SHAKESPEAR'S SISTER
The Spooky World of SIOBHAN FAHEY
She used to sleep on her knees She's got a stream in her
back gardne that stops flowing at midnight She dyed her hair
black to be like a witch Chris Heath investigates the strangest
Story in pop...
"So," says Siobhan, sitting down with a cup of tea, "what are
we going to talk about?". She has a few guesses. "It could be
all the various houses," she says warily. "Or what it's like
being married to Dave Stewart? Or what it's like to be rich,
famous and a mother...?" Perhaps. She interupts her musing to
rush round looking for a match, lights a cigarette, murmurs
"guilt" and a "Secondary cancer" and explains that her smoking
is one the few things that Dave "No longer Rolf" Stewart of
the Eurythmics can't stand. Once she gets going conversation
literally gushes from her...
To being with we do indeed discuss the millions of spook-houses
in which she and her husband live. ("Three," she corrects.)
First there is a modest affair in Los Angeles - there is a recording
studio and a house with "big rooms" and "not enough bedrooms
for guests" (four), a swimming pools ("of course," she laughs)
and a lkarge garden... "It's just ecstatically beautiful ",
she raves. " I wanted a really enchanted English garden. Wherever
I live I try to recreate England. It has lots of roses... I'm
made about flowers. It's also got thiungs that English gardens
don't have, like oranges and lemons and grapefruits and hibiscus
flowers and humming-birds a stream that comes on at mid-day
and goes off at midnight. In fact you can have it on whenever
you want - it creates a nice soothing backdrop..."
Sound's quite nice, doesn't it? The there's France, where they
built a house on a plot of land they chose while on honeymoon.
(Dave Stewart doesn't like English weather - "the air pressure
makes him really depressed" - but Siobhan wanted to live somewhere
close to London) "Once again, it’s just a four-bedroomed house…
a nice pool… that’s it really." There is no stream (swizz) "but
there is a lake on the land." Of course. And finally there is
their house in London ("one of those tall thin ones that looks
massive from the outside and is really pokey on the inside")
where she likes her bedroom ("a dark cozy womb") and where she
has just been watching "A Problem Shared". It sounds like a
bit of a spoke-life – they’re hardly ever home anyway and when
they are, their clothes or the toys for their baby (Sam) are
never in the right house – but it’s quite clear that the unlikely
couple of pop are blissfully happy.
"People don’t really know what Dave or I are like," she reflects.
The media represent Dave as this withdrawn, elusive, boffin
genius madman and I’m the fluffy blonde bimbo from Bananarama
who’s just dyed her hair black. And of course neither stereotype
remotely resembles the real person. "The family travel around
as a posse of five people -–Siobhan, Dave, Sam and their nanny
Nida and her cousin Wui. (Nida is pronounced "needa", Wui I
pronounced "wee" – need a wee," titters Siobhan ). The story
of Nida is, as with most things in their household, a slightly
odd one. "She pre-dates me by a couple of years," says Siobhan.
Eh? In other words, Dave Stewart got a nanny two years before
he met Siobhan just in case he got a bit broody and felt like
having children?
"It was a bit like that," she laughs. "his mum met her in the
street. Dave’s mum is a really amazing person. She really loves
people – there's a bus stop near her house and she’ll make big
pots of soup and offer it to the people at the bus stop. She
instinctively homes in on lovely people and she met Nida in
the street and she knew that Dave was unable to look after his
house because he just spends all his time…" she chuckles "being
creative". And so, even though Nida didn’t really understand
much about Western houses" and would get jeans dry-cleaned and
bung priceless garments into the washing machine, it was much
more important than that "she’s so full of love" and she was
welcomed into the household.
This March, whilst the posse was whizzing around France, Siobhan
saw a life-altering sight. "I drove past a truck on the way
to the slaughterhouse," she shudders, "and I could see all the
cows. They’d been beaten round the head and they were all covered
in blood. Suddenly you realise – do you want to be part of that
or don’t you? She decided that she didn’t. When she arrived
at their French "no stream, just a lake" house she told Nida
that meat was off the menu forever. "Before I hadn’t given it
serious consideration because I couldn’t relae the meat on my
plate to the cow in the field." The world is messed up badly
– it’s a very violent place – and seeing those animals bullied
and beaten and tortured… I just think that while society condones
such acts against animals it condones them against people as
well. It makes me feel directly responsible." There is however
a slight vegetarianism problem with Sam. "A few months ago,"
she admits, "he decided he liked sausage." Oh. "He doesn’t like
much food and it’s really difficult to know what to do because
you think "Oh well, at least he likes something!" It seems little
premature to impose my decision on him…"
You get the impression that becoming vegetarian is just one
of many changes that have come over Siobhan recently. She talks
about her days in Bananarama as if I was a life of a different
person, a person who had lost the point of what they were doing
and lived life in a rather cynical, aimless way. She explains
that she changed her hair colour partly because she didn’t want
to be "recognised from or associated with my past" "I feel more
submissive with blonde hair… more of a victim," she elaborates.
"You aline yourself with Marilyn Monroe and Madonna and the
submissive sex kind of woman." Black hair, by contrast represents
"strength or purpose and almost defiance… sexual but not 'sexy'…
you kind of associate it with witches."
Witches and general spookiness is a world which, it turns out,
interest her greatly. When asked about it a very strange story
from her past slowly unravels itself. "I went through these
very weird phases as a teenager," she begins. "I think I was
teetering on the verge of schizophrenia at the time."She laugh
in the kind of awkward way that suggests she knows that sounds
silly but that she also means it. "I had a weird kind of obsession
at the time." At first she is hesitant to explain but eventually
she continues. "I think because I was virginal, and The Exorcist
(a spook film about demonic possession) had just come out and
people had noted a vague resemblance between me and the girl
in it and for a couple of years I thought…" She laughs nervously.
