Spice Girls: the real star behind their success
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Closing Ceremony at the Olympic Stadium. The Spice Girls return. Pic. Brett Costello
Source: News Limited
THE mastermind behind the biggest-selling pop group of the 1990s, the Spice Girls, has revealed that Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox also played a large part in their success.
In a new documentary to be screened on BBC Radio 2, The Fuller Picture: The Simon Fuller Story, the man who managed the group during their rise to fame – and was unceremoniously sacked by the Spice Girls for his efforts – reveals how another of his star clients helped to shape the girls’ Spicey personas.
“I’m not sure this story has ever been told, and Annie might not thank me for telling it,” Fuller said.
“I think we were flying to New York and I sort of brought up midway in the flight and said I’ve just signed this girl group, and Annie was very interested.”
“She said ‘I want to meet them’. Almost directly she was the one who got them to be louder and more brash and more specific, so Emma, who was the sweet cute blonde girl, became Baby Spice. She just played it and hammed it up – none of these names actually existed, but Annie gave them focus,” he confessed.
Annie Lennox performs on stage during the Diamond Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace in 2012. Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller has revealed that Annie played a key role in the success of the Spice Girls. Picture: Getty Images
Source: Supplied
“Each of the girls knew who they were and in their own way tried to represent it but it wasn’t strong enough. Probably the most significant thing that happened was when they met Annie Lennox.”
Once Lennox encouraged the fivesome to play up on their individual traits, it wasn’t long before they were officially christened Scary, Baby, Sporty, Posh and Ginger. From there it was a whirlwind two years of world domination for the group – but the cracks started to show even before Ginger Spice Geri Halliwell left the group in May 1998.
In November of 1997, the five girls banded together and decided to sack Fuller, the man whose marketing expertise had made them perhaps the most profitable pop group on the planet.
While they later reconciled (Fuller handled the group’s 2007 reunion tour), Fuller revealed that the sacking scuppered plans for a second Spice Girls movie and another album as a five-piece.
“[The sacking] was kind of somewhat out of the blue. My initial reaction was kind of shock, and, ‘fine, OK, that’s that’. Sod them, I’m moving on. They’re missing out on having the best manager in the world and that’s the way it is, so I withdrew and stopped managing them instantly,” he said.
Rumours of another Spice Girls reunion show no signs of abating, with Scary Spice Melanie Brown addressing the topic on her 2 Day FM radio show recently.
“I get asked this question a lot, and out of the five, it’s always me saying yes. It’s just a case of getting everyone else to say that too. But I will not give up, at some point this year I do hope to be performing with The Spice Girls. And if not … I’ll just have to kill them all!”
