When she was Sporty, Mel C endured weight problems, clinical depression and
media savagings - but the newly re-energised Melanie Chisholm can have the
last laugh, as she emerges as the Spice most likely to have an enduring
career in pop
Of course, we should all be careful of what we wish for. In Melanie
Chisholm's case, it was precisely at the moment when things started to go
right that, simultaneously, things started to go wrong. The flyer handed to
her in a London street had been guaranteed to fire the imagination: "Are
you aged between 18 and 25? Are you attractive? Can you dance and sing? Do
you want to be in a new, all-girl band?" She was. She could. She did.
Bingo! And, in time, she metamorphosed into "Sporty", one of five
young women in what would prove to be the global pop phenomenon of the
Nineties, the Spice Girls.
Along with Melanie Brown (Scary), Emma Bunton (Baby), Geri Halliwell (Ginger)
and Victoria Adams (Posh), Chisholm was primed and polished for stardom by
the group's then-manager, Simon Fuller. Collectively, and in a blaze of
hype, they were launched at the public in the early summer of 1996. A debut
single, the strident, appropriately named Wannabe, topped the charts in that
July, and so began four years of chart and media ubiquity. All of us, the
utterly uninterested included, were forced to know who they were, and which
moniker was attached to whom. At the very start of it all, though, one of
the tabloids offered a handy guide.
"And what it said is still imprinted on my mind," says Chisholm, now
29. "'Mel C. The plain one who stands at the back, not doing anything!'
Stupid to have let it bother me, I know, but I was so vulnerable. It
compounded my sense of inadequacy, and intensified all the fears I already
had about not being good enough to be in the line-up." Rich, really,
given that she was acknowledged to be by far the most committed, musically.
But this wasn't about knowing your James Brown from your John Galliano. It
was about body image and received notions of beauty. "I felt the
increasing need to look my very, very best to compete. And unfortunately
that meant being the absolute thinnest I could be."
For someone prone to self-criticism, being catapulted into the public eye
alongside four other, more conventionally glamorous and photogenic peers was
never likely to be healthy or helpful. "But that's not something you
think of when you're 21 and hungry. God, listen to me! Literally hungry,
because I was, most of the time." Having now emerged at the light end
of a six-year tunnel of obsessive dieting and exercising, binge eating,
clinical depression, medication and therapy, Chisholm laughs at her
unwitting double entendre. "I look at the young girls in today's pop
bands, and I fear for them. They start out healthy then, after just a few
months, you notice that one or other is starting to look really gaunt. I
fear, because I know what a horrible, horrible thing it is to go through."
Three years on from the final Spice Girls' implosion (Halliwell's early
departure had turned them into a foursome in late 1998), Chisholm has much
to feel proud of. In the aftermath, it is she who has fared best in both
critical and commercial terms. A well-received first solo album, Northern
Star, recorded as a side project in 1999, sold three million copies
worldwide, and contained four UK Top Five hits, two of which (Never Be the
Same Again and I Turn to You) reached No 1. Despite some commercial
successes on solo projects, Chisholm's former colleagues have, in general,
not fared so well. These days, Halliwell would appear content to be famous
for being famous, while Brown and Bunton have tried their hands at TV
presenting, and Adams, now Mrs David Beckham, has been recast as the
ultimate footballer's wife. Chisholm, meanwhile, continues to command
respect as a pop artist, and a strong second album, Reason, should further
bolster this credibility.
When we meet in the north London offices of her publicist, she acknowledges a
few pre-release nerves. Engagingly, she also admits that, on re-entering the
spotlight at the recent MTV Europe Awards, the thrill of being greeted
warmly by her peers soon palled. "By the end I was thinking, 'If one
more person comes up and tells me how great I'm looking, I'll scream.' Very
nice to hear, of course, but how completely dreadful did I look before?"
She refuses to talk specifics of weight loss or gain, but what it is possible
to say is that, for the first time in several years, she looks relaxed,
happy, vitalI That, in effect, she looks well. Her tenure as a Spice Girl
brought Chisholm instant, worldwide fame and something (again unspecific) of
a financial fortune: "Not as much as people might think, honestly, but
more money than I imagined was possible." Yet, she believes, she has
paid in kind. "It was a fantastic ride. We were so, so lucky and I'm
very, very grateful. But at the same time - and I know it's kind of awful to
say - it was f****** horrific, too. I don't think you can put a price on
what I or any of us went through."
