The true Brits spirit
Jarvis Cocker’s bottom, Geri Halliwell’s dress, Kanye West’s bikini bonanza ... as the Brit Awards hit 30, the stars remember some of pop music’s most iconic — and silliest — moments
Annie Lennox dominated the Brits throughout the Eighties and Nineties, winning six Best British Female Awards. Pundits joked that the award be renamed the “Annie Lennox Award”.
Back in 1984 the Brits were a completely different thing. Almost like a school outing. You went out for this afternoon in the Dorchester that would end up this boozy event where everyone was plastered. And at the time that was super-grand too, this room full of booze and smoke and people staggering between tables. It was a bunfight, and if you were a musician that was the high point of your year. Dave [Stewart] and I just felt very gratified to win.
Then they decided to do something a bit more upmarket. It moved to the Albert Hall. I missed the booze-up that it had been. They were trying to be a bit American — they just got bigger and bigger — and wanted to be like MTV, really sharp and flash. Did I feel like I was the only female out there when I kept on winning? Well, it was very rarefied for women. And if you were a gifted artist there was an advantage to your rarity, you were distinguished as a female artist. But the industry was a big old-boys’ club.
Steven Webb was performing Earth Song with Michael Jackson when he was knocked off the stage during Jarvis Cocker’s infamous invasion.
I was 11 and a pupil at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London. It was the era of the History album and I was obsessed with Michael Jackson. The day before the Brits we did a big rehearsal at Earls Court, Michael appeared on the top of this metal slope on the set. He introduced himself and we were all jelly-kneed. He was so lovely. He spoke to me backstage and said: “Oh, I get so nervous doing these sort of things.” He was just like a child. He truly was.
For the show, we were all dressed in rags, but underneath we had clothes from different nations — I think I was Swiss, because I had lederhosen on! The performance was all going to plan. And I’d dropped on to my knees, doing my “What about uuus?” line and was crying and screaming. Then Jackson got in his crane to go do his big bit. Then I saw this odd figure I didn’t remember from the rehearsal. I realised it was Jarvis Cocker. He was doing a moonie and pulling up his top. Then Lavelle, Michael’s choreographer — he did the Dance Like Michael Jackson programme recently — started trying to chase him off stage. And as Jarvis was being chased off stage, he nudged me out of the way — there was no malicious intent. Unfortunately I fell over, into the pit of the Brits.
The audience picked me up and put me back on stage. Then we did the big finale where Michael is in his white silk suit and we all hug him and go offstage. That was the last time I saw him. Then somebody said to me, “Oh Steven, there’s blood all over your face”. Suddenly I was on a stretcher being taken to the medical room — just me and Michael fans who had fainted. I’d cracked a rib and got a blood clot in my ear.
The next day it was a massive thing in the papers: “Beaten to a Pulp” was one headline. The tabloids said that Jarvis had run around the stage punching kids in the face! The nation was completely divided. If you agreed with Jarvis, Michael was trying to be Jesus. If you agreed with Michael, you thought: “What an appalling thing to do, to ruin someone’s stage show.”
Afterwards, Michael Jackson called my mother to apologise and explain what happened. Ridiculous. And [Jackson’s record label] Sony took me to Hamleys and I was told to take whatever I wanted. There was a Smurfs figurine set laid out like a village on display — to my shame, I just swiped it with one arm into a basket. I turned up at home with about 40 bags full of Hamleys toys.
I was later told that when I hugged him in the performance I actually got blood on his white silk shirt. So the footage when you see me hugging him was actually rehearsal footage that they broadcast. I’m from the Wirral, and the front cover of the Liverpool Echo said: “True Grit at the Brits.”
When people find out that I’m “that boy that was hurt at the Brits”, they’re like, “Oh, are you all right?” But it really wasn’t traumatic. As an adult I look back and I think f***, I wish I could do that again. I was performing with Michael Jackson at the Brit Awards!
Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys is a Brits veteran, opening the show in 2004 with a little help from 90 Welsh miners. Last year the band won the Outstanding Contribution to Music award and performed with Brandon Flowers and Lady Gaga.
We’d had the idea to do Go West with Welsh miners’ choirs beforehand, because we’d been asked to do the Royal Variety Show. But Chris [Lowe] and I are not royalists and we don’t do royal events. So we thought we’d do it for the Brits. The miners came up from South Wales the day before and we went into the studio — to get a big sound we recorded them, double-tracked them and they sang along on the night. Alexandra Palace is a huge, rambling place so we had plenty of dressing-room space for 90 miners, who were roaming around backstage asking people for their autographs.
