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Off the record
Evening Standard 02.11.07
Making a classy comeback: The Spice Girls
Self-confessed microstar John Otway
Look here too
Power to the reunited Spices
How could anyone not really, really like The Spice Girls? My love for them is neither kooky nor ironic, and it's certainly not sexual. I love them because they made fantastic music.
I was the first to hurl my hat in the air at news of the 18-city reunion tour, which starts in Vancouver on 2 December. If we are to believe the BBC, the first Spice Girls London show, at the 02 Arena on 15 December, sold out in 38 seconds. So they added two more. A further 14 O2 dates have now been set for January and tickets are long gone.
There's an accompanying greatest hits album, sensibly titled Greatest Hits, due in a fortnight from Virgin, but first comes a new single. Available from all good download stores from Monday, the stately Headlines (Friendship Never Ends) will delight diehards and casual acquaintances alike.
"It's a big love song, a Spice Girls classic," according to Geri Halliwell (is she Ginger Spice again? I do hope so). She's entitled to be boastful. Just as a generation came of age with them, the ultimate girl band have come of age themselves.
Composed by original Spice writers Matt Rowe and Richard "Biff" Stannard (plus, allegedly, the Girls themselves), this year's Children In Need song is a ballad of the 2 Become 1 ilk. Better still, it's strictly old school Spice Girls and makes no concession to fashion or the passing of time. Doubtless arms will be interlocked when they tackle it live.
Wisely, Mel C, always their best singer, is left to do most of the legwork in the verses, which she belts out with believable soulfulness. But when they com together to harmonise divinely the choruses, it's as if they've never been away. As a song, it twinkles.
That the new single is so good is, frankly, a bonus. The Spice Girls have nothing to prove. No matter how inevitable their comeback was, following the disappointing efforts of their grizzly solo careers, the Spices remain of genuine cultural importance.
We can chuckle over Girl Power now, but for female performers The Spice Girls' rise and their 55 million album sales was Year Zero. Before Sporty, Scary, Ginger, Posh and Baby, there had only been the Motown girl groups, whose every move was controlled, and then The Belle Stars and Bananarama, who remain very much of their time.
Look around and you'll see the Spice Girls' legacy everywhere. You might not like it, but they are as influential as The Velvet Underground.
Sugababes and Girls Aloud, feisty pop groups who make great singles, are obvious heiresses but so too is the can-do, I-want-it-all-and-I-want-it-now attitude of pop stars from Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen to Razorlight and Kaiser Chiefs. What's not to be excited about?
An early listen to...
Duran Duran
Red Carpet Massacre (RCA)
If Duran Duran's revival following 2004's Astronaut surprised even themselves, its successor has proved a more tricksy proposition.
One album, Reportage, and one guitarist, Andy Taylor, were binned before they decided to up the groove factor and enlist long-time fan Justin Timberlake on a couple of tracks and, more extensively, Timbaland. When the two Timbs join forces on Nite-Runner, it's as slinky and sexy as Duran Duran have ever been, while Timberlake adds a .1st- century aura to Falling Down, which is Save A Prayer with added oomph.
When the extra funkiness works, as on Skin Divers, they strut imperiously. When it doesn't - the grim Tempted - it's grandads down the disco and the grace of Box Full O'Honey or the instrumental Tricked Out, suddenly seem like more pleasurable options. No great step forwards for popular music, then, but as Duran Duran albums go, it's a solid effort.
John Otway the microstar
It can't be easy to keep failing - all the more lovable, then, of John Otway to call his new anthology of a 30-year pop career, The Patron Saint of Losers. "I am that man," chuckles the two-times hitmaker (Really Free in 1977 and Bunsen Burner 25 years later).
Singles have never really been Otway's thing. His thing is touring. Endlessly. He has just finished his "Jet Debt" tour, to cover the cost of last year's disastrous world tour that never was. He had promised to hire an Airbus 340 to take his audience and music to such venues as New York's Carnegie Hall and Sydney Opera House.
After one gig at Liverpool's Cavern ("very strange atmosphere: the entire crowd had just had malaria jabs"), the whole enterprise collapsed owing £150,000.
Life goes on. Now 55, Otway plays 130 anarchic gigs a year, between penning the sequel to his autobiography: Cor Baby That's Really Me (Rock and Roll's Greatest Failure). Always a better songwriter than he gives himself credit for, national treasure status beckons.
"I tried acting (in Supergran and The Chronic Crooner - I wasn't Supergran), but I wasn't very good. The shows mean I've never had a proper job and now, strangely, some people have a modicum of respect for me. I've got an insight into being a microstar." Next month, he embarks upon the world's first Acrostic Tour: Oxford, Tavistock, Wyside, Alston and York. Put the first letter of each place together and you have an acrostic. "Stupid, isn't it? I can never resist a gag."
• John Otway performs at the Half Moon in Putney (020 8780 9383) on 1 December.
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