July 2012
It's been a few months since Siân Lacey Taylder broke that news in the music press and despite a continuing silence on the part of Gina and Suzi the reunion rumours are still doing the rounds.
And now Ms Lacey Taylder, once a close friend and intimate of Gina Gershwin, is set to publish a frank account of the band's rise promising to reveal, for the first time ever, the real reasons behind her sensational departure from the band.
The book will be published later this year but you can now read, for for a limited period only, the first chapter on Ms Lacey Taylder's website: http://sianlaceytaylder.weebly.com/whose-hair-is-it-anyway.html.
And if there's any news on that impending reunion, you'll here it here first. Be sure to keep in touch.
It's been a few months since Siân Lacey Taylder broke that news in the music press and despite a continuing silence on the part of Gina and Suzi the reunion rumours are still doing the rounds.
And now Ms Lacey Taylder, once a close friend and intimate of Gina Gershwin, is set to publish a frank account of the band's rise promising to reveal, for the first time ever, the real reasons behind her sensational departure from the band.
The book will be published later this year but you can now read, for for a limited period only, the first chapter on Ms Lacey Taylder's website: http://sianlaceytaylder.weebly.com/whose-hair-is-it-anyway.html.
And if there's any news on that impending reunion, you'll here it here first. Be sure to keep in touch.
From the Record Mirror, 29th December 2011
It might have been the decade that taste forgot but that hasn’t put the mockers on the music industry’s fondness for eighties reunions. As one of the decade’s more enigmatic bands looks set to make a comeback, Siân Lacey Taylder gives the lowdown on Approval Needed’s colourful and occasionally controversial history.
And so the eighties revival grinds inexorably on, each week claiming an ever more unlikely victim – or casualty, depending on your point of view.
The rumours currently doing the rounds are that pop-rock outfit Approval Needed are on the verge of reforming for a possible European tour; whether there’s any truth in them is another matter. Certainly there’s plenty of goodwill and a substantial financial incentive; only a Wham or Smiths reunion would generate more publicity and filthy lucre. Former manager Gary Lumbton is certainly keen on the project claiming the band have ‘unfinished business to attend to’.
For those too young – or whose brain cells are too addled – to remember, Approval Needed were a six-piece big-hair-metal combo who shot to fame in the summer of 1987 before imploding, in quite spectacular fashion, four years and five top-ten albums later.
The band, once dubbed the West Country Abba due to the complex nature of their personal relationships, were rarely out of the media spotlight. Most of this attention was aimed at lead singer Gina Gershwin who was the subject of much speculation as to the exact nature of her gender but they also had a field day scrutinising, in quite graphic detail, the love lives of rock’s premier lesbian couple, bassist Suzi Trocodare and guitarist Janie Bekynton.
It was Gershwin’s sudden resignation – on a primetime TV chat show in December 1991 – that precipitated Approval Needed’s premature demise, though the rot had probably set in the previous year with the release of their critically-derided concept album: ‘Death by Eyeliner’. Although it was a commercial success across Europe, going platinum in several countries and spawning a couple of hit singles, the subsequent tour was marred by internal strife, not least the acrimonious divorce of keyboard player Stella Bekynton and Gary Lumbton.
‘Whatever happened to the good-time Charlies?’ asked one critic, wondering why the band had abandoned the tried and trusted formula that had brought them so much success in favour of an earnest, almost excruciatingly self-analytical examination of the excesses of the nineteen-eighties It was a bit like the end of the age of innocence, the moment when the hedonistic spirit of the decade breathed its final breath.
So what are the chances of one of the eighties most striking icons getting together again? Pretty good, by all accounts. Next year sees the release of a complete boxed set of Approval Needed’s albums, re-mastered by former guitarist Pete Lumbton. It’s also the twentieth anniversary of the release of ‘Whose Hair is it Anyway?’ prompting BBC4 to commission an hour-long ‘rockumentary’ detailing the band’s rapid rise and fall.