The plan was that Chris and I would descend from the sides of the stage in industrial buckets. But Chris doesn’t like heights so he wouldn’t do it. And there was a shortage of batteries to light up the miners’ helmets. Our designer had the idea of Chris and I being miners as well, but dressed all in white — like we’d never done a day’s work in our lives.
For the Outstanding Contribution to Music award last year, what we liked, and also what we were terrified of, was the fact that you have 12 minutes of live television. Because when you’re performing live with technology, it can be rather unreliable and temperamental. At the dress rehearsals our computers all crashed. We had the idea of doing a medley, and getting in Brandon and Lady Gaga; we like putting on a show.
I think it’s ridiculous that they haven’t given Susan Boyle a nomination this year. She’s actually a very good singer, she’s made an extraordinary impact, and it’s an astonishing personal story. I hate that music-business snobbery that someone isn’t really cool enough. It was a great idea of Lady Gaga’s when she said she wanted to do a performance with Susan Boyle. If those two sang onstage together, that would be a massive moment.
Danbert Nobacon of the anarchic indie group Chumbawamba found a novel use for a champagne bucket at the 1998 ceremony when he tipped one over John Prescott in protest at the Liverpool dockers’ dispute.
We were at the Brits after a long discussion as to whether we should even go or not. Our label at the time, EMI, told us we could make a film and build a stage set. So we compiled a film of Reclaim the Streets footage. We were doing the vocals live so we changed the chorus [of the song Tubthumping] to: “New Labour sold out the dockers just like they’ll sell out the rest of us ... ”
As the night progressed and people got more drunk, people started wandering around. We were sat at big round tables that had these big ice buckets full of wine and champagne. And our bass player came back to our table and said, “Oh, Prescott’s sat over there ... ” I was always the one in the band who was most easily convinced of a dare. So I went over. Fleetwood Mac were on and Prescott and his party were enjoying that. So I jumped on to the table with this bucket full of ice water and I just said, “This is for the dockers” and threw it at Prescott. He got up and shoved me off the table. I scuttled off and got about 50ft before the security guards got me.
They took me to the head of the whole security operation. He was absolutely livid, handcuffed me and left me with these two coppers. He disappeared to find out what charges Prescott was going to bring. After 20 minutes he came back really flustered and said, “Mr Prescott doesn’t want to press charges and we have to let you go. But we have your name and number.”
What was more shocking was the press the next day. I was on the phone for two hours that morning. Then I thought I better phone my mum and dad. When I got through to my mum, the press had been on her doorstep from eight in the morning and talked their way in. My mum had got out the photo albums and made them cups of tea while they mined her for any salacious details they could find out about me.
You know, we’d had a few drinks, but over the years Chumbawamba had used theatre and demonstrations and pranks as part of our repertoire. Having an anarchist sense of humour we always looked at a situation and thought, how can we enjoy this? Not many bands would use the Brits in that way.
Rob Dickins was chairman of the BPI in 1988. He pulled the plug on Rick Astley during the show, in favour of The Who.
We had many months of delicate negotiations to get The Who back together to close the show. At that point they hadn’t played since splitting up years before. The producers had hired Noel Edmonds to present. It was a live show, and I was in the audience, watching, looking at my watch, thinking, “This is crazy, it’s half-past eight, we’ve got four more awards and the Nine o’Clock News is coming”. I went backstage and Bill Curbishley — The Who’s manager, a tough character — is talking to the producers, saying, “What are you doing about this?” So the producers send a message to Noel Edmonds, who says: “I’m a professional, I’m hired to run the awards show.” So Curbishey turns to me and goes: “Well, what are you gonna do about it?” So, I got up on stage and said to Noel: “Noel. Finish it. Finish it now. Just announce the last award.” “No, I can’t do that. Rick Astley has to come up and get his award.” So I grab the mike from him and say: “The winner is Rick Astley, congratulations Rick, and here on stage for the first time in years, it’s The Who!”
Someone had to do something, otherwise we would have had 28 seconds of one of the greatest British rock bands of all time. I don’t think Noel was best pleased. Rick Astley wasn’t either — he stormed off. But ever since then the horrors of that night have been like a bond between us.
