Beneath the Blonde

Beneath the Blonde Read Free

Book: Beneath the Blonde Read Free
Author: Stella Duffy
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to gear herself up for the next press launch, she reminded herself that as long as she kept her lips apart just a little for the photo calls and wore a short enough skirt, all the baby boy journos (and at least a third of the girls) would fall over themselves, and each other, to be nice to her, taking great care with their sharp muso prose to note her looks first and her music second. It was tedious and predictable and if it annoyed Siobhan, it probably annoyed the boys in the band even more, but all five of them knew that the perfect packaging they’d chanced on by accident—blonde girl singer, four boys backing—was the glitter that sold their music. While the press was slowly starting to acknowledge that the music could stand by itself, no one yet felt brave enough to test the waters and allow Siobhan more than a moment or two out of the spotlight. So the four men of the band prepared for the press part ofthe launch by buying matching charcoal grey Paul Smith suits, with a different coloured linen shirt for each and Siobhan prepared herself by buying most of South Molton Street with half of Top Shop thrown in for glitter trash value. Their manager, their tour promoter, the record company and the band itself knew that Beneath The Blonde was made up of five people, only one of whom happened to be Siobhan. The buying public knew that too, but only as much as it knew winter follows summer and first love always dies. Truth, but not the kind of truth you think about too much. For the world outside the band, Beneath The Blonde was the Blonde.
    In the past five years Siobhan and the guys had learnt more about the business than they’d ever hoped to know. They’d had a fairly slow start. The first single, a minor triumph, had been followed by another year of student gigs and record company stonewalling. Then they’d eventually managed to record a very well received first album with a willing if disorganized indie label. That album had been a huge and very surprising success. However, the subsequent tour had been followed not by the weeks of glory they’d expected but by another agonizing year in which they eventually sorted out all the business details. And rather messily extricated themselves from a tricky relationship with the guy who had been acting as their manager until a real one happened along. An old friend of the bass player Steve, Alan had known far more about managing stand-up comedians than bands and had only been looking after them as a favour. Manager-free (after a great deal of negotiating and a greater deal of cash), they accepted an offer from Cal Harding, a Texan businessman their record company had introduced them to. He’d commuted between LA and New York for thirty years and, in his early fifties, he knew the businessinside out. Or certainly seemed to. With one success under their belt and badly needing to realize the promise of so much more, the band couldn’t afford not to make a leap of faith on the manager front. They signed away the next five years to him and then, for the first time in their career as musicians, they were able to leave business to someone else and get on with being creative. Greg and drummer Alex churned out over forty songs, Siobhan and Dan edited, pruned, arranged and then rearranged. After five major arguments between Alex and Dan, yet another monumental fight between Siobhan and Greg, and a single moment in which even Steve was ruffled, they finally had the sixteen tracks they felt ready to let Cal offer their record company. The album was whittled down to thirteen songs, at least one of which everyone hated, and another which needed virtual blackmail to get the record company to agree to. (Cal had proved himself a man of great artistic integrity by simply sending a fax to the most difficult company executive: “No ‘Pink Pleasure Please?’ No Blondes.”) Luckily for all of them, his bravura show of force was successful.
    And now, with the second album due out soon, Cal

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