Intimate, melodic and charming are all adjectives you would associate with the music of Fairground Attraction. Fronted by charismatic vocalist Eddi Reader, the band rocketed to fame in 1988 thanks to the magic of their ubiquitous hit Perfect. Yet their elegant sound actually originated during a pub bust-up.
‘This band I was in [at the time] played a gig in Tooting. Afterwards, the owner of the pub accused us of stealing a stylus from the jukebox and attacked us with baseball bats,’ guitarist and Perfect songwriter Mark Nevin recalls to M. ‘Our backing vocalists then left the band, so we needed someone else for our next show — that’s how I met Eddi. I remember teaching her the songs in a van outside our next gig in Walthamstow and being blown away by her voice.’
Fairground Attraction weren’t rehearsing in vans for much longer. Perfect, their debut single, went to number one in the UK and won a BRIT award for Best British Single, while the track’s accompanying album, The First of a Million Kisses, notched Best British Album. The band became the first act to claim both awards in the same year; an honour only matched since by Blur, Coldplay and Adele.
This feat was made all the more remarkable by the fact that Fairground Attraction’s sound was at odds with the times; a decade that was largely dominated by synth pop and glossy production. Having always swum against the tide, though, their music owes more to classic American songwriting and jazz guitars.
‘Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass did this brilliant record [1976’s Fitzgerald and Pass... Again]; her amazing voice and his playing kind of became the template for Fairground Attraction,’ Mark explains now. ‘I could be Joe Pass and I found an amazing vocalist in Eddi. But our [early] success was something else — it was a bit like going out for a drive in a Morris Minor, taking a turn and ending up on a Formula One track.’
'I remember teaching Eddi Reader the songs in a van outside our gig, and being blown away by her voice.’ - Mark Nevin
Perfect first homed into view when Mark was living in a squat in Cricklewood, a place he ironically dubbed the ‘Academy of Fine Popular Music’.
‘I tried to write songs that were like Dusty Springfield when I lived there,’ he says. ‘It was only years later that I realised it was opposite the house where Dusty Springfield was born!
‘The song itself was based on a relationship that wasn’t working out, and I remember writing it in the kitchen of this mouldy old bedsit. I got to the chorus and ran out of ideas. Then, about a year later when I was in Akron, Ohio working as a gardener, I was thinking about the song, and the chorus just came out as if it had always been there.’
It wasn’t until a gig at Hackney’s Duke of Wellington pub that Mark and Fairground Attraction realised the song’s full potential. While much of their live set at the time featured slower and more dramatic songs, Perfect was something of a poppy outlier — but, after Eddi’s insistence, it was added to the setlist.
‘By the time we got to the third chorus, everyone was singing along and bellowing it back at us,’ laughs Mark. ‘It felt weird, almost as if it was something I had copied by accident. We were told if we released it it would go to number one, but we lived in a squat at the time and couldn’t believe it. But the next year, it did just that.’
This success wasn’t without its drawbacks, though. Mark remembers an underlying tension between himself and Eddi, with the pair constantly deliberating whether he was writing songs for her solo project or the band. Another point of contention came when the band were being courted by record labels.
‘I was concerned about [our label insisting on] a producer who would destroy the essence of what we did,’ Mark recalls. ‘I wasn’t sure about Phonogram’s intentions, so we went to RCA and said we’d sign with them if they promised they wouldn’t make us work with anyone else. They agreed, but we had a nerve-wracking day where Phonogram were waiting for us but we were planning on going with RCA. I thought it was going to go wrong, but we landed the deal and they let us go on to make the record.’
The First of a Million Kisses was made with engineer Kevin Moloney and recorded in just a couple of weeks with the simple production Mark had hoped for. The album reached number two in the charts, but, ultimately, this rapid success led to the destruction of Fairground Attraction. With no manager in place to help steer them through this momentous period, the group imploded in 1990 on the brink of making their next record.
‘We did try to record the second album, but the relationship between us was so bad that when we went into the studio, I picked up the guitar and couldn’t put my fingers on the strings,’ says Mark. ‘I couldn’t press them down, couldn’t stand it any more. I walked out and never came back.’
Nearly 30 years have passed since Mark’s fateful exit, but the book hasn’t been closed on Fairground Attraction. Indeed, their reunion — announced earlier this year with the promise that they still have ‘lots of things left to say,’ according to Eddi — only came about thanks to a chance text Eddi sent to Mark.
‘It’s like a big family where you love each other but you can’t stand them at the same time,’ Mark wryly tells M about his bandmates. ‘When Eddi sings my songs, she’s a better singer, and my songs sound much better when she sings them. In some ways, we’ve always needed each other.
‘I did this gig a year ago and Eddi was there, and my wife encouraged her to get on stage with me. She sang Allelujah from our debut album and it was an incredibly powerful and emotional moment.’
‘Fairground Attraction are like a big family where you love each other but you can’t stand them at the same time.' - Mark Nevin
The band’s new album Beautiful Happening, out next week (27 September), sounds like vintage Fairground Attraction with a mixture of songs both old and new. The title track, one of Mark’s personal favourites, was inspired by a stirring live performance Andrea Bocelli gave on the empty streets of Milan during the pandemic.
‘I ended up writing the song inspired by the weird and terrifying time we all went through,’ Mark explains. ‘I was trying to find optimism in those horrible times, and Eddi loved it.’
Mark believes the best way to work as a songwriter is to leave your ego at the door and try and get out of the way of the music. ‘I don’t write the songs: they’re like mushrooms that grow in the garden,’ he says. ‘I’m grateful to find them and pick them. They’re in the room already and if you’re receptive to them, then they will come to you.’
While the music industry might look radically different from the last time Fairground Attraction were active, for Mark and his bandmates, some things do remain the same.
‘We’re doing it exactly as we did the first time: by ignoring everything else and just getting on with it ourselves,’ he says. ‘We could have gone to a label. but we financed the album ourselves and did it completely independently without any outside influence. It’s very much our baby.’
Fairground Attraction’s new album ‘Beautiful Happening’ will be released on 27 September via Raresong Recordings. The band will tour the UK from 28 September to 18 October.