Helen Terry has worked as a producer of the Brits since 2001. Among her most hair-raising moments was choosing Russell Brand to relaunch the Brits as a live broadcast in 2007. “What about the rumours that David Cameron smoked drugs as a schoolboy?” Brand joked. “What worries me most is that he dressed up as a schoolboy to do it, the pervert.”
Ali G and Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me/Me Julie was one of the most difficult performances. They wanted to throw inflatable dolls — sex toys — into the audience and all sorts of impossible things. I had to go and have a stern chat with Ali G — which was quite difficult because I’m about 5ft 5in and he’s about 6ft 3in . He was in character, although there was a fine line between Sacha Baron Cohen and Ali G then. And he wasn’t having it. But he had to in the end because it was a health-and-safety issue.
To perform Gold Digger, Kanye West hired 77 models. The ITV lawyer was down there specifying what we could and couldn’t put on the models’ breasts to make it safe for broadcast. Kanye wanted to use pasties — those stick-on things — and that completely wasn’t allowed. And the size of their pants — they couldn’t use thongs, they couldn’t use G-strings. It was kind of absurd. Then this busload of women were being spraypainted, freezing their arses off because they were being held in one of the outer areas, which wasn’t heated. I just felt really sorry for them. But it was spectacular. That’s Kanye for you. It was his idea, we just had to make it happen.
In 2007 we went back to a live broadcast. Being live, the show is more immediate, it adds tension, we added a live vote — there is this feeling that anything can happen. Russell Brand was the perfect host for the set design — it was the Love and Hate set, very rock’n’roll, tattoos everywhere, a great big lock and chain in the middle. Was I concerned about what he might say? Well, Russell Brand is a very bright man. He was told very clearly what could and couldn’t be said and that lawyers would go through his script — we took out some stuff that was deemed to be too offensive. I think he seized that moment and made it his own.
The Scottish soul singer and Texas frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri duetted with the hip-hop artist Method Man in 1998.
Method Man’s such a lovely man, really cool and adorable. And he’s a helluva height. All the Spice Girls were coming up saying, “Can you introduce us?” I felt like his pimp! And he was loving it. But he got put away somewhere because the organisers were saying, “We don’t want trouble”.
Just as we were walking onstage he said, “I’m really nervous”. And I looked at him and thought, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you f***ing dare”. I grabbed him by his jacket and pulled him down to my face and said: “Listen, you better do this. It’s Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye for the Nineties-style, so get in there.” And he goes: “Yeah, I’m liking that, I’m really liking that.” Then he goes, “Maybe I’ll sing.” And I went, “Don’t sing! Don’t sing! Just rap!” Then we walked onstage and it was absolutely amazing.
In 2004, the Darkness won Best British Band, Best Rock Act and Best British Album. The lead singer, Justin Hawkins, in his fishy catsuit, stole the show.
We didn’t know we were going to win three awards, but we planned our performance months in advance. Because we are from Lowestoft, initially we thought we’d go big on the fishing town/trawler boy angle — perhaps arrive in a big net. Then we thought, use the Suffolk/rural aspect and come as the Wurzels. So we tried to get a combine harvester. But the sharp rotating blades aspect of that meant there were some health-and-safety issues.
So, the same thing happened, as happened with a lot of Darkness things: have a million ideas and end up with the one that’s most do-able. We made a set based round my catsuit, which I decided to make fish-like, with gills and a fin. I’m not sure why now. Maybe because the British Isles are surrounded by water?
Round the catsuit centrepiece everything was nautical, with giant, rearing seahorses and rocks. It was much like an aquarium. And for some reason we had a giant tower, which I disappeared into at the end amid flames and explosions. That was quite tricky, timing-wise. I had to disappear down a trapdoor as the pyros went off. Otherwise I would be chargrilled turbot. The Brits are a huge, theatrical, disco-panto night out. We just felt we had to be as big and explosiony as possible.
Last year Florence and the Machine were Critics’ Choice. This year Florence Welch and her band have been nominated for three awards, including Best Album.
I’d forgotten what a big deal the Brits were until I went last year and I suddenly started remembering: “Oh my God, that’s where the Geri Halliwell Union Jack dress happened and the Michael Jackson incident happened.” Performing there definitely brought me into the public eye much faster. It was an amazing experience but terrifying — I’d never gone to anything like that and suddenly I was on the red carpet in front of the cameras and people were screaming my name. I received the award, promptly cried and had a minor panic attack.
The 2010 Brits will be screened on ITV1 on February 16 at 8pm
Craig McLean, The Times 06-02-2010
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