"…I thought that something was going to possess me. I did have
a bizarre ritual that I would go through every night to ensure
that I would still wake up in control of myself in the morning."
Again, at first she is unwilling to go into detail, but she
relents.
"It's just ridiculous... very very sad. You see, the other
thin that happened at that time was that I went to a convent
school and one of the nuns said, in front of the whole class,
"There's a girl in here who would really make a great nun and
she knows who she is! It's.... SIOBHAN FAHEY! Would Siobhan
stand up!!! You know you've got a vocation! If you turn your
back on the Lord you'll always remain UNHAPPY..." Terrible."
And so she became convinced she was in danger of being possessed
by evil. "So I had this ritual. It was based on stations of
the cross and rosary beeds and frantic chanting." She laughs,
embarrassed, before spluttering out the strangest detail. "And
I had to sleep on my knees." Sleep on your knees in bed? "Yeah."
And you'd manage to fall asleep kneeling in bed? "Yeah" she
murmurs. "After many hours." She did this every night for about
two years. The ritual stopped "when I lost my virginity, I suppose.
I though 'I'm safe now - they don't want me anymore'. I'd pick
up some piece of information that the Price of Darkness was
rather keen on young virgins." She laughs at how odd all this
sounds. "I've come a long way since then. I'm OK now."
Nevertheless, these days, Siobhan has many deeply felt beliefs
that many cound a little strange to some people. "I don't believe
in just flesh and blookd," she says. "I believe in the forces
of good and evil, in God, in a great spirit. That should be
the most important thing and it isn't. Peoplejust worship material
things and the trappings of success in the lifetime - they forget
that they're on a long journey and they've got to make up in
their next life for what they do in this one.
A lot of people will think it's easy for someone to critise
the "worship of material things" when they own three houses...
"Well", she nods, "they've got it completely wrong to look at
it in those terms. Dave and I do not seek to earn money and
when we do we put it back and help other people. We don't hoard
it in a Swiss band account. We have a very communual and generous
attitude - we don't regard it as essentially ours. We don't
want to hand onto it and form a dynasty. People who might critise
us should put their own house in order first because that's
obviously what they'd do." She sighs. "That's why I hate doing
interviews about the houses, because to us it means absolutely
nothing. We're hardly ever in them... usually our friends are
there."
And on she chats, smoking more cigarettes, drinking more tea
(no sugar) and eating her unpopstarish lunch (one toasted cheese
and tomato sandwich out of a white paper bag). She is quite
one of the most friendly and interesting people you could meet,
and the conversation spooks all over the place. She talks about
how much she likes the coat she's just taken off: "black velvet
coat with an elasticated waist and full swinging skirt with
an uneven handkerchiefhemline - I used to do fashion journalism"
- because "it feels nice against my legs"; about how she was
terrified to go underwater in the new Shakespear's Sister video
"Run Silent" because normonally she never gets her face wer;
about how she writes poetry - and has poetry reading sessions
with a friend and they "sit there cringing bright red"; about
how she thinks "a peaceful breakdown in society as we know it"
would be a good thing'; about how Dave Stewart likes joke shops
and has bought a horrible mask that "cackles and blinks and
spits water in your face" and which Sam calls The Horrible Man;
about how she wants to do past life regression and has a weird
feeling about The Deep South of America; about how she used
to talk about seeing an old lady when she was tuny and her parents
told her there was no old lady unless she's seen the ghost of
the previous inhabitant who was - tada! tada! - an old lady;
about karma and hwo she believes scientific understanding of
the world is hopelessly limited; about how usefless Mrs Thatcher
is; about how Sam's birth chart says, to her delight, "he'll
be a great visionary and humanitarian...." and so on.
I can't see all this in Smash Hits," Siobhan suddenly declares,
after she's been talking about reincarnation and spirtiual matters
for a while, "apart from 'She gurgled! She burped! She's a loony
girl!' That's the trouble - these things aren't given enough
gravity and respect. I've always been really shy about talking
like this in interviews because in England there's such an atmosphere
of doubt..." So if someone read all this and though 'Golly!
She sounds a bit odd!' what would you say to them? "I'd say
'Who are they to say what odd is?' That's my way of living my
life. I think if more people got interested in being creative
and expressing themselves in a creative way then there'd be
less frustration and people wouldn't be so bitter and cynical
and violent and the world would be a much better place." She
is beinning to get angry just thinking about it. "People are
scared to be creative, especially in England because it's taboo.
You're a loony - there's something wrong with you. You're supposed
to work in a factory like everybody else. When I didn't want
to be like that I was treated as someone who was very selfish
and irresponsible."
Even by your parents? "Yeah" Do they understand now? "I think
they understand a bit better not but they come from a different
generation and I really do think that they have been slaves
of their own upbringing, quite tragically so." What will they
think of you saying that? "I think they'll be very upset but
my hope is that now my parents are retured they can fulfil themselves.
My dad in particular has, I think, a very special brain, for
writing, but he's always had to be part of the sausage factory."
By now Siobhan ("She gurgles! She burps! She's a loony!"....
except she's quite clearly now) is looking very thoughtful and
not a little sad. It's as though she forgot quite a while ago
that she was giving an interview. "The good thing," she quietly
reflects, thinking of her upbrining, "was that I could see all
that when I was very young and I didn't want to go the same
way...".
Extract from Smash Hits, 18-31st October 1989, Written by Chris
Heath
Last Updated: 26th October, 2001