That, from childhood, she should have wanted to be a pop star is
unsurprising. Her mother, Joan, now 53, has been in bands since the age of
14, and still plays the north-west club circuit as the Tina Turneresque
vocalist in a cabaret outfit, River Deep. "She had two gigs in the same
day the other week," grins her daughter. "That's more than I
manage when I'm out on tour." Originally, home was on the outskirts of
Liverpool, but when Melanie was three her parents divorced and she and her
mother moved to Runcorn. "Mum just wasn't happy. I think my dad wanted
her to pack in the singing and stay home, but she couldn't do it. Like me,
music's in her blood."
Within a couple of years, Joan married again, but little Melanie wasn't best
pleased. "He wasn't my dad. Who did he think he was, telling me what to
do?" She smiles. "Now, I love him dearly. I mean, he brought me
upI But back then, there was a lot of animosity from my side. I was a real
test of his love for my mother." Chisholm has a half-brother, Paul, now
22, from her mum's second marriage, and two others from her biological
father's subsequent remarriage. "When I was small I thought I was
really hard done by, because all my friends had a mum and a dad, and mine
were no longer together. Now, I realise I'm the fortunate one. I have two
mums, two dads, and this fantastic huge family which I truly appreciate.
Everyone gets on, and I love them all."
Her initial interest in performing came from watching her mother rehearse.
But it was dancing, rather than singing, which first excited her. "I
started very young, and pursued it seriously from the age of eight - all day
Saturday and two nights a week after school. And I really excelled - got
accepted by a performing arts college at 16, did a three-year course, and
emerged with a qualification to teach ballet. At which point I set my sights
on the West End. At the time, all dancers wanted to be in Cats, because of
the high standards it required, and I'd had a recall for it just as I got
accepted for the Spice GirlsI Not that I'd have been happy in an ensemble. I
never wanted to be in the chorus. I always wanted to be a lead."
Then, as we have established, both the dream and the nightmare began. Though
part of something that was fresh, exciting, media-sexy and genuinely
era-defining, Chisholm was also (it was written) plain, a passenger, and had
thighs that were simply too big to be seen on a pop star. "Previously,
I'd been a normal, healthy girl, one who only if pushed would say that no,
she wasn't very happy with those thighs either. Suddenly, journalists were
writing features about them. Believe me, I knew when I was overweight or not
looking my best. I didn't need someone else to point it out." As a
result, she obsessed. About everything. And, for most of the Spice Girls'
shelf-life, continued to do so.
Some two stone under her previous body weight during this time, she both
drastically reduced her food intake and began to exercise to excess: three
hours per day in the gym became her norm. "Ridiculous, but at the time
I couldn't see it. The weight was coming off, off, off, and the paranoia was
setting in. 'This is what it takes! You've got to keep it up!'"
Chisholm says that, repeatedly, the other Spices took her aside and said, "Melanie,
you're much too thin." Even Victoria? I ask, thinking of how the former
Ms Adams went from being known popularly as Posh to, in certain quarters,
Skeletal. Ironic, no? "I can't talk about that. What I can say is that
people around me were concerned. But, as everyone knows, you can't be helped
unless you want to be."
Things came to a head two albums in, and after Halliwell's departure.
Increasingly frustrated by what she hints was her remaining partners' lack
of commitment, Chisholm decided to record a solo album. All manner of
stellar writers and producers proved keen to work with her, and she loved
the new sense of autonomy and individual achievement. The only negative (my
interpretation) was that, in the run-up to Christmas 1999, she had to return
to the Spice fold.
"Melanie (Brown) and Victoria were both pregnant by then and they didn't
want to be in the band. I completely understand that - they each had a much
bigger priority. But I'd been really pushing for us to make a third album.
It would be our first without Geri, and so was quite important. We'd already
toured without her, but I wanted to prove we could cut it on record, too.
And, eventually, everyone else came round to the idea." Just as (again,
my interpretation) Chisholm had gone off it. Northern Star was newly out,
and gaining attention, but now here she was back amid what she admits was "the
same old same old...
"After not having had to deal with the egos and bullying and attitude and
everything else of being in a band - any band - it was hard." A series
of live shows was coming up, but "once again, you had people not
wanting to rehearse, disagreements, the usual stuff. I thought to myself, 'I
don't need this.' It was during those final live dates that I decided the
Spice Girls were over for me. And we should have quit straight after them.