So if ever the time was ripe for a reunion it’s surely now. But are the former members themselves interested? According to the unofficial Approval Needed website husband and wife guitarists Pete Lumbton and Janie Bekynton are ‘actively investigating the various options’ in addition to their existing commitments to Noggin the Nög. With former Dark Burgundy and Approval Needed drummer Damien Dare retired on medical grounds it’s been suggested his nephew, current Nög drummer Tom Bekynton, could take his place.
Talk about keeping it in the family! Tom’s mother, Stella – now the Marchioness of Sherborne – hasn’t ruled out a return either; the website quoting her as being ‘open to offers’. ‘I’ve got no axe to grind with any of them, not even Gina, and I certainly have no intention of entering my dotage as a sedate and sensible old fool’, she added.
All of which leaves Suzi Tuscadero and Gina Gershwin. The former now runs a gay-friendly hotel and spa complex in rural Somerset and recently told a local paper that she hadn’t spoken to any of her former bandmates for nigh on twenty years and hasn’t picked up a bass guitar since quitting her own post-Approval Needed band – Blunt Instrument – in 1993. ‘I can’t see the point in staging a reunion,’ she said. ‘I don’t need the money and I certainly don’t want to put myself through that sort of emotional rollercoaster all over again. Julie [her civil partner] and I are very happy with our lot and I don’t see any point in upsetting the applecart’.
Bad news for Mr Lumbton senior, not least because a poll on the band’s unofficial website voted Suzi and Gina Gershwin the most popular members of the band with 95% stating they’d want nothing to do with a reunion in which neither or both didn’t take part. When he and Pete attempted to bring in Nög vocalist Marcus Branson to replace Gershwin all hell broke lose, with father and son receiving death threats from irate Approval Needed fans.
And what of Ms Gershwin? She was last spotted boarding a flight to Mexico City the morning after her harrowing interview in which she blamed her decision to quit on her unrequited love for Suzi which had, in turn, forced her to break-off her long-term engagement to fiancée Damien Dare. Fans and friends of the band have always argued that there was much more to it than that; the real reasons for her departure remain as mystifying as her current whereabouts. The truth is that nobody has seen nor heard from her in nigh on eighteen years and even occasional reports of her death have never been uncorroborated.
But Gary Lumbton isn’t disheartened. ‘There’s no rush; if we’re going to do this I’m determined we’re going to do it properly. If she’s out there, we’ll find her.’
And if she’s not?
‘Nobody’s indispensable. I have my eye on a suitable replacement, but it’s up to the rest of the guys to make a decision. All I will say is that this project’s far too important to let sentiment dictate the course of events. If the public wants Approval Needed back on stage then they’ll have it, by hook or by crook.’
Say what you like about Gary Lumbton but he usually gets his man – or in this case, perhaps, woman. Watch this space, as they say.
It might have been the decade that taste forgot but that hasn’t put the mockers on the music industry’s fondness for eighties reunions. As one of the decade’s more enigmatic bands looks set to make a comeback, Siân Lacey Taylder gives the lowdown on Approval Needed’s colourful and occasionally controversial history.
And so the eighties revival grinds inexorably on, each week claiming an ever more unlikely victim – or casualty, depending on your point of view.
The rumours currently doing the rounds are that pop-rock outfit Approval Needed are on the verge of reforming for a possible European tour; whether there’s any truth in them is another matter. Certainly there’s plenty of goodwill and a substantial financial incentive; only a Wham or Smiths reunion would generate more publicity and filthy lucre. Former manager Gary Lumbton is certainly keen on the project claiming the band have ‘unfinished business to attend to’.
For those too young – or whose brain cells are too addled – to remember, Approval Needed were a six-piece big-hair-metal combo who shot to fame in the summer of 1987 before imploding, in quite spectacular fashion, four years and five top-ten albums later.
The band, once dubbed the West Country Abba due to the complex nature of their personal relationships, were rarely out of the media spotlight. Most of this attention was aimed at lead singer Gina Gershwin who was the subject of much speculation as to the exact nature of her gender but they also had a field day scrutinising, in quite graphic detail, the love lives of rock’s premier lesbian couple, bassist Suzi Trocodare and guitarist Janie Bekynton.
