t understand dance music. What I really liked was indie music, and even if no one else liked it, I thought, therefore, that maybe I should carry on with it. The third and final part of our interview with Amelia Fletcher will follow in September.

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