They were fantastic. We had a blast. But the album wasn't finished, and
though no one's heart was in it, we had to see it through. Of course, it
suffered as a result (combined sales of '96's Spice and '97's Spiceworld
exceeded 35 million, but this, the unfortunately titled Forever, sold only
two million). To be honest, I didn't care."
She also wishes, she says now, that she had listened to her body. It had been
a pressurised and emotionally fraught time, and she was exhausted. Instead,
she began what became an 18-month transglobal trek in support of her own
album. And, despite the positive reaction to it, quickly hit rock bottom. "On
those days when I didn't have shows to do, I simply couldn't get out of bed.
And while I never, ever had actively suicidal thoughts, I no longer wanted
to live. I would go to sleep in the hope of not waking up again. My eating
patterns were totally out of control. Eventually, I was diagnosed as being
clinically depressed."
Binge eating for comfort, she visibly ballooned. More cruel headlines, and
more self-induced pressure. There wasn't even a significant other to talk it
all through with. Chisholm says that, prior to the present day, she has had
only one real romantic relationship, "at 18, which is so long ago that
I can't remember what it was like". Because of this lack of a visible
male partner, rumours circulated that she was lesbian. "Believe me, if
I were, I'd be up and out and shouting loudly about it, but the fact is that
I'm not, which is tricky. You don't want to sound like you're saying, 'Ugh!
No! Not me!'"
It took a year of experimentation to find the right drugs to stabilise her. "What
worked in the end was Prozac. It takes a few weeks to kick in, but was
amazing in a situation like mine. I'd had this terrible, crippling anxiety
about everything, and it took that away. After a few months, though, I came
to feel like a zombie, zoned out to the point of having no emotions left at
all. That frightened me. 'Am I going to be like this for the rest of my
days?' I knew it was the right time to try and come off."
Counselling played a major part in the healing process, "because while
anti-depressants can be great, they don't tackle the root cause". She
tried all manner of alternative therapies, too. "And the love and
support of my family was key. I'd isolated myself from them. Getting back in
regular contact proved a fantastic thing to do." On recovering some
equilibrium, Chisholm then tackled her weight gain. "I'd lost so much
confidence, mainly because of the way I looked. Even walking down to the
shops, I'd be willing people not to look at me. Having become so
uncomfortable in my own skin, I knew it was part of my overall recovery to
get physically healthy again."
Sessions with a personal trainer have paid clear dividends, but she says she
is no longer obsessive about the gym. "I used to be a robot in there.
Just mental. Now, although I'm very active again, I have it in perspective.
Being good to myself used to be so hard, because I hated who I was. A big
part of getting better has been overcoming that."
An unexpected new relationship has also helped greatly. "I've always
been alone as an adult. People would say to me, 'You'll meet someone some
day', and I'd think, 'No, I won't!' I thought I was unlovable, undateable,
and having so many secrets didn't help." She was introduced to Tom
Starr, 35, by mutual friends, and the two have been seeing each other for a
year. He is a director of a Hertfordshire-based construction firm, but has
music industry contacts. "Which is cool, because he inhabits the
'normal' world, yet also understands what I do. We keep our separate places
(Chisholm lives in Hampstead), but he's in my space a lot. I love his
company, and I'll miss him greatly when I start travelling again."
Which will be in promotion of the enjoyable Reason; largely self-written and
with a quirky, adult pop sensibility that is a refreshing contrast to the
more mainstream or r'n'b-lite directions chosen by her former bandmates. Do
the five remain friends? "I've got a lot of love for them still. But
not really friends, no. I probably speak to Mel the most. And if I bump into
Emma somewhere, we'll have a little chat. If anything happened to any one of
them, I'd be devastated, but there's no ongoing relationship. In time,
perhaps. Who knows?"
To borrow from the great sage Ronan Keating, life these past few years has
been a rollercoaster. So much so that she might easily write a book about it
(after all, both Mel B and Mrs Beckham have, while the presumably doubly
fascinating Halliwell has made herself the subject of two autobiographies).
Chisholm smiles and shakes her head. "It's not right for me. I just
don't have that same desire or need to be famous these days. It was my
motivation once, but now I just want to make my music." She screws up
her nose, and appears to study the tattoo on her wrist. "And anyway,
God willing, none of us has lived even half our time on earth yet."
Reason is released by Virgin on March 10. It is preceded by a single, Here It
Comes Again, on February 24