It was Gershwin’s sudden resignation – on a primetime TV chat show in December 1991 – that precipitated Approval Needed’s premature demise, though the rot had probably set in the previous year with the release of their critically-derided concept album: ‘Death by Eyeliner’. Although it was a commercial success across Europe, going platinum in several countries and spawning a couple of hit singles, the subsequent tour was marred by internal strife, not least the acrimonious divorce of keyboard player Stella Bekynton and Gary Lumbton.
‘Whatever happened to the good-time Charlies?’ asked one critic, wondering why the band had abandoned the tried and trusted formula that had brought them so much success in favour of an earnest, almost excruciatingly self-analytical examination of the excesses of the nineteen-eighties It was a bit like the end of the age of innocence, the moment when the hedonistic spirit of the decade breathed its final breath.
So what are the chances of one of the eighties most striking icons getting together again? Pretty good, by all accounts. Next year sees the release of a complete boxed set of Approval Needed’s albums, re-mastered by former guitarist Pete Lumbton. It’s also the twentieth anniversary of the release of ‘Whose Hair is it Anyway?’ prompting BBC4 to commission an hour-long ‘rockumentary’ detailing the band’s rapid rise and fall.
So if ever the time was ripe for a reunion it’s surely now. But are the former members themselves interested? According to the unofficial Approval Needed website husband and wife guitarists Pete Lumbton and Janie Bekynton are ‘actively investigating the various options’ in addition to their existing commitments to Noggin the Nög. With former Dark Burgundy and Approval Needed drummer Damien Dare retired on medical grounds it’s been suggested his nephew, current Nög drummer Tom Bekynton, could take his place.
Talk about keeping it in the family! Tom’s mother, Stella – now the Marchioness of Sherborne – hasn’t ruled out a return either; the website quoting her as being ‘open to offers’. ‘I’ve got no axe to grind with any of them, not even Gina, and I certainly have no intention of entering my dotage as a sedate and sensible old fool’, she added.
All of which leaves Suzi Tuscadero and Gina Gershwin. The former now runs a gay-friendly hotel and spa complex in rural Somerset and recently told a local paper that she hadn’t spoken to any of her former bandmates for nigh on twenty years and hasn’t picked up a bass guitar since quitting her own post-Approval Needed band – Blunt Instrument – in 1993. ‘I can’t see the point in staging a reunion,’ she said. ‘I don’t need the money and I certainly don’t want to put myself through that sort of emotional rollercoaster all over again. Julie [her civil partner] and I are very happy with our lot and I don’t see any point in upsetting the applecart’.
Bad news for Mr Lumbton senior, not least because a poll on the band’s unofficial website voted Suzi and Gina Gershwin the most popular members of the band with 95% stating they’d want nothing to do with a reunion in which neither or both didn’t take part. When he and Pete attempted to bring in Nög vocalist Marcus Branson to replace Gershwin all hell broke lose, with father and son receiving death threats from irate Approval Needed fans.
And what of Ms Gershwin? She was last spotted boarding a flight to Mexico City the morning after her harrowing interview in which she blamed her decision to quit on her unrequited love for Suzi which had, in turn, forced her to break-off her long-term engagement to fiancée Damien Dare. Fans and friends of the band have always argued that there was much more to it than that; the real reasons for her departure remain as mystifying as her current whereabouts. The truth is that nobody has seen nor heard from her in nigh on eighteen years and even occasional reports of her death have never been uncorroborated.
But Gary Lumbton isn’t disheartened. ‘There’s no rush; if we’re going to do this I’m determined we’re going to do it properly. If she’s out there, we’ll find her.’
And if she’s not?
‘Nobody’s indispensable. I have my eye on a suitable replacement, but it’s up to the rest of the guys to make a decision. All I will say is that this project’s far too important to let sentiment dictate the course of events. If the public wants Approval Needed back on stage then they’ll have it, by hook or by crook.’
Say what you like about Gary Lumbton but he usually gets his man – or in this case, perhaps, woman. Watch this space, as they say.