Marcella Detroit, singer/songwriter
Stay came to life one morning in my converted garage in the back of my house in LA: a very unassuming studio, all knotty pine and carpet, my recording equipment in a cupboard. Siobhan Fahey lived down the road and her then-husband Dave Stewart [ex-Eurythmics] had given her a lift over, then he came in, because he had an idea.
The idea came from these amazing parties Dave and Siobhan used to have. You would not believe the crew that would show up – Tom Petty, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne from ELO, Timothy Leary. Eventually, we would all start singing and jamming, and I would always end up doing ballads. Dave said: “You know how you always sing those ballads at our parties? Wouldn’t it be great to style a song like that to feature you?” And he had an idea for chords and a melody.
Stay was rewritten maybe four times – it sounded like a Prince song at one point – before Siobhan and I went back to the original, developed it, and made a cassette of it. We played it to Chris Thomas, the producer of Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols, who was staying at Dave and Siobhan’s. We weren’t expecting anything, but I remember the room was completely silent: everyone was listening really intently. After it stopped, Chris stood up, and he went: “No 1 smash!” And we were like: “Yeah? Really?”
Later, when the final mix wasn’t working, we asked Chris to help. He rescued that song and made it sound incredible. Jennifer Maidman, from Penguin Cafe Orchestra, came up with the great synthesiser parts for the chorus, and Steve Ferrera, the drummer, also did great things.
It entered the charts at No 27. Then we played Top of the Pops and it kept steadily going up. When it got to No 1 and stayed there for eight weeks, it was really unexpected. But it was incredible that that could happen. I think it’s still one of the longest-running No 1s by a female band.
Siobhan Fahey
For our second album, Hormonally Yours, we’d had this lofty idea to acquire the rights to Cat-Women of the Moon, a fabulously kitsch 3D B-movie from 1953, and build songs around its narrative. The record company said no – they’re not known for their creative thinking are record companies – but we’d written half a dozen songs already, so carried on.
If I remember rightly – 30 years is a long time – the idea for Stay’s lyric came from a woman in the film who had to go back to her planet and leave her human love behind. I was worried about it being too saccharine, but alongside Chris Thomas we had Alan Moulder. He’d recently worked with My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain, who I loved. At that point, we were the only “pop” band Alan had ever worked with – and he went on to work with Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. It meant there was nothing sugary about the production.
Sophie Muller , who was my best friend at the time, made the video. We were muses to each other. I’d been getting into gothic ringlets and sparkly glam-rock catsuits, enjoying becoming an unhinged Victorian heroine meets Suzi Quatro meets Labelle! Now that look was combined with me becoming the angel of death in the video, in dark makeup coming down the stairs from another dimension, trying to steal Marcella’s human love away from her – the video had a slightly different concept to the song.
We only had a day for the shoot. Most of it involved recording Marcy singing, so by the evening I was getting bored – but also the clock was ticking. At 8pm, I hit the vodka and by the time we filmed, I was, shall we say, in high spirits, in full deranged splendour. Performing as a darker character is always more fun than being peaches and cream.
I loved coming down the staircase, which was inspired by one of my favourite films, Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death. That character seemed to register with lots of people, which was amazing – there were lots of ludicrous takes on it [by French and Saunders as well as David Baddiel and Rob Newman]. I found that funny and the greatest compliment. Funnier still is how people expect me to be just like the angel of death in real life, 30 years on. They’re bitterly disappointed when I’m not.
Hormonally Yours is released in a 2-CD deluxe edition and coloured vinyl on 17 February, the 30th anniversary of its release.
