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They are
now the newest and hottest of groups. But
The Spice Girls have come a long way - in
fact they couldn't sing and couldn't dance
when Ian Lee first met them. Caitlin James
hears the real story...
The
legend of the Spice Girls has them all
meeting up at auditions, all desperate for
a break and out of work, with two of them
commuting from the North down to London.
Stories of how they decided to team up,
live together and form an all-girl-power
group abound. The generally repeated story
of their beginnings says that for two
years the five girls were writing songs
and laying down the foundations for the
Spice Girls, and after managing
themselves, they met their current manager
and the bidding war began.The rest is
history. Well, not quite.
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Ian Lee, 50, is
the main person who helped the Spice Girls realize
their immense ambitions and bring them to their
present success. He runs the charity-funded Trinity
Studios in Woking, Surrey, where he helped groom
the band - which was originally called Touch Ian
spent time with the girls every day for a year, sat
at a piano with them and helped them to train their
voices. But according to Ian Lee, the girls never
clapped eyes on each other until June 7, 1994. He
says: "I couldn't believe it when all these stories
came out about how the girls did everything
themselves."
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They were a
put-together band. They'd never met until they were
picked from 400 others and Emma Bunton and Geri
Halliwell weren't even considered for the original
line-up. The whole idea of a girl band to rival boy
groups such as Take That and East 17 was dreamed up
by Chris Herbert who, together with his father Bob,
owned a management company - which was originally
called Heart and later, Safe. The Herberts have
since been contracted by the girls' new advisers,
19 Management, and they are legally bound not to
speak of their involvement with the Spice Girls.
What actually happened was that Herbert, 26, went
to dance schools and drama colleges in London and
the South-East with a rather cheap black and white
flyer, asking for girls who could both sing and
dance, and who were streetwise, ambitious and
dedicated.
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On March 4, 1994,
girls turning up at a studio in London were given
30 seconds to perform and marked out of 10 on their
ability to dance and sing, as well as their looks
and personality. The 400 hopefuls were whittled
down to 10. Among them were the two Melanies, along
with a middle-class girl called Michelle
Stephenson, who had received the highest score.
Victoria was also picked. Then Geri Halliwell
finally entered the picture on April 28 when the
management team were choosing the final five. Geri
had missed the first audition because of a
modelling job, but had begged with Chris Herbert on
the telephone to give her a try. When she walked
in, everybody could see she was a bit older than
the rest of the girls so Chris asked her how old
she was. Her reply was a classic Geri. She said,
"I'm as old or young as you want me to be. I can be
a 10-year old with big tits if you want." She got
the job.
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On June 7, the
girls came to the studio to work together. Chris
had put them all up in a local B&B, and for a
week they got to sing and dance together. After a
week they were told they had a couple of weeks to
think things over, and decide if it was something
they really wanted to do. They all agreed and Chris
moved them into a house in Maidenhead and asked Ian
to allow them to use his studios on a daily basis
at a cost of £100 a week. The girls were given
expenses, but no regular wage. In a bare, bleak
dance studio with paint peeling from the yellow
tongue-and-groove surrounds, thegirls got to know
each other.Soon after Michelle left the band and
Chris held a panic audition and Emma was picked.
She was suited to the rest of the girls.